NEM Foundation - Funding Proposal 2019

[jason.lee]

Hi @Kimble_Ngo, thanks for your feedback, just responding to some of your comments:

Treasury management should be much more significant.

• In traditional businesses where Treasury based on traditional Fiat can make and break a business (and is already quite tough), we need a very strong look into this. Utilizing crypto is extremely complicated and fickle, there should be points/research into areas of Hedging and Investments.

Yes, we have discussed with the council about all options and treasury management will be key in making sure that should the funding be approved, we managed the XEM transparently and all FIAT amount is used as needed especially during this market conditions. It will be an ongoing process.

Salary / budgets of personnel

• Some roles have a very high-salary while others significantly less
• Questionable rate on Legal retainer (seems unnecessarily high, so do re-consider service needs and their appropriate rates. There are plenty of strong corp lawyers in Singapore we can approach)
• Might be wiser to look at some roles in a more cost-effective locations (example HR manager, lead website dev, etc)

There will be many factors - cost-effectiveness, hiring based on merit, looking at diversity in locations etc.

As for the Singapore legal retainer, that has been look at a few options already and the cost and standards in the industry have been relatively high.

Higher focus on Revenue Generations

• I would suggest more focus on this area (more dedicated staff)
  • R&D Team (or something similar) to develop effective ways to generate more income

Hence, the need to develop specific Chief Revenue Officer role rather than combining roles with BD, marketing etc. there should be a strong focus on revenue generation indeed.

[Shingen_Takeda]

First of all, Thank you for Exco & Councilors, detailed materials.
I can see that a huge amount of time was spent just by looking at the first glance.

Please let me ask you 4 questions.

1. Is it possible to tell us more details? 2018 and 2019.(Proposal deck 43 page “Why Is Our Budget Better?”)
   · Number of people
   · Their position
   · Number of people by position
   · Pay by position
   I do not know about other countries, But NEM Japan seems to be an unusually high salary despite having little success. (2018) This is flaming on Twitter now.

2. Do you have a personnel evaluation system for Exco & Councilors? If not, how do you control motivation to achievement?

3. Does the Exco & Councilors concurrently take on the CXX? I am concerned that the person concurrently serving as a CXX with a Exco & Councilors trying to obtain funds illegally .( I know that you are about to create a new process. )

4. Is it possible for the community to hear the opinion of this proposal from core-devs?

[LauraBKK]

Hi ExCo and Council and the community.

I want to start out with a big thank you as looking at this, and the process that went into it, this really is a phenomenal amount of work in such a short amount of time. Just the video alone took a lot of editing and time (over 20,000 words because I transcribed it).
I feel it may be a bit unfair for me to comment objectively on the proposal as a ‘former’ NF team member, of course the staff are uneasy and concerned for their futures.
Do I think this is the correct way forward? Yes. Focusing on Catapult and putting out the products the market wants, the community wants is the way to go. Even if it means the end of my journey with the Foundation, this is the right decision, and I support this 100%.
For some other critiques from community members about months funding set against milestones I really think that won’t work as top talent is not going to work on a monthly contract basis, that’s not the way to recruit nor retain the people you need to get the products out in an efficient and cost-effective manner.

• I would be interested to know which of the verticals you will get up and running first and which you will be bringing online later, and is there an approximate timeline for that?

• I would also like to know, if a community member came to you with a product already finished, would you accept it, (no payment required).

• With the BRI partnership, what is the most optimal way to leverage that for future revenue generation or market analysis?

Really, best of luck moving forward, I will be voting yes on the proposal, and I will encourage all of our Thailand community members to read the proposal carefully and vote accordingly.

Thanks again for all the work.
L

[Investor100293]

I love the details and transparency. A big thank you for everyone involved.

I see a focus to deliver catapult and associated technicals which I think is great.

I’m interested to know more details for the business development and marketing areas. As stated, to see more enterprise adoption and more blockchain transactions, what are the plans for accomplishing these two from a business development and marketing mindset.

• What are the barriers here?
• What are the biggest challenges? NEM not being known well enough, missed opportunities, ineffective direction or goals, missing technicals or something else?
• Accomplishments from 2018?
• Expectations for 2019?

For the teams that already exist, when can we see their KPI’s/goals? For the mentioned key objectives under each team, can we get future updates? Quarterly may not make sense but perhaps semiannually? Some of the objectives may not make sense to make public but I’m thinking at least business development and marketing.

The proposal is encouraging. The transparency is huge, continuing this will encourage more interest in NEM.

[jason.lee]

If NF is no longer exist I have to say that I don’t think NEM Ventures , core devs or even the new nem LAbs can commercialize NEM and Catapult by themselves and therefore help the XEM price.
I will vote YES.

Thanks @Trikar_Blockchain for your vote of confidence in the new NF structure, it is a team effort in getting everyone around NEM and Catapult and I do believe that the refreshed structure will help with the XEM price too.

