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Proposal and Poll: Dispersing Funds for Past Development Work #248

Closed jring-o closed 1 year ago

jring-o commented 3 years ago

Reddit Thread Hive Thread Steemit Thread

Much discussion has already taken place at #242.

All future discussion should happen on this thread.

Poll Details

Type: Management Duration: 3 weeks [21 Days]

Start Date: May 3rd End Time: May 24th

Question Do you approve of the Dispersing Funds for Past Development Work proposal?

Answers

Validation

20% or more AVW participation*

*This is a wide-reaching proposal seeking to fix issues around funding. I placed it in the category I think best fits, however I am very open to the poll requiring 40% or more AVW to pass. Please leave comments.

Dispersing Funds For Past Development Work

Goals

Summary

The people listed in the proposal have continuously contributed to Gridcoin over the past 4+ years. Their work over these years has established them as trustworthy, well intentioned, capable, and active. They should be granted the privilege to establish a network effect, fund initiatives and bounties, and otherwise distribute GRC while maintaining a significant stake in the network for themselves.

The proposed dispersion schedule incentivizes those receiving funds to continue active contributions for 18 months.

If this proposal passes, half of the foundation funds will be dispersed to the listed individuals as described. The other half will be budgeted to specific fields of development via two programs.

If this proposal passes, it would be expected that future development work will be paid based on established network protocols, currently $30/hr for software work.

Future payment for non-dev work might rely largely on bounties established by the Bounty Program.

Rationale

There are four types of contributors listed in this proposal:

All four are critical to the success of an open-source commons-based blockchain.

There is no market if no one is engaged. There is nothing worth marketing if the engaged are not organized. There is nothing to organize around if there is no functioning technology.

Payment for both software and non-software development will establish a precedent that encourages people to improve and build on all aspects of the Gridcoin network.

Spreading large volumes of GRC across several well established contributors will generate multiple avenues through which potential contributors can seek funding; the past work of those listed in the proposal indicates that they will likely use a significant portion of the received funds to build things, establish bounties, and energize the community.

Proposal

Foundation Purse: 30,000,000 GRC - bc3NA8e8E3EoTL1qhRmeprbjWcmuoZ26A2 Circulating Supply: 440,000,000 GRC

Use of Funds

Core Devs for Fern, Gladys, and other recent bug fixes

I propose experimenting with a %circulating supply/hr metric to pay for the work put into Fern+. The hope is to discuss the implications of this model.

Practically, I back-mathed the numbers so the proposed numbers work out to about 30$/hr for development work.

To start the discussion, here are several potential benefits to this model:

“Y work is equal to X% of the total currency-translation of the network’s value.”

Proposed numbers

Rate: 0.000681% circulating supply/hr Rate: 2,996.4 GRC/hr

Jim: 1,500 hrs | 4,494,600 GRC Cy: 3,000 hrs | 8,989,200 GRC Total: 4,500 hrs | 13,483,800 GRC

Remaining: 16,516,200 GRC

Paying Other Software Devs For Past Work

Because we cannot calculate hours for this work, we must simply allocate funds. Future payment for software development would be based on the 30$/hr protocol until a replacement is approved by the network.

Total: 2,000,000 GRC

Barton - Testnet Coordination: 1,000,000 GRC Ravon - Work prior to Fern: 500,000 GRC iFoggz - Work prior to Fern: 500,000 GRC

Remaining in Purse: 14,516,200

Paying Non-dev Contributors for Past Work

Because we cannot calculate hours for this work, we must simply allocate funds. Future payment will be based on a protocol approved by the network.

Total: 2,350,000 GRC

Jringo - Organization, engagement, community building, outreach: 500,000 GRC Roboticmind - Wiki, community building, engagement: 500,000 GRC Startail - gridcoinstats block explorer: 500,000 GRC Delta - Tipbot, community building, engagement: 500,000 GRC Gridcoin2Moon - Manages twitter since 2019/2020ish, community building, engagement: 250,000 GRC Shmoogle - community building: 100,000 GRC

Remaining in Purse: 12,516,200

Allocation to Future Development Program

6,258,100 GRC

Remaining in Purse: 6,258,100 GRC

Allocation to Bounty Program

6,258,100 GRC

Remaining in Purse: 0 GRC

Payment Process

Payments are made in equal payments over 18 months, subject to the retention of the developer or contributor in their role. (I.e. if Cycy or Jim or anyone were to go dark in those 18 months, the payments to that individual would stop.)

