Hi @xemnewbie the intention is help supoort people turn the creativity into viable businesses by advising and partnering more than is possible just now. Where its not a commercial one, the NFP will still help fund smaller creative projects under the grants. Just now there is a 3-6 month backlog on applications due to workload on volunteers as well, so it will help speed things up once running
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Mycoinvest failed to get voting. Will you apply for nem VC fund? 
Fair point. 
I actually do not own any shares in myCoinvest, nor do I make the business decisions, but regardless - myCoinvest has taken a different funding route.
I would assume comments like this would be implying a potential conflict of interest.
There are laws against conflicts of interest, especially pertaining to fund trustees. So it would be quite foolish for anyone involved to even consider anything unethical.
In fact, even in current form NCF members will excuse themselves from the processes if there is the possibility of a conflict of interest.
Are you working with NEM Ventures?
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This is true and I can very easily prove it, which i already have done to particular parties that may need to know depending on how this plays out.
Now you are blatantly lying and fabricating facts, as well as contradicting your previous statements. I do not recall being rehired after resigning in order for you to be able to let me go. In actuality, after having resigned, i further went on to declined your offer to rehire me after the vote as that would of course also be a conflict of interest.
I was not made aware of any complaints against my person. AFAIK, the company/foundation is legally obliged to inform the person in question of any complaints made against them, which i was not. Given the circumstances in which you are saying this complaint was made, and given i can very easily prove those circumstances did not ever exist, i would tend to believe that this too, is fabricated.
The majority of my employment at MuleChain we had very little communication, and was actually a cause for concern for me, as i did not want to simply be a face on a website for appearances only - which from my experience in crypto is generally a ploy to solicit investment based on the appearance of a fuller more experienced team, when in reality, sometimes the majority of team members displayed are actually just being paid to be on the promotional material. Because of our lack of communication, i could only assume that may have been case which lead me to consider resigning even prior to discovering your plans for NCF. I am not stating that that is why there was a lack of cummunication, but simply that it was a cause for concern for me. This is actually a concern i raised with another party also around that time, so there is also a written log of this too.
However soon after, i discovered you were going for community funding which of course resulted in my discontinuing the contract regardless. So, when exactly i became a detriment to your business, is really very unclear and as far as i can tell, also fabricated in order to defame my character. Therefore your statement that i âincessantlyâ requested money is quite bizarre, and very easily proven otherwise. Your remarks are highly libelous and iâm quite shocked that the CEO of a company, would act in this manner, given your reputation is also now at risk because of your own actions, Mr Ralph Liu.
The maximum threshold listed in the guidelines is 3%. 3% is the target that will be in place, which has previously been decided and i can also prove. I would request that you verify information before using it as a method to cast further allegations about my character or the character of the other principal partners of the fund. Of course you are right, that, had we gone with 2%, that would be very questionable, hence there was no question about it, 3% would be the target we would aim for, regardless of previous changes to the guidelines.
Edit:
I have no idea what you are even talking about here. I gave absolutely no indication that i would assist in any capacity such as this and why would i? Again, i am more than happy to provide all communications to disprove this statement.
I have absolutely no idea how. I even told you that should you or your team need any technical assistance i am still available should you be stuck - again - volunteering my time for the benefit of nem, canceling a paid contract because anything else would have been wrong, i did not want to leave you in a difficult position.
I have been nothing but amicable, respectable, honest and integral in all of our (limited) communications without exception as i am with everyone. I will refrain from passing judgement on your own character, as i think it is in bad taste, especially in a public domain, but i suspect that after your posts here, you have demonstrated your character quite clearly.
Edit 2: haha after investigating, rather than replying from memory, it seems that spinning off the ICO software was your idea. I just thought it was mine because, as i said to you, its something i considered a few times knowing it was a needed piece of infrastructure
in the future we could actually rent the software we developed to other ico issuers and i plan to invite you to have a share of the future profits from the future earnings of this software we develop together. but we first need to investigate and define whether there is a business value of the softward we devlop and provide to others in the future on a stand alone basis.
does that ring a bell? it was also you that suggested using your developers to do it.
our coders could work on the actual coding and i could hire more coders if necessary.
