CC Fund: expenses, responsibilities, spending guidelines and follow-up processes

[l33d4n]

This post is a proposal to freeze any future expenses from the CC fund until clear decisions are made regarding the responsibilities and roles, enforcement of the spending guidelines and clear and transparent decision making about the follow-up processes.

The proposal does not include the role of one GK which is necessary for transparency and the accessibility of information for the community as specified in the spending guidelines.

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Just to clarify, this is not a personal attack against the members of the CC, 5/6 are volunteers and I believe that most of them want the best for the community, but without clear rules and responsibilities the road is easily opened and there is no way back once the funds run out.

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Table of Contents

1. Basic facts to make things clear

2. Spending guidelines

3. CC role definition

4. Enforcing the spending guidelines and follow-up

5. Solution

6. Final note

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Basic facts to make things clear:

All the information in this post is collected from the available public records of the CC repo and this forum. If you find any mistakes, outdated or missing information, please let me know and I will update it.

The CC Fund received 33 BTC from the original Grin Development Fund. In almost 19 months, the CC fund has spent 9.13858939 BTC which is 27.7% of the total CC funds.

Also, the CC committed to paying £25,000 for CoinSwap Milestone 3 once it’s done.

During this time the CC approved and funded 25 requests for 9 applicants.

The charts show the distribution in BTC as paid by the spending log although some payments were made in GRIN coins so the total funding should be higher.

| Category | requests  | BTC        | USD         | % of total |
|----------|-----------|------------|-------------|------------|
| GRIN++   | 5         | 4.42621146 | $108,430.37 | 48.4%      |
| GK       | 12        | 1.54663826 | $37,927.10  | 16.9%      |
| Mining   | 2         | 1.10501997 | $52,531.99  | 12.1%      |
| CoinSwap | 2         | 1.01527389 | $30,755.22  | 11.1%      |
| BTC-GRIN | 2         | 0.54550658 | $27,539.69  | 6.0%       |
| Bounties | 2         | 0.49991923 | $11,418.00  | 5.5%       |

There was never an official tracking process for the funded tasks so I manually checked for updates for each one and marked it, “Is this request fully completed and the benefits are transparent and clear? Yes or No.”

Total of 25 funding requests approved but only 18 can be easily defined as completed according to the spending guidelines (as far as I know with my limited technical knowledge so the number may even be lower)

These are 7 funded requests that cannot be defined as completed right now because is not possible to understand what exactly was funded or why and how it serves the community:

• 2 were abandoned (0.30840909 BTC / $6,092.14)

• 1 is currently unclear (1.86553872 BTC / $31,430.00)

• 4 missing transparency reports or public records for follow-up how they used and how they serve the community today (1.65052655 BTC / $80,071.95)

Abandoned:

| Date       | spend description                | BTC        | USD       |
|------------|----------------------------------|------------|-----------|
| 2022-05-14 | @jankie Mar-May 2022 funding     | 0.07206201 | $2,112.14 |
| 2022-12-25 | @satoshcrat Jan-Apr 2023 funding | 0.23634708 | $3,980.00 |
| Total      |                                  | 0.30840909 | $6,092.14 |

Unclear:

| Date       | spend description                | BTC        | USD        |
|------------|----------------------------------|------------|------------|
| 2022-12-22 | @dtavares Jan-April 2023 funding | 1.86553872 | $31,430.00 |
| Total      |                                  | 1.86553872 | $31,430.00 |

The status is still unclear. The funding request specifies 3 tasks: CLI, API and documentation, but from the discussion and the new “Progress Tracking of Funded Requests” it is not clear what the status is right now before a new funding request was submitted.

