What is the Purpose of Cardano and the dcfund?

Governance
,
1

I feel like I have to qualify myself to even be able to share my thoughts with the community, because if not risk being treated like an idiot and having valid points disregarded. Please read the following knowing how much I want Cardano to accomplish its mission!

I was born with a rare genetic disease called Gaucher. When I was born my family lived and owned a dairy farm on over a hundred acres of beautiful land in Camp Creek Oregon. It was an amazing place to be a kid, but around the age of 5 I was diagnosed with Gaucher, and based on my condition at the time doctors said I would probably live to 8 or 9.

Around the age of 7 my liver and spleen were 10x the size they should be and could have exploded at any time, also my bones were deteriorating rapidly. When I was 7 years old a treatment was found that could combat the effects of the disease, but it was an infusion I would have to get weekly for as long as I lived. And worse, it was the one of the most expensive medicines in the world costing around $300,000 a year.

My mother was a single parent dairy farmer and did not have health insurance or that kind of money, so she frantically looked to find a way to get me the medicine. She tried to move to Canada, get the medicine from Mexico, and other options, but the only thing that worked out was, if you lived in Washington State and lived below the poverty line the state had to help you with the cost of lifesaving medication. So my mother had to lose the farm and cows she spent her whole life working for and move her family to another state to live in poverty to get life saving medicine for her kid.

Once we moved to Washington State my life became a weekly trip to the doctors to get a 2 hour IV, and the start of me realizing the effects having a disease was having on my family. By time I was a teenageer I hated myself for even being born and causing hardship for my family, and even though I had been getting infusions for years every week when I was 15 I had the bone density of an 85 year old man in my spine.

I felt like I could not chase my dreams or I would risk losing the medicine keeping me alive. If I or my family made more than $800 a month all together we would not be under the poverty line and the state would stop paying for my medicine.

So my choices were stay poor and get medicine, or ty to get out of poverty and try to afford $300K a year medicine before I die. This thinking led me to major depression by the time I was 16, and a life in which drugs and alcohol were how I dealt with my hopelessness. I did not really care if I died, and I even thought my family might be better off if I did.

This way of thinking and living ended up leading to more bad decisions and when I was 20 years old coming back from a party on the Kalama River I had my Ford Explorer loaded with 10 people I was giving a ride to and taking them back to their cars parked at the bottom of the river. I was driving like an idiot and the rear passenger tire came off the rim and caused my vehicle to roll over twice and kill the girl riding in the front passenger seat.

Thankfully no one else was killed or had any real injuries, except me. I was partly ejected, breaking my neck and causing many fractures to my skull. When the ambulance arrived I was barely conscious and could only think about how I was now responsible for someone losing their daughter and hated myself more than ever for even being born.

They say I died on the way to the hospital, I don’t know I just remember gaining consciousness in the ER at St John’s Hospital for a few moments with police and nurses yelling at each other before coming out of a coma 10 days later in the intensive care unit at Oregon Health & Science University after having brain surgery to remove blood clots from my brain.

Coming to my senses at OHSU I knew that whatever future I did have now was going to include prison time. By time I was well enough and sentenced to 3 ½ years I was angry about the life I felt destined to. And ashmand of what I had amounted to. When I first got to prison I was so angry at the world and God for how I felt He treated me.

Thank God He has patience and mercy, because despite my selfishness and pride God saved me in prison. That is another story itself, but let me just say I went from a person that suffered from a lot of physical pain from the car wreck, and massive emotional pain from all the bad choices I had made, to a person free of pain and full of joy and hope in one day.

I spent two more years in prison after that moment, full of more hope for the future than I had in my 20 years before being locked up. I got out in 2008 during a financial collapse in the USA and people with college degrees and years of experience were applying for any kind of job. So me being a person with no degree, no work history, and now a Class A Felon, my employment opportunities were near zero.

While cleaning peoples toilets, landscaping their property, and doing any other kind of side work I could get, I have dreamed up many types of business models that would improve people’s lives, including mine.

And while living below the poverty line so I could get life saving medicine I have tried starting many types of businesses but experienced many trials and hardships that have stood in my way as I try to get out of the poverty.

Two years ago I decided to startup or die trying, and gave up taking medication I have been on since I was 8 years old so that I could pursue entrepreneurship in hopes of getting out of the poverty needing medicine caused.

