Request For Funding, @lehnberg: Oct - Jan 2019/20

Governance
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Tl;dr

On Oct 12, my funding from the previous campaign will expire.

This is a request for an extension in order for me to continue to be able to support Grin with the type of contributions I’ve been doing over the past six months.

As part of this request, I’m proposing:

  • The rate to be increased to a 1/4th of a Yeastunit, or $2,500/month. This, as the workload has been greater than originally anticipated.
  • The time period to be reduced from 6 months to 3 months. This, to make the review check points more frequent in order to evaluate whether it makes sense for this to continue.

I’m adding this request to the agenda for Tuesday’s Governance meeting.

Motivation

The original motivation still holds true today:

Beyond work on the main grin (node/wallet/miner) repositories, work on the admin side of the project has evolved over the past year. The /grin-pm repo is now a place where we track general project management issues, meeting notes, event presentations, financial data, and more.

I think this work adds value and is important for the project’s health, for it’s good governance, and for progress to be made faster.

Grin would get reliable and consistent support for the non-development related tasks, that would help achieve its potential quicker.

With Igno’s departure the need for good governance and a push for decentralization of work and decision making has become even more important. Ultimately the goal is to have several independent sub-teams with their own processes and governance, but we’re not quite there yet. The bootstrapping process takes time and effort, and benefits from having people dedicated to laying the groundwork for it.

Evaluation of previous period

My own assessment

Some of the past period’s efforts worth calling out in particular:

What went well?

  • All the scope as outlined in the original funding request was carried out as intended.
  • There’s been consistency in quality and delivery - meeting notes, newsletters, etc have all been delivered in a timely manner, only missing an issue when I took a brief break for the birth of my son.
  • Adapting to Igno’s absence and helping the project move forward despite this. I feel we are in better shape than ever to respond to disruptions.

What could have been improved?

  • Planning process for v1.1.0 and the v2.0.0 hard fork could have been much better. It was in the middle of Igno disappearing, but nevertheless. Our approach to slate versioning was a mistake, and we should have handled it better.
  • The findings from the security audit have still not been published. On the bright side, @j01tz is now lead on this, and is doing a great job: All issues have been resolved, and a publication is now being co-ordinated. But it still feels like something I could have done more to progress.
  • Some of the discussions in the community have recently been filled with contention, perhaps most recently around transaction building. In hindsight, I could have been less contentious, and better focused on the bigger picture.
  • Turnaround time of meeting notes could be improved.

What have I learned?

  • It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Keep a long term view.
  • Manage time more efficiently, set tighter limits and avoid spending too much time each week on things that will not make a difference in the longer term.
  • There’s no point for me to get consumed by too much of the technical details early on. I should focus more on achieving actionable outcomes, and spend less time debating.
  • Community building does not happen over night, and cannot be forced. Patience.

Community feedback

Feel free to raise feedback and/or suggestions in the thread below, or in private, my DMs are open.

Specific tasks in-scope

Same as last:

In addition, also:

  • Manage the newly created /grin-rfcs and /grin-security repos and the related processes.
  • Focal point for corporate donors and ecosystem requests.

Funding request

  • $2,500/month
  • 3 months.

Role

  • Part-time
  • Ring-fenced around admin tasks

Next steps

The intention is to raise this as a discussion point in the next Governance meeting and ask for the request to be approved.

Edit Oct 3: Clarification in lessons learned.

15 Likes
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Glad to see the amount increase. You are consistent and productive, and handle all of the time-consuming and distracting administrative tasks, while still managing to contribute to technical discussions and focus on the long game. Well deserved.

More action, less discussion.

While more action is good, I don’t think “less discussion” should be the takeaway. More productive discussion, sure, but important technical decisions should be discussed and made as a team, like we did with tx building. The goal should be to get more people involved earlier, and try to make the discussions less… exhausting :joy:

4 Likes
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As mentioned last time, the $'s for the amount of work you’re putting in Grin are not equal.
Therefore happy to see the raise in price.

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Thanks both!

While more action is good, I don’t think “less discussion” should be the takeaway. More productive discussion, sure, but important technical decisions should be discussed and made as a team, like we did with tx building. The goal should be to get more people involved earlier, and try to make the discussions less… exhausting :joy:

I realise that wasn’t very clear - the “less discussion” part was directed squarely at myself, not the wider community, which certainly benefits from discussion, especially about something that’s contentious.

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Happy to see the proposal go through the gov meeting unanimously :+1:

Your work is greatly appreciated @lehnberg

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Thanks all, this was approved, and progress can now be tracked here: Lehnberg - Progress update thread - Oct 19 to Jan 20

1 Like