Bitcoin Forum

This is the official thread for the Monero Economy Workgroup (MEW). Please post both your requests for registration (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg9049866#msg9049866) as well as regular comment here.

• FAQ (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg8988314#msg8988314)
• Member list (https://xmrmonero.com/list-mew-members)
• Article of association (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UYASf0gHI-fxqQsyyLVUqLcQz6uowz1wydMHwc2JBPI/edit)
• Initial Decisions (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zxK1a5VpAtgAkwR-3atxOB9lh8ubxMgwdBHjFEXhHdA/edit)

The usual warnings about self-moderation apply here: self-moderation is not meant for censorship, but to encourage a better reading experience for all.

Will keep an over eye here!

This is very interesting.  If done right, I think the bitcoin community could take a page from the Monero community in this regard, which would add ALOT of legitimacy imo.  Not to mention, it will make the Monero the coin and the community unique and attractive to outsiders.  Can't wait to hear more!

yes , let's keep on eyes

Where do i sign up?

I will be joining - probably at level 6 initially. As for the name of the group, the only problem I have is that I already know the acronym quite well as standing for mortgage equity withdrawal. I suppose that's a generic problem with TLA's.

Hey all! +1

Monero is an entirely new type of coin and needs it's community to be organized. 

I like this because it seeks to be a representative voice of responsible Monero holders, without presuming some kind of authority beyond its legitimacy.  It is questionable how much it can achieve on those terms, but at the very least it will provide substantial support to core development, and serve to facilitate networking between holders, which is likely to speed the development of the economy in various small collaborative initiatives.

Sounds interesting

the MEW is needed to have good exposure. I'll join for sure

Perhaps we could contact Obama.

I am interested.

I am also among the first members of this.

Well i am interested too.

I wish I could join, but my XMR stack is barely 50. Monero Poverty Crew checkin in.

Maybe you can create "one entity" and join as a collective of "Monero poors" ;)

We'll need to make sure this is legitimate, is there word from the official Monero development team?

On poloniex there was said to connect David Latapie for more details, so I am pretty sure this is legitimate.

It's legitimate in the sense that is it definitely engaged in communications with the core team, and I have no reason to doubt the commitment to donate 50% of membership fees to the core team for devleopment. Further some of the core team may also be members of this group, though such membership would be as individuals and not representing the core team (nor vice versa).

However, it is also an independent group with its own charter and direction, so you will need to use your own judgement as to whether it is something you want to support. The option to donate directly to the core team and decline to participate in this new group remains.

The word "legitimacy" can mean many things. What is happening with MEW, is that the group claims to be a legitimate representation of the users of Monero (at least to a degree), based on:


1. The group members have delegated their right to express their opinions as Monero holders, to the community vote of the MEW*;

2. Joining the group is available for all as much as is practical, and the cost (if any) to join the voting body of the group is equal;

3. The group is being administered equally so that influence in the group corresponds to the ownership of XMR, and club bias does not occur;

4. Rather high percentage of all moneros outstanding are owned by the people in the group;

5. A meaningful percentage of individuals using Monero have a way to influence the group's action.


It is NOT derived from the following:

-1. rpietila or David Latapie or anyone accepts/supports it (even though they do, and are actually soon becoming founding members)

-2. the core dev team supports it (even though they probably do, at least no core dev has been specifically against MEW so far)

-3. anything else.


The criteria for legitimacy depend on what we claim to represent. Actually we believe that everyone pretty much represents himself, and the legitimacy we claim (as a group, a unity) is very small. We can only represent those members that have voted in a particular matter. (As a comparison, national parliaments claim overarching powers towards everyone, derived from much smaller actual legitimacy than MEW.)

If we are not mistaken, the core team's legitimacy statement is: "we have taken this coin to develop it, and we do what we want, and if you don't like it, you are free to sell your coins, or make a fork". There is no reason for us to obtain their blessing, as our legitimacy is based on how well we represent Monero users, and not developers. Likewise they need no blessing from us, because they exist on their own right and claim no legitimacy except over the development of the current main chain of Monero software.


* continues: "where they can express those opinions and vote for them, so that they count as much percentagewise, but are counted together with like opinions, so they have a bigger influence in the real life"

To answer some other questions:

- For those willing to sign up: just PM us.
- The membership fee for entry level for the moment is 50 XMR (corresponding to a notional holding of 5000 XMR which does not need to be proven and is not even morally required).
- Lower entry points will probably be opened as Monero increases in valuation; so later won't be cheaper (in term of BTC or fiat valuation).
- There is no plan at the moment for allowing people inside access without voting power (an "observer" status).. Nothing is set in stone, though.
- There are lots of plans to make useful services for all Monero users so definitely MEW will benefit everyone in a way or another.

I'm in with that, too. Just I have no social reputation nor much Monero. My CPU lacks AES-NI

It is too late to mine monero on your computer. Even at the end of April, my future teammates already encouraged me to just buy it, it was cheaper.

The "Monero poors" idea may be just tongue-in-cheek or not from you both, I don't know. But the idea behind it is interesting to consider (not necessarily to accept). AFAIK, "collective of small shareholders" are pretty common in large corporations, no?

I think that depends. I am mining on my PC on the basis not of current value but of potential future value.

It is true that only a small fraction of my holdings have been gained through mining however.

How transparent will MEW be to non-members? Will meeting minutes/logs and such be published for public viewing?

I think/hope MEW aims for maximum impact and usefulness. So if there is anything that could be useful for the general public, it will be published. The meetings are not the primary idea though. The focus is on doing things.

Since subsitutions for 'MEW' name was asked, here are my submissions:

MONERO ECONOMIC CLUB   (MEC)  : since this enterprise has all the trappings of a club.......
MONERO ECONOMIC CABAL (MEC)  : 'cabal' may have some negative social connotations but the positive ones are rather fitting here imo.........
THE MONERO CLUB             (TMC)  : unambiguous, short &sweet. The 'THE' may signify this very enterprise, and none else, future or past.......
THE MONERO GUILD           (TMG)  : 'guild' aptly encapsulates your motives and aspirations of the enterprise  imho..........

MEW needs its own dedicated site. A cat logo is needed..

Thank you!

I have proposed the current name Monero Economy Workgroup (MEW). As we remember from the OP, it has a twofold purpose, to be the means for determining the community opinion, and the platform for those interested in developing things.

The current name is mainly describing the latter, not the former. Your suggestions are taking this even further, which may not be good. Outsiders should, if possible, be able to see both the aspects of the group from the name already.

The MEW is an inclusive, not exclusive group. Club/Guild has a connotation of exclusiveness. MEW is bound to accept everyone to be members, because the legitimacy of our vote is dependent on the ability for every holder to join us, otherwise it would be "just a club" voting things.

The voting aspect could be conveyed by "Parliament" or similar. "Council", even "Consortium" have been proposed. "Foundation" is often used but was rejected in yesterday's meeting.

I would like to suggest:
Monero Community Workgroup.

To me this makes the most sense if this effort is 1st and foremost a community initiative, and retains that it is a workgroup as the focus is to engage in activities & projects that can push Monero adoption forward.

It would be great at some point if the group would clarify on the possibility that was raised earlier, of multiple small holders participating as a single entity. I could entertain a collection of interested people and draft out some communication workflow to facilitate the creation of the single entity, but only if inclusion into the larger group is generally expected/anticipated.

~ Myagui

+1

We are already discussing possibilities for every interested XMR holder regardless of size, to be part of it directly. The challenges here are technical. The idea is definitely not to draw borderlines in the middle of the community, but the necessary tech to administer the huge number of members is just yet not there.

That would allow a fluid way for vote aggregation by proxy, so that smaller holders would delegate their votepower directly to the holders they trust, and some members might set up "mini-parliaments" by being open in what they represent, and professional in their communication, in order to gather a large amount of votepower, and thus justify spending time on the things.

The current void of representative democracy is that one vote does not count. The only way to affect things is to bribe/"lobby" a career politician that speaks lies to people before the election to get elected, and then does what you have paid him for. This has been rethought in MEW.

ENRICH MONERO INITIATIVE (EMI) ?

I like "MEW", it's catchy and memorable.

How can I join in?

MEW sucks. MEOW is much better

http://media.catmoji.com/post/vji/super-meow-rio.jpg

Heck no. Spare us the 'cute' cat/kitten images. Far too many of those on the internet already.

This sounds like a good idea, but I hope the core dev team can actually maintain complete independence from MEW.

There have been several instances in the altcoin world of devs getting cozy with outside organizations or businesses to the point where the boundary between the two gets really blurry. Inevitably, the whole thing ends up being an elaborate scam by the outside group, or a plot to gain control over a coin exclusively for personal gain.

For an example of what I have in mind, see the Worldcoin - Scharmbeck debacle.

If I could make a naming suggestion. the Monero Economy Workgroup - MEW may express the purpose of this new community, but perhaps "Monero Economic Collaborative(Collaboration)" speaks more to the collaborative nature and sentiment of the group. And gets away from the cat/MEW(Meow) type of ridicules presenting a bit more professional face to the group.

Just my opinion, but my advertising/marketing experience tells me we don't need to feed those who would attack us with any more ammo no matter how minor, I've already seen a lot of jokes about it.

I hope this proves of some value to the group and wish the best for all!

Since you mentioned several instances, please list the cases/coins, and link the relevant threads, please.

I dare to say that there is no inevitability, especially when the "outside" group is constructed as an open community like MEW is.

Who?

a voting system for XMR holders to vote proportionally to their holdings

if 50% of the fee goes to development - what happens to the rest?

When the group is established, the memberlist will be public, although it is possible to be anonymous or pseudonymous.

No more MONERO threads!!!!!!!

This one is unique. MEW is similar to BTC Foundation.

I hope not!

it is stated it the OP. Spent by vote of the membership on various projects to promote Monero (web sites, videos, etc.) and whatever other such ventures the members support spending it on.

You can't read well. By "pay for web sites, videos, etc." I mean pay people such as web developers, video producers, etc.

Is is not going to pay the core team members who don't work for MEW.

The MEW is officially opened. See OP for updated information.

Follow the instructions on the OP

Might be worth posting on reddit.

Um, I can think out my own payment ID?
Sorry, I'm having a cold and my brain may be less responsive...

So I send the amount with own payment ID, PM it to someone here and get accepted?

You PM it to this very account.

Are you aware that there is a space between the d and the n (at the end) in the adress posted at 1.1? I don't know if that's meant to be, just notifying before someone sends to the wrong adress. Will soon send mine.

I'm in too, payment ID is: 170c153bf403a24127db1dae845ab4f939c91a6f4c34c3a3459d179d2dc524d4

Sent via MP as well.

Maybe I had too many beers but I am at my 5th try and seem not be able to find a working 64 character string that doesn't give me "payment ID has invalid format expected 64-character string ".

sorry for OT but it's driving me crazy.

I need more beer.

That is smart and I did just that, thanks!

However I still don't understand where the difference between their 64 chars and my 64 chars is....oh well.

Payment ID: 1d4be45c2dccb169c7ccd2868ac6971ad4c2c23574c285ea15f0bc8efb1c4811

PM sent

EDIT: It was brought to my attention that the amount should be public. I paid 50 XMR.

I sent 100 and the ID it says I used is : 6c8e7ad4e94cae5c292e2353c2ea1b9777637400a580613631b4e9719dddbfd9

I'm in.
20 XMR, payment id 20c1b2c53cfacf19ed6276acb81a6a3886df580e73dce751e1447544296ebf42
Hopefully I can contribute more soon :)

Payment ID info below<><><>

_______________________________________________________________________________ ___________________



Yes the space is there, this is what you get when you copy and paste an address from the CLI wallet as the address wraps.

PLEASE CORRECT IN OP.

What address are people sending to?

I have send through my membership donation to the MEW, unless I have made a horrible mistake the payment ID should be: 139b678c71acd3dbe5df6c09d91e828366f37384592f06c9c6d10c1cccda515f

The creation of a second group of XMR contributors who are less technically minded but no less enthusiastic about the project is a huge step forward for XMR. I look forward to hearing about the views put forward by the MEW and hope that we can capture some fantastic plans from the graphic designers, website designers, marketers etc who might be involved.

Ideally this group should trigger the creation of other economy groups for altcoins meaning that devs are supported by the community of skilled contributors rather than the slow liquidation of premined coins.

The adress is correct, you just need to remove the space. The adress posted in the sample syntax is correct.

EDIT: Post beneath has the good adress.

This is the adress without space. You can find it in the OP also in the syntax sample of simplewallet.

The forum breaks monero addresses with a space unless it is 'code', like so:

10 XMR
Payment ID: 417de22ee25d60f528fb92775faa8c61fb6c715755f72ef9475d597b4c383055
Tx ID: 16fc496f8265fde2ad5f1dedd4b3374cc69fe909bacd0e0284c4ea50c1aba1ec

Cheers!
_{Edit: Obsolete information removed, added membership registration details!}

I see, thanks for elaborating and fixing it! Will edit my post.

What about having a logo for MEW, both inspired by Monero and yet different? Much like the Monero Research Labs?
https://lab.monero.cc/logo.png

• Advantage: consistency
• Disadvantage: risk of confusion, people could believe that MEW is an official Monero project, which it is not.

Food for thoughts.

Thank you, this is a known SMF limitation and an oversight from us. This is corrected. No risk of error, though, the payment would not have been processed.

Should have a separate logo in my personal opinion.

Hexadecimal. 0 to 9 plus A to F (case-insensitive). For instance, ShrikezShrikezShrikezShrikezShrikezShrikezShrikezShrikezShrikezS would not work, because apart from e, no letter is an hexadecimal number

Ok, count me in for 250 xmr; payment ID: 1eb507a5536c2070c73232c91f7dd3fcd2d0fe2a079baa24c92b5e55531cd792

Thank you David, yeah there was an "x" hidden in there which apparently I fat fingered. The beers made me overlook it.

