A 1% devtax on mined blocks (excluding tx fees) would provide devs with motivation for putting in continuing/extra effort.
I proposed a "retroactive pre-mine" in the form of a Bootstrap Block containing 1% of all XMR, which is 184,000 coins.
I'll share some of my personal thoughts. The core team has not really addressed this as a group.
DB seems a bit high if it doesn't include work already done (although some of that has been paid for out-of-pocket by the core team and should ultimately be repaid out of the dev budget).
p2pool seems low especially given ongoing development. (This is not a modification of the existing p2pool, which is largely unmaintainable, but a new solution based on some of the same concepts.)
$5K "network defense fund" might well be small if the attackers are better funded than that or multiple attacks occur, both of which are entirely plausible.
Other needs will undoubtedly appear, beyond a low level of ongoing maintenance that can be paid out of 1% of block rewards, at least at current prices.
In genreal I would suggest that if we are going to do this, that we just go ahead and make the "post-sale" bigger, provide for a larger fund that can be used on a more ongoing basis to hire expert developers and generally ensure that the project is adequately funded going forward. As a benchmark, how much funding did VIA raise? Funds that turn out not to be needed can be returned to the community in some manner tbd.
MEW is also working on a funding model based on memership fees and dev donations, so that should be factored into it. MEW is being launched Tuesday, according to the recent post, so more information should be available then.
Of course with more funds in an account intended for longer-term use there is more responsibility to ensure it isn't wasted or stolen so issues like oversight (as we previously discussed a bit) come to the fore.
Thanks for keeping going with this, and especially not being too distracted by attempts to distract us.
VIA raised 610BTC, via a presale of about 10% of total coins.
Other than emulating the mechanics of their scrupulous, very well done presale, I can't recommend going much further in that direction.
It would be selling Monero short if we sold 10% of it for a measly 610BTC. And it runs afoul of social contract considerations.
I'd be OK with doubling the bootstrap to a 2% presale. Anything more would seriously test the bounds of acceptability, and give the impetus to fork additional energy.
Be careful about advocating for a bigger "post-sale." As a core dev, the knives are already out for you, and anything that may be twisted into the appearance of impropriety will be, with relish.
Another consideration is market fatigue, IE the larger our pre-sale the lower the diminished marginal return per coin.
I may join the MEW, but at first glance do not like their 'membership fee' approach to dev funding. It seems too centralized and cliquish for a true FOSS project, while allowing outsiders to ride free on their/our contributions.
This will be the first, and only, time I will agree with David Lapatie and take the pinko socialist position in favor of a wealth tax, albeit flat and thus fairly apportioned.
Let's run the numbers for a 2% bootstrap, taking your feedback into account.
The 368k XMR/$600k it provides seems sufficient to fund the following to at least alpha testing, and provide a semi-comfortable reserve going forward:
$100k - refactor codebase
$50k - security audits
$50k - integrate DB
$25k - complete I2P
$25k - Official Wallet
$25k - p2pool
$25k - bug bounties
$25k - network defense fund
$25k - trustless web wallet
Now we've got $350k of initial expenses, which would leave $250k in the war chest.
Given that a 1% Bootstrap pre-sale (with some luck and contributions from the MEW) would raise about $350k, I'm not yet convinced of the need for a larger one.
For what do you anticipate the potential $250k reserve being needed, and couldn't that be covered by the ongoing mining tax?
