@molecular
Donations of a fish - on voluntary development funding.
This doesn't come easy for me, but after pondering for quite a while, I decided to publish my past donations to BCH projects. So here is a (incomplete) list:
(sorry they're not in chronological order because they come from different wallets and I had to redact names of individuals and also some unrelated donations (I filtered for "donation")) Total: 59 BCH worth 22,975 USD at the respective times of donation. Why I am publishing this? I think publishing this data can open some eyes and maybe even mobilize some people into action who have been asleep. What's the story? A couple of days back I got woken up by an article on read.cash (my new home ❤️): Risk for Bitcoin Cash = UP (@MarcDeMesel) https://read.cash/@MarcDeMesel/risk-for-bitcoin-cash-up-1efa3dbb What the actual FUCK? A plan to forcibly funnel a part of **all** (not just their) coinbase rewards via some central company to "the developers" by redirecting 12.5% of the issuance to this company and orphaning any blocks that don't participate in the scheme? I later found this Infrastructure Funding Plan by Jiang Zhuoer of BTC.TOP mining pool explaing ~~the idea~~ what would be done without any debate. https://medium.com/@jiangzhuoer/infrastructure-funding-plan-for-bitcoin-cash-131fdcd2412e I was shocked. What an affront to the ideals of Bitcoin! I could go on a rant here, but I'll spare you that. It's not the point and others have argued way more eloquently what is wrong with that plan. Let's just say: That plan is a huge mistake in my view. I also had to read that Bitcoin ABC was apparently unable to make use of (some of?) the donations they received because of some KYC/AML issues and that Amaury didn't believe in the voluntary donation model. Another blow! Look at the abc donations in my screenshot and imagine how that makes me feel. What I'm doing now? As a first step I decided to **stop all donations** to BCH infrastructure. What sense does it make at this point with this disastrous plan on the table? I've also been hitting the **sell BCH** button quite a bit. I'm not going to give you any numbers, but a couple days back it would've been unimaginable to me to sell this many BCH... a substantial amount already and growing each day. I've also become very emotional, oscillating between **anger and sadness**. What's the point of this article? The point is that I believe voluntary donation model *can* work and I want to show people that there are actually voluntary donations happening. Maybe I also want to wake some people up (holders mainly): I didn't make these donations out of generosity, I made them to strengthen my investment and in an attempt to make Bitcoin succeed as money for the people. I also want to show the effect of even suggesting this plan has on parts of the community and I want to put myself as an example here. Another divide? Another split? Is there hope / a solution? What can be done to save the day? Much damage has already been done (although not awfully apparent in price at this point), but I think there is hope. The recent Update by bitcoin.com for example and the many concerned voices make it conceivable that this plan might not be put into action after all (despite that "no-debate" bullshit). https://read.cash/@Bitcoin.com/update-on-developer-funding-83695ebc I think what *could* be done to greatly improve the situations is to show that the voluntary funding model *can* in fact work. This would require: "the developers" to publish some information on how much funding they actually need and for what exactly they intend to use them and also to provide a way to give them funds in a way that enables them to actually use them "the holders" (and businesses, really) to voluntarily (but *actually*) put up substantial funds for the above (if they haven't already and repeat if they have). "the miners and pools" to stfu, mine for profit and pay for software out of their own coffers if necessary probably someone to coordinate and organize a fundraise (for the next 6 months is enough to compete with the disaster plan ;-)). I'm very low on time, but if others take matter to their hands and get something going, I'm sure I will contribute substantially from the BCH I then have left. love you all ❤️ molecular
48 comments
Love it :) Think is great idea to share how much you donated to whom, and also awesome to read your thought process. You've been a true supporter of Bitcoin Cash and it's ecosystem, wow
Very interesting, and wise your post. Congratulations.
glad you like the idea, I was very torn about doing it, tbh. reading online one could get the impression that voluntary funding wasn't viable and I wanted to show not only large whales like Roger and you, but also medium sized fish do actually make donations in order to counter that impression. I think it helps to give a personal touch to the otherwise pretty anonymous donation figures. maybe that triggers some to think about what they could contribute because they realize it's actually people like them and you and I that make up this coin. about being a true support: I would much rather help by contributing valuable work (am a software guy, but way short on time, especially structured and/or continuous, due to personal issues) and I did help a bit with EC in the early postfork days, but it wasn't enough for my liking, so I had to resort to using monetary contributions, which is way less satisfying. thanks for your generous upvote and for sharing your opinions on the matter, btw.
