Request for funding @paouky

Governance
1

Overview

I’d like to request a 3-month funding period to create a comprehensive introduction and documentation for Grin. That would make me the first non-Core member to receive funding for their work.

Grin’s on-boarding process is really bad; I believe I speak for all of us when I say that.
To understand even the most fundamental things about the project, one has to sift through old forums threads, scattered medium articles and outdated & unorganized GitHub docs.

The inevitable result is that potential users are deterred from even taking the time to learn about the project and the unique propositions it has to offer.
One might claim, rightfully so, that in our very early stage we’re better off without attracting too many actual users. However that claim holds no water when you recognize that every avid supporter, every contributor, begins as a simple user with a mild interest.

It is no secret that even long-term community members often have minimal understanding of the project, because the learning process is so demanding. I was one of those myself. It’s essential, in my opinion, that those who are dedicated to grin are actually capable of explaining it well to others.

Objectives

  • Create a marketable, one-stop introduction resource for Grin.
    Make the first step into the project as clean as possible and reduce friction for potential future users and contributors.

    Examples
    • Story & history
    • Core design choices
    • Friendly explanations of technical aspects
    • CLI-wallet (and TUI node) beginner introduction
    • Archive of significant articles and forum posts
    • Overview of 3rd party software and exchanges
    • Media package
    • edit: @Mokhtar’s list.

  • Official documentation/wiki work.
    Building upon @quentinlesceller’s great start.
    As I’ve experienced myself lately, even the advanced users who dare to venture into github, often run into old and dusty documentation.

This list is open to community suggestions.

Funding request

€1.5k/month
For a single period of 3 months, not to be extended.
(fund; amounts to ~0.15%/month).

Role

  • Full-time
  • Writing & Documentation
  • Improve Introduction to Grin

About me

:wave:

I very recently finished a military service in a field of work I can’t disclose. I begin my BSc CS studies in 3 months. I’ve been following Grin closely and occasionally participating in community discussions since early '18. But now that I’ve regained my status of citizenship, I have also reclaimed my time, and I’d like to dedicate all of it to Grin.

I also absolutely do not plan on leaving after said funding period. I’ll remain an active community member and help maintain the written material.

GitHub, Twitter, Keybase

Next Steps

The intention is to ask for community support and approval in the upcoming Governance meeting on the 28th of July.

Update: The request has been approved on a month-to-month basis. See you in the progress update thread.

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Hi Paouky,

Great that you keep committing yourself to this project. I just wonder… do you have any experience in such a task which should convince us you can pull this off? There is a lot going around in the documentation and branding of a product. And for now it appears to me that no one really is clear about what Grin is going to be. So how are you going to document that? Not that I want to be skeptical, but I think it should be done by someone who has some decent experience in that field of work and also has some extensive knowledge of what Grin is. With that being said is today not a little bit early for that?

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You make several good points @bluimes.

While I agree that I don’t have the technical qualifications of an actual developer, I’d argue that if we decide to wait for one to appear and to take on this big effort, we could be waiting for a very long time. It would be unfortunate if for some reason the project receives an unexpected spike of interest while the written material is in it’s current state today. There’s much to benefit if it’s done well.

Also, this is the reason I’m requesting such a small compensation for full-time work, compared to the core-team. If the community is interested in my work but thinks that amount is too much, I’m open to an adjustment.

Lastly, it’s worth pointing out that complete experts often lack the ability to make a satisfying introduction to a topic. I’m no expert, but I’m confident in my ability to understand all the relevant subjects and transfer that knowledge in very a friendly and aesthetic way.

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isnt that Lehnberg doing? sorry if i am wrong…

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I like this, this the boring but very important work nobody is motivated enough to do, myself included :sweat_smile:

I disagree, in fact, I think a fresh-mind is better because any core developer is already biased.

@Paouky do you really think that a 3 months period is enough time? I’m not sure to be honest, it could take maybe 4 or 5, also, there is an upcoming HF in 6 months, I would suggest to considered that.

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Awesome. I think having a smooth/easy onboarding of new users to the idea is one of the key things to enable fast community growth. Grin is different than other projects which can make it hard to understand, but it comes with many benefits that other chains simply can’t have right now. So we definitely have interesting things to show, but right now, unless you’re a developer, you will probably have a hard time understanding the benefits (which is why I also vouched for something like Grin in pictures).

The way I see it is that node and wallet development MUST be secured first. In case we feel like we have enough, then funding the community work would also make sense. Growth of Grin only from the technical side won’t be enough imo, it needs the community to get people excited and investing their time to build projects around it.

I agree this work is important, but would need a clear plan of what the problem is right now and what kind of documentation we would need in the long run (for different levels of knowledge). If there would be technical questions around how grin works, they should ideally be answered once and then written down :slight_smile:

Thanks for taking the time to write this request :v:
I support it if we have enough money for development secured and if we define clear goals.

