Add possibility for people to donate crypto

[FagnerMartinsBrack]

I was chatting with @carhartl and there's a significant amount of traffic coming from a lot of different places to js-cookie Github repo. Likewise, I've read countless posts talking about how many Open Source devs work below the poverty line.

We decided to try out and put a couple of public addresses on the main page to see if people who use js-cookie would be keen to donate to fund other Open Source projects.

I wasn't able to make significant contributions to Open Source in the past few years, that's my motivation. The idea is to use js-cookie visibility and the positive price predictions of BTC and ETH to make that stash grow in a way that creates a significant help to the community in the near future. It's the least I can do with my current time available.

[carhartl]

I found a typo:

own any Crypto or a long time

=>

own any Crypto for a long time

?

My only worry is that people will get the impression that we’re trying a scam here..

[FagnerMartinsBrack]

My only worry is that people will get the impression that we’re trying a scam here..

@carhartl It's a valid worry.

To be honest, if we were intending to do any harm we would already have done so, and much more harm than a mere few bucks in crypto. We have billions of downloads in JsDelivr every month, tens of millions on NPM, CI systems, Dev environments, and prod environments run our package NPM Scripts either as a peer dependency or not without any sandbox protection. I don't think credibility is an issue in js-cookie at this point in time. Credibility is one of the main reasons I believe we can make some good for Open Source outside this project.

Many years ago most people considered blockchain-based financial ledgers as a scam, so I would totally understand where you're coming from. However, nowadays it has been mainstream long enough so that majority of folks don't see it as a scam anymore and is actually invested in it. All transactions are public, it would be worse to run this through a financial institution as visibility would depend on our own will to share that information. Likewise, awareness of crypto is improving year over year outside geek circles.

The best way to improve Open Source is by using Open Finance.

[carhartl]

I thought about this some more and concluded I personally don’t want to contribute to furthering cryptocurrencies in any way, due to the well known issues. As an alternative, I‘d be happy to set up a GitHub sponsoring button and distribute any donations we might get to other open source projects.

[carhartl]

Looking at https://opencollective.com/opensource

[FagnerMartinsBrack]

I have considered multiple sources of donation including open collective. I did receive some feedback about crypto donations and I’ll attach to this thread, including a more elaborated justification on why Cryptocurrencies are better for the open source community than a centralised system. What are the “known issues” you’re talking about about cryptocurrencies?

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[FagnerMartinsBrack]

Feedback from other channels

I've been doing some research since November 2021 in other forums and got some independent feedback from this PR outside Github. The feedback is that this proposal really sounds like a scam, as you said before. I will post here the summary of what I got from my research.

The main reasons pointed out by some people are:

1. There's no date for the release of the funds. Donators won't see their money directly sent to the projects that need it, they would have to wait some undetermined time. That affects trust.
2. The owners of this project don't have a successful history of passing funds to other projects, which affects trust and therefore would also affect donations. People wouldn't be comfortable donating to a middle-man that haven't done this before.
3. A follow-up to point "2". This project has significant visibility and usage in the wild, that is billions of downloads per month in jsDelivr and millions per week on npm. However, people have the impression that it's much easier to scam by asking crypto donations than to scam by leveraging NPM scripts or the jsdelivr cdn, which would be a much harder thing to pull off. Not enough "skin in the game" for handling other people's money.

My takes on each of those points are:

Point "1": The idea to leverage crypto markets to exponentialize the impact it could have in Open Source technically works and I strongly believe it's beneficial to the community. However, it won't work because of trust issues which will affect donators (see the other points)
Point "2": The idea of a middle-man makes little sense to donators, regardless if we know we can handle it. They would rather see links to projects we believe might be worth supporting or to refer to a more credible organization that has more trust in handling money and passing to the projects that need it.
Point "3": This is merely a public impression, as most of the points above. The reality is if we wanted to do any harm we would have done it already.

Why Open Collective wouldn't work?

Just like any centralized system, the transactions are processed by a server that is programmed by the organization. It requires human trust. In a decentralized ledger, you have mathematical certainty that the balance is what it is (The donation pool) and the transactions went to the addresses which are then verified by their owners (the Open Source contributors).

I'm not saying that Open Collective is not trustable or that there will be an issue with using them where they will lie at some point. It could be, or it could not. It's more likely that it wouldn't. The main point here is that by having a public ledger and mathematical proof of the balance and the transactions, it's mathematically impossible to lie.

The difference here is between unlikely to happen and impossible to happen. According to the feedback above, the general public is not ready for the use of a blockchain yet, as most of them don't understand how it works. However, I know that it will be ready in a few years time. It's just too early at this point (see the topic "My Background on Crypto").

Why Github Sponsors wouldn't work?

Github Sponsors allows you to put a link to a platform (such as Open Collective) and show a button on Github for this project. It's targeted to support the project that the button is in. However, as we probably don't need any support and we're only looking at helping other folks that need most while capitalizing in this project's traffic, it doesn't make sense to have the Github Sponsor button here.