Missing reports for transparency:

| Date       | spend description         | BTC        | USD        |
|------------|---------------------------|------------|------------|
| 2021-12-22 | BTC-GRIN conversion       | 0.50000000 | $25,756.42 |
| 2022-02-27 | BTC-GRIN conversion       | 0.04550658 | $1,783.54  |
| 2022-11-23 | community farm expenses   | 0.13977543 | $2,265.00  |
| 2021-10-21 | Community miners purchase | 0.96524454 | $50,266.99 |
| Total      |                           | 1.65052655 | $80,071.95 |

The “BTC-GRIN conversion” missing records how and why the GRIN coins were used, the GRIN wallet report is messy, outdated and contains errors (revenues marked as expenses so when calculating the balance I got a negative number -240K GRIN)

The Community farm has been discussed many times but the Miners purchase and expenses were not documented clearly so I was unable to verify this due to a lack of transparency (“Mining report” or something organized and accessible to the community), how many miners were purchased? How many of them are active right now? testnet or mainnet? the g1 has been inactive for a while, what is the plan and who is responsible? What are the monthly expenses/maintenance costs? What is the revenue?

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Spending guidelines:

Even if we can’t agree on all the expenses above we can all agree that some of the previous funding goes against the official spending guidelines, the quotes parts in bold:

Decision Process: … The Community Council will never make a decision without having clear:

How the expense will be helpful for Grin, How much funds will be spent. If the expense will be a one time or require multiple rounds of financing?

Some rules will be established during the discussions to clarify how the accountability process will be.

We need clear decisions to be made regarding the responsibilities and roles, enforcement of the spending guidelines and clear transparent decision making about the follow-up processes.

Reporting: The result of all funding decisions will be published in the meeting notes found in the Grin Community Fund repository. It is mandatory to publish a detailed spending log of all transactions made in and out of the funds.

Some of the funding reports were published over a year after the funding made, the GRIN wallet report are still outdated and since the meeting notes duty removed from @cobragrin duties the meetings notes have not been published again for months until now, I explained the timeline here.

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CC role definition:

When the CC fund started we were all full of excitement and felt that finally the community will be able to fund what we want and need but the CC role definition and the responsibilities are still unclear and over time things have changed, most of the CC members got busy with life and that’s fine, but we’ve reached a point where things need to be clear, what exactly are the CC duties? just keyholders or active duties to enforce the guidelines?

The CC members explained some of these challenges several time

(Full long discussions here, here and here):

@Anynomous

We are all volunteers who have a variable amount of time and no consistent time available, that leads to problems now and then. Especially since most of us are business owners and have families, free time is simply limited and variable with us sometimes having not enough time to actively keep track of everything going on in Grin.

@davidtavarez

Since the role of the CC has been reduced to mere key holders, which was not supposed to be the case, the CC has been failing with no sign of improvement in that regard

@Neo

My opinion is that the community should hope CC members are more than just key holders, however, there shouldn’t be any expectation for them to be more than this, unless they’re fulfilling a funding request. However, if members can only just be a keyholder for a prolonged period, they should offer to step down. The most important thing from my perspective is that development moves forward outside of just maintaining the core codebase and the community has as many funding routes as possible. Grin needs to be keep building, everything else is noise.

@Anynomous

We need to own our mistakes and admit that going on as we did in the last half year is not a good way forward since we were inefficient, not very effective and some members and contributors got demotivated.

@davidtavarez

The situation is very simple: if no one assumes any responsibility of any kind, then there is no reason to exist. No one has explained why a transaction takes weeks or months to be made. Or why there are still pending commitments to fulfill. My guess is that I won’t get the answer. It’s not just about payment delays, that’s just one of the symptoms.

Don’t get me wrong, a lot of the approved requests had a positive impact on the community, for example: the mobile wallet by @davidtavarez , the CC website by @stakerv, the bounty by @nicolasflamel and @Cobragrin as a GK who is always ready to take on more responsibility.

But what about the wasted funds?

GK roles: 2 funded GK abandoned and none of the CC members even noticed or asked. I had to push again and again to get an “official refund request” for something so obvious, and actually looking back I have to ask, why did we even need 2 GK in the same period of time? It doesn’t make sense after reading the meeting notes.

Community miners: the miners purchased at the highest price ever over a year before even being placed in the facility, The G1 has not been inactive for a while, and there will always be new issues that require some kinds of skills, ongoing expenses and responsibility.

