[XMR] Monero - A secure, private, untraceable cryptocurrency

[smooth]

and it is not presently sufficient in the magnitudes mooted...it doesn't actually solve the problem.

Actually a 1% mining donation (of course this number is set in stone, I'm just using it because that's what BBR uses, I think) would make a huge difference to the development budget. In fact, it would mean there was a budget at all, which isn't currently the case for the most part. So a huge change.

It wouldn't need to be the entire source of funding, but as a source of some steady funding it is sufficient enough to consider on that basis alone. Working out the numbers it comes to about 2500 USD per week at current exchange rates. That's enough to pay for a few days of full time dedicated development, which we are currently not able to do on a sustainable basis, and is certainly enough to accelerate progress significantly.

[aminorex]

about 2500 USD per week at current exchange rates

and at xmr 10k, 52mm/mo.  too much is at least as problematic as too little.  the degree to which this scales with the network is inappropriate.

[Anon136]

and it is not presently sufficient in the magnitudes mooted...it doesn't actually solve the problem.

Actually a 1% mining donation (of course this number is set in stone, I'm just using it because that's what BBR uses, I think) would make a huge difference to the development budget. In fact, it would mean there was a budget at all, which isn't currently the case for the most part. So a huge change.

It wouldn't need to be the entire source of funding, but as a source of some steady funding it is sufficient enough to consider on that basis alone. Working out the numbers it comes to about 2500 USD per week at current exchange rates. That's enough to pay for a few days of full time dedicated development, which we are currently not able to do on a sustainable basis, and is certainly enough to accelerate progress significantly.

I think the really important point to drive home is that, atleast in the bootstrapping phase, there is nothing "wrong" with this approach. In almost every other industry in the world, when someone develops a product they charge for their services. No one makes a pair of shoes and puts them up for free in the store and hopes that someone donates. They make the shoes, put a price on them, and then people decide whether or not they want to make the exchange. There is no good reason why crypto developers shouldnt be entitled to do the exact same thing as a shoe makers for the exact same reasons why shoe makers are entitled to do that thing. Consumers arnt "forced" to pay this fee any more than a customer at walmart is "forced" to pay for the products that are on the shelves.

[smooth]

about 2500 USD per week at current exchange rates

and at xmr 10k, 52mm/mo.  too much is at least as problematic as too little.  the degree to which this scales with the network is inappropriate.

With a voting scheme, miners can vote to turn it off if it is viewed as too high (or not being spent usefully) or possibly reduce it. I'm not sure how the BBR scheme works -- some sort of auction process where the votes are for a level (rather than just on-off) and the median vote determines the amount of the donation sounds reasonable to me, but just throwing ideas out now.

[nioc]

How much money BTC/xmr/$ in donations is (approx) needed to get an ETA of the following:

- Embedded DB solution/implementation  --> $14 500 (as posted on reddit)
- Convertion of C-code  
- Finished (official) GUI
- C++ version of the I2P router (IP obfuscation)
- ... (blockchain bloat issue?)

It might help to have some funding goals, so that as a community, we can work to certain points more rapidly. Maybe the Monero Committee (or whatever is called) can do something with this?

I'm thumb-sucking numbers, don't take these guesstimates as anything actual or realistic.

- Embedded DB solution/implementation - 6 man weeks is a pretty solid guess, so I'll leave the $14 500
- Convertion of C-code - it's not as simple as this. Apart from this specific item, there needs to be an incremental audit and refactor. Just because the bug was lurking in a piece of C code with this doesn't mean there can't be a bug elsewhere, it's just easier to obfuscate it in C. Holistically this is an active, ongoing task, that will likely end up costing in the $80k - $140k range over many, many months.
- Finished (official) GUI - assuming all the other pieces are in place, then dEBRUYNE is correct - anything from $15k - $20k.
- C++ version of the I2P router (IP obfuscation) - this is already making rapid progress: https://github.com/PrivacySolutions/i2pd. To get it to a point where it's usable and implementable as submodule / library I'd imagine is easily a $50k job, but I'm guessing at what orignal's hourly is.
- ... (blockchain bloat issue?) - not really an issue, and I'm unsure as to what we'd consider "solving" it. A linear reduction? A lightweight access methodology that heavily reduces the need for local storage / bandwidth? The amount of experimentation and research needed here to find a cryptographically sound "solution" makes it hard to pin a value down.

