Team augmentation – why is it important for your business?

Paulina Lewandowska

07 Mar 2023
Team augmentation – why is it important for your business?

What is team augmentation?

The term "team augmentation" describes the technique of adding outside expertise to an organization's internal team in order to strengthen and support it. This external talent can consist of people or groups with specific abilities, know-how, or experience in a particular field, or it could entail contracting with outside partners to handle the entirety of projects or company operations. The purpose of team augmentation is to provide new viewpoints and access to specialized experience that may not be available inside the firm's existing team, all while assisting the organization in completing projects and achieving its goals more successfully and efficiently.

When is team augmentation a good idea?

A number of circumstances call for team augmentation. For firms that need to scale up rapidly or have few resources, it could be helpful because it enables them to access outside talent without making long-term employment or investment commitments. Companies that need to finish a specific project or activity that calls for specialized knowledge or abilities that their present team lacks might also benefit from team augmentation. Additionally, team augmentation can give a company access to fresh viewpoints and concepts that can support innovation and help it stay competitive in its field. In the end, team augmentation can be a smart move for any firm looking to use the knowledge of outside partners to help it reach its objectives more quickly and successfully.

When an organization needs to scale up quickly or has limited resources.

By using team augmentation, businesses may swiftly expand their teams with seasoned individuals without making long-term employment commitments or spending money on new resources. For instance, if a business unexpectedly secures a major project or client, they might not be able to finish the work with their current crew. They may swiftly and effectively build up their resources to meet the increasing demand by adding external talent to their team. 

When a particular project or activity need specialized knowledge or abilities that the current team does not have.

An organization may occasionally need to finish a task or project that calls for specific knowledge or abilities that their current team does not have. For instance, a business might need to develop a new software program or put in place a new technological platform, but its current staff might not be qualified to do so. In this situation, team augmentation can assist the business in bringing in outside professionals who can offer the necessary expertise and knowledge to finish the project effectively. 

When a company wants to access outside talent without making a long-term hiring or financial commitment.

A corporation may have to make a large time and financial investment in hiring full-time workers. Companies can acquire external talent through team augmentation without making long-term recruiting or investment commitments. Without the long-term commitment of recruiting full-time staff, businesses can connect with professionals for specialized projects or tasks by working with outside partners or freelancers, paying only for the job that is performed. This strategy can be especially helpful for smaller businesses or startups that might lack the funding to dedicate to full-time personnel.

When an organization seeks to innovate and remain competitive by bringing in fresh viewpoints and ideas.

Team augmentation can give businesses a useful chance to include fresh viewpoints and concepts from outside specialists. By introducing firms to fresh perspectives and methods of operation, this strategy can help them innovate and stay competitive in their sector. External partners might have expertise using various technologies, instruments, or strategies that the organization has not yet taken into consideration, which could result in innovations in product creation or service provision. 

When the current staff is overworked and requires more help to fulfill deadlines or finish projects.

Companies may discover that their current crew is overloaded and requires more assistance to meet deadlines or finish tasks. In this situation, team augmentation can offer extra resources to assist the current team in carrying out their work more quickly and effectively. By sharing some of the task with other parties, the current team members will experience less stress and burnout. 

When a company wishes to employ outside experts to lower the chance of project failure.

Organizations can reduce the risk of project failure by enlisting the help of external specialists. External partners may have previous experience working on related projects and can offer insightful information about potential risks and obstacles that the company may not have thought about. The likelihood of a project's success can be increased by using this strategy to help the organization detect and handle possible issues before they materialize.

Challenges of team augmentation

Team augmentation, which is bringing in outside professionals to support an organization's current team, can create a number of difficulties. They include effective communication, coordinating the efforts of internal and external teams, effectively transferring information, cultural fit, and responsibility. External team members must also be integrated into the existing team. Organizations can take a number of measures to reduce these difficulties, including establishing clear goals and expectations, good communication channels, regular training and feedback sessions, and making sure that everyone on the team is aware of the company's culture and values. Team augmentation can be an effective strategy for firms to enhance their current capabilities and provide positive results if done correctly.

Conclusion

Organizations can enhance their skills by bringing in outside specialists through team augmentation. It may result in more innovation, quicker time to market, and lower risk. Yet, it can also present difficulties, like incorporating outside team members and ensuring clear communication. Organizations must establish clear expectations, offer efficient means of communication, and guarantee accountability if they are to flourish. They can use the strength of outside expertise in this way to realize their strategic objectives.