For that they should unite a little more and coordinate, plan, say, as a work plan, personally and those who have the ways to strengthen and not allow anything bad to happen. Greetings, I don't know much about it but I want to learn.
You also have donated on read.cash a lot, you have donated me about 2-3 dollars in total so far.
I know for a fact that you've contributed a LOT more than that, not only financially, but also financially. THANK YOU. I MEAN IT. I have read various posts [1] and comments on this site that made me change my thinking in a major way. Even though I'm also nothing but a small fish who donates to projects and individuals for past good work when I think they'll continue doing so, I previously thought that miners/pools/exchanges have the lions' share of responsibility to maintain the "infrastructure" software. I perceived them to be the ones with the most direct interest (and largest sunk capital in the case of miners). I now think it was wrong of me to think like that, and no longer think so. At best it leads to pools coming up with proposals like the IFP, in which parties that should not bear the most of these costs, try to scrape together funds in ways that are not good for Bitcoin Cash as a whole. For some, it's about centralizing power as a business decision. We need to watch their actions and less their words. What's clear to me know is that HOLDERs who stand to gain the most, should have the most incentive to finance activities like development. I'm happy that there are some really smart people in BCH who know a lot more about economics and finance than me, and have some really good ideas that they already put forward, on how coin holders can be incentivized to contribute more. And even though I don't hold much coin, I'd be happy to commit even more of that to good funding schemes. I don't really regret any investment of my time or money into Bitcoin Cash so far. In the worst cases, it has provided me with valuable learning experiences. In the best cases, it may have actually helped someone to carry on developing something, or showing others what Bitcoin Cash the peer to peer electronic cash system, is about. END WALL OF TEXT. THANK YOU FOR READING ;-) [1] https://read.cash/@im_uname/assessment-and-proposal-re-the-bitcoin-cash-infrastructure-funding-situation-3e5179fc#holder-contributions
excellent wall of text! Thanks for describing your journey of thinking on who should fund infrastructure. and please... your downplaying your contributions to Bitcoin cash. Those are more valuable than anything monetary Edit: I love the ideas about organization of holder contribution you linked. personally would love some lighthouse style contracts... these could be deployed by devs on a case by case basis.
Amazing! 59 BCH / $22K in donations is a crazy amount. Wow! Thank you for the contributions to BCH ecosystem!
what's more interesting is not the absolute amount people donate but rather the percentage of their holdings. for all you know it could be peanuts for me, right? (it isn't, btw). obviously I won't reveal the exact percentage, but let's just say if everyone did that much, bch development would be fantastically overfunded.
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I totally believe that the problem isn't with the donation model, the problem is with ABC dismissing the donation model.
that's possible and it would be an entirely different story. EDIT: it would probably mean that ABC isn't *just* looking for funding, but for something more.
A rag-tag team of bchers are cooking up an assurance contract website as we speak.
awesome!
Isn't this what lighthouse was supposed to be?
Sort of, I was actually involved in the Lighthouse.cash porting project a while ago. As a general platform it sunk due to UX limitations that needed a lot more investments to overcome... ...but we're not going for a general platform first, and have a very specific purpose in mind! I think there's a shot here.
His article was really nice and I appreciate your comment we hope it becomes really successful
I totally understand. However, I did not sell yet because I am optimistic the community will reject bad ideas and come out stronger. It will turn out that 51%ing BCH is much harder than many think. Current events show that nobody has absolute power over the project.
that would be a tremendously positive outcome and I am sure hoping for that. just to be clear: I didn't sell everything and I'm probably not going to.
Very good article, it reflects on what happens behind the camera for the great issue of donations to developers, I myself am faithful proof of donations and sponsorship of initiatives that promote Bitcoin Cash worldwide.
Your Reddit post finally got me sign up to read.cash. Don't sell all of it!
great to see you here and thanks for the advice. I never sell all of anythig😉.
You are proof that there is no free rider problem. Why does the developer team need 18 million dollars a year, an amount that will appreciate significantly with the price of BCH? I am sure it is possible to find developers who will work for much cheaper. I am not worried as I think we have successfully stonewalled this attack for now.
