A new community funding mechanism

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Problem statement

After many hours of discussion in our BTCZ Discord channel during the last days, many of the most active members of our Community have expressed some interesting thoughts about the funding system of our BITCOINZ Project. Something which of course plays a fundamental role for its future success overall.

As a Community driven cryptocurrency, we have a Community Fund in order to cover any expenses for our Project’s needs.
Until now , this Fund was supported by the Community donations either when someone choose to send funds directly to our specified address or by choosing to mine, using a pool which is donating a percentage to the Community.
There were some extra events like hash rate lotteries in some pools in order to raise some extra funds as well.
Again , as we can all see , the basic idea is the same : our Community Fund is raising its funds by the donations of those who really care for this Project , who in this early stage are not so many.
When the crypto market was skyrocketing, with our coin gaining more and more value, this donation system seemed as a working solution. However, many times it would be much better if we had some extra economical power.
Now ,this need for changing our funding system to something most effective, is more obvious than ever : With a bear crypto market and with our coin’s value reduced to very low levels , the Community Funds instead of rising by the “BTCZ friendly” pool’s donations , they are almost steady or even shrinking in value for many weeks!

There are thousands of miners-dumpers of our coin who use pools which don’t donate anything to our Project (like suprnova), interested in just selling it for immediate cash , enjoying its ASIC resistance. Those miners have never donated anything, because they either don’t have any true interest in our Project or at least because they have not been motivated yet. They simply found it profitable for now , without even knowing how special the btcz idea is. Those in the first group , will simply proceed to the next profitable minable coin if we cease to exist , while those who would participate as active members if they knew more about us , will never learn about us if we cease to exist. This is a lose/lose situation if we continue with this self-destructive funding system, because in reality our Community Funds are very low , with a very bad future outlook as well.

Market has been extremely cruel with our coin.
The Market loves seeing capitalism :
Extra funds , extra marketing , extra exchanges, extra development.
The market is punishing btcz because she has priced in, that with the situation as it is , it will be very hard (for the market’s view completely impossible) for btcz to succeed , especially with the cryptos in bear mode.
By changing this approach , starting to use some parts of the system and playing with the market’s rules, maybe we could be able to change the game.
So , we have to be more organized and find a golden recipe in order to get some funds by the dumpers who never donate for anything.
This way we could make the things run faster and stronger for our beloved BTCZ Project.

Mission Statement or Vision

By adding a Community Fee of a very small percentage (for which exactly we will afterwards decide - let’s say hypothetically about 3%) which will be automatically donated in our Community Vault , we would make our funding system balanced , stronger and much fairer , because after this everyone will contribute equally.

Please take in mind that this is totally compatible with our coin’s white paper and idea as it is a completely fair and democratized funding system:
1)with a Community fee , the financial burdain won’t be assymetrically distributed anymore , with the few same persons covering the expenses for the whole Community
This is fair
2)The Community Funds raised by this fee , will be used for every case after the democratic procedure we were always following, by voting the proposals for every fund usage.
This is democratic

I must add here , that this is NOT a DEV TAX , this is a Community fee.
The difference is more than obvious :
This is something for which WE , ALL together , as BTCZ COMMUNITY decide as a solution for funding OUR Community Vault which will be used again for OUR Community’s needs after again OUR vote for every case.

This is NOT a fund for making rich a specific Developer or a CEO. (A DEV TAX would have been put by the DEVS themselves and it would automatically pay a certain developer’s personal wallet for his work).

We all work for FREE for the BTCZ project because we care for it and we love it.
However there are endless cases for which a strong Community Fund is needed :
-For entering new exchanges as almost no exchange out there is listing you for free
Example if we could afford paying for EXMO instead of CCEX , many users wouldn’t have suffered by CCEX’S unprofessionalism and our coin would’t have been hurt by this parody-exchange.
-For marketing / Promoting BTCZ
Examples : Paying for publishing our chosen articles to certain sites with cryptocurrency news (like Cryptorex had achieved with his last proposal , we had some serious views then but we had no more funds to keep the good pace with the bear market after). Funding Community giveaways (I have achieved 10k + views in twitter msgs by small personal giveaways ) Buying youtube/google ads promos leading us higher in results , promoting our btcz info clips etc
-For external cooperations with certain freelancers / developers
Example we could pay for a relift to a Community’s site or for developing a specific alternative payment gateway or a completely new one (like the Shopify bounty which now is very low in value and hasn’t brought any result!)
-For other scenarios like a partnership or funding the development or redesign of a specific app (example paying for the needed changes in our mobile wallet in order to be accepted in the iOS downloads or paying for another Coinomi-like cooperation).
And for so many others, this list could be really long.
For EVERY case of using the Community Funds, a proposal will be made by the member and the Community will vote for the approval as now. The only thing that will change is the Funding system of our Community Vault which will be much more reliable and effective.

