The flipstarter for my proposed project is live.
I dont think I can write it better than the proposal on Flipstarter so I will copy it again below
What is Build.Cash?
Bitcoin Cash is Thriving. There is so much happening in the BCH community. There are more than 80 meet-ups happening all over the world. There are thousands of online and brick and mortar stores accepting Bitcoin Cash. There are more developers and projects being worked on than ever before. In fact there are so many projects being developed it has become difficult to find information about them. It is nearly impossible to keep track of what is being built and who is building what.
If I were to ask you what is the best place to find a BCH wallet where would you look? If I asked you what BCH privacy projects are being developed and where can I find them, what would you say?
There has been a problem sharing and compiling information. I want to end that problem.
The Inspiration
Last Fall while co-organizing the Devcon 5 Osaka BCH/ETH after party I was faced with the challenge of securing sponsorship. I found it quite difficult to track down information about all the various projects I wanted to connect with.
I knew it was a fantastic opportunity to pull our two communities together. I was confident that some BCH centered businesses would appreciate the opportunity to reach out to the Ethereum community.
Who do I contact?
Should I send the project a DM on twitter?
Should I try to figure out who the lead developer is first?
But how does one even find them to begin with?
I found myself looking for a list of projects. I found a few resources that listed things but many were poorly maintained, outdated and extremely limited in scope. Bitcoin.com is probably the best source of information about BCH for new people. There is a "getting started" and a "news" section as well as an exchange and whole slew of tools and other resources. But it rightfully makes no effort to maintain a list of projects and people working on BCH. Bitcoin Cash Wallets is great for comparing wallets. However it is limited to only that. There is also"Awesome Bitcoin Cash"on github. Coin Dance (cash.coin.dance specifically) is getting closer to what I was looking for and is fantastic. But still not quite comprehensive enough. I thought to myself that someone should make a directory to make it easier to find and share information and news about what is developed and being developed. There is clearly a need for such a thing and someone should build it. Someone should pull together all that information. Someone should make sure it stays up to date as well. Someone should attempt to make it easier for projects to get funding as well.
"Someone"
I see a larger need, I have had that need myself and I am going to make it happen.
Who am I and why should you trust me to make this happen?
I got into the space in 2011 when you could still mine with GPUs. I have been running a successful online business for 15 years, so Bitcoin was a very welcome fit. I am currently the Osaka BCH meetup co-organizer. Before covid-19 we were having bi-weekly meet-ups here. I also co-host and sometimes moderate the Japan Virtual Meetup
I am really proud to say that I co-organized the Devcon 5 Osaka BCH/ETH after party which was a great success and I think helped form a bridge between our 2 communities. I also help out with whatever else I can when asked including helping the former BCF with logistics and sent shirts and stickers etc to meetup groups all over the world. I have also helped out the new Bitcoin Cash Network Discussions group and Satoshi's Angel's a bit.
I do not want to bore you with my Bitcoin history, but if anyone is curious I wrote a more detailed history that you can read HERE.
Bitcoin Cash is one of the most decentralized if not the most decentralized cryptocurrency in the world. This is a great thing. However it is not all great. For better or worse, we do not have the benefit of a "foundation" to direct projects. We have no crowdsale or token sale. We have no premine. We have no Blockstream and V.C. nor nchain to direct or strangle things as they see fit.
Many times I have been talking to developers and heard similar ideas and found that many people are working on similar but separate projects. Instead of reinventing the wheel, teaming up and sharing ideas could hopefully speed things up and not waste time and scarce resources.
So what can I do to help?
At the most basic level I hope to create a sort of directory or "white pages" for projects. A place to lookup projects by name, type, most recently updated or by who is working on them. A sort of BCH-wiki that also allows people to receive non-custodial donations to their projects by posting a verified BCH address.