My background on Crypto

Very few people know it, but I've been involved in Crypto for the past 10 years, mostly research. Although I haven't participated on any public Open Source project, [redacted].

I do understand the trend of where things are going, and I do see the value of Crypto for society and secure money handling. It will become as common as the internet, but it may take years or decades to happen. There are not great front-ends to deal with Crypto these days for things such a day to day purchases or OSS donations, and that affects people's awareness of its potential, whichin turn affects their trust on those willing to use it (like us).

Suggestions moving forward

What I believe we can do to move forward is to add a link to some Open Source projects in the top of the README that already have a "Sponsor" button on their page, or use Open Collective for the lack of a better option.

The good thing about linking to specific projects is that we would be able to influence projects that we believe are useful for society. The bad thing is that it may involve a lot of discussions and disagreements.

The good thing about linking to Open Collective is that we would be able to direct our traffic to build awareness of the existence of that project and rely on their own work to use the money to sustain open source. The bad thing is that we would lose the ability to influence projects directly.

Questions

1. Do we want to redirect traffic to specific projects, or are we willing to let Open Collective do it?
2. @carhartl What are the “known issues” you talked about cryptocurrencies in the previous comment? Is it the same as I posted above or do you have another concern that is not in this thread?

[carhartl]

What are the “known issues” you’re talking about about cryptocurrencies?

Environmental (should be obvious by now), Ponzi schemes (I understand that not all cryptocurrencies are that), “sound money” + class collaboration (https://twitter.com/davetroy/status/1478017698676228099?s=21 for more)

[carhartl]

Re: Open Collective… I hadn’t investigate thoroughly yet, but my hope was that it would allow for distributing donations automatically to other open source projects. If that’s not possible I have no interest in putting up a GitHub sponsors button.

https://twitter.com/carhartl/status/1479001261114638339?s=21

[FagnerMartinsBrack]

Environmental (should be obvious by now)

That's only for PoW (Proof of Work) systems such as Bitcoin. ETH is moving to PoS (Proof of Stake), which means you don't have to run expensive computations to validate the transactions and therefore there's a negligible impact to the environment.

Ponzi schemes (I understand that not all cryptocurrencies are that)

Correct, there are plenty of Ponzi schemes out there, but I can filter which ones are not. That's why I chose the TOP most valuable cryptocurrencies for this PR (ETH and BTC), which are the ones that most people have skin in the game and the safest to hold (ETH probably more than BTC). They're the most stable at least for a few years to come. It's a way to manage risk than choosing to build a wallet and get donations using a riskier cryptocurrency that can be gone in 2 weeks. I prefer for us to avoid that too.

“sound money” + class collaboration (https://twitter.com/davetroy/status/1478017698676228099?s=21 for more)

I read the thread but I can't comment on that because I'd rather avoid talking about politics in this project and instead focus on science, the conversation can go sideways. Politics are debatable in every small aspect, even on people who are within the same political party. It's better for us to focus simply on the technical merits of doing this or not and ignore any political opinions we may have outside the goal of "helping to fund Open Source".

The suggestion to use cryptocurrencies is not a political decision. It's merely a tool, a means to an end. We should just clearly agree on the end, that is "helping to fund Open Source". If you have made the decision to close this PR based on politics, please reconsider.

[FagnerMartinsBrack]

https://twitter.com/carhartl/status/1479001261114638339?s=21

There's the https://github.com/maintainers repo. There a lot of OSS maintainers can talk to each other. I highly recommend for you to apply, you'll certainly be approved. I do believe by asking the question there you're more likely to get a quicker and higher quality response than posting on Twitter.

I can ask them if you want

[carhartl]

I think you’re mistaking political for societal.

Anyway, I believe you concluded yourself that crypto donations just so won’t be trusted and thus I don’t see value in discussing this approach any further.

Anyone can donate to open source the way they want, if Open Collective doesn’t do what I hoped for we can still put up a notice in the readme asking people to donate to open source.

[carhartl]

Good to learn about Proof of Stake though..

[FagnerMartinsBrack]

I think you’re mistaking political for societal.

A conversation about societal issues can easily become political, even across cultures, and even if you know the difference. It's very hard to apply self-control. It's a grey line I'm wary to jump into. We can have this kind of conversation on Twitter, though, if you want.

We can still put up a notice in the readme asking people to donate to open source.

Exactly! Anything. I do believe we should do something, regardless of what it is.

I do believe Open Collective is the best alternative out there that doesn't involve Crypto.

[FagnerMartinsBrack]

Since this PR is closed, I've created #754. Shall we discuss there?

[carhartl]

For discussions we may use https://github.com/js-cookie/js-cookie/discussions imo

[FagnerMartinsBrack]

Done, see #755

[carhartl]

(Fwiw, the Twitter thread I had linked is probably conspiracy nonsense, better not believe strangers on the internet.)