Sent: 100 XMR

Payment ID: 6c3e5b0f4661aa8d4bcc2232566003514005ddc6e7818adc15f549dc1eaf5645

IRC: iourzzz

Sent 100 XMR. Payment ID: 99cd3b04420824a615b08fa248f5ed48c912a12f9263668690a6a6bb0d147b31

OK, the thread is not only for registration but also for discussion. So, which topics should be considered here? Some ideas:

• What is the exact perimeter of MEW (as opposed to "core team" and "neither core team nor MEW")
• How to increase visibility of Monero outside of Cryptoland
• How to better fund the core team
• List of business opportunities, either started or proposed
• What about the governance of MEW
• Others

I think we should get our own IRC channel and maybe a Ventrilo/voice server.

We just created #monero-mew.
The reason for the name is that it fits into the monero- namespace, which will help protecting its existence on the longer term (see freenode policy).

It can be accessed on the web at http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=%23monero-mew.

What is MEW? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg8991516#msg8991516)
Who belongs to it now? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg9049706#msg9049706)
What is required for joining? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg9049866#msg9049866)
What is the relation of MEW and the core team? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg9137058#msg9137058)
What can be voted for? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg9137081#msg9137081)
Do I bind myself to something when joining MEW? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg9137090#msg9137090)
Is it possible to become an anonymous member? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg9137106#msg9137106)
Shouldn't the devs decide the priorities? I mean they are the ones who must donate their time to implement features. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg9137129#msg9137129)
Is the MEW focused on funding development projects or does it plan to fund non-technical startups involving XMR in some way? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg9137139#msg9137139)
What kind of business opportunities there are/mostly needed? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg9137149#msg9137149)
Is MEW controlling the members' XMR funds? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg9137162#msg9137162)
To what extent will the MEW's actions be applicable to other (mostly CN) coins? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg9137172#msg9137172)
MEW is a stupid name (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg9137191#msg9137191)
Where can I find more information? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg9137202#msg9137202)

Q. What is MEW?
A: MEW is a gathering of Monero holders of (almost) any wealth willing to promote Monero and assist in its developement as a major cryptocurrency.
Specifically, MEW will financially support the dev by giving 50% of the registration fees to the dev, advocate Monero to the largest audience and offer a place to allow members to foster the development of the ecosystem (wallets, exchanges, services, merchants, adoption), through joint ventures between them.

Also read: What is MEW? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=721045.msg9010346#msg9010346) on the Monero Community Thread.

I'm in, 40 xmr sent.

Payment ID: 19722c460ae7d019298e382f733c7c896bf00b52c869cde7190d1718b2f3ab33

https://jitsi.org/

IRC: #monero-mew (http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=%23monero-mew)

For some reason this post just reminded me I have access to aminorex.com! I will add a link to your most recent posts there. :) (Let me know if you want the text changed or don't want the link for some reason... just doing this for fun ;))

Sent 10

Payment ID e41b63d872ae70b616f011119c2b8661429794fcce5f9b5c8ea41e9bde8f8fe0

The MEW in its role as the business-facing aspect of Monero may provide advice and input to development as to what our analysis shows us would be helpful for the advancement of our common interests.

Let us take some ideas from our body here as to what features and functions would help take us forward so that we can be most useful to our developers.  Please feel welcome to add your own development priority ideas for consideration and discussion.  When we have the 10% voting quorum seeking a vote, according to our charter, we can then bring them to a vote on ranking, and them make a suggestion known to the development team.

I propose that these suggestions follow the format here of [preferred rank] [feature] [benefit]
By way of example, here are four: WIF, OTK, AUTH, GRACE in order of the rank I prefer:

1. WIF (wallet import format) for private keys and seed defined and implemented (import/export RPC and CLI methods)
2. OTK Address and transaction signing (one time key). - This feature allows proof of ownership of an address, or a transaction.  This should include format definition and the methods implemented.
3. AUTH Develop and implement HTTP/HTTPS/RPC simple authentication between components. - This allows merchants to run the daemon on a separate server and communicate securely.  (not every waiter in the restaurant has to have a full block chain on their bill pay device)
4. GRACE Upgrade error handling in the daemon to either use a "graceful shutdown" - Better stability of bitmonerod by determining if it is necessary to shut down (absolute worst case), or retry indefinitely. the daemon should only die under the most dire of circumstances, and provide alarmable output for manual intervention and remediation.

My ranking is based on my personal assessment of what would be beneficial to more widespread adoption, and to the development of an economic ecosystem.  These are incremental, small improvements and not giant milestones (like GUI wallet or DB).  You may have other ideas?  Or comments on these?

Sent 10
ID: EA1260887B98447A7B60D010DCD328909CBFFBE6D86EEC4FFF09168A9FCAA19A

Sadly my knowledge of the benefits of the code in question is lacking, I would need to see the time each piece would take to implement and the overall benefit to the coin, I suspect you have already taken that into consideration when you ranked them. Could I suggest a bounty system for the winner of the vote with the dev able to complete the code in question eligible for some XMR, or would offering individual prizes lead to duplication of work?

I'm interested in the projects that the less technical skilled members of MEW could take on, should people be encouraged to post ideas in this thread for a group vote?

Thanks for this.
There is really far more to do than there are people doing it, so your suggestion is on point.  There are a ton of business activities as well as the every-day grass-roots effort of getting people to even understand what this is and what it can do and how it can change the world in amazing ways...  For every technical activity, there are 10 or 20 non-technical, and plenty of room for each of us to pitch in and make it happen.  I don't want to go into payment mechanisms to development and incentive structures (mostly because its not a big concern for me), but that may be another thing for you to lobby to get the 10% quorum in order to bring up to a vote.  I'd heard using bounties was not well received in this project, but really its not my bailiwick.

These 4 are things that I think will 1) bring us closer to the GUI wallet full functionality, but also 2) open up business opportunity in the near term even before the wallet is ready.  If you think "no vote before effort assessment" and we can't get 10% that want to vote on this proposal, then we can probably get a 10% quorum to vote on asking to get effort assessments, and pass that with a simple majority.

Here is a bit more to think about on this proposal so far:

#1 is what is needed to get paper wallets, coin-wallets, all that sort of thing.  There are lead times for making items that can be quite long in some cases.  Having this will start the clock rolling on that.  So I put it first.
#2 is something business and accounting will require.  To me, the killer app for Monero is not the "i fear my government" folks.  No, it is the 100% legal high finance and multinational business enterprises internal settlement accounts.
Here's why: If you are the C-level exec doing business internationally, and you are looking to expand in a foreign region, you are going to run up against entrenched interests.  In many/most areas, these will include the local banking systems.  If you want to keep your business advantage of first mover and avoid industrial espionage risks letting the in-country folks collude against you, you want a way to move your money within your company in private OUTSIDE THE BANKING SYSTEMS.  Sure you could use Bitcoin for this, but with its public ledger, if the opposition has half a clue, they can track it.  Sure you could take steps to obfuscate the transactions, but then you can't delegate it to your low level functionaries.
MONERO solves these problems in ways we do not expect Bitcoin to address anytime in the near future.

And here's the kicker, that market is 100x what Bitcoin is today.  Even if the only one doing it was Apple Computer, it would overwhelm the total market cap of Bitcoin today, and there are 10,000 companies in this situation.
It's #2 because there are a lot more pieces needed to do this, but this one is crucial.  It will have to be perfectly internally auditable, and perfectly obfuscated externally.

#3 is the Small and Medium Enterprise function.  Merchants will need this.

#4 is for basic reliability.  We have to have usage, but when they have it, it needs to not break.  I think if we asked our developers to do them in this order, we would be well suited to engage marketing solutions more swiftly.

These are designed around business needs, geared to promote success of the technology, and to take us to the next level. 

If we get to 50%, we can send it as a request for development priority to dev team.  Short of that, we can talk about this or other proposals, but I am also looking for some quick actionable things that we as a functioning body can put forward to get things moving.

(Speaking as an MEW member.)

Agree with NewLiberty's post. I'm not sure about this whole multinational use case (not saying it isn't valid, just that it all seems a bit speculative) but his analysis on the other items is spot on.

Note that #1 in particular is more about defining an "industry standard" and much less about coding. The MEW or a working group appointed by MEW can handle this item completely as long as the developers have some input on the final proposal to be adopted to ensure no feasibility problems. Also somewhat true of #3.

It is less speculative than you might think.  I was asked by a service provider for multinationals to investigate the potential for solving that use case.  Monero is the current front runner.  It is a significant factor as to why I am involved in Monero at all.  The need is real.  The current workaround is buying an in-country bank, which is expensive and comes with its own set of problems.

Intrest may not be speculative at all. Whether it catches on and remains the front runner is highly speculative IMO. That shouldn't be meant as discouragement or even skepticism, it isn't meant that way. Personally I hope we do find even one credible and scalable use beyond speculation better than Bitcoin has.

This would do it.  But XMR is way to immature yet.  It has to prove itself with smaller fishes first.  Bitcoin can't do it, XMR could, if it survives, and grows up.  There are a lot of steps between here and there.

Anyhow, I don't have enough input yet on my proposal to bring it to a vote, much less the 10% votepower needed for that anyway, so I'm hoping to keep that discussion going further.

What does the current total votepower stand at now?

I am in favor of sending a message concerning priorities. What we need to efficiently do it, however, is to open the own discussion channel first. (I heard there is a freenode, but am not a member yet.) Then we can do what the voting protocol requires, which is draft the initial proposal for discussion, and then the final proposal to be voted when the discussion ends. The voting is allowed to take 168 hours, but it can be ended when the absolute majority (50%+1 vote of all votes) is reached.

Then we should gather the financial information from the devteam, for making these things happen. This should accompany our initial donation of about 3,000 XMR.

Please others - we don't want to be guiding the devteam too often, if you have something important for them, it might be possible to write a one-page communiqué distilling pretty much all that the community members want of the devs. After having this information, the rest we'll have to do ourselves! And that's going to be fun! :)

Sent 100 XMR from Polo.
Payment ID: 3e2b5d1c486dbfd8232f615b804f1ed77c4f5d6500d1eabf8754292c403308e1
Q

#Mew is taken, but i see there's a #Monero-Mew channel that's invite only. Do we know who runs that channel?

Edit: A private forum would be an option as well. This would assist with voting and keep a semi-permanent record of discussion.

That is the MEW channel if i'm not mistaken.

You have to contact davidlatapie for that. Also you have to register otherwise the invite will only work once, doesn't matter if you have a bouncer but if you don't have one you can't get into the channel if you reconnect. I think IRC is better for discussion than a private channel.

#monero-mew is only for mew members who already paid. There are some delays in opening access, for mere logistic reasons. Instructions for getting access to this channel will be published soon. The account to contact is this one (Monero Economy Workgroup), not David Latapie (even though presently the same person handles the two accounts).

The core team will open a MEW section on its incoming forum.

I did not realize the donation address was here. I asked for it through David in PM but never got a response. My bad.

Sorry, that was not intentional, just too much PM on my main account, I suppose. Don't forget the payment ID and the amount. Also, send your IRC handle and make sure to register if first.

Q. Who belongs to it now?
A: Last count (September 25) is more than 50 members.

Q: What is required for joining?
A:
Short answer
Post a entry similar to this one.
Votes + fees               : 10 xmr
registered IRC handle :  farfi
We will PM you with the payment ID to use for your transfer
By default, identity and amounts are public. If you don't your membership to be advertised, send us a PM instead of posting.

Minimum votes     : 10 XMR (soon more)
Maximum votes    : 1000 XMR
Granularity            : 1 XMR
Handling fees        : 0 XMR (soon more)

Instructions to IRC and register your handle
An alternative summary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oHZDLPbD3uUJhetSBm3pAkI71xA39M13sAn906HvHKM/edit#heading=h.okie6bqu4bsv)
1 XMR = 1 vote. Vote are perpetual. One can upgrade or downgrade at any time. The annual fee to keep the voting rights is only 10% of the one-time fee.

MEW address:

How to add a payment ID:

• If you use an exchange, find the generate payment id button or generate one with the methods below)
• If you're on Unix (Linux and Mac), open up a terminal and paste this command (then enter): openssl rand -hex 32
• If you're on Windows or a mobile, type exactly 64 hexadecimal characters (0-9 and A-F, case insensitive)

Sample syntax for simplewallet (with 100 XMR):

How to register a nick on Freenode:

• Connect to freenode. You can download Hechat (http://hexchat.github.io/) for that.
• Type the following commands
  /nick <new_nick>
  /ns register <password> <email>
  /ns identify <password>
  The first command allows you to change you nick, if needed. The second one allows you to register your nick - if you forget your password, you could reinitialise it with your email. The third command is to identify yourself once you're registered (registration doesn't identify by itself, hence this last command)
• Check that you indeed are registered with
  /msg nickserv info <nick>
• Configure your client for auto identification upon startup (with Hexchat: network list, select freenode, then choose authentification method PASS then type your password.
• Optionally, ask to autoconnect to #monero-mew (with Hexchat: network list, select freenode, auto join these channels, add #monero-mew, leave password blank).

Note that you won't be able to actually connect on #monero-mew before you handle as been confirmed. If you leave IRC open, you will receive an IRC invite once it is done. Confirmation is manual, so it can take anything from 1 hour to 2 days.

Everyone please read "How to register a nick on Freenode:" above for instructions for connecting to the invite-only IRC channel on freenode.

Summary of two posts by NewLiberty regarding a proposed itemised agenda:

(source 1 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg9028591#msg9028591) source 2 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg9035728#msg9035728))


I suggest we vote on it and then start rolling. I'm feeling MEW is facing the writer's block at this moment and this would break the ice.

