It is very simple. Make Grin such that it is easy to use for users, exchanges and darknet markets. That is all.
Many exchanges including Bisq stopped supporting Grin because it is unusable.
The only place where there is real adoption of Cryptocurrency are darknet markets. Make it easy for them to use Grin.
What would be the steps to make grin easier to use ?
there are several ideas that could be implemented:
Maybe there are other ideas as well, in which case would be curious to hear 
This! Less talking about who siphons more money from the funds (very cypherpunky, as was mentioned above) more of good ideas like what Kurt stated above. I really hope things will change now and the team will start to think more about the project. Literally, what is stoping us now from implementing the above? If there are no people who can do this in the team, let’s hire them. Hire Ux designer, build official wallet, standarize the way to send coins, make the coin easy to use. Start with what is really necessary, then go to the fancy stuff. Unless this is all about extending the work for as long as possible to siphon as much money out as possible and then abandon the project, which I really hope is not the case. Yes, some mistakes were made along the way. Now it is time to make Grin what it is supposed to be and not just money making machine for the centralised group of few, which is way worse than Beam’s tax. As I said before, I am optimistic now. The community finally spoke.
Some people are already thinking through some interesting ideas on UX improvements on keybase so you might want to check there as well. I think the paid devs should work on the protocol code (they have this skillset and it’s probably the best use of money) and make it stable so that we reach something that can run for decades if needed - apart from quantum computers drama in case we reach that.
good protocol engineers are rare. grin happens to have a few of them. most crypto projects dont even have one. i encourage them to continue working on the base protocol.
The fact that the acceptance of these projects are exponentially growing is simply an assumption. Grin may be dead in 10 years or maybe its defining blockchain and protocol will shine compared to the others. While the outlook of Grin may be little in your mind, now is the perfect time to join a project like this. Maybe you should help contribute to making it more desirable for the average user. Out of all mineable cryptocurrencies, Grins market cap is 38th. If you look at the 24hr volume, it is 16th on the list at 33mil. That is not bad for a currency developed by the open-source contribution that is just over a year old. Many of the cryptocurrencies started out with an okay protocol and they have continuously been patched to achieve their desire. This makes many of their blockchain’s full of legacy data that is not able to be trimmed. Grin stands out in this arena. While it will continue to be improved upon the maturity of the protocol from the beginning is years ahead of the others.
I stated a cryptocurrency is not meant for an average user, which can be highly debated. But what government would allow for this. And why would an average user accept crypto as their primary exchange when governmental currency is insured and accepted everywhere. The point of cryptocurrency is freedom from governmental control. This freedom has to be explicitly sought out by the user for their own purpose. China is a perfect example of governmental control and banning bitcoin. Crypto to me will always be underground for those who seek the freedom that has never been achieved in the past. The history of open source technology is a great example of this.
A good bet website 100% Grin friendly would increase the adoption by providing a new and constant use case…
Interesting discussion, I like elephants 
. Wanted to add a couple of things, opinions are my own, my filters are turned off, here we go:
In case you missed it, I referenced this thread in Tuesday’s governance meeting: https://github.com/mimblewimble/grin-pm/blob/master/notes/20200324-meeting-governance.md#66-teams:
I just wanted to point out that suggestions and ideas like these are welcomed. There’s a dormant @grincoin.teams.community. If people have ideas for a fund or ambassador program, put it in an RFC, write a budget and a funding request, and let’s discuss in detail. Your chances for funding being approved will improve if you are not completely new around here and if you have some kind of positive track record of contributions to the project.
If you’re new and still want to propose something, you might also want to start making contributions and get to know others here. That’s how it worked for all of us.
Generally speaking, any proposal that’s well argued, shows reason, follows logic, is full circled and is argued in good faith, seeking to discover some constructive improvement rather than trying to be right for the sake of being right or for the sake of inflating your own ego, I think will be at least considered. Even if people may not agree or draw the same conclusions as you. So if you have something to propose, nobody is stopping you. And there’s no shame in trying and failing!
The general fund being detached from Grin price fluctuation I think is a feature, not a bug. Especially given the emission rate the first years of mainnet, it would have been very difficult to fight the tide of the percentual increases to the supply. 
Look around at other projects, living and dying with the price of their coin. You end up being very short sighted, doing what you can right now to move the price, rather than focusing on stuff that makes sense in the longer term.
If you think devs are being “insanely” overpaid, get involved when they ask for money. Make a convincing case for why they are asking for too much. Deduct operating costs, taxes, health insurance, pension contributions, etc and present your case for what a fair rate is instead. Keep in mind that each individual submits their own request. In fact, there was one funding request that launched today, so here’s your chance! Request for funding / Antioch / Apr-Jun 2020
So far, people who’ve been funded are Ignotus, Yeastplume, Jasper, and myself. They were all contributing without compensation for a long time (years) before asking for money (not sure about yeastplume). Antioch who’s now asking for money (see previous point) submitted their first PR to Grin in 2017. And me, I’m not sure but I think I was contributing 9-10 months before making my initial request. I’m sorry to disappoint but - none of us joined the project in order to get rich quick.
In fact, we never expected to receive such a windfall in the fund in the first place. We set up a mu-sig wallet, and we received very generous donations to it. It was unexpected, but it was most certainly welcomed. The large donor(s) understood who had control of the funds. “Keep doing what you’re doing” was the message. I for one intend to do just that, advocating for spending in the way I think best helps the protocol over the long term.
At some point though, the funding will run out, and donations will dry up. It’s okay. The project was literally broke and launched one of the most anticipated blockchains with $0 spent on protocol development. (Aside from three or so yeast funding rounds that he managed himself.) Unlike other projects, I think Grin will do just fine without any funding, we never even expected to have funding in the first place. This makes us resilient. I can think of many reasons why I would decide to leave the project, but running out of money is not one of those.
