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

[Anon136]

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.

Im pretty sure i made better arguments than "its wrong". Namely they consisted of the fact that anyone who wants can mine any fork they want any time they want for any reason they want. Everyone who likes the 1% fee idea can mine that fork, anyone who doesnt can mine a fork that is not like that. This whole idea of using words like forced or taxed in this context is wrong-headed. Its not condescending to point out wrong-headed thinking when thinking is wrong-headed.

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.

I dont think it does. Unless walmart is forcing you to use the currency that they issue. But again no one is forcing anyone to mine on any particular fork so that analogy falls apart there.

You conflate the dev team with a company again.

Im not conflating the dev team with a company. Im suggesting that they, atleast in some aspects, become like one. And whats wrong with that? Companies make most of the most wonderful things in our lives.

[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.)

I think Anon136 has a point, it isn't really a tax, it is a price for a product (sort of). 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).

Fair enough, even if that's probably still a tax in the sense it's automatically deducted from your potential gain. Let's say it's a mix of both. Anyway I'd pay it. It's a no-brainer for me. You guys need money, you spent a lot of time trying the voluntary approach, it didn't work well, now you're completely open about it. I should have donated more (just paid via the pool) but I didn't know you guys were that desperate. To me that's another proof of your honesty, the fundamental health of this project, and another incentive to make it prosper.

[Anon136]

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.

Well talk it over amongst yourselves and if you decide that you are interested in using my escrow service to this end, you know how to find me .

For now though im off to bed. Gnight folks.

[Anon136]

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). 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).

Fair enough, even if that's probably still a tax in the sense it's automatically deducted from your potential gain. Let's say it's a mix of both. Anyway I'd pay it. It's a no-brainer for me. You guys need money, you spent a lot of time trying the voluntary approach, it didn't work well, now you're completely open about it. I should have donated more (just paid via the pool) but I didn't know you guys were that desperate. To me that's another proof of your honesty, the fundamental health of this project, and another incentive to make it prosper.

Even i used the word tax in sense of automatic deduction in an earlier post. If someone wants to find it and link to it they can use it to crucify me.

[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). 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).

Fair enough, even if that's probably still a tax in the sense it's automatically deducted from your potential gain. Let's say it's a mix of both. Anyway I'd pay it. It's a no-brainer for me. You guys need money, you spent a lot of time trying the voluntary approach, it didn't work well, now you're completely open about it, I can't complain. I should have donated more (just paid via the pool) but I didn't know you guys were that desperate. To me that's another proof of your honesty, the fundamental health of this project, and another incentive to make it prosper.

Desperate is not the word I would use right now, but I would say forward looking and candid. No one has threatened to quit yet. No urgent work that needed to get done to respond to attacks for example, didn't get done. We simply gave up a lot of sleep for it, and made it happen. Realistically, and I'm not even necessarily speaking for myself here, it is likely that willingness to do that will decline if it doesn't seem the project is really going anywhere. You only get so much of a honeymoon period.

And I said we aren't necessarily opposed to continuing the volunteer approach, but with that -- if we are going to be realistic about things -- it is likely progress will continue to be slow (and get slower if, as I expect, enthusiasm for volunteering on a slow-moving underfunded project wanes). Speaking 100% as my personal opinion here, that seems like a bad idea in a fast moving competitive environment.

[xulescu]

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).

That logic doesn't work. You don't "develop" a product (i.e. the code), because if that was correct then I could just merge your changes into CryptoNoteX and derive the same benefit. That is clearly not the case as the distribution of coins is at least as important as the code (otherwise anyone could clone Bitcoin1-2-3-10 and they would be fungible with the original). You develop money, and an economy. Not a product, and not a service.

In this sense you are the central bankers (with limited powers).

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.

This is not what I meant. My point is that the vote is not credible.

Suppose miners voted against, then they would damage your reputation and Monero. Thus, even if they might not agree to the screw-turn, the alternative is worse (i.e. why don't people rebel against inflation all the time? why do people just swallow injustices? because the alternative is often worse -- boiling frogs, slippery slopes, tragedies of the common and all that).

From this argument, a positive miners' vote would not indicate miners' approval, and the validity of the vote is under question.

Alternatively, suppose miners voted for and the motion passed smoothly (no pun intended). Then, even if this was indeed optimal, there would be suspicion of collusion between devs and miners, not unlike that between the corporations and the governments of the world. Monero's reputation, as well as the devs', would be damaged again.

From this argument, a negative miners' vote would not indicate miners' disapproval, and the validity of the vote is under question.

