EFF donations and the Bitcoin Faucet

[Bind]

the idea they liked best was to redistribute the coins via the Bitcoin Faucet (and have any donations that trickle in get passed back out via the Faucet).  The reasoning is that anybody who donated bitcoins to the EFF would also support the mission of the Faucet-- to promote bitcoin by giving people new to the currency a little bit to start.

It their bitcoins. Its their decission. So it sounds like the faucet is the answer.

Keep working on the faucet to secure it as much as possible.

Just because there are scammers does not mean you should not use the faucet. Much like it does not mean that bitcoins are bad because someone can use bitcoins for bad.

Anyways thats alot of time and hard work making a new google account on a new proxy/ip just to get one-thousand'th of a bitcoin. Not a real issue IMO unless they find a way to automate it.

[unbuttered_toast]

Electronic what foundation?

"Faucet", obviously.

I'd just lost all my respect for EFF.

Come on, they're lawyers with lawyerly concerns; we all know the American legal system has no basis in the reality of mortals. And they're putting the coins back into something that supports the Bitcoin ecosystem. Cake for everyone!

[citizen]

It sounds like they are giving the coins to Gavin, and allowing him to decide what to do with him.  I like that idea the best.  He's reaching out to us to ask us what we want to do with them.

So Gavin, I would say use the majority of the new coins - maybe 75% for bitcoin client/community development.  We need lots of work on the client, so why not let those working on it get rewarded in bitcoins?  This seems to make the most sense!

Then 25% for the faucet.  I like the faucet and it's really cool.  But it is only pennies for new people.  The idea of someone giving away free money is really nice, so we should keep it going.  It's good karma

[gim]

Allow scripting in Bitcoin, so that they can share ownership of the coins with their previous owners for a while.
They can decide later what to do with the remaining coins.

(It would be fantastic if this kind of operation was offered in the client.
Mistakes could be reverted safely and anonymously.
Of course this requires that the coins are from a standard address.)

[jojobeans]

EFF blog post: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/06/eff-and-bitcoin

RE: refunding donations by proving you own one of the private keys that donated:  interesting idea!  Anybody willing to write code to do that?  Could be a fun project... (find all the transactions that donated to EFF, dig out the public keys, come up with a way to sign/verify a message with private key proving you own a public key, then keep track of which donation transactions have already been refunded)

I made a sizeable donation to the EFF when they first announced their acceptance of bitcoin donations so I would offer a 10 bitcoin bounty on this project if someone could develop a way to refund the bitcoins easily so Gavin doesn't have to manually go through them.  This code would be handy for other initiatives or startups that get discontinued and the original investors can recoup some of their investment.

i don't think this will work the way people intend. if i'm understanding correctly, the reason the EFF doesn't simply want to refund payments to the addresses from which the payments came is that those payment addresses could be controlled by intermediaries or otherwise can't be tied to the equitable owner of the donated funds. if that's the problem, allowing people to claim addresses by proving that they own them doesn't seem to solve much: the intermediary (e.g., mybitcoin) could still claim the addresses, perhaps through a proxy or 'beard' so that they wouldn't appear associated, and the EFF would be none the wiser.

to say that more simply, what problem would signing solve here? presumably we can assume that someone who sent money from an address owns that address (except in the rare event the private key was lost or stolen).

There is no good answer I can think of for people that who donated using an intermediary, unless the intermediary would be willing to refund the bitcoins back to the address that was sent to them.  At least for those that donated directly they can get the refund by returning the bitcoins to the address the donation was received from.

As someone who did donate to the EFF I am disappointed they made this decision but I understand it as well.  I would appreciate a refund of the bitcoins I sent so I could send them to other projects that could help with gathering mainstream usage of bitcoin or serve the community rather than a freebie handout to whoever has the biggest botnet.

[teukon]

EFF blog post: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/06/eff-and-bitcoin

RE: refunding donations by proving you own one of the private keys that donated:  interesting idea!  Anybody willing to write code to do that?  Could be a fun project... (find all the transactions that donated to EFF, dig out the public keys, come up with a way to sign/verify a message with private key proving you own a public key, then keep track of which donation transactions have already been refunded)

I made a sizeable donation to the EFF when they first announced their acceptance of bitcoin donations so I would offer a 10 bitcoin bounty on this project if someone could develop a way to refund the bitcoins easily so Gavin doesn't have to manually go through them.  This code would be handy for other initiatives or startups that get discontinued and the original investors can recoup some of their investment.

