Financial Update for October 2022
Every month the Lisk Foundation provides a financial report in which monthly expenditures are transparently broken down.
Total Assets Held
An overview of all fiat currencies, stablecoins, cryptocurrencies, and managed assets currently in possession of the Lisk Foundation is illustrated below.
Generally, the Lisk Foundation is continuously liquidating BTC in order to have enough fiat and fiat equivalents to cover expenses for at least 12 months. This is currently the case.
Additionally, assets are deposited into a managed fund and are continuously invested into forms of green energy production, e.g. power plants, to reach environmental sustainability with the Lisk network.
Lending and Buybacks
In order to generate additional income, the Lisk Foundation is using BlockFi which provides interest on 6,500,000 USDC, locked until the end of 2022. Given the current situation around centralized lending platforms we are withdrawing the monthly yield always immediately to Bitcoin Suisse. In October $45,468.43 USDC was yielded from BlockFi. BlockFi has also reassured us that they are not impacted by recent market volatility.
Update 11-11-2022: Further updates concerning BlockFi have been provided here and here.
The Lisk Foundation is also lending away directly to third-party companies. This generates additional interest and ranges between 6% and 8% APY.
Just recently, a loan of 4,000,000 USDC which was locked for 6 months was paid back with an earned interest of 131,068 USDC. The loan was not extended. Additionally, another loan of 500,000 USDC was partially settled with a 50,000 USDC payment.
Currently, 1,450,000 USDC are still locked in loans with the interest becoming available only after the lock-up period is over. All lock-up periods will end in 2022.
Previously, the yield generated from BlockFi and the loans given to third-party companies were used to buy back LSK tokens. Given the current market situation this was stopped and all the yield goes into our treasury until we decide what to do with it. As a replacement we started individual buyback programs to benefit from current market conditions.
Monthly Expenditures
The overview shown below depicts the overall expenditures of the Lisk Foundation for the last month and is broken down into 2 main categories: Lisk Foundation and Lightcurve.
Lisk Foundation
Bounties & Sponsorships
This covers all costs associated with the Lisk Bug Bounty Program, Lisk Grant Program, and sponsorships.
Promotions
This includes all marketing-related expenditures such as public relations, influencers, merchandise, events, advertisements, Lisk Centers, and giveaways.
Operations
This includes all operational expenses of the Lisk Foundation which consist of the following: salaries, financial and legal, office rental, contractors, e.g. legal advisories, accountants, auditors, and finally taxes.
Lightcurve
This covers the monthly invoice from Lightcurve to the Lisk Foundation. This amount is calculated using a daily rate per employee and encompasses all services provided by Lightcurve. The daily rate only applies to employees of the Research, Development, and Marketing departments.
Research
This includes all related costs of the Research team members at Lightcurve who are working on the Lisk Improvement Proposals.
Development
This includes all related costs of the Development team members at Lightcurve who are working on Lisk Core, Lisk SDK, Lisk for Desktop, Lisk for Mobile, and Lisk Service.
Marketing
This includes all related costs of the Marketing team members at Lightcurve who are working on all facets of Lisk.com, as well as managing public relations, events, business development, promotional activities, design creation, and documentation.
Operations
This includes all operational costs of Lightcurve, such as taxes, office rental, utilities, hardware/software, servers, accounting, and legal, as well as the operations and management team members. All associated costs are fully covered with the daily rates from the research, development, and marketing team members.
Disclaimer: All information contained in our monthly Financial Updates is of informational value only. Differences from their actual state may occur due to time variances of the booking of expenses and inflows. Thus, this information cannot serve as an accurate reference point for the Lisk Foundation finances.