Transparency Document for Venezuela Workers Fundraising.
**First off, thanks a lot for everyone who donated. These funds will surely help to progress faster and reach a better designed platform.**
As promised, we published a transparency document for Venezuela Workers fundraising.
Click here to check it out. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kW3SGfqPNUJXM0HwJcK4vzJP-KYhTkHwyCutA4zs5rM/edit?usp=sharing
Some important notes to take in consideration about director, lead developer and community manager payments:
**Quote from our fundraising proposal.**
*"We also want to be transparent that once the fundraising is completed, we plan to offer our main director, lead programmer and community manager a 6-month or 12-month upfront payment to prevent volatility issues."*
If you notice full payments going out at this moment, it is at decision of each of the mentioned positions. We are offering them upfront payment for their commitment at the start of the project and to prevent volatility issues that might harm the total budget expected for their work.
Any questions regarding all the other areas, please, comment below our mail me at contactoscarsalas@gmail.com (personal email) or support@venezuelaworkers.com
Thanks,
Oscar Salas
venezuelaworkers.com Fundraising announcement
Link: https://flipstarter.venezuelaworkers.net/
**What is Venezuela Workers (venezuelaworkers.com):**
Venezuela Workers is a website intended to serve as a platform for the use of venezuelan freelancers and international employers interested in completing remote or digital tasks and jobs under a budget that is economical and accessible to anyone, while both parties achieve a beneficial deal.
This platform is currently powered by cryptocurrency, specifically Bitcoin Cash (BCH, allowing instant deposits (zero confirmation transactions), and an escrow system for fair negotiations. One of our key elements to solely operate with venezuelans is to offer a website that allows people in need and crisis to get opportunities outside their country through the internet.
**The development team:**
The development team of our project currently has one main director, Oscar Salas. Likewise, it is conformed by a team of developers made up of two (2) people and a team of promoters made up of five (5) workers, all of them located in venezuela, not-including the lead programmer which is located in Europe.
**Objectives as a project:**
Among our objectives, we aim to provide an optimal and effective mechanism to employ and obtain employment through a platform that has a sophisticated and user-friendly interface, powered with Bitcoin Cash for payments, a method to transfer value without barriers, while offering constant low fees and fast transactions.
To summarize everything in key points, our objectives are:
Grant employers the privilege of providing job opportunities to venezuelans who currently, more than ever, find themselves in an accentuated crisis both economically and professionally.
Expand the circulation and use of Bitcoin Cash through remote or full-time jobs. This has great potential to serve as a method of economic remuneration for a growing group of people in Venezuela.
Being a recognized platform, whose popularity predominates due to its technical and operational efficiency, as well as the offering of works and results of broad excellence.
**Elements that our platform currently has:**
Intuitive, novel and aesthetic design for the homepage.
Publication of jobs and tasks with concise specifications, initial or unspecific budget open to offers.
Workers who can apply, offer prices to the employer other than the established and attach work documents if required.
Escrow system, which protects both stakeholders from the risk of fraud: In this way, the money is retained on the platform until the work is correctly completed by mutual agreement of the employee and employer.
Deposits and withdrawals in Bitcoin Cash (BCH).
Multi-coin deposits with Sideshift.ai
Alliance with Instabitcoin.net, to allow users to exchange their Bitcoin Cash (BCH) to Bolivares (national currency in venezuela).
Profiles with complete customization: You can place basic information, curriculum vitae, external links for social networks, image gallery, web portfolio, studies carried out and much more.
Button to send “tips” to the profiles of each user.
**Objectives to accomplish with the funding:**
A more updated, intuitive, flexible and attractive user interface. The users will obtain helpful tools to make easier the use of the platform.
A re-branding of the website, changing logo and user-interface elements, planned to be deployed by the end of the year. With this, we aim to demonstrate brand qualities, and obtain a new corporate image.
Work on new improvements for the base code of the platform to make it more efficient, while also offering new tools for the users.
Promote the platform and its advantages, both nationally and internationally.
**Details about our current payroll**
The current expenses of the platform include the collaboration of the workers with their payments, promotion expenses and the total invested per month.
**Support/secondary developer:**
$250 US dollars per month.
**Lead promoter:**
$50 US dollars per month.
**Promoters (2):**
$60 US dollars per month.
**Content creators (2):**
$65 US dollars per month.
**Community manager and designer:**
$130 US dollars per month.
**Total investment from monthly Payrolls**:
$555 per month.
**Extra expenses for promotion**:
$325 US dollars.
**Current investment, per month**:
$880 US dollars.
Our Lead developer and main director are currently working with no payroll established. All of our workers are currently located in Venezuela, except for our lead developer.
**Budget and goals expectations**
We estimate to receive a total of 102 BCH for the use of 12-months work. The funds will be used in the following areas:
**General administration of the platform:**
It is estimated to receive a total amount of 20.16 BCH for a 12-month work period.