I would personnally add a pure MEW item, parallel to the others: conquer the Asian market. We are strong in Northern America and Europe, but not in the Asia, which is the biggest market (more particularly China).

sent : 10 xmr
id     : 61235153c1459d8ba8206f40e30219b7ee40b105c18a3dc8348f255a20cc64f7
irc    :  farfi

The address of the IRC channel is now bigger and more explicit on the OP.

sent : 100 xmr
id     : 0918858bb126b255b7443f86fe9f481da05392c42ea5881dc5cfa51bf2846ba1
irc    :  Bobabouey

Sorry if the info is somewhere in the thread, I didn't see it in the FAQ, and have no time to crawl through.
50% of the subscription fees goes to the devs to support development *immediately*, right?

Immediate answer: Yes.

Thanks.
Additional selfish question (partly kidding): is it then reported in the hall of fame?

Will be, as MEW (not as individual donators).

Funny enough, we had a longish discussion about it. Since I am the creator of both some important parts of the MEW and the Community Hall of Fame, I can decide that the MEW votelist ranks higher in precedence. It is a sign of an ongoing commitment, not only of one-time donation.

Speaking 100% out of personal opinion here, but I found the quirkiness of the MHoF to be more compelling than a relatively dry/official votelist.

I'd suggest merging the two somehow.

sent : 10 xmr
Payment-ID: 55356e2dfcf99bd5c802064439f5479063f0fc49db5c4675772824fe9e07d782
irc: whoknowsthisnose

They both have almost identical levels (well the votelist has base metals instead of "wad of green toiletpaper" :) ) Perhaps David can copy some of the design elements to the official votelist to make it look less official...

I created an alternative summary for joining. This is meant as a starting point to help people connecting to IRC. Please mention any way to improve it or better yet, improve it yourself!

An alternative summary (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oHZDLPbD3uUJhetSBm3pAkI71xA39M13sAn906HvHKM/edit#heading=h.okie6bqu4bsv)

sent: 300 xmr
payment id: 92c0eb3139635948b65999b1f25927894f3966d9485d8dabd4548e27818b87ad

irc: ceger

The last vote list I saw had no levels listed at all. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg9049932#msg9049932

3393.5 XMR (half of the registrations) sent to dev fund.
Update: payment_ID is 66a9f92348534366a46768f50bb622a3a4830ade25f8a469159c1a588febf18f

Great stuff. Hopefully we can get to 5000 fairly soon.

In terms of priorities, I personally view the establishment of a rock solid, and easy to use GUI as most important for wider community adoption and confidence. Establishing something like coinbase for XMR would be good (possibly in collaboration). Just my 0.02 XMR.  :)

Alright, let's give this a shot...

Question:

- Is MEW tied to forum persona, or RL identity? I'm alright with signing up with the former, but not the latter.

- Membership and voting weight is tied to donation, right? As denominated in XMR, correct? I know we're in this entire crypto project (not just XMR, I mean) to bootstrap distributed currencies, but as units of account, not even BTC performs that well, let alone XMR. Seems to me that, apart from idealistic reasons, USD denomination would have made more sense. Possible though that this was discussed already and a conclusion was reached, so the above is more of a question than a negative judgement.

It is each member to decide. So far, everyone chose persona, as you can see in the Member list (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg9049932#msg9049932).

Everything is denominated in XMR. The core team may pay in XMR, BTC or fiat, depending on what the contractor or service wishes. Some early days bounties from the core team are known to have been paid in XMR, whilst the contractor could have chosen otherwise.

I'm making the domain http://www.monujo.com/ (http://www.monujo.com/) available to MEW should we decide that it is useful to any of our initiatives.
If decide to checkout the domain/link, please ignore the current redirect (or not, knock yourself out).
Cheers!

I have registered on IRC as per instructions:

irc : McHaggis

I think this is an important topic for discussion, especially when it comes to hacking/fraud.

Also including how we go about voting. I understand for now we can use this thread/forum, but what about longer term.

One of my concerns is always getting hacked, what would I need to do to prove who I am and get my voting rights back as a member of MEW?

Is there a way to incorporate the Monero wallet and Open Alias to help prevent this? Register a web-domain and get my open alias setup so that I vote through it? It might be easier to prevent a theft of an account that is owned as a web-domain than it is to prevent being hacked on BTCT, plus does 2FA even exist on this forum?

Just some of my initial concerns

amount: 300 xmr
tx id: f558cf832cb5eba52aa659d87d9f5bf98068aea571d1dcca77bbd436b1bba7b4
irc: oda_krell

Actually it was a bale of high quality hygiene paper which I never received.  After giving up hope of ever receiving this most useful item I donated a little more.

So at this time I will pay the minimum required to join MEW.

amount: 10 XMR
payment ID: f1cbdafd7eef6a87f81657504a0feef81fb273a18ec85b86347da8b4ee5aa2be
irc nick: nioc

Hi,

sent : 20 xmr
id     : 2f75aa26d008bb680f6fc896f7607544b109ef1157327191cafd3ae41b81eacd
irc    :  papa_lazzarou

MEW - Operational Executive speaking

1. The official documents

MEW has the following documents:
- Articles of Association (AA)
- Initial Decisions with Nominations (ID)
- membership list with ranks and votes (Votelist)

Furthermore:
- Every voting will be made a memo that lists the voters and the result.
- Every Executive (and preferably everyone else who actively works in MEW) will summarize his actions periodically.

To have all these important things posted duly, we'd need a bulletin board. The logical place for such a board is this forum. Possible ways for finding the board are to:
- have it as a thread with very little other content (hard, since interesting content draws discussion)
- post it only in the name of MEW main account, so that it can be searched by poster (not all do this habitually and may miss it).

IRC should have a feature for listing files, also a Google Drive and own website, even push email-list are possibilities. I invite all members to discussion concerning these. We want to select more than one, but not an overwhelming number of official channels for one-way information. Then we need 1-2 channels for group discussion. I am not at all sure that the IRC selected is an all-purpose tool. For discussions that require dispensing of thought, a forum would be better. Luckily there is a no-troll Monero Forum already available, I have been told. The management of user rights is a pain anyway, since we are talking about a large number of users.


2. MEW prong #1 - Providing a stake-based voting system

We are currently getting the basics right for voting. If something needs to be passed quickly, the rules allow 51% of all votes to do it in no time at all. If the issue is both important, popular, and in a rush, we don't have a problem with reaching a legitimate conclusion, but the voting experience for most of the small members will be quite tough as they are simply ignored once the required number of votes is reached.

What we do need now, is the tools for fact- and votepower-based discussion. IRC constrains the expression of facts due to the format. Forums should need moderation in the order of posting etc. to make the discussion go on smoothly. (Even ordinary meetings have had chairman always, there is a role that needs to be fulfilled if something is to be achieved.) Then the voting itself has several options how to make it happen.

As soon as the general forum for discussion is generally available, there will be at least one of the proposals up for vote.


3. MEW prong #2 - Providing a decentralized yet coordinated power platform for ideas to enhance Monero economy

This also needs much nurturing. What we are doing here is not according to the way that everyone has been conditioned to do since childhood. Many members have approached me with offers to help in whatever is possible, which is good, but currently I am not that much up to my task that I could have given them the work. With our Agora program incubator running, it will be easier for these people to do something.

Some have approached me with a specific peripheral project, and I have tried to direct them to work with others. This has caused even resentment. Folks, please, I cannot work in every project, more likely in no project at all. I would be much more content if I could do all my current responsibilities instead of taking projects where I would not be a good match really.

I wish (just for balancing the previous examples) that some people would also grasp much more power than the average guy, and would form strong groups inside MEW to push their agendas and projects. This would energize all to be more vigilant. But please do this activism only in connection with the increase of our "governance tools" of chats, forums, voting systems etc. Trying to pull to different directions when no such systems are in place is damaging and destructive.

To grasp the magnitude of change, the previously 7-membered core team now has a helper named MEW with over 50 members. Organizing such a bunch of people in any school of organizing though available, is not easy, nor happens overnight. But it will happen sooner than you think, and yield surprisingly good results.


4. My doings past and future

- I will be putting things for vote as soon as the voting system is reasonably ready
- David is appointed to be my hotel manager in Malla, soon 2 other guys who are interested in cryptocurrency join him
- The XMR emission change cat is out of the bag and situation is causing confusion and price/adoption weakness until it's resolutely resolved.
1) No one is proposing to increase emission, that's just FUD. The only proposal is to make the curve slower, but ending in the same number
2) If emission is not changed, and adoption does not increase quickly, XMR will be perceived a premine in 2 years
3) If emission is changed, XMR will be perceived premine now, albeit likely will a smaller % of relevant people
4) Trolls feast on the topic, saying "doomed if you do, doomed if you don't". Forget them! Just read the Initial Arguments (being prepared) from both sides, and take part of the discussion, and vote, and act responsibly.
5) The economic majority decision is most likely the better one, and will lead to best adoption in the future. (In the extreme parlance, would you like 1/3 of the holders to sell their coins? No, of course not. So why do you insist on taking the risk that 2/3 do it??!?) Current price has already discounted the worst situation which is continued uncertainty and trolls keeping us from taking action. Let's not let them! :)
6) No matter which way the vote goes, I will continue as a large owner of XMR. No other coin comes even close to XMR and BTC in overall evaluation, and I have no desires to own anything else except them. Perfect is the enemy of best, and by sticking to perfect only (instead of best available), I would have never done anything worthwhile and profitable.  
- Partly due to BTC weakness that has decimated the purchasing power of my net worth, I will seriously consider sending a bulletin to my list, with the intention to make OTC deals and commissions. I have said this several times already, but not done it. Last time I sent was more than a year ago. If I do, and mention XMR, the liquidity impact to the market with hardly any asks will be huge.
- Please ask me if there is anything!

My mission for the next 48 hours:
- Make the MEW internal communication more functional and open the first thing for vote

One point of clarification here. The emission while somewhat fast, is still only half the speed of BCN. So while there are risks of some sort of comparison, it isn't a direct one.

Can the list of MEW joiners ( and irc access) please be updated before such vote?
thanks

I'd also like to add:

While I am (cautiously, after we've gauged community consensus) a proponent of emission rate change, this:


... is a bit of a loaded way to frame the discussion (as in: it introduces the question and seems to favor a conclusion at the same time).

Anyway, it's a major and uncontroversially controversial topic, I'm sure everyone agrees. Hoping to see a mature discussion on this topic in here/other MEW channels. Also, for once, I'm glad it's taking place in a moderated thread. The previous "discussion" in the free-for-all thread was just a shouting match between who could dump his xmr faster in case the holy protocol is changed :/

despites that the argument #2 does not make sense. monero can by definition not be a premine if we do not change the fundamentals. Additionally I think we do not need to talk about the visibility of monero on bitcointalk (for the good and for the bad :D).

we all would like to design an emmission rate which is perfectly fitting to the rate of adoption. I think this is neither economically nor technically possible without a central institution

Thanks. Changed to hopefully remove the bias, yet leave what I see it as an unquestionable factual difference (when a coin IS nearly fully mined, it IS seen as a premine, vs. SOME ppl currently in the forums when Monero has 0.0001% of world population as users, when emission curve is changed so that 20% first happens quickly than 80% rest, see it as a premine).

Hopefully my months and months of bashing altcoins have not gone to waste, and have solidly established me as an opponent of all sorts premine. It includes situations when a small premine must be accepted to avoid a bigger one. As you implied, we are not comparing holiday destinations. Rather all alternatives are a little risky, yet a coin that cannot live through dangerous times has no desire, nor right, nor chance, to live.



Everything is a premine if you arrive to the scene only when 60-70-80% (or whatever is your preferred %) has been mined. ;)

Otherwise good point, I also haven't seen such a mechanism that would actually work.

Let's close this one here in MEW thread. My next post is about the topic I selected for the first to be voted upon.

First MEW voting round has just started (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=812959.msg9102409#msg9102409). It is being done here in Bitcointalk, because of convenience. The subject of voting is an Internal & External Communications Strategy for midterm. The first Proposals concern whether we should decide to stay in Bitcointalk platform for now, or try to move out of it as soon as possible.

Non-members may read the discussion but not comment.

I am excited that the MEW is now put to discussion and vote for the first time! This is a great milestone :)

sent : 10 xmr
Payment-ID: 34A4864FFBBF05E2BA7C6C7C28188D2C6B1CC4D95081C6A71F6D0D3627C228A9
irc: owlcatz

sent: 12 XMR
payment ID: b16f57ac38c846506a5aa76126afea114207d03d9c89bd79927cde194f2dc3e7
irc: vuduchyld

sure hope I did that all correctly!

Sent another 110 XMR, putting my total at 210.
Payment ID: 3d2823bf409f6b550bdb5d42511de0da4a1fc0950c6a71ca94be4cc12af93c05
Q

Q. What is the relation of MEW and the core team?
A. Core team exists by their own right, chooses their members, and they have defined their role is to develop the Monero software.

MEW exists as a voluntary group of people who own XMR, and is bound to accept more members based on this criterion. Because the core team members also own XMR, they are eligible and welcome to join MEW, and some have been interested in doing so.

MEW will concentrate on the peripheral/economic aspects of the coin infrastructure, and the people in the community, leaving the core team more time and resources to concentrate on the development. MEW will also support the donation address.

MEW only has consultative power over the core team. This means that the core team has no obligation to follow the MEW decisions. That being said, since some core members (as individual) have a sizeable part of the votes, a MEW decision has high probability to be accepted by the core team.

