Request for funding @jaspervdm, Feb-Apr 2021

I cannot agree more with this concern.

The late locking feature is enabled on the wallet and can be used with the -l flag. There is a known limitation currently in that the transaction cant be finalized if the required number of inputs changes. This could be solved by adding a second kenrel that pays for the difference.


@david
The way I see it, there’s 2 concerns here:

  • I have not been engaging with the community much outside of the meetings – this is definitely true. There are some reasons for it, but not something I am going to discuss here. Going forward what could help me is if we add an explicit expectation here, something like “funded devs should spend roughly X% of their time participating in discussions”.
  • My output is not considered high enough – I work at the speed I do, I can’t change much about that. I do acknowledge I have the tendency to put my head down in certain periods which may make it seem like there is not much progress. However, if my output is not high enough to warrant funding and there is a candidate capable and willing to do the (pibd) work for a lower cost, I urge them to apply to the fund instead. It would be for the good of the project.

@johndavies24
While I am not opposed to bounties on principle, I didn’t think that discussion was far along yet for me to consider it an option for now. If we were to flesh the idea more out it is a possibility, yes.


Yes, it is the same RFC. And yes, during these proposed 3 months I would work on both writing the RFC and the implementation.


With all that being said, I am retracting this funding request for now. I am going to reconsider whether or not it is worth it for me to continue down this path.

Well played guys :clap:

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@mably Yes, that is also the problem. Whether we think someones output high or not, the simple situation is that we do not have an abundance of developers working on Grin.

I for one do not have the ability to implement PIBD, so what right do I have to critisize or say something is taking to much time or not.

Yes, I think if it does not come naturally to you it would be good to simply arrange some time for this. E.g. 2 days in the week use some 2 hours to browse on the forum to interact at a specified time. In this way you make sure it will not slipp your mind while not to much interfering with your normal workflow (daily checking could sucker too much time).

To sidestep the full time vs part time issue, would you be willing to request funding for completing certain tasks, such as finishing the PIBD design and implementation, which you can then work on at whatever pace best suits you?

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Since there is an on going work on PIDB I think this makes sense:

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I’ve added a point to Tuesday’s Governance agenda about our view on funding requests, in lieu of the above.

I think there’s some valid feedback brought up, but I also think it’s being raised in a needlessly antagonistic and zero-sum way, and that’s a real shame.

Let’s think about how we can improve for the future, how can we set clearer expectations from both fellow community members and and the person raising the funding request, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I don’t think Jasper pulling his funding request, is a win for Grin. Who’s doing PIBD now? Did we really need fewer hands working on Grin at this stage? How is it a win for Grin if Jasper works part time now? Does this mean work will progress faster? What’s to say this will give us better value for money?

If someone thinks that Jasper being funded is unfair, that they themselves or someone else deserves to be funded instead, then why not just submit your own funding request and do a better job contributing while you’re at it? Lead by example. Be the positive change you want to see in the world.

I don’t have a strong opinion about how best to proceed.

But I do think that “just doing a bounty program like monero or zcash” is not as easy as it sounds. Zcash has been having quite a lot of trouble it seems with their grants process lately, and Monero’s funding system has yet to be replicated successfully (to my knowledge) by any other project, and we certainly don’t have a large swath of bag holders that can donate to projects for the greater good.

Similarly, from the point of the funding requestor, asking for project-based funding for doing things that have not been done before, that are heavily R&D dependent, possibly also having other people and areas on the critical path to completion, would be akin to shooting themselves in the foot. You make an open ended commitment to work indefinitely on something for the same amount of pay. No professional in their right mind would ever commit to that unless they were dead certain they could deliver within their own estimations.

My position is and remains that beggars can’t be choosers when it comes to having people contribute to Grin’s codebase. We should have demands. We should be as precise as possible with those in order to ensure we get good value for money. If we’re not getting good value, we should pause and reflect and figure out how to improve (like we’re doing now). At the same time, we should be realistic and practical. Some progress is better than no progress. At the current size of the fund, contributing is not zero sum; If Jasper gets funded, that doesn’t mean someone else will not. More is more.

Let’s not deter people from asking for funding or ask them to retract their funding requests. Let’s not call them names. Let’s not ask them to work less for Grin. Let’s welcome them and help them do a better job instead.

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i agree with you all above this and better add to Tuesday meeting, ‘‘why Grin is still in beggar position after all’’, this is a problem that cant be ignored.

Why dont we have more devs?

I had a long, detailed response that covered each point you made, but before I post that and risk this devolving into a huge back and forth, let me first ask you a simple, sincere question. Do you, @lehnberg, personally believe Jasper’s contributions this past 2 funding periods have been adequate enough to justify further funding?

Yes agree, let’s not do that. Instead why don’t you come and participate in Tuesday’s governance meeting instead.

Do you, @lehnberg, personally believe Jasper’s contributions this past 2 funding periods have been adequate enough to justify further funding?

I can say that I think out of all of Jasper’s funding periods, the last one probably wasn’t his strongest.

The one before (I think) is the one he took a leave of absence from and came back to do good on and really I have no cycles to spend dissecting that one beyond what we’ve already done in the past. I hope we’re ready to move on by now.

Whether these are “adequate enough to justify further funding”, feels like the wrong question to ask, I suspect the point I was trying to make above is not coming across, so let me try again to explain where I’m coming from:

We have a long list of work we want to get done for Grin. We know what this is. It would do the project good to have someone work on those.

If we’re concerned about whether Jasper will give us good value for money or not, asking him to withdraw his funding request and possibly apply for part-time in the future looks like a lose-lose* outcome to me: Grin has work it wants done, and now it either will not be done at all, or done slower. Jasper wants to work on Grin full time, and now he either should look elsewhere for a full time job or a part time job.

