Here's part 3 of my extended article on ORA!
PART 3
Nio contacts me
During the registration period for the 'phase 1' FREE giveaway nio contacted me, and we started discussing the possibility of him joining ORA as our lead dev. This was obviously a major milestone for the project! ORA now had an experienced and talented dev who was capable of cloning Qora at the very least, but just as important for me, nio was already familiar with the ideas around leaderless 'starfish' communities, and he was instantly very supportive of my desire to make ORA a leaderless Starfish community from the outset.
Nio was also capable of modifying Qora, (or any other coin) into something unique, and he also has his own goals and vision for what a new crypto coin could/should be, so having him join ORA so early in the community building stage was really exciting. I honestly thought attracting a lead dev would take a lot longer, so nio making contact and starting a discussion DURING the registration period gave me a well needed boost of confidence!
After nio joined ORA I was able to split the community building side off from the dev related efforts which was a BIG relief. I am very interested in crypto tech, but I have a laypersons understanding of the nitty gritty details only. Obviously everyone in the community can, and should, have an opinion on everything to do with the project, but if ORA was to become truly leaderless, then someone had to assume the role of lead dev, and given the importance of the role of lead dev to the success of the project, and the risk of wasted effort should ORA fail, I was more than happy to pay nio a 2 bitcoin personal bounty in recognition of his time and skill. Paying the two key developers a personal bitcoin bounty was always part of my plan, and this was outlined in my original announcement post on BTT.
Funding, what works in crypto?
Another lesson from crypto coin history is quality people need to be compensated in some way for their efforts. A persons time is valuable, and if your project timeline is many months, and the likelihood of future success uncertain, then a dev share in the coin itself probably wont be enough to attract quality people, especially in this instant when the role of the ORA lead dev included almost complete autonomy and decision making authority over the tech direction. Good people often work on projects for the love of their craft, especially in the open source software movement, but we all have bills to pay too. Paying a bounty is also a way of saying 'thank you'!
Getting the right mix of performance based compensation that still covers the dev in case the project fails is something that many crypto projects have suffered from in the past. In a way its like paying police very low wages, and then being surprised if they dont work very hard, or they end up being corrupt in order to earn enough to survive. I think many coin projects suffer because a few key people spend many hours working for very little, so the temptation to do something dodgy like a P & D with a premine can become too great, especially if the community isnt helping much.
IMO 2 bitcoins plus 5% of ORA was a balanced and reasonable compensation package to attract an experienced lead developer like nio who has a skill set capable of taking existing code from different sources and modifying and extending them into something unique. If ORA is successful 5% might be a tidy sum for nio one day, but if ORA failed, 2 bitcoins would cover *some* of his wasted time. Finding a good balance that was fair to both parties was my goal, and I hope I found it!
I honestly dont know what the best method for compensating developers and community activists working on community based decentralised crypto projects is, but I know it is critically important to reward people for effort, even if its only a token payment to show the community values their effort and skills, and I think the best option probably involves a combination of incentive based payment from holding the coin being developed, plus some real immediate funding in fiat or bitcoin for those who commit time when the outcome is most uncertain (i.e. the start of the project). Whale donations can be very important too, but any coin that relies solely on whales as a funding source exclusively to pay people long term is taking a big risk IMO.
For PoW coins the dev is probably an early miner and can grab a big holding relatively cheaply, or maybe there is an acceptable premine, so compensating PoW developers is probably more straight forward compared to PoS coins. BUT, the easier method of PoW compensation comes at a HUGE cost in the form of wasted electricity and wasted computing resources involved.
With PoS coins the distribution happens all at once, so that does offer the chance to reserve a good proportion of coins for dedicated purposes, including paying developers and community activists. This is one of the key ideas I want to pursue for ORA. If ORA could establish itself as a credible and honest community, and we were able to setup one or more community treasurers independent of Mac Red, nio and myself, then it *might* be possible to keep a large proportion of coins undistributed for a long period of time. If it was then ORA would potentially become one of the first decentralised crypto coin projects with a MASSIVE amount of community funding available to spend on performance based compensation, and we wouldn't need to get involved with an ICO. If things go well the value of ORA in our community coffers will grow, and so offering it as payment becomes a more realistic proposition. On day 1 ORA had no value, but now it DOES, just very small! The future ... that depends
ORA community could pay many people to work to advance the project, and it's all incentive based. ORA is worth peanuts now, but what about in the future? We have enough community funds to create many merit based dolphins, and a good number of merit whales too! The possibilities open to ORA from having such a large pool of community funds are very exciting, but the challenge is huge too.
