NEM Foundation - Funding Proposal 2019

Pedro_Gutierrez · February 8, 2019, 6:20pm

I will leave the other suggestions / questions in the hands of my other colleagues, so they can express their thoughts.

I completely agree with you, just as it is invested in technology there must be a balance in investing in the business development (And that is what we are going to do) which is the most fundamental part of an organization, since it is the Vertical that is It identifies opportunities by region and by market.

We must definitely start walking faster because our product is much better. Improving the strategic focus of business development, I am 100% sure that we will be at the forefront of the competition.

The rapprochement with governments, universities, banks and private companies is a fundamental part of being able to penetrate the markets with our technology and thus only be able to bring income to the Foundation

Pedro_Gutierrez · February 8, 2019, 6:22pm

Kimble_Ngo:

To me we are not a very complicated tech firm. We are still tiny in terms of mature companies. The CPO is definitely a Product Manager in most organizations, and to me a CTO should encompass that role (as visionary) while assign a Product Manager (or multiple Product Managers) to get what is needed. To have a CPO at 200K seems excessive if I am to be honest, as right now we are predominant building out past commitments.

My suggestion is to get a CTO (who understand clients) and given him a Technology Director to overseas implementation and a Product Director to ensure they capture the right needs. This would be more cost effective and not burn out the CTO, and help focus the work until we can expand, bring XEMs up (which expands the budget), and build ever more complex protocol.

I like your idea, we will discuss it in the council.

FoggyBeer · February 8, 2019, 6:30pm

Thank you for this.

I would like to see more of an incentive for employees to put their collective effort into bringing back the value of XEM. One way to achieve that is to pay at least 50% of salary in the form of smart contracts that will unlock an amount of XEM only 12 months after their issue date. This way it’s in everyone’s interest to do what’s good for XEM.

Also, what happens when the “NO” votes have the majority? Will the old rate of expenses automatically continue? Will there be a “government shutdown” until consensus is reached?

F_Ayako · January 25, 2020, 1:54am

Sorry I notice this post right now.
Before January 31st, there’re 10 people.
After February 1st, there’re 3 people.

Currently these remained 3 people are all work for Enterprise IT industry for long time.

2 are engineer and supporting Catapult launch things.
1 engineer is testing, does research about wallet, etc.
Other engineer is software architect and also technical consultant for mid-large corporations.

1 is me, and I handle many public relations with media, industry group like BCCC and JCBA, etc. And marketing activity with Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and an university (University project is pending for a while, but PoliPoli, Engate and Opening Line are involved).
And I also do introduction consultant for mid-large corporations who wish to utilize NEM blockchain technology.

Nik-NemRussia · February 8, 2019, 11:02pm

For russian community

jabo38 · February 9, 2019, 4:19am

The Foundation realizes that the markets are down, and the NEM Foundation feels this loss. That is why while the previous foundation’s last payment was $21,000,000, this foundation is not even asking for half of that in fiat. This is in part reflected in additional layoffs that have been announced.

If the market continues to go down, then it would be up to the community to decide and give feedback on how much to ask for next time, and how many more cutbacks would need to be made. We of course hope that markets will be well up and the ask will be less in XEM. But that said, the original founders set aside this XEM just for this case, to make sure that the NEM ecosystem is sustained through a crypto winter when other projects up and close doors. I’m very grateful that the original team had the foresight to put these funds aside.

F_Ayako · February 9, 2019, 7:57am

Thank you for following me up… ( ^ ^ )

My name is Ayako, and I’ve been in blockchain tech. industry since late 2016. I used to work for Enterprise IT industry like Oracle, so basically middle ware/database are my field.

I lectured at mijin blockchain seminars and taught over 800 people when I used to work for Tech Bureau, and I did media correspondence for NEM.io Foundation with Alex and Jeff when Coin Check Hack happened.

I joined Engate, Inc. on May 2018. Engate provides Live Video Micro-sponsorship Platform for Sports Team and Athletes since October 2018.
Engate utilizes NEM mosaic technology to issue points.

It’s a fun use case of NEM, please watch video here: https://youtu.be/_P4inSwZE9M
And a nice article: https://medium.com/nemofficial/engate-uses-nem-blockchain-to-support-athletes-dreams-to-participate-in-tokyo-2020-olympic-games-c3f6882fd1e1

I joined NEM JAPAN on October 2018. I do PR & Marketing / blockchain introduction consultant.
I like everybody who I’ve met in NEM community.
I like to see that creativity makes NEM tech. more interesting and amazing!
Thank you for reading.