**Lead programmer:**
It is estimated to receive a total amount of 20.16 BCH for a 12-month work period.
**Junior programmer:**
It is estimated to receive a total amount of 18 BCH for a 12-month work period.
**Rebranding and design:**
It is estimated to receive a total amount of 18 BCH for a 12-month work period.
**Promotion:**
It is estimated to receive a total amount of 25.68 BCH for a 12-month work period.
**Promotion budget details for a 12 months period:**
**Advertising and financing**:
The promotion will be through spanish and english speakers YouTube channels whose contents are related to our platform, aimed to attract new employers and freelancers. It is estimated to receive a total amount of 5.68 BCH.
**Financing the team of promoters:**
It is estimated to receive a total amount of 10 BCH for a 12-month work period.
**Financing the team of community managers:**
It is estimated to receive a total amount of 10 BCH for a 12-month work period.
**Estimated dates for results**
Our team estimates to show the first major change by the end of 2020, announcing the rebranding of our platform, as well as a renewed website in certain visual aspects. Finally, in mid-2021, we plan to have everything ready for our final website version, allowing new tools and sections for employers and workers to publish their services.
**Transparency plan**
I (Oscar Salas) will be posting our transparency files through my personal read.cash account (**https://read.cash/@oscarsalas**), giving monthly updates on the progress and the usage of money, while also attaching a link that will redirect you to our public excel sheet, where we plan to post the xPub address of our fundraising wallet and all the expenses made during the 12-month period. I also plan to export the spending history file of our Electron Cash Wallet with all the descriptions for each spending transaction. When looking at this file, all the deposits received after the fund-raising event will be considered as donations and will be described as that.
We also want to be transparent that once the fundraising is completed, we plan to offer our main director, lead programmer and community manager a 6-month or 12-month upfront payment to prevent volatility issues. We also currently have a two thousand dollar fund for promotion that we could use for protection in case of volatility.
Finally, we will make a public announcement days before November's hard-fork to inform our donors how the funds will be protected against a possible market crash. All transactions regarding this event will be publicly covered for anyone who is interested to know.
**Our platform, social media and contact email**
You can find us through the following platforms, social media along with our contact email:
**Venezuela Workers**: www.venezuelaworkers.com
**Twitter**: www.twitter.com/VenWorkers
**Facebook**: www.facebook.com/Venezuela-Workers-2076835755947007
**Instagram**: www.instagram.com/venworkers
**Contact email**: support@venezuelaworkers.com
Best regards, Venezuela Workers.
What to learn from today's disagreement in the BCH ecosystem
It has been a hard month.
Things are starting to look better in the Bitcoin Cash community recently (and by community, I mean everything that is part of the ecosystem: miners, devs, holders and participants on the discussion forums), but there's still a sad vibe around. Luckily in this case, most of the people (from all sides) remained united, but the leadership behind the project seems to get weaker everytime.
At the beginning, I started looking things from a *3rd point* perspective without choosing any particular "team". Even If I already had my differences after the IFP approach, I was still confident that Bitcoin ABC leadership was going to improve.
**But I was wrong.**
Bitcoin ABC doesn't seem to fix their ways to communicate with users, miners and most importantly, their colleagues (other developers). Based on that, things won't work, doesn't matter how much control you have inside a project, nation or company: If the leadership doesn't listen to the desires of the people around it will simply break away, and the easier it is to take an alternate rute, the easier "you" will get behind.
We could say that Bitcoin ABC leadership is weak, by not approaching problems in a way that could be understandable. Even by taking the role of a dictator, there is ways to community ideas that you think are efficient for the development of project you are helping to build.
From the start, the IFP proposal was suggested in a manner that was far from desirabled, and this is something I cannot simply understand. Bitcoin ABC first proposal was weak, full of questions and without a proper fundamental base to apply it: It was rushed and made with not effort to actually get the approval from users and miners, it was a disaster.
It is understandable to make one mistake on an issue (and for me, considering the importance ABC had inside the Bitcoin Cash community, it is still unacceptable). But if things couldn't be worse, ABC team makes a second announcement after months of unnecessary political game against their new "enemies", planning a definitive funding plan with an 8% reward fee with no proper explanation on why and how it will work. At their first post, there was no proper explanation on how the money was going to be segmented inside the development team, and who was going to receive and manage it. There was not even a transparency plan to make sure community and miners knew how they were going to use the funding. https://cointelegraph.com/news/tensions-flare-is-bitcoin-cash-headed-to-another-catastrophic-fork?_ga=2.42137637.1035165934.1596775711-211824272.1594142194
When the second announcent arrived, things just got totally worse as I said before. Apart of discovering that ABC was using a DAA implementation as a political game inside the community, we also learned that they had no intention to explain to people or miners how things will work (once more). In this particular case, even community members deserve to know how a proposal will be managed, since after all, we are talking about an open source project where everybody should be able to audit.
