What are your thoughts on this? The Steem Foundation is a community resource and, if I understand correctly, it is set up as a not-for-profit organization, meaning it exists to support the Steem platform's end goals and can't pursue profit. (Someone please provide the Foundation's Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws so we can verify this.)
The Steem Foundation could be paid by the Steem Proposal System to hire Steemit, Inc. employees, so that they will have ongoing job security and they will be accountable to and serve the community. We know that Steem developers are a key asset, probably much more important than the Steemit, Inc. stake. So if the community hires them (and if they find the prospect and offer desirable), the community will have this critical asset, which gives it the ability to determine its future direction. It will also give the community a huge advantage in negotiating the partnership terms with any for-profit corporation.
Thoughts?
I don't think we can afford them.
Update: When Steemit had the monthly STEEM sales going, the majority of it was going on salaries, when STEEM went down in value. At most 800,000 STEEM for salaries / month, but an order of magnitude SPS can't handle, even if we boost its cut from inflation. And STEEM was at least at this price last time when they had a scheduled STEEM sale.
200k USD a month is what I think Eli Powell mentioned as Steemit, Inc.'s total expenses (salaries + nodes and websites + office + everything else). The question is, how much can we reduce this if run things in a more lean way? I think currently the Steem Proposal System can do 60k USD a month.
Any other thoughts or objections? Do you think it's a good idea if we can make it financially viable?
That is accurate, I think. I forgot to count in hosting, which is an important amount as well. So, less for salaries, but nodes still need to be hosted.
Personally, I'd wait for the AMA. There are many reasons why Steem can't show Sun the middle finger, and he knows it. The most powerful of them being who exchanges side with, if there is a conflict.
Well, the idea of the community hiring the developers to develop for the community's purposes seems like an important step for the maturation of the community. It seems like a good thing to do for a community-owned platform, unrelated to any acquisitions of for-profit companies that do development for the blockchain and its dapps.
And it doesn't mean this would be a bad turn of events for Justin Sun. If the community better delivers on its purpose due to this maturation, then as a stakeholder he will be enriched. And it seems the community definitely wants to develop interoperability between Steem and Tron. So there is a lot of alignment of goals.
That was the purpose of SPS, wasn't it? One of them at least. To sustain development in Steem ecosystem.
In time however SPS showed patterns of discontinuity in funding. That is not something a blockchain developer who already has a well-paid job would likely consider as an alternative.
Yes, that is why I was thinking that the Steem Foundation can be funded from the SPS (and potentially from other sources if needed), so that it can provide solid continuous salaries.
I wonder how advanced are they with all the paperwork and organizing.
It would be such a pity to lose what we barely built to a level that could make us relevant again, with proper strategies. Sure, Sun would be a great marketing asset, and a relationship with Tron would give us the visibility we lost, but I doubt that's where we're going with all this.