The above post by fluffypony should put this funding discussion in perspective.  He lists approximately $200,000 in costs.   3,500,000 coins have been mined and 1% is 35,000.  At a generous exchange rate of $2 equals $70,000.  So 1% of all the coins ever mined equals 1/3 of the most important costs listed.

[xulescu]

and it is not presently sufficient in the magnitudes mooted...it doesn't actually solve the problem.

Actually a 1% mining donation (of course this number is set in stone, I'm just using it because that's what BBR uses, I think) would make a huge difference to the development budget. In fact, it would mean there was a budget at all, which isn't currently the case for the most part. So a huge change.

It wouldn't need to be the entire source of funding, but as a source of some steady funding it is sufficient enough to consider on that basis alone. Working out the numbers it comes to about 2500 USD per week at current exchange rates. That's enough to pay for a few days of full time dedicated development, which we are currently not able to do on a sustainable basis, and is certainly enough to accelerate progress significantly.

I think the really important point to drive home is that, atleast in the bootstrapping phase, there is nothing "wrong" with this approach. In almost every other industry in the world, when someone develops a product they charge for their services. No one makes a pair of shoes and puts them up for free in the store and hopes that someone donates. They make the shoes, put a price on them, and then people decide whether or not they want to make the exchange. There is no reason at all why crypto developers shouldnt be entitled to do the exact same thing as a shoe makers for the exact same reasons why shoe makers are entitled to do that thing. Consumers arnt "forced" to pay this fee any more than a customer at walmart is "forced" to pay for the products that are on the shelves.

I believe many things are wrong with this approach. I would ONLY use it as force majeure because it is so damaging to the image of Monero. It is not a business, it is not a producer, it is not a company or a startup. It is an open-source project in an environment of extreme suspicion. If something is imposed on the miners it is not a donation, it is a tax, and to pretend otherwise is doublespeak.

We are here because we don't believe it is wise for any entity, especially one as central and powerful as the developers, to have a rent on the system. We are here because we are dissatisfied with exactly such a system.

I have to agree with aminorex here:

1. Reputation damage
2. Corruptability / Tragedy of the commons
3. Yields too little now, too much later
4. Market methods are likely better in a suspicious environment - crowdfund small specific tasks, with specific requirements

Of course, "swag" of any kind is good and memorabilia better. Humans hoard and owning a unique/limited asset can be worth very large sums for some.

What I do not understand is, why you downplay the reputation damage, the socialization objection and the market methods, and handwave a complex adjustment mechanism for the tax level that looks even more worrying than a fixed 1% tax. Remember that the income tax in the US started at 1% as well.

[smooth]

The above post by fluffypony should put this funding discussion in perspective.  He lists approximately $200,000 in costs.   3,500,000 coins have been mined and 1% is 35,000.  At a generous exchange rate of $2 equals $70,000.  So 1% of all the coins ever mined equals 1/3 of the most important costs listed.

I'd rather work with 1/3 of the costs than work with 1/30, which is approximately what has been received in donations. The former at least allows prioritizing, scaling down some items (at least temporarily), etc. and still getting a significant portion of the work done, plus as I said it need not be the only funding source (and some work will I'm sure continue to be done by community volunteers who are interested in doing it).

[smooth]

What I do not understand is, why you downplay the reputation damage, the socialization objection and the market methods, and handwave a complex adjustment mechanism for the tax level that looks even more worrying than a fixed 1% tax. Remember that the income tax in the US started at 1% as well.

Nobody is downplaying anything. We are splashing some cold water on the idea that the purely voluntarist approach is working and will be viable. It isn't working and I see no evidence that it will be viable. Sooner or later (probably sooner, but I have no specific information) the developers who have been funding the work out of their own pocket will lose their interest in doing so, and the work will stop.

The current state of things is such that the project hasn't reach a particularly useful stage, and without major ongoing effort, it won't

If you have specific suggestions for how to raise the necessary amount of funding (or encourage unpaid volunteer efforts on the large scale that is necessary), I'm all ears. Better yet, organize it and make it happen.

[Anon136]

and it is not presently sufficient in the magnitudes mooted...it doesn't actually solve the problem.

Actually a 1% mining donation (of course this number is set in stone, I'm just using it because that's what BBR uses, I think) would make a huge difference to the development budget. In fact, it would mean there was a budget at all, which isn't currently the case for the most part. So a huge change.