Instead, I’d be more keen on constructively working with Jasper, and concerned members of the community such as yourself, to find a win-win scenario, one where:
a) Grin as a project gets the work it needs done;
b) Jasper gets some sort of semblance of confidence he’ll get paid fairly for the work he puts in; and
c) Community members can feel some assurance that the general fund is spent wisely.

I don’t think this forum thread is the right place to brainstorm this (let’s discuss on Tuesday instead), but on top of my head a couple of things we could be doing:

  • Insist on regular interval updates containing specific content that gives people better insight on progress.
  • Ask for specific portions of his time to be allocated on engaging in forum and keybase discussions (if we think that’s worth while).
  • Introduce check-points and reviews mid-way or at each month before deciding whether to continue or not with the current scope of work, or shift priorities to do something else, or stop the funding request altogether.

The possibilities are endless for figuring out win-win solutions, but it requires us to take a constructive approach in the way we go about things. In a regular jobby-job, we have people mentoring and coaching us, constructively helping us to get better and improve. I don’t see why we can’t have this here as well.


*) If Grin had a list of other candidates ready to step up and fill Jasper’s shoes, it wouldn’t necessarily be the case. But me knowingly, we don’t, so it’s a lose-lose.

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I think it would be a good idea also @lehnberg if you put some active advertisements google / github (?) to attract additional full time programmers. We can’t have these discussions every 3 months and at some point in time you will need a backup plan, since the Jasper plan is not always working or turning out what everybody thought it would be.

Otherwise motivate everyone to use upwork this will track peoples work and records it real time. This way there is a healthy social check for everyone.

How can a dev that is being payed 10k each month perform like this? Meanwhile have zero interest in participating on the forum, telegram or discord? And then… when he is asked about the concerns he dismisses it continuously with: this is not something I am going to discuss here. Or when the critics are getting rough pulling out in a way like he is being misjudged by the community, rather then discussing the concerns people have. You did the same thing a few months ago in your explanation when you were afk for months while getting payed.

This behavior is beyond arrogant and it frankly pisses me off. If you sum the parts of your behavior you might think it is rather unprofessional, distant and uninvolved. Actually it disgusts me your funding requests turned out into a money grab. Legitimized by earlier results… yeah of course. Therefore I am glad you retracted the funding request. I truly think grin is better off if you take another path.

For those who are outraged that the community slaps this request: Maybe ask yourself what you did personally the last few months to make sure expectations from the community were met in regard of Jasper’s progress?

It was 30k to the drain…

Slow down mate. We shouldnt be unfair or calling names when Criticizing. Jasper is not the talkative guy,he isnt active at social media,forum. Some guys just like that.They communicate less…

if being arrogant,he would be the last one imo) Watch Grincon videos.You will see. Lehnberg is the arrogant one like Thormund))

Jasper is a cool and talented guy,i trust him personally.

I made a suggestion here about how to gain the attention of new developers: Mimblewimble Whitepaper V2

I haven’t seen anyone in the marketing team come up with a better idea.

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we should try to find solutions to problems . @david raised important questions that as a community we need answers to as a first step and then came up with a counter proposal .

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To be honest, I did not want to step in and add another comment here, but I think I have to.

First:
From my personal perspective, its is not ok to treat anyone here on the forum or any GRIN-Dev’s, without the needed respect in phrasing your concerns. This should be normal behavior for everyone here.

Second:
We, as the community, should have a saying when GRIN developers are not performing as communicated. But me personally I can not judge the work from Jasper , as I am not a programmer, but on the other side I can judge a well described technical requirements for a deliverable in a project.

This is why, in my opinion, communication is key here and we all need to communicate in a fair, ethical and healthy manner to not offend, but to share our thoughts and concerns.

Third:
From an personal experience, I would allow Jasper to proceed with the funding offer for next months, for the following reasons:
Working as a full-time programmer, does imply he is not working for anyone else and should be fully comited to develop GRIN.

Therefore if the majority is in favor of parting with Jasper, we could do so after the next funding period.
This would allow him to finish and transfer knowledge to someone new and move on to a new project in a healthy and not stressful transit time.

If we, as the community, want to apply written technical deliverable’s like late-lock etc , we could and possible should do it.

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if he has some things going on in real life which he doesn’t want to discuss then that’s understandable, i’m not sure why that’s so hard to understand. Nobody knows his situation, so nobody can judge his actions. Sure someone can point out that he’s not being as productive as is expected but we can do this in a polite way and in this case only a few people can actually judge his productivity. Most of us don’t have this knowledge so shouldn’t try to compliment/criticize his work

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I just wanted to jump in and say that having a dev participate in forums and chat, aside from what’s needed to progress on their work and inform others of how it’s going, probably isn’t a good use of their time.

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@jaspervdm @lehnberg

I would like to suggests to get this request over with and for now to go forward and give Jasper his next 3 months. Otherwise we are wasting too much time and words. Another idea is that @lehnberg will be coupled ( buddy system ) with @jaspervdm so jasper will communicate his progress with lehnberg and lehnberg can share this with the rest of the community. Perhaps that Jasper can extend is his request to May so May will be included in his request feb/march/April to gain some trust back from the community.

my vote: Aye

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It has been extensively discussed in the last Governance meeting:

I am also in favor of funding Jasper for the comming 3 months with the clear target to finsih PIBD. In the future the buddy system or a second check of the funding request should hopefully avoid getting these kind of discussions and help in formulating clear output measurements for accountability.
The monthly reporting could help, but this can also be implemented after funding the three months. The question is also if @jaspervdm is still willing to work on this :pray:. The way I see it, for now, every day that Jasper is not working on PIBD is a loss for Grin.

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