With the above in mind, I am not going to continue this discussion with you any further as you very clearly cannot be reasoned with and are more than willing to fabricate facts and twist them to suit your own agenda and defame my character as well as those associated with the proposal. If you continue to post libelous, false, misleading or otherwise damaging information about my character, Nem Ventures or parties to the proposal, without grounds and accompanying proof, I will be forced to pursue this to the full extent of the law.
I again wish you luck with your future endeavours.
also, Leon is not associated with this proposal in any form.
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Iâm going to ignore all the vitriol and personal attacks from certain parties - which are unprofessional, inaccurate and in some cases potentially libellous.
Some of the loudest voices have explicit financial interests in the NCF remaining in its current form and I would urge readers to consider that when reading comments. There are several challenges with transparency and funding mgmt at present. This proposal brings more rigorous, transparent governance around both the funds and process, while also helping create an enduring mechanism, I find it hard to understand why that is opposed so strongly by some parties and will let people draw their own conclusions.
Iâve picked up on several constructive points at once - I will keep this as brief as possible but its a bit long.
@Madamecito thanks for your considered review and focussed feedback, the attention is appreciated, as is your experience. We have run the concept past advisors in our network from traditional backgrounds, they had similar initial comments, but after discussion on the rationale were in agreement that this is a viable alternative to the traditional model you refer to. I have tried to cover them below from early in the chain.
We gave this point a lot of thought as well; the current pipeline of projects which will have to be a lot of the initial focus to be fair to people who have invested time in the proposal and are awaiting review. Q1/2 investment budget covers that in the event that everyone is backed (which is probably unlikely but to be safe) and some latitude to consider new, smaller ones. Additionally, we prefer the transparency and governance model that the early years are run with close supervision of the trustees, specifically to avoid the situation of asking for a large chunk of the NCF and being accused of that, hence the staged release of funds and only proposing a portion of the total fund not its entirety. If the community wishes, we can revise that, but we donât think it is necessary and prefer not to ask for more than is needed. There is provision in the DFA to take an exceptional project or investment opportunity to the trustees with appropriate sign off so the capability is there, but requires very strong oversight. It is controlled deliberately to retain strict governance and transparency; in short it reduces the risk to the NCF funds as Trustees can step in.
It is worth noting, the fund is trying to generate a positive return - not âthe highest possible returnâ, there are three primary objectives, Return is one of them but not at the expense of treating projects fairly - a typical criticism of most start-ups who have spoken to traditional VCs. Ventures will behave as a valued member of the community and support projects, not just take as much flesh as possible.
I donât follow the âconflictâ, perhaps you could explain it further? Do you feel the VC you work for now is also conflicted? Paying staff to meet business objectives is a fairly standard business model.
That is one model of a traditional VC but is not the only one.
This is not a traditional VC, nor using traditional funds. Management and investors regularly tailor approaches to a specific business model. We have chosen not to adopt the approach outlined, this is to maintain a high level of governance from Trustees over NEM Ventures. This sets the tone for how the company will be formed and run ongoing. There is business plan revision to be created in Q3 to further refine the budgets in collaboration with Trustees to decrease (or increase) these in response to actual costs if the estimation is found to have been incorrect somewhere.
In terms of headcount, we propose starting with 3 part time general partners for the reasons you outline (slightly less than 2 full time head count initially), the budget includes cost for that to scale along with the Non-Exec/Advisory positions and various accounting, audit, governance/tax assistance to formalise the funds. Operating budget is received quarterly in collaboration with Trustees so if this plan changes the payments can be controlled. If that plan needs to change, and can be done with fewer people, it will be and the revised business plan in Q3 will cover that. It is worth noting that traditional VCs do not have the governance/audit challenge of creating entities around a decentralized/anonymous funding source, nor helping to start the NFP trust.
As you will know from traditional VC, the due diligence costs can be large ($30k average per opportunity is frequent, 26 proposals in the pipeline would be approx. $780k). We have begun conversations with a service who can expedite this and save a lot of the traditional VCs costs, however it is not free. The accounts will be prepared and provided to trustees quarterly and audited annually with a summary published publicly, this is being done specifically to be transparent on the actual cost of the operation and to allow future business plans to revise it in response to market conditions.