Future Development Program

A program run by Jim that would define software priorities, maintain the Gridcoin codebase via patches and updates, allocate resources, and welcome and educate new developers.

Bounty Program

A program run by Jim, Cy, and Jringo that would initiate bounties that advance the Gridcoin network, develop the codebase, engage the community, and reach out to external parties. This program will include marketing bounties.

KeithMyers commented 3 years ago

Finally getting to a vote.

empirebuilder1 commented 3 years ago

Like the idea of separating payment from a fiat equivalent. Promotes devs (current and future) to do everything they can to improve the value of the coin to the benefit of everyone and greatly simplifies the math.

startailcoon commented 3 years ago

I can already here state that my share will go back to the community in various ways. For example like the current faucet.

delta1513 commented 3 years ago

Thank you for considering me in the funding, to encourage people to vote, I've listed below what my commitments have been and will be as a result of the funding.

What I have done

The GRC wallet bot (source code):

Created a blockchain game that uses GRC called Gridplace](https://gitlab.com/delta1512/gridplace-python-api). Currently this is not hosted anywhere but I had it working for a while on the testnet and I think the main net at one point.

Created a GRC/AUD market pair for Australian customers only, check it out. I have invested many thousands of dollars of my own and others money to get this running.

What I will do if I receive the funding

Thank you all for your contributions and please vote for what you think is most beneficial to the future of this cryptocurrency.

additude commented 3 years ago

I think that all reimbursements need to be fair, considerate and validated. No one works or dispenses their time for FREE. But in this case, any "Compensation" is in lieu of a Self-Rewarding prophecy....

presciencia commented 3 years ago

@delta1513 It is very nice post, thanks. It is good for this post type to be included in the proposal to help understand the vote. I think others listed in proposal should write similar to clarify what is compensated because not all are familiar with or able to see each contribution.

Any way I am in support of this proposal and paying for much hard work completed by our dedicated team.

ShmoogleOsukami commented 3 years ago

My contributions primarily come in the form of work done on the Gridcoin website (mainly rewriting the navigation, making it work on mobile, fixing up some of the pages and instigating the move to github pages), reviewing PRs etc.

I also made the Gridcoin Community on Hive/Steem (although I abandoned steem to a degree) where the gridcoin community can post to.

While I'm grateful to be considered for funding, I haven't been very active in the community for a fair while, Currently suffering from some mental issues that prevent me form being productive enough to dive into code and stuff.

So while I'm in the list I feel like I'd easily fall into the payment stopped thing as I most likely won't be active over the next 18 month... or well. I might be but I donno. Depends where my heads at.

frank0051 commented 3 years ago

I've read through the 242 thread and 248 thread, I guess the thing I still don't see laid out is what plans are there to replenish the Foundation in order to fund future development? I'm hesitant to cast my vote until I get further understanding on this front.

jamescowens commented 3 years ago

We don't have an exact answer for that. There have been several ideas, including a form of sidestaking contribution from stakes. Note that this proposal restores credibility to contributions in the short to medium term and is meant to encourage contributions by new contributors, because they will have faith that their contributions will be rewarded.

As you can see from the proposal, there is a significant amount of the foundation fund held in reserve (6.3M GRC x 2) as a bridge until a permanent replenishment method is worked out. We should not allow our uncertainty over future replenishment to paralyze us to properly compensate individuals for contributions already made.

frank0051 commented 3 years ago

We don't have an exact answer for that. There have been several ideas, including a form of sidestaking contribution from stakes. Note that this proposal restores credibility to contributions in the short to medium term and is meant to encourage contributions by new contributors, because they will have faith that their contributions will be rewarded.

As you can see from the proposal, there is a significant amount of the foundation fund held in reserve (6.3M GRC x 2) as a bridge until a permanent replenishment method is worked out. We should not allow our uncertainty over future replenishment to paralyze us to properly compensate individuals for contributions already made.