We talked about this topic on 2023-04-29, @davidtavarez confirmed that:

“Maybe spending on ASICs wasn’t the smartest idea, ASICs were bought in the worst moment”

Have we really considered the long term responsibility of running a mining community farm before spending over 12% (1.10501997 BTC / $52,531.99) of our approved funding (not including GRIN payments and ongoing maintenance costs)?

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Enforcing the spending guidelines and follow-up:

The follow-ups for each new funding request is almost impossible right now, the follow-ups and the review process requires time, tech skills, clear responsibility and equal enforcement.

For example: I brought the follow-up progress issue to the CC meeting (2023-4-25), the original idea was to follow-up the GK tasks, but in the end I suggested adding to the GK duties follow-up for each funded task.

@davidtavarez and @Anynomous as CC members supported it, and @Cobragrin created the progress tracking file as agreed but when he asked @davidtavarez one week later (2023-5-2) to update the status of his ongoing funded tasks he resisted:

CC meeting (2023-4-25):

**l33d4n** : We skipped the first item on the agenda list. I would like to suggest adding to the GK tasks follow-up for every funded task. Once the CC approves funding, it will be the GK responsibility to follow up and update (on a monthly basis?) what the status is.

**dtavarez** : I’ll a PR with that suggestion to add it to the repo officially.

**l33d4n** : This way we will avoid such situations in the future.

**dtavarez** : I support it

**cekickafa** : yes, i support also👍

**anynomous** : I am fine with it. Just a few bullet points will do, but it will avoid that nothing happens without no one knowing about it.

**dtavarez** : Or @cekickafa will you add it to the documents?

**cekickafa** : yes i can.

👍 anonymous, dtavarez

**dtavarez** : Thank you. That was easy. Something else?

One week later (2023-5-2):

@davidtavarez contributions summary & logs

No, and I never agreed on participating on any “Progress Tracking Scheme”. I post regularly, I’m reachable, I share updates, links, post, code, etc., I release things when they’re ready. When things are released you can link whatever you want. In order to follow a “Progress Tracking Scheme”, it should be properly defined, and a “Project Manager” role should be created. Keep me out of that. Thank you.

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Solution:

Freeze any future expenses from the CC fund until clear decisions are made regarding the responsibilities and roles, enforcement of the spending guidelines and clear and transparent decision making about the follow-up processes.

For necessary or urgent developments that is not part of the OC responsibility, it can be discussed specifically and we can offer a bounty with a clear definition and responsibility for the end result.

At the same time we can try to understand together how to:

@Anynomous

… work in subteams and have more contribution on a voluntary basis. This is happening to some extend, people make great contributions to discussions, marketing material, their own websites on Grin and many people use their free time and energy to contribute…

As long as the wallets are working and the nodes are running, everything will be fine and I can assure you that the end users won’t even notice it.

The proposal does not include the role of one GK which is necessary for transparency and the accessibility of information for the community as specified in the spending guidelines to close the transparency gap in all the missing reports and meetings notes.

It would be great if community members who have taken part in previous/ongoing bounties could share their thoughts about the model and their experience in the discussion. @Nicolasflamel @renzokuken @Scilio

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Final note:

My motivation behind this post is to make sure that the funds are used in the best way that benefits the community and are not wasted or abused without transparent follow-up process and clear responsibilities.

I know this is a sensitive topic but let’s try to have a productive and objective discussion based on the facts above.

[johndavies24]

Thank you for putting this together. I completely agree that the CC should pause all funding until they get it together. What you’ve described is not appropriate and the CC communication is really poor and in some cases the opposite in consecutive conversations

[phraudsta]

This lack of transparency is a huge problem and should be addressed as a matter of urgency. It could be nothing more than a communication issue, or it could be something much more sinister. Consequentially therefor I agree it would be most prudent to freeze the funds pending a deeper revelation or investigation providing that or close to that level of transparency required to be assured of the best outcome for grin.

[Anynomous]

Nice overview graphs
There a few things I can say here.

