GOAL: €39k for Full-Time Peercoin Development (COMPLETED)

open-collective

NOTE: With the recent donation of 9.7 BTC, this funding goal has now been completed!

Continuous Project Funding

The Peercoin Foundation is starting a new initiative with a push toward continuous project funding. Our main goal is fully funding Backpacker, Peercoin’s Core Developer. Since being hired by the foundation two years ago, Backpacker has revolutionized the Peercoin protocol by overseeing 4 major releases, v0.7 (Op_return and fee changes), v0.8 (SegWit Integration), v0.9 (PoS Reward Adjustment), and the upcoming v0.10 (Sync with latest Bitcoin 0.20).

Backpacker requires a yearly salary of €39,000 in order to continue full-time development of the Peercoin network. To achieve this goal, the Peercoin Foundation will utilize Open Collective, which allows community members to subscribe to monthly fiat donations of USD/EUR through credit/debit card, or a one time bank transfer. Other fiat currencies are supported as well. Open Collective is similar to Patreon, except it is designed around ongoing open source projects such as Peercoin, and provides a transparent accounting of donations and expenses.

The Peercoin Foundation currently has enough funds to pay Backpacker until the end of December 2020. Without an additional source of funding however, the foundation would need to start tapping into its peercoin reserves. At the current price of $0.26 cents, these reserves can carry Backpacker’s development activities until the end of 2021, and even longer if that price increases along with the rest of the crypto market.

The purpose of this fundraising campaign with Open Collective is to introduce an additional source of continuous funding to help prevent the foundation from needing to tap into its peercoin reserves, which are better saved for other important purposes once the crypto market rebounds, such as exchange listings, marketing and a bounty program. You can help the foundation retain its Peercoin reserves by becoming a backer of the project on Open Collective today!

Current Progress

The progress featured below may have changed. Check here for updated numbers.

PeercoinFundingGauge

Donation Options

There are a variety of donation options, one time custom donations or recurring (monthly or yearly). All the options are displayed below. The large one time donations correspond to how much development time you can sponsor Backpacker for, starting at 1 month, and going all the way up to 2 years.

One Time or Recurring:

  • Donation (Customizable)

Recurring Contributions:

  • Peer (€10)
  • 100 Peers Club (€36)
  • Backer (€100)
  • Sponsor (€250)
  • Peer Pal (€500)

One Time Contributions:

  • Peer Partner (€3,670)
    Dev Time: 1 Month
  • Hero (€11,010)
    Dev Time: 3 Months
  • Savior (€22,020)
    Dev Time: 6 Months
  • Sugar Daddy (€44,040)
    Dev Time: 1 Year
  • Master of the Peerverse (€88,070)
    Dev Time: 2 Years

100 Peers Club

Funding Backpacker’s full-time development costs will likely be a challenge. To help share the burden, we setup a special donation tier on our collective called “100 Peers Club”. If we can get 100 people to commit to a recurring donation of €36 per month, that will fund the full €39k that is required to maintain full-time Peercoin development. This amount (€36 per month) includes fees from Open Collective and our Fiscal Host, plus payment processing fees.

Anonymous Donations

If you are concerned about the public nature of the donation process and would prefer more privacy, there is an incognito mode, which hides your identity on the public donation list. Just select the option in the following image…

BTC & PPC Donations

Alternatively, we’d also like to remind you that we also support BTC and PPC donations. Only 4 BTC would cover our entire development budget for the next year. The Peercoin Foundation’s BTC and PPC donation addresses are listed below…

BTC Donation Address:
376NhxVL1LFBFndHNx9k7hvwvUzq6RZiPT

PPC Donation Address:
p92W3t7YkKfQEPDb7cG9jQ6iMh7cpKLvwK

Conclusion

The Peercoin Foundation has always been transparent about our financials. Previous annual reports can be found here. The new tools provided by Open Collective will bring even more transparency by automating reporting. In addition, we open the foundation up to new possibilities with easier methods of donating and a continuous funding model. If you have any questions, please post in the comments below. If we combine our efforts and share the burden, we can get this accomplished, so let’s get to work!

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I did my part. Hope everybody is well. I’m still trying to get back on my feet from this stuff

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After going on vacation recently I’m broke. But what the hell, I’ll join the “100 Backers to €39k” club!

Nice going everyone! Thanks to the monthly pledges we have so far, we’re currently up to an estimated annual budget of €2,540 and we haven’t even opened this thread to the public yet. I’m interested in seeing who else will pledge as they see the messages I sent out.

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This thread is now public.

Good work. I’d amend the heading “Larger Donations” to “Larger and Smaller Donations”. For example:

Larger and Smaller Donations

If you can afford to donate more than this, please feel free to use one of the other donation tiers such as Backers or Sponsors. Or you can choose a smaller regular donation, it all helps. You can also create your own custom donation amounts and set them as either one time donations or recurring (monthly or yearly).

Edit: I was wondering whether we could devise some sort of a “funding thermometer”, that shows the total rise. It could be tweeted out, each time it passes a particular threshold, etc.

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Hi I will become a backer too, I first started following peercoin in late 2013 and haven’t been the most active contributor here but peercoin is something ive always held and will keep buying, im loving the new staking rewards too!

