Firstly, A BIG Thank You!
The first thing that needs to be said is that the Bitcoin Cash community has completely blown me away. You lot are just absolutely amazing. I really did not expect this kind of outpouring of support from the community. The Bitcoin Cash community has shown itself to be truly positive, generous and forward thinking.
Thank you all so much!
If you haven't heard about the fund you can read about it my initial post here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7cvzu6/now_that_the_debate_is_over_lets_finally_make/
Our original goal was to crowdfund just $200 to produce short an animation video about Bitcoin Cash, and produce some leaflets with any extra funding. As of today, 17th, November 2017, the fund has received over $17,000 (15.33BCH). Not only did we receive the funding, but we also received a huge outpouring of support from Bitcoin Cash supporters across the world. Some amazing people have been volunteering their time, skills and knowledge to help us expand capabilities of the fund far further than we thought possible.
The energy and positivity within the community is immense right now, and we should capitalise on this and clearly the Bitcoin Cash community feels there is a need for an initiative to push the economy forward by increasing adoption. The Bitcoin Cash network is made up of a nodes that make up the infrastructure, developers that offer up software upgrade, businesses that make using Bitcoin Cash useful, and users who save and spend Bitcoin Cash. But there is a need for an entity that can drive adoption forward and make sure there are more users and businesses coming into the economy. We propose that this entity is the Bitcoin Cash Fund.
Establishing the Bitcoin Cash Fund
The Bitcoin Cash Fund is a community-driven, grass-roots project to push forward the adoption of Bitcoin Cash. The initiative is growing at lightspeed, which is great, but we need to tread carefully to make sure that it remains effective.
The problem
The biggest and most pressing issue with the fund is, how do we remain efficient, effective, and community-driven as we scale up. We currently already have close to 100 volunteers involved, spread across the globe. There needs to be an effective system for community collaboration and fund allocation.
We need to create a process where funds move from point A (donors) to point B (The Bitcoin Cash Fund) to point C (the community), to achieve point D (action). The process of achieving this needs to be balanced between a hierarchy so that we remain efficient, and a decentralised structure, so that the project is community driven. These are starkly opposed concepts but I believe it is possible to combine them into a structure that achieves our goals.
Solution
The diagram below is the proposed structure for the Bitcoin Cash Fund. At the top, you have the funding sources which input funds into the Bitcoin Cash Fund. These are; individual donations, corporate sponsorship, and direct revenue. These funds are all funneled into the Bitcoin Cash Fund. Now, instead of the Fund itself working on projects internally, or handing down projects for the community to work on, the community will be the driving force for projects. The community will be encouraged to self-organise and take ownership of their own projects. The leaders of these projects can then put in proposals for funding (and any other support they need) to the Fund. The Fund can then allocate funds to projects that have the best cost/impact ratio. Proposals will need to clearly outline the project, with a project plan and a budget.
In the future, as the community becomes more organised and the fund grows, the Fund will look into giving community leaders a direct budget to allocate to projects as they see fit.
Since the fund launched, we have been working on bootstrapping the self-organisation piece of the puzzle by creating channels based on project-types, and then assigning people to those channels based on the expertise the volunteers have. A subreddit at www.reddit.com/r/bitcoincashmarketing has already been established to serve the reddit community in project development. As the initiative grows, we expect the projects to spill out into many different areas of the internet.
The process for requesting funding from the Bitcoin Cash Fund (BCF) is shown in the diagram below.
How Does the Solution Solve the Problem?
-Funds can be driven back into the Bitcoin Cash economy by the entities who have gained from price appreciation (Bitcoin Cash holding individuals and businesses).
-Bitcoin Cash community is able to self-determine what projects they want to work on.
-The Bitcoin Cash Fund is able to allocate funds effectively, giving donors and sponsors confidence that their donations will be spent wisely.
How Can the Solution Be Improved?
-Allow donors and sponsors to choose directly which projects they want to fund.
Governance of the Fund
When I started the fund initiative, I never expected to get the huge response that it got. For this reason, there was little to no governance plan in place. When the fund expanded to over $10,000 in the first 24 hours, it became clear that we would need to think much more carefully about the project. With the funds growing rapidly, I feel the need to be more cautious and prudent with spending, not less. There is also the issue of security. Being the only holder of the private key of a publicly known and growing fund puts both a legal and criminal target on my back that only increases as the fund increases.
It became obvious that there was a need to spread the security responsibility across multiple bases to mitigate these problems. After discussions with various parties in the community, it was decided that it would be best if the fund was put into a secure 2of3 multi-signature wallet, with three different signature holders.
There was discussion over how best to structure the governance model, and the largest concerns (other than security) were of; (A) making sure the fund is effectively and efficiently managed, and (B) making sure the fund is not owned by just one person.
To solve this, it was agreed that the fund would be set up as follows:
Three board members of the fund create a 2of3 multi-signature address, with each member being responsible for one signature.
One member would be a known and respected member of the Bitcoin Cash community, who is highly active in the community, willing and able to lead the Bitcoin Cash Fund. This board member would lead the Bitcoin Cash Fund. We will call this board member (A).