The mission of Build.Cash is to be a well curated and constantly updated resource for all people. A hub of information about all projects in the space. People looking for a specific kind of product like wallets will be able to find all that are available and see how recently they have been updated. People looking for games, gambling sites, full nodes, hardware, financial products and everything else that has a BCH focus, sorted in multiple ways.
Perhaps you are a developer looking for a designer. You will be able to search for people based on their abilities and see what other projects they have worked on. People with projects under their belt will also be able to make personal profiles with their skills and have them linked to the projects they previously worked on.
Build.Cashwill be a somewhat basic website. A collection of project pages with ability for people to submit new projects to be listed as well as editing for people with established project pages. The main challenge will be having someone make sure the information is as accurate as possible and to reach out to projects at regular intervals to get updates. It will require a significant amount of time to do so. Which is why I am seeking funding for this project.
Goals Brief
- Continued regular communication/updates with/from project leads.
- Increase communication and sharing of information across the space.
- Help projects find funding.
- Help projects find team members.
- International facilitation by listing the projects in several languages.
Who Are Our Target Users?
- People trying to find a particular type of project
- Projects who need team members
- People looking for projects to work on
Site Overview
The best way is probably to see it in action. A crude demo site I made is up and running now at Build.Cash . You can see the basic function of what I hope to do. However there is no active database at the moment so no one can sign up to add their own project. There is only one example project page up and running at the moment and that is the project page for what you are reading right now.
If you do not want to click around I will provide a brief overview.
The home page itself is pretty self explanatory. The current default view is that of selectable categories. You see categories listed alphabetically by default.
The live version will have other sorting options such as "Featured" and "Recently Updated" and "Popular". At the moment though we only have one project.
There is also the "People" category at the top. This will allow you to search for individuals and see what projects they have worked on.
Individual project pages will list all the things you come to expect including a description of the project as well as the official locations of their project and social media accounts. Projects will have the option to submit a verified BCH address to receive non-custodial donations directly. Recent project news will also be listed prominently on each page. Projects that we have not been able to get updates from in a certain amount of time (6 months or a year perhaps) will be marked as defunct.
Only projects that are predominantly BCH focused will be listed. We do not intend to compete with map.bitcoin.com and list physical merchants. This is about projects built on/with BCH. We will however also have a resources section for anyone who wants logos etc.
Donors FAQ
1. How Would You Describe Your Project?
An easy to use website where people can quickly find the most important and up to date info about every project developed or being developed in the BCH space.
2. What Are Your Goals and Objectives?
The goal is to become a hub of information that many/all major projects utilize. This will be clear when/if major projects are eager to be listed and are keen to update their projects.
3. Who Will Benefit From Your Project?
Hopefully everyone in the space indirectly. People needing basic information as well as anyone who wants to help or needs help with a project will see the most benefit.
4. Will You Be Creating Any Products?
Just a website/database. Maybe merchandise (t-shirts and stickers etc) to ease dependence on donors in the future.
5. Will You Be Providing Any Services?
Ideally projects will be keen to update their own pages. However if there is no update for a certain amount of time, our team will reach out. This will be a service of more interest for "searchers" than "listers". Dead/unreachable projects will be labeled as defunct. There will be a somewhat uphill chicken and egg battle. I think when people see the value in having their projects listed and up to date they may take the effort to do so themselves. However if there are no projects listed, no one will come look. So we have to populate the site ourselves first in order to generate that interest.
6. What Methods Will You Use?
At first I will be trying to get some momentum leveraging contacts I know. I will also pre-fill in as much detail for major projects as possible to inspire use and take less dev time. Hopefully projects will come to see the benefit of the site itself and make efforts to keep their own listings up to date.
7. What Kind of Schedule Do You Anticipate?
Ideally, after the first year, the site itself will eventually be mostly user input driven. However checking the validity of projects and communicating with devs will clearly take some amount of time. For major projects I would expect to try to touch base with them on a regular schedule. Perhaps monthly. For lesser projects perhaps every six months depending on the scope.