Anyway one has to focus on future, cut personnel, work on marketing and restructure core dev
team if necessary, because single man show (aka Vitalik Buterin) is not sustainable on the long run.

Which is what the council has been doing and will be conscious off, no lone wolf or one man show but working together as team.

• On-Topic: I am glad that Alex & team stepped in, stepped up, and put all the effort to create the draft which is point of discussion. Let’s use this call for comments - and gather constructive input for revising the draft , so the NEM Foundation can achieve a workable version to vote on in a few days from now.

Rene, LuxTag.io

Thanks @r3n3, we need to consistently work with partners to ensure we grow together. Appreciate the constructive input from the community.

To be able to see nem=2$ technology must work avanced technology= up price

And that is why we are product-focus on Catapult and revenue-driven to be sustainable. Thanks @eddy

[lmkh]

Just a gentle reminder that we are given the first 5 days for us to give our feedback in order to have them considered/reflected in the changes. 4 days left…

Just a little concerned as there seems to still be an emphasis on the past and the legacy/problems it came with in the chats - the very same legacy the NEW council had to deal with and the very same problems they are now seeking to address in this new proposal. All in the span of one month while managing the transition from what we know to be messy. It is apparent much lessons were learnt from the past and translated into this new structure and direction moving forward.

Yes, there are questions that should be and could be answered better. There are also many that have already been answered a number of times and articulately - in this very proposal even. Regarding unanswered questions directed towards this proposal, hopefully they can be addressed in timely manner.

Please note that this is not to call anyone out but simply to shift once again the focus toward the fact that the new Exco and council is now bringing a lot more opportunity for involvement and input from the community to the table. So let’s take them up on their offer and start giving constructive feedback to make the proposal even more solid for the benefit of everyone and let’s all look more towards growing together in the future.

Good job in creating more transparency and shift of focus towards Catapult and sustainability from the council.

[GodTanu]

We had so many employees. Some regions has too much people, other too little but in general the outcome was not the best.
So IMO is not the marketing the issue. NO LEADERSHIP, NO GLOBAL STRATEGY, NO CONTROL, NO COMMUNICATION.

How many staff are there in each country?
Please clarify.

I am Japanese, but I do not know how many staff there are in the Japanese team.
I want to know the numbers before and after layoff.

[LauraBKK]

I can only tell you how many there were in my country. Two. Myself and the Thai staff mandated by Thai law.
I’m sorry I cannot answer your other question.
Laura

[DaokaTrade]

I think most of the engineers of the Foundation who contributed to Catapult are NEM EU.
I think that the engineers of NEM EU will transfer to NEM Lab.

Then, I have some questions.

1. Are there any engineers other than NEM EU(NEM Lab)?
2. What kind of relationship will the NEM Foundation build with NEM Lab?

[simakki]

After reading through topic I probably will vote yes for both parties (NEM Foundation and NEM lab). Allthough I would like to hear more about how they will manage to sell XEM’s for needed USD. Will it be done on monthly basis or pay salaries with NEM etc.

[satkb]

…also would it be OTC trades when they convert XEM to fiat, so that it doesn’t affect the market price?

[okj]

1. If the price of XEM goes down, we will strategically reduce staff and projects. We aren’t hiring at full capacity in the beginning. We would be ramping up specifically for positions we need to focus on that are technical and projects that focus on bringing in revenue.

2. If the price of XEM goes up, we will slowly put fiat into the banks to help sustain us long term. If it rises for an extended time; we would also look at which projects were most successful and create more of those. A XEM surge does not mean salaries go up—they won’t. It means we look at the ROI of programs and pivot to add new resources to support positive results.

We will take care to avoid hurting the XEM price through rapid selling. Salaries will be a mix of fiat and XEM. We will liquidate as necessary, with priority for the first 3 months. After that we will make responsible decisions based on financial analysis.

^ just pasting this here from the Foundation Proposal deck so people can see this clearly since this seems to be a point of major contention.

[simakki]

Okay, thanks for clarifcation. It does sounds reasonable and sustainable enough at the moment.

PS. What about that legendary silver coin fund? Have anyone planned to do something with it?

[MattRiddle]

I think the NEM Community should take a lot of positives from the proposal above. I hope people take the time to listen to the full presentation from Alex and absorb everything that is being planned here. For me, the key aspects that make this a good proposal are:

• A strong commitment to good governance, well thought-out structures, and accountability.
• Building for the future. A product focus is right for NEM (and Blockchain more generally), and is well overdue. BUIDL! That’s how you’re going to get the market up, but more importantly it’s what we’re all here for.
• Significantly improved communication with the NEM Community, building trust and demonstrating accountability

Any concerns I have are really more to do with sanity-checking the feasibility of turning things around with what is being requested here.