Q. What can be voted for?
A. Fundamentals, Priorities, Executives, Rules, Funds.

• Voting can be used to measure the opinion on XMR holders in whatever matters, if measuring the opinion is needed.
• Voting can be used to make priorities how the XMR economy should proceed in the way of development, services, infrastructure etc.
• Executives that fulfill the tasks assigned to them by the MEW, and handle practical matters, are appointed and dismissed by voting.
• Rules may be changed and new ones added by voting.
• The use of MEW common funds is decided by voting.

Q. Do I bind myself to something when joining MEW?
A. No. We do have ideas of having deeper layers of cooperation between members, but they will be voluntary. Even now, some members are in a partnership to develop some XMR stuff. MEW is a power platform to encourage joint initiatives, but using the platform is not much binding.

When you enter, you must pay the membership fees, but you even get back the unspent part if you decide to leave.

Q. Is it possible to become an anonymous member?
A. This is an anonymous coin, and it is very important that the coin holders can become members and vote anonymously if they so wish. Otherwise we miss the big part of holders in the voting phase, and the results will come out biased to only the non-anonymous part of the holders, the visible community.

How to practically accomplish even the voting, much less other interaction in the group with anonymous members, awaits solutions.

Pseudonymous but established accounts pose no issues.

Q. Shouldnt the devs decide the priorities? I mean they are the ones who must donate their time to implement features.
A. The core team retains complete control with how to develop the coin, Monero (XMR). The role of MEW is to give them valuable information on the community's wishes, but MEW cannot force even its own members to do anything, much less the devs who - as a collective - are not even members. In a similar way, MEW may issue suggestions to whomever, but they are not bound to follow the suggestions, and MEW will employ great care to not meddle in others' affairs, and also expect nobody to tell MEW how it should make use of its XMR privacy coin.

Q. Is the MEW focused on funding development projects or does it plan to fund non-technical startups involving XMR in some way?
A. 50% of membership fees are given to the core team immediately and they may spend it on the core development at their discretion. The remaining 50% is decided by the vote. The money involved is so small that it is not realistic that the MEW as a group would fund anything except very basic level not-for-profit tasks (websites, marketing materials...). It is up to the members what kind of startups they like to start, technical or service/community-oriented.

Q. What kind of business opportunities there are/mostly needed?
A. If you were an aspiring entrepreneur, the idea of selling XMR for fiat offline, OTC, for physical cash or bank transfer, to your friends and their parents, in 1000+ XMR chunks, at 20% markup, would be the way to go to distribute the coins to strong hands, aid the price, and make good money in the process. This can be started with no investment at all, even the same day.

MEW will arrange group chats for those wishing to make connections and start developing joint ventures.

Q. Is MEW controlling the members' XMR funds?
A. No.

Q. To what extent will the MEW's actions be applicable to other (mostly CN) coins?
A. MEW is an Economic Workgroup, so it is a way to organize flesh around the bones of a currency. Other coins may adopt similar or different models to make cohesion in their community but in general the MEW actions don't matter to them.

Q. MEW is a stupid name
A. Several days of discussion have been spent proposing another name. with no convincing argument.
Plus MEW is also the name of the most powerful Pokemon ever. He has the power of all the pokemon and is selfless enough to have sacrificed himself for a greater cause (but was saved at the last moment). This is also a very rare, expensive card; 1 MEW=1BTC.
With such background, no way we use another name :)

Q. Where can I find more information?
A. This thread is the only publicly available official source for now, although we are considering using the Official Monero forum (http://forum.monero.cc/) for most of the future activities.

You are the very first person to upgrade your number of votes. Congratulations!

• Article of association (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UYASf0gHI-fxqQsyyLVUqLcQz6uowz1wydMHwc2JBPI/edit)
• Initial Decisions (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zxK1a5VpAtgAkwR-3atxOB9lh8ubxMgwdBHjFEXhHdA/edit)
• Member list (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg9049932#msg9049932)

OP revamped and updated with these links, as well as the FAQ (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg8988314#msg8988314).

Done.

In order to encourage joining, MEW had decided to dispense early members of any handling fees and to accept subscriptions starting from 10 XMR.
The early access period will stop in exactly 1 week, on the 16th of October at 23h59 UTC. Starting from the 17th, the minimum number of votes will be 50 XMR and the one-time handling fees will be 10 XMR, all paid at the same address
Example 1: you decide to join MEW and to get 50 votes. You pay 60 XMR (50 votes at 1 XMR per vote + 10 XMR for handling).
Example 2: you decide to join MEW and to get 500 votes. You pay 510 XMR (500 votes at 1 XMR per vote + 10 XMR for handling). You later decide to upgrade to 700 votes. You pay 200 XMR (200 more votes, no handling fee).

MEW initial decisions (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zxK1a5VpAtgAkwR-3atxOB9lh8ubxMgwdBHjFEXhHdA/edit?pli=1#)
Handling fees

• Processing a new member request
• Buying more votes for an existing member
• Change in identity information
• Change in how a member's votepower is proxied
• Casting a vote
• Refunding of votes to a member in downgrade or resignation
• Time-based charge for fulfilling special requests (applies to non-members as well)
• The fees are donations paid directly to the administrative clerk (ME or his deputy) and do not go to the GF.

For easier handling, the fees are paid at the same address as the registration - the administrative clerk will then proceed with separation of funds.

Did I understand that correctly -- 10 XMR fee to cast a vote?

That is really excessive especially for smaller members.

If so please refund my membership.

Do you really want to discourage voting and participation?  How are you going to get a community consensus without the community?

Probably not, please read further  ;D

The MEW is an economic organization, not a political one. That means there is no big kitty to make the big holders support the hobby-participation of the smaller ones. Or even if there were, we would not consider it a right thing to do.

Therefore, the Initial Decisions, made by the then 18 members, accepted as a condition to join MEW when it was founded, provided a way to handle the financial and member registry administration costs. The principle that the costs would be borne by the members according to the usage of the administrative services. We do not believe that this would lead to diminished usage (no incentive) but we do believe that it is a fair way to collect money to pay for the costs.

People would argue why is the ME not working for free, after all this is a voluntary project and everyone else (yes, including me and JE, and the core devs on their side) is working for free. This is because it takes a very special person to be the ME (less people to choose from), yet the tasks he must do are mostly very menial, and involve near 24/7 checking of accounts, incoming mail, bookkeeping etc. that nobody in the real world does for free. I can happily serve in my current position for free, but David's work I would not do no matter how much you paid ;) Having a stream of fees makes it possible to outsource some of this job to other members who get some trickle of an income then.

Back to the MEW initiation. In the beginning, the minimum to join was 50 XMR, about $90. Although it is blasphemy to talk on dollar terms, this was considered to be the level of involvement we would like the members to have to really get into the MEW after joining, making their voice heard and contributing to the projects. There was a resolution to take this price down as soon as possible, to about $30-$50, to increase the legitimacy of the voting. It is a problem if the vote cutoff is so high that it excludes everyone except the biggest owners, and we were very aware of it.

Then it was decided to be lowered to 10 XMR, and simultaneously XMR crashed so that the minimum was only $8. This is good for legitimacy (everybody can get in), but bad for organization (many people get in, some with lesser involvement, knowledge, and determination to support the building of the MEW, which is very much going on). Not only this, but David had not announced the fee schedule for administrative actions, resulting in that all members so far, and for 7 more days, are getting in for free, not paying anything except for the votes themselves.

• Processing a new member request
• Buying more votes for an existing member
• Change in identity information
• Change in how a member's votepower is proxied
• Casting a vote
• Refunding of votes to a member in downgrade or resignation
• Time-based charge for fulfilling special requests (applies to non-members as well)

David has so far announced only the Processing of a new member request -fee, that it is 10 XMR (about $8, and will be revised so that it follows the fiat value more closely than the XMR value). This is hardly excessive; where I live, a loan handling fee is $260. It is more of the principle.

The following items are changes in the registry and require small amount of time and concentration. I hope that the fee for them will be less.

Casting a vote is listed just to show that nothing is holy. It is unlikely that casting a vote will cost anything. The votes are bought "per vote" basis, and charging for voting with a "per member" basis is unfair towards small vote holders. Charging by "per vote" is also not going to happen - we decided that we do not do it, and instead the votes carry a yearly fee and the votepower may thus be exercised in every voting without paying separately.

When resignation, taking care that the refund happens according to rules, accesses to communication channels are closed etc. takes some time. The fee may obviously not be higher than the refundable amount in any case.

I am very interested in hearing how cheap David is ready to sell his time. Even my Estonian car mechanic charged 39€/hour (46 XMR). Hopefully David's time is more valuable - but even if not, please no not bother him with the official matters too much, he is important for the project, for the core team, for the MEW, for Malla and for what not :)

This is to shed some light to the issue that surfaced out of the woods for many.

Okay, that sounds reasonable then. I certainly see no problem with a one-time registration fee, especially since people have the chance to join now and avoid it!

10 XMR sent. Paiment ID: 6e9c0f8135afcff7d5790b13b5e2f3452d22da400e0cef3c4a545681c64b981b
irc: equipoise

May I suggest that the probably be changed to never.

I don't consider being able to freely vote as being equal to big holders supporting the "hobby-participation" of the smaller ones.

One man's hobby is another man's life.

I'm selling my time way too cheap, but I do it because I want Monero to succeed - and at my current price it is mostly symbolic - I only spend 10 minutes per account under the very best circumstances and this is not even considering the future handlings that I will have to take care of for probably months on.

I plan to only lower the handling when XMR will go way up compared to fiat. I might also consider charging a percentage - this is completely unrelated to the amount of work (handling a 50 XMR account is usually not different from handling a 1000 XMR account) but this would be a way for the (probably) wealthier person to "help" the less fortunate ones to still be able to join (yes, this is the abominable "redistribution" - richs paying for the poors - scheme that people hate, so remember, I'm just considering it). If something was to be changed, there would be a grace period anyway.

The "early access soon over" post has been updated with some examples.

We are on the same page, but:

1) never say never

2) even if there says "never" in the Articles of Association, it only means "until 2/3 of the votes otherwise decide".

If any decision of the MEW CV is too much for any member or a group of them, the following will happen:

To clarify a bit on fees, this is my understanding from reading this:

• The 10XMR is a one time fee for signing up.  It is being waived for the first week.
• There is no fee for casting votes.
• You get as many votes as you buy, this is called your votepower, you get to use those votes in every ballot, they are not lost or used up.  You will see how this is done in the current discussion about an item brought for pre-vote discussion.

There is also a yearly renewal fee (not mentioned in the text but as I recall it is in the reference document).

The other thing that may happen is that the group gets larger and a lot of the administrative tasks can be automated. Fees for things like signup might still make sense as a fundraiser though, even if all the work is being done by a computer at a negligible direct cost.

Pardon my emotional reaction.  I know a great deal of thought has gone into this and I understand the perspective from which it was created.  Considering the quality of people involved I imagine that the right things will be done.

sent    : 10 xmr
Wallet : 4AHDacN4rVtFTfyc2hTXqCD5apS25YEtCcG16jVVcyW69MG1PHWua5j1AiJXTdVAk7jDPUZDijBfabd nHk2REKsC7L4qpKK
id       : 0476e40e64f29906a5bfca6fce5719196763144aa57a82e7fbab2176b23d22ca
irc       :  wedgy2k

Sent from POLO - Your withdrawal has been successfully confirmed

Hi i've upped my ante from a measly 10 to now 50 xmr:

sent: 40.1 XMR
Payment ID: DDC8838ADDC0C6721F343E186ECFB7BDEFCE0E372386B999E029CFF948F237E7
irc - owlcatz

thanks! :)

sent : 20 xmr
id     : 65e9d6af27d310f919dbcb23198318bb308d10e8cf0c09b831a3a4c73eb9aca3
irc    : tugwert

I'd like to suggest a small rule change. During the discussion of proposal #1, a change was made to the text of the proposal at the very end of the 168-hour discussion period, and then voting started almost immediately. My suggestion would be that in such cases the discussion period be extended for a short time, perhaps 24 hours.

Sounds good. We are all learning it here :)

If there is an issue which is close to your heart and you want to increase your votepower in order to grant your vote greater weight, doing so also supports development and is encouraged, up to the 1000 votepower limit (1000XMR).

sent: 50 XMR
id: 8425ddd6fd0f9ad807193fb21dfa5b497a08a44a326e8c0ed2603d5338e6bec5
irc: thud_

A D V E R T I S E M E N T  -  O P P O R T U N I T Y

The early adopter phase of the Monero virtual world - Crypto Kingdom is starting NOW. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=819073.msg9156194#msg9156194)

If you are interested in the game, want to fund its development, and enjoy a bit of speculation, now it is possible to buy ingame gold (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=819073.msg9156194#msg9156194). Minimum at this point is for 100 XMR (about BTC0.25) but it will be listed soon and then smaller lots become possible.

MEW members get a 20% discount, up to the maximum purchase that is equal to their MEW votepower. Purchases higher than this go at normal price. MEW discount will be removed some time before ingame gold becomes freely tradable.

In my eagerness for this I even wasted some time on that weird psychodelic 2d world building website you linked the other day.
So yeah, I'm in.  As the saying goes "Shut up and take my Monero!"

If after a look through it seems suitable for a fairly worldly 14yr old, I may be getting my son an account too.

What is the procedure for buying ingame gold?

I need this thread in my new replies list, so I am motivated to post a comment, hopefully not a vapid one:

In my view the most needful initiative in the XMR economy is a forwards desk.  A forwards desk would allow payment processors to hedge, which would put XMR head-and-shoulders above other crypto.  The closest thing is BTC's coin-lock.

An acquaintance of mine is an officer of EasyBitz, which is in the process of enlisting local merchants in their easy-to-use merchant payment processing channel for bitcoin.  I think it would be an easy sell that he should support XMR, if it had automated forwards.  Of course that would not suffice to inspire consumers to use XMR for their snacks and bottled water at a bodega, but it would at least enable them to do so.