8. Will You Need Any Partners or Collaborators?
Yes. There are many parts of this project that I am not skilled enough to implement. Specifically the backend of the website is beyond my skillset. Volunteers would also be welcome. There are a lot of other fantastic projects and people making amazing things. I would love to collaborate with many of them in the future. However I feel it is important to get the foundation of Build.Cash solid before we stretch beyond the main purpose of the project.
9. Will You Need Specific Information or Advice?
I will need the expertise of people who are more capable than myself for sure. I have already contacted and gotten an estimate from a web developer, Corentin Mercier, to develop the nuts and bolts of the site itself.
10. Will You Need Special Systems or Equipment?
No, nothing out of the norm for this kind of a website.
11. Will You Need to Use Special Tools or Templates?
No, nothing out of the norm for this kind of a website.
12. How Will You Evaluate Project Success?
Success will be easy to see. When the project has reached the level that it is a well used resource and a "go to" place where people go to get information about all projects in the BCH space.
13. Who Needs to Review and Approve Decisions?
The project director is me Cheap Lightning at first I will be the only paid staff and responsible for everything . However as part of incorporation as an NPO in Japan there will be two other voting members; @yumenoiwasaki and @emergent_reasons who will not be receiving compensation. The articles of incorporation go into quite a bit of detail and I will publish both the drafts and final versions on read.cash shortly. All financial decisions will be made by me except one, I will not be able to give myself a raise as per Japanese law. This would need to be approved by the entire board.
14. How Might Your Project Evolve over Time?
At the moment I am planning on making the project in 4 phases:
Phase 1 FLIPSTARTER:
Flipstarter campaign.
Funds will be used to establish the 一般社団法人 (Ippan shadan hojin or general incorporated association), a non profit in Japan.
This includes the lawyer's fees (documentation, surrogation, consulting and government fees). The initial funds will also pay for the development of the website itself. The contracting of a back/front end developer as well as a designer. For this work we have gotten a quote from Corentin Mercier (bitcoincash.org, bitcoinbch.com etc) and if this Flipstarter is funded will contract the development work to him. Importantly it will also provide a one full year base salary for 1 staff member to do ALL the other work, the data entry of and tracking of all the various people and projects developed and in development. The management of the project. The compiling and verifying of all relevant information will take an enormous amount of time and organization at first.
Phase 2:
When our Flipstarter is completed and phase 1 is shown to have been a success, and traction has been made in the BCH community Phase 2 will begin. At this time we may run another flipstarter but that will depend on the state of the market and our success after 6-12 months. Phase 2 is going to be about community building. Ideally we hope to be able to get the entire site translated into Japanese and Chinese to make further inroads to both of these extremely important and somewhat isolated communities. Further language translations may also be possible. However at first having the basic interface and pages translated into Japanese and Chinese will at the very least allow ease of access for people exploring the possibilities of BCH. Integrating flipstarter as an easy to deploy fundraising option will also be a stretch goal. I am aware of some other teams working on flipstarter as a platform and may attempt to integrate or collaborate in the future.
Phase 3:
Phase 3 will be about expansion. By this point we will begin to look at hiring more staff. If possible and if needed full time translators. Work on income generation streams such as advertising/highlighting of BCH projects as well as perhaps a line of "Build.Cash" merchandise. We hope to at some point be self sufficient and not have to rely solely on donations for administrative costs. In the future we may attempt to sell merchandise (t-shirts stickers etc) and perhaps even have advertisements. Referral links to all available sources will be used (bitcoin.com purse.io etc). As a non profit, we will be required by law to be fully transparent with all income and expenditures.
I wish to reiterate this does not mean we turn into a for-profit business. It means only that we hope to have sources of income other than donations in order to grow our team and services. We will remain fully transparent.
