Grin Community Candidate for fund granting control: @davidtavarez

Governance
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Based on @tromp’s request I volunteer myself as a candidate for the new “Grin Community Council”

My name is David Tavarez aka DavidT aka dtavarez aka “the other David”.

I’ve been involved in Grin for a while now. I’m responsible for the Grin++ Desktop UI and Grin++ Android version. I started to follow Grin since 2019 and I’ve always been fascinated for what Grin can become: a true cryptocurrency. Grin++ is available in 15 different languages, is being used by almost half of the grin users, if we include the android version we probably would say that Grin++ is the most used grin wallet out there, thanks to the great Grin++ community and of course, the amazing work done by @david.

My experience during these years and after hours offering support to the community all around the globe, I could say that I may have a good idea of what users face everyday while using Grin. I’ve been compromised to simplify as much as possible the user experience, and I will continue doing it.

Which approach do I support?

I would support the Fund Alternative: Another Split Fund Proposal primary, why? Well, I will try my best to be unbiased and explain myself.

I realized that there are 2 strong visions for Grin that seem to not be getting along. One side wants to keep Grin as simple and minimalistic as possible at the expense of usability, and the other side is pushing to improve usability even though this represents affecting the simplicity. I think having these two strong visions is actually healthy for Grin. I believe that simplicity will pay off in the long run.

I’m in favor of having full control of your crypto wallet as you do with your real world wallet. I think that a strong academy approach has a true value, I want Grin to overcome all scientific challenges. I really do. I think that the Council has been compromised with this and that’s why I think that the people that share that vision should have free will to focus on what they believe is important for grin. And I trust the current members of the Council to do that. I’m not saying that they should destroy all possibility of improving the usability, I just think we should encourage them to do their best on improving Grin according their vision.

On the other side of the spectrum, here we are, those who want to make Grin actually usable. People focus on the practical perspective of a crypto currency project. I think that Grin++ has the potential of becoming a complete Grin ecosystem, offering packages, libraries, plug and play plugins, tools, a payment gateway, etc., in other words I want to help people to actually use grin as a real world cryptocurrency. I want to go to a Pizza place and buy a pizza using grin. Will the Council oppose to this? No, I do not think so at all, but what the Council will try to do is to keep a good balance between their vision for grin and what they decide to fund. But more important, just as the Council is free to experiment with ideas, we should also have that freedom. Does this mean Grin++ will no be compatible with the Council implementation? not at all, we just need our own playground.

Now, we need more content related to Grin, we need evangelists, not Grin Maximalists maybe, but at least people that are willing to talk about this beautiful yellow project. There is also a need to having people solely focused on connecting Exchanges with Grin, helping them. Until now we have failed on this. Also more documentation would help. Marketing, wallpapers, events, talks and more are also needed. Why are we not funding the Grin Nicehash Defender from @bladedoyle for instance? I think that with a fund focused on this kind of things we could see more and more projects coming to life.

What about IronBelly and Niffler? I think funds should not be mutually exclusive, I’m 100% in favor of keep funding @i1skn for his great job in IronBelly, I think IronBelly is vital for Grin. I even see a possibility of fulfilling the potential funding requests either by all groups or by one, depending on the nature of the requests. I could say the same about @xiaojay and Niffler.

I do not see this as one group vs the other group, what I see is a bunch of people who want the best for Grin and I believe that eventually we will figure out how to push forward this yellow project to the right direction.

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Your contribution to Grin via Grin++ UI/UX and Grin++ mobile implementation is huge. I believe that you’ll be a great council member.
The council needs new blood badly.

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Finally, someone is speaking from the community side here.

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Totally agreed with arguments and support

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what about other proposals? it will be easier to see what candidates are in favor of if they create a sorted order of their preferences. Happy to see you announce your candidacy :+1:

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Your respect for Grin is great and I hope to see you around the community for as long as you’d like

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Full support for you, the work you’ve done speaks for itself!

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I fully support! We need people like you.

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Just do it /////…

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i fully agree with that. grin ++ needs to evolve and become a whole ecosystem for grin. the core team should focus on the protocol, the technical side. Grin ++ is the GUI ecosystem that focus on UX/ integrations and needs to have its own fund to feel more free and autonomous.

full support @davidtavarez

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I support a higher percentage going to the core team than what is proposed in Fund Alternative: Another Split Fund Proposal and do not support Grin++ team having full autonomy to manage the funds.

Therefore you do not have my support

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I fully support having you on the/a council, you did great work for the community.

I agree with your vision for Grin++, but if the above is what you are in favor of and is what you think the community wants, why is there a need to have a separate fund and council for Grin++?

Would it not be better to simply have a Community Council who funds request for all interesting wallet and User Experience oriented projects, Grin++, Niffler and IronBelly, web-plugins, great documentation etc.?
Basically I agree with your vision and reasoning, but I do not see how this would lead you to be in favor of having a separate Grin++ fund. If the community supports the vision you describe above, and they do, they would support that vision through the “Community Council” anyway?

Basically by saying you would need to have separate Grin++ council, this would imply that Grin++ would want something that they fear the community, or some part of it, might not be fully supportive of. Since that is not the case having a separate council and fund should be unnecessary, right :thinking:?.

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Maybe yes.

Thank you for bringing this up. I see what you’re saying, it is a valid point, but the same can be said in the opposite direction. What I’m looking for is fully autonomy and decentralization. I believe that by removing all these barriers between visions and groups it will spark the birth of new projects, technical and non-technical. A Grin++ fund will be more restricted to push Grin++ forward as it is written in the proposal, what if a funding request does not match this? What I want is to give all Community members a voice, but more important, true decision power.

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I get what you mean, and I do think some autonomy/freedom is desirable. I doubt enough potential council members will be there to make both a solid Grin++ council and a Community Council.

True, you could reverse the argumentation and say that not being in favor of having a separate Grin++ council would mean not trusting Grin++. But in that reverse argumentation, you could argue in for having a separate councils for basically anything, e.g. an IronBelly Council and Niffler Council, which would lead to too much fragmentation.

I believe this can be achieved by applying plans and providing funding for the long term for Grin++ as well as other large projects. In that way, by allocating funding for the long term, I think everyone in the community who wants to build something will feel more freedom to do so while at the same time ensuring the community is there to provide feedback as well as checks and balances for continued funding.

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