I apologize, the East-Asia region is currently on Spring festival holidays, and Wuhan has been experiencing a severe coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak, we have spent a lot of time tracking this epidemic and purchasing medical supplies, as the result, I could not respond to your discussion in a timely manner and I apologize once again.
Firstly, there is a culture misunderstanding in communication, "No debate" does not mean : "I refuse to discuss with you" or "I do not accept your opinion", but rather "let us stop debating and give it a try, if the test turns out positive, we continue, otherwise we stop".
As I answered in the AMA, many parts of the donation plan have not been fixed but are under discussion. Here are some fruit of the recent discussion: my views are as the following (I need to exchange ideas with other mining pools):
1、Donate mechanism
Let's start with the final step: the miners will donate directly to the development projects. The miners will directly send part of their coinbase to the projects they wants to donate, for example, miner X can direct n% of his coinbase to address of the project A, direct m% of his coinbase to the address of the project B.
The benefit of this approach would be the removal of the companies--the donation receipients may lead to the centralization. Indeed, I still recommend setting up one (or various) foundation(s), we may refer to the ETH foundation that I think they are working well. If the miner does not know to which project to donate, he can donate to the foundation, or direct to each project by refering to the foundation's fund allocation ratio.
2、Fundation will run for a pilot period
Before the donation plan kicks off, the BCH Miner Fund will be established and be ready to accept the donations from miners, as well as from other non-miner individuals and corporations. The Foundation will run for a pilot period to show the effect to the community, while the decision-making power of the Foundation will be determinated by the votes of donors in proportion to their donated funds.
Therefore, a sound competition mechanism has been established, all the projects (including more than one foundation) must work hard, ensure the full public disclosure and transparency of their business finance, in order to earn more support and donation from the community(miners and non-miners).
3、No donation option
What if some miners believe that none of these projects are good, or they don't have willingness to donate, or some projects don't accept donations? To avoid the tragedy of the commons, they has the right to send this part of coinbase to BCH Black Hole address to destroy these coins -- this is in fact a donation to all BCH holders.
4、Decide the donation approach
One of reasons for the objection of the previous plan was that many people thought that plan was the secret decision without public discussion. Hence, I hope that the plan could start in another way -- Hashrate voting. Some people may argue that miners do not have the right to vote on the matters that concern the whole community, but I think that the miners have at least the right to vote on how to spend their coinbase production.
I wish a 3-month miners vote could be conducted and completed (miners can use bmp.virtualpool.com to vote), if 2/3 of the hashpower votes are in favor of the donation plan, then I hope that developers can include the donation plan (sending to project or sending to BCH Black Hole address) as part of the protocal upgrade in May 2020, if there is not enough time, then include the plan in the protocal upgrade in November 2020. This funding will last for 6 months until next upgrade.
5、How to vote through the plan
Certainly some people may doubt that how the one third of the hashpower get a two-third majority vote? It is not difficult, it depends on how many people are willing to pay a price for BCH.
At present, there are a lot of anonymous BCH miners whose hashpower sometimes account for half of the total network, however most of these anonymous miners actually come form the Poolin (Poolin.com), they mine BCH only when its profit is higher. Therefore, as long as we mine at a loss and control the BCH mining profit slightly lower than BTC mining profit, those anonymous miners who thinks of nothing but making money will not mine BCH.
6、What will I do
I personally hold 3500 P hashpower, and I can also influence almost 10,000P hashpower, so that the total hashpower amount will be sufficient. In consideration of that BCH mining may sometimes loss money, and I am one of the shareholders of BTC.TOP mining pool, I can not ask the company to loss money as I wish. As a result, I will allocate my personal hashpower to a new mining pool (D.TOP), please do not suprise when you see this new mining pool appears and accounts for a higher percentage : )
In addition, if there is a next vote, I will vote against the donation to ensure that the donation will stop at the next version 6 months after the donation. Further development will be decided by the community.
7、Miners' donation ratio
The 12.5% is the opinion of other mining pools. From my prospective, this ratio is too high, considering the incoming bull market in 2020-2021/22, the BCH price will rise sharply. Therefore, I believe by the middle or the end of 2020, the 2-3% of the donation ratio is sufficient, the 1% probably be sufficient in 2021.
8、Welcome to vote and donate
I hope all miners who care the long-term development of BCH to participate in the voting, only those votes having cost (the BCH mining profit is slightly lower that the BTC mining during the vote) will be truely valid. If the final result is negative, I'd be happy to accept.
9、Why BCH needs miners donation plan
It's very simple, each project developed by BCH requires funds, and the donations from the BCH companies are not enough which may cause the slow development of BCH. For example, the ABC mainly relies on donations from a few companies, and these companies wish that the BCH projects could be sustainable and they intend to gradually reduce the funding.
A decentralized community, cannot rely on centralized companies' donation for a long time, the Blockstream and Core are the best counter-example. If the BCH can sucessfully realize the decentralized donation, permitting the decentralized miners to donate different development teams according to their wish, then the BCH will be ahead of other coins.
10. I am glad to see that everbody makes comments on the donation plan
I have been reading everyone's opinion, for instance, this article was publiched on read.cash(rather than on medium.com). I hold a lot of BCH, and I hope the future of BCH is better.
Above is my statement for my opinion, there are many things that need to be discussed by the community. Again, thanks to all of you for reading and sharing opinions : )
Thank you for re-opening and continuing the dialogue. I believe there is a lot to be gained by exchange.
Please give serious opportunity for large holders to present their crowdfunding solution based on Dominant Assurance Contract which they are working on. It has a very good chance to establish an open development funding model that is voluntary and would result in YOU having more money to invest into stronger mining.
If the compulsory donation/burning plan goes ahead, it will have a detrimental effect on the voluntary initiatives that might otherwise grow solid roots.
Now to your article - I will tell you on what points I differ, philosophically, and why I think we differ there, so that maybe we can come closer.
Yes, but I think you mean every project that demonstrates real performance or potential. Because in general, no, not every project can receive funding. Otherwise the funding would never be enough even while not reaching our roadmap.
Projects (companies) which do not perform the work right MUST improve or fail so that everyone can learn from the mistakes. The sector which does this extremely badly is banking, where failure is often subsidized by the taxpayer. Let us never follow this example.
To best allocate funds, the spending decisions should be made by more independent actors/observers, not fewer. You already propose the good idea of multiple foundations being better than one.
The missing ingredient now is the voluntary donation aspect.
The most sustainable model is payment in return for value received. I believe holders have taken your earlier proposal as a wake-up call that there is a serious need to invest in development. And that they realize they would be able to gain the most by investing in a risk-reduced way to make sure the roadmap is fulfilled.
Under the proposed plan, it is an obligation, not a right. This would be a huge difference and economic principle change to Bitcoin Cash. This is the problem I and some other have with the proposal. We are not comforted by promises that this will change after some months, because we are realistic that development needs to go on after it - so the funding cannot just stop.