I have floated proposals for a U.S. business development corporation, devoted to bootstrapping various critical infrastructure business for the XMR economy to one private equity manager, and plan to develop pitch materials for presentation to selected venture capitalists, but lately my day job has been all-consuming, so my plans have been on hiatus.  I certainly don't mind being scooped on this - If you can get there more rapidly than I, and execute well, I will support your endeavours most whole-heartedly.  If you have any substantive work in this area, let me know, and I will route your info to my network appropriately.  (These are mostly legacy capitalists, and not participants in the crypto community.)

It would be quite easy to start a margin-trading and futures market for XMR using whitebox exchange software.  But it would require a devoted and talented individual to do so properly.  My day job makes me insufficiently devoted, and it would require an exhorbitant financial inducement to convince me to leave that position, so I am not well-suited to captain any critical non-trivial enterprise.  If you are a good CEO candidate for any of the various critical infrastructure businesses, please do send me a PM.  I can promise nothing, but a good-faith effort to connect the right people to derive synergies for the XMR economy.

This is in the form of a MEW vote / resolution, for fun, but is obviously meant for now just to be a more general discussion.  And as I noted on IRC, this is by no means meant as a criticism of anyone.  If I had deeper experience in crypto, and credibility in the community, I would try to take more leadership.  Since I don't, and since I don't believe in whining about others not taking leadership in a voluntary organization, I am simply trying to think of potential incentives - financial or intangible - that might reinvigorate MEW.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WHEREAS, there is a general state of malaise in the crypto-currency world in general, and Monero in specific;

WHEREAS, the decline in crypto-currency valuations has also no doubt forced people to return their focus to their day jobs, other ventures and new ventures;

WHEREAS, the above may have had a material and negative impact on the amount of time and attention many knowledgeable and energetic MEW members could devote to MEW initiatives;

WHEREAS, the MEW General Fund ("GF") currently has a balance of 3,929.1 XMR, none of which is reserved for any specific initiative;

WHEREAS, there has been general discussion within the MEW relating to the pros and cons of alternative emission schedules for Monero, but such discussions have not led to concrete voting proposals and resultant debates; and

WHEREAS, there are potentially other MEW initiatives that may also be falling by the wayside due to the conditions noted above;

NOW THEREFORE IT BE RESOLVED THAT MEW CONSIDER CERTAIN POTENTIAL INCENTIVES TO ENCOURAGE MORE VIGOROUS INTRODUCTION AND DEBATE OF EMISSION AND OTHER POTENTIAL INITIATIVES:

FIRST ALTERNATIVE: the Governance section of the MEW Articles provide: "To handle practical matters, the community may elect Executives. An Executive must be a member in good standing. Upon election, the Executive is given the length of term, mission to be fulfilled, limits of authority, and a possible budget."

Accordingly, MEW could consider appointing an experienced MEW member as an Executive to research and lead the discussion, and formulate proposals that could be subject to a vote.  A budget could be considered for such an experienced Executive.  However, it is likely, given the limited MEW funds at current valuations, that financial incentives alone may not be sufficient incentive, and thus we would need someone for whom the intangible benefit of being elected by MEW as an executive for this matter would also add some incentive.

SECOND ALTERNATIVE: Given that a sufficiently experienced member may not find the financial incentives MEW could offer to be sufficient to compensate him or her for the time of leading such an effort, MEW could appoint a more junior, less wealthy MEW member to be a facilitator of the discussion.  MEW's financial resources might be more attractive to such a member.  Such member could coordinate with more senior members to solicit their views, research the market on the issues, synthesize the views and coordinate the discussion.  This approach could be combined with a honorary executive title for some of the more experienced parties who work with the more junior member.

THIRD ALTERNATIVE: A bounty system could be created whereby it was agreed that any proposal that was part of the alternatives submitted to a vote, and received more than X% of the votes, would be entitled to a XMR denominated reward from the MEW GF funds.  For example, any proposal that received more than 2 messages of support via the Monero Forums would be considered as one of the alternatives that was submitted to vote, and any of such proposals that received more than 10% of MEW voting member support would receive a Monero bounty.

FOURTH ALTERNATIVE: Anything else to reignite some fire in Monero / MEW!

FIFTH ALTERNATIVE: We continue to indulge in crypto-depression-apathy, and those of us with a predilection to the consumption of alcohol or other substances to compensate for lack of excitement continue to punish our livers / other afflicted organs.

With the warmest sentiments, and a solid buzz,

Bobabouey

Speaking only for myself.
I don't know what you are talking about.

What malaise? What apathy?
This is an extremely exciting time.  There is a lot happening.  Constantly busy with crypto issues and projects.

NL: Yes, it seems that some of the members of the MEW have started the projects they have chosen, and therefore have less time for the organizing of the MEW in general.

THIS is a REAL and BAD THING. Bobabouey2 is right.

Is it a coincidence that MEW organization is not functioning at the time when all 3 of its executives are also the 3 highest-ranking players in the Crypto Kingdom??  :-\

I think there is certainly a need to appoint new executives to coordinate the new projects if the old ones are concentrated on the current projects, namely developing the core and CK.

On the other hand, developing projects do not legally require voting. But voting legally requires me to initiate it, and the emission vote has taken this long time to start, since I have been busy and the voting section in monero.cc was not there. Today should be a good day to finally do it. Expectedly the long brooding time for this decision has made the decision that much more clear. The importance in this MEW decision imo is that it clearly shows unison, and is swiftly implemented. Both of these are to end the period of uncertainty, which definitely is going on, eating the motivation of the people in the community and hindering the joining of new ones.

Like said before, once majority opinion is gauged and put to practice, there is no way to go but up!

MEW D&V round #2: Emission and related issues. (https://forum.monero.cc/19/voting/90/d-v-round-2-xmr-emission-and-related-issues)

This still alive?

Yes.

The "emission and related issues" has been found to be a subject where the consensus (or majority) of the vote, is more important for the coin's future than the outcome of the vote itself. Therefore the timing was originally delayed until this month, and therefore also it is still in discussion phase even though our rules typically mandate a 1 week discussion phase and 1 week voting directly afterwards.

In practice, the high-stakers in MEW are trying to find an agreement where each of them could commit. Whatever it is, it is deemed to give the best impression on the internal and external stakeholders. If this cannot be reached, the normal Proposal stage will continue, with the final 2 proposals voted against each other.

Silence in this case is no (t totally at least an) indication of death, just that it is expedient to wait.

As for other matters than the ongoing voting, they have been pressed beyond the emission issue, and under the downtrend. CryptoKingdom is the biggest adoption initiative going on for Monero, its gameworld is valued at about 1.5% of all moneros already, and it is going online this week.

Im not a member of MEW yet, as im not sure what kind of value i can add to the project, but i must agree here with rpietila.
My field are the games, and i have been saying for two years now that distribution and adoption of a virtual cryptocurrency will occur when a good online game penetrates on the average joe real life. CK is pretty much the closest candidate right now. And XMR is a good platform for it.
I will not be on MEW, but rest assured i will be on CK very active and when it hits alpha, there will be on display on my store for all my little player-customers for it to see.

Not sure if i'm doing this right?

Q: What is required for joining?
A:
Short answer
Post a entry similar to this one.


Votes + fees               : 20 xmr
registered IRC handle :  goin2mars
payment ID : do i make this up or do I pm you guys?

Minimum is now 50 XMR + 10 XMR for handling fees. 50 XMR gives you only minimal vote power. You can go up to 1000 XMR. In any case, half of them go to the dev fund.

Donation address: mew.moneroaddress.org (openalias from mymonero.com or simplewallet 0.8.8.6) or regular address

I sent you your payment ID by PM. Please inform me once you sent the payment.

What is the situation with renewals? Are they due by the end of this month? How is this going to be handled?

Renewals 4 months after membership was first offered?

Well, according to the rules, renewal is required every year by the end of January at 10% of the original buy-in. So this year is no exception.

The treasurer should send everyone a nice shiny address for payment :)

We have rules? :-[

Umm.. yes, we do. Perhaps they should be linked for the members to view?  :D

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UYASf0gHI-fxqQsyyLVUqLcQz6uowz1wydMHwc2JBPI/edit?pli=1# (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UYASf0gHI-fxqQsyyLVUqLcQz6uowz1wydMHwc2JBPI/edit?pli=1#)

I would like to join.

Votes + fees               : 60 xmr
Registered IRC handle : netg

Please PM payment ID so I can send TX.

One could just use the same Payment ID as of the original entry into MEW, no?
Plus one to the waiting list then  ;)

David gave me yesterday my payment ID on Freenode and I paid.

He told me, you get yours soon.

A lot of the MEW payment messages may have been lost due to the downtime of BCT. I did get the emails with the messages but not the message on BCT.

There is a chance of manual recovery, see: https://twitter.com/bitcointalk/status/558273534393217024

I sent the PM to everyone. Unfortunately,  I do not remember exactly what I wrote here but this was something like "I am busy with xmrmonero.com and I will take care of the renewal message".

MEW has today 51 members, 50 of them needing to renew (the 51st joined us this week; please welcome dewdeded (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=149867)!)
Of these 50 members, 12 already renewed
Of these 12 renewals, at least three (myagui, pa and equipoise) decided to take advantage of the opportunity (and the special offer) to upgrade their level  - two others sent more than required so I am waiting for their answer to know if is an accident or if they confirm they want to upgrade.
These upgrades are a nice surprise, I can tell you :)

Also, to keep with the spirit of separating ourselves from Bitcoin (https://plus.google.com/+DavidLatapie/posts/9PxC9Xb5uzg), futures announcements will be on the MEW website and forum, xmrmonero.com (http://xmrmonero.com). There is a dedicated public thread (https://xmrmonero.com/forum/en/mew-thread-public), on top of a private forum, accessible only to MEW members who created their account (http://xmrmonero.com/article/en/user-profile-payment-id) on xmrmonero.com (being a registered MEW member also allows you to have your own blog (http://xmrmonero.com/blog)).

The updated member list (https://xmrmonero.com/page/en/list-mew-members) is available on the MEW website.

Didn't have time to follow this one, perhaps it was answered somewhere else. If so, maybe I can ask for a quick recap:

Of the total funds donated to MEW in the form of the membership fees, how much has approximately been transferred to the devs (or XMR related projects unrelated to MEW) up to this point?

50% of the registration fees. For upgrades, same rule, just not done yet.
So to know how much, do this:
1. Go to https://xmrmonero.com/page/en/mew-members
2. Add any member
3. Divide the result by two

Presently, this means 3 969 XMR to the dev fund - I can't say exactly how much fiat it represents but a good approximation of what we spent can be found on the MMM#22 (https://xmrmonero.com/article/en/monday-monero-missive-22).

I have this from an e-mail, if it's what you're referring to from before the forum crash:

We are considering changing the URL of the MEW website.

Presently, it is xmrmonero.com, mainly because we had it available :)

What we have at our disposal:
xmrmonero.com
gomonero.com
xmr-monero.com
go-monero.com

We have to consider both SEO and branding. Starting with "xmr" seems better SEO wise (if there is a dash); starting with "go" seems better branding-wise (the dashed version would probably also help for SEO on "monero").

"Go monero" can be understand as the traditional encouragement, or like the injonction (like "gone Google").

Any feedback appreciated

I would go with xmr-monero if you really thinks it needs to be changed.
"go-monero" is kind of...hmm... not serious in my eyes - It makes me think of jumping cheerleaders with pompoms :)

I'm not in MEW, but I agree "gomonero" sounds a bit childish/pumpish.
Doesn't work so well with monero spirit.

i prefer xmr-monero also.
but go-monero could be used as an xmr-educational site. "howto go monero" with examples and case-stories

Please vote for only one (othe domain name may be redirected, recycled...). Note that evenif non MEW members are voting too, the final say is only by MEW members.

Update: voters can mention one particular post (that they pledge to update) for rationale for their choice. Remember than you can change your vote (but then, you must explain why).
Votes without a link date from before the arrangement. Remember to follow the voter's links before voting since at least some of them gave rationales about their choice, rationales that could help you choose better.
Undashed versions:
gomonero.com: (0)
mewmonero.com: (0)
moneroeconomyworkgroup.com: (0)
moneroeconomy.com:  (5) David Latapie (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg10421616#msg10421616), binaryFate (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg10421676#msg10421676), GingerAle (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg10427387#msg10427387), warptangent (on IRC),  Lloydimiller4 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg10428590#msg10428590)
moneromew.com: (0)
xmreconomy.com: (0)
xmrmonero.com: (4) smooth, 5w00p (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg10421601#msg10421601), Shrikez (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg10425437#msg10425437), papa_lazzarou (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg10427661#msg10427661)

Dashed versions:
go-monero.com: (0)
mew-monero.com: (1) Hueristic
monero-economy-workgroup.com: (1) arnuschky
monero-economy.com: (4) NeuroticFish, Jojatekok, equipoise, aminorex (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg10421929#msg10421929)
monero-mew.com: (4) Moneromoo, GreekBitcoin, primer-, Quicken (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg10429040#msg10429040)
xmr-economy.com: (0)

I like monero-mew.com personally

Updated and added NeuroticFish's proposals (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg10417785#msg10417785). So you can change your vote if you wish.

I'm not sure if here is the place to vote or if my vote counts (I heard that you have to pay to vote in MEW?) but my vote goes for monero-economy.com

The first question here is what is the primary purpose of the site:

1) A site to promote Monero that happens to be a project of the Monero Economy Workgroup (MEW).
2) A site about the Monero Economy Workgroup (MEW) itself

For 1) The original four choices make sense. In reality there are two choices the pair xmr-monero.com with xmrmonero.com as a 301 redirect and the pair  go-monero.com with gomonero.com as the 301 redirect.
My vote is for xmr-monero.com with xmrmonero.com as the 301 redirect.

