Then what is a good model? I kind of understand the downside of the bounty model - made up target numbers by peeps (like me) that have no idea wtf goes into the work. But the "hiring a dev" also has its potential problem of the dev not being able to deliver (for whatever reason). The Monero community is still working through one such instance. And this all, of course, is wrapped up in the fact that the cryptonight bounty proposed is for an improved open source GPU miner, because Monero people want to bump the hashrate in order to secure the network.... pocketing more coin for themselves is not the goal, because optimized mining software that is publicly released won't provide any financial advantage to the miners. OK, perhaps for a week.

I was trying to make the 2X-hashrate-increase-on-existing-hardware bounty model such that lots of individuals would put into the bounty, creating a ridiculous bounty for the 2X target. Something crazy, like 15,000 XMR. Because I figure at some bounty level, it does become an attractive incentive, no matter how flawed the funding model. But, unfortunately, we're not there yet.

I mean, should we just contact tsiv and try hiring him? He seems to have working knowledge of cryptonight and maxwell architecture.