GodTanu · February 9, 2019, 1:52pm

Why are you a newbie?
You are a newbie but you like the NEM community?
Are you wanting to become a CMO though you are a newbie? lol

I know that you do not respect the community.

Inside_NEM · February 9, 2019, 5:08pm

Creative solutions are a good way to brainstorm how to tackle problems but I don’t agree with using salaries as a bargaining chips. People’s livelihood depend on their salaries and due to serious issues of the Foundation before, many team members went without pay in the month of Dec… some in November. I’m not doing that under this new leadership. ROI and KPIs will be listed for each product team so everyone knows progress.

I’m not sure I understand what you mean on the “no” votes. Can you clarify?

Inside_NEM · February 9, 2019, 5:12pm

No more, please. This forum is for discussions on the proposal - not bickering about those interested in open positions. I’d rather we spend our time on problem solving how to move the NF forward.

Inside_NEM · February 9, 2019, 5:40pm

Hi Heiuchi,
RFP process will be clear and fair. There will be an audit in place. Some things to know:

1.) Proposals will be listed in the forums and on our website for all to see.
2.) We will be using RFP software (ex. Loopio) and have been actively doing demos/exploring various software that might work best for our needs. This takes time and is important for us to get right.
3.) As mentioned, some larger projects will be listed in forums and the NF would solicit feedback from community on the RFPs submitted. So community will be involved in the process.
4.) PM is one of 7 Product Leads. There is no one Product Lead to rule them all. There is an oversight committee to help ensure checks and balances.
5.) I’ll fix typo on page 30 - thanks.

Thanks for your questions.

Inside_NEM · February 9, 2019, 6:03pm

Hi GodTanu and also Takeuchi. We had many people in each region. Most were consultants and not full-time.

Here is breakdown of staff:

ANZ - 26 (includes 14 ambassadors)
SE Asia - 40
LATAM - 17
North America - 9
Russia - 3
Japan - 11
Europe - 15
China - 19
UAE - 5
Ukraine - 4

It’s gut-wrenching for me to have to suspend staff while we restructure NEM Foundation. Behind every number, there is a real person.

I won’t know final numbers for who remains until after we get funding because the staff has free will to look for new jobs. We will do the best we can to match talent with open roles.

Inside_NEM · February 9, 2019, 6:22pm

Hi Greentea,
I want to specifically talk about the NEM Blockchain Centre in KL. The first week I started, I asked all Regional Heads to give me an audit of their regions. Then I matched the audit reports to the final spend/budget from Finance (since 2017!) This gave me a good understanding of ROI and opportunities in the regions based on spend, partnerships/MoUs and contributions.

The NEM Blockchain Center was a red flag for me because it has never been profitable. There’s many reasons for this which I won’t get into in the forums but I understand now why it’s struggled. One of the first things I did after the audit was ask Jasmine Ng to take over the KL Blockchain Centre. She’s well respected by teams/partners and has an impressive background. I also did 360-reviews of staff as well and this helped me understand how people liked working with various team members and also what concerns they had. Overall, Jasmine was hands-down a clear choice.

In the short time Jasmine has been working on the blockchain centre, she’s converted non-paying consulting projects over to paid consulting projects. We’ve discussed at length what the opportunities are with the current KL centre and how we can restructure it for sustainability and maxim outcome. A new mandate has been given to Jasmine to help empower the SE Asia teams to be tech focused and contribute code, training and revenue. It’s clear to me from working alongside Jasmine that she has the acumen needed for this role and challenge.

Clearly the Blockchain Centre would never have been sustainable if it had stayed as it. So we’re running a few pilots now and pivoting accordingly. I’ll keep the community posted once I have more data on the results.

Inside_NEM · February 9, 2019, 6:55pm

Thanks Gevs. I’ll say this much regarding NEM Labs, there is a place for both NEM Labs and NEM Foundation. Right now, we need as many independent contributors to NEM as possible. This means not just having one entity contribute code, tools or training – it means having many entities do so. The PMC exists for this very reason.

Right now, there is also technically no NEM Labs. There is the EU team working to make NEM Labs a reality by doing a funding proposal but the work they do is still done under NEM Foundation and paid for by NEM Foundation. The NF has been working with the EU team on communicating the kinds of projects we plan to do so we can find a way to not overlap too much and to both push Catapult forward. I absolutely want their team to be recognized for their hard work but I also want there to be an understanding that there’s more to this process than the community knows.

