Fluffypony & co are setting up a new funding system on the official forum, this will likely speed up things and you can donate to what you personally find most important. Currently the donations go to more or less a blackbox (no offense to the devs, you guys are doing great work, but you get my point) and this is in my opinion a great step forward. If I recall correctly, fluffypony said a few days ago that they are finalizing this system.
you guys are always pointing out how the project is basically unfunded and you do great work under those conditions no doubt. but i just want to do what i can to help with this situation for 2 reasons, for the good of monero, but also because you guys should be compensated for the work you do. and the thing is, i just dont think that panhandling is ever going to get you the sort of consistent and appropriate compensation you should be getting, and monero should be getting.
We've been working on adding some needed functionality to the forum, and our next major task we're going to tackle is the funding system. The idea is:
1. Users / developers / anyone will pitch an idea in the
Ideas section of the forum. This is already happening.
2. After some discussion it will be moved by one of the administrators (currently the Core Team only, but that would change in future) to the
Open Tasks section of the forum. No tasks have been moved as yet.
3. Developers (including the core team, and initially probably only the core team for simplicity) will pitch against each of these open tasks. Later on I would expect that there would be more people / teams pitching against tasks, and the most competent / available / reasonably priced will be the one the community will veer towards.
4. Once the developer / team has been selected to complete the task it moves to the
Funding Required section of the forum, and it is opened for funding.
5. Funding will be to a core team controlled address with a payment ID for that particular project/task, and there will be a funding progress bar. This information will be mirrored over to a funding page on the website that shows the funding progress per project/task.
6. When funding reaches 70% (for smaller tasks) or 30% (for larger and longer tasks) it goes into the
Work in Progress section and work begins.
7. Funds are dispensed by the core team on a regular basis and only if there is actual progress / commits / whatever, so it doesn't go into a black hole.
Advantages of this approach:- the core team's oversight role can eventually be replaced by a group selected from the community at large, so as not to have a stranglehold over things
- the core team's escrow role can eventually be replaced by a multi-sig system (2-of-3) where the signatories are the core team, the oversight group, and the recipient, so the recipient can't spend those raised funds without the involvement of one of the other 2 signatories
- this isn't limited to dev tasks, and things like "fly David Latapie to speak at a conference" or lobbying or PR or advertising can all have tasks created and funded
- funding is direct and specific to tasks instead of going into a big black hole and hoping for the best
We expect this system will still take us another short while before we can put it live, but we're already crunching away at the functionality for it (and this also further emphasises why the forum couldn't just be SMF with a theme;) )
