Community Funding Board 11th Meeting

First off, Team Nimiq would like to thank all the candidates who put themselves forward to represent the community and all of you that cast your vote in the second set of Community Funding Board elections. We are happy to announce that MrMaestro, Vasconcelos and Ginghis Kan were all duly elected as the new Community Representatives. Here is a summary of the final results:

Source: https://twitter.com/nimiq/status/1236335060246290432/photo/1

We’d like to say a special thank you to Chugwig for helping to run the election smoothly on the voting web app he created that records all votes on the Nimiq blockchain. Team Nimiq would also like to thank Mat, Chugwig and Wekkel for their service to the community over the last six months, as Community Representatives. You guys have played a vital role in the Community Funding Board over the last six months, your contributions to supporting numerous Nimiq ecosystem projects during your term has been invaluable.

The remaining three Board seats will be taken by Richy, Bruno and Matheo from Team Nimiq for the next term.

This month, the Community Funding Board held it’s transition meeting with both the new and old community representatives in attendance to ensure a smooth handover between Boards. Here’s what went down.

The Meeting

During the meeting, both old and new Community representatives weighed in with thoughts and opinions to further improve the operation of the Community Funding Board. The following topics were discussed.

• Server Costs: Given that help with server costs are a common request from community developers, the Board had the idea of beginning a plan to implement a Community Managed Server Infrastructure Service to help support the further decentralization of community projects.The technicalities of this effort are yet to be discussed.
• Process Improvements: The Board discussed how to further expand the reach of the Board and Community Funding initiatives. It was agreed that communication channels with Board updates could be maintained better, updated more frequently and this would make it easier for the Nimiq community to be kept in the loop about the Board’s activities. The agreed-upon solution was to assign a task-leader to each communication channel, through which Community Funding Board information is distributed. This task-leader would ultimately be responsible for Board updates on their assigned channel and this covers channels like Twitter or the Nimiq forum.
• Open-Sourced, Close-Sourced & For-Profit Projects: Discussion focused on how important it was for new project proposals to be able to survive or be maintained without the leadership or efforts of the original creator. In short, it was agreed that any new funding proposals submitted to the Board, should be incentivized to include a mechanism that would enable the general Nimiq community to build upon or even take over the project at a later date. The key driving force behind this decision was to strengthen the shared vision that any project funded should strive towards the ideal of ‘for the community, by the community’.
• Incentivizing Open-Sourced Project Proposals: The Board discussed how proposal submissions are to be broken down into three different categories.

1. Open-source

2. Closed-source

3. For-Profit - Any type of project that can monetize and generate revenue for the creator.

It was agreed that a higher reward could be applied to submitted proposals depending on what category the project falls into. Open-source projects attract the highest reward multiplier, followed by closed-source and for-profit. A final decision on these reward multipliers will be made in the coming few weeks. The Board also unanimously agreed that previously funded projects would not be forced to open source.

Evaluated Funding Proposals

This month, two community projects were assessed for funding.

NIM Tip Bot

• Project purpose: Telegram tipping bot for NIM with simplicity and decentralization in mind.
• Development stage: Working product.
• Project team: Albermonte
• Previously evaluated? No

The Board commented on how the amount of NIM requested for airdrops seemed low and agreed to ask Albermonte if he wanted to increase the amount of airdrop NIM requested. It was agreed that server costs would be covered for two months until a Community Managed Server Infrastructure Service was set up to support projects like this. The Board also decided to allocate a reward of 500K to recognize the effort that goes into this project. This does not only include development but also the awesome support that Alberto provides in the community and also the huge value it provides to the community in terms of engagement.

NIMNow

• Project purpose: NIMNow is a service where anyone can earn free NIM by doing online tasks like watching videos, getting involved in contests and much, much more.
• Development stage: Working product.
• Project team: Hextic
• Previously evaluated? No

After a lengthy discussion about the proposal, the Board decided that modifications were required in order to fund NIMNow. It was decided that HTTPS support was critical for the project and that this feature should be added to the proposal as a milestone. The discussion then turned to the features suggested and the opinion of the Board was that many of these milestones could be achieved with plugins or features of Titan script which could be easily installed. It was agreed that Hextic should be asked why he thought that the additional feature required a significant amount of work.

After review of the NIMNow site, the Board believed that the platform could do with a UI/UX upgrade to make the service more usable. It was agreed that Team Nimiq should offer NIMNow help with this. Finally, given that NIMNow is a for-profit project and has ways to monetize through ads or driving traffic to select partners, the Board decided to ask Hextic to modify the proposal to add more details regarding the milestones while at the same time providing a revenue and expense plan for NIMNow’s operations to help the Board fund a fair portion of the project's operating costs.

Reactive Rewards

Last but by no means least, the Board turned its attention to reactive community rewards. The following decisions were made:

• Everyone who put themselves forward as a candidate for the most recent Community Funding Board elections and didn’t get elected as a Community Representative is to be awarded 7777 NIM each. 
• Community member Destropx was also recognized for the survey questions he was frequently doing in the Nimiq Telegram group. The awesome thing is that he was constantly tipping people who respond to his excellent questions. The Board decided to grant 50K NIM to enable Destropx to keep doing what he’s doing in the NImiq Telegram group.
• The Board and Team Nimiq agreed to make the Community Funding Board more visible by showcasing the initiative on the homepage of Nimiq.com. It was agreed that this increased prominence of the program should lead to even more proposals being submitted. 
• In the next meeting, the Board will discuss rewards for all the Community Representatives finishing their current term. Chugwig will also be considered for a separate reward to recognize the development of the Nimiq voting app - which was key to holding Community Funding Board elections.

Got A Great Idea That You Need Help Getting Off The Ground?

Do you have a great concept that could add value to the Nimiq ecosystem and just need a helping hand? The new Board would love to hear your ideas and proposals. Remember that the Community Funding Board is there to help you get started and get building.

All you need to do is to read our proposal submission guide and shoot off an email to Proposals@Nimiq.com.

The future is bright, the future is Nimiq.

Pura Vida,

Team Nimiq