If you would like to find out more about how team augumentation from Nextrope can support the development of your project, click here!

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Aethir Tokenomics – Case Study

Kajetan Olas

22 Nov 2024
Aethir Tokenomics – Case Study

Authors of the contents are not affiliated to the reviewed project in any way and none of the information presented should be taken as financial advice.

In this article we analyze tokenomics of Aethir - a project providing on-demand cloud compute resources for the AI, Gaming, and virtualized compute sectors.
Aethir aims to aggregate enterprise-grade GPUs from multiple providers into a DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network). Its competitive edge comes from utlizing the GPUs for very specific use-cases, such as low-latency rendering for online games.
Due to decentralized nature of its infrastructure Aethir can meet the demands of online-gaming in any region. This is especially important for some gamer-abundant regions in Asia with underdeveloped cloud infrastructure that causes high latency ("lags").
We will analyze Aethir's tokenomics, give our opinion on what was done well, and provide specific recommendations on how to improve it.

Evaluation Summary

Aethir Tokenomics Structure

The total supply of ATH tokens is capped at 42 billion ATH. This fixed cap provides a predictable supply environment, and the complete emissions schedule is listed here. As of November 2024 there are approximately 5.2 Billion ATH in circulation. In a year from now (November 2025), the circulating supply will almost triple, and will amount to approximately 15 Billion ATH. By November 2028, today's circulating supply will be diluted by around 86%.

From an investor standpoint the rational decision would be to stake their tokens and hope for rewards that will balance the inflation. Currently the estimated APR for 3-year staking is 195% and for 4-year staking APR is 261%. The rewards are paid out weekly. Furthermore, stakers can expect to get additional rewards from partnered AI projects.

Staking Incentives

Rewards are calculated based on the staking duration and staked amount. These factors are equally important and they linearly influence weekly rewards. This means that someone who stakes 100 ATH for 2 weeks will have the same weekly rewards as someone who stakes 200 ATH for 1 week. This mechanism greatly emphasizes long-term holding. That's because holding a token makes sense only if you go for long-term staking. E.g. a whale staking $200k with 1 week lockup. will have the same weekly rewards as person staking $1k with 4 year lockup. Furthermore the ATH staking rewards are fixed and divided among stakers. Therefore Increase of user base is likely to come with decrease in rewards.
We believe the main weak-point of Aethirs staking is the lack of equivalency between rewards paid out to the users and value generated for the protocol as a result of staking.

Token Distribution

The token distribution of $ATH is well designed and comes with long vesting time-frames. 18-month cliff and 36-moths subsequent linear vesting is applied to team's allocation. This is higher than industry standard and is a sign of long-term commitment.

  • Checkers and Compute Providers: 50%
  • Ecosystem: 15%
  • Team: 12.5%
  • Investors: 11.5%
  • Airdrop: 6%
  • Advisors: 5%

Aethir's airdrop is divided into 3 phases to ensure that only loyal users get rewarded. This mechanism is very-well thought and we rate it highly. It fosters high community engagement within the first months of the project and sets the ground for potentially giving more-control to the DAO.

Governance and Community-Led Development

Aethir’s governance model promotes community-led decision-making in a very practical way. Instead of rushing with creation of a DAO for PR and marketing purposes Aethir is trying to make it the right way. They support projects building on their infrastructure and regularly share updates with their community in the most professional manner.

We believe Aethir would benefit from implementing reputation boosted voting. An example of such system is described here. The core assumption is to abandon the simplistic: 1 token = 1 vote and go towards: Votes = tokens * reputation_based_multiplication_factor.

In the attached example, reputation_based_multiplication_factor rises exponentially with the number of standard deviations above norm, with regard to user's rating. For compute compute providers at Aethir, user's rating could be replaced by provider's uptime.

Perspectives for the future

While it's important to analyze aspects such as supply-side tokenomics, or governance, we must keep in mind that 95% of project's success depends on demand-side. In this regard the outlook for Aethir may be very bright. The project declares $36M annual reccuring revenue. Revenue like this is very rare in the web3 space. Many projects are not able to generate any revenue after succesfull ICO event, due to lack fo product-market-fit.

If you're looking to create a robust tokenomics model and go through institutional-grade testing please reach out to contact@nextrope.com. Our team is ready to help you with the token engineering process and ensure your project’s resilience in the long term.