I get that, but this is also an opportunity where we have a lot of focus on this. Given that 242 started in February, I'm somewhat surprised this issue didn't get bundled into it. There is also the issue that for some of the values requested we don't have explanations while for others didn't request compensation. I think the 18 month pay-out and lock-out is an excellent compromise to address those issues...but...I'm more like to just not vote rather than vote.

Before we had the multi-sig Foundation wallet, I want to say we had like 35-40M GRC back in 2017 (I vaguely remember 45M as a number but I could be dreaming). When we started the multi-sig wallet we then had around 32M then quickly went to 30M. Now we're going down to 12M under this proposal. In short, it's been 4 years and we still don't have an an adequate way forward on foundation support other than 1.5% APR from the POS balance and we haven't benefited from the same asset appreciation (some might say bubble) that other coins have in order to keep their foundations/reserves flush...so I do think we need to find some way to approach this...

jamescowens commented 3 years ago

I agree that we need to find a way to replenish this, but trying to combine that discussion with this one will almost certainly doom it to failure.... it is "biting off more than you can chew". If you have followed the discussions on funding methods, you know that those have been among the most spirited. We do not have agreement from the community on that. Trying to jam that into this proposal will guarantee failure, and then where will that leave us? I should remind you of the failed marketing budget proposal a while back that set us back significantly in that department in the past, although in hindsight, maybe it was a blessing in disguise, because the code base at that time was in such bad shape, we really had no business marketing GRC until we got the wallet in order. Thankfully after a lot of hard work by a number of folks listed above the technical fundamentals are in good shape.

One of the reasons that, especially in regards to @cyrossignol and me, we have proposed paying out over time, rather than a lump sum (which since we did the work in the past, we actually have every right to demand, but chose not to) is to demonstrate our long term commitment to the future of this coin. That commitment also involves figuring out a way forward. Part of the way forward will be to work out the details on go-forward economics for the coin, which will include stabilized future funding for the coin's development, marketing, etc. as a subset.

We need to get the past addressed first, though.

jring-o commented 3 years ago

@frank0051

Likely some combination of #202, verified side-staking addresses, and other tools.

Learn more about verified side-staking addresses at in the gridcoin.world proposal, section 6e: https://gridcoin.world/Gridcoin.World%20Proposal.pdf

frank0051 commented 3 years ago

@jring-o : Responded in 202 with a quick question.

@jamescowens : I appreciate that but work was done at risk; we're entitled to different perspectives on this and I respect your opinion but would prefer some degree of clarity on the other issue prior to casting my vote. But, I am committed to not voting against the proposal - I would rather abstain without clarity and a sense of certainty on the longer-term sustainability issue. It's just like in fiscal policy debates: sure we can divorce a $4T spending bill from the discussion of how we might approach paying for it in the future but that doesn't mean some people won't disagree with that approach and would prefer clarity.

additude commented 3 years ago

I agree that we need to find a way to replenish this, but trying to combine that discussion with this one will almost certainly doom it to failure.... it is "biting off more than you can chew". ..........................................

One of the reasons that, especially in regards to @cyrossignol and me, we have proposed paying out over time, rather than a lump sum (which since we did the work in the past, we actually have every right to demand, but chose not to) is to demonstrate our long term commitment to the future of this coin. ........................

We need to get the past addressed first, though.

I agree, it's best to "Divide and Conquer" ...

As for payout...... "Over Time" can have consequences which are related to "The Time Value of Money"....and that typically ends up in a situation of "Fairness Compensation".... where the balance becomes "Not Fair to One" and "Over Prosperous" to the other. So it typically doesn't end in good Karma.

jamescowens commented 3 years ago

The over time approach was the only simple way we could come up with to give a clear signal about the core dev's commitment to the coin.

jring-o commented 3 years ago

@additude

To a point.

Cost-benefit of TVM risk vs. Dev retention is fairly straight forward. Combine with logistics, rational fears of large lump expenditures, and %circsup/hr (instead of opting to continue to use fiat) and you have a no-brainer.

presciencia commented 3 years ago

There is realated comments for funding also for this earlier reddit thread.