I presume you also accept that the economics of distributing community funds from a finite resource with no return from the projects is a poor model. Feel free to suggest improvements or create an alternative model which you are convinced will solve those problems while also providing the transparency and governance the community should expect from this process.
There is a problem with the current approach, this is one way we think it can be solved, we welcome others who wish to achieve the same outcome and have ideas for doing so to put them forward.
Hi Kailin @kodtycoon, You are not just a disgruntled ex-employee. You have gone to the extreme to corrupt the system for your own personal benefits that have hurt the interests of all the current employees of our company. Whatever song and dance you and @leoinker have made our employees to do earlier to revise our detailed milestones in the name of complying with the NCF grant committee review process up until the eve of your coup, knowing very well that all their activities will become useless since you have already got your own NEM VC Incorporation planned out way before in which you were going to dump all those NCF applications including ours.
What kind of ethic standards can you and @leoinker claim to have? The grant money you took away from them and many other applicant companies was all of sudden used to enrich your own VC project with the lavish $875,000 annual budget. Everybody elseâs project got immediately cancelled. How did you ever get the support from within NEM Council Members to do this?
@leoinker what is your role or promised role in this new NEM VC Incorporation? I do not see your answer to the question posted by @Lionheart above. Your profile still states you are involved in myCoinvest. That project has failed to pass the community voting before. I was told that you have been marketing yourself as a volunteer to give many other applicants a hard time to review their applications, including us. What is your motivation or agenda exactly? What is your day job? What would you like to accomplish with Kailinâs VC project? It seems you have a strong vested interest in its approval.
I have received many support messages privately in PM to be the person to speak out about the lack of integrity and against this crony attempt to rob and privatize the NCF into a few crony individualsâ hands. Most people are still afraid to speak out publicly, no matter how angry they are, for the fear that they would not get any funding from NCF in the future if they do. They voiced their fear that there is a high chance for this manipulation to pass through the voting of the unsuspecting public and you guys would be still in the crony power to manipulate the process.
That is where the problem is. As an active NEMber and a XEM POI holder, I question how you guys got the mandate from the NEM Council Members to change the rules to do this to begin with, i.e. hi-jacking the existing NCF process to let only yourself to go through the voting process to take full control of the NCF money after that.
Regarding your defense attempts above. No matter what you tried to change history on the details. It was a blackmailing pressure all the way which I did not entertain because I did not feel it was right. When you resurfaced as a CTO of Solo Energy I was happy for you that you have found new friends who could appreciate your talent more. Little did I know at the time that you would bring your new found friends to become your general partners for this new NEM VC initiatives. Perhaps it was a mistake that I did not invest in your crony influence properly.
Now no matter what you say by throwing a lot of unnamed fancy profiles to try to gain credibility, the bottom line is that the three general partners, you, David Mansell and Dave Hodgson that you have listed in your main NEM VC Incorporation proposal are the ones who are the sole and direct beneficiaries from this $875,000 annual budget and let yourselves continue to exert the influence on many other future applicants with our NEM Foundationâs Community Fund. I would recommend all the NEM members to take a close look at the Linkedin profiles of each of your three partners closely to see if there are any prior professional qualifications that would remotely entitle any of you to become a VC overnight to control NCFâs money going forward.
The three of you need to remove yourselves from being the general partners and calling yourselves VCs before the voting takes place. You should also move away from the approval process of the NCF applications. There are just too many conflicts of interests. You are a good technical coder but you have not any formal education, let alone in business, finance and economics. Coding is where you belong.
It is very strange that NEM Council Members approved your sole campaign without at least one opponent candidate proposal. We the NEM community members have no any other NCF-turning-VC project alternatives to consider and vote for.
Even Donald Trump had to make some effort to beat Hillary Clinton. What kind of democracy is this? Nicholas Maduroâs? You guys are really treating the NEMbers as easy lambs to slaughter.
So bizarre.
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Thanks for the reply Ralph @MuleChain , as mentioned earlier we want this discussion to remain constructive, there is nothing constructive in the above, so nothing to respond to.