For 2) The choice would actually be Monero-Economy-Workgroup.com with MoneroEconomyWorkgroup.com as the 301 redirect since it is the name of the organization.

The site currently at xmrmonero.com is basically 1. It purpose is to promote Monero. The MEW should not make it about itself. There is nothing wrong with the MEW creating a site about itself, but it is fundamentally a different site with an entirely different purpose.

The rationale for xmr-monero.com is very simple. It combines the two main keywords for Monero, name and currency code in one domain in what, regardless of all the the new extensions remains by far the strongest ICANN extension namely .com.  This is backed up by xmr-monero.bit and xmrmonero.bit in the Namecoin root and xmrmonero.com in the ICANN root.

To be fair I honestly do not get monero-mew.com at all, since MEW stands for Monero Economy Workgroup. As for Monero-Economy.com and XMR-Economy.com they seem to indicate confusion as to whether the site is about 1 or 2. The fact that both were proposed does indicate to me that XMR and Monero are the key keywords here.

^^ what he said.

also posting in order to get updates from this thread.

Agree with most of the comments by ArticMine, however I do not like hyphenated domain names at all. They not generally used except by one-off sites (landing pages for campaigns for example), and it wouldn't surprise me in fact if they get automatically penalized (a little at least) in some forms of SEO. Even multiword domain names are usually just strung together, not hyphenated (sometimes  stylistically rendered using CamelCase, though even that seems to have gone out of style). This is bitcointalk not bitcoin-talk.

Smooth, shall I understand you are voting for xmrmonero.com?

The list is updated with feedback from both the ANN and the MEW thread - the votes on the two URL below have kept in sync. Please everyone review if your intent is on par with what is written.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg10417386#msg10417386 (ANN list)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg10417348#msg10417348 (MEW list)

I didn't see the actual vote yet but sure.

I'd futher add to what ArticMine said, which is that perhaps there should even be two different sites (they can of course link to each other and/or share content where appropriate): 1) The MEW site itself (about MEW) and a new-user-focused outreach, promotion, and education site (which can be viewed more as a "project" of MEW according to the original charter). Various names like monero-economy and monero-mew make a lot of sense for 1) but not for 2). The main difference would be naming and the front page.

Also, one more thing. I see no harm in a forum poll to discuss ideas but a final decision should be made by the MEW membership. This should include an explicit statement of the budget for the project (which could be zero if all resources are being donated).

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg10417386#msg10417386
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg10417348#msg10417348

An "about" page and a "member's section" should suffice, no? I'd rather avoid multiplying website. This is one of the reason I chose Drupal: a wiki, a forum, a corporate website, a blog farm an e-commerce site, a CRM... all in the same box with the same look and feel and credential and without bloating it like a WordPress attempt would.

Updated the posts.

Latest "snapshot". Up-to-date list here (ANN) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg10417386#msg10417386) and here (ANN) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg10417348#msg10417348):

monero-mew.com: (3) Moneromoo, GreekBitcoin, Lloydimiller4
xmr-monero.com: (3) florida.haunted, ArticMine, GingerAle
xmrmonero.com: (1) smooth
go-monero.com: (0)
gomonero.com: (0)
xmr-economy.com: (1) 5w00p
monero-economy.com: (4) David Latapie, NeuroticFish, Jojatekok, equipoise
monero-economy-workgroup.com: (1) arnuschky
mew-monero.com: (1) Hueristic

Maybe, but I see a lot of confusion on the focus of these names, as ArticMine pointed out. A lot of the names like monero-economy, I really wonder whether those make sense as an outreach an educational site for new users. But it certainly does make sense as an organizational site.

As an exmaple of what I'm (and I think ArticMine is) talking about, compare the content and naming of bitcoin.org and bitcoinfoundation.org (again note the lack of a hyphen -- why are we going off and doing what almost nobody else does with their site name?). They are very different in terms of organization, branding and focus. The latter is clearly the site of an organization and the former is educational information for new users.

One aspect of this vote that is important is that there are two different issues here. The word combination and whether to use a dash or not. So we should vote on pairs xmrmonero.com / xmr-monero.com vs gomonero.com / go-monero.com vs moneromerw.com / monero-mew.com and then decide on the use of dash or not as the primary domain with the other domain in the pair as the 301 redirect.

I will be using xmrmonero.com / xmr-monero.com as the example since that is the pair I support. The non dash version is considered by far the stronger domain and is by far the most readable when used. It is also the best when the domain is communicated orally. The only advantage of the dashed domain is a possible slight advantage in SEO; however this is counterbalanced by the possibility that it could be considered aggressive SEO and be penalized. My own experience with using the dash vs no dash version on my own websites is comparable SEO results with a very slight bias in favour of the dash version. For everything else the non dash version wins hands down. For this SEO reason I had a very slight preference for the dash version and voted accordingly.

smooth has made a very strong case in favour of the non dash version which is way more than enough to swing my vote in favour of the non dash version. So I am changing my vote to xmrmonero.com.

Yes the distinction between bitcoin.org and bitcoinfoundation.org is what I am talking about.

ArticMine I'm not at all an expert on SEO and you seem to know something about it, so I would ask whether xmr not being a word makes a difference. I'm thinking that bitcoinfoundation may be parsed by search engines as "bitcoin foundation", as would likewise moneroeconomy, but xmrmonero but they might have trouble with?

I also wonder how much domain names matter to SEO. Isn't it mostly based on linking? I would think any of these sites would become well-linked on the web from all sorts of cryptocurrency sites and articles as long as Monero continues to grow and MEW continues to be active in efforts to promote it.

Massive update on the voting list (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg10417348#msg10417348), please check

My experience with SEO is that it is as much an art as a science. We are dealing in fact with the constantly changing  propriety algorithms of Google and other search engines who are trying to provide relevant search. What matters is that the keyword or term is naturally used within the site, linking can play a key role particularly if the site that is doing the linking is not seen by the search engine as related (Sharing an IP address for example).  If it is also present in the domain name then that strengthens the SEO provided it is seen as a natural use of the word. The whole here is not the sum of its parts.

To understand SEO one must understand the conflicting interests. In the classic SEO battle the site is aiming for a very profitable highly competitive and generic keyword such as hotels or travel, while the search engine is trying to provide the most relevant results for say travel and Joe's recent affiliate travel site is not even close. If Joe's affiliate travel site tries to artificially push for travel or hotels and the search engine detects this expect a severe penalty on the site. My take is that highly generic terms such as "economy" or "money" in a domain name can actually hurt SEO for this reason if the search engine thinks the site is aiming for a not justified ranking on say economy, money etc. If the goal is a ranking on economy then that of course is an entirely different objective and the SEO has now increased in difficulty by many orders of magnitude.  

The way to compare how generic a search term is,  is to search each term and see what the competition is like by looking at the number of results. It is also very important to start with a fresh browser session with no search engine cookies saved. One also has to consider that the search engine may skew results based on the location from which the search in made. Finally one must not log into the search engine while doing these kind of tests.

We start with:

Monero: 550,000 results. Dominated by Monero the currency. The first non Monero as a currency results are on page 3 of Google. one of which has the term in the domain. without a dash I must add.

XMR: 1,050,000 results. Here XMR as the currency is strong but is in competition with XMR as an ATV, clothing etc.

Economy 696,000,000 results. Way to generic to even consider targeting.

Strengthening our position on XMR as a search term while supporting our position on Monero as a search term seems like a reasonable and achievable objective here.

A site about Monero will naturally use the terms "Monero" and "XMR" so a search engine encountering for example xmrmonero.com would parse the name since it is considering the whole site not just the domain name when ranking the site. If there is one thing about SEO that I have learned over the years is that one has to consider the whole site not just the domain name, keywords, links, content etc. A possible concern that the search engine would not parse XMRMonero,  because the terms are not that well known, is why I considered xmr-monero.com at a point; however upon giving this more thought I still consider xmrmonero.com the best choice since the site will naturally use both of these terms.

Do you mean we should focus on the use case being "type monero on Google" and not "go to something.com"?

I have the feeling that when asked to go to something.com, people actually go to google and type something.com.

A lot of people do this. My favourite case was once watching an Internet novice teach another Internet novice how to use the Internet 10 years ago. The instruction was to type "Google" into the MSN search bar on the default IE5 home page on Windows XP.

SEO is always about the generic term not the domain name. If someone types example.com into Google and it resolves Google will take you there as the first search result. If it is typed into the browser bar then a good browser will bypass search and take you there directly.

Edit1: So yes the focus is on someone typing Monero or XMR into a search engine.
Edit2: Try typing monero.com and go monero.com into Google with a space  between the "go" and "monero.com". This is a classic example of the domain not supported by content.

What do you guys think of monerocentral/monerohub as in "a hub for info and discussion about monero (XMR)"?

If this sucks my vote goes to xmrmonero.com

EDIT:
Regarding SEO,. Wouldn't we want to focus that effort around words like "privacy", "security", "cryptocurrency". I mean, if someone is googling monero most of the work is already done - at least at this stage. We should target people who are unaware of the existence of monero or of its importance to privacy minded individuals.

I agree that this will be all about content, hence the importance of the Blogs (if i'm not mistaken google gives more weight to constantly updated content).

Excellent points.

My vote goes to xmrmonero.com although I find it to be slightly generic considering it is intended for the MEW and thus only a subset of the monero community.

Shall I add you on
monerocentral (dot what?)
monerohub (dot what?)
xmrmonero.com

monerohub (.com?) sounds interesting to me too, but it may be even farther from the initial idea - support for MEW.

Also, as idea: voting for these ideas should be "checkbox based", not "radiobutton based" (I don't know how to explain better/easier). And the name with more points will "win".
Just.. yeah... this idea came a little late and may not be useful for current voting, for the main reason that the voting has already started with another "set of rules".

You mean a binary Instant-runoff voting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting)? That is, several yes, but no ranking between the yes?

There is no voting in the community (the Drupal module advanced poll (http://advanced Poll) may allow the technical part of it, though). MEW uses First-past-the-post voting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting) with weighted voting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weighted_voting) (Risto calls it "stake-o-cracy") and show of hand (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show_of_hands). Not this is is a MEW vote (so it doesn't apply here), just for information.

The most popular proposals are moneroeconomy.com, monero-economy.com and monero-mew.com, all ex aequo.
Now if we consider only votes after the final list (some people updated their votes, some did not so we don't know if they decided to stick with their choice or did not know about the new options) then we have moneroeconomy.com, with 4 "updated" vote
(all the othe have less "updated" votes - the closest contender is xmrmonero.com with 2 votes or 3 if we consider that smooth, being active here, just did not change his mind.

Reminder: community voting is consultative only - see it as a "primary". Internal voting at MEW will decide.

I support the moneroeconomy.com decision.

Wow, I didn't expect to see a wiki about voting! Yes, that's what I meant.


OK. (I am still impressed by so many info).


This clears up the things. And yes, MoneroEconomy.com may be better choice than monero-economy.com

Since there's no support for my suggestions add my vote to xmrmonero.com


PS- Just to clarify, the site is NOT primarily about MEW, right?

from what I gather its about the monero economy.

It seems moneroeconomy.com is a better choice then monero-economy.com. It's also easier to tell it to a friend.

I would like to change my vote to moneroeconomy.com

I also really like monerohub.com

Updated the list (ANN (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg10417386#msg10417386) - MEW (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg10417348#msg10417348))

moneroeconomy.com is first (5 voices), xmrmonero.com and monero-economy.com are second (4 voices each)

My understanding is that the primary purpose of the site is to promote Monero. It is not a site specifically about the MEW or specifically about the Monero Economy.

I confirm your understanding. At least at the beginning, everything about MEW itself will be in an "about us" section and a private forum.

This might be a good site/redirect for the "how do I get started" educational resource (like https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet )

An attempt: choose your wallet (http://moneroeconomy.com/news/choose-your-wallet)

Official page: https://getmonero.org/getting-started/choose

Yes it is. Get in touch with David if he doesn't see this.

apologies for digging this up from the darkest depths.

Can we assume this initiative is dormant? Or is it dead?

Who is handling this currently? What has been done with the funds?

Thank you in advance for a heads up.

Looks like we've been missing davidlatapie.

While I'm around here: I'd like to see the MEW funds invested on monerodice or lending at polo. In the grand scheme of things, it's probably not worth much, but still, would feel good to know that the contributions towards MEW are actively participating in the Monero economy.
I'm well aware that a slice was initially directed towards development. I'm referring to the portion that was not put to use (AFAIK).

Maybe something to think about if when we get moving again...  :)

As the first project, we created a virtual world, and then morphed ourselves in.

The MEW executives, me, David and NewLiberty, are the 3 founding characters in Crypto Kingdom, nuff said ?  :D

Then that project got surprise delays, but now they are behind.

Are you saying that MEW funds have been invested in Crypto Kingdom?  Was any discussion / vote ever held on that?

Well no. Crypto Kingdom was a MEW initiative and got so immersive that we forgot about the bureaucracy. My understanding is that David as the Members Executive still controls the funds since he collected and treasured them, and despite time passing, I would believe he has not done anything to them since the legit use would have required contacting me, which has not happened.

Has anyone been able to verify if the MEW funds are accounted for?

I don't think "anyone" is the correct address when the funds are held by David Latapie and he is not in hiding in any way, last active a few days ago, still in Monero Core team, and has a CryptoKingdom account worth more than the MEW funds.

Please send your detailed inquiry to him as a PM and surely he will reply in public. This is sounding too FUDdish currently, and for no reason.

FUDish?  How exactly?

