POLL: How should IOTA raise money to continue development beyond 2024?

✍ General Governance General
1

How should IOTA raise money to continue development beyond 2024?

Estimates from Dom would give us until mid-late 2024 to obtain funding to continue core development on IOTA. Since it will take months to build community consensus and execute on the chosen path, we should get the conversation started sooner rather than later.

For example, if the best option is: inflating MIOTA, we must agree on: the new supply, how much to give to the IOTA Foundation, Tangle Ecosystem Association, and/or a Community DAO, whether to sell any to new investors, etc.

Dom mentioned investing/earning yield in Shimmer DeFi, but we’d be lucky to squeeze two months of funding from DeFi on an illiquid chain in the depths of a bear market.

Ideally we could raise upwards of $100 million to comfortably last out the bear market.
Perhaps some combination of these options is ideal, I’d love to know where you all stand on this pressing issue. Our best options so far seem to be:

A) Increase MIOTA/SMR supply - Give to IF/TEA/CD
Pros: Simple(r) to do, no need to find investors.
Cons: May cripple price as tokens are sold for fiat. Hard to convince community, as it dilutes us.

(B) Increase MIOTA/SMR supply - Sell to investors, fiat goes to IF/TEA/CD
Pros: Better for price, investors are less likely to dump it below cost basis.
Cons: Hard to find investors. Hard to convince community, as it dilutes us.

(C) Take unmigrated (pre-Chrysalis) MIOTA
Pros: 252 Ti/$55 million available. Simple(r) to do.
Cons: Threatens IOTA’s credible neutrality. Morally, holders should have another >6 months to claim, delaying funding. May cripple price as tokens are sold for fiat. Doesn’t reach the target amount.

(D) Donations
Pros: Simple(r) to do. Our collective ‘sunk cost’ might raise enough money.
Cons: ‘Free rider’ problem. We all want IOTA to be well-funded, but individually donate as little as possible. Unlikely to raise the target amount.

(E) Sell Pretty NFTs
Pros: Cooler than donations. Still semi-simple, depends on scope.
Cons: Hard to find buyers. Requires work: art/marketing. Same as Donations, still altruistic as NFTs won’t have utility/intrinsic value. Unlikely to raise the target amount.

(F) Sell NFTs as debt - The IOTA protocol sells a % of daily Mana to repay debt + interest
Pros: Profit-driven vs altruistic, could raise far more money compared to Donations/Pretty NFTs.
Cons: Hard to find investors. Requires work: art/marketing, a way to create/sell Mana, and a contract/DAO to handle money, diverting resources. Will take years to repay debt.

(G) Other - Comment below

  • Increase MIOTA/SMR supply - Give to IF/TEA/CD
  • Increase MIOTA/SMR supply - Sell to investors, fiat goes to IF/TEA/CD
  • Take unmigrated (pre-Chrysalis) MIOTA
  • Donations
  • Sell Pretty NFTs
  • Sell NFTs as debt, owed by the protocol
  • Other - Comment below

0 voters

12 Likes
2

Thank you so much for bringing this up.

I wanted to address that in the coming days as well, but you did the work for me :wink:

I would like to add that I think it is very important to talk about it NOW. Because the process will probably take months … and when the Foundation runs out of money, it’s good to already have a plan.

For reference:

2 Likes
3

I think the discussion is good, and something for the community to talk about. However, jumping straight to a poll without in depth discussion seems a bit premature. There is so much to discuss and think about.

I can only talk for the community treasuries which is where I focus almost all of my time as a solution. When I wrote “To Burn or To Build” nearly two years ago, I stated in the article that using the Treasury funds to build not only supports the ecosystem but also gives a risk mitigation to the IF running out of funds. I still believe this today and one of the most important thing is to preserve the IOTA community treasury funds to ensure the protocol is completed.