1. Yes, buying the community miners turned out to be a bad idea in hindsight, since the timing was wrong (even though we got 20% discount), and since it takes a lot of time to setup and maintain.
   However, we have to be clear here. These are not decisions made by the Community Council, but by the community at large. Neither can we or the community predict the future

2. Yes, not all funding requests turned out perfect. I do not think this can be completely avoided, but I do think there is a few simple fixes:

• Fund after completion, except for regular our Ground Keeper who has proven himself to be trustworthy.
• We only need one Ground Keeper, simple true and cost saving
• Endless administration… not the solution IMO. Administration puts people of and requires time which we do not have or have to pay for which is a wast of fund. Keep things simple, but clearly define deliverables, check them.
• Status tracking, this was a good suggestions and we are doing that now.

As expressed before, I am personally fine with pausing spending until the BTC price is >30k$ with the exception of funding tasks that we deem essential for the future, e.g. PIBD implementation for Grin++.
However, in the end it is up to the community. If the community thinks we should already spend funds on implementing Nostr, they can up-vote this funding request:

Request for funding @davidtavarez May-August 2023

TL;DR This is a request for a 4 month period from May through August 2023 at which time it should properly release work from Q1 of the current year. The new source code should be merged and ready for production, this also includes the ability to send and receive transactions through Nostr, and it should improved the P2P communication. What the Community should expect? So far, transactions are working just fine across Nostr, node and wallet running on different architectures without any proble…

Personally I am still torn on whether it is worth the money right now (due to low BTC price). And yes, I would have preferred it if the API part for the Client would already be finished before any new funding for Grin++ since these were the deliverables for the last funding request of @davidtavarez.

I have seen similar post and discussions in the past. They happen at least ones a year. In general I think there will always be criticism on Governance, attempts to improve them, some changes turn out right some turn out wrong. This is a natural process , and we should have these discussion now and then. What I want to warn about is the danger of complexity (e.g. to much administration), or to much putting weight on the governing body (in this case the Community Council). In the end, simplicity, clarity and transparency (not at the cost of complexity) are key. Al decisions are made by the community and are publicly discussed, so do not criticize from the sideline, but get involved in the meetings like @l33d4n did or make suggestions to improve governance here (but do your research), participation is the key of proper governance .

[ardocrat]

Good research. As developer I think we should fix existing critical bugs before creating new bounties, its our responsibility. Cooperation with community is must have everywhere: from testing to inventing new features. Tansparency should be everywhere. CC meetings can be translated out from Keybase to hear every voice, I found Telegram has active community.

[noobvie]

Great to see your detailed tracking information on the fund issue. I totally agree that we should have same voice/process/ to use fund more efficiently.

[johndavies24]

@Anynomous

since it takes a lot of time to setup and maintain.

You plug them in, point to grinmint, and walk away. They’re incredibly simple to set up and maintain.

[ardocrat]

@Anynomous

PIBD implementation for Grin++.

As said above I think fixing crticial bugs should be priority over new features. At Grin++ we have problems with peers and Android app initial syncing crash what prevents of using it. Having fixed amount of peer nodes is not fixing problem, but creates single point of centralised failure.

[Anynomous]

@johndavies24

You plug them in, point to grinmint, and walk away. They’re incredibly simple to set up and maintain.

This would have been the case if we would have bought a few miners and distributed them. Unfortunately we bought many, electricity prices went upt etc. So it now only works centralized at a location with very low electricity costs. This involves others who manage the physical location, proper security to not leak information and a before a lot of logistics to get them there. So you have so see it in the trend of professional large scale mining which was not easy to setup.

[davidtavarez]

@phraudsta

This lack of transparency is a huge problem and should be addressed as a matter of urgency. It could be nothing more than a communication issue, or it could be something much more sinister. Consequentially therefor I agree it would be most prudent to freeze the funds pending a deeper revelation or investigation providing that or close to that level of transparency required to be assured of the best outcome for grin.

More fake accounts?