Even now as the NEM Foundation struggles with financing the 2019 operational funds based on the 2018 Foundation, I have been working to ensure the EU team has budget to continue their contributions to Catapult documentation and building out an SDK. I set aside ~3M XEM to help the EU team work through debts, severances and projected spend over the next few months during this transition.. Considering we have less than 20M XEM left, this is a huge deal. I’ve been working with the EU team since December 21st to negotiate how to best and fairly separate out their team from the NF. There are legal issues around how things have to be done so it takes time and care to do it right. But look, I want them to succeed. My expectation in all of this is that we remove past toxic working conditions and that NF and NEM Labs communicate and independently collaborate on shared goals/outcomes that best will move the tech forward.

The reality is that the NEM Foundation has established global partnerships across many different verticals that are important to maintain and nurture – from the United Nations to the Ukraine Government to the Dubai Government. We need to have people and resources dedicated to ensuring our partners have the support they need. This is not the focus for NEM Labs and it never will be.

The biggest feedback I heard from the community was around lack of technical contribution from the NEM Foundation. There’s many reasons for this - from lack of policies to lack of communication/organization done in 2018. I don’t see NEM Labs as the one size fits all for development for Catapult nor do I see NEM Foundation being the single point of contribution to the platform. And the community should not want that either. The community should want to see many entities contributing independently to the best of their ability. That is what is NEEDED for Catapult to thrive.

To be frank, we had projects going on last year that stopped due to lack of organization, funding, management, and/or commitment. I’m talking about technical projects. We had people leave and as result we had gaps in expertise. This crippled those projects. This is why it’s important to have more than one entity working on contributions and code.

corporal_clegg · February 10, 2019, 6:30am

Apologies but I will be voting against the foundation and for nem labs until the catapult budget is taken out of the nem foundation proposal. The funds are obviously limited and I haven’t seen any explanation yet as to why to allocate two budgets for the same catapult development. I think nem labs is a better proposal since they can bring catapult and a tested business model and do it with more experience and less bloat.

IMV we should either be choosing nem labs + a lean foundation, or else chose only the foundation (because labs would be largely redundant). Somehow NL and NF are both supporting both organisations receiving full funding with no explanation as to what the excess funding would be used for. It’s not right.

I will vote for Labs only and hope the community will force the foundation to revise their budget request.

Lionheart · February 10, 2019, 6:33am

Do you have POI newbie?

Just kidding.

NF has fantastic staff and people who can take NEM to another level. I can guarantee that NEM Labs cannot do it.

You think tech development is everything. I hear a lot of catapult news. I have a question for everyone. Who will use Catapult? Any multinational companies? Any unicorn startups? As of now, we do not know the ROI.

NF is planning to package entire software in such a way that we generate revenue. I do not think just by releasing catapult will end NEM’s misery. We need a strong team who can take the project to another level.

I hope you understand.

jabo38 · February 10, 2019, 7:25am

I’m pretty sure that both the NEM Foundation and NEM Labs are supporting each other because they both want to see NEM very successful and know that adding these two budgets coming together is still only about half of what the foundation got before in fiat. So basically even with two orgs, this is a very leaned down proposal already with much more focus on development both from the EU team and the NEM Foundation team.

This is also really NEM’s last shot. We need to make Catapult as great as possible with as much development as possible and as much documentation, tooling, and education as possible so it becomes widely adopted. Now that we are in a crypto winter and some chains are going out of business, this is our chance to double down and gain back the market share we lost, and fundamental to this at this point is development.

jabo38 · February 10, 2019, 7:28am

Thank you. We are working together and working overtime to make sure that NEM will be great.

heiuchi23 · February 10, 2019, 11:26am

Hi,

Thank you for detailed explanation!
It is a really good idea that everyone can check proposals on your website.

I hope we have successful projects with this new schema.

jason.lee · February 10, 2019, 10:21pm

Going to the next level will have to be a joint effort. NEM Labs and NEM Foundation can work both as a contributor to the ecosystem. In terms of who will use Catapult, the doors are open for teams to apply Catapult based on the local partner network. We have existing relationships with governments, enterprise, startups - that is why the proposal is key to ensure that we have talent people working on this.