I have no paid positions or personal interests. I have nothing to gain or lose by any of this. The only reason for responding is for the reputation and benefit of 3rd parties, namely NEM.
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Changes to guidelines was a group effort by NCF, with community input. There are forum posts with discussion about these things.
No proposals were canceled. In fact, review of them would be accelerated via NEM Ventures. As previously stated, we have a serious backlog. It will be a benefit to waiting projects to have their reviews accelerated, instead of retaining the backlog, which at current rate, extends into next year.
No money was taken away from anyone.
Nobody is robbing NCF
The work projects have done to apply for NCF does not, and has not, become useless.
We do need the legal framework in place to be able to proceed properly, and accept equity stake. Most projects have been very open to offering an equity or mosaic stake to drive sustainability, but NCF has been unable to accept without a legal entity for it to belong to.
myCoinvest has nothing to do with NEM Ventures. What is your bias against them? They are a great team that has been developing on NEM for over a year, has hosted numerous NEM meetups and hackathons in the USA, and continues to help finance NEM meetups around the world.
You even have a myCoinvest adviser on your team.
This is ridiculous on so many levels, and itâs quite silly Iâm being put in a position where I actually need to respond.
It sounds like you are bent out of shape because I asked questions about dispute resolution in a business model involving p2p transport of goods, and questioned the financial viability of defaulting all logistical updates to public chain. (again, questions of which I received satisfactory answers)
In review, we do have to ask what may be considered âhard questionsâ. Majority of businesses fail, especially when using blockchain. We canât be singing, hugging, and spreading love to people asking for millions of dollars. This is business, not church camp.
There are no conflicts of interest. And as Iâve said before, when projects are under review by NCF, occasionally NCF members excuse themselves from the review processes in the event there even appears to be conflict of interest.
This is a common marketing tactic. It implies popular support without any evidence. Itâs actually harmful to all pending projects as well, as it causes public to wonder who is privately colluding with you and your slanderous behavior, while having personal financial interests at stake.
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Leon,
Why are you even responding to this forum? I donât think you should be in the review process of Community Funding. What is your qualification?
A. You are Director of Sales of a company that donât have a product.
B. Regional Ambassador of a company that no one knows. A company that already failed NCF.
C. You worked as customer support for your own company which sold ESSENTIAL OIL (Donât know if this is fake or true)
DO YOU EVEN HAVE A HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION BRO?
I PUT ALL MY MONEY IN NEM AND COUPLE OF OTHER STARTUPS HOPING THAT IT WILL GIVE ME A GOOD RETURN.
I DO NOT SUPPORT SOME COMPANIES THAT ALREADY GOT VOTES FROM NCF. BUT YOUR PLAN IS WORSE THAN THEM. I DONâT KNOW WHATâS WRONG WITH NEM CEO KRISTOFF @kristoff THAT HE IS EMPLOYING PEOPLE WITH NO BACKGROUND OR EDUCATION.
I WILL BE SENDING EMAILS TO COINDESK, COINTELEGRAPH AND ALL OTHER MAGAZINES ABOUT THIS INSIDE JOB AND WHATâS GOING ON WITH NEM AND HOW ITâS GOING DOWN TO ZERO.
I ENCOURAGE OTHER PEOPLE TO DO THE SAME TO SAVE NEM.
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David Mansell -
A. 9 BILLION CONTRACT NEGOTIATION - WHATâS PROOF?
B. 4M PROJECTS - WHATâS PROOF?
C. 75 M DEBT RAISE - WHATâS THE PROOF?
SUPPORT YOUR ACHIEVEMENTS WITH PR RELEASES OR MEDIA COVERGE. OTHERWISE, WE WILL BELIEVE THAT ITâS FAKE. IâM SURE IF YOU HAVE RAISED 75M THEN THERE WILL BE A PRESS COVERAGE.
WHATâS YOUR EDUCATION?
DO YOU HAVE A FINANCE BACKGROUND ?
STANFORD OR HARVARD ? EVER WORKED AS A ANALYST IN ANY VC COMPANY?