Yet I think we are jumping too far ahead. When it comes to finances we should be looking at, “what needs to be completed”? Minting or giving community funds to the IF, what will that solve? How long will it fund the IF? There is no way to answer those questions because we haven’t yet discussed, “what is needed to enable the ecosystem to grow without the IF”? Or put another way, “at what point does the ecosystem grow on its own? At what point are projects and partners so invested that they would fund protocol development themselves?”

I think answering “what” needs to be completed when it comes to protocol development is a first step, to then discuss can the IF fund themselves enough to get there, and if not, how much is needed to get there.

Personally, I think EVM validator fees, the Treasuries, yield returns, may be enough to get the ecosystem to a selfsustaining point. More important, if we can survive the bear market with the Treasuries, the Shimmer and IOTA treasuries (if they don’t get depleted) can easily become a value of $100+ million. What we need to remember is to “sell” some at that point.

But focusing on what is needed for an ecosystem to survive on its own, I think we need:

  1. Shimmer EVM
  2. IOTA 2.0
  3. Mana used witihin the protocol
  4. Usable Identity Application
6 Likes
4

I’d go much further than this.

In my point of view, a (self-sustained) ecosystem isn’t the goal of this entire journey here, that would just put us as one of many irrelevant (in terms of real world adoption) bubbles out there, i’m not here for that…

If we really want to make a difference, additionally we need at least L1 SCs (or some basic scriptability for ZK tech) and sharding (1000 tps is really insufficient longterm for global adoption).

DID is very important aswell, but that doesn’t need to be done by the IF as it is a layer on top of the protocol.

I doubt the community would be able to develop sharding for example, so we absolutely need the IF to deliver that.

If we calculate 2 years for IOTA 2.0, another year for L1 SCs and at least 2 more years for sharding, we somehow have to fund 5 more years (imo those are optimistic estimates).

I’d also assume that within the next 5 years, some new big narrative arises which might require the IF to spend resources on it.

Btw, the poll is just to get a first impression on what people think, it’s not about committing to some funding decision here now, i think you might’ve misinterpreted that :slight_smile:

6 Likes
5

Understood and I like it as a discussion point.

I think my point is, what is enough to not just bring adoption, but to get enough big companies and governments interested to the point they would fund the IF to complete things such as ZK tech and Sharding.

For instance, if we have IOTA 2.0 EBSI builds with it, Digital MRV continues building and adds more global projects, companies start using STMicroelectronics, etc., could that be enough that someone like EBSI, Dell, Intel, etc. become so invested that they fund and provide teams to complete ZK tech and Sharding?

But like you said, it could also take having sharding in place before companies and projects are that invested to continue maintaining and developing the protocol on their own.

2 Likes
6

A really good Topic. It is an Important Topic, what (in my Eyes must be discussed).

But to discuss it, we need more Information.

  • How long the IF can uphold in the current condition
  • Whats about the promised Partners which fundet the IF?
  • Which strategys for self-preservation has the IF and how is the exact Status of all that?
  • etc. pp.

Iám sorry but the given Information from the IF and Dom are very contrary. Some time its no Problem and the IF must not touch reserves. A few months later a high supply of the Reserves are sold…

What we saw in the last Years is not a good Communication and Management from the IF. But we have luck to have such great Engineers like Hans, Phylo, muxxer etc. who will carry us (hopefully) over the finish line :slight_smile:

1 Like
7

New to IOTA but the main issue I find as a new user of crypto is that is pretty much impossible to find the exchanges where people can purchase the tokens. You have to go mainstream and be easy to exchange. Also a lot of marketing, You dont see anything on twitter about IOTA, shimmer. and please the wallet, can you make a desktop wallet that can be added as an extension? the one I have is a separate app that requires a lot of updates and has a glitch that always says I have to update the wallet.

1 Like
8

They should give IOTA holders the option to stake some iotas for long time, not only for voting power, but as a kind of lending IOTA’s for IOTA development purposes. Every development may have some payback for the lenders. Or do it like a Kickstarter start-up concept, where people can invest and get something for return, depending on how much they offer.