200k USD a month is what I think Eli Powell mentioned as Steemit, Inc.'s total expenses
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.