if I understand it right you guys don't want to establish an another altcoin in the first line but want to add value to the development of Bitcoin if you still maintain the "
Btcsuite" and improve the development of "
Btcsuite" thru "
Decred" in a practical way. is this right?
and for shure you have the same issue as the Core Developers have. your work has to be funded and you need something for living.
is the word "
Degred" a made-up word of "decrease" and "greed"?
Funding:There are basically three models we've seen in most free and open-source projects that want to remain sustainable (continue development over time). In these, funding comes from:
- Donation-type efforts, or hoping for goodwill
- Some type of initial offering, or selling influence to insiders
- Some external party, or selling influence to outsiders
Nobody here will tell you Decred is going to fix your world. Anyone who tells you that is a false prophet. What we can tell you, unequivocally, is that Decred is a project that will attempt to introduce a fourth option to counter the corruptive influence of funding we've seen destroy a lot of good ideas that started in an earnest way. By writing funding into a consensus rule, Decred attempts to put power back in the hands of its users. Some people will stop reading here and say it's a terrible idea. Others will come along on the journey and see where it goes. The fact remains, if the network dislikes the direction development takes, they now have a direct voice to communicate that - stop mining and staking and the funding stops. That's the fourth option.
All the other options we've seen are suboptimal. Donation-type efforts are limited in scale. Selling air to you saying it'll be worth something "if you just trust us" is sick. And finally, Decred won't accept a situation where it's owned by a handful of corporations astroturfing the community and manufacturing consent in its name. By putting funding into the hands of users, Decred attempts a representative democratic model where nobody owns it. Decred isn't for sale - and you can't inquire within about sale. And if anyone messes with that in the future, scream from the hilltops and burn the whole damn thing to the ground - it's our duty as a community.
btcsuite:btcsuite has been funded by a single guy, relatively unknown, who is crazy about freedom. There's no selling and no venture capital. There have been attempts to buy influence, and they have been chased away. Bear in mind btcsuite is the backbone of a great number of Bitcoin businesses and organisations now. There isn't a number because many close off their code - so we don't know. You may be interested to know that Ethereum's most popular client (geth) is based on btcd, for example. The point is btcsuite is high quality software written in public view over years. That is what you will see from Decred from a development perspective - you need not look further than btcsuite's history.
That type of situation is obviously quite unique. A single source of philanthropic funding is both rare and a problem for a project like Decred. It's been sustained fine for a project like btcsuite, but Decred intends to build a multi-stakeholder development environment where anyone can come contribute and be rewarded for their work fairly when it becomes part of the codebase. 100% of funding goes to the benefit of Decred's development - in full view of the public. So funding isn't going to go to btcsuite as a separate project unless that code clearly and directly benefits Decred, goes into its codebase, and is part of a Decred feature. It's clear now how that can be confusing - what we mean is actual code contributions accepted into Decred's codebase will go to btcsuite too if it's applicable. Similarly, Decred gets free contribution from btcsuite where applicable. So the symbiotic relationship between the two is based on code, not funding, aside from the fact Decred gets free code from btcsuite's ongoing work. The word applicable is used because they're different systems and Bitcoin is more constrictive on what it can accept - chances of a hybrid PoW/PoS change are 0.
As for Decred, the community is beholden only to itself. If someone (person or organisation) wants to build a feature put up as a development proposal, and there's sufficient support from the community, it can built by that party, reviewed, merged, and becomes part of Decred's codebase. c0, for example, is a competent development stakeholder interested in continuing work on Decred, so it'll be doing work for Decred as a team. They don't own it, and anyone can be a development stakeholder if they are good - that's the meritocratic element of the system.