From the miners side, there was more uncertainty based on what we heard from them so far. There was no interest from Bitcoin ABC side to approach them and explain them how things were going to operate. This alone tells you a lot from ABC organization work and leadership, it simply was not right and it felt they had complete authority over the Bitcoin Cash project.
Anyone with an honest thinking leaving trivialism apart knows the current communication method was horrible, even more considering there was money in between. To make it even worse, we never knew exactly what happened to the previous funding Bitcoin ABC had, which apparently was over a million dollars worth of Bitcoin Cash.
Bitcoin, from the start, was a project that had no owners. There was no major authority to decide what was the next step to take. All developers were supposed to have the same voice, as long as they were helping Bitcoin by their personal commitment. No one forced ABC to take this role, and considering this is an open source project, there was no way Amaury and other members from ABC team didn't know where they were going into from the start.
For me, the saddest part is the people tryting to divide for no productive reason. One thing I learned: there's maybe no "true friends" (I hope I am wrong) in this community. You'll always need to be careful, maybe because there is money and political interest behind. Some of my old partners are now looking at me from negative a position, when (in my case) I never wanted to take things to a personal degree. No matter what, I will always remember them with good heart, as my intention is never to cause a strong division by sharing my opinion or listening theirs.
Moving away from personal things, open source projects depend on donations to improve their software. There's no such thing as stable budget. I understand this makes difficult a lot of things inside the development process, but it is at heart what Bitcoin means as a project: decentralization in every aspect. Did Satoshi asked for money while being a developer? Did Gavin did as well? No one did. Maybe those were other times, it requiered maybe even more commitment because the risk of building something with no guaranteed future.
Today, we are trying to build a Bitcoin that works for everyone, but a lot of people seems to be centered on how much money they can take away from this project. Honestly, I am not sure if that's the idea inside ABC's leadership, but at some point, based on their current actions, it looks like that.
Will things improve? I am not sure, but we will probably need to make a more diplomatic approach to the issues we face in the future; Otherwise, we will repeat the same mistakes over and over again. By diplomatic I simply mean, not risking the progress of a project If my desires are not as popular as I wish inside the three main areas I previously mentioned. Bitcoin was never meant to be a democracy, most of the people don't care about the technology behind cryptocurrencies. But Bitcoin, considering there is not proper leadership or boss, needs a development team that takes a more diplomatic approach at decision making. I am sure most of the community members here that are pro-ABC or pro-BCHN aren't looking to damage Bitcoin Cash: we are all looking for the best results.
Saying this, I lack of technical knowledge to actually propose a coded solution, but it is interesting to mention that we should have a philosophical backup to base all our decisions, at least easily visible in an official website. These type of "rules" will probably help us to behave on heated discussions, and reaching an agreement based on the objectives we are working for. I also think that it is time to leave trivialism, thing that always hurt the general population of this project... and by "trivialism" I mean: the use of personal attacks because some people aren't sharing the same ideas. It beaks partners, relationship history and efforts apart.
I am not a major key member inside the Bitcoin Cash development team, and I am sure I don't understand all the technical aspects behind, but I feel this was an important message to share around, doesn't matter If I could be wrong at some parts.
I hope we can finally learn from all the mistakes. In the future, the new Bitcoin Cash leaders need to approach all the areas that are part of our community in a way that truly feels professional and done by true effort. Otherwise, we will probably fail again.
Thanks for reading,
**Oscar Salas**
*My public bch address for signatures:* bitcoincash:qpruhler02v5t7l7mp98zegxa237c5clwgyy24qsly
**@oscarsalas93**
I proudly announce Venezuelaworkers.com: a platform to employ and seek jobs for venezuelans.
Hello everybody,
Today I proudly announce Venezuela Workers (venezuelaworkers.com), a website for venezuelans seeking job opportunities and for foreigners or local to employ them, all powered with Bitcoin Cash (BCH). The website is already 100% functional, with a planned launch on our social media networks by the start of next month (August), for venezuelans to start registering.
The website idea was created by Jonald Fyookball, which is behind the creation of all the platform with the support of a few programmers. I recently took the role as executive director of this project to improve the platform visual look and social media marketing.
I encourage people to register to our platform for testing and employ venezuelans. We already have a few freelancers ready to take projects! But as I said before, we'll publicly announce our opening by the start of August, so expect more volume by that time.
Currently, the website allows 0-conf transactions, so the process to deposit and withdrawal is very fast and simple. We also work with an escrow system, so money is kept by the platform when a freelancer is paid to do a job. The resolution of the projects will lead the money to be released by the employer.
We also let workers withdraw money instantly after finishing a work, so no more waiting times of 4-5 days after a job is finished to take it out. This is a huge step forward since there's almost (or not any) website that allow this today.
Are you interested? Please check Venezuela Workers (venezuelaworkers.com) today.
If you face any problem by registering or notice a bug in our platform, please let me know in the comments, so we fix it and help you at the same time.
@oscarsalas