Agenda: Community Council (CC), 22 November 2022

[cekickafa]

Solicit suggestions for agenda items for the Governance meeting to be held on Tuesday November 22 @ 10:00 UTC in grincoin#general channel on Keybase. Please comment to provide topics or suggestions.
(Meeting can be followed on @keybase-ro channel - GRIN community discord server via GRIN discord bridge).

Proposed Agenda

• Grin CC should be paused until further notice and funds must be returned.
  Slow payments/ poor payment management are a re-occurring theme and off putting for all Grin contributors who have had funding requests approved by the CC
• Proposal to add a payment management roll to the Groundskeeper duties.
  Agenda: Community Council (CC), 22 November 2022 #72 (comment)
• Unlock the Python CFFI secp256k1-zkp wrapper and Ledger hardware wallet support bounties.

[davidtavarez]

• Grin CC should be paused until further notice and funds must be returned.

Given that Grin's CC cannot go to meetings, is mostly absent and cannot sign off on pending transactions, I see no value in having a Grin CC in the current state.

[future3OOO]

Proposal to add a payment management roll to the Groundskeeper duties:

Slow payments/ poor payment management are a re-occurring theme and off putting for all Grin contributors who have had funding requests approved by the CC

New Groundskeeper tasks:

• Keep track of all approved CC funding requests
• Keep track or all outstanding debts owed in both BTC & Grin
• Send reminders to CC about any outstanding payments
• Update the community during each meeting with any payments made in the last period and all outstanding debts that still need to be paid
• Incharge of drafting all transactions*

*A groundskeeper could also be formally added to the CC so that they're involved in any internal payment discussions and could then be in-charge of drafting all transactions. A member reshuffling of CC should also be discussed and a groundskeeper could assume the roll of any departing member. If more than 1x CC member wishes to depart then a new position will become open for the community to apply for.

[future3OOO]

Audit of amounts owned to contributors and BTC/ GRIN balances

1. @davidtavarez is still owned 3,750.00 EUR paid in Grin) from an August funding request. Where he requested 10% to paid in Grin. CC either needs to honor this in Grin, or agree to pay in BTC.

*All outstanding amounts need to be resolved during this meeting and actions need to be taken asap to make payments *

[davidtavarez]

I still stand by my proposal: Grin CC should be paused until further notice and funds must be returned.

I want to say this first: I believe in the idea behind the CC and the purpose for which it was formed, perhaps in the future it can work. That being said...

Not a single funding request has been met without delays; not a single commitment has been fulfilled without delays of at least weeks, if not months. No one has stepped forward or suggested anything to manage the Farm Project, something that was approved and coins were spent on. Time and time again I find myself apologising to the contributors over and over again since the CC started functioning. I will not do it again while we ignore the problem and pretend that not meeting commitments on time is not disrespectful to say the least. Unfortunately no one can claim ignorance, the attitude adopted is below basic decency.

Since the role of the CC has been reduced to mere key holders, which was not supposed to be the case, the CC has been failing with no sign of improvement in that regard. How will anyone want to contribute if they have to humiliate themselves over and over again to have their funding request honoured?

PR grincc/finance#12 has been open since September 15 and not a single revision has been made.

The funds should go to support the Community that improves the Grin ecosystem by supporting contributors, and the CC should try to keep contributors motivated to continue to devote time and effort to Grin, but the current behavior is causing just the opposite.

If no one assumes any responsibility of any kind, then there is no reason to exist. Therefore I suggest to:

• Pause the Grin CC until a more motivated group of people join.
• Allocate an amount of coins to cover funding for the next 12 months.
• Define a better process in the meantime.
• Return the rest of the funds to the OC.

[future3OOO]

Not a single funding request has been met without delays; not a single commitment has been fulfilled without delays of at least weeks, if not months. No one has stepped forward or suggested anything to manage the Farm Project, something that was approved and coins were spent on. Time and time again I find myself apologising to the contributors over and over again since the CC started functioning. I will not do it again while we ignore the problem and pretend that not meeting commitments on time is not disrespectful to say the least. Unfortunately no one can claim ignorance, the attitude adopted is below basic decency.

Your main issue seems to be around payment delays and poor etiquette where contributors have to chase up CC to have payments made. Which is something that affects you personally and that you find humiliating having to bring up. This has been touched on before and a CC priority group was setup to improve signing speed. However, it still requires someone to take charge, liaise with the payee and initiate a transaction. Payments in Grin are another story, since only certain CC members have access to the Grin CC wallet and it also requires someone to monitor Grin funds and alert CC members if more Grin needs to be purchased to cover Grin funding requests.

How will anyone want to contribute if they have to humiliate themselves over and over again to have their funding request honoured?

