Network Governance

Budgeting and Finance Administration

Author: Cateatpeanut, with input from the Mantle Core Contributor Team and service providers

Tags: Budgeting, Finance, Administration

Purpose

This document outlines the best practices for finance administration processes between the Mantle Core Budget and authorized Service Providers. The first iteration was the BIP-19 proposal.

Accounting Method

  • Multicurrency: For the purposes of monthly claims, each major asset including MNT, USDT, USDC, ETH shall be accounted for in units. This provides simplification for end of period FX treatments.

  • Invoicing and payment cycle: Each authorized Services Provider shall invoice the Core Operations Budget after the end of each month, by the 20th of the month. Qualified payments will be made within 1 week to the onchain address. For 1-2 months working capital, service providers can request working capital financing.

  • Record Keeping: Service Providers shall maintain standard accounting systems, general ledger, and records of payments and costs for the purposes of review by the Mantle Administrator, or future nominated reviewers.

  • Accrual accounting: Revenue is recognized in the period in which it's earned and realizable, but not necessarily when the cash is actually received. Revenues and expenses are recognized in the same period.

Category Definitions

Budget proposals and monthly invoices should align with the following Category and Subcategory definitions:

Operating Activities

A1 Workforce

  • Research, Development

  • Creative, Growth, Marketing

Note [1] Includes core teams and advisors.

A2 General and Administrative

  • PeopleFinanceOps - charged at $X per FTE supported

  • Recruitment Fees

  • Legal

  • Travel - does not include marketing and dev rel events

  • Other

Note [1] For event related Travel and Other expenses, categorize under A3 Marketing for networking events, and C1 Ecosystem Programs for ETH events, dev events, and hackathons.

A3 Marketing

  • General - Includes marketing agencies, community management, analytics subscription, networking events, video production, etc.

B1 Infrastructure

  • Protocol Services - includes costs of off-chain services for Network and LSP such as AWS, monitoring services, Ethereum nodes, etc.

  • Support Services - includes other third party services such as: explorer, graph and indexers, RPC, oracles, analytics, security tools, bridges, relayers, wallets, etc.

  • Security, Audit

  • Other

B2 Protocol Expenses

  • Network Core - includes various core protocol system gas fee paymasters such as L1 Gas Fees and L2 Sequencer, Batch Submitter, and DA fees.

  • Network Other - includes gas fees for other setup requirements and faucets.

C1 Ecosystem and Builder Programs

  • DevRel, Events -

  • Grants - to applications and user programs

  • Bug bounty

Financing Activities

Funding

  • Working Cap Advance - Due to payment and claim cycles, service providers may request 1 to 2 months working capital advance. These are to be treated as a loan from Mantle Core Budget and repaid or settled at the end of the engagement period.

Special

  • Node Delegation

  • Canonical Bridge Assets

Investing Activities

This is out of scope for the Mantle Core Budget. All investment or fund deployment activities shall be executed through MIP-24 Mantle EcoFund, or MIP-25 Mantle Economics Committee vehicles.

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