Why do I share all this with you? Because I am Cardano’s ideal client! I was the unbankable, but now I am banking others and creating jobs by building sustainable businesses that deliver Triple Bottom Line ROI. The first thing Cardano tells people they are all about is “

Making the world work better for all
Cardano is a blockchain platform for changemakers, innovators, and visionaries, with the tools and technologies required to create possibility for the many, as well as the few, and bring about positive global change.” https://cardano.org/

It is statements like this and others that the leadership has made about having a positive impact in the world that attracted me to Cardano, and led me to investing half of my savings into ADA. It is also what made me start designing ways for my businesses to use the Cardano blockchain.

And why I was so excited when I heard about the dcfund during the summit. I believed Cardano meant what they said and were going to be different in good ways and had high hopes to work with them.

Now after taking part in fund1 and fund2 and working tirelessly to read thousands of messages and watch all the updates and townhalls I have found Cardano to be breaking my heart, and the dcfund acting more like a normal VC fund that makes it near impossible to get funding for a startup.

The giving first type of attitude that I thought Cardano was all about has turned into more of a Ebenezer Scrooge attitude, and all I can do is hope that Ghost’s of the past come and visit the leadership fast before Tiny Tim’s last words.

I am writing this as a concerned community member who is an ADA holder and ADA maker and disappointed in how treasury funds for the dcfund are being managed. Almost $1,000,000 dollars worth of ADA are being added to the treasury every epoch, but fund1 gave out $0 ADA to proposals after people worked 4 epochs to help the dcund. Then fund2 is set to only give out $250k worth of ADA after 6-8 epochs, and fund3’s plan is only $500k. So during fund1 and fund2 the treasury will have made about $12million dollars, but is only going to use $250K to support pioneers in the ecosystem.

The dcfund purpose is not to sit and hoard ADA, it’s to incubate the ecosystem. And for the price and utility of ADA to increase we need to fund as many pioneers proposals that the community votes YES on as possible. Not sit on millions of dollars worth of ADA while passionate community members are eager to develop tools, new businesses, and news for Cardano.

So I am asking you the community, do you think using just 3% of the funds the treasury already has is enough to grow our ecosystem?

How much of the staking rewards that dcfund makes every epoch should be allocated for funding proposals?

25 Likes
2

That is a powerful and touching message Boone. It appears the IOG lack of time management and failure to properly set expectations is having a real impact on people trying to better themselves.

14 Likes
3

Oh my God Boone, you are indeed the real deal, thanks so much for sharing. When Boone joined Catalyst fund1, some of us were impatient with him because we felt we had to allow the process to work out. At that time he was honest enough to say that he had no ADA, but he has recently revealed that he has bought $16k worth of ADA. Why am I sharing this? It is because I feel as if right now in Project Catalyst, we are talking past each other. Project proposers like Boone are somewhat being seen as people coming in to dip their fingers into the ADA stash. Some are forgetting that we the project proposers also own ADA and want this pre-Voltaire experiment to succeed as much as anyone else. I started accumulating ADA very late 2017 and early 2018 (yes, I bought high) and have never sold. I have never cared about the price of ADA because I am in it for the long term. We want Cardano to succeed as much as anyone else and I have made many sacrifices along the way for the ADA that I have now. So, what am I saying? Proposers like Boone and I and others want to build Cardano; it is our investment too, and we don’t want any money to go wasted. We just see real world problems that we want to solve, and maybe, that is what is driving our impatience. So please hear us when we want things done well and in a timely manner.

7 Likes
4

Thank you Mercy for summing that up so nicely! It’s not about trying to get something from Cardano, its about working together to see Cardano be all it can be :smiley:

5 Likes
5

Boone, I’m speechless, thank you for sharing this. You deserve a real response. You are truly changing the world, and your advocacy makes a difference in how, as a community, we witness the roll-out of these complex solutions to the complex problems we face together. I thought I knew what I was getting into when I picked up my first ADA, but again and again these moments keep happening where I see how little of the bigger picture I actually see. I thought I had some clue of where you were coming from, but I only saw a sliver of it. Your questions are valid, and I second what Mercy added. Technical challenges may remain to pushing out the technology we’re all counting on, but the real questions are so much bigger than blockchain. Thanks for being here to drive the conversation.

