[Passed] Phoenix compensation to change from USNBT to NSR

Cybnate 2017-12-30 23:51:58 UTC #2

From Nu’s perspective it is attractive to pay you in NSR over NBT. There is an incentive to increase the NSR price in order to raise your compensation. That would potentially want to make you work for Nu over other profitable endeavors. I would like to see a timeline attached to it, say for 1 year even if it is only self imposed and no doubt you would be able to pass another motion to supersede this one.

However I’m unclear why you want to be paid in NSR for the B&C network. I would prefer to see you paid in BKS shares providing the same incentive as for Nu. Unless you propose a merger between the two e.g. by fixing the BKS and NSR price to each other or by other means B&C shareholders profiting from an increase in NSR price.

I’m keen to hear more about that translating in a documented and published vision for Nu and B&C and how to achieve that by you with some key KPIs against it in order to keep you on track going forward. These can be reviewed on a regular bases when markets and the environment change.

Looking forward to X-NBT.

Also like to take the occasion advocating for more transparency in general. I haven’t seen you advocating that much for someone to take an ‘independent’ role in automatically translating available network data into meaningful information for current and potential shareholders (e.g. like networks like Dash do), let alone this position is being advertised anywhere as far as I’m aware. I hope we see this back in your vision statement.

cryptog 2017-12-31 06:21:19 UTC #3

I think that overall this looks reasonable.
I think shareholders must recognize that phoenix was instrumental in restoring the peg and increasing drastically liquidity of NuShares and Nubits as well as their trade volume.
Whether or not they like his way of interacting with the community is another problem.
I also think he needs the right incentives to keep on contributing and innovating on behalf of shareholders.
I think shareholders can agree on the fact that his contribution/leadership is crucial for Nu and BCE growth. Therefore we need him to stay on board for the long term
So I would support this draft overall though I cannot find precise justifications for the 30,000 NSR per hour. Why not 40,000 NSR or 20,000 NSR?
One may have the impression that such motion would cause further centralization of minting in the hand of phoenix. This is true in some respect but such centralization is still necessary, I feel, before we can think about decentralizing the network for the time being.
If there is no critical flaw or counter argument showing up within the next days, I will add it to my data feeds.

Phoenix 2018-01-01 02:34:47 UTC #4

There are several reasons. The B&C Exchange fund is mostly NuShares, so it certainly has them to pay with. If I asked for equivalent compensation in BlockShares it would be about 100 BlockShares per hour. I expect there would be concerns about me earning too large a share of the network. The B&C Exchange market cap is only about $600,000, while the NuShare market cap is $36 million. Finally, this makes pay from each network equal. It just makes sense I would charge each network the same amount.

From my perspective, the call for transparency in network data seems very strange. It is already totally public, with real time aggregate and calculated figures on many aspects of liquidity available in the explorer, like these real time liquidity figures. @Woolly_Sammoth is working on this. It would seem suboptimal to make him unaccountable (i.e. independent). My management of @woolly_sammoth has been pretty hands off. I would encourage him to speak about that here (the minor role I have played in guiding his work, what he has done recently to bring insightful information to the public, and what he plans to do in the future). We have just decided to hire a subordinate developer to work with him to increase the amount of work done in this area.

Our system is incredibly transparent. Still, some feel it is not transparent because they aren’t watching closely enough to experience the transparency. They don’t know what is going in most regards, because they haven’t looked, not because the information isn’t publicly available. Sometimes people who don’t understand what is going on from inattention get suspicious. That is all understandable, but at the same time, strange from my experience, which is one of consistently doing my best to use limited resources to get as much done and bring as much insight into network health and events as possible.

Cybnate 2018-01-01 04:05:19 UTC #5

Ok, re B&C makes sense. Re concerns of earning too large a share I believe that would be the case both for Nu and B&C. The marketcap of B&C and lack of liquidity on its shares is a larger issue I believe.

These figures you refer to are very new, only available since a week or so. It is a good step forward and would like to see more of that. I know @woolly_sammoth is working on that. However transparency is not only about availability of data but also about accessibility and readability. As I said in my previous email a datastream doesn’t make information. It would be great to have all the data Jooize posts regularly also in similar dashboards. Looking forward to more.

I appreciate that.

cryptog 2018-01-01 06:47:03 UTC #6

Voting for both motions.

DavidMc0 2018-01-01 21:40:25 UTC #7

While I think Phoenix has brought significant value for Nu, I wonder if for $285 per hour other skills could be brought to the network that add greater value?