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I am against all funding now until someone makes a GUI wallet, I just installed version 4.0 for myself and was horrified at how bad everything is.
I can’t even get my address, it constantly asks me for a password and then gives an error.
I cleaned the whole history, downloaded all the blocks again and the error still exists.

I hope you understand that your official wallet is completely non-working, a person will not bother with it and fix errors, no one needs it.

And you want to do documentation, who needs this documentation?

So if someone asks for funding, tell everyone no until a normal GUI wallet is made.

Translation and documentation does not cost € 1.5 thousand / month. If you lived in poor countries, you would understand that most people earn € 50 - 300 per month.

With such useless funding, your project will fail faster.

I do not think that someone else will send you 50 bitcoins

so I want to say start making a working version or you don’t have to rely on people to support it.
As a user, I am very upset by your project, in fact, grin has nothing but optimization of blockchain scaling now. And also a giant minus with money transfers.

I apologize for my clumsy translation.
hope you got what I meant.

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It would be great if you framed your opinion in a way that would not be so insulting towards the wallet developers. Wallets will stabilize and converge over time.

Regarding the funding amount, it depends a lot on where you live. It would be his full time job as a contractor which brings its own costs, so I doubt he would get 1.5k per month from it.

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These are not insults, I write what I think, of course I can lie and be more friendly, but then you will not understand what I want to tell you.

do not be offended if it seems to you that I offended you this is not so.
If for me it was not important I would not write anything, silence is much worse than what I write.

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For context, I live in a western economy and my request is 10% above local minimum wage.

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i think that we need an updated documentation, and most important an onboarding for new users. CLI is cool but even with a good documentation, the average user won’t be interested and we will end up documenting stuff for developers. Still, update the documentation is important.

as an average user, i want to know :

  • what is grin ?
  • another private coin, what for ?
  • what makes grin so special ? (community funded, governance, general fund)
  • why not monero ? ( redundant question, how is it more scalable and light )
  • Grin is not an altcoin
  • Grin Monetary policies and how is it fair for users and miners ?
  • Any road map ? what are the possibilities ?
  • what GUI wallets are supported ? (Mobile First)
  • why do we need interactivity for transaction ? (simplify this new approach)

These are top questions i keep getting from friends and on twitter.

we can start from there and get more technical.

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I support this funding request.

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This is an excellent idea, but I also agree that for the time being the focus should be on improving the GUI wallet. I also support funding, although it’s not a priority, but it will have to be done at some point.

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@Mokhtar This is a great list, it summarizes the introduction I had in mind. These are elementary questions that either lack decent answers, or they are hard to find.
Added your comment to the original post.

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The CLI works fine for me and the password prompts are for your security. But this could be one reason why clear documentation could help. I am sure if you mention the issues you have in the correct places you would receive help.

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Probably wont surprise anyone that I understand you, lol. But in the case of your complaints, I think most of them can be addressed if you ask on keybase or telegram where it’s easier to answer your questions & troubleshoot (or maybe write your own forum post). The password thing just is and for me everythign works, maybe you are trying interactive mode, which is experimental? Either way, if you take your questions to another place they’ll be addressed

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The grin wallet doesn’t have much of a function to write documentation, and who will read your documentation, tell me?

Users don’t read the documentation, they don’t even read the forum rules.
In 2020, the entire application should be intuitive.

If you need advice, start with the designer, not the documentation.

You don’t have to wait for someone to do something for your project and write a request for funding.

You can simply hire people on a freelance basis or on specialized resources.

If you do not know where to find specialists then I will tell you
https://gitcoin.co/ here you can hire programmers

https://www.freelancer.com/
Here you can create a competition for $1000 for designers, you will have at least 100 design layouts, the winner will receive a prize, and then you will work with them.

All my thoughts are justified, if you do not know or understand something, just ask, I will tell you.

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grin-wallet --help
find what you are interested in, say send and go
grin-wallet send --help
and it is all documented and this is the expectation of CLI, even in 2020.

I too think there should be a cross-platform GUI with same UX, but the CLI is fine with respect to expectations of CLI, imo

Also, I read the documentation until it was kind of out of date and realized I really should just be using the help command in CLI

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grin-wallet
Password:
Wallet command failed: Unknown wallet command, use ‘grin-wallet help’ for details

This is annoying though.
Seems it should have the help behaviour without any arguments?!
Or, for more concise output, just respond with

Missing wallet command, such as grin-wallet help

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FWIW I 100% agree that we need an intuitive GUI Wallet with one click install and super simple to use.

However, I disagree that it is as simple as hiring someone on Gitcoin or on some freelancers website. We will pay likely a lot for a wallet that will break at the next HF.

But that’s not at all the subject here and I don’t think we should halt everything until we have a GUI wallet.

@paouky very nice. Two questions:

  • Create a marketable, one-stop introduction resource for Grin. Can you details what is it in term of concrete deliverables?
  • Second part would be great. Do you have any idea how deep/technical you’d go. I can totally see that part as a month project or 4 months project based on how deep you go.

Thank you :slight_smile:

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