5 Likes
6

@BooneBergsma I get the impatience and I think it is mostly well placed… I have been biting my tongue (although I have been giving some feedback on their forms, for what that’s worth). I started out thinking they were just being overly careful during the start of the DCfund but as it wears on it seems to be slowing down, not gaining momentum… I also was not a part of DCFund1 so your frustration is understandabley greater then mine.
My hope is that it gets better and I want to disagree with you but it seems the micro-management is getting worse… I do think that Dor and the rest of them are really trying to do the right thing but maybe the pressure to be perfect is starting to get in the way of just being a good solid deployment… At this point (after everything is functional) maybe they should just start letting the project loose.
Although, I do still have a very strong feeling that after the shine wears off a little and we get into fund 5,6,7, etc, it will find it’s place and settle in… Also, as I have expressed to you, you have some great ideas and projects that I am sure will get funded. They are solid, well documented in your proposals, and (most importantly) already started to some extent. I hate to say have patience because I am frustrated also but i really do think you are going to get where you want to be with Cardano. When you are working on something it’s sometimes hard to see but as someone looking in from the outside, it’s obvious to me that your stuff has a very high probability of being successful in the future…

7 Likes
7

Thank you for sharing this, Boone! I didn’t know that each epoch there is additional funds added to the treasury. At this point when the competition for talent and community in the crypto space is getting serious, I agree more of those funds should be released sooner.

At the same time, having only discovered Cardano a few months ago, I’m still in awe that this concept of a dcfund/project catalyst even exists. All my life I’ve been intrigued by alternative forms of governance. I’ve always thought that some form of true direct democracy needs to be tested, where individuals have the power to influence the decisions being made. The fact that something like this is being built and tested amazes me. Whether it’s $250k or $2.5m, I’m just excited to be a part of this process. This is a truly revolutionary project and I encourage you to not lose sight of the big picture and appreciate that this thing even exists at all. Look forward to growing this ecosystem with you over the coming years :raised_hands:

7 Likes
8

@BooneBergsma your story has moved me. Inspiring, and just an amazing story of human vulnerability, resilience, adaptability and ultimately great strength and positivity. Thank you for letting us know you better and having the courage to share your story.

Me and the team are doing the best we can to get Fund2 shipped - for you and all the other proposers who want to get started.

I am also concerned with getting treasury to be fully utilized. At IOHK we believe in systematic measurement and hypotheses validation to direct our way forward.
Check out this video as a visual metaphor: [https://youtu.be/8yYWILv91YU?t=176]
I see Fund2 as the third tiny block among the dominoes, Fund3 the fourth block slightly larger, Fund4 as the fifth block and so forth.

Each fund is exponentially larger in size until we get to full treasury capacity.

If your perspective is focused just on the third domino block falling (very slowly, with some annoying pauses) and don’t see the larger blocks aligned behind it, it would seem very slow and that little progress is made.

However this is missing the bigger strategy in play, and it’s awesome conclusion.

Important to note that this kind of work requires that the blocks are aligned just about right, that the momentum generated by each block is just the right amount to cause the next block to fall. This is the equivalent to tracking fund ROI (how much impact is observed from funded proposals), proposal quality, decision making quality, voter engagement and community approval. All these require passing acceptance threshold to justify an increase of funding. Using these checks and balances keeps us accountable that funds are used correctly and we are actually building capacity to use them effectively, while also providing motivation and drive for the community to produce impactful work together.

I will give more detail in a future townhall with specific metrics and figures, but hope it at least gives you some insight about how the Catalyst team is thinking about the issue.

Again, thank you again for sharing your story, and I deeply appreciate your leadership and courage.

10 Likes
9

Hey Boone.

Amazing story. Glad to see someone with your drive and passion getting behind this. I think you should be impatient and patient at the same time. Impatient in the sense that you use it to drive yourself and others relentlessly forward. Patient in the sense we are together working on something that the world has never seen before and it will be amazing!

God has not brought you this far for nothing my brother!

5 Likes
10

@BooneBergsma much respect, it must be really hard getting things like this out there.

Regarding the funds. There’ s a lot of frustration in the community about delays in the funding. Oddly enough your story has made my frustrations less.