I wouldn't know about the difficulty of creating such a system but I do very much like the idea of being able to sign messages with my wallet.  Unfortunately I'm down to my last 7.16 BTC and am avoiding all exchanges for a little while so I can only manage a pledge of 2 BTC.

If the EFF decides to allow a short period for people to reclaim their donations and the aforementioned system is instrumental in this then I will send an additional 10 BTC on being reimbursed.

[QuantumMechanic]

I can pledge 0.5 BTC for the refund thing if I end up getting my donation back.

[Anonymous]

It should be placed in trust and used to pay bounties to get the bitcoin software improved or spread it out amongst the other bitcoin accepting charities.

[tubro]

I personally like the idea of a trust fund for Bitcoin held by some of the developers / elders with the purpose of legal defense for Bitcoin. We could probably work out some kind of trust instrument which ensures it would only be used for purposes in the spirit of the EFF's work. It may well be that the EFF qualifies for the money some day but it shall not be held explicitly for them (due to the reasons mentioned).

Of course, Gavin would have to take the trouble to set this up but I think such a fund might come in very handy for the Bitcoin community and would probably be the closest thing to the original intentions of the donors.

I'm sure such a fund held by reputable members would receive even further donations!

This is a brilliant idea IMHO (unless the EFF explicitly wants to give it to the faucet as they have stated), because it is probably what the original donors wanted anyway. Plus, I believe such a fund might be very much needed soon.

Even if the EFF money goes somewhere else we should think about setting up such a fund.

[QuantumMechanic]

I personally like the idea of a trust fund for Bitcoin held by some of the developers / elders with the purpose of legal defense for Bitcoin. We could probably work out some kind of trust instrument which ensures it would only be used for purposes in the spirit of the EFF's work. It may well be that the EFF qualifies for the money some day but it shall not be held explicitly for them (due to the reasons mentioned).

Of course, Gavin would have to take the trouble to set this up but I think such a fund might come in very handy for the Bitcoin community and would probably be the closest thing to the original intentions of the donors.

I'm sure such a fund held by reputable members would receive even further donations!

I'm also fine with my donation going to this.

[marcus_of_augustus]

I now prefer idea of keeping the coins in escrow somewhere (ClearCoin?) as a "legal defence fund" LDF (I suggested faucet first, my bad i think).

If/when EFF work their way around "complex legal issues" they may be open to accepting btc donations again and in the interim it could be also used for other worthy legal bitcoin defences.

[teukon]

I personally like the idea of a trust fund for Bitcoin held by some of the developers / elders with the purpose of legal defense for Bitcoin. We could probably work out some kind of trust instrument which ensures it would only be used for purposes in the spirit of the EFF's work. It may well be that the EFF qualifies for the money some day but it shall not be held explicitly for them (due to the reasons mentioned).

Of course, Gavin would have to take the trouble to set this up but I think such a fund might come in very handy for the Bitcoin community and would probably be the closest thing to the original intentions of the donors.

I'm sure such a fund held by reputable members would receive even further donations!

This is a brilliant idea IMHO (unless the EFF explicitly wants to give it to the faucet as they have stated), because it is probably what the original donors wanted anyway. Plus, I believe such a fund might be very much needed soon.

Even if the EFF money goes somewhere else we should think about setting up such a fund.

My main motivation for donating to the EFF stems from my philosophy on the oxymoron "intellectual property".  I also highly value TOR and support work done to allow people to communicate with one another against the wishes of highly authoritarian governments.  A legal defence of Bitcoin misses the mark for me.  However, if this fund is controlled by Gavin (or someone Gavin can personally vouch for), is specifically for the legal defense of Bitcoin (possibly also namecoin), and the fund is used in the spirit of the EFF's work as suggested, then I must admit that the idea has merit.

[teukon]

Having said that...

The EFF themselves are in a difficult position.  If they make a decision as to where the coins go then they could be undermining their position as future defenders of Bitcoin (even if they donate the total to a charity it would be a charity of their choosing).  If they have no say, destroy the coins, or fund the faucet, then the donors, even those that understand the motivation, will lose some faith in the EFF.  In light of this, making a token effort to return the coins to the donors before offloading the rest in ostensibly neutral way makes sense and, indeed, is arguably the right thing to do.

Note: I have donated 80 BTC to the EFF and so my argument is coloured with personal greed.