It wouldn't need to be the entire source of funding, but as a source of some steady funding it is sufficient enough to consider on that basis alone. Working out the numbers it comes to about 2500 USD per week at current exchange rates. That's enough to pay for a few days of full time dedicated development, which we are currently not able to do on a sustainable basis, and is certainly enough to accelerate progress significantly.

I think the really important point to drive home is that, atleast in the bootstrapping phase, there is nothing "wrong" with this approach. In almost every other industry in the world, when someone develops a product they charge for their services. No one makes a pair of shoes and puts them up for free in the store and hopes that someone donates. They make the shoes, put a price on them, and then people decide whether or not they want to make the exchange. There is no reason at all why crypto developers shouldnt be entitled to do the exact same thing as a shoe makers for the exact same reasons why shoe makers are entitled to do that thing. Consumers arnt "forced" to pay this fee any more than a customer at walmart is "forced" to pay for the products that are on the shelves.

I believe many things are wrong with this approach. I would ONLY use it as force majeure because it is so damaging to the image of Monero. It is not a business, it is not a producer, it is not a company or a startup. It is an open-source project in an environment of extreme suspicion. If something is imposed on the miners it is not a donation, it is a tax, and to pretend otherwise is doublespeak.

We are here because we don't believe it is wise for any entity, especially one as central and powerful as the developers, to have a rent on the system. We are here because we are dissatisfied with exactly such a system.

I have to agree with aminorex here:

1. Reputation damage
2. Corruptability / Tragedy of the commons
3. Yields too little now, too much later
4. Market methods are likely better in a suspicious environment - crowdfund small specific tasks, with specific requirements

Of course, "swag" of any kind is good and memorabilia better. Humans hoard and owning a unique/limited asset can be worth very large sums for some.

What I do not understand is, why you downplay the reputation damage, the socialization objection and the market methods, and handwave a complex adjustment mechanism for the tax level that looks even more worrying than a fixed 1% tax. Remember that the income tax in the US started at 1% as well.

How are the devs going to impose something on the miners? No one has to mine or transact on any fork that they dont want to mine or transact on. "imposed" "tax" this is the doublespeak. Does walmart "impose" a "tax" on you when you buy a gallon of milk? No they charge for the product. The devs are producing code. Therefor the code that they produce is a product. A tax is something that you are forced to pay, a price is something that you chose to pay in exchange for a good or service, what we are discussing here is not a tax, it is a price.

As for all of the stuff about damage to the reputation. yea thats totally true and i mentioned it before. but its only true because of wrongheaded thinking. thinking that im trying to mitigate.

Yea lets try the crowd fund thing first, i totally agree. I even offered my services to that effect. But if other options are exhausted, than we will need to confront this issue, and when we do it would be ideal for people to consider it with clear thinking, thus i make arguments like those witnessed above.

[nioc]

The above post by fluffypony should put this funding discussion in perspective.  He lists approximately $200,000 in costs.   3,500,000 coins have been mined and 1% is 35,000.  At a generous exchange rate of $2 equals $70,000.  So 1% of all the coins ever mined equals 1/3 of the most important costs listed.

I'd rather work with 1/3 of the costs than work with 1/30, which is approximately what has been received in donations. The former at least allows prioritizing, scaling down some items (at least temporarily), etc. and still getting a significant portion of the work done, plus as I said it need not be the only funding source (and some work will I'm sure continue to be done by community volunteers who are interested in doing it).

smooth, I agree.  

Also to anyone mining, there is a pool that donates 100% of it's 1% fee to the devs.

[smooth]

Yea lets try the crowd fund thing first, i totally agree. I even offered my services to that effect.

Go for it. Start getting people to sign up and see how much you can (relatively) quickly line up in the way of at least nonbinding commitments. If it looks promising, we will likely be influenced in that direction.

[smooth]

about 2500 USD per week at current exchange rates

and at xmr 10k, 52mm/mo.  too much is at least as problematic as too little.  the degree to which this scales with the network is inappropriate.

Oh, another thing. This is certainly false because the mining rewards will be dropping rather quickly. If you had XMR=10K USD right now, then you would be paying 140K USD per block or 200M USD per day for mining. Now maybe that might make sense to continue to secure the coin if the value of the coin increased explosively, but if that happens then the urgency of resources going into development has also exploded.

I don't really see where 1% of the amount paid for mining going instead to development is ever going to be an unreasonable balance, outside of some distant future where everything is mature and a dedicated development effort isn't needed. In fact at the current stage of maturity, development is clearly more important than mining, at least on the margin.

