Yes, I think that it seems quite expensive for Wonderland and is not built on the right principles to align the respective interests of the Devs and participants in Wonderland.
I understand that platforms require some ongoing maintenance and development (although the proposal is not very clear on what would actually be built). However, there are two ways to do this.
First, if the Wonderland managers believe that this will generate a meaningful revenue flow, then some of it can be used to pay for further Dev services or even to add Devs to the Wonderland team. In such a situation, the liquid staking is maintained and evolves and Wonderland manages that process. This would be the standard approach to business and can often have advantages in cost-effectiveness and ability to control quality on the final product.
The second way is to partner with another team to jointly develop and maintain the service. However, in a partnership, you would expect that: a) the partners are bringing specific skills or capabilities to the table; and b) partners also make commitments to the project and have obligations under the collaboration. In this model, they would get a percentage of revenue and maybe some payment for services, but would only have one of those two as a primary benefit. If they get paid a lot upfront, then subsequent percentages are low. If they don’t take much upfront, then they might get a higher percentage for longer. I don’t see any justification for offering generous terms on both and making the percentage payments permanent. Percentages agreements end when the partnership stops or shortly thereafter.
This proposal seems to use a hybrid that does not appear to be to Wonderland’s advantage. There appears to be a very substantial upfront cost (particularly if you compare it with the launching costs of some of the other projects). The Dev team receives a permanent share of the revenues. The Dev team do not appear to have any obligations beyond shipping code and getting the site started. There are also do not appear to be any performance penalties or “skin-in-the-game” for the Dev team as this is presented.
Sometimes, you have to negotiate from a position of weakness in order to access a great opportunity. In this case, the numbers leftover for Wonderland don’t seem very large after you take out the Dev cost and commissions. Further, Wonderland would appear to bear the primary reputational risk if the liquid staking faces a code problem (e.g., hacks, failures, etc.).
A final variation would be that Wonderland invests into their project in which case Wonderland would be the one receiving a percentage of revenues rather than the other way around.
I like the ambitious thinking of the team. The proposed project is not particularly clear (since liquid staking is more of a topic to discuss than a description of a platform and service) and seems to have limited upside for Wonderland based on what is presented here. There is another post that points out potential profits are only a few million dollars after you crunch the numbers presented in the proposal. That seems like a small return for the risks and the opportunity costs of having a small team having to follow this project.