Also I have updated this team member list for info I can find and from here for clarity about the contributors if not provided by each.

tonycasanova commented 3 years ago

Firstly - thank you all for all the hard work to maintain all the components of this projects going. I agree the folks working on this project should be compensated. I have a concern about the rate of 2,996.4 GRC/hr and how that came about along with "number of human hours worked". I believe the compensation should be calculated including a "baseline" price target that incentivizes Gridcoin price being higher. I.E. - based on GRC reaching $1.00.

How much compute power/time/electricity would it take to earn 1,000,000 GRC? I am sure folks burn electricity / hardware / setup time and run 24/7 just to get a few GRC would look at the rate of this compensation and think it is a little off.

Just looking at the proposed amounts earned I thought to myself I would have been way better off working on infrastructure and code than actually investing in hardware and crunching GRC.

My feedback is adjust the pay as if it the conversion were some higher target value to incentivize reaching the higher value. We need to add a measurable GRC value to the work done. Reward results not just effort.

I know this does strategy will not work if the developer needs funds today so we should have a FIAT account to directly pay folks. We need a Treasurer maybe and fund raiser for projects?

In the future, I would rather there be a fund created before the work and it funded via donations.

Having a subjective "human" work way to earn GRC does not seem fair to me. GRC should be earned through the compute. Just my opinion.

Rate: 2,996.4 GRC/hr

Jim: 1,500 hrs | 4,494,600 GRC Cy: 3,000 hrs | 8,989,200 GRC Total: 4,500 hrs | 13,483,800 GRC

presciencia commented 3 years ago

I believe the compensation should be calculated including a "baseline" price target that incentivizes Gridcoin price being higher. I.E. - based on GRC reaching $1.00.

...My feedback is adjust the pay as if it the conversion were some higher target value to incentivize reaching the higher value.

I do not see benefit for price calculating in future fiat price, relative incentive is equal to increase price, or it is even more when price is lower. Holders have more incentive to increase price if holding more coins.

Any way, from the linked thread of my previous post the estimate from one redditor is the proposal is much less than market values of the dev work completed and % circulating supply rate is proposed to stay away from thinking of fiat price.

Just looking at the proposed amounts earned I thought to myself I would have been way better off working on infrastructure and code than actually investing in hardware and crunching GRC.

Yes but these people actually did it. I left GRC some years ago when I want to start working on coding and saw it was very terrible code and very difficult to change and fix. I was hopeless and sad because it GRC was my favorite crypto and I have read others feeling as same. I am amazed by contributions when I saw Fern release because I know it is difficult to fix and it was done not hacky like before but very well coded and professional by my knowledge. I believe hours written is not very relevant even because GRC protocol will not last at all for even two more years without Fern and related upgrades. It is save from death by huge effort by devs and community leaders who have keep working in very high uncertainty and scaling for higher price/exposure is not possible without this work.

I know this does strategy will not work if the developer needs funds today so we should have a FIAT account to directly pay folks. We need a Treasurer maybe and fund raiser for projects?

In the future, I would rather there be a fund created before the work and it funded via donations.

This is Future Development Program and Bounty Program created in this proposal and separate discussion of #202. I agree it needs more discussion for how to measure value of work done as you say. The matter in current proposal is past dev work though which is ignored for too long by this community IMO. The amount of changes of Fern is so very big and complex I do not see how it is possible to estimate and raise fund before for projects like it.

Having a subjective "human" work way to earn GRC does not seem fair to me. GRC should be earned through the compute. Just my opinion.

GRC is a payment network used by humans and built by humans. The compute is for benefiting of humans. And it is still young project that need humans to grow. So far it had generous humans working on it but I think it is not fair to ignore human work.

grctest commented 3 years ago

What effort was made to reach out to devs/non-devs (outside those in scope for rewards) regarding potential payout? A few people are missing from the rewards list such as myself, fkinglag, peppernrino, neuralminer, etc

Apologies to fkinglag if he's already rejected rewards for historical grc effort and I'm speaking out of place, but he's helped moderate telegram for years and ran the gridcoin hangouts for a long time after I stopped participating in them.

