NEM Foundation – Funding Proposal 2019

Dear community,

An opportunity is presented to hear your voice through a proof of importance (POI) vote in support towards a funding request for NEM Foundation. We have completely rebuilt the Foundation’s operating structure and mission. We are hitting refresh and starting from scratch. This means a renewed focus under this new leadership and a NEM Foundation that truly exists to serve and support its powerful community.

Before any vote is cast, we highly encourage the community to review the resources we have prepared to help you in making an educated and calculated decision:

1. Proposal deck – here
2. FAQ here – here
3. Video message – here

Update:

Spanish translation

1. Proposal – here
2. Proposal deck – here
3. FAQ – here
4. Video – here

Ukrainian translation

1. Proposal – here
2. FAQ – here

Japanese translation

1. Proposal – here

Requirements:

1. Minimum of 3% POI voting (includes 3% of TOTAL POI votes – both ‘YES’ or ‘NO’ votes included).
2. 65% majority of ‘YES’ votes out of total vote count.

Both requirements have to be met in order for the funding proposal request to be successful

Terms:

1. The process of discussion (no voting allowed) will go on for 10-days from 5 February 6:00PM Central Standard Time (CST) to 15 February 2019 6:00PM CST.

• During the first 5 days of discussion, the NEM Foundation would like to be able to make changes after hearing feedback from the community.
• For the second 5 days of discussion, there will be no more changes made to the proposal but the discussion can continue on.

2. The POI vote will begin for 5 days starting on 15 February 6:00PM CST and end on 20 February 2019 6:00PM CST, all community members are encouraged to vote. No more changes shall be made in order to give the community a firm proposal to vote.
3. Funds will most likely be taken from either the Marketing, Unconventional Marketing, Operations 1 or Operations 2 Funds. This will be finalized and proposed 5 days before the POI vote on 15 February 6:00PM CST
4. All community members can vote via the NEM Nano Wallet. A voting guide can be found here.

Summary:

If the funding request is approved, NEM Foundation will restructure to have newly created product-focused teams. The heads of these teams are the Chief Technology Officer, Chief of Product Management, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Business Development Officer, Chief Operations Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, and Chief Revenue Officer.

Each of these team’s leads will be responsible for reporting metrics and delivering a Return of Investment (ROI) directly to the community and council to maintain transparency and accountability. All funds spent will flow through the Chief Financial Officer and adhere to consistent accounting standards.

NEM Foundation should continue to exist as product-focused, revenue-driven and community-oriented organization because:

1. NEM Foundation has had a strong focus on marketing and business development which will be a key need to the launch and commercialization of Catapult – there are plans to promote Catapult through a comprehensive digital marketing strategy and following up on key strategic relationships which have been established.

2. The new leadership team has been only one month old and is committed to working with transparency and accountability. Alex Tinsman, the elected President had the highest votes for both POI and registered members votes.

3. We are adding an aggressive set of goals for tech product features, developer tools, and programmers that will help make the NEM platform the best in the industry. We are also adding plans to be sustainable by being revenue-driven through the appointment of a Chief Revenue Officer.

4. We are proposing a budget with a burn rate reduced by about 60% from its previous level. This will allow the Foundation to deliver ambitious results with responsible use of reserves. This budget is not yet confirmed, and there are more steps ahead before we have the funding needed for these plans.

5. A lot of thought and reflection was put forth reviewing the 2018 Foundation’s failures and successes as well as understanding the general landscape of how other similar successful organizations are structured – having this funding request approved would mean that we can utilize the learning from the failures and successes to ensure we allocate resources appropriately moving forward.

We want to be clear that the NEM Foundation operates as a separate entity and is one of many ecosystem contributors to the NEM open-source project. Therefore the NEM Foundation is not NEM. The NEM open source project remains strong and thriving.

We would like the community to use this forum post to engage in discussion and the council is fully committed to taking in feedback for the new structure. The voting period will begin from the 15 February 6:00PM CST to 20 February 2019 6:00PM CST.

Three things we expect to see in 2019 if funding is approved:

1.) Expect to see more enterprise adoption utilizing Catapult with a revenue-driven culture.

2.) Expect to see more public and private chain transactions when Catapult launches.

3.) Expect to see stronger leadership, solid governance and more service to the community, partners and the world as we hope for a brighter future.

Reference on past announcements from NEM Foundation:

1. https://forum.nem.io/t/nem-foundation-message-to-the-community/
2. https://forum.nem.io/t/nem-foundation-update-a-response-to-questions-and-anticipated-questions/

Join the discussion at the NEM forums!