Bitcoin Forum

 People say it, but ill say it again. Bitcoin is a community, however, recently I've noticed a theme. People are often missing the important innovative projects. I see things like etherum being funded but darkwallet, a project of a good supporter of the community runs dry until someone posts a rant like this.

 I see the attractiveness of some of these projects, the promise of money. Do people realize that this way of moving forward won't change anything? These viable projects are often worth millions, look at bitgo. 12 million in funding due to their stellar team and wallet Tech. The money is deserved, however, this serves as an example of what and why funding can do for a project.

 Simply look at some of these project's (will add more later on phone)

• etherum
• storj

These projects promise coins in return. Let's be honest most of these currencies won't amount to much (truth be told). I think we need to rethink how we decide projects to support. A lot of these projects are just hidden wealth, contributions go far.

A lot of these projects just resolve to VC. They shouldn't have to, they're often giving an amazing innovation to the community for free. Can't we show a little aptitude towards these projects?

 I've talked to a lot of project owners. From the guys at darkwallet, bithalo, bitgo and so on... I know the difference funding can do to some of these projects. Remember trezor?

Adding more soon and adding links on phone atm
Some viable projects;

• Darkwallet
• bither
• armory

If you have a project please list it below with a link a description thanks.



To not seem like a douchebag I didn't list my teams project you can find its announcement in my signature
address for frozenbit; 15yqW7NaGUbq1B3WZ6Th1m1XNaMaiSzHar

Could someone tell me about etherum, I dont know what it is because I havent been much here lately.

 It's a new crypto platform that's supposed to promise ether currency.

A lot of people vote with their wallets(bitcoin wallets too!). But that is just how it is. Not many people have money or bitcoins to throw around you gotta remember this is a forum. Forums are generally places people come to to hang out and chill and type back and forth and learn. People are not primarily coming here to donate to anything and you gotta remember that, this isn't kickstarter, it is a forum where a lot of people come to and don't have money or bitcoin.

etherium is a promise of making an altcoin where the blockchain stores contracts. its not even made yet and supposedly will be launched late 2014-early 2015. and instead of just launching it then, they greedily asked people to pay for their name to sit on a 'pre-paid' list. with a promise that one day they will receive ether.

in short a money grab effort much like BFL's shady pre-sale scheme.

Nailed it.

A lot of us really don't have a lot of Bitcoin to throw around. If it was me, I wouldn't mind doing a bit of investing if it meant a reasonable chance of making a good return on investment. And for me that means giving projects the same level of scrutiny that any smart investor on Wall Street would give to something new.

ive done ALOT of investing and if you do come to a point of having enough wealth to invest in a project keep these things in mind. oh and be subtle about how you ask for the info, you can tell more about the project by HOW they reply, more so than the details they reply with. which combined with these (atleast) 6 points will help you decide:

1. what is the purpose of the project
2. what niche market it will fill
3. what potential it has for growth/usage in the practical and real world
4. whats their 5 year plan
5. ask them to lay it out in specific detail.(most important)
6. ask for current progress and proof

if they seem evasive or very weak on the details, where it sounds more like a brain fart rather than a well thought out and planned project, DO NOT invest.

for every 1000 scammy money grabs idea's, you may only find the 100 brainfarts and of those 100 brainfarts you may find 1 single feasible project. so dont just throw your funds around.

 Good point, but this isn't about short term gain. It's about substance and a viable ecosystem

my investments are not about personal profit (i got enough coin, so making money comes 5th place to me). but i only invest if that project is going to actually bring some BIG benefit to the bitcoin ecosystem.

and now you know why i tried getting info out of you frozenbit. why i tried asking you to add certain features (different log in methods or even a simple pushTX), and your replies.. well as you know i didnt help you out financially..

hmm.. that reminds me, the "subtle" part
7. dont let on to a business your interested in investing. just act like its due diligence or just being nosey

 Besides frozenbit (http://frozenb.it) there are plentiful projects available. Especially armory. Immensely underfunded, but very popular. We've gotten support from the community, we've just recently hired 2 more people.