KAILIN OâDONELL
A. **3 YEARS OF SOFTWARE EXPERIENCE DOSENâT MAKE YOU ELIGIBLE TO MANAGE 10M FUNDS. **
**B. ****NO FINANCE BACKGROUND **
C. DONâT KNOW ABOUT THE EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND
D. NCF REVIEW COMMITTEE - THIS GIVES YOUR 0 CREDITS TO RUN A 10 M FUND.
DAVE HODGSON
A. WORKING AT A ENERGY STARTUP WHERE YOU ARE THE CTO - DOSENâT MAKE HIM ELIGIBLE TO MANAGE 10 M FUNDS
B. NO EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS. NOT FROM A LIST COMPANY
YOU ARE BUNCH OF CROOKS THAT ARE BEHIND MONEY. $875 - WHERE IS THE SPLIT FOR OPERATIONS? WHATâS YOUR TAKE IN $875? ARE YOU TAKING $300K PER YEAR TO MANAGE THE FUND?
SHAME ON YOU @KAILIN. DONâT STEAL MONEY FROM HARD EARNED PEOPLE.
IF ANYONE FROM NEM TOP LEVEL IS READING MY COMMENT - IF YOU HAVE INTEGRITY, PLEASE SCRAP THIS PROPOSAL AND GO FOR A PROPER VC FUNDING STRUCTURE WITH PEOPLE WHO HAVE MANAGED FUNDS OR PEOPLE WITH INVESTMENT BACKGROUND.
I WILL BE SENDING EMAILS TO ALL MAGAZINES TO STOP THIS ROBBERY IF NEM DOES NOT TAKE CARE OF THIS COUP.
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IMO it is the lack of people on this forum that makes it a poor platform/strategy to present million dollar proposals.
Lets face it this forum lacks traffic and honestly it lacks an infux of punters.
Albeit the much welcomed enthusiasm and energy that those already posting contribute.
Dan
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Yes, would be nice to have more people on forum, but I guess most are on other medias rather than in forum.
Anyways, any entity deciding what to fund needs a proper technical view also, IMO @kodtycoon will be providing this on behalf of NEM technologies and thus makes him proper candidate for this proposal. There could be another technical person also. Other people suggested for candidates also seem to be in order, at least for told qualifications. It is important to look projects from all aspects, not just from financial side - thus not all candidates need VC experience.
4th and 5th candidates will make a difference how the NEM VC is going to be perceived. I hope you will find excellent and fair candidates to present for us. IMO these other candidates can balance what are now perceived as unbalances. I assume that NEM foundation personnel will check backgrounds of this proposals backgrounds? If NEM foundation (or similar entity) sends a green signal for trustee candidates it should be taken as token of trust for candidates.
All-in-all, big kudos for making this proposal and trying to get NEM community forward even with disagreeing voices! IMO all this word-acrobatics is unnecessary until 4th and 5th candidates are introduced.
Disclaimer: I am just voicing my opinions as myself, no affiliations to anything or anyone.
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So far NCF proposals needed a place where the people can read it. Keep in mind those projects where promoted in different channels with more traffic than here, but at the end, only the people interested took a moment to read the WP, provide feedback and vote. As I know more NEM community members are in Telegram, twitter, here and others in reddit or other channels.
Not everybody are interested in read proposals or voting. So Iâm not sure if the problem is the forum itself or just the lack of interest.
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Iâm glad to see somebody has spent the time to at least take a look at these three proposed general partnersâ background. Thanks @Lionheart of your investigative due diligence work. It would indeed be laughable for NEM Foundation to hand over $10 million to these three stooges with zero credibility to manage the money and be in charge of the selections and review of the applicant companies, including somebody who has not even finished a high school degree.
@kodtycoon got himself this job at NCF and tried to bring in the two others now to review the companies before they even staged this coup to hi-jack the NCF. Our company was unfortunately one of those victims they had experimented with together with a few of those so-called âvolunteersâ such as @leoinker who has zero qualifications in terms of education or work experience but craves to obtain a job from Kailinâs new VC scheme. Likely another person without a high school degree. This person has also even made us to do some song and dance from an assumed fake authority in our companyâs NCF review committee. We feel like a fool now that we know what kind of person he really is.
