How does one verify development? How would something like that be any different from voting for content that describes such development? If you use a stake-based system, it seems kind of redundant with what we already have here and given that we would have to vet whether or not that development is quality or not, that would require a some mechanism to determine "quality" code (a billion dollar idea) or we would have to trust some individual or group.
While the idea might sound good initially, logistically it doesn't make a lot of sense to pursue at the blockchain level. You should organize a fund separate from the chain, not add it to the protocol.
How does one verify good content? Let me give you an example of what I mean. My post got a payout of $53:
https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@inertia/more-current-steem-documentation
How do you know I didn't just splat a bunch of nonsense and pick the right tags? Maybe the utopian moderators weren't paying attention. How do you determine one way or the other?
(actually, the utopian moderators are top notch and very qualified to determine these kinds of things, but that's not my point)
My point is, sometimes you do have to rely on experts with domain specific knowledge to verify delivery. Maybe that process can work for application development too.
Yeah, but those experts are centralized points. Which could be good if they are truly experts, or perhaps could be an issue as they have some central authority over the code. The only way to avoid central authorities is to have everyone vote via stake, but the notation that stake is anyway positively correlated with the ability to judge code quality is absurd.
I don't see why we can't simply have individuals willing to stake projects as investors put stake into those projects. That's how it works in the real world. And it doesn't force us to siphon off part of the pool to either allow larger voters or "experts" elected by larger voters to determine the future development. We already have those. They're called witnesses.
And see where we are now? I can see how having such a fund addresses accountability and speeds up development rather than reckless delegation to projects with most hype.
Dash, Bitshares, Ethereum, even Bitcoin does this to a degree.
Sure, decentralize everything. And then Project A will work on heading north and Project B work on south. Nothing gets done in the end.
The central issue of OP's post is the address reliance AWAY from a few parties. Edge case scenario, say a legendary developer comes to the Steem blokchain and is willing to work on a proposal. He's not a witness though, does that mean he's not qualified to develop Steem?
There are certainly better reasons that the blockchain is suffering more than the lack of developer incentives. One of them is developer focus. Another we can tie into the game theory behind Steem. A third would be cryptocurrencies being strongly correlated with Bitcoin. All better reasons to why we are here now.
Nobody forces anybody to delegate. How would a shared pool solve this issue? Please enlighten us.
My concern is about on-chain funding. Foundations and private companies are off-chain funding. I'm perfectly fine with that sort of funding and would encourage it.
I feel like these ideas conflict with each other to a degree. The second implies moving toward the first, and critiquing the first would suggest moving towards the second.
He may be qualified to develop Steem, it depends on his experience. But let's say dude solves all our problems with perfect code. If code doesn't get witness support it isn't passing regardless.
But that's true for judging content too, which I just said previously. For some content, some people are better suited to judge quality than others. I don't see how this informs us on how to to use the reward pool.
Well, that's a great idea. Go do that. In fact, why we can't simply have individuals willing to stake content as investors put stake into content production as well?
Why do any of this at all?
Read the SMT Whitepaper? And think Development Fund?
Yes. No.
Maybe you verify the development at the Code Drop. Or you payout in thirds which is common in contracted development projects.
Although I agree we can currently fund small development with votes, what about larger projects like SMTs or other features?
I disagree that logically it doesn't make sense, it could logically make sense. Which also doesn't mean we have to implement it. :)
How do other projects raise capital? Bitcoin doesn't have a fund. It has passionate individuals that work on it for free and groups of developers that propose functionality to investors and raise capital through these proposals. Such an approach is better for developers in that funds are often in stable currencies and it makes sense to trust investors since they provide all the money that is "at stake". It would be preferable to encourage more startups and small organizations around Steem, not turn Steem into a partial funding platform because it can print tokens.
I'm not sure how Bitcoin's devs are paid.
Dash does have a foundation and a group of people who approve work proposals and such as do several other chains.
One thing that is hard when you have more than just a currency is how to attract people/devs and projects to your blockchain when there are no assets set aside to fund it.
I'd like to recommend you this read in case you haven't already.
https://medium.com/@lopp/who-controls-bitcoin-core-c55c0af91b8a
IMO, there are much to learn from how Bitcoin Core Dev does their job. And even then they still admit it's somewhat centralized.
I'll read it, thank you.