Osmosis Support Lab Funding Round March 2024-2025

[maxpower]

---

Introduction

The Osmosis Support Lab has had many iterations over the span of Osmosis’ existence, the current period spanning the last

6 months. This iteration has truly been the most streamlined and efficient, maintaining the high level of service Osmosis is known for while also allowing the team to focus on directly support-critical tasks.

The partnership with Interbloc has allowed OSL to grow into a more robust team. With technical development, management and business skills to complement the top notch support and troubleshooting that made OSL what it is today, their feedback was invaluable, and the insight gained will bolster our operations as we move forward.

---

Looking Ahead

Over the past 2 years, we estimate approximately 30% of incoming support requests have not directly pertained to Osmosis, spanning issues such as IBC challenges, wallet applications, or other on-chain dApps. Within this subset, roughly half of the inquiries can be classified as entirely unrelated [how to stake KAVA, how to transfer INJ to Ethereum chain, etc.].

This brings attention to Osmosis as home to the leading, most accessible and capable support system in the ecosystem. This observation is reinforced by a noticeable number of new users migrating from other IBC projects which lack any kind of user-facing support structure.

However, these issues, comprising ~15% of all support requests, represent a significant additional workload. Although historically these have been attended to (traffic permitting), we recognize this is not the most efficient way to handle support. While most of the IBC ecosystem is fairly familiar, it can be frustrating for both the team, and for the user who simply cannot find help navigating the most rapidly evolving and already intimidating space in both tech and finance.

In response, in continued partnership with Interbloc, the Interchain Support Group was created- novel entity aimed at managing growth and streamlining support across multiple platforms within the ecosystem. OSL and any other support groups under the ISG umbrella stand to benefit from increased coordination amongst the networks, cooperation in handling broader or ecosystem-wide issues, and a reduced workload through established channels for many unrelated issues. At no added cost and with no negative impact on service levels, this is a logistical enhancement, and is detailed in this proposal for the purpose of clarity, and in the interest of transparency.

---

Term in-review

In the last six months, OSL has utilized the support.osmosis.zone web widget to support over 5,907 user inquiries, and we estimate there to be a similar level of requests done through Telegram and Discord. OSL will continue to use the widget analytics for reference of user requests and support needs.

As seen in the data [below], Osmosis’ support needs have grown exponentially in the past 3 months, showing nearly 4 times the traffic compared to the depths of the bear market. Furthermore, there will always be periods of extreme volatility, especially around token launches, chain upgrades and any unplanned events or incidents.

---

We’ve noted increases in both traffic, and in complexity of requests within the Discord group, which saw over around 3500 requests. Many come from new or migrating developers who may be unfamiliar with any existing issues or quirks unique to Cosmos SDK, Tendermint, or the IBC protocol.

There has also been increased action on telegram in terms of new users, user activity, and, as with all periods of optimism in the market, an increased presence of scammers and the propagation of malicious information.

Despite the increase in requests, users continue to be blown away by the quality and consistency of support, receiving comments like this on Twitter about OSL and Osmosis on a fairly regular basis. (Thank you all for taking the time to share your feedback!)

---

Transparency

Interbloc published two reports focused on OSL operations for the past 4 months of operations; this proposal serves as the last report.

Osmosis Support Lab Transparency Report #1 - by Interbloc

Introduction After 3 months of the OSL’s operation, we present the first transparency report of its operation and effectiveness. First an apology for the delay, the selected person for the role of Auditor had a personal situation that forced them to step down, as such we had to adjust our planned reporting schedule. The structure of the report will be: OSL performance and service coverage Areas of opportunity and improvement Suggestions from Interbloc (executed and pending) OSL performance a…

Osmosis Support Lab Transparency Report #2 - by Interbloc

Introduction Another 2 months have passed of the OSL’s operation, as stated in our previous report Osmosis Support Lab Transparency Report #1 - by Interbloc, we are doing a 2 month report of OSL’s operations. The structure of the report will be: OSL performance and service coverage Areas of opportunity and improvement Suggestions from Interbloc (executed and pending) OSL performance and service coverage OSL continues to provide excellent support service to Osmosis’ users. We also no…

OSL treasury can be consulted here: https://daodao.zone/dao/osmo1fq3wmetv8xme6v0fn53ujdmtazgz5f04vz3ta9d7qdz8gmrxwpwsy9kelc/treasury

DAODAO has provided a significant increase in treasury transparency as well as easy navigation of the transactions and payment to members. In addition, the clear timesheet tracking allows every payment to be justified and corroborated through internal data and social channel activity.