What is it with the NEM management? How could these crooks got so far so quickly to this stage? They are making decisions for the NEM Foundation now. They appointed themselves the general partner roles and had already arbitrarily shut down the entire NCF process in order to get themselves funded with the lavish $875,000 budget and try to call the shots on how the NCF money is going to be spent in the future.
Not only this proposal needs to be scratched and the voting disallowed. These people will have to be removed from the gate keeper roles at the current NCF management immediately if the NCF is going to resume its operations in the same way it has been doing before.
These crooks are really treating the NEMbers like idiots and trying to take us to the cleaners. I have put in a significant investment before in XEM for the love of NEM. I had also devoted our companyâs entire future on NEM to build our own applications on it. We use the NEM logos everywhere in our company image with pride. I just can not sit there and watch this kind of management incompetence or corruption going on at the NCF.
For all that matters, my only financial interest in this now is the XEM holding I have like the majority of all the other NEMbers. As for our company, after these people have wasted months of our precious time and efforts to make us jump through hoops after hoops, we have lost faith in the current form of the NCF management under these crooks and we are no longer interested in seeking to get the NCF grant or any funding from the future NEM VC run by these crooks if it ever materializes.
We continue to be proud of being a NEMber and love the networks of all the NEM communities around the world but these crooks at NCF will have to go. They have to stay far away from getting into any management positions at NEM immediately.
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with our NEM Foundationâs Community Fund
Not sure what you are referring to here. Foundation, by charter, is not allowed to have any influence on the disbursements from the community fund.
We the NEM community members have no any other NCF-turning-VC project alternatives to consider and vote for.
Feel free to propose any alternatives that address (1) current months long backlog, (2) lack of resources for proper vetting or proposals, and (3) lack of sustainability of funds.
What kind of democracy is this?
The change is up for a vote. It is not a dictate. You are free to vote no if you feel strongly against it. Not sure why you think voting is undemocratic.
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you forgot problems with sensible evaluation and verification of milestonesâŚ
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This is what NCF needs! Much better solution! Well done!
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It is not that we do not know the details of this process Jaguar. It is not as simple as you put it in these few sentences.
We ourselves have been going through the entire process from a to z for months, having satisfied all the requirements and jumped through all the hoops. There were only about 3 or 4 other applicants in the NEM Main Forum at the time. Then on the eve of that weekend our voting campaign was supposed to launch, we were suddenly informed that everything should be on hold because there would be new guidelines. We held our horses and jumped through another numerous hoops. That may be the time when Kailin got the job at NCF.
Then weeks later, we were informed that we were number 2 in the line under the new guidelines. Sernez was number one in the line and there might be another handful other applicants in line under the new guidelines. Kailin then started asking us to make drastic changes to our milestones. We complied diligently. Kailin then claimed he was busy traveling and had no time to review our revisions. Until today there had not been any response on what we revised for him to answer his request. Leon started to make us jump through even more hoops. Another one or two weeks past.
Then came this sudden NEM VC Incorporation as Kailinâs personal project to take over the NCF funding process and immediately stopped all other applicants without any legitimate response or a proper voting process to stop the pending applications. Isnât this a hi-jack of the entire NCF process for personal gains?
What was the real cause of the application backlogs based on the experience I described above that we have had with NCF since March? Isnât that a man-made phenomenon to purposely ignore them and try to stop them? Did these hundreds of new applicant backlogs they claimed NCF has now just emerged since two weeks ago? Us included?
The undemocratic part is that they stopped the existing process at the expense of all other applicants who have put in months of work without voting. Instead of doing the work the he was hired to do at NCF, Kailin put himself as the only running candidate with his new outside friends from Solo Energy to seek $875,000 annual budget for themselves from NCF funding now.
Nobody else can go to the voting to get to the NCF funding. Only Kailinâs proposal is allowed to seek voting at the moment. I would really like to find out who gave him the authority to make this decision at NCF? Can you help us find that out?
Is anything I described above new to you? Please kindly do not confuse the need to fix NCF and this current proposal by these totally unqualified people to use this opportunity and his crony influence to enrich themselves under the disguise of a grandiose cause of revamping NCF.
Please feel free to let me know your thoughts and suggestions. Thank you.