We need to stay decentralised, open, transparent and accountable, and we need to come up with community processes to handle decision making, and spending decisions. Those tasks are difficult for traditional hierarchical organisations with pyramid management structures, but what about a decentralised leaderless organisation, can it decide how to spend all these funds wisely, and fairly, in a way that promotes community harmony? I honestly dont know the answer yet, but I do know that the people who joined ORA to become our community treasurers, Darkhorse and fragORA, are both exceptional people, and their willingness to take on multiple roles for ORA has been outstanding, and much appreciated.
Neither of them has received any bitcoin bounties from myself (although Mac Red and I did give them both personal ORA bounties from our own holdings), but an ORA bounty probably doesnt feel the same as bitcoins at this stage. Despite having little personal gain, both Darkhorse and fragORA have both pro-actively organised things for ORA off of their own backs. Darkhorse organised with cr7yp to develop the first NXT based asset faucet! Thats something Im ecstatic about! Not just because its cool to have an ORA asset faucet, but because having other people do things independent of myself shows that the ORA Starfish is working. People ARE doing things for ORA that didnt start from me. ORA has multiple centers of activity, there isnt a leader calling the shots.
I had an idea to start a crypto short film festival to promote crypto currencies generally, and as a way to distribute more stakes, but fragORA took that basic idea and made CryptoFest a reality by making the CryptoFest site and refining the processes for how CryptoFest will work. Again, this makes me very happy because frag did it because he wanted to, so its pure Starfish at work. The fact that other people have wanted to organise things for ORA gives me confidence that my original idea for ORA CAN become a reality! But it is proving quite difficult too.
We needed a logo, and Pentamon took over the organising of that, and as a result we ended up with a really great logo! Again, this was very important as it wasnt a traditional top-down process of organising things, and Pentamon was autonomous in organising how the logo process worked.
So the ORA 'Starfish' has developed a life of its own in many regards, and that's been a highlight of this project for me so far!
Quote
PART 3
Nio contacts me
During the registration period for the 'phase 1' FREE giveaway nio contacted me, and we started discussing the possibility of him joining ORA as our lead dev. This was obviously a major milestone for the project! ORA now had an experienced and talented dev who was capable of cloning Qora at the very least, but just as important for me, nio was already familiar with the ideas around leaderless 'starfish' communities, and he was instantly very supportive of my desire to make ORA a leaderless Starfish community from the outset.
Nio was also capable of modifying Qora, (or any other coin) into something unique, and he also has his own goals and vision for what a new crypto coin could/should be, so having him join ORA so early in the community building stage was really exciting. I honestly thought attracting a lead dev would take a lot longer, so nio making contact and starting a discussion DURING the registration period gave me a well needed boost of confidence!
After nio joined ORA I was able to split the community building side off from the dev related efforts which was a BIG relief. I am very interested in crypto tech, but I have a laypersons understanding of the nitty gritty details only. Obviously everyone in the community can, and should, have an opinion on everything to do with the project, but if ORA was to become truly leaderless, then someone had to assume the role of lead dev, and given the importance of the role of lead dev to the success of the project, and the risk of wasted effort should ORA fail, I was more than happy to pay nio a 2 bitcoin personal bounty in recognition of his time and skill. Paying the two key developers a personal bitcoin bounty was always part of my plan, and this was outlined in my original announcement post on BTT.
Funding, what works in crypto?
Another lesson from crypto coin history is quality people need to be compensated in some way for their efforts. A persons time is valuable, and if your project timeline is many months, and the likelihood of future success uncertain, then a dev share in the coin itself probably wont be enough to attract quality people, especially in this instant when the role of the ORA lead dev included almost complete autonomy and decision making authority over the tech direction. Good people often work on projects for the love of their craft, especially in the open source software movement, but we all have bills to pay too. Paying a bounty is also a way of saying 'thank you'!
Getting the right mix of performance based compensation that still covers the dev in case the project fails is something that many crypto projects have suffered from in the past. In a way its like paying police very low wages, and then being surprised if they dont work very hard, or they end up being corrupt in order to earn enough to survive. I think many coin projects suffer because a few key people spend many hours working for very little, so the temptation to do something dodgy like a P & D with a premine can become too great, especially if the community isnt helping much.
