Good points, I’d like to address in order.
Point 1 seems to be that Bonfire is “getting too much” - @mrq02 brought up three proposals, one for coin gating functionality, one for Clubhouse gating, and one for creating new media content. What I’m hearing is heavy anchoring to these precedents, and none of which have raised venture funding to build on Rally Network.
One of my goals of this proposal is to re-anchor (and I’m not sure that this is high enough frankly) and assess other dimensions of our decision making as a community. What are some of these dimensions?
- What is the environment these days for venture fundable teams?
Answer - as @Idan_Levin brought up, it’s very good. We need to compete with other opportunities for great developers and startups which are raising millions of dollars, not just focusing on hourly rates. - What is the budget in the community for funding developers?
Answer - 750 million $RLY tokens, of which 500K represents a tiny fraction - What is the value of creating a platform where 3rd party developers are building businesses that independent investors think are good enough to invest in?
Answer - easily 10’s or hundreds of billions.
What I think I’m seeing is a strong reaction to unfairness or inequity – why does Bonfire get this grant, and why not other community participants? I think the solution here is to ensure we help many other developers, not constrain the issue with Bonfire. I’ve proposed a 10M $RLY funding for a new RallyDAO that is meant for other strong community members and developers to earn sizable grants for their work. Instead of no one getting anything, I think we should make sure we start with accelerating Bonfire and then address the system broadly with the DAO.
Point 2 is that funds are better spent elsewhere.
- We are not $RLY funding constrained on core development; we are talent constrained. There’s no $RLY funding that will speed up core development, as we simply need to hire more engineering, product and vendorized talent (which we’re doing). On advertising, we cannot spend $RLY on creating more awareness, as media companies only take USD. But besides that point, we have plenty of budget that Bremner has already gotten approval for here, and we’re constrained on doing great marketing work not by budgets at the moment.
Point 3 is that we don’t want to send the wrong message to developers.
- This seems illogical; if we think developers are creating significant value we should be finding more ways to accelerate developers. This point argues that we already have some traction with teams investing their own time and money, and that’s enough; let’s not rock the boat. I think this is a cautious and conservative approach, which for some platforms may be fine.
- For Rally, I strongly advocate for an approach where Rally is playing the game to be the clear market leader. Rally has an opportunity not just to build a new web3 Creator platform, but I believe to change even how web2 companies approach the space. Let’s not be cautious and conservative; that almost never changes the world and creates massive value. Let’s take the bulls by the horn together and play to be market leaders.
Thanks everyone for weighing in. It seems like there’s different starting perspectives, and I’ll give it another day or two for comments before starting the vote. In general we’re not looking to get consensus here in the forums; the whole point is that certain $RLY community votes may not have clear consensus and that the vote will determine the outcome. This is normal governance, and I’m pleased to see many new voices in the community debating this issue.
My only ask is that we keep personal attacks out of the equation. I’m saddened to see accusations of cronyism in this debate; I must be the stupidest founder in the world if I’m using a forum like this to try to pass 500K $RLY funds over to friends, which anyone looking at my background and Matt and Mel’s background can see there’s zero overlap. While it’s no big deal in this particular case, it does make it daunting for others in the community to want to post their big ideas here if toxicity and personal attacks become the norm. I will be asking community moderators to enforce this more closely going forward
Kevin