Same for peppernrino, he helped with gridcoin-site tasks, helped edit at least the first 40 gridcoin hangouts, was an ambassador for gridcoin on adult websites for years, etc

Neuralminer has helped moderate slack/telegram/irc for years, helps coordinate inter-team boinc competitions as a team lead, and worked on an open source gridcoin blockchain explorer in this org as well as helped maintain autonode scripts iirc

As regards to myself as far as I can recall I wasn't asked about rewards despite the following efforts:

So how come not everyone in scope was included?

jamescowens commented 3 years ago

@grctest This document, and the preceding one (#242 opened on February 2) has been up for discussion for a significant amount of time. I believe you have access to it. I do not believe anyone was purposefully excluded from the contributor list.

grctest commented 3 years ago

None of the rewardees seem to have had to request request being paid out on github, it's rather unfortunate that historically active users have intentionally been omitted. I have voted no in the poll due to this lack of inclusion (even though it seems it will pass).

jamescowens commented 3 years ago

There were no current contributors intentionally left out. A common theme on this is that contributors awarded are currently involved with the coin. If you read the proposal carefully, the GRC is not paid as a lump sum, but rather over an 18 month period dependent on continued contribution to Gridcoin. Some of the contributors you mentioned are not really engaged in Gridcoin anymore and do not qualify.

I think we need to be open to folks that were left out. I think people need to opine on whether that requires a separate poll, given that it must come from the remaining 12.5M GRC that will be left.

presciencia commented 3 years ago

Question for payouts, is it in each month for active contributors? If contributor is not active for a month is the payout lost? Where is this fund allocated back? @ShmoogleOsukami say he is not active, and Ravon listed in proposal looks not active, so they will not receive proposed funds?

presciencia commented 3 years ago

@grctest

None of the rewardees seem to have had to request request being paid out on github, it's rather unfortunate that historically active users have intentionally been omitted.

What I see is rewardees are nominated by proposal authors and by other independend community members in the other discussions for having strong past work but also for having strong potential to continue growing the project. There are many including founder Rob with past work but have gave up on Gridcoin and so they are not strong candidate to receive funds that will use for future benefit of this community.

additude commented 3 years ago

As a general rule and a matter of practice, all mechanisms of this nature need to be clear and concise. If they are not able to be precise, then those mechanisms need to be well documented. detailed and have reasonable validation and/or concurrence. Those considerations need to be founded by those who are the most trusted and those who are the most knowledgeable.

NickP1 commented 3 years ago

An idea for replenishment of Foundation wallet: as transaction fee starts at only 0.001 double the fee and send 50% to Foundation wallet.

barton2526 commented 3 years ago

An idea for replenishment of Foundation wallet: as transaction fee starts at only 0.001 double the fee and send 50% to Foundation wallet.

Over the last 10 days, the total amount of fees spent on the chain was 25.789 GRC, or 0.0026 per block. Extrapolating for a year, this would generate less than 1000 GRC per year for the Foundation and would incur significant fees (likely almost as much as it receives...) to consolidate this dust back into usable coins.

startailcoon commented 3 years ago

An idea for replenishment of Foundation wallet: as transaction fee starts at only 0.001 double the fee and send 50% to Foundation wallet.

As Barton2526 points out, this would probably get lost in dust fees. A better way would be to add a "I wish to donate [percentage] or [amount] of GRC to the foundation for this transaction". Together with a lowest amount of donation, 1 GRC or something, this could be more usable.

NickP1 commented 3 years ago

eh... just a thought. Maybe a seed to answer down the road. But it is concerning that Gridcoin does not have a way currently to replenish it's coffers to support the hard and important work of all those involved past, present and going forward. I am surprised this was not tackled much sooner. Thanks for taking it easy on me :)

jamescowens commented 3 years ago

There have been extensive discussions on the funding issue.

ghost commented 3 years ago

Now when the poll ended. When will the payouts start?

KeithMyers commented 3 years ago

Jim stated the beginning of June for start of payments.

grctest commented 2 years ago

Because we cannot calculate hours for this work, we must simply allocate funds.

Moving forwards maybe track your time using something like this https://www.toptal.com/tracker/

jamescowens commented 1 year ago

The final payout under this issue has been made. See txid 18d8edb4db2c01f8c075b05c47910a41f2df41625d4959b9936f33406c99ad3a.