Meanwhile we should not forget that a positive change like this, could probably open a new promising circle for our Project bringing more energy to those who voluntarily work.
Because for example it is much more inspiring to see your hard work in your article being promoted with thousands of views , or your artwork being chosen by the Community and afterwards being shared by hundreds of social media accounts , or your application (like renuzit’s revolutionary btcz.me) being used by more and more. This is moving you to work even harder guys!

This afterwards could make more people join our Community , which means even more hard working friends here.
Not to mention that with a value gain for our coin, we will see a higher Community income as well , which means better exchanges, even better promotions , even more people here and so on…

All those need some funds which other scam coins’ dev teams have given (in order to just flood the social media and inflate their price) as a very small part of their massive ICO raised / premined funds , leaving afterwards their speculating meaningless coins abandoned !

In BTCZ COMMUNITY, we have a superb coin with a ready to work ecosystem , a marvelous idea & project by good devs but we have no funds for making it known to the world!

Let’s change this… Now !

Thank you all and forgive me for the long post.
VandarGR

PS. If for any reason , this funding mechanism doesn’t work as we predicted (something for which I personally don’t have any doubt) , or if we see in the distant future that we no more have the need for a Community fee , our Community is always free to vote again for returning to the previous state with No Community fee.

  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

9 Likes

Great idea, I suggested donations for developers, but I think this would be a much better idea. Since also developers could be payd by this :slight_smile:

4 Likes

I think its a super idea, as long as we dont dump (by vote) the whole amount for pay improvements (only sell small packages) and we dont pile up a huge amount which what newcommers cant get (less circulating supply).
By the way We need this mechanisum to get better on our road not forever .

2 Likes

VandarGR,

Thank you for your excellent write-up for the proposal “A new community funding mechanism”!

Extra kudos for the worth-1000-words graphic of why the Community Fee is not a Dev Tax!

Let’s look at this numerically. How much “money” could we raise for the Community Fund?

Is this not the opportunity do do great things for our coin?

I strongly support the idea, and I think that our @ goal should be in the vicinity of $50m available over the next 10 years for Community Fund purposes.

I would apply the most conservative/pessimistic assumption of a $.01 value to conclude that the tax rate should be not less than 30%.

I will also add that I think we should be giving away not less than 20% of the new coins, in small increments( e.g. 50 -100 coins) to members of the public around the world. But that is another proposal …

I would like to suggest that when/if this is implemented, it be done in a way (assuming this is possible by design) that would allow the community to adjust the fee up or down in the future with minimal subsequent technical effort.

1 Like

Good idea, I fully support. But I don’t understand, will this community fee will be transferred automatically to the community fund as a result of mining or exchange operations?

3 Likes

Yes , automatically.

1 Like

Will this be a fee from mining? Because this will depend on the pool… For example, suprnova doesn’t pay now and won’t pay in future.

1 Like

It is fee from mining. From every new mined block, certain ammount of BTCZ would go to community fund (VaultZ).

3 Likes

With this change , the percentage which our Community will decide (let’s say 3%) will be automatically sent to the VaultZ.
There will be no choice by the Suprnova or any other pool because this will be taking place by way that the coin itself distributes each block’s rewards.
The pools will be free to decide only extra percentages for them or for extra donations anything else

4 Likes

Ok, thank you, now this is clear.
I support this idea and I voted “yes”.

2 Likes

I have 2 questions, the first the proposal does not actually contain an actual % just a hypothetical mention of 3% does this mean we will get another round of voting to pick how much etc?

The second does this mean another fork? I know you mentioned that our whitepaper allows for it but I am not sure this will fall under the improvement banner this does not add any new features or improve the coin like dding extra privacy or mobile z addresses etc. I don’t want a fork, look what happened with the last one.

I personally am just calling it out that it is semantics to say this is not a dev tax, call it a community fee a tax or whatever you like it still is a dev tax, or a development tax, community fee just is a nicer way of putting it, and just because our whitepaper isn’t written from a legal backing where terms like “dev tax” are not clearly defined it is open for as much interpretation as you like.

I haven’t voted yet.

Yes, the percentage will be the subject of another round of voting if the idea-in-concept passes.

The Fund as proposed will not be managed/spent/allocated by the developers. Whatever specific mechanism is used to manage the fund would be the subject of further proposal and voting. It’s democracy in action.