I also don’t know what degree of expert guidance was required to recover Nu from it’s big crash. The clarity of direction Phoenix brought was certainly valuable (primarily being clear about 1 NBT = $1, which isn’t rocket science… despite some not seeing the importance of this!), but perhaps not $285 valuable. I expect many others who would require less pay could also have provided this.

The recent massive jump in value of Nu can’t be simply put down to Phoenix’s good management. Pointing out gains as a percentage from a time where confidence was close to zero up to a time where the entire crypto scene has boomed hugely may be quite flattering, though I do believe Phoenix has been highly competent with the exception of the hacks.

NSR’s current market cap is $27m; number 298 on coinmarket cap and not a great achievement given the current crypto boom.

Tether is at number 29 @ $1.3bn market cap. Would you want to pay a CEO / team nearly $500k per year to achieve what NU has?

With respect, I think that with great vision, leadership, stewardship, execution & quality marketing, NSR could be a lot further forward in terms of adoption, usage, and market cap.

For example, for this kind of money, Nu could have someone, or a team who:

are public, trusted figurehead(s) - great for promotion, conferences, confidence etc
have broader competencies, e.g. a deeper understanding of marketing (could have a bigger impact on adoption and therefore demand, price, and usefulness)
A greater focus on developing the business model beyond where it is to increase sustainability in prolonged times of reduced NSR demand (which is the environment in which FLOTs decision became a disaster, and there’s no guarantee that disaster could have been avoided in those circumstances even with the right policy)

For just shy of $500k per year (assuming full time commitment), I think a visionary leader who’s strong on economics could work alongside a couple of specialists in crypto tech & marketing to form a core team who might bring significantly more value to Nu than what Phoenix can.

The small amount of community engagement must also be seen as a significant failing of Nu’s leadership.

I’m not anti Phoenix, as I believe he/she/they were right about FLOT’s decision, and Phoenix’s leadership in that time was important and well done. Phoenix has also shown competence in the critical area of understanding monetary economics. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that paying around $500k per year is the best route to go at this time of stability and managing huge resources and huge opportunity.

Might ~$500k per year be sufficient to bring in skills that are likely to add greater value to the network than what Phoenix can offer?

It may be that Phoenix really is the best for the job and represents good value for money, but perhaps it’s worth talking about alternatives when so much money is being committed.

Cybnate 2018-01-01 22:27:27 UTC #8

Looking forward to your proposal for a better leader with credentials doing it for less. I’m afraid most are tied up in successful or promising existing coins (on of those 250 in marketcap ranked above Nu) or are trying to setup the latest ICO earning them millions.

I doubt he will be working 40h/week on Nu, but maybe @Phoenix like to comment on this aspect I’m also interested in.

DavidMc0 2018-01-01 22:54:57 UTC #9

I could put forward some ideas, but any firm proposal would require significant work & that wouldn’t be worthwhile without an indication of support from shareholders… perhaps I could put suggest a motion to fund scoping out a potential team for Nu that could add significant value to Nu, and once the scoping is complete, shareholders can choose between the proposed team & Phoenix’s proposal.

If any significant shareholders are interested, please let me know so I can consider whether it’s worth putting any time into.

jooize 2018-01-02 01:18:31 UTC #10

A post was merged into an existing topic: AngelaLee’s removed posts

dysconnect 2018-01-03 17:53:19 UTC #11

To make Nu work and justify this kind of spending on JL you’ll need to make JL accountable for his actions and require more devotion. Tier 6 liquidity is fragile unless Nu can earn an income, most likely through being a hedge fund or through profitable market-making type activities, otherwise it’ll be like bank loans - they shove it to you almost for free when you need them the least, and be extra stingy when you need them the most.

But Nu has suffered from poor relationships with exchanges; Poloniex effectively squeezed all liquidity value from Nu and offered little in return, and the community couldn’t even lobby Poloniex to treat it on par with Tether in the good days. The hope is of course he can make the money-printing machine running and bootstrap both Nu and BCE. But he has failed to hire a consistent level of labor for the development of BCE, failed to answer questions on BCE and the missing development funds and the bad decisions that put BCE development in jeopardy and Henry and NuLagoon. Two years has passed and BCE is not even a toy. I can’t say that shows an adequate amount of commitment to the success and legitimization of Nu, nor that he is resourceful enough to complete that vision he prizes himself so much for.

