Community update
This was a very exciting week for FoldingCoin Inc! We received a major donation, went on the road to spread the word and have made some valuable connections!
1. Major donation
We were slowly running out of funds to distribute the coins, so we were busy looking for companies that could donate to us. We’ve received a 10 BTC donation from the Indianapolis irrigation company “A&O Irrigation”!
After discussing with the team we decided to allocate the money to the following three things:
- 3.25 BTC for 501C3 application
- 2.63 BTC of the funds for daily distributions
- 0.75 BTC to create some merchandise.
- The rest of the funds will be saved for future projects and distribution.
We will explain the initial spendings below:
501(c)3 – 3.25 BTC
This is a vital step in becoming a fully fledged non-profit! We will hire the expertise of a professional Crypto Accountant located here in Indianapolis. We will meet this Accountant Monday and he will be guiding us through the steps required to get our 501(c)3 and answer other legal related questions and concerns we have. When we achieve 501(c)3 status, to our knowledge we will be the first crypto currency to be considered a 100% regulation compliant non-profit.
Daily Distributions – 2.63 BTC
We like to give our miners a daily share of their FLDC profits, but this does not come cheap. The daily distribution cost is 0.00006 BTC per address, which currently adds up to 0.016 BTC per day. We had been running dangerously low on daily distribution funds, so we are very happy we now have a good sized buffer to be able to continue.
We are looking into building an “Off Chain Distribution System” in which we will eliminate this daily cost completely by putting this very small charge on the Folders themselves. The Off Chain system will allow for Folders to withdraw whenever they would like. So if a Folder was to wait for one week to withdraw funds, they would only have to pay this cost one time, instead of 7 times. For an individual this is not expensive at all, for FoldingCoin Inc., to do this for every donor everyday, is getting costly.
Until we release this new system we wish to continue to be able to do daily distributions, however, since this is becoming more and more expensive we need to think about the future cost. We do not wish to use all of this money we received in daily distributions solely. So we have come up with a plan that we think will work until the Off Chain is ready. To start we have isolated 2.63 BTC of the 10 BTC donation to the BTC wallet address:
13CZdEn4bRiaenhzZ9hrdGK94Zso918xTx
Any BTC in this address will be used exclusively for daily distributions. Should this address fall below 1 BTC, we will switch to distributing FLDC every other day. Should this address fall below 0.5 BTC then we will switch to twice weekly distributions. Should this address fall below 0.25 BTC then we will switch to once weekly distributions. If we no longer are financially able to continue daily distributions by falling below the 1 BTC mark and you wish to continue to see daily distributions, then donations to this address will be greatly appreciated. James and Chad however are working very hard on getting the Off Chain system ready as soon as you can so you may withdraw your funds as you would like.
Merchandise – 0.75 BTC
We will invest 1 BTC in merchandise that can be purchased by supporters. This way we can spread awareness of the project. Should this be successful with the initial amount of BTC we are putting into merchandise, we will be able to continuously mainstream merchandise for continued purchase.
FLDC Funds Page
With having a non-profit it is vital to be fully transparent about the way we spend the funds. For this reason, we created a FUNDS PAGE where our budget and spendings can be tracked in realtime.
2. Off Chain Distribution System
Chad has come up with a good solution to do the off chain system in a way that we will not have to hold any private keys on the server itself. Chad and James will be creating this system by creating a database that will hold everyones FLDC + Merged Tokens in a secure place. By utilizing the LTB usernames, we will only need users to login with their LTB accounts on the off-chain server as this will be a perfect way to verify which addresses you have. LTB has a BTC address verification system on which people can register any BTC address via message signatures or BTC outputs being sent to a specific verification address. This will allow us to give LTB users access to FLDC folding addresses that they have verified through the LTB verification system. It will require you to sign up for LTB and verify any FLDC address you have folded on to withdraw your TOKENS. When you decide to withdraw, we will simply deduct the cost of the 0.00016 BTC it will take to do the withdraw in FLDC you have earned (currently around 200 FLDC). More will come from this including updated road maps.
3. Code Debugging
James and Chad have been working hard on doing some debugging to our current code completing sanitation. The current code we have is now to the point where we are 100% comfortable to have James and Chad to begin on the Off Chain system.
4. Meetups Attended
Robert attended a few meetups this week in hopes to spread awareness of FLDC and to meet new developers. A few great contacts have been laid by attending these meetings and Robert will continue to go through the local Indianapolis community to continue making contacts.
Last Tuesday, Robert attended the Indy Python Meetup and met a couple potential developers who might be interested in getting more involved in the FoldingCoin project bringing Python skills to the table. Robert had a chance to pitch a five minute explanation of FLDC.
On Wednesday, Robert attended a Indianapolis version of TED Talks called Sparks. Though, he did not get to speak here, Robert met the organizer and received an application to speak at a future show. Sparks is booked until October so this will be further down the road to speak at.
Friday, Robert attended a marketing workshop for Indianapolis business owners. This was a five hour event in which Robert was able to learn some extra marketing skills. At the end of the meetup, Robert had a chance to speak for 20 minutes to the crowd about why their businesses should accept BTC as a method of payment. Since this was a meetup of business owners, it was thought best not to try and confuse them by talking about FLDC, but rather peak their interests by talking BTC. Afterwards though, almost half the crowd approached Robert to talk more about BTC and FLDC. Robert spoke individually to business owners for over an hour after the meeting was already over.
5. Videos
Jona is currently going through the process of editing a quick explanation video of FoldingCoin that should be ready soon. Jona also is editing the Drupal meetup that Robert spoke at.
6. FLDCVOTEIII
It is still possible to vote if you want us to get more funding by selling 100mln undistributed FLDC. Currently the vote is 50.1% NO and 49.9% YES. This is very close so don’t forget to vote! There is still 2.5 weeks left and we only have about a third of the votes in, so get your FLDCVOTEIII in today!
7. Voting system
We are rethinking the way we are approaching the Voting system. We want to keep phase 1 and phase 2, but it has come to our attention that a phase 3 may need to be implemented for a better more community oriented vetting system of what is being put up for a vote in the upcoming month. This current vote went through the system in the way that it should, however since this vote has had very strong arguments on either side of the fence everyone has had some great ideas on how future votes need to be further vetted including some sort of system in which we can basically have the ideas up for vote in a community editing document. As with this vote we learned that some parts of a vote people will agree with, and other parts they do not. So if you wish to vote for something it is basically an all or nothing situation without being able to contribute tweaks to the proposal. We feel we have some good ideas coming up for a phase 3 and we will post more about it as it develops.
8. Upcoming Counterparty Panel
FoldingCoin will be involved in the upcoming Counterparty radio panel being held on Dogedcoin Radio. This will take place March 27th starting at 10:00pm EDT. The following Representatives from various Counterparty projects will be here:
- Robert Ross – FoldingCoin
- Chris DeRose – Counterparty Foundation
- Jeremy Lam – Vennd
- Evo Ked – Storj
- Filip Martinka – Counterparty Representative
9. Public Meeting
Make sure to attend our second upcoming public meeting being held April 5th, 2015 at 3:00pm EDT. We hope to have the entire development team there this time!