Thanks a lot for your contributions in general and for this article in specific! In my opinion Bitcoin Cash is especially with the progress on SLP these days on a good track, but the "Developer Fund" proposal is threatening to derail all that. BCH can't afford another community split if it wants to become a global(!) P2P project. Global like in "global adoption/acceptance" etc to a reasonable degree, not by having maybe two hundred followers dispersed globally while nobody else cares about it because it forked into an ever smaller community and landed ultimately at coinmarketcap rank 134 or similar. What BCH needs now (besides more attention on how development is/can be funded outside this btc.top proposal, thanks again for your article) is a certain stability so one can focus on growth of the ecosystem and adoption. Tech alone won't bring you that; there are many cryptocurrencies out there which can "transfer value", "tokenize assets/whatever" - but (and we see this with BTC) stability also matters if one wants to achieve wider adoption beyond the close circles of the BCH community. Not every BTC user is "a member of the BTC community" or cares about it; actually I would say it is probably a minority. This is at this point certainly not true for BCH, where the users are basically all tight-knit members of the BCH community, but your average "mainstream" user does not care much about it at all. If the latter should change (and that's what necessary if one wants to achieve wider adoption beyond the BCH community), then a certain stability is needed/required. And a possible contentious community split would erase a lot of the good work done there over the past year.
Hi!!! I translated your article for Spanish community. Thanks. https://read.cash/@CryptoSpanish/donaciones-de-un-pez-para-financiamiento-voluntario-para-los-desarrolladores-92486c64
> "no-debate" bullshit What are you referring to here?
Hey @molecular I wanted to comment especially about this part: "I also had to read that Bitcoin ABC was apparently unable to make use of (some of?) the donations they received because of some KYC/AML issues" I just wanted to let you know that we ended up solving that problem, and coming up with a way to accept and use all of the money that was donated. It is being put to good use as we speak.. The fundraiser actually allowed us to sponsor two more developers to work on ABC (Mark Lundeberg and Fernando), and be able to retain a third whose funding would have run out otherwise. So rest assured that your contribution is being put to good use! And it is very much appreciated! Thank you for your generosity!
hey Mengerian, we haven't met but since you were picked by Amaury to help run the dev fund I take it you are on very good terms with him. This is the first message we get about the donations we all send to ABC, it's great to hear finally that the donation is well received and has been of great use. Amaury totally failed here in showing any gratitude, caught up in his political games that almost destroyed Bitcoin Cash if he had succeeded. I hope you are wise to take some distance from him and go your own path so that we can work together in the future. I want to continue to support generously valuable coders, but that is not Amaury, despite him having been crucial in getting it started, his toxic behavior thereafter neutralised all that goodwill to zero, and is out for me. Same for Vin Armani.
Hey Mengerian, > I just wanted to let you know that we ended up solving that problem, and coming up with a way to accept and use all of the money that was donated. It is being put to good use as we speak. I can't tell you how good that is to hear and also just to hear from you in general. Also thanks for those kind words of appreciation. I usually donate silently and non-publicly because I really don't need any kind of ego-boost from donating. In this case however I got a bit emotional because the main reason I made those donations (to make Bitcoin succeed to make the world a better place for the people that live in it and -- I admit -- to support the value of my investment) seemed to be getting torpedoed and I didn't even know exactly why. Some very uncomfortable thoughts crept into my mind and reading your message just made it so much easier to believe all is going to be well in the end (**without** having to tap into coin issuance, mind you). I'm especially happy you're able to sponsor Mark Lundeberg, he really *is* an asset to BCH. I'm pretty sure the community can come up with a lot more funding if there is enough transparency and specificity about the use of those funds. It's just tremendously helpful to be given information about how exactly funds were/will be used for a donator. After all he's giving money and I think he deserves to know what effect that has, preferably even beforehand so he can have some influence, which I think he also deserves. Maybe this issue can be solved. I'll be the first to donate to keep-the-light-on items like "employ 1.5 developers for code maintenance for 6 months" or "hold monthly developer meeting and individual preparations for that", for example. (Chris Pacia has complained that these things couldn't be "itemized", which I think is not true). > Thank you for your generosity! Don't take this the wrong way, but the motivation is not being generous. Even "making the world a better place" is really not altruistically motivated. Even more directly, though, I think of those donations as "investments" which eventually come back to me (or not, there's risk as with all investment) via appreciation of the part of the coins I *didn't* donate but kept for myself. Thank *you* for your continuous engagement and the wonderful work you do (and I mean both you personally and the larger group)! And one question to end this long reply: Will you be able to accept funding in crypto in the future or is this a one-time thing? In case you cannot accept anonymous donations through the chain, what other model that allows many individuals to easily donate could be set up?