[Anon136]

Yea lets try the crowd fund thing first, i totally agree. I even offered my services to that effect.

Go for it. Start getting people to sign up and see how much you can (relatively) quickly line up in the way of at least nonbinding commitments. If it looks promising, we will likely be influenced in that direction.

First I will need to know precisely what it is that I am selling to people. Part of the problem I think is that people dont want to commit to the nebulous idea of "munny to make munaro gudder". They will want specifics. They will want to know what feature it is that you will be developing with their funds. The price to develop that feature. And given the budget and the number, availability, and proficency of the staff working on delivering said feature, a time table for completion.

Granted i understand that there are limitations to what you can know. But neither can people be expected to go into this blind. Do your best, and give us a specific price and specific features, but feel free to leave yourselves a realistically generous range for time of completion. People will be understanding and they will know that you cant possibly know exactly how quickly a new feature will be able to be developed.

[smooth]

Yea lets try the crowd fund thing first, i totally agree. I even offered my services to that effect.

Go for it. Start getting people to sign up and see how much you can (relatively) quickly line up in the way of at least nonbinding commitments. If it looks promising, we will likely be influenced in that direction.

First I will need to know precisely what it is that I am selling to people. Part of the problem I think is that people dont want to commit to the nebulous idea of "munny to make munaro gudder". They will want specifics. They will want to know what feature it is that you will be developing with their funds. The price to develop that feature. And given the budget and the number, availability, and proficency of the staff working on delivering said feature, a time table for completion.

Granted i understand that there are limitations to what you can know. But neither can people be expected to go into this blind. Do your best, and give us a specific price and specific features, but feel free to leave yourselves a realistically generous range for time of completion. People will be understanding and they will know that you cant possibly know exactly how quickly a new feature will be able to be developed.

Perhaps this is a problem with the approach. Most of the things you say you "need to know" are largely unknowable (as you acknowledge to some extent). Also, developing these sort of specifics accounting for al the unknowable factors and possible outcomes is itself fairly time consuming and therefore expensive. Maybe that should be crowdfunded, or maybe this crowdfunding thing wont work for this, or we lack the tools for it (again expensive)? I'm not really sure.

Crowdfunding works really well when you are going to get some device, trinket, etc. in return. R&D on an very immature technology in a rapidly changing environment is a different animal.

[xulescu]

How are the devs going to impose something on the miners? I dont think you understand how crypto works. No one has to mine or transact on any fork that they dont want to mine or transact on.

As for all of the stuff about damage to the reputation. yea thats totally true and i mentioned it before. but its only true because of wrongheaded thinking. thinking that im trying to mitigate.

We are trying to reach consensus here. If devs propose this and miners refuse, devs lose credibility. Thus miners would not refuse even if the decision is against their interests unless they wanted to damage Monero. This is a perverted incentive, related to the fact that there is not one 51% attack that is not in the attacker's best interest, but that the attacker would make it in the others' best interest to not disagree. I'm not saying the devs are going to steal it all and leave (heck, I'm arguing they already have supreme power now). What I'm saying is that this misaligned incentive makes the vote result biased (or at least makes it not convincingly unbiased) and that leads to the reputation damage I mentioned.

Also, "wrongheaded thinking" is a loaded expression. It is patronizing and denotes that you don't really consider other points of view. If the best counter-argument is "that's wrong" maybe you need to engage a bit more in the conversation.

"imposed" "tax" this is the doublespeak. Does walmart "impose" a "tax" on you when you buy a gallon of milk? No they charge for the product. The devs are producing code. Therefor the code that they produce is a product. A tax is something that you are forced to pay, a price is something that you chose to pay in exchange for a good or service, what we are discussing here is not a tax, it is a price.

This distinction becomes blurry and troubling when Walmart issues your currency. Or other imperfect analogy of the kind. You conflate the dev team with a company again.

Yea lets try the crowd fund thing first, i totally agree. I even offered my services to that effect. But if other options are exhausted, than we will need to confront this issue, and when we do it would be ideal for people to consider it with clear thinking, thus i make arguments like those witnessed above.

Like I said earlier, I see it as a measure of force majeure. The atomic solution. It is clearly better than the devs packing and taking a hike. But I want to fully explore the posibilities before signing up to this.

More transparency about the funds and their destination would definitely attract more donations. Make a list of 10-30 itemized atomic tasks, how much effort (XMR) they require, what are their expected time requirements, what is their urgency and their impact. An Excel sheet could work for now, and a Form for investors to indicate binding or nonbinding commitment for each of the projects.