This is what I mean by misaligned incentives. No matter the outcome, it will not convince those who "lose" that their rationalization is incorrect and that Monero has not been corrupted by (a) greedy devs (b) greedy devs and miners colluding. From a reputation/credibility point of view, it's a lose-lose scenario unless transparency can counter both options (a) and (b) above.



We don't want grant proposals, we want transparency and accountability. We don't want to continue the "voluntarist" approach, in which you place a hat and start playing the instruments. We want to participate in a crowdfunding platform, which has been promised to us. We want to be able to back tasks and to observe how and what others back. But to do this, we simply need a list of SOME tasks in just marginally finer grain and more detail than what fluffypony already posted.

1. task id/name/description
2. estimated cost interval (XMR)
3. estimated time interval (weeks?)
4. estimated urgency
5. estimated impact

It probably takes you less than half an hour to compile this. But the non-developers among us need to understand more to throw our cash. Like aminorex said, again, "telling me to <<trust you>> does not inspire confidence" (paraphrasing).

We just want your best first guess. Again, just marginally finer grain and more detail than what fluffypony already posted. And if it doesn't work and no other solution seems workable, then it's time for the manual override.

[smooth]

We want to participate in a crowdfunding platform, which has been promised to us.

The crowdfunding "platform" is among the many pie-in-the-sky development ideas that don't get done very quickly because we are fighting fires with limited resources.

I'm open to the suggestion that it can be temporarily replaced with a google docs spreadsheet or something. Perhaps you would like to create one.

It probably takes you less than half an hour to compile this. But the non-programmers among us need to understand more to throw our cash. Like aminorex said, again, "telling me to <<trust you>> does not inspire confidence" (paraphrasing).

At this stage of development, that's basically what it is. In the embryonic stages, this is not an economy and we are not central bankers. It is just an open source project competing with 1000+ other such projects, with developers setting direction toward some goals in whom you are vesting a level of trust as a user and project supporter. If that trust includes funding -- by whatever method -- then more will get done. If it does't then, some will still get done, but much more slowly.

[Ultros]

We want to participate in a crowdfunding platform, which has been promised to us.

The crowdfunding "platform" is among the many pie-in-the-sky development ideas that don't get done very quickly because we are fighting fires with limited resources.

I'm open to the suggestion that it can be temporarily replaced with a google docs spreadsheet or something. Perhaps you would like to create one.

It probably takes you less than half an hour to compile this. But the non-programmers among us need to understand more to throw our cash. Like aminorex said, again, "telling me to <<trust you>> does not inspire confidence" (paraphrasing).

At this stage of development, that's basically what it is. In the embryonic stages, this is not an economy and we are not central bankers. It is just an open source project competing with 1000+ other such projects, with developers setting direction toward some goals in whom you are vesting a level of trust as a user and project supporter. If that trust includes funding -- by whatever method -- then more will get done. If it does't then, some will still get done, but much more slowly.

As said, just try your best to give us a basic idea. Even vague and incomplete. Even for a start. That's always better than nothing. Most crowd-funding project end up needing much more money than expected anyway.

Also consider the possibility of a virtuous cycle. In any crowdfunded project, the more you work and improve openly your product, the more people believe in it and want to pay for your work. As of now a lot of non-tech savvy people see XMR as a clone without much dedicated work behind, but as soon as you release a GUI (for example) some dudes will start to think it is something unique. What I'm saying is we're probably in the most critical phase.

[xulescu]

We want to participate in a crowdfunding platform, which has been promised to us.

The crowdfunding "platform" is among the many pie-in-the-sky development ideas that don't get done very quickly because we are fighting fires with limited resources.

I'm open to the suggestion that it can be temporarily replaced with a google docs spreadsheet or something. Perhaps you would like to create one.

But smooth, look how absurd this discussion has become. The platform we would like IS the spreadsheet and an escrow. We have the escrow. I gave you the column headers I desire and find reasonable. I told you how many rows I would like in the spreadsheet, as a rough order-of-magnitude measure. Heck, it doesn't have to be a spreadsheet, just a forum post with tabs is enough. Is it that much of an effort to populate the fields? I can throw in 10 XMR to help grease it up. Is the project really not more modular in tasks than fluffypony's post? Surely there are more dev branches than that!

[xulescu]

@smooth, @ultros,

Also consider that any price appreciation means we can better support you in the future. We need to get you a good chunk NOW and get the ball started. We don't need to decide on milions in the future. At least not now.

[smooth]

Is it that much of an effort to populate the fields?

Of course not.

Is the project really not more modular in tasks than fluffypony's post? Surely there are more dev branches than that!

I thought fluffypony's post was pretty modular. Not all of the items though. But let's take these two:

- Embedded DB solution/implementation - 6 man weeks is a pretty solid guess, so I'll leave the $14 500
- Finished (official) GUI - assuming all the other pieces are in place, then dEBRUYNE is correct - anything from $15k - $20k.

