RE: Steem Alliance: Foundation Proposal by Witness @upheaver
Hello, I am trying to write about the proposals.
I noticed yours is on github which is unique. This post is two months old and well beyond pay out. Maybe you should just copy pasta your github to a new post?
Also, I have concerns with 2 parts of your proposal, one is students are free. This is sort of unfair. Maybe you should only give free membership to people who can prove they are poor to avoid concentration of power in liberal universities. Free membership should require some kind of work like based on the minimum wage of their country and extend beyond just students. They can translate, program, etc.
Next I am wondering about the 50-50 fiat / market investments. I think this is a huge strong point, but I want clarifications that this will only be done by creditable licensed professionals and not some dude who thinks BTC will moon.
Thanks for your message and interest.
Students getting a free membership works as a trial period in reality (student status eventually expires and normal membership fees must be paid). It also serves a way of attracting members of academia and their PhD research teams who could base their work on Steem rather than ______ blockchain. However this is not set in stone and can be removed / amended.
Membership grants access to some events, etc. but beyond that it's a symbolic token which costs more to the member than you gain out of it. Looking at other foundations individual members are usually the ambassadors of the platform.
On a second thought, students/academia could have a separate board seat as their goals for Steem platform might be vastly different.
About funding: FIAT holdings would be held in a professional managed fund / bank and distributed in near-liquid assets outside Steem or simply kept in fiat currencies. The idea here is that in times of crisis (major hack or ecosystem failure) foundation would still retain funding power even if Steem price tanks.
I envision that this foundation should act as a bridge between FIAT world and Steem ecosystem, and having solid fiscal policy which incorporates both simply makes sense.
Glad to hear about the professionally managed fund.
The student thing makes sense in some ways, but I think there should be other requirements for free memberships with some kind of mechanism in place to prevent an entire class or school from signing up together...ie an approval process for free.
I didn't realize you also helped with merger until I heard about it today. Your ideas seem good and to come from some sort of experience.
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Thanks. Yes, the student memberships would require a manual approval anyway as the credentials need to be validated (usually a valid university email + scan of student id). There can be limits on student memberships imposed anytime if it becomes a problem - but what I've seen in other foundations it never is.
I'm an venture capital investor myself and have been around in similar structures, startups, funds so a lot of the ideas aren't new but they come from years of observation and / or experience.
Merger proposal has some great ideas, but I see a major problem with it relying on volunteer staff and not professionals, that's why I kept mine as well as I think it has something to offer. In reality operating a fund is a full time job which requires domain excellence and expecting people to do it for free will lead to major performance issues and mismanagement of funds.
I will be honest. I like the idea that it's funded by membership dues. There was a lot of talk about how some were thinking to take away authors rewards as a tax for development. However, I think just putting in some kind of opt in funding for an enhanced membership or account would be good. Ie. Give us 100 SBD a year or whatever and you get voting rights, an account badge If you want it and possibly something else.
This foundation is in part replicating the role of Steemit Inc. when it comes to ecosystem support and funding so we have more than one corporate structure based in FIAT world supporting the ecosystem. Now imagine for a second that Steemit Inc. would be funded by author's rewards... It would not work for them, why would it work for this foundation?
Also important to note that in my proposed structure, the initial donation made by Steemit Inc. would be paid as a corporate membership fee and they would be treated no differently than any other corporation, no fixed board seat, no special rights.
That kind of experience is exactly what we need. Some people look at steemit and think it is massive or the chain just makes free money. Anything that requires money needs to have financing. There ain't a bank out there that will give the foundation a loan.
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