If you trust JL, as a startup you’ll need to make bold choices and require JL to use every ounce of his energy to push everything forward effectively. If he can do that, I’m sure you won’t mind even paying him millions. If he can’t, it’s hard to justify even 100k. Just remind yourself how much you get paid and how much you’ll be screwed by your boss when you can’t meet your milestones. I don’t say this in a way that assumes Nu is a scam - if JL is really so important, you should bargain to get a lot out of him and dangle an even bigger prize in front of him if that’s really needed. Also remember he’s probably hiding shit loads of NSR and BKS and might not really need more incentives, the same way Zuckerberg takes virtually no salary.

Phoenix 2018-01-03 19:14:49 UTC #12

It is very curious for a multisig signer who had power and responsibility in Nu mid 2016, and used it to dramatically and unexpectedly defund B&C Exchange in a plainly illegal, foolish and anti-social manner, to criticize me for all I have done for B&C Exchange, in spite of the very difficult circumstances @dysconnect has personally handed BlockShare holders. @dysconnect was a signer for Nu’s BTC and NSR, as I recall. We were one signer short of operating as planned. @dysconnect made the decision to defund B&C Exchange, which was funded with NuBits, by choosing to abandon the peg, and he had the power to do that. So, don’t forget the deplorable and highly destructive role @dysconnect has played in this endeavor. What a petty attempt to shift attention from your own extreme guilt @dysconnect!

After imposing this kind of severe damage to the projects through destructive, unpredictable and dishonest actions, @dysconnect is certainly unwelcome here. As such, he has no interest in seeing the projects succeed. Quite the opposite. People who abandoned the peg like to blame the network design, so they don’t have to take personal responsibility. But the network design was superb. It works very well, as we have proven over the years.

@dysconnect you ought to take responsibility for your destructive actions here, not try to deflect blame to me. Remember, I am the guy who grew B&C Exchange’s funding from its low of about $20,000 after your destructive and illegal acts, to its current value of about $2.5 million. It is plain to see who is a friend of Nu and B&C Exchange, and who is not. I have done some amazing things to recover these projects from the damage you imposed, and I am very proud of that.

Sabreiib 2018-01-04 00:38:35 UTC #13

Good news! I know it consists of BTC, NSR and NBT. How about having a portion of other stable currency such as bitUSD Or Tether? In this kind of extreme Bull market I worry about the sysmatic price collapse.

dysconnect 2018-01-04 01:00:22 UTC #14

Look, we can go on and on about it and also that I remained one of the most active signers towards the official end of FLOT, and you talked about killing FLOT and I just made that better for you by firing myself first.

But that is not the point. The point is that if you’re taking a big salary, Nu shareholders would rather you work full time and shoulder responsibility. And if you do, your followers would be willing to hand you much more than you asked for. No startup thrived with a part-time CEO… especially not in today’s cryptoland. FLOT went the route of being underpaid and overworked, had great responsibility but no terms of accountability. You’ll make big promises and keep them and be ready to answer questions when you can’t deliver, and with the knowledge it could cost both your reward and your skin in the game. Otherwise that salary increase would rather go towards development of Nu market-making research and BCE, remembering BCE core dev was budgeted at 200k and like 50 NBT per man hour.

Sabreiib 2018-01-04 01:16:36 UTC #15

Even FLOT made mistakes, they are NOT vicious, their intention was to protect pegging not destroying it although their behavior consequences in real world is another story.

@phoneix The past is the past, let us be friendly to each other. IMO, violent revolution never solves core issues, but compromise does. Britain people behead “Charles I” but a new sort of king Cromwell came. Only the Glorious Revolution- a peaceful compromise gave Britain a bright future.

BTW, I’m happy that I supported the motion of changing B&C fund from NBT to NSR, and believe 2.5 million USD is enough to finish this project, so let’s nail it down, how about holding several stable currencies for the fund?

lissajous 2018-01-04 01:58:39 UTC #16

I’d argue that the basis for your objection to his compensation is precisely due to your willingness to let NBT customers suffer the consequences of a lost peg and for having the finger pointed at you.

I have aired my own opinions on the liquidity model, but if NSR becomes highly liquid then Nu will finally have recovered from the collapse. Only then will we move towards definitively knowing one way or another whether the model has merit, without the presence of human emotions protecting self interest (NSR price). I think we can trust @Phoenix will not let emotions get in the way of his vision, so I am going to vote for this motion.

dysconnect 2018-01-04 02:48:38 UTC #17

I’m not arguing against his compensation per se, but would remind NSR holders of their rights and what it takes for the whole system to succeed. If NSR has total faith on somebody then it’s more rational to pay a lot and ask for total devotion, rather than look at the hourly wage and feel good about not having to pay for full 40-hour work weeks. And it would be advisable for JL to offer a price for his full commitment.