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I have received some concerns from a couple people about not liking their profile being tied to a public list of donations. There is a way to donate anonymously. I’ve added the following section to the first post.

Anonymous Donations

If you are concerned about the public nature of the donation process and would prefer more privacy, there is an incognito mode, which hides your identity on the public donation list. Just select the option in the following image…

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something something Bitcoin.

Like/Retweet:

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I took your idea here for the recent tweet, thanks.

We just got a $100 monthly sponsor. Progress toward our goal is now up to 13.62%.

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I’ve made a number of changes and additions to our donation options. The biggest change is there are now 3 higher level one time donation options, €1,000, €5,000, and €10,000. I also added in a recurring option for €500.

One Time or Recurring:

  • Donation (Custom)

Recurring Contributions:

  • Supporter (€10)
  • 100 Backer Club (€36)
  • Backer (€100)
  • Sponsor (€500)

One Time Contribution:

  • Champion (€1,000)
  • Hero (€5,000)
  • Savior (€10,000)

I got issues with that naming scheme, personally. Backers are now both 36 and 100, and a champion is a cooler name than supporter, even though a supporter donates the same amount after 2 weeks and is more steady income. I know it doesnt really matter, but you should give the reoccurring donations cooler names since they are more integral to what we are doing than one time donations.

Also, maybe a 250 option or something in there, though I definitely like the 10 option. Hard to know what to set as levels, but I think it’s obvious that the prechosen levels affect what people choose to donate.

What do you mean by 2 weeks here? Champion is set at €1,000, while Supporter is only set at €10.

The tiers aren’t even really necessary. Everything is customizable once you get into the payment screen. You can select “Other” and type any amount, and then select one time, monthly, or yearly. Nobody is mandated to choose only the available options. Everything is fully customizable.

Also, if you select a tier, you will see that I added in other suggested options that go up to the next tier in the list. For example, if you select the €100 option, you will see the following selectable amounts: €100, €200, €250, €300 and €400. The next tier starts at €500. The €10 tier has selectable options from €10 up to €100. Here is an example…

Maybe I should make the price range clearer in the description text for each tier.

I was not sure what to call the most basic tier, so I went with supporter at first, but it just dawned on me that I should probably call it “Peer.” I added 3 more additional tiers as well. Because we never know who is going to see this fundraiser, or how much they may be willing to give, I’ve added some extra large options just in case…

One Time or Recurring:

  • Donation (Custom)

Recurring Contributions:

  • Peer (€10)
  • 100 Peers Club (€36)
  • Backer (€100)
  • Sponsor (€500)

One Time Contribution:

  • Champion (€1,000)
  • Hero (€5,000)
  • Savior (€10,000)
  • Sugar Daddy (€25,000) Suggested by Peerchemist :grin:
  • Master of the Peerverse (€50,000)
  • Sunny King (€100,000)
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Cute, I’m into it.

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For the larger amounts, I think it’s important that we retain a link between the money asked, and the purpose of the money.

How about:

€3,250 - This one time contribution funds the developer’s salary for one of 12 months.
€9,750 - This one time contribution funds the developer’s salary for three of 12 months.
€19,500 - This one time contribution funds the developer’s salary for six months.
€39,000 - This one time contribution funds the developer’s salary for one year.
€78,000 - This one time contribution funds the developer’s salary for two years.

Regarding the contributer names, I’m not sure about some of them. For example, Sugar Daddy is a bit random/jokey for my taste. I’ll have a think …

Here’s a few ideas; I think we need to get the word “Peer” into the titles.

The first few have an university/academic theme (although Double ‘0’ Peer disrupts that. Peer Professor is an alternative):

€10 - Peer Fellow
€36 - 100 Peers Club
€100 - Double ‘0’ Peer
€500 - Learned Peer
€1,000 - Peer Don

€5,000/€3,250 - Peer Champion
€10,000/€9,750 - Peer Commander
€25,000/€19,500 - Lord/Lady Peer
€50,000/€39,000 - Master of the Peerverse
€100,000/€78,000 - Sovereign Peer (or King Peer, Peer King, etc.)

Others:
Peerhero
Peerhoncho
Peer Irregular
Peer Legionannaire
Peer Chevalier (French for knight/cavalier)
Emir Peer
Peer Cashier
Princely Peer

I still would prefer a tier between 100 and 500. It’s by far the biggest gap here and would be more realistic based on the current donations.

  • I’ll add in a €250 option.
  • I understand the reason for the suggestion, but I don’t want to change the amounts at this point. I like the nice round numbers, plus it makes it easier to choose amounts for each tier’s range.
  • I do like the idea of adding “Peer” to all the names. It sounds best when you have two words starting with p. I looked through the dictionary and found these to be most appealing. I’d like to implement them unless someone has a problem with it…

€10 - Peer
€36 - 100 Peers Pledge
€100 - Peer Pal
€250 - Peer Partner
€500 - Peer Patriot
€1,000 - Peer Pupil
€5,000 - Peer Professional
€10,000 - Peer Prophet
€25,000 - Peer President
€50,000 - Peer Power
€100,000 - Master of the Peerverse

Alternates:
Peer Player
Peer Prince
Peer Professor

I also changed “100 Peers Club” to “100 Peers Pledge.”

I would like to finalize this within the next day, because I want to send a newsletter out about it and start private messaging forum members.