IMO 2 bitcoins plus 5% of ORA was a balanced and reasonable compensation package to attract an experienced lead developer like nio who has a skill set capable of taking existing code from different sources and modifying and extending them into something unique. If ORA is successful 5% might be a tidy sum for nio one day, but if ORA failed, 2 bitcoins would cover *some* of his wasted time. Finding a good balance that was fair to both parties was my goal, and I hope I found it!
I honestly dont know what the best method for compensating developers and community activists working on community based decentralised crypto projects is, but I know it is critically important to reward people for effort, even if its only a token payment to show the community values their effort and skills, and I think the best option probably involves a combination of incentive based payment from holding the coin being developed, plus some real immediate funding in fiat or bitcoin for those who commit time when the outcome is most uncertain (i.e. the start of the project). Whale donations can be very important too, but any coin that relies solely on whales as a funding source exclusively to pay people long term is taking a big risk IMO.
For PoW coins the dev is probably an early miner and can grab a big holding relatively cheaply, or maybe there is an acceptable premine, so compensating PoW developers is probably more straight forward compared to PoS coins. BUT, the easier method of PoW compensation comes at a HUGE cost in the form of wasted electricity and wasted computing resources involved.
With PoS coins the distribution happens all at once, so that does offer the chance to reserve a good proportion of coins for dedicated purposes, including paying developers and community activists. This is one of the key ideas I want to pursue for ORA. If ORA could establish itself as a credible and honest community, and we were able to setup one or more community treasurers independent of Mac Red, nio and myself, then it *might* be possible to keep a large proportion of coins undistributed for a long period of time. If it was then ORA would potentially become one of the first decentralised crypto coin projects with a MASSIVE amount of community funding available to spend on performance based compensation, and we wouldn't need to get involved with an ICO. If things go well the value of ORA in our community coffers will grow, and so offering it as payment becomes a more realistic proposition. On day 1 ORA had no value, but now it DOES, just very small! The future ... that depends
ORA community could pay many people to work to advance the project, and it's all incentive based. ORA is worth peanuts now, but what about in the future? We have enough community funds to create many merit based dolphins, and a good number of merit whales too! The possibilities open to ORA from having such a large pool of community funds are very exciting, but the challenge is huge too.
We need to stay decentralised, open, transparent and accountable, and we need to come up with community processes to handle decision making, and spending decisions. Those tasks are difficult for traditional hierarchical organisations with pyramid management structures, but what about a decentralised leaderless organisation, can it decide how to spend all these funds wisely, and fairly, in a way that promotes community harmony? I honestly dont know the answer yet, but I do know that the people who joined ORA to become our community treasurers, Darkhorse and fragORA, are both exceptional people, and their willingness to take on multiple roles for ORA has been outstanding, and much appreciated.
Neither of them has received any bitcoin bounties from myself (although Mac Red and I did give them both personal ORA bounties from our own holdings), but an ORA bounty probably doesnt feel the same as bitcoins at this stage. Despite having little personal gain, both Darkhorse and fragORA have both pro-actively organised things for ORA off of their own backs. Darkhorse organised with cr7yp to develop the first NXT based asset faucet! Thats something Im ecstatic about! Not just because its cool to have an ORA asset faucet, but because having other people do things independent of myself shows that the ORA Starfish is working. People ARE doing things for ORA that didnt start from me. ORA has multiple centers of activity, there isnt a leader calling the shots.
I had an idea to start a crypto short film festival to promote crypto currencies generally, and as a way to distribute more stakes, but fragORA took that basic idea and made CryptoFest a reality by making the CryptoFest site and refining the processes for how CryptoFest will work. Again, this makes me very happy because frag did it because he wanted to, so its pure Starfish at work. The fact that other people have wanted to organise things for ORA gives me confidence that my original idea for ORA CAN become a reality! But it is proving quite difficult too.
We needed a logo, and Pentamon took over the organising of that, and as a result we ended up with a really great logo! Again, this was very important as it wasnt a traditional top-down process of organising things, and Pentamon was autonomous in organising how the logo process worked.
So the ORA 'Starfish' has developed a life of its own in many regards, and that's been a highlight of this project for me so far!