With respect, these facts and those given in the proposal and it’s accompanying graphics make it clear this is not a dev tax. I would ask all to please not say “Well it really is a dev tax.” No. It is not. Let’s have the proposal be discussed as it actually is w/o applying incorrect terminology to it.

2 Likes

Yes I am strongly voting YEAH to this proposal. I think it will give power to this coin. Of course funds need to be safu, and allow the community to vote and check the good use of the fund. Also “success criteria” or sthg like this can be set to track results?

2 Likes

To clarify, I would expect that expenditure from the Community Fund to the purpose of compensating developers would be but a fraction of it’s use.

Advertising, marketing, exchange listing fees, charity, etc. would all be represented in the mix substantially (I would hope and expect.)

1 Like

I would expect (but it’s up to the community) that governance/administration of the fund would not be done by developers (they are busy writing code!). Offhand, I would see an administrative body of some size (e.g. 5 -7 people) elected by the community for set terms. This “board” would control the multi-sig wallet(s), being sworn to act only per the expressed will of the community.

But, let’s not get too far ahead of the proposal-in-concept …

1 Like

The 3% is just an example ( which I have to confess that I find balanced and effective enough). Yet , another round for deciding the exact percentage would be necessary.
We must first decide if we like the idea of adding a fair Community fee for funding our Community or not.
MeJutty is really huge the difference between a dev tax and a Community fee.
Only the fact that WE ALL TOGETHER decide right now for it and if we wish in the future we decide to reduce it or stop it , is saying a LOT about this difference.
And their purposes are quite different as well:
The Community fee has ONLY the purpose of serving the Community’s needs for expansion while the dev tax has mainly the character of rewarding the founders/developers/ceo of a Project and it is up to their will IF just a part of their reward will be used for the project again.
In our case we , as a Community decide for everything , this is not even near a dev tax. It is very different by all aspects.

In the case of a YES vote , we will have a soft fork just for changing the distribution of the block rewards, like an update.
There is no algo change , leaving an old blockchain etc. like the previous fork.

The idea of btcz is built on Democracy and Fair rules , so a fork for achieving a fair Community Funding mechanism with equal contribution by all and not with the same members always donating again and again, is compatible with the BITCOINZ’s whitepaper.
Not to mention that something like this is contributing to the coin’s safety from every aspect (by making the Community much more effective in facing with a big bounty a highly urgent safety issue , like those we faced with our payments gateway recently), and a soft fork for improving safety is clearly foreseen and it is ok by our whitepaper.

Thank you

1 Like

This proposal is setting out what it deems to be a dev tax and what it sees as a community fund i’m sorry if you don’t like other people having their views on what is being proposed with their own opinions this is exactly what this forum is for so things can be discussed and i will voice my opinions. Please show me where in our whitepaper there is a definition of a dev tax does it stand for developer tax development tax? This proposal is providing an interpretation of said “dev tax” And you can call it what you like when you take something away from someone it is a tax. A community fund is the terminology of where the funds end up and are held the method by which they are taken is a tax, duty, tariff take your pick.

The proposal says “Fee”. No argument from me that that’s not a “Tax”.

But it’s not a Dev Tax! (as explained above)

Those words together “Dev Tax” have a different common meaning from what is being proposed.

1 Like

A percentage which is set by a Community , with a democratic way , in order to have a fair funding mechanism for our needs cannot be characterized as DEV TAX because WE ARE the ones who took this decision and WE decided which is the right percentage in order to sustain our Community.
And WE are deciding anytime if this doesn’t work.

You don’t need any white paper to give you a desceiption for this.
This is NOT a DEV TAX. It is common logic

In the case of ZCASH for example where they have a 20% DEV TAX , the community was never asked if they agree with this , neither they have any option to stop this.
They haven’t decided if the 20% is too much or if they prefer 10 or 5.
And they don’t vote for the way that those funds will be used!

It is like you and 1000 other guys live in a big castle and you are trying to find a way to cover your external expenses and you decided by voting to pay 3% of their income (each one) every month.
This is a Community fee for which they all decided together in a democratic way

If there was a Tyrant who would say that the castle is MINE and you must ALL pay to me 20% of your income in order to stay here and I don’t give you any receipt for what I am going to do with those funds , because those funds are for ME and my royal team ONLY, this is a DEV TAX.
Nobody asked you if you want it or not , for which reasons you need to pay this , or how high this will be and you have no idea where those money are going to be used.

It is a huge difference between the Community fee and the dev Tax which if you cannot understand , I cannot help you further my friend .
I tried to explain it even by a fairytale :slight_smile:

1 Like