The next board member would be a highly active member of the community, and is known and respected. This member would sign off on the decisions/transactions made by member (A), unless there is obviously something very wrong with what the member (A) is doing (i.e. stealing the money or doing something that seriously jeopardises the fund). They agree to support the decisions of member (B) on a voluntary basis, and let member (A) lead the fund unless absolutely necessary. This stops there being a war of 50% control that could jeopardise the functioning of the fund, and allows member (C) to not have to sign transactions all the time and resolve disputes. Without a definitive decision maker, it can be very difficult to make progress, and a project often ends up in arguments over minor details.
The final board member would be a very well-known and respected member of the Bitcoin Cash community, who has nothing to gain by acting maliciously, but who probably doesn't have the time to have much input in the governance, due to their other commitments. They would act as a failsafe in-case of security issues (hacking or loss of one of the board members signatures). We will call this board member (C).
All board positions would last one year (suggested), and would be opened to a vote after the term. The exact details of this voting mechanism will be hashed out in the coming weeks. This governance system is efficient, as I would be able to make leadership decisions effectively, but provides fail-safes to make sure that member (A) does not hold ultimate power over the fund.
Board member (A) will be myself, Paul Wasensteiner (aka Singularity). I have been a Bitcoiner (now Casher) since mid-2011 when I discovered Bitcoin shortly after the first $30 price bubble. Since then, I have been highly active in the community, although it wasn't until this year that I dived into Bitcoin full time. I started the BTCforks initiative last year with Freetrader, which was a precursor to the Bitcoin Cash initiative. Until recently, I spent my time in the community trying to correct misinformation and educate newcomers. After Bitcoin Cash successfully launched, I decided to make a positive change and instead put my energy into pushing Bitcoin Cash forward. I have a wide range of experience and expertise, and have had two businesses of my own in the past. I am working towards changing the world for the better, and I feel Bitcoin Cash is one way of achieving this. I launched the Bitcoin Cash Fund initiative on 14th, November 2017 to expand Bitcoin Cash adoption.
Board member (B) will be Fitz Michael (aka checksum0/FractalGlitch). Fitz found out about bitcoin on January 3rd, 2010 after reading a piece on it. He spent time CPU and GPU mining, both solo and with Mining Team Reddit and Slush. After a break from Bitcoin, he reinvested in mining when the Bitmain S1 was released, and has kept this endeavor going ever since. It was at this time that fees started to increase and he realised that this may become an issue in the future. Today I own and operate a private 4 MW mining facility in North America. Bitcoin Cash is the plan I signed up for when I first got into the bitcoin space.
Board member (C) will be Haipo Yang. Haipo is the CEO and founder of ViaBTC. He graduated from Northwestern Polytechnical University of China in 2012, majored in mathematics. After graduation he worked as a developer at Tencent Weibo (China’s Twitter) and then FUTU, a Tencent-invested Hong Kong stock exchange. YANG is one of the earliest adopters and investors of Bitcoin and has in-depth understanding in blockchain technology. YANG began to be involved in Bitcoin in 2013. Between 2014 and 2015, YANG started his career in cryptocurrency industry and led the R&D team at ZeusMiner, the former TOP3 Scrypt miner in the world. In April 2016, YANG committed himself to the development of ViaBTC Bitcoin pool and released the initial version after two months of extensive coding effort.
The fund will be moved to the multi-sig address below. Feel free to contribute.
3ECKq7onkjnRQR2nNe5uUJp2yMsXRmZavC
This will be used as a highly secure hot wallet, and we are currently working on implementing an effective cold storage mechanism that remains distributed across the three of us, to be used as the fund grows.
You can check our twitter profiles to see our signed messages that link us to the multi-signature address.
Paul Wasensteiner
Fitz Michael
Haipo Yang
We are currently looking at the possibility of setting up a non-profit organisation to establish the Bitcoin Cash Fund.
So What is the Fund Actually Doing Right Now?
There are lots of projects already on the go right now. I would suggest that you join us in the slack (link to sign up in the paid section below) or at www.reddit.com/r/bitcoincashmarketing to find out the finer details and get involved. The community is working on a number of projects simultaneously, but the primary goals we have right now are:
-Completing the video and leaflet projects promised in my initial post on reddit (completed within 2 weeks). Teams already working on it.
-Setting up a website for the Bitcoin Cash Fund to have a web presence (Simple static page completed in the next 2 days, and progress to a more complete page within 2 weeks). A team is already working on it.
-Our secondary goals are almost too numerous to detail in this post, so I will leave them for further updates in the future.
We can always use more help, so if you are willing to volunteer your time and services to the Bitcoin Cash Fund please get in contact at bitcoincashfund@gmail.com, or contact me directly through any social media channels.
Last Note
Again, I'd like to say a big thank you to the Bitcoin Cash community! It really feels like the early days of Bitcoin again when everyone was positive and working towards the future. It is going to take time to grow this initiative, so I ask that you give us time to build things out. We may stumble, and everything is not going to be perfectly organised from day one. Keep in mind it is only day 3 of the initiative right now. Many, if not all, of the processes and structures in the above text, will surely be improved upon over time. As we progress we will become more adept and effective. This is a community effort.
We are going to do great things together!
Paul Wasensteiner,
The Bitcoin Cash Fund.