And well, Nu was nearly out of BTC and had lots of NSR nobody wanted to buy. I resigned when there was almost nothing left to sign for and still kept signing until I handed over all my duties and “power” to others and forfeited my fee. If JL is implying otherwise he’s making stuff up.

lissajous 2018-01-04 03:00:52 UTC #18

They also had nobody willing to sell NSR, so the premise of your argument is an assumption.

dysconnect 2018-01-04 06:31:31 UTC #19

Not true. If you dig out posts on NSR FLOT you can see that FLOT had acted according to schedule and come to agreement to provide NSR and was forced to use discretion beyond their own assigned authority due to the lack of sufficient directives (which by the way was still being discussed in a motion draft prior to the event) despite a strong emphasis on checks and balances and processes.

Then NSR prices just dropped more and more quickly as Nu was closer to insolvency. Some actions were judged to be mistakes, and I assume responsibility (in the form of my forfeited fee and shying away from the glory of the reborn NSR which I’m not going to touch again) for whatever of those that were true and made by me.

There are many things that can be said in hindsight but the one most important thing I wanted to raise is this: the main failure of FLOT was that it wasn’t given the right combination of power, responsibility, incentives and accountability. I think having an real incentivised and accountable leader is a better way than a bunch of near-volunteers that can’t be held responsible because they don’t have real power and don’t get paid. Whether JL is worth it is a problem for NSR holders, not me.

I talked about JL’s past blunders partly to rant, but not really to suggest that he can’t be employed by Nu. Nu wants to move forward, and JL’s tactic of “pump up the market cap and the rest will come” is working to an extent that it still needs a lot of developers, a real business model, and a convincing plan to withstand the next blackswan. It’s sorta ok.

But I’m saying, as Nu gains an organizational structure under a leadership, shareholders must realize the value and price of that leadership, and understand what should really go into this sort of proposal. At this point JL’s KPI as a leader should be in terms of growing the community, developing relationships with exchanges, development milestones etc. all with timely delivery, rather than market cap and volume supported only by minor exchanges, which we all know are funny money until Nu has a real plan to survive a BTC bubble burst or exchange default. If Nu is convinced JL can lead it to all those things then consider to offer him a massive incentive, but also ask that he’ll have to make this a full-time job and be ready to take the most blame and lose the fat comp package when things don’t work out.

So it comes to this: NSR holders, you know the value of these things. A finished BCE, relisting on Poloniex et al, an optimized mechanism for market-making and decentralized liquidity, a business model. You believe Nu’s gain can be worth magnitudes more than 500k if those plans get real, and you probably only have one chance, and you don’t want to blow it on holding a leader to a low standard in order to underpay him. I won’t judge whether JL is that leader; I have no dog in this fight apart from some residual emotional attachment to what happened last year. If you think JL’s worth it, try to negotiate a high bar and compensate him even higher.

cryptog 2018-01-04 08:50:09 UTC #20

Very good points. Tks a lot for your advice and insights, @dysconnect .

woolly_sammoth 2018-01-05 00:32:35 UTC #21

As Requested by @Phoenix, I have created a new topic showing the work I’ve undertaken in the last month as well as the work I intend to do over the coming months

I can confirm that @Phoenix has not been micro-managing me or deciding which work I should focus on as a priority, rather I have been given the trust to focus on what I consider to be important for the network.

I believe that Phoenix is offering that style of management for the wider network too with this proposal.
I firmly believe that the ultimate aim for the network is to regain the decentralised nature that was so important to the burgeoning community we had here in 2014-2015. Decisions will be made by Shareholders and enacted by their representatives, for the good of the Network.
We have seen what can happen though when the decisions made pull the network in multiple directions and it spells disaster for Nu and by association B&C.
Phoenix is offering to be the final adjudicator and to take the responsibility of making the decisions that need to be made in those tough times. The compensation is there to ensure that it is less easy to shirk that responsibility when it is needed most.
The style of this leadership might not have been to everyone’s taste to date but it arguably has shown results. With the formation of a team to carry out the needs of the network and steer it in the same direction there will, I assume, be less and less need for Phoenix to step in in the same style. The compensation requested here is to ensure that Phoenix is there to step in during this transitory period.

That’s just my take on this and has been made without any influence from Phoenix or anyone else. I think the compensation requested seems fair given the kind of role Phoenix has and what my presumed intentions for the future are.