I'd like to address a few things here because I think it'd be good for a little bit of time to reset. I've spoken to many of you but I think it will be good to aggregate a bit of those conversations in one place.
- This is the first of 3 rounds of SCF that will happen this year. There will be 2 more. This is not the one and only round of SCF. They are ongoing. The next one will begin after this one.
"The Stellar Community Fund will be held quarterly throughout the year.
The first SCF round will begin today and end on June 30. Final voting will begin on June 23 and run 1 week. We expect this program will evolve significantly after the first round. In the spirit of the space, the first round will be a “beta test”. Participant feedback is welcome and will help shape future SCF rounds."
We know that the current setup isn't perfect and as we mentioned in the introduction, the program will continue to evolve and improve based on community feedback.
In case you missed it: "We’ve started work on a separate web app featuring weighted votes based on a handful of signal items. We’ll still encourage discussion on GalacticTalk because I think it's important - but the voting/project-sorting will not be on GT or Reddit. It will be a site specifically designed for the SCF, iterating on what we’ve learned from this round and what we’ll learn in future rounds."
The web app will likely not be ready until round 3, so the current system will need to continue with some tweaks until then. However, we will definitely be utilizing the community fund channel discussion to figure out how to best weigh signals.
But, the next round will start right at the heels of this one. Since individual projects can only win once - the intent was that this will help foster some innovation and provide feedback to projects that are working hard! The intent wasn't to stoke the flames of war. I feel like the spirit of the SCF should be collaborative and not combative. My hope is future refinements will help ease some of the tension - but there's also got to be some consideration of how we treat each other during this process. Constructive criticism is always welcome but it has to be done with some level of respect.
I've also said this isn't the replacement to SBC. This is an ongoing experiment for community distribution. I would really like to see it continue on.
As outlined in the original post. "one of the major requests we’ve heard has been a method for the community to participate in guiding lumen distribution. We also wanted to make it possible for more than just developers to participate in growing the ecosystem." There are all kinds of people participating in the Stellar ecosystem. Some of them aren't developers and haven't had an opportunity to present their ideas. I am eager to see what kind of projects come from both developers and community members with other backgrounds.
- The rules
Going off of the above, since winners can't resubmit the same project - we have not limited participation to a certain threshold. Anyone can participate. While it is currently up to the GT community to nominate - in the future it should be open to everyone during nomination round. This will open the pool of voters from the onset. The ICO rule was placed not because of a "funding limitation requirement" but to protect the community from potential token scams. Having a token is not grounds for disqualification - we just don't want to push the overall community to having to buy into a token sale in order to see how a project functions.
We have been recording all of the feedback we've seen and the rules will be expanded to clarify some of this in the next round.
- Disqualification and Brigading
If you've followed what I've said before - there's a heavy emphasis on the spirit of things. The last thing we think is productive is disqualifying anyone. Disqualification really should only be on the grounds of blatant manipulation (buying votes) and abuse (overtly being hostile). If someone is breaking the Stellar Code of Conduct (https://www.stellar.org/community-guidelines/) - this is something we are very serious about.
However, we did outline that vote manipulation is against the rules. "Engaging in vote manipulation will cause your proposal to be disqualified. This includes botspam, fake/sock puppet accounts, and brigading."
Since this wasn't deeply defined, we aren't going to kick anyone out who has used dummy accounts to vote - but the GT team did add additional constraints to remove extraneous accounts from this round. However, please try to avoid self-nominations. We'll be expanding the definitions for this next round to clarify what EXACTLY constitutes vote manipulation versus clever promotion.
- Everything else
SCF exists inside of its own program. That being said, it won't be the last new program from SDF. We are recording feedback. Moving forward I'd like to keep the conversation in the SCF channels focused on SCF - ways to improve it moving forward and especially on project feedback and discussion. I'd also like to see less instigating and gatekeeping. I believe everyone should have a voice and have the ability to have their project seen. Please refrain from attacking each other. Kolten and I are always happy to talk about the community fund and are eager to hear your perspectives. We greatly appreciate the feedback and suggestions we've heard so far. We'd love to hear any additional criteria that the community thinks should be included for proposals as well.
Just remember, this is the first of many rounds and eventually it should run smoothly, on-rails without the friction of this "beta" round. I have seen a lot of interesting and unique proposals and I'm eager to see how these projects grow over time with participants sharing in the spirit of community collaboration.