As mentioned in the report #2, there was no migration to Mava since we felt it lacked basic support features, was unreliable in terms of notifications, and did not always fetch and display new tickets without delay. In the future, with these issues addressed it may be an option. However to maintain consistent levels of support we will continue using our current chat backend.
In conjunction with their oversight mandate, the auditor will now be responsible for preparing regular transparency reports. These will continue to provide the Osmosis community an overview of day to day operations and challenges.

During this cycle we will continue to improve our issue tracking with an in-house database aggregating support requests and responses from all platforms. Benefits from this include quicker and standardized responses to common issues, improved feedback for development teams and key indicators for support guides and other materials. More importantly, it will provide the additional support that allows the support team to focus 100% on… support.

---

Giving Back

Emphasis on overall user-experience has always been central to OSL, and remains a core value to this very day.

The Osmosis community has always been overwhelmingly appreciative of OSL and all that we do, and for that we are immensely grateful. Our team occasionally gets the opportunity to tackle issues that may appear trivial to some, but hold serious weight for those on the other end.

One recent example was the correcting of the Autonomy limit order front-end failure and subsequent contract ‘bricking’ that trapped over $21,000USD of user funds in the contract indefinitely.

[Full story below]

Allow Cancellation of Autonomy Limit Orders

Background On Nov 16, 2023 the admin of the Autonomy Registry-Stake contract, which controls Autoswap Limit Orders, changed a config param that disallowed further creation or cancellation of orders, essentially bricking the contract. We speculate that this was done because the front end was live long past the contract itself stopped being maintained, so they wanted to stop new stuck orders from being created without regard for existing orders. Proposal The Osmosis Support Lab proposes to upload…

Not only reactionary, OSL also responds to changing situations and trends in user issues and requests. With the increase in new projects and networks joining the IBC ecosystem, and the rising popularity of additional wallet apps, having a central area to get all of the important information for the dozens of chains is important.
One OSL member created ‘Cosmos Directory Bot’ as a simple and safe way to find various chain info directly from chain-registry.

These are only a few things which, although they were not funded or undertaken by OSL as a whole, it is because of this organization that we are enabled to do such things. Keeping the interchain healthy, also keeps Osmosis healthy in the long run.

---

2024-2025 Funding

Our current request from the Osmosis community pool is to to fund our operations for the next full year [budgeted at 52 weeks].

Services offered by OSL for 2024 include:

• Support through web widget on: https://support.osmosis.zone/
• Support in Telegram group: Telegram: Contact @osmosis_chat
• Support in Technical Integrator Telegram group [launch TBD]
• Support in Discord server: Osmosis
• Forum moderation and management: https://forum.osmosis.zone/
• Support requests through Twitter: To be checked daily to ensure queries for support are being responded to, and to extend the friendly presence many users have already experienced in the live support.
• Dev team communication through shared Slack group.

OSL budget 2024 - Final Proposal.pdf (56.1 KB)

---

New Offices, Same Colleagues

Two of our longest sitting members are moving onto roles, though our paths will still intersect in some ways.

Maquina accepted a full-time role with the Keplr Wallet team, handling support and product testing.

Coldchain now assumes the auditor role, and will no longer be part of the active support team.

[aaronxkong]

Some quick thoughts that I also shared to the Siberia chat

• OSL still needs a leader.
• Current rate comes out to be $37.5 an hour (or $43 with twitter/reddit/discorddev), is every member at the same rate still?
• the social channels twitter/reddit section, and dev support/discord should be bundled w the standard and simply be baked into that owning member’s hourly rate (ie, Technical member or twitter support specialist should be paid a higher rate). This should then be made clear in the proposal.
• Don’t think twitter and discord warrant $50,000/year, but definitely warrant some hourly premium to the owning members.
• With Maquina + Coldchain dropping, are new hires going to receive the same premium as the existing members?
• W Maquina + coldchain leaving, and monthly rate doubling, a breakdown w more detail showing how these numbers changed / are justified would be good to see.
• There should in theory be 3 tiers that warrant 3 rates? New trainees > OG standard support > OG Standard + Specialized support.

Personally, supportive of the continuation of the existing responsibilities + the new ideas, but think that more clarity and finer details should be provided.

This is also a 12 month ask, with key members stepping away, while assumably new members being brought on, new responsibilities being proposed, and higher rates being requested… it will be valuable to provide extra transparency for the community and leadership to hold these items accountable.

[ctrl-Felix]

This proposal is more about the product in general rather than the internal structure itself.

We’ve quantified the ask for each platform we cover into a product and this proposal represents the request for this product.

So in the end we say, we can provide the support like we currently do for one year at a price of $440.000.