This could all be resolved be adopting something like this: #72 (comment) which is already inline with the current groundskeeper duties. Alternatively we could see if anyone from the CC is willing to volunteer and take on this specific responsibility. Failing that, we could see if anyone from the Grin community was willing( Who would also then take on a CC role)

I don't see how dissolving the CC and returning funds is going to do anything but hurt the community.

Is OC going to fund Grin++,Grin Python, a grounds keeper role, a hackathon, other community ideas, or even CoinSwap? Would they approve funding requests that are not related to Grin core? OC doesn't even have meetings anymore. As it stands now, do they have any more capacity then CC to meet funding requests and do they want all that responsibility given back?

Even if CC was just a voting/ key holder role, it still offers the community a funding route that wouldn't necessarily be an option from OC. Why would you want to shut the door on that?

You make a good point about no one accepting responsibility. This needs to be talked about more and we should all be more accountable to one another. Everyone in CC is a volunteer and no one is in charge or has been assigned any specific tasks, which I think is an issue. If you look at how other volunteer groups/ clubs/ councils/ charites are run, there is always a chair person, or a president who takes on a leadership roll and allocates tasks, which in turn improves accountability.

If no one assumes any responsibility of any kind, then there is no reason to exist. Therefore I suggest to:

• Pause the Grin CC until a more motivated group of people join.
• Allocate an amount of coins to covert funding for the next 12 months.
• Define a better process in the meantime.
• Return the rest of the funds to the OC

From my perspective this would be taking a step backwards, especially when the community outside of CC seems more engaged that it's been in recent times, with more passionate Grin supporters emerging. Before burning down the house we should have an open discussion with the community- The CC has the voting rights to choose what the funds are spent on, however, they are community funds. Any proposal to return them should be decided by the whole community, not just CC members. If we are going to continue on with the CC there should also be a discussion to see who in the community would be interested in joining and who from the CC is looking to depart. Along with what procedures/ reforms can be put in place to make improvements moving forward.

[cekickafa]

New Groundskeeper tasks:

• Keep track of all approved CC funding requests
• Keep track or all outstanding debts owed in both BTC & Grin
• Send reminders to CC about any outstanding payments
• Update the community during each meeting with any payments made in the last period and all outstanding debts that still need to be paid
• Incharge of drafting all transactions*

I am working on transparency report, so I got the required data. I will prepare and submit it before the meeting tomorrow.

[NicolasFlamel1]

• Unlock the Python CFFI secp256k1-zkp wrapper and Ledger hardware wallet support bounties.

Both bounties appear to have been abandoned by their assigned developers. @walkbackgod's last github commit to the Python CFFI secp256k1-zkp wrapper was on September 20, 2022. @ndcroos's last post on forum.grin.mw regarding Ledger hardware wallet support was on September 4, 2022.

[MCM-Mike]

If no one assumes any responsibility of any kind, then there is no reason to exist. Therefore I suggest to:

Pause the Grin CC until a more motivated group of people join.
Allocate an amount of coins to cover funding for the next 12 months.
Define a better process in the meantime.
Return the rest of the funds to the OC.

I would suggest to give the community some time and react about this, to get a final decision after next meeting which will take place tomorrow.

We would also need to write a public forum post about this so everyone can participate in the discussion:

• pause the GRIN CC by XX.XX.XXXX
• replace some of the CC members by new community members (voting process?)
• etc.

[davidtavarez]

Your main issue seems to be around payment delays and poor etiquette where contributors have to chase up CC to have payments made. Which is something that affects you personally and that you find humiliating having to bring up. This has been touched on before and a CC priority group was setup to improve signing speed. However, it still requires someone to take charge, liaise with the payee and initiate a transaction. Payments in Grin are another story, since only certain CC members have access to the Grin CC wallet and it also requires someone to monitor Grin funds and alert CC members if more Grin needs to be purchased to cover Grin funding requests.

That is not true. I am being clear: not a single funding request has been met without delays; not a single commitment has been met without delays of at least weeks, if not months. This has been going on from the beginning. It is not true that you are going to accept a job and then when you are doing your job you don't get paid, neither you nor anyone else, it doesn't even make sense to have to clarify that.

I also mentioned the lack of accountability, no one takes responsibility for anything, and now we have reached this point where the CC does not even care about honoring payments. If you don't understand that this is disrespectful to those who spend time and effort to do the work, I don't know what to tell you, because we don't share the same moral framework.

[MCM-Mike]

some ideas for the meeting from satoshocrat :

1. We need a re-affirmation from all existing CC members that he/she is still able and willing to commit necessary time to the project

2. There needs to be a designated time, for example The Friday following the group meeting on keybase when-by those members are expected to sign the necessary transactions for approved disbursements.

3. I'm willing to take on an expanded groundskeeper role to include management of payments, communication with the working parties and council members to minimize any delays or concerns.

4. The trend of people disappearing knowing they have obligations they agree to is unacceptable and reflects poorly on current and future contributors