We all want the greater project to succeed and there’s an opportunity cost in not funding things in a timely manner. I’m sure @Dor_Garbash and the rest of the IOHK team realise this, and won’t let us down, even if it feels to you like that’s happening right now.

much love brother

2 Likes
11

this is a very moving story @BooneBergsma
i hope you ultimately get funded…I’m confident this bet you did is a smart one but patience for us is key.
That said, I agree with some of your observations related to fund size and most importantly, the dangers of micro management mentioned by someone else.
@Dor_Garbash you are doing an amazing job and I enjoy being part of the weekly calls that you handle with maestria. But while constantly looking for metrics for evaluation and how to create accountability does seem like a good idea (after all the community IS looking), it can be a killer for entrepreneurs. I am one, i would never have been successful in my career if in the first few years my obsession had been around metrics and accountability. Obviously i paid attention to cash and my P&L, but I wouldn’t focus on accountability as much as client engagement, product development, product market fit, and speed to market. And expectations management was absolutely crucial in my line of business. These were my key drivers. It’s a trade off, yes, but we’re together still very small and frankly, when I read this quote from you “Important to note that this kind of work requires that the blocks are aligned just about right, that the momentum generated by each block is just the right amount to cause the next block to fall. This is the equivalent to tracking fund ROI (how much impact is observed from funded proposals), proposal quality, decision making quality, voter engagement and community approval.” it reminded me of stuff I read from my behemoth industry clients and not from a project trying to move at speed and scale, where new engagement is paramount. Take it from an “older” school tech entrepreneur for what it’s worth :slight_smile:

2 Likes
12

Cardano, particularly IOG, has always prioritized product quality over speed of delivery, that was its USP over other cryptos from the start. They all would push something out the door and fix it later, Charles wanted Cardano to be known for delivering something that worked right first time and every time.

2 Likes
13

I know this and I accept it. Here we’re talking about the funds and their allocation. Just sharing a slightly different perspective as this is what this community is about.

2 Likes
14

Not saying a different approach isn’t appropriate at this stage but I think we have to appreciate the “corporate” mindset.

1 Like
15

This is true and what drew me to Cardano. But, there is a difference between 1) most projects that, as you say, pushes things out the door and fixes things later and 2) companies that do do-diligence like Cardano’s immense research work and 3) organizations that start to get to the point of wanting perfection which is unattainable… It’s always good to work towards perfection but still unattainable.

The paper that Cardano wrote and is basing their governance on is, “A Treasury System for Cryptocurrencies: Enabling Better Collaborative Intelligence”, by Bingsheng Zhang, Roman Oliynykov, and Hamed Balogun. This paper appeared in the 2019 Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) journal. Entries for that journal had to be submitted by July of 2018… My point is that this research has been done and testing (very important) has been complete for over 2 years at least.

I don’t think @BooneBergsma and @mans7733 criticism of moving (maybe) too slow and holding back on funding is unfounded… Remember, research papers aren’t like normal articles submitted to magazines… Research papers need a certain amount of proof and evidence in order to be considered for publication. Considering that, it is not crazy to ask, if these structures we are now implementing have already been proven why are we moving at the pace we are? Are we trying to re-prove the paper? Are we just being overly cautious? It seems we are progressing like we don’t have a road map laid out in front of us when we do… from 2+ years ago…

I always feel like I have to qualify this by saying that I am not saying Dor and the rest of them are doing the wrong thing. I just think its healthy to keep the big picture in prospective and point things out when they need to be pointed out… Also, everyone should read though that paper. It will give you some good prospective and both answer and create new questions to ask (like about the role of representatives and how and when that is going to be implemented… they are a big part of the system according to the paper)…

3 Likes
16

I truly appreciate all the kind words from everyone about sharing my journey with Cardano!

The whole point of my letter is to bring attention to the funding that dcfund gives out to the community for improving the ecosystem. And understanding how much of the rewards the treasury is making every epoch should be used to grow the ecosystem.

Shouldn’t the holders of ADA be making these decisions or at least have say in how much of the dcfund is giving out each round?

I am not asking to be foolish with funding, but support more proposals the community has voted YES on. Especially if funding all those YES proposals cost less than what is being earned from staking during the fund.

So if for example, during fund2 lets say 34 proposals get enough YESs and the total of funding all of them is $700,000 and during fund2 treasury earned $5,000,000 why not fund all 34 proposals voted YES on? Why limit funding to a set low amount, why not limit funding based on how much is being earned from staking?

Let’s have the community vote what % the staking rewards earned by the treasury is available for funding proposals. And quit having a central authority decide how much ADA is given out each fund, and let’s be decentralized at the dcfund!

3 Likes
17

GOD Bless you

1 Like
18

Thank you so much for sharing your story Boon. God met you there in prison and opened your eyes! May God work through you to help fulfill the Cardano vision for which it was created. I bought Cardano at the beginning because I liked Charles Hoskinson’s vision and haven’t followed it much over the last year. I think I have some catching up to do.

2 Likes