I am asking because there have been some questions asked about the funds in this very thread dating back to a few months ago and David Latapie has not responded.

Ok whatever.. David's recent misfortunes in business are well discussed in the Monero forum and in CK alone, he has more than enough to make good of the funds. So what remains that you are eager to know?

You are correct in that the MEW should organize a little, and have successfully put the irritated feeling in me  :D

(My take is that the MEW birthed CK, which is the platform for going forward. But I cannot make this decision alone of course.)

If the MEW is to persist I don't think it should be within the CK game as that would force everyone to participate in CK which requires both $ and effort to simply stay alive.

I though that MEW was created to affect change in the real world of finance which is hardly conducive to being administered through the role playing, fantasy, make believe world of Crypto Kingdom.

Just my two XMRs.

Cheers.

Whatever happened to David, some questions still stand. Not about him but about MEW.
Who controls MEW's funds?
How many XMR are those funds?
Are those funds lost?

I believe that the funds arent lost however even if there are lost i dont care whose fault it is. I simply would like to know if those XMR exist or not. After all its crypto, stuff like this happen all the time.

Since i dont see anything happening with MEW i would prefer the funds, if still exist, to go somewhere else. My contribution was really the minimal, but i would prefer to go to the donations of the monero project or towards CK than standing in an account.

Member list is here along with their donations: https://moneroeconomy.com/list-mew-members

50 % of those donations went directly to Monero devs as I remember, so the remainder looks to be around 4000 XMR.

My personal opinion is that the funds are best served going towards development initiatives. But of course this should be decided in a vote between MEW members.

I agree 100%.  Either to the core team for their continued hard work or maybe one of the critical initiatives being crowd funded such as the Trezor integration.

Half of the funds were given to the Core team for starters. The name MEW "Monero Economy Workgroup" hints at the whole thing was intended to promote economic initiatives as well.

What is clear to me is that the dormancy of Monero Economy (compared to the buoyancy of the development) is a continued issue and the greatest bottleneck for adoption. To this end, I and David had the infamous Wine, Cognac, Foie Gras and Caviar workshop in Malla in late 2014, which spawned Crypto Kingdom. The game still commemorates these most precious consumables with 1 liter of fine cognac costing 3 XMR and 1 kilo of caviar costing 3 XMR.

I am personally satisfied with spending all my time to CK, as I perceive it to be a very potent asset for Monero economy. After more than a year, we still have ~170 characters only (of which 11 died this day  :P ) and the marketcap is <$1 million. I have been CEO of 3 private companies valued at more than $1 million, and several below that threshold. With this experience, I perceive CK to be severely undervalued compared to the potential. Most similar all-voluntary experiments - take MEW for instance - effectively bite the dust in a few months. CK is going on very well. Our goal is to reach 10,000 userbase in 2016 with the ultimate goal in millions.

I do not support a wholesale donation of Economy funds to development. If the MEW members do not want to revive the Workgroup, I have a better idea of donating the funds to the Town of Crypto Kingdom, because that is the cutting edge of Monero Economy.

If MEW disbands, I would support returning the funds to the members. If I recall correctly, it was always envisioned that member shares could be refunded, less than half donated to development.

But voting to spend them on something such a donation to development, to CK, or to some successor organization is within the scope of the charter, as I understand it, as is continuing MEW in some fashion. The latter I would support only if there were leadership enthusiastic about supporting the stated mission.

These are my personal opinions.

They died because they were not vaccinated?  :o  ;D

I agree that MEW funds should just be returned. It seems too difficult to have a representative MEW meeting to vote on something else.
Also, David seems a bit inactive lately, so it would be a good idea to also transfer other funds he holds in escrow.
(for example the money he holds in escrow for the XMR parties (https://forum.getmonero.org/14/events/49/1000-usd-monero-party))

I don't see the problem with an online meeting. There were votes before. You don't need 100% participation, but fairly high participation should be easy. Glancing at the member list, most are still involved.

MEW Discussion Page!
https://monero.consider.it/

Obviously this does not supplant a proper Community Vote as outlined in the MEW article of association, but I saw this website and thought it looked cool as a way to visualize what the most desired outcomes might be.

If you create an account and login, you can select Agree/Disagree for each option on the slider. The page will then order the list accordingly, as more feedback is received.

Let me know if I should add any proposals to the list.

https://i.imgur.com/4RG26P2.png

@saddambitcoin: Expressed opinion on the form! I'm going all in with the 10x bet on monerodice  ;D

... say we win then what?

Then we could simply proceed to execute all other options as well!

I think we should use the funds to further development either through donating to core team or by funding one of the initiatives and voted accordingly.

Diamond Member. 1000 votes.

I vote that the MEW is dissolved and the funds donated to the only large-scale Monero Economy initiative born within the MEW, Crypto Kingdom, and there, specifically, the Devfund: ingame pool account taking care of the technical development of the game platform.

If we consider the alternatives, the ones that are somewhat legitimate and easy to accomplish - considering the sum is only about $2000, which does not warrant excessive considerations nor practicalities - they are 1) giving the money to core team 2) giving the money to members.

Of these, the 1) is not legitimate. MEW was expressly established to be a counter to the core team, yet 50% of the contributions were decided to be given to the core team to ensure that their work proceeds correctly and also because there were no pressing uses for the membership donations. To put it bluntly, donating the rest of the funds to the core team "goes against everything MEW stands for". Anyone who was there remembers this.

And 2) is not practical. Since the inception of MEW, the value of XMR has declined greatly and the once-large donation of $100 or $1000 has declined in value to be trivial. The ones who donated little, stand to gain even less, and the ones who donated much, have much more remaining. (Taking the 50% initial cut to the core team into account, only about 10% of the value remains and we have collectively more important things to do.


As a member of MEW, you already had the chance to gain free CKG valued more than your contribution to the MEW. (Price of gold was 0.05-0.28 XMR during the opportunity.) Overall, CK is valued at about 1,500,000 XMR and is almost completely owned by the members of the MEW, with many enriched 10x already. Merging the MEW to its offspring would be a most suitable next step in the saga of Monero.

Of the options listed by saddam those are the only 2 options that make sense to me.

I see that you commented on the Trezor thread on the Monero forum and it seems interesting to me as well.  May I suggest people read the comments made by NoodleDoodle and Gingeropolus (aka GingerAle)

Point of order. I believe there was a specific voting process? My recollection is imperfect but I think it included:

1. The discussion should take place on the Monero forum or maybe a MEW forum (does this still exist?), i don't remember which.

2. There is supposed to be a designated discussion period followed by a voting period. I don't remember the time periods for each.

3. I don't remember if this requires someone to call for discussion and vote, but I would guess so.

3rd dan, 51 votes.

I vote that the MEW is dissolved, and remainder funds are donated towards CK (as per below) and Monerodice, equally split among the two. If there is another live initiative of particular relevance, I'd suggest adding that as well.

Smooth's point just above is quite important as well in my mind, though if one quickly finds the majority voting in a certain direction, however informal the process, I'd be happy with reaching closure and hopefully not be wasting everyone's time.

From the Articles of Association linked in the OP:


The bolded part is an interesting condition.

I have to agree with smooth, that before we all start voting we should lay out some guidelines again (to refresh people's memory) and set a number of options. I am in favor of whatever is best for Monero's economy.

Rpietila, what about something donating a part of it to the Monero House character in CK?

I am in favor of the funds going to Crypto Kingdom. Whether you play the game or not, it is arguably the most active hub of the current Monero Economy and is still undergoing massive development. The success of the game would no doubt further the success of Monero.

The game also directly donates to the Monero devs in the form of its "Monero House" organization. As the treasurer of Crypto Kingdom, in the past year I can account for 2351 XMR donated to Monero development from Monero House.

As the Operational Executive, I call the vote: "What to do with the MEW and its funds" to the discussion round. Rules state that the discussion takes 168 hours, and during this time members may make proposals and support them.

To move on reasonably, the proposal should include if the MEW is terminated or not, and what to do with the funds. The most supported proposals go to final vote.

The discussion will be held in this thread until pressing matters otherwise dictate. It is likely that after such a long delay, this forum is able to reach larger audience.

Proposal: MEW disbanded and the funds refunded to member's accounts in CK (new accounts created if necessary). Members may then decide whether to use those funds within the CK economy (which could include donating to MoneroHouse or any other purpose) or withdraw them.

50 votes

Proposal:

Contact every MEW member and ask them if they want to get their remaining share of funds back.
If they provide a deposit address within 7 days, funds are returned.
Unclaimed funds are donated to core dev team.
Dissolve MEW

I don't have a CK account and I have absolutely no interest in one.

Please everyone follow the rules of MEW: when discussing, start your post with the number of votes, even if it is not the voting stage yet.

100 votes inclined in this direction.

Personally, I would not request funds back and would let it go to core dev team, but I think people should have the option of a return since MEW went dormant for so long.

That approach also seems consistent with the articles of incorporation, which provide for a refund of votes if annual fees are not paid.  So basically, if MEW was not dissolved, anyone who did not renew would be entitled to a refund anyway:

Although you quoted me I assume this also applies to smooth, saddambitcoin and dEBRUYNE.

10 votes :-[

100 votes

In support of PROPOSAL CK!

If the result comes against my vote, I automatically resign and accept a refund of my remaining 50 XMR.

 :D

500 votes (plus some small added votes that were delegated to me -- 20?)

My proposal allows you to immediately withdraw the funds from CK.

500 (+ 20?) votes

I could support this. It also seems this requires no membership action at this time, given that the January 30 renewal date is near in any case.  People who want to renew can do so, and it will be up to those people to continue to group. The rest will be refunded.

However, donating funds to the core dev team (or anywhere else) would require membership action prior to non-renewal. In the absence of that, there will need to be some reasonable provision for refunds to people who can't be reached immediately.

ArticMine 1000 votes.

Proposal for the orderly dissolution of the MEW.

That the MEW be dissolved and the corresponding funds be refunded to each member as follows: Members shall have 15 days from the date of the end of voting to provide:
1) An XMR address and transaction ID for refund.
or
2) The name of a Crypto Kingdom character account to be credited with the funds.

Any remaining unclaimed funds after the 15 day period has elapsed shall be credited as follows:
Crypto Kingdom account MoneroHouse 50%
Crypto Kingdom account Town 50%

This proposal allows each member to identify how their portion of the funds will be allocated and provides a balanced approach for disposition of the unclaimed funds. For those unfamiliar with Crypto Kingdom, the MoneroHouse account is used to support Monero development.

Edit: Those wishing that their portion of the funds go to Monero development could choose 1 and provide the Monero donation address. https://getmonero.org/getting-started/donate/ (https://getmonero.org/getting-started/donate/). Those wishing to donate to Crypto Kingdom can choose 2 and specify "Town" as the Crypto Kingdom character account. This will minimize administration time and transaction fees

Thank you ArticMine

500 (+ 20?) votes

Very well thought out proposal. I withdraw my earlier proposal and would support this one.

Yes, I delegated 20 votes to you and this is still in effect.

1000 votes in favor of this one, since it seems to take everything into account, and also allows the distribution of funds even in the event that David continues to be busy, in which case his CK assets are just administratively swapped to MEW and he can keep the equivalent amount in the MEW treasury account (in XMR blockchain).

100 votes, supporting ArticMine's proposal

Also personally in favor of this one:


Therefore, I shall not provide a withdrawal address nor a CK character.

100 votes.

I support ArticMine's proposal as well.

I'm not in MEW but I'm playing CK, pardon me if I'm not supposed to intervene here but I'd like to make some remarks.

David assets in CK are mostly not in Moneretos (matched by real XMR) right? I see two mechanisms to transfer value to MEW holders within CK from David CK assets:
- Assets are sold, moneretos backed by real XMR are transfered to MEW players.
I find it unfair to CK economy as a whole, this will trigger largish sells and influence the economy even though those events taking place have nothing to do with CK economy.

- Assets (various game items) are transfered directly to MEW players
Not really my business, but I find it unfair to them as they get a refund in a very different form as the initial payment, which admittedly involves a greater risk and volatility (that of XMR plus that of CK items backed by internal free-market only, not by real XMR).

In general I must say I find it really ridiculous that after more than a year of funds not moving, the escrow isn't available to do it in a timely manner and you MEW members are therefore rushing with a weird work-around solution... Ok, that's none of my business anyway.

I am really curious if the treasurer is still in possession of the funds.

I do not know if he has kept those funds as "allocated" or not. Regardless of this, it is still possible that they have been stolen.

However I have good news for everybody concerned: If David does not promptly return the correspondence, his CK character worth ~15,000 XMR will be frozen and necessary funds liquidated from that one to fulfill the MEW resolution that seems to pass. :)

The appropriate action in that case would be to call for an audit. Presumably, since there is no special provision for such an audit in the articles, such a call would then be subject to discussion and vote. However, I am not an expert on the organizing documents, so I may have missed something.

Its great that you are willing to exercise that option Risto but I must state that if he did abscond with those funds we have much bigger problems than just the value of the missing funds.

Since the funds were only implicitly demanded to be allocated, I would not attach unnecessary gravity to the situation. The worst possible case for David is that he is demanded the funds. If he wants to claim that the funds were allocated and were stolen from his hand without negligence from his part, so be it. Without such a claim the actionable story is that he possesses the funds, is busy, and we will administratively swap the funds and notify him post-facto.

That would be unfair to CK as a whole (and its players) as I mentioned. It would plummet the price of whatever asset David holds in large quantity and would impact CK economy and its free market even though current events have nothing to do with it.

Maybe David developed too much of a taste for the above bolded delicacies during the infamous spawning of CK with you in Malla and dipped into the MEW treasury to indulge.  

I think the prudent course of action would be to conduct an audit as smooth mentioned.

