Hi @Mayor_of_Pumpopolis happy to clarify:
As mentioned, different proposals involve different stakeholders in execution. While we operate with a lean core team, each proposal requires coordination with multiple external parties, and these vary case by case.
To illustrate:
- HSP-002: Meta Pool (proposal lead), Gauntlet (data & analysis), small validators (reward recipients), NF Finance (funding), HoS directors & accounting (approvals)
- HSP-003: Meta Pool, Linear, Hot (staking integration), Gauntlet (data & analysis), Security Council (veNEAR allocations), NF Finance (funding), Agora (frontend staking and rewards claiming frontend), HoS directors & accounting (approvals)
- HSP-007: Sal (SVRN), Kendall (Proximity), Proximity Finance (payouts), NEAR One (performance reports, monthly), 8-21 node operators (monthly), NF Finance, Ops manager, HoS directors & accounting (approvals)
Across all of these, we coordinate via Slack, share documentation via Google Workspace, take notes (Gemini), and run analysis using LLMs (NEAR AI, OpenAI).
Since we’re dealing with private/sensitive data, we need proper access controls and user management. Many times we can grant guest access, but in some cases we need a paid enterprise license per contributor/API/project (estimate: up to 40 stakeholders in a single proposal, 10 paid licenses on average per proposal).
And because each proposal brings in a different set of people and access requirements, these tools don’t fully overlap. That’s why I’m modeling the licenses per proposal, not just per month.
More details in my previous post.
Hope this clarifies the rationale.
…SaaS billing figure, it was removed entirely?
As stated: Over the past days, I’ve been verifying opportunities to reduce costs by leveraging existing infrastructure and licenses.
→ Total reduction potential: $104.65K
This is not about removing budget items, because they are not required. It’s primarily a shift to shared NF infrastructure.
This raises a broader question on direction:
a) Maximize for independence: build up our own, independent capabilities as soon as possible (in licenses, services, and bandwidth), and carry the associated costs
b) Maximize for cost efficiency: rely on NF infrastructure wherever possible, avoiding any duplication