Anyways…

Of all the issues that could be addressed such as: Auditing the Atomic Swap PR in such a way that it can be released, or continuing with the development of mwixnet… or spreading MW/Grin everywhere… well… here we going again: Pause GRIN Community Council - we need your opinion!

Good luck, this time I’m out of this conversation.

[Anynomous]

Is it me, or does it always appear like these discussion are happening when the Grin and BTC price dips , is anyone having major short positions on Grin or something…

Coincidentally there are also three FUD causing posts at the same day… two by new accounts, just like new accounts were created just for this discussion. I know, coincidences right?:

2 Grin++ wallets showing same address

Anyone know why two different Grin++ wallets are showing the same address? This is in the address part in the transactions. I use Tradeogre to send, but it uses slatepacks. In the address section on Tradeogre it just says slate. So, I don’t think it has anything to do with sending, I might be wrong. It also now confirms in 3, before it was 10 or 12 if I remember correctly.

GRIN ++ - missing founds

The “missing” transaction was found in old wallet. Balance on both wallets are correct. I opened an issue on Github to track this and find the right solution: Wallet should not allow users to cancel a Finalized transaction. · Issue #220 · GrinPlusPlus/GrinPlusPlus · GitHub

Had issues with Trade Ogre; resolved with David's (Grin++) help

@dog you know we always find the solution, it just took longer this time. DM me again.

[phraudsta]

Just because this is the first time I post on here? I am pretty new to grin. Mostly I am on telegram. But looks like this is where the real action is.

[Trinitron]

@l33d4n has put into data what most of us just grumble about here and there.

David say’s he’s out of this one, Mike and Neo are mostly gone (not to denigrate their good intentions), Anynomous is receptive to criticism and/or pausing. I don’t know about Cobra.

[phraudsta]

If you are referring to me I am just a new grin user/supporter. I am mostly active on telegram.

[Anynomous]

Yes, one of those accounts. Perhaps I am seeing connections that are not there but it remains a fact that major discussions and criticism on governance are often timed with crypto dips and fake accounts.

[phraudsta]

Correlation doesn’t equal causation. Probably there are some people that are trying to take advantage of the bear market that way (btw how long is a ‘dip’). But if there are unaccounted funds then whose to say what they have been used for? This is a weak fud to bring if it were a fud, as it is simple and empirically answered by delivering the said transparency. Also no one who doesn’t believe in grin is holding grin. Like seriously look at the chart. Only people with belief in it will be holding it (and this have any interest in this discussion)

[davidtavarez]

@Trinitron

David say’s he’s out of this one, Mike and Neo are mostly gone (not to denigrate their good intentions), Anynomous is receptive to criticism and/or pausing. Who’s the fifth member again?

The last conversation about this lasted 3 months or so, opinions/feedback were asked about whether CC should be paused, you can read the post yourself, or read the logs in Keybase, I doubt you will, but I hope you do. In summary, after 2 months (and counting) a “Pause” did not get any support…

One could get a “new group” again, and again, and again, and this conversation will never go away and unfortunately the same people who brings this topic again and again will not going to take any kind of responsibility or role because what they are really saying is: “you should do this or that, not me”.

[johndavies24]

The electricity costs should have been donated by community volunteers… The point was to stack grin for community driven funding, not to build a professional mining operation at scale. Paying a third party might cost as much as the electricity difference and loses physical possession of the hardware. This whole thing was botched horribly

[johndavies24]

Fwiw I think David and yeast are worth every penny and people need to chill and let them work on what interests them (myself included, which I think I have on this topic). I don’t regret the prior points I have tried to make but I definitely regret upsetting high quality full time devs and we should avoid this unless something horribly wrong occurs.

[ardocrat]

@johndavies24

work on what interests them

They are working for community and this is quite clear that quality of work has been dropped. We are talking about CC Funds, not about OC. Something happened already: work was not done, promises were not fulfilled. Wasting of CC funds happened not even once, its our responsibility to change this and protect ourselves: pay only for done work, not in front. We are not even asking for refund from David yet.