Also, @smooth: crowdfunding also works really well with completely experimental games. Sure, they often flop, but not because they didn't get the money but because they were either unrealistic in their requirements (too low) or inefficient.

[Anon136]

Yea lets try the crowd fund thing first, i totally agree. I even offered my services to that effect.

Go for it. Start getting people to sign up and see how much you can (relatively) quickly line up in the way of at least nonbinding commitments. If it looks promising, we will likely be influenced in that direction.

First I will need to know precisely what it is that I am selling to people. Part of the problem I think is that people dont want to commit to the nebulous idea of "munny to make munaro gudder". They will want specifics. They will want to know what feature it is that you will be developing with their funds. The price to develop that feature. And given the budget and the number, availability, and proficency of the staff working on delivering said feature, a time table for completion.

Granted i understand that there are limitations to what you can know. But neither can people be expected to go into this blind. Do your best, and give us a specific price and specific features, but feel free to leave yourselves a realistically generous range for time of completion. People will be understanding and they will know that you cant possibly know exactly how quickly a new feature will be able to be developed.

Perhaps this is a problem with the approach. Most of the things you say you "need to know" are largely unknowable (as you acknowledge to some extent).

Crowdfunding works really well when you are going to get some device, trinket, etc. in return. R&D on an very immature technology in a rapidly changing environment is a different animal.

You just have to try to strike the right balance I think. Do the best you can. Price: between 1 and 1 million dollars, date: between now and the the year 3000, isnt going to cut it. But obviously you cant say april 23 at 3:25 pm for $33,214.47 either. Find the best tradeoff that is going to work best for the needs of the devs but also for the needs of the contributors. Talk it over with the other devs and come back to me when you come up with something. That is assuming that you decide that you are interested in the crowdfunding route.

[smooth]

How are the devs going to impose something on the miners? I dont think you understand how crypto works. No one has to mine or transact on any fork that they dont want to mine or transact on.

As for all of the stuff about damage to the reputation. yea thats totally true and i mentioned it before. but its only true because of wrongheaded thinking. thinking that im trying to mitigate.

We are trying to reach consensus here. If devs propose this and miners refuse, devs lose credibility.

I'm okay with that.

Remember, the market for miners is completely open. If you guys don't like the way the miners vote, you can start mining yourselves, and vote differently, or you can shift your hash rate to different pools with different voting policies. We likely wouldn't accept a negative miner vote immediately and just give up, so if the community really wanted to influence the vote in a different direction, it could.

If ultimately the community votes (or votes by default) for no funding then the will of the community is pretty clear, and will proceed from there, continuing as a (slow and underfunded) volunteer project, or considering other monetization strategies that don't necessarily require direct community buy in, or as you say, dropping the project. Though everything ultimately requires community buy in because the community can walk away too, or fork the code and do it their way instead.

[smooth]

You just have to try to strike the right balance I think. Do the best you can. Price: between 1 and 1 million dollars, date: between now and the the year 3000, isnt going to cut it. But obviously you cant say april 23 at 3:25 pm for $33,214.47 either. Find the best tradeoff that is going to work best for the needs of the devs but also for the needs of the contributors. Talk it over with the other devs and come back to me when you come up with something. That is assuming that you decide that you are interested in the crowdfunding route.

I'm interested in the crowdfunding route. Fluffypony posted some rough estimates earlier. Perhaps he can elaborate on those when he comes online.

If it turns into a formal or semi-formal grant proposal writing exercise, then we are likely not going to be interested, at least without crowd-funding or other funding to write the grant proposals.

[Ultros]

I never thought I would ever think a tax could be the best solution to a problem, but that 1% seems fair and logical considering the needs. (Note: I'm a pretty big XMR miner myself.)

[smooth]

I never thought I would ever think a tax could be the best solution to a problem, but that 1% seems fair and logical considering the needs. (Note: I'm a pretty big XMR miner myself.)

I think Anon136 has a point, it isn't really a tax, it is a price for a product (sort of), or a continuing service (attention from the developer team) if you prefer to look at it that way. If you don't like the product, you can always use another one. It isn't as if there is a lack of choice of cryptocoins (1000+ and cointing) or even cryptocoins based on CN technology (10 or so and counting, including one that has been abandoned and you can adopt yourself for nothing if you want it).