Charlie Lee proposes voluntary mining reward donations to fund the Litecoin ecosystem.

The question of how to properly and successfully fund open source non-profit projects has been a perennial one, and altruism only goes so far. Some ventures are maintained purely as passion projects by a small number of highly engaged people, while others are supported by privately funded developers in a thriving business ecosystem, such as Square et al.

However, the Litecoin project is stuck in a kind of purgatory that takes on both aspects above. The largest group of developers, Litecoin Core, led by Australia-based Adrian Gallagher, is made up entirely of volunteers, so new releases are often slow to appear.

In response to BTC.TOP CEO Jiang Zhuoer’s recent proposal to implement a block tax through majority consensus on the BCH network to fund development, Mr. Lee wrote on Twitter yesterday to share his thoughts and opinions on the matter. Announced. :

I think a better way to fund development would be for mining pools to voluntarily donate a portion of their block rewards. How about donating 1% (0.125 LTC) of the Litecoin pool block reward?@LTC Foundation? If every miner/pool did this, the annual contribution would be around $1.5 million! Currently, merged mining of Dogecoin and other Scrypt coins earns miners over 105% of the block reward. So 1% is a reasonably small amount to use to finance public benefits. Even better, the pool allows miners to decide which organization they want to send their 1% to. It could be the Litecoin Foundation, @LitecoinDotCom, @theliteschool, or other Litecoin projects. What do you think?

There have been cases in the past where private companies donated development funds. InosiliconThe mining chip manufacturer donated £666 to the Litecoin Foundation led by Lee in 2017. However, most private companies simply have little interest in donating unless they receive something in return. This is an issue raised by BCHABC developer ‘Deadalnix’, who claims the group has previously denied funding to keep the project independent.

So what should miners gain from Lee’s proposed agreement? The main benefit is that it potentially increases the value of the Litecoins you mine and hold, as funding generally brings certainty, confidence, and stability. This would ideally at least offset the voluntary 1% fee.

Such voluntary contributions would require widespread consensus and consensual participation. Especially since the pool is made up of thousands of individuals who must agree. People who refuse to participate may also benefit without contributing, which can lead to understandable hostility.

The Foundation works with Litecoin.com to fund our efforts through merchandise sales of cryptocurrency wallets and clothing. Although this is supplementary and not sufficient to run a dedicated operation. Encouraging funding would be of great benefit to both sides, but it is not clear whether the current proposal is agreeable, especially if private companies can hire people directly responsible to carry out the work on their own terms.

Core, on the other hand, already has a proven track record and goodwill, so providing unconditional funding would indirectly tap into goodwill of its own merits through a positive and wider community image.

At the time of writing, no mining group has commented publicly on the issue.