by Douglas Horn

Telos worker proposals are a crucial innovation for our chain because they let the token holders decide how we will spend money to build the chain. It’s one thing to make rules, but spending money is where the rubber meets the road, as they say. Telos can make all the rules we want, but unless we can spend money to support development, promotion, and other ways to expand the blockchain, very little is likely to happen.

On the other hand, if we can create a pattern of distributing funds to those who are actively building and promoting the network, then not only will those people be able to continue, but more will be drawn to the Telos chain with their ideas for how to promote and grow our network. This is a virtuous cycle where the Telos users get more options to vote for, more things built for our chain, and as a result, the value of the chain increases and the amount of funds we can disburse gets larger — so we can do even more.

Like any virtuous cycle, the hardest part is usually getting it started. The Telos Core Developers have been working unpaid for almost three months since the Telos Launch Group voted to launch the network — which closed out the previous form of funding, the Telos Founders Rewards Pool. The bulk of this work has been done by GoodBlock, whose developers have performed about 1,400 hours of work in bringing Telos to where it is today. Other TCD members have also performed hundreds of hours of work. Everyone in the Telos Core Developers believe in Telos. But they also need to be paid for this work. This is why we are submitting a worker proposal to recoup these costs.

A Big Proposal

The TCD worker proposal is large, no doubt. 800,000 TLOS is more than half of the current eosio.savings. This is primarily due to the fact that there was a very large amount of work required at launch and it has grown over the past 12 weeks. To keep the proposal more manageable, some of this work is being pushed until the next TCD worker proposal a month from now. That proposal is expected to be in the neighborhood of 500,000 TLOS. Thereafter, the typical TCD worker proposal is expected to be 100,000–200,000 TLOS, depending on the amount of work performed and, of course, the price of TLOS. Since the next worker proposal should cover the launch of TIPFS 1.0, we are hoping that these developments will add a lot of value to the TLOS price so that proposals can be smaller, leaving more funds for other proposals.

It is worth noting that this worker proposal and the next few that the TCD will submit are for work already performed. In the future, we aim to move to a system where the developers propose work and the community approves it before the developers begin work. That is what is intended from the worker proposal system so that individuals do not take too much risk of going unpaid. However, because there was much work needed and no time to wait around for the payment system to be created, we leapt in, putting our faith in the Telos voters to reimburse our efforts.

We understand that we are asking for a lot of the system’s available funds right now. We hope the Telos tokenholders will review things like the Roadmap and Developers page to be reminded of all that we are working on. And also to remember that Telos is working hard to be the most innovative and progressive of EOSIO chains (or any chains, really). Doing this requires ongoing effort and commitment from the Telos Core Developers. It is my hope that the worker proposal system provides a way to build developing income that TCD members can depend on so that they (we) can build our work plans around expanding and improving Telos. We are aware that the chain has other needs, of course and we respect this. However, development is one of the paramount needs Telos has and will always have.

We have an opportunity now, while we have several talented developers interested in working on Telos on an ongoing basis, to lock in the start of a great development team and expand from there. “If you pay them, they will come” is the what the Field of Dreams would whisper about developers. If developers know that Telos will pay them, then they will dedicate time to our chains. If we don’t then before long, they will drift off to other projects because no developer wants to get stuck doing unpaid work for long.

Vote YES

Thank you for considering the Telos Core Developers’ worker proposal #1. We hope you will vote for it to repay work done to date on necessary improvements and maintenance to the Telos blockchain. Please vote YES on funding this proposal.