Whenever I see a Donate with Bitcoin button or an address added to a site I frequent I will donate ~10 USD.

Its sad to see how much money Stellar and Ethereum have raised in such a short period of time compared too worthy projects.

Just a side-note, maybe some places needing funding can offer a t-shirt or hat for a donation. (10 dollar t-shirt, accept a 25 dollar donation in BTC/Fiat) Not only would it help earn 10-15 dollar donations, but people who donated will then advertise the software by wearing the shirt.

 That's a good idea. But I do agree there is a big discourse between hype and innovation.

We can't even fund Core or Armory development at a sustainable level. -But we're always talking about funding NEW projects by unknowns. Almost every project which is able to acquire needed funding which doesn't snag corporate or angel funding is hyped so much with 200+ page threads over a couple months' time, "boring" fundamental stuff is completely ignored. Corporate/Angel funding really muddies the waters, too. For example - when I fund Armory, am I funding development or am I funding Trace? -and why should I donate to Core development when developers are being picked up by corporations? Those points don't seem too relevant though, given this wasn't always the case for either and they took "centralized" funding because we couldn't put out enough. -And Core has a separate problem, where donation options aren't really given to user.

I'm not sure if this community just doesn't have the capacity to sustainably fund fundamental development or if projects have just been going about it the wrong way.

 I agree entirely. Too much wasted on hype projects. If we could give the funds contributed to something like etherum  to the core devs I suspect well see a lot more progress than what we've seen. I'd love to see what the devs think about this if theure watching this thread.

 Another good point, but innovation still counts if you can still do the same thing faster. However, its detering for people to do that without support.

It is a pump and dump coin like any other altcoin out there.

bitcoin community does not get a good couple of years of trouble free times to innovate some new options. I think that's the main problem.

 Good point but community support is a large part of how things move along. Either zig-zag or straight line. If no one puts forth the support, it'll hinder growth.

 I would like to hear some project managers and core devs. opinions on this issue.

 This is something more than just dark-wallet. This issue affects everything from core projects, qt, armory, trezor, etc.

 
 Take that into account.

Dwarf Fortress, a very niche, free video game, is able to pay its devs enough for them to make it their full-time jobs without corporate subsidies/dev-leasing. They consistently raise $thousands each month, even though it sometimes takes over a year to release an update. They've been at it for far longer than Bitcoin's been out and enable a ~$0 economy.

 That's a story based on a different enviornment. They still have to come up with some money to pay their servers, coders, etc. So do companies like trezor, armory, dark wallet etc.

Wow, I forgot all about Dwarf Fortress... Thanks for reminding me.... Hours will be wasted once again :P

talking about gaming..

dragons tales is a bitcoin only game, they are making profits that are not done via donating, but by players paying to play for the mini-games inside the main game. they even have faucets as a give-back to the community and to help noobs get some satoshi dust to play with.

so some great projects can work and generate revenue fairly without IPO's or money grabs before anything is even gets coded.

Im glad to see someone else speaking out for underfunding of some extremely promising campaigns.

The reason is greed. No one wants to spend precious Bitcoins. The people that offer equity in their projects are raising millions. Those that don't, or their project is not apparently/directly possible to be monetized, are suffering to raise money.

It's not really that shocking to me.. It just makes sense. If you have a good idea that requires a lot of development you pretty much have to monetize it and offer equity to make it a reality.

That why I don't get all the hate for the newer ALT coins/app coins. You gotta do what you gotta do to get a good complicated idea developed. In a perfect world they would all use Bitcoin, but this is not a perfect world and they would never raise enough money. People don't generally like to work for free.

your right its greed. but to explain the hate for newer ALT coins is very simple.. their development is not complicated, doesnt require a team and it is even automated due to a couple websites that script out your coin for you with just a couple selection buttons..

its a script kiddies wet dream, definitely not worth investing into.

you can usually spot the scammy ones by having two aliases. use one to send the dev team an idea that could be incorporated into their plan, and use another alias to talk about finances.. if they ignore the idea completely and dont even respond, yet are really quick to respond to a money grab, you can instantly see their motives and know which is more important priority for them (i done this many times to test businesses)

You are referring to scam coins, I am referring to Alt coins. There is a big difference and people don't seem to be able to tell the difference. They lump them all together as all being scam coins.