• A 69% cut in staff is a high number. Going from a $22M budget to $8M is a big drop. With such a short time frame to freeze the team, and so many leaving, there is a danger that a lot of corporate knowledge is gone for good.
• This has been partly addressed above by Alex but the target salaries for some roles (particularly dev roles) seem under-budgeted, and I’m mindful that the best dev shops I’ve ever seen hire a smaller number of people who are extremely good at what they do (and don’t come cheap).
• The request is for 1 year’s funding, and XEM may yet drop further. What happens then? The projected revenue presumably doesn’t cover the full budget, so how do the activities get funded beyond 2019?

So in summary, YES I think the proposal needs to be supported, and I may be going against the grain here, but if anything I worry that it’s too ambitious to do everything proposed here with significantly reduced budget and a year to turn things around.

[Trikar_Blockchain]

Hi God Tanu,
I only know 2 people in Nem Japan. Ninja and Rio. If there are more people they should answer to you.
I met many Nem representatives in different countries but not everyone know each others or knew how many people are in a team.
BTW, I was alone in Hong Kong.

Anyway, I hope you support the New NF and honestly I know Japanese community is very active and not everybody is happy with NF but you should ask what do you want or expect from NF in Japan (apart from Catapult ) so Nem representatives can do better and support.
Thanks

[satkb]

Okay, thanks for clarifcation. It does sounds reasonable and sustainable enough at the moment.

PS. What about that legendary silver coin fund? Have anyone planned to do something with it?

I think it should be used to compensate the stakeholders who’ve HODLed through the ATH and lows and remained loyal, and have been shafted by the 2018 foundation. Just saying…

[spizzerb]

In the development for Catapult, there will need to be localised trainings (likely most will be digital) that can be understood in all levels (enterprise, government, individuals, startups etc), guides and manuals along with partnerships with other parties with the distribution and scale. This all supports to the development of Catapult.

A lot of the work will come also after Catapult is launched, like the commercialization, localisation to various languages, projects to manage etc. We are taking a revenue-driven approach through some sort of consulting, advisory (managed by the Chief Revneue Officer) for NEM Foundation to continue to provide support for version updates and further applications to be build on Catapult.

thx for trying to answer my question but i have to ask again:

"given that one of the goals of this propposal is to advance the development of catapult, how does it actually achieve this? from looking at the numbers I don’t see a clear focus on tech development itself

the propsoal calls for 8M of which 2.5M (31%) falls under the CTO. of that, there appear to be only 4 FTEs (together at 275k) working on nemtech development (excluding docs and websites). what happened to the positions listed on nem.io/jobs ?"

Out of 8M in funding you only plan to spend 275k on actual devs which support catapult/nemtech development. Can you pls comment how this fits the strategy “catapult first” ? Jobs from nem.io which are online at the moment are not considered in your proposal at all. Why?

Thank you

[Pedro_Gutierrez]

Hi, @spizzerb, thanks for asking again, our business plan includes 2.5M only for the development and support of CATAPULT, I leave you some of the features:

5 - 10 SDKs
Desktop app
API - REST
Mobile app
Block and Node Explorers
Lightning network
Hardware wallets for Catapult
others

The 2.5MM are divided into In-house developers, writers, designers, among others. As well as in a large budget for projects, so that other service providers can collaborate with the development and speed of delivery of CATAPULT

Our goal as a new Foundation 2.0, is to give the highest priority to have our product (Catapult) ready to market it, enhance its implementation and generate revenue, as we have planned in the new vertical structure.

[Pedro_Gutierrez]

Hello @MattRiddle, thank you very much for your comment.

I answer your question: we have made a great study of what is needed from the point of view of human resources and finance to decide to assign to the technology vertical a large budget, which we consider is more than enough to deliver on time and complete the objectives traced

We have teams in different parts of the world that are ready to start working, as well as service providers in Ukraine, Japan, USA, LatAm, Europe, Asia, ready to start proposing their companies to address technology projects.

For the fall of the XEM, we have plans in principle to make a small change to FIAT currency via the OTC. This would give us a space, so that the XEM is recovered. From the technical point of view, when we see the graph of the XEM in 1 day, we can see that it has apparently bottomed out. So after the Nem Foundation and NemLabs proposals are approved, I do not see another way to go up, so from my point of view, if we manage well, we can stretch our budget beyond 2020.

Now, in a hypothetical case, the XEM will definitely fall more (Sincerely I do not see what can fall more), Since the foundation we have a contingency plan to cut some verticals while technology ends delivering the product and can deliver the proposed results in CATAPULT.

Being able to fulfill the requirements of our community, to which we must give the results.

[Pedro_Gutierrez]

Thank you very much for your comments @lmkh

If you have any questions please let us know and we will gladly respond.

At the same time if you have any suggestions, please let us know.