It has been sometime since I have addressed the community and for that I apologize. I don't want to go into grave detail on what has been going on in my personal life, so in short I just needed a break after almost 4 straight years of living and breathing cryptocurrency. With 2 years of experience in running FoldingCoin I feel I have learned a lot of what we did right, and a lot of what we did wrong. So for the 2016 year let's break everything down and talk about it.
Distributions - Back when me and James wrote the White Paper, we foresaw the distribution should be handled by more than one person. This needs to be a priority in fixing. Remember, FoldingCoin Inc is an official non-profit, so anyone can be nominated by existing board members to the seat. We need a full board like we once had before. Because for 3 months I have been out of commision and we now know that without a backup person with the keys to fill in, then delays can happen. But when James was around to share the keys, he could simply take over. Jona does not have the skillset to secure the keys to a comfortable level. Another board member can help fix this by being the second hands. Until something new comes along in the counterparty community, distribution addresses will always need to be filled manually so a process needs to come into place.
Board of Directors - By having a board of 3-5 people, we can have a good number of folks watching over the project and maintaining when they can. One very valuable lesson I learned over the past 2 years is a project needs a team working behind it to be successful, but since it is volunteer people can come and go. When we had 6 people working on the project things were going great. But over the second half of last year it was down to me and Jona, and then over the last three months it's been basically only Jona. This halts production in its tracks. Life can get in the way, and we have learned that with each and every volunteer at FoldingCoin including myself that sometimes things in your personal life will need your immediate attention. So trying to mix 30 hours a week of FoldingCoin is hard. A team can easily distribute out tasks to complete (we will talk about this more later) but we need a solid board to make that happen. Right now per our IRS standings we are a Board of three. When James was with us that made sense, but perhaps we need to upgrade to 5 board members. Currently official changes to our Bylaws must be made by majority vote of the board. So me and Jona have to agree on everything, and if we don’t then we contact James for the tiebreaker. So me and Jona will discuss this and come to a decision. But we do need a more permanent board member since James is no longer involved that way we do have a tie breaker.
Public Voting - When folks were just beginning to think of using XCP tokens for vote tokens it immediately attracted our eyes. So we implemented it without really setting up a good system. The last vote was very controversial and we have not run another one since that. I feel suspending the current public voting system is a good idea. If someone wishes to write up a well structured plan on how and when public votes would take in effect then we can revisit it. So how I see this working out, is once we have an established board, the new board as a collective whole will go through the old votes of the past and determine what stays, what leaves, and any other changes to be added immediately to our Bylaws.
Public Meetings - I have learned that Sunday is not the best time for these meetings. I have received many complaints about that. Perhaps move these to Saturdays. Me and Jona will discuss and come to a conclusion.
Responsibilities - I no longer wish to operate in a way in which some are taking on a heavy load of work. This can and will burn people out. For FoldingCoin to succeed we really need to rely on having people help build the project. By taking on one or two responsibilities, I feel that FoldingCoin can operate 24/7 instead of on me or Jona’s time. The following are some tasks I have generalized, but that we are in dire need of help with:
Administrative:- Director, Board Seat - Currently Robert Ross, replacement needed
This person's responsibility is to be the overall overseer of the project. The director needs to be in contact with each member of the team and keep track of deadlines and direction of the project. Currently I am running as more than just the overseer. I have been the director since the beginning of FoldingCoin and I feel I have done some wonderful work with the help of the community. But I think it's time for me to step down as the director and be reutilized in another role, and that's the treasury role. I have done all I can for FoldingCoin with being the director, but I think we get to that next level when someone with a fresh mind and new ideas comes in. I will remain the director until a replacement is found and I plan on continuing to help build FoldingCoin into a great prosperous project for years to come. - Treasury, Board Seat - Currently Robert Ross
This person’s responsibility is to be the main distributor of FLDC, to file taxes for FoldingCoin Inc. at the end of each year, and to be the main account holder for the FoldingCoin wallets, multisig, Coinbase, and if we have a future US bank account that as well. - Communications, Board Seat - Currently Jona Derks
This person's role is to facilitate communications between the devs themselves, set up collaboration environments, access to all information for review, peer reviewing all documents that go out, and being “the face” of the dev team on forums. - Lead Developer, Board Seat - Currently Vacant
This person does not necessarily need to be spending time coding for use, but rather is the main point of contact for any developer working on FoldingCoin code. This person will need to have the qualifications to verify and review the integrity of any new code proposed to FoldingCoin. This person is also the caretaker of the GitHub account. - Social Media Rep, Board Seat - Currently Robert Ross, replacement needed
This person is to be in charge of all social media accounts which include Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Skype, Slack, and any you wish to add and maintain. - Forum Moderators - Vacant 1-5 spots
Moderators of the FoldingCoin forum need to be people knowledgeable about the general concept of FLDC and FAH, should be able to answer most questions on the forums, and are willing to spend time throughout the week making sure people have their questions or comments responded to on the forums. Its this person's job to also contact the right board member to answer if a question cannot be answered by them. - Merged Folding Rep - Currently Robert Ross, replacement needed
This person's job is to maintain a communication line between the Merged Folding participants and the development team. Also it's this person's job to help any merge folding participant with troubleshooting. - FAH Forum Rep - Vacant 1-5 spots
This person is to already have a good history on the FAH folding forums. We need people from the FAH forums to also be involved in our forums for help with troubleshooting the FAH program. - Your own idea - Unlimited Number
It’s your volunteer time so contribute in anyway you think is helpful. Maybe speak at local meetups, or just help spread the word on different forums. Even just helping to answer peoples questions on the forums will be of great help to us. Let us know how you want to contribute.