There are mechanisms for getting funding that some of these projects should consider (e.g., kickstarted, angel list).  I'm an investor on angel list and the only bitcoin related company to come through there recently was crowdcurity (yes, I invested).

The right way to get funding involves building a good team, formalizing the organization, having a solid development path, and demonstrated tech.  If they have this, then it is all about networking.  Build a good kickstarted campaign, or find a solid syndicate leader on angel list and good projects will become funded tech companies.

 Those are good platforms, but alot of these bitcoin companies are niche. I often see alot of these (pitbull) go without ever getting any funding.

this community is too divided to come to a full conclusion on almost anything. the dogecoin community gets behind stuff all the time and they have fun with their stuff. i sit time we make a bitcoin meme honestly? why not? people likes memes, and people buy doge and cate merchandise.

someone might be able to come up with a clever enough meme with bitcoin that most people will use it who see it.

Oops. I was making a counter-point to an argument I was having with imaginary people. Invisible Bill said major projects can't rely on user donations because there's no funding consistency. A dev will likely not leave his current post to take the new project on full-time if it's uncertain whether or not he'll be able to support his family. DF proves a widely-used product can consistently raise enough through user donations to employ multiple people even though they don't frequently update and enable no commerce.

 Indeed, that's because the community supports their game. The same isn't true for bitcoin, and bitcoin projects. Alot of projects aren't receiving any support from the community. I do think something needs to be done about awareness and simple community support.

 My goal here is just to maybe promote a more responsive community.

well how about offer idea's on methods to fund them.. you know provide actual solutions, after all when community members offer you idea's of services that would help, you ignore and continue with your agenda. so i take it that you have lots of soltions to a problem that you think exists..

or

should i mention a few solutions

 If you think you have a solution; by all means.

the botcoin core dev team.

1) bitcoin dev-team for instance should add a donation address maker to a "suggestion box" (think bounties)
eg
so if i wanted the dev team to simply add a imagebox to the background of the GUI that pointed to a file in the app path(import GUI skins). id make the suggestion and donate however much i feel is needed to cover their time in doing so (its only a 2 minute job)

thus they get paid for adding features. and if more than one person wants the feature they can donate too, meaning the more thats been donated the faster the team would be incentivized to add the feature.

2) scrutinizing businesses to ensure the funds that would go to businesses is utilized properly.. as there is no point handing out alot of bitcoins to many projects that simply come up with a website and a basic wallet, that can be replicated or already is a replicant. that way funds can be hoarded for the truly useful and inspirational projects that make things easier for 'joe public'

3) offering advise on how businesses can make their service better, its not always about just offering them funds, advise is just as useful.

4) donations do not work for business services. if the business cannot become self financially sufficient, then its not likely to be around in 5 years.
after all facebook is a free service and gets paid by other businesses via adverts. not by demanding donations or charging fee's per user. this is why facebook got so famous as it was free in comparison to people making international call's and texts to friends and family that were not nearby.

5) to explain points 1 and 4 better. one time efforts like adding a single features will work for donation/bounties. but for recurring and ongoing business costs, donations and bounties do not work

6) in short businesses need to fund other long term services which will benefit them both. EG bitpay hiring the bitcoin-dev coder jgarzik, foundation paying Gavin Andressen. etc. this can also be done via paid advertising, not just hiring staff.

7) what bitcoin community also needs is a business model such as 'google ads' where businesses design their adverts and upload them to a service and put some bitcoin in to cover X views. then other websites that have adverts on this page using the 'bitcoin ad service' get paid