Are those chunk sizes you think are reasonable for crowd funding, or do you want to crowd fund daily or weekly subtasks? Because I think that is pretty crazy.

[generalizethis]

University funding?
Transaction %?
Crowd funding?
Tax?
Pan handle?
Feed the Devs benefit?

[smooth]

@smooth, @ultros,

Also consider that any price appreciation means we can better support you in the future. We need to get you a good chunk NOW and get the ball started. We don't need to decide on milions in the future. At least not now.

Totally agree, but at the same time, I'm not 100% behind an approach that has us begging for funding on a repetitive and ongoing basis. It is not something that any useful team of devs will be good at or find interesting enough to want to continue doing again and again. People with those skills and dispositions go and join real charities and stuff.
 

[xulescu]

@smooth, @ultros,

Also consider that any price appreciation means we can better support you in the future. We need to get you a good chunk NOW and get the ball started. We don't need to decide on milions in the future. At least not now.

Totally agree, but at the same time, I'm not 100% behind and idea that has us begging for funding on a repetitive and ongoing basis. It is not something that any useful team of devs will be good at or find interesting enough to want to continue doing again and again. People with those skills and dispositions go and join real charities and stuff.
 

But it's not begging. It's just filling a row for each task. It is an anticipated bill, if you prefer. Pretend you're a contractor and give an estimate for each task. Given the problem at hand, we're only looking for loose numbers.

I don't think once a week is unreasonable. You could update the table every Missive under the dev diary or as a "finance diary". It shouldn't take more than ten minutes. You don't handle the collection of the funds either since Anon136 offered to be the escrow.

But asking for funds is totally the way to get funds. In startups and FOSS alike, until the project gets a/some large enough backer/s.

Again, we don't want PowerPoints or grant proposals or anything like that. Just more transparency and accountability on the progress of the various branches of development that take place. And all this in the simplest, fastest and most minimalist data format that maintains easy readability. I believe you can raise enough now for a buffer and that monerists are going to read the Missives and vote on branches with their cash.

[smooth]

@smooth, @ultros,

Also consider that any price appreciation means we can better support you in the future. We need to get you a good chunk NOW and get the ball started. We don't need to decide on milions in the future. At least not now.

Totally agree, but at the same time, I'm not 100% behind and idea that has us begging for funding on a repetitive and ongoing basis. It is not something that any useful team of devs will be good at or find interesting enough to want to continue doing again and again. People with those skills and dispositions go and join real charities and stuff.
 

But it's not begging. It's just filling a row for each task. It is an anticipated bill, if you prefer. Pretend you're a contractor and give an estimate for each task. Given the problem at hand, we're only looking for loose numbers.

I wasn't talking about that necessarily. I have no problem with your proposed structure, my only concern is with the level of participation. If the crowd funding works well, with a consistently high level of participation, then the problem is solved. If it doesn't, then we're not likely to want to beg for every line item to try to drum up participation. So we will see. 

Also, there is still a need for general funds to cover infrastructure, pay unexpected expenses, pay for certain items that can't be disclosed until after the fact for various reasons, etc. Donations haven't really even been enough to cover that. Maybe T-shirt sales will do the trick. I'm doubtful.

[Ultros]

Just keep the tax idea on the side and try most other form of financing before so you can say, at the end, that you're doing it because it's the only way.

In fact it works even without trying anything else before... Um. Believe me, I'm French. I know what I'm talking about.

Yeah yeah I know. Ultros, just shut up and go buy a T-shirt. I'll do that actually. I like the black one.

[smooth]

Just keep the tax idea on the side and try most other form of financing before so you can say, at the end, that you're doing it because it's the only way.

That's certainly reasonable, though I doubt we will give each approach six months. That's not realistic and contrary to the whole idea that we need more funding to move faster.

[Ultros]

Well I trust you to give it a try in a realistic time-frame. A crowd-funding takes one month top (well it takes more if it works well but in 2 weeks you usually get a very good idea of the potential gain).

And well the MEW might come up with better ideas and methods, and funds. I don't know.

[smooth]

Well I trust you to give it a try in a realistic time-frame. A crowd-funding takes one month top (well it takes more if it works well but in 2 weeks you usually get a very good idea of the potential gain).

Certainly reasonable.

And well the MEW might come up with better ideas and methods, and funds. I don't know.

Open to ideas from any source. The MEW is planning to make its own direct donations but the amounts seem not likely to be sufficient (short term, if the group and coin both really catch on anything is possible). Of course as you say there may be other funding ideas or initiatives from that group.

[xulescu]

It seems we have consensus?