As requested we are now also including new social channels such as Twitter and Reddit which will be covered by us for an additional monthly cost of $1.583.

Providing dev support is something we valued as something useful as devs ask questions in the devs channel every day and people from the OSL jump in and answer. But this requires more knowledge than just providing standard support so it comes at a cost for us too.

We’re establishing management structures in the background as part of the ISG (as mentioned in the Looking Ahead part). Part of this process will also be the decision whether we hire new people or reorganise the current manpower.

To sum it all up. We’re providing the same support level we’ve been providing for the start at a rate of $440.000 for 1 year. That’s what this vote is about.

[LeonoorsCryptoman]

For me this is a full Yes, hands down.

If we do a simple math. For $440k we get a 24/7 service which is appreciated by the users and which makes Osmosis stand out amongst all the other DEXxes out there.
That means that this is a mere $50 we pay these people per hour (440000 / (365*24)).
In a lot of countries about half of that you pay in taxes. And then insurance also has to be deducted after taxes are paid. So the pay per hour is not that high (note that the costs for tools are also included in this $50/hour, so in reality the pay is lower). And in exchange we get a full service in return. So it does not really matter how they manage their payments internally imo, since the payment requested is just not that exotic. And we can assess the service delivered for the money, because their work is out in the open and very transparent. Not delivering is visible for everyone immediately. And they have a trackrecord to deliver.

It has already been proven that the retention of users for Osmosis is much much higher than other decentralized exchanges.

(source: https://twitter.com/pyorxyz/status/1758762430673691008)

Comparing this to the most recent approved pay for the OGP (Osmosis Grants Program v3 Renewal) the pay per month is comparable.
This proposal passed with flying colors (Mintscan).

For me it would be seriously weird if this proposal would get much headwind. If that would be the case, then we should be much much more strict on other less visible and tangible spends as well (yes, precedents has been set). To make a long story short, full YES!

[Winfred]

@aaronxkong

Don’t think twitter and discord warrant $50,000/year, but definitely warrant some hourly premium to the owning members.

I have to say I agree with Aaron here. Also, maybe I missed it, but I wish there was more transparency around how many staff there are, as opposed to just the scope of work and rate charged for that scope of work.

I have worked in Marketing and Communications + Community in web3 for the last decade and a 64,000 budget for Discord alone or Telegram alone seems very high. At those numbers people should be doing waaaay more than that.

With that said, we’re most likely going to vote yes anyway, due to the need for this service to be available at what may be the most busy time for Osmosis in the more recent years. Hope to see more transparency from the OSL moving forward though

[LeonoorsCryptoman]

@Winfred

I wish there was more transparency around how many staff there are, as opposed to just the scope of work and rate charged for that scope of work.

I spoke to @maxpower on this field in the previous period about this exact topic. He came up with a fitting example though, which made me change my mind on this subject.

When you get a price estimation of let’s saint paintwork on your house. You get an estimation of the required amount of hours and materials. They can send 1 person to your house for the job taking an X amount of days OR send 10 persons to your house for the job taking way less days. In the end you pay exactly the same thing.

I had the initial opinion as well that it was relevant to know how much hands they had on the job, but in the end we pay for a service… not for having an X amount of people on the job And if we think the service is worth a certain price and we have Service Level Agreements, then the amount of people doesn’t matter anymore.

Also taking into account that depending on where the person doing the job lives there are also taxes to be applied. So this amount if not too excessive if you ask me. We approve higher payments for other services where we don’t expect people to work in 8-hour shifts. And where those people can also do the same job for multiple projects (I can name examples even if you like).

For me this is a go ^^

[maxpower]

These are essentially line items for the man-hours allocated to these things, not necessarily one person being paid $64,000 a year to manage the Discord server.

[Winfred]

Cool, I get that. My point around transparency of what roles constitute the OSL and what are their salaries still holds.

Most publicly funded projects do this and so it’s not a tall order in any way shape or form.

[luisqa]

I think I get the confusion. This line item is not going to a single person or even a couple of individuals. This breakdown is basically accounting for the percentage of time that any support staff will dedicate to each specific tool/channel.

The amount of people that Max mentions is irrelevant in the sense that even if currently there are 7 support staff, one person might work 10 hours one day and 4 hours the next. Goal is to have 24/7 coverage of all channels. If one channel (like discord) stopped receiving support there wouldn’t be any reduction in the staff size, since you still have to be on 24/7, but there would be a reduction in the amount of people needed in high volume shifts (since now they would be able to focus on less support channels).

Current structure is 7 support staff with variable shifts, manager role to coordinate and do administrative duties and one external auditor, to verify quality of work, correct payments, etc.