> I can't tell you how good that is to hear and also just to hear from you in general. Yeah, good to hear from you too! I remember meeting you in person in Arnhem. I'm not sure if you're on Telegram, if you are could you send me a message to @Mengerian? I'm not sure how to contact you other than here. > Don't take this the wrong way, but the motivation is not being generous. Even "making the world a better place" is really not altruistically motivated. Even more directly, though, I think of those donations as "investments" which eventually come back to me (or not, there's risk as with all investment) via appreciation of the part of the coins I didn't donate but kept for myself. That's actually great to hear! I told Amaury something similar years ago. Basically I told him that I was helping him for my own selfish reasons, because I want to make peer-to-peer electronic cash be successful, and helping him is the best way I see of furthering that goal. So yeah, I think that's a great basis for how people relate in this space. I don't think people should sacrifice their own self-interest, everyone should be benefiting together. > And one question to end this long reply: Will you be able to accept funding in crypto in the future or is this a one-time thing? In case you cannot accept anonymous donations through the chain, what other model that allows many individuals to easily donate could be set up? Yes, as a result of the fundraiser we set something up for ABC that enables accepting crypto anytime going forward. I don't want to give details here, just to not give info to litigation-happy people. But yeah, accepting BCH, anonymous or not, should not be a problem anymore. I'm totally open to helping set up better or easier ways for people to donate if anyone has requests on that front.
> But yeah, accepting BCH, anonymous or not, should not be a problem anymore. this is great to hear! > Basically I told him that I was helping him for my own selfish reasons, because I want to make peer-to-peer electronic cash be successful I'm deeply thankful you did this.
That was great bitcoin cash is becoming our main crypto and replace bitcoin to the next one
I appreciat your concept about voluntary donation! IT actually makes some sense. I am glad to know you thoughts.
Great article!it reflecting on what happens behind the camera for the great issue of donations to developers.Thank you. I will be glad if you check my some article
Great article! I have got a new idea and some new knowledge also! I dinot know about it before.Thank you.
Great article about voluntary donations. It is really helpful especially to me. Kudos to you. I hope that you also notice my simple article and advice if I improve my writing skills. It is a big help to motivate me more in writing.
You can tip me some, atleast $60 my phone is critically bad. thanks. 🙈
You misunderstand. I'm not selfless and I'm not giving money for charitable reasons here. I consider the donations I made to the projects I mentioned to be "investments" that generate a return for me in the form of increased BCH value. What kind of return is $60 for some random guys new phone going to generate for me?
Thank you so much for all your donations. I just subscribed to you and I hope you would notice me as I write good articles.
Based on the Survey of Bitcoin User, most Bitcoin users are Generous. They Spent 77.6% of thier money to Donation, Charity, Giveaway and More. You are really an Cryptoprenuer Sir! Long live. More Blessings to come. Might your a Libertarian....
I am proud.
Great information
Perfect and very informative Please can you help me with sponsorship
sir can you help me to fulfill my dream to buy a new smartphone, i have not joined here long ago, and i am very difficult to get tips from bots, quite difficult.if you want to help me a little to give a tip for me, I tried to call @ MarcDeMesel, but no response.I hope you read this and help my dreams at this time, you can read the articles that I have made.🙏🙏🙏
Hello. I still do not know the problems of Bitcoin Cash, but I think that crowdfunding and voluntary donations are great tools in a project. Hola. Aún no conozco las problemáticas de Bitcoin Cash, pero creo que las financiaciones colectivas y las donaciones voluntarias son grandes herramientas en un proyecto.
Very informative and it shows that you are not just helping people but in also the life of a fish 💖 godbless you more ,😇
The amount donated on the Bitcoincash is a bit much I hope there are improvement on the project really soon. 59bch is about 17600$ now .
Wowwww, congratulations! Cheers to more projects you will be involved with! Stay safe and see you around.
It's been almost a year since I joined read.cash and this is the first time I saw your article. Apparently, I was like a baby who couldn't understand walking yet. Some of the greats at bitcoin cash, I know for their generosity and the moment I found you, must be thumbs up now, because militant BCH holders want everyone to have bitcoin cash and as I understand it, read.cash's goal is also like that. Even though at this time many people have left the platform, there are those who still survive and come to deliver innovations. You are awesome mate.