We had another discussion on salary caps offline. It turns out there’s a lot of nuance to how we implement it, from a conceptual and implementation standpoint. For example, when someone hits a salary cap, does the extra Grain get “taxed” back to the SourceCred treasury, or does it simply not get issued, or does it get re-distributed to everyone else? If the latter, what if the re-distribution would push someone else over the salary cap?
After discussing these issues in depth, we realized that we may not need a salary cap at this point. The issue that prompted the salary cap is that much of our Grain was getting distributed to long-term Cred whales (such as myself) rather than the broader community of people who are currently active in the project. However, that was an artifact of the fact that our distributions skewed heavily towards the “BALANCED” or lifetime allocation policy, rather than to “RECENT” policy. While I have a large share of total Cred due to the year+ where I was SC’s only/primary contributor, the recent Cred is much more evenly distributed.
Since we’ve already switched our allocation policy to deliver most of the budget towards recent contributions, I think that accomplishes our goals without needing to implement the salary cap. I’ve simulated re-doing distributions (with my account activated) and the result has been that my Grain distribution is roughly in-line with the salary cap anyway.
So, let’s punt on the salary cap for now, but we’ll keep an eye out on the distributions and see if changes seem necessary. (Also, I am re-activating my Grain account.)
Thanks @wchargin and @blueridger for discussion.