Phase 4:
Exploration of ways to gamify and expand adoption efforts worldwide. Google has had great success with their efforts to crowd source information for google maps using the gamification of data input. I believe that a key component of spreading BCH adoption is to make it fun, challenging and also taking a cue from Satoshi's greatest idea – incentivize greed to help make the world a better place. I have some lofty goals as to how we can go about doing that. But at the moment I feel a lot of the foundation needs to be laid first. Build.Cash is the first step in laying that foundation.
15. Who Will Be Responsible for What?
At first, I will be responsible for almost everything. I will also need to make sure the info given to me by users is as accurate as possible and need to be the one to verify that the people I am talking to are indeed who they say they are. I will also be required to write the descriptions or at least edit the information available about the projects. Some of these things like Cash Fusion can get extremely technical. Writing a description that is easy enough for a layperson to understand will also be required.
Keeping track of who has been contacted and when will require a fair amount of organization. A constant process of adding new projects and people while at the same time keeping previous pages up to date will dominate my time.
16. What Risks Should You Plan to Manage?
There is always going to be spam and scammers. Someone pretending to be Roger will probably happen on a weekly basis. People setting up a fake project page in an effort to solicit donations will certainly occur. Stressing that none of the funds go through/to me or are held in escrow or anything similar is a must. Vigilance of weeding out bad apples will probably grow quite quickly.
To avoid the above problems we will be sure to get cryptographic proof or other very hard to fake proof of ownership of domains and projects etc.
17. What Open Issues Remain?
My biggest challenge at the moment is getting a working prototype up and running. If people can see how it is to be used they may spark some interest. Getting all the pieces together and working will probably require help. Throwing together a basic prototype for making a project page is not hard. Getting to to work the way I want and reading the blockchain is a different story. My attempts to do so have led me to conclude that the results would be much better if I simply contract a professional.
Initial funding and start up costs.
The bare minimum initial funding to get the site up and running is going to be about
22 BCH ($6000 USD approx). This would pay for the web development as well as the set up costs as an NPO in Japan. 22 BCH would not however pay for any work being done beyond that and would be dependent upon volunteer efforts to stay up to date and relevant. If project leaders are inspired to keep their own project pages up to date this may work. I fear however that without an initial push of effort to get major projects listed ourselves the site will find limited use. The chicken and egg problem. No one uses a site with no info. No one enters info into a site that no one uses. This is why I think a dedicated builder is essential to the success of the project.
My estimated cost for the completion of phase one is approx 175 BCH ($50,000 US approx).
1 Year full time staff to do all the above minus webdev: $40000
Accounting and Incidentals: $4575
NPO registration and startup fees: $2700
Web development: $2150
Front End Design: $200
Flipstarter setup: $150
Domain (secured already): $130
Hosting (annual): $95
Total: $50,000
The flipstarter campaign is for Phase One, a full year of funding of full time work on the project. If the flipstarter fails I will attempt a second one minus the major cost of an annual salary and still actually set up the site/NPO. The project will go forward but it will be very limited in its growth potential and slow as I would have to work on it in my very limited free time.
Commitments to the community
- As a registered NPO in Japan we will be required by law to operate with full transparency.
- All funds donated will be held 50/50 in both BCH and stable coins.
- Any donations received will be to the address: [qzckpuqaku2qlrk2euqj6jwgtv87h02a0c0sasf5js
- When expenditures are needed, business/people that accept BCH will be given priority.
- All current and future staff will be encouraged to accept all or part of their salaries in BCH.
- Build.Cash will never collect a fee for listing a project. We will also never handle donations and therefore will never take a cut.
As a token of appreciation and participation, I will mint a Build.Cash founder SLP token and distribute 1 to each donor who pledges regardless of value. It will have no monetary or utility value. It will be a digital souvenir that you can hold in your wallet forever proving that you helped to build something positive.
If you are interested in making a donation but do not want to use flipstarter, please feel free to donate directly to: bitcoincash:qzckpuqaku2qlrk2euqj6jwgtv87h02a0c0sasf5js
Thank you for taking the time to read and consider my proposal. With your help we can build better cash for the world together.
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