[LightRider]

What about the bitcoin firehydrant?

http://bitcoinme.com/index.php/fire-hydrant/

[Herodes]

Hm.. When I first started with bitcoins. I read about the faucet. I got my amount of btc, and later send it back with some extra btc as well. I think it serves an important function as it can be the first taste for anyone to 'get a taste' of bitcoin. I talked with a newbe yesterday, he just tried the faucet and was extatic, so I sent him another 0.01 too.

It is sad that anyone would want to exploit the faucet and try to empty it for personal gain. I am sure that many would have suggestions for how to safeguard against this, so I won't suggest anything here as I am sure these things are already tought of.

[Nescio]

They should just shred the wallet file. That would be equivalent to giving a little donation to every other bitcoin user in proportion to how many bitcoins they have.

That would constitute taking funds out of the pockets of people who support the EFF directly and giving it to people who didn't care. This will not educate those who don't care, it would reward that behaviour.

[Eri]

The best choice is glaringly obvious to me. We the bitcoin users want bitcoin to succeed and catch on. but it has a few major issues in the way first. while i respect the doners and what they want their donated money to be used for, i think these issues are of greater importance to the community as a whole.

-The client *must* have security for the wallet itself!  not having this is ridiculous and if we expect anyone to use bitcoins it has to have virtually *no* setup and be idiot proof.

-this whole thing of *currently* waiting *24* or more hours to use the client is a joke! we need the /other/ implementation that only requires the most recent transactions/the ones that affect the user (possibly for mobile devices or a way of quickly getting the App itself working so you don't have to wait 24 hours)

-we need code made for websites that is Completely secure that allows *ultra easy* setup to allow for doing business in BTC.

-more of a personal desire, but i think having all clients able to mine for a pool would benefit the system as a whole to provide a somewhat stable amount of hashing power, possibly using something like 20% of unused CPU power/GPU power if the user enables it. (ie, say I'm using 60% of my CPU and have 40% unused. 20% of whats left is 8%) this wouldn't be to 'make money' but to 'secure the network' (the money would of course go to the user automatically).


So my proposal is this, put the money into a found for bounties, handed out/selected by Gavin(or a poll he runs?) with a readout Somewhere that shows Exactly what the funds have been used for.

[marcus_of_augustus]

The best choice is glaringly obvious to me. We the bitcoin users want bitcoin to succeed and catch on. but it has a few major issues in the way first. while i respect the doners and what they want their donated money to be used for, i think these issues are of greater importance to the community as a whole.

-The client *must* have security for the wallet itself!  not having this is ridiculous and if we expect anyone to use bitcoins it has to have virtually *no* setup and be idiot proof.

-this whole thing of *currently* waiting *24* or more hours to use the client is a joke! we need the /other/ implementation that only requires the most recent transactions/the ones that affect the user (possibly for mobile devices or a way of quickly getting the App itself working so you don't have to wait 24 hours)

-we need code made for websites that is Completely secure that allows *ultra easy* setup to allow for doing business in BTC.

-more of a personal desire, but i think having all clients able to mine for a pool would benefit the system as a whole to provide a somewhat stable amount of hashing power, possibly using something like 20% of unused CPU power/GPU power if the user enables it. (ie, say I'm using 60% of my CPU and have 40% unused. 20% of whats left is 8%) this wouldn't be to 'make money' but to 'secure the network' (the money would of course go to the user automatically).


So my proposal is this, put the money into a found for bounties, handed out/selected by Gavin(or a poll he runs?) with a readout Somewhere that shows Exactly what the funds have been used for.

I think you've confused what YOU need with what everyone else needs.

[Eri]

I think you've confused what YOU need with what everyone else needs.

My wallet is already secure. My client is already setup. I don't have a business and I don't see how having people donate 5% of their cpu to a pool /if they want/, in any way could possibly help me any more then it would help anyone else.

And, it technically isn't even to help us, but to help those new to bitcoin and to make it easier for those that are new, many people wont be bothered with it unless its secure and "works right out of the box".

So tell me... how is this to help me?

[marcus_of_augustus]

I think you've confused what YOU need with what everyone else needs.

My wallet is already secure. My client is already setup. I don't have a business and I don't see how having people donate 5% of their cpu to a pool /if they want/, in any way could possibly help me any more then it would help anyone else.

And, it technically isn't even to help us, but to help those new to bitcoin and to make it easier for those that are new, many people wont be bothered with it unless its secure and "works right out of the box".

So tell me... how is this to help me?

Fair enough.

EFF directed funds redirected to development projects .... helping people into bitcoins versus helping them out of bitcoin troubles ... just can't see the rationale, sorry.