Even if you’re not a dev, and don’t have a brilliant idea you want to ask for money for, we can still use your help. We’re looking for community managers / moderators, testers, technical writers, wiki wizards, and individuals with good vibes in general that are excited about the tech and the promise of Grin. Hit me up if you want to toss ideas, my DMs are open.
If you’re not a dev, don’t have idea for how to spend money, don’t want to contribute, and don’t have any good vibes to offer either… Bummer. Make sure you stick around in any case, you might get inspired at some point in the future!
But! If you find that this is all quite the bullshit, that the “true spirit of grin” has been hijacked by some centralized, virtue-signalling assholes that are buying themselves golden slippers and diamond rings (it’s all about that bling bling baby 
) and you feel something ought to be done about this… then please do so! What is the core team anyways?
It’s some people with:
Really, how hard is that to replicate? Grab a few likeminded buddies, fork the repo, setup your own forum and keybase group, and there you go! Throw in a donation btc/grin wallet for good measure and you’re off to the races. Call yourselves Grin PRO, Grin X or whatever you like. If you follow the consensus rules, your node will be treated just like any node on the network. And we’d be happy to have you. The more the merrier. You’ll be running your own show, king of your castle, master of your domain, and can do whatever you like.
Note that this is NOT me telling you to “fork off”, on the contrary I’d like you to stay. This is me telling you that you DO NOT have to accept our governance model if you don’t want to. Participation is voluntary.
Finally, I just want to close with saying that we never expected to find ourselves a few months after mainnet having launched without Igno. Core team members were all looking to Igno for leadership, and he disappeared way too early. We’re definitely not perfect, and none of us are close to having the leadership qualities that Igno had. We’re doing our best, trying to learn from mistakes, and are hoping to improve over time.
Thanks for reading all the way, keep on keeping on in these times! 
Yay, we’d love to have your help! 
See here QA Team by j01tz · Pull Request #45 · mimblewimble/grin-rfcs · GitHub for some current thoughts about a QA team, there are some unanswered thoughts and questions in the PR conversation, feel free to chip in if you like.
This is disingenuous. You yourself told me the act of creating Grin++ was adversarial in its nature, and claimed that I was wrong to do so. This is just more virtue signaling.
The community has been speaking but the centralized core makes their dealings in an echo chamber
I agree. They’ve turned a blind eye to the community they’re supposed to represent.
Many people in this thread have rightly recognized that Grin is not the cypherpunk-driven coin it once was. It’s all about politics, power, and collecting salaries. I hope we’re resilient enough to recover someday.
This is a joke. You don’t take proposals or suggestions from the community seriously. The core is the only voice.
#4 you guys are taking in $440k (66 BTC) which is roughly half of the fund at current price… I also called out your nonsense funding proposal when you pretended you were unaware of any difference in the exchange rate of GBP and USD. That lie led to another grin core member becoming verbally abusive. Do you guys get off on this two faced virtue signaling or what?
#6 look up all the places you guys mentioned to pay yourselves with the fund, it’s on here…
$50k (just an example) feature bounties would be more productive than spending half the funds and getting relative kernels and possibly a sensible IBD mechanism can’t be what you honestly believe will help the protocol for the long term
#7 grin is bleeding developers and community members. You guys have done a horrible job maintaining the community and getting trust from the community
#8 you guys provide little help or feedback to community members (beta testers). Vast majority of comments are entirely ignored and you are all woefully absent from most community mediums
#10 you finally heard us?
Since David seems to be very active person in the community, has lots of ideas, wants to implement them, wouldn’t it be good if he becomes part of the core team? Yeah, I know he is involved with Litecoin, but it just shows how Grin lost opportunity by not grabbing him first. I would like to encourage him to opt for becoming member of the team.
Let’s see what the GRiN community wants. Should David Burkett (creator of Grin++ wallet) be part of the Grin core team? Vote here: https://www.strawpoll.me/19637251
Speaking for myself, I never considered Grin++ adversarial in nature, but rather a welcome enrichment of the Grin ecosystem.
I have been a silent observer of the project for over 2 years. This is my first reply in any forum, but I feel compelled to support David Burkett as I believe he should be added to the core team. It’s the first of many steps needed to strengthen the community and improve governance.
For me it’s about making Grin fulfill its promise of a highly capable blockchain that is beautiful in its simplicity. I tend to oppose proposals that in my view unnecessarily complicate the protocol. NOT because they’re proposed by the community.
I agree with the simplicity and the beautifulness, but in my thinking it is really important that we dont get blinded by it.
In physics, Einstein general relativity cannot be stated as simple per say, but it is definitely in the paradigm of reasonable mathematics, and to do the link with mimblewimble, all the people that have studied it will say that it is elegant (in a way simple by the assumptions it makes and uses - just a little insight on top of special relativity assumptions) and beautiful.
Nonetheless it is almost unused in the practical life. the only application apparently that is used today is in GPS applications, and the other uses are done in laboratories or with telescopes to confirm observations in astronomy that couldn’t be explained by Newton, and also for cosmology (theories of Big Bang etc)
Newton theory is overwhelmingly used for practical uses compared to Einstein’s. Both are elegant, both are beautiful (probably Einstein’s even more), but one of them is almost just confined in the realm of “scientific curiosity”, despite being definitely the right and best ever (more accurate) theory of gravitation
If you want to build planes or bridges only Newton is used, and if you want to predict weather and for many other things, only Newton is used too. it is used for everything
Just to say my 2 grins that we must be careful about how we consider elegance, beauty or simplicity when it is balanced with ease of use and other day to day practicalities…