I wanted to start a conversation on the feasibility of creating a non-profit grin foundation. The motivation is that there are a number of scenarios where having an officially recognised body could massively support the project. One of the challenges of an open source project is the dependence on voluntary work. Many developers work on grin alongside a more stable full time role. Grin in its current form has created somewhat stable roles, however when an individual requires legal declaration of employment status for mortgages and such, it becomes virtually impossible. This may deter developers from committing to work. Another challenge is where grin intersects with regulations. The recent App Store rule change where individual accounts can no longer submit wallet apps is a good example of that.
Id like to hear if anyone is outright opposed to such an idea.
You mention the positive impact that comes with creating a legal entity for Grin but remember there is a massive negative effect that comes with it.
Creating a legal grin foundation puts a target on grin. Right now, if a federal agency tried to take legal action against grin and its community there wouldn’t be a singular person that they could pin it on.
On the other hand, if we had a cooperate legal entity for grin, those people could/would be held liable for any regulatory or otherwise illegal violations that grin may be guilty of breaking depending on the variety of different, and ever changing, laws imposed by different countries.
There are examples where the SEC have tried and failed to take individuals down for doing much more than a grin foundation would do. I think if ground is treaded carefully from a legal standpoint, it would work but I’d like to explore the details.
The correct approach in terms of app regulation would be to either A) relay on other multi-wallet apps to include grin in their infrastructure therefore shielding grin from legal obligation and responsibility. B) make a separate business for their own grin-app wallet not connected to grin itself legally.
What does being “specifically connected” to grin actually entail? Calling it a grin foundation doesn’t legally tie it to anything. It’d be an independent entity responsible for itself. There’s nothing stopping multiple people creating multiple foundations even. I think bitcoin had different organisations
Ya man, like I said really my only objection to the idea is that the members in the purposed legal entity will be subject to legal actions.
If these same people have access to grins official resources (GitHub/websites/etc), then it’s very possible these members could be “pressed” legally to commit hostile actions against grin like “shutting it down” to avoid legal repercussions.
I appreciate the feedback. As it stands, there’s still work to do going forwards to harden grin up from a dev access standpoint, even without a foundation. The good news is that there are so many examples of governance structures that can be examined for grin to use as a guide
Maybe just let the grin devs launder their own pay to appease their own countries specific earning guidelines.
Every countries laws are different, and the notion of creating some non profit organization who’s crypto payments would somehow appease the plethora of different countries and their many different regulatory standards may be far fetched. Inevitably tripping across some countries made up rules and getting into international legal troubles…
isn’t the whole point of grin to basically free us of exactly this stuff man?
Trying to take a freedom money system like grin and force it to bend to regulatory standards seem antithetical to its nature and purpose.
TLDR: if I was getting payed as a dev from the grin community, I would simply make a business locally for myself for which I was the sole owner and then I would simply list “grin community” as my client to justify the source of my income to my government.
ANALOGY: If a painter comes over to paint my house, I don’t need to create a non profit business to pay him. HE needs to make the business and to put my name as client. Same for this, grin community is customer, dev is business owner. You are purposing a grin community owned business and dev is employee of business. That’s a big no-no imo. (Legal ramifications)
I get where you are coming from, but where possible I would avoid introducing any complexity.
There are a couple of general “foundations/organizations’ to help decentralized crypto projects exactly with these issues such as offering an entity for the app store or even help with legal documents. If needed we can contact one of those existing foundations.
Therefore I think it would be best not to create such an entity our-self since it is complex, costly and opens an attack vector - instead use existing foundations which already have experience - only when needed.
This approach works with Bitcoin, Linux and Rust. But everything has a base, like C, Unix. Grin can be base for Bitcoin when they will stop network imo.
For sure, we don’t want to put the cart before the horse and create something for a need that we don’t have. I think I just want to ensure that we are not holding ourselves back based on incorrect beliefs. I wanted to highlight that we could create a legal, transparent and stable way to employ long term developers and not rely on space that people may find in their normal lives. We’d love to have more full timers.
I like it, but we need a sponsor from bitcoin devs.. do we want someone who does not know cryptography and currency? Where is the posting of grin on the bitcoin forum?
I think better place is Universities, students can research and build things on top, later they can be hired to work full-time, their future will be clear.
Maybe one option to consider is forming a fund for Grin at https://magicgrants.org/. There are existing funds for Monero, Firo, and most recently Privacy Guides: Independent Privacy & Security Resources , and we have had discussions with members/reps of other cryptocurrencies who were interested. Full disclosure, I am a member of the board at MAGIC for the last few years.