Development:- Webmaster - Currently Robert Ross, replacement needed
This person's role is to maintain and update the website when needed. Currently I am the caretaker, but I can no longer focus a lot of energy into the website. - Stats Page Developer - Currently Vacant
Looking for a developer to build our envisioned stats page as laid out in these documents. Since we have nothing built yet, any kind of coding language would be acceptable, connecting to a MariaDB - Calculation Server Developer - Currently Vacant
Looking for a maintainer of the integrity and security of our calculation server currently temporarily maintained by another developer. Would need to move our database to a new server, PHP skills are required. - Distribution Server Developer - Currently Vacant
We need someone to help develop version of the LTB distribution server so we can distribute tokens on our own - Tokenly Pockets Developer - Currently Vacant
Someone who can integrate FLDC somehow into the Tokenly Pockets web wallet - Desktop Client Developer - Currently being Independently worked on
An all in one installation package that makes joining the project easier. This program is to bring you through the automatic steps of downloading FAH and setting up your username properly. - Your own idea - Unlimited Number
It’s your volunteer time so contribute in anyway you think is helpful. Maybe you have a mobile app in mind, or possible some cool new logos. Let us know where you can help us.
If you are interested in being on the board seat or any other position, please fill out an application and send it to
[email protected] and cc to
[email protected] and we will go through them and interview the applicants (certain positions will not require a video interview). We do not need to collect personal information from anyone looking to volunteer time with no compensation. However, since we are an official 501(c)3 non profit, if anyone receives compensation (such as FLDC or BTC) or if you are applying for a board seat, we do need to have your personal information on file.
100 million FLDC and paying devs - This has long been a conversation for almost a year and we need to finalize a decision on this. Jona approached me with an excellent spreadsheet showing how we can pay out FLDC over a 5 year period. This will still take some vetting , and Jona will be leading the front on this task, but the goal is to incentivize people to help build the project. For code related tasks it is hard to get a coder to work for no monetary gain. Coders are looking for cash or BTC, not FLDC. I propose that we assign a donation address to each code task. You will simple donate to that address if that is something you want developed for the project. Then whoever builds it, gets the money in the pot. With this proposed idea me Jona and the future Board seat will need to discuss in depth on how that process will work.
Merged Folding - We currently do not have a sound way for merged folding participants to distribute their tokens on our platform. The current system requires access to the LTB distributor which other merged folding participants do not have access to. For this reason I propose we put merged folding on hold until we have a more bulletproof way of operating it. The way we accomplish this is by have someone build a distribution server for us based on the LTB distributor.
Moving Forward - By getting involved in way too many ideas and projects, I became overburdened to the point where everything I was doing began to get accomplished behind schedule or even worse not at all. When I was full time crypto in the middle six months last year I was able to keep up, but after going back to work it got overwhelming. So here are the current activities I have been involved with that I am halting:
- CounterpartyNews.com - It's a good domain name and JPJA gave it to me to hold onto and possibly develop it. I didn't get far into it before I stopped, mostly I compiled an RSS feed from every XCP related project into a template. I wish to give this domain to the Counterparty Foundation. If the foundation doesn't want it, then I will give it back to JPJA, if JPJA doesn't want it, then I will continue to hold onto it until a trusted person in the community wishes to claim it.
- Shop.FoldingCoin.net - We initially had plans to help build something great to compliment Tokenly, but this is simply too time consuming and the results were not anything to brag about. This project is to be cancelled permanently. If you wish for a XCP based shop to develop, I recommend going to Tokenly and seeing how you can help them accomplish this goal.
- Community Director for the Counterparty Foundation - I will finish up my term but I will not be rerunning come April. I need to refocus all of my energy and time back into FoldingCoin as I dont have the time to be involved with both anymore.
- XCP Weekly Update - I am sad to say that I can no longer host the podcast. I have tried to think of ways to still be able to do the show, but it is simply the most time consuming of everything I just named. Thank you to all my listeners and I hope to see someone else start a XCP related news show.
- Forums - I have to spend most of my free time for forums into the FoldingCoin official forums. I no longer will be very active at the LTB forums or the Counterparty Forums. I will be active on 3 different platforms: Bitcointalk ANN page, FoldingCoin Forums, FoldingCoin Slack.
Right now with my schedule and work, I am only available half of thursday, some saturdays, and all sundays. My time online going forward will be significantly less than it was in the past. I feel for the most part I have got FoldingCoin right to the edge of the next level, but we need someone else to come in and lead us during the next chapter of FoldingCoin’s life. Now obviously I know that finding people can be hard in this space, which is why I think Jona’s proposed idea for spending the 100 mill FLDC on administration help will be very fruitful. Also I know that asking for a total of 15 volunteers is also a lot to ask, but if we want FoldingCoin to make it, it can’t rest on the shoulders of me and Jona’s alone.
I look forward to all of the feedback from this post, and I highly suggest you all come to the next monthly meeting to discuss this live with us and tell us what you think. I will continue to remain as the director until a replacement is found, and I will continue to be on the board for as long as this great project will have me. I am so proud of this community and how far we have come together and I cannot stress enough how sorry I am these last few months,but with your help we can revive FoldingCoin to the 2.0 status we have long been looking for.