Quadratic Voting in Web3

Kajetan Olas

04 Dec 2024
Quadratic Voting in Web3

Decentralized systems are reshaping how we interact, conduct transactions, and govern online communities. As Web3 continues to advance, the necessity for effective and fair voting mechanisms becomes apparent. Traditional voting systems, such as the one-token-one-vote model, often fall short in capturing the intensity of individual preferences, which can result in centralization. Quadratic Voting (QV) addresses this challenge by enabling individuals to express not only their choices but also the strength of their preferences.

In QV, voters are allocated a budget of credits that they can spend to cast votes on various issues. The cost of casting multiple votes on a single issue increases quadratically, meaning that each additional vote costs more than the last. This system allows for a more precise expression of preferences, as individuals can invest more heavily in issues they care deeply about while conserving credits on matters of lesser importance.

Understanding Quadratic Voting

Quadratic Voting (QV) is a voting system designed to capture not only the choices of individuals but also the strength of their preferences. In most DAO voting mechanisms, each person typically has one vote per token, which limits the ability to express how strongly they feel about a particular matter. Furthermore, QV limits the power of whales and founding team who typically have large token allocations. These problems are adressed by making the cost of each additional vote increase quadratically.

In QV, each voter is given a budget of credits or tokens that they can spend to cast votes on various issues. The key principle is that the cost to cast n votes on a single issue is proportional to the square of n. This quadratic cost function ensures that while voters can express stronger preferences, doing so requires a disproportionately higher expenditure of their voting credits. This mechanism discourages voters from concentrating all their influence on a single issue unless they feel very strongly about it. In the context of DAOs, it means that large holders will have a hard-time pushing through with a proposal if they'll try to do it on their own.

Practical Example

Consider a voter who has been allocated 25 voting credits to spend on several proposals. The voter has varying degrees of interest in three proposals: Proposal A, Proposal B, and Proposal C.

  • Proposal A: High interest.
  • Proposal B: Moderate interest.
  • Proposal C: Low interest.

The voter might allocate their credits as follows:

Proposal A:

  • Votes cast: 3
  • Cost: 9 delegated tokens

Proposal B:

  • Votes cast: 2
  • Cost: 4 delegated tokens

Proposal C:

  • Votes cast: 1
  • Cost: 1 delegated token

Total delegated tokens: 14
Remaining tokens: 11

With the remaining tokens, the voter can choose to allocate additional votes to the proposals based on their preferences or save for future proposals. If they feel particularly strong about Proposal A, they might decide to cast one more vote:

Additional vote on Proposal A:

  • New total votes: 4
  • New cost: 16 delegated tokens
  • Additional cost: 16−9 = 7 delegated tokens

Updated total delegated tokens: 14+7 = 21

Updated remaining tokens: 25−21 = 425 - 21 = 4

This additional vote on Proposal A costs 7 credits, significantly more than the previous vote, illustrating how the quadratic cost discourages excessive influence on a single issue without strong conviction.

Benefits of Implementing Quadratic Voting

Key Characteristics of the Quadratic Cost Function

  • Marginal Cost Increases Linearly: The marginal cost of each additional vote increases linearly. The cost difference between casting n and n−1 votes is 2n−1.
  • Total Cost Increases Quadratically: The total cost to cast multiple votes rises steeply, discouraging voters from concentrating too many votes on a single issue without significant reason.
  • Promotes Egalitarian Voting: Small voters are encouraged to participate, because relatively they have a much higher impact.

Advantages Over Traditional Voting Systems

Quadratic Voting offers several benefits compared to traditional one-person-one-vote systems:

  • Captures Preference Intensity: By allowing voters to express how strongly they feel about an issue, QV leads to outcomes that better reflect the collective welfare.
  • Reduces Majority Domination: The quadratic cost makes it costly for majority groups to overpower minority interests on every issue.
  • Encourages Honest Voting: Voters are incentivized to allocate votes in proportion to their true preferences, reducing manipulation.

By understanding the foundation of Quadratic Voting, stakeholders in Web3 communities can appreciate how this system supports more representative governance.

Conclusion

Quadratic voting is a novel voting system that may be used within DAOs to foster decentralization. The key idea is to make the cost of voting on a certain issue increase quadratically. The leading player that makes use of this mechanism is Optimism. If you're pondering about the design of your DAO, we highly recommend taking a look at their research on quadratic funding.

If you're looking to create a robust governance model and go through institutional-grade testing please reach out to contact@nextrope.com. Our team is ready to help you with the token engineering process and ensure that your DAO will stand out as a beacon of innovation and resilience in the long term.