The bolded parts seem very much antagonist to me. (unless physical violence is involved somehow and this is surely not the case).
Also I do not think it's on you (nor on anyone) to declare that "so be it". (I am not in MEW, but since David is a core team member this is a legitimate concern beyond MEW).

In general, I consider that it would be a breach of trust in such a situation if the funds are not there anymore and the escrow/treasurer would not even have informed anyone, let alone the fact that they would disappear in the first place.
So I am as well of the opinion that knowing if the funds are there is more important than recovering those funds (to holders).

Now personally I have respect and trust in David, despite the current doubts floating around. I really hope he can clarify positively the situation asap and ease the unease.

CK valuation of 1,000,000 XMR++ is obviously not hanging on a 4,000 XMR. If needed I can promise to purchase assets from David (HG The Prince-Bishop) up to 4,000 XMR value at 5% less than the bid, so the maximum loss to CK players, even temporarily, is 5% on the market value.

Further, I don't want that David is bashed. If he makes good of all the funds with his assets, he fulfils the most that he is liable for.

What does this even mean?  And how is what YOU want even relevant?  This is not the ledger game now risto.

He either spent the funds in which case as far as I am concerned he is a thief or he did not and everything is cool.

This is the determination that we have to make as soon as possible, hand waving about taking funds from CK will not cut it.

1. There was no explicit rule to keep the funds allocated, which means that David (only) needs to have enough funds to make good of 100% at all times. He does.

2. Since you have a grievance against a MEW Executive, please PM him and copy it here so that both he and we know exactly what the problem is.

3. Until there is any evidence to support the contrary, I as the double role of MEW-OE and CK-King decide that the rightful way to proceed is to freeze the required amount in his CK funds and use it to make good of the MEW Treasury fund.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say "Until there is any evidence to support the contrary"?

In my opinion, it is unnecesarry to heat up the debate like this until David Latapie has come online and posted/clarified here. Until then, everyone that is merely making wild assumptions, which may or may not be valid, is deteriorating the quality of this thread and the outside image of it. 

100 votes

Agreed with dEBRUYNE, let's continue resolving the dissolution of the MEW in an efficient manner. It is a waste of everyone's time to argue.

Let's not forget David has done much good work for Monero education.

With or without David's input, we can all resolve the situation NOW and get back to doing things that benefit Monero development, adoption, and economy.  :)

So you are ok with never determining if he in fact spent the money or not?  You want to pull the funds from CK and sweep it under the rug?

ArticMine 1000 votes.

My thoughts on this is that we should start with the premise that David has done nothing wrong and has the required amount of XMR on hand. Whether the XMR were segregated is not the critical issue since there was no explicit requirement for this; having said this it is simply bad practice to not segregate the funds. It is also appropriate for the remaining MEW executives to ascertain as to the status of these funds and require proof that these funds exist. These actions are simply prudent management and should not be construed as evidence or suspicion of wrongdoing. If there is no response or an inappropriate response to above requests then it does become at least suspicion if not evidence of wrongdoing, it also becomes appropriate to take action and the MEW members deserve to be made aware of the situation.

Edit: Has David been officially contacted about this?

People have been asking about the funds in this, the official MEW thread going back as far as 3 moths ago, which in my mind constitutes being officially contacted.  No response has been provided.  In addition I have reason to believe other MEW members have contacted him privately.

50 votes

I withdraw my earlier proposal and will support this compromise.

50 votes

I'm in both (well, dnaleor is dead in CK, but is son will soon be active) and I agree with this.
We shouldn't mix CK balances with the MEW fund. I want to be paid directly from the MEW fund.

Hello,

Only one person having access to the funds has one advantage: better control
And one disadvantage: greater risk of loss
Multisignature would fix this but doesn't exist for Monero, so there's that.

I have access to the party funds and the MEW funds. I'm happy with whatever is decided about them. I replied to dnaleor in a PM. Because the last time I publicly expressed what happened, it was used against Monero, I will only reply to PM about the current state of things and only to people I know are not anti-monero trolls.

Thank you David.

10 votes 

We shouldn't mix CK balances with the MEW fund. I want to be paid directly from the MEW fund.

For everyone:

Contact me privately for every details.

As an example of the message I will send:
I case you ask, I have my own ledger of who paid how much.

100 votes.

I support this. I'd like my portion to be given to my CK character.

Thanks David.

Great.  In that case I propose that all the MEW funds are sent to Dnaleor immediately, MEW as well as the party funds.  If anyone objects to Dnaleor holding them until we decide what to do with them please speak up in this thread.

Dnaleor please post a XMR address so the funds can be transferred to you ASAP unless anyone objects.
 

I somewhat object, as it was stated.

David, if I recall correctly, had (and has) some sort of named position with MEW as a Treasurer or the like.

If the funds are to be transferred, then it should be to someone holding such a position, or perhaps someone delegated by someone holding such a position.

I instead support returning the funds to the members as ArticMine suggested earlier. There has been no effort toward collecting renewals (nor has anyone stated support for doing so) and unless that happens by January 31 then MEW will disband.

I will be sending David a PM asking for my funds to be returned.

I rather see the MEW funds in the hands of Fluffy (or someone else from core)
because I don't want to be trusted with larger amounts of XMR until we have trezor integration.

The party fund is rather small so I'm willing to handle that.

I am also going to withdraw my funds.

VOTE on the DISSOLUTION of the MEW


As the OE, I call the discussion round ended. As per the rules, two proposals are put on vote. Because this is a spending proposal, there is no absolute majority rule that would shorten the voting period unless all the members have voted. Because the dissolution proposal outcome differs markedly from the non-dissolution proposal, these are put against each other. The voting is structured so that only the first proposal causes a new MEW Resolution to pass. Therefore there is effectively one proposal, with NO meaning support to the non-dissolution "proposal".

The proposal is as follows:


The voters have 4 options:

HELL YES - Support the proposal, on the condition that if it does not pass, the member resigns and is refunded.
YES - Support the proposal
NO - Does not support the proposal
HELL NO - Does not support the proposal, on the condition that if it passes, the member resigns and is refunded.

The ME David Latapie is exhorted to produce the members and votes list without delay. Due to the privacy inherent in Monero, the addresses may be posted here publicly, or to user: David Latapie in PM.

The voting period commences immediately and lasts for 168 hours. Any unmaterial changes to the proposal or practicalities do not cause the time to be changed.

1000 votes.

I vote HELL YES and request the funds to be transferred to CK account "1" regardless of the vote outcome.

51 votes.
HELL YES
_{Refund address provided to DavidLatapie via PM}

51 votes.
HELL YES
Refund address provided to DavidLatapie via PM

1000 votes
Vote:Hell Yes
XMR refund address or CK character for refund will be provided to DavidLatapie within the time frame of the proposal.

50 votes (if i remember correctly)
Vote:Hell Yes
XMR refund address:

20 Votes
Hell Yes
Return to Ck char 91

All the best David.

20 votes
hell yes

I'll send to dev fund

 

500 votes

I'm voting YES. I'm not voting HELL YES although I think it is pretty clear the vote will pass and it won't matter. But in the event that it didn't, I don't see the need to resign and receive a refund, as it would be okay to continue the organization if someone were interested in doing the work to run it. I do think the role is potentially valuable.

If the measure passes, please refund my portion to CK character "smooth"

I have relinquished the delegated votes from equipoise who may place his own vote on this matter.

20 votes: hell yes
Return to CK char 171.

500 votes YES
refund via XMR (PM'd David Latapie)

52 votes: hell yes
refund via xmr addressthere is no need for a transaction ID in my case.

100 votes Hell Yes.

Funds go to monero development donation address:

46BeWrHpwXmHDpDEUmZBWZfoQpdc6HaERCNmx1pEYL2rAcuwufPN9rXHHtyUA4QVy66qeFQkn6sfK8a HYjA3jk3o1Bv16em

Hi
20 votes (I think): hell yes
refund via xmr address


Cheers

Wedgy2k

Figures I missed the development of this thread after digging it up in October.

Anyway,

50 votes for hell yes, please be so kind as to return to:


Although I would have preferred the MEW to renew and continue its effort outside of CK.

This is the most disturbing statement I have ever read about CK and it has nothing to do with David.  I am deeply concerned that rpietila as "king" or anyone would have the ability to independently freeze and liquidate assets of a CK player.

Monero prides itself on decentralization and the absence of 3rd party control over assets.  The statement above (which some may say is no longer relevant since David has responded) has caused me to lose some trust in CK.

Please do not call me a troll because I have supported Monero for a long time.

My goal is not to sounds negative. If the problem is technical then a committee should be formed to make decisions on freezing or liquidating funds. That much power should never reside in 1 person.

Yes, I would say the only meaningful decentralization is actual decentralization. If you have assets in CK, that is not in fact decentralized, so you should expect that the operator has control over them and you are at their mercy.

If you don't want that, hold an asset where you control the private keys.

seems I missed the deadline

HELL YES from me, pro forma

my address

Quicken 210 votes.
First I have seen of this thread in over a year, and the first I have heard of a now expired vote. Was any of this dissolution vote stuff cross-posted on the main Monero thread? I can't see it going back through to January. I only regularly check the main thread and the speculation thread.  ???
Q

Funds were returned to the members, if you PM David with an XMR address he should be able to refund you the remaining XMR.

I don't think the vote was even tallied up since no matter what happened, the remaining funds should be returned to the members.

What is the current situation, on this pretty important topic?

Are there people actively working (structured and systematic?) on

• solving known issues,
• developing knowledge & insight - to be able to give qualified suggestions and recommendation on the important decisions
• or helping by coordinating & organizing our efforts and activities

on all the upcoming questions, that are related to the huge challenge of developing a self-sustaining, healthy and active ecosystem and economy.

This will be a very, very hard work and involve very complex decision problems. (A task all altcoins failed and Bitcoin still struggles with.) And given the environment, our deviation from the crypto-currency mainstream, the great once in a lifetime opportunity during the next months of becoming a/the leading privacy-related cryptocurrency (by winning and binding users, partners and support) and naturally growing the project with (the classic) network effect, the huge history of failed P2P- or crypto (currency)-projects and other basic (project) management-related finding/observations: it is safe to say: we only have one chance at growing the community. It is something, that will have a huge impact on Moneros future and existence.

We really need good preparation, stamina, a mindset, culture & true conviction inside the community, that Monero can only succeed, if everybody helps, contributes and truly supports the idea of developing of the eco-system and economy, that is needed for the payment-system as (decentralized) P2P-network to exist & operate efficient and reaching a big enough user-base and acceptance-level, so the vision and ideas behind the project become reality. And the intended benefits & purposed improvements (based on the coins features and characteristics) will for the first time ever available to use and benefit from.
(Which will push demand, trust, image of the project and prove it's concept, use cases, significance and justifys it's necessity.)


- help with legal, long-term Monero e-business
- write a list of companies/business contacts over the next weeks, that you could ask for acceptance (write maybe 10 names and think about their potential use cases, then contact 2 or 3 of them, around the 1.0 release)
- we need legal, business cases that cant be realized without Monero
- help newbies, be friendly and open
- don't invest in stupid scams (that pop up, when a coin gains momentum, if u really, really cant help yourself ask someone knowledgeable inside the community about the person)
- tell traders, haters or misinformed persons to GTFO with their complaints/comments about price development, market cap, the next mega great ICO in 2 days
- clearly state in discussions that Monero is not about getting rich-quick or making early adopters happy
- tell people asking about price estimations and potential pumps, that they are looking at the wrong coin and the chance is low
- tell people not to buy Monero to have capital gains on investments (this just creates an unhealthy environment/estimations/feelings), better tell them, if they like the project they should support in any possible way by contributing and if they really want to buy they should research themselves for 1 or 2 months, look at other things, if they still have to much money they can buy like x00$)
- talk and represent Monero as free, open alternative solution, it's a friendly offering complement to Bitcoin (not competitor and different feature-set, different use cases),
emphasize the different code base)
- try to build business cases, infrastructure and services, that doesn't depend on external third-parties like payment providers (Bitpay etc.), its worth the effort und much better long-term, don't wait with bigger projects/ideas, because there is no payment-provider and its to risky/inconvenient this way, do other smaller projects/services instead, we cant relay on payment providers like Bitcoin does (they are create dependencies and centralization, KML/KYC bullshit, they charge expensive fees, they dont share our vision or care about our motivation project, another big problem: they will make the supported coins exchangeable and equal, by offering the same standard featureset like Bitcoin, so Monero would be just another arbitrary coin without most of its real benefits and features, making its usage useless for customers and merchants)
- i think we should friendly apply for addition in privacy-related linux distros like: Tails, Qubes, Kali, Backbox, BlackArch, etc.
- as a P2P-network, I think it is a very good idea to have partnerships with other P2P-networks to support each other and run the other service on ones own host (we could ask people/projects running nodes in TOR like Torservers.net, globaleaks.org, JohnDoe-network, Freenet, owner of Tor2Web-nodes, bitmessage, OpenBazaar etc.
- have understanding and (some) acceptance for normal people outside cryptocurrency scene, who are today doubting all cryptocurrencys and their benefits fully (they may be Monero users in 5 years later)
- from my POV it's a waste of time to discuss with stubborn & self-opinionated people about Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin or Monero, let them talk and smile IHMO
- stay open-minded and informed there are a lot of other new P2P-, Encryption-, OpSec-, Crypto-, Privacy-related projects (on the internet), that are worth checking out (there is trully a real world outside the cryptocurrency scene, heh)




Sorry for bad english and structure and redundancy, because I  sadly have no time to readup everything that happens with Monero.

@ dewdeded

MEW is defunct. No willing organizers or leadership existed. Funding was returned to members.

If you think an organization is needed to promote the initiatives identified in your post or others, you will need to create a new one.

Anyone can do this.