Go Immutable - 2020 Q1 Update

[Matt Osborne]

-----------------------------------
ORIGINAL PLEDGES START
-----------------------------------
TECHNICAL

"Provide Top-Notch Technical Support"

"We have the ability to scale up tech as fast as the protocol demands. We also plan on maintaining tech specs in the top 15% of all Authority Servers."

DEVELOPMENT

--Collaborate with other ANOs for development

--Establish a platform for tracking progress of entities

SALES/END-USERS

--Onboard new enterprise clients

--Determine the needs of enterprise clients

TESTNET

--Four Testnet nodes

COMMUNICATION

--Keep the community updated on any relevant news and allow standing parties to track progress
----Basecamp for project management
----Trello, Asana or Jira for development projects
----CRM to track relationships

FCT PRICE IMPACT

"We’ve extensively modeled FCT price changes and have contingency plans for a worst-case -scenario ($5 FCT). Not only can we survive that scenario, but we would be willing to step up and run more servers should other entities drop-off. We’re also well-capitalized and have the ability to operate in the red for extended periods of time."

PLEDGED EFFICIENCY

2 nodes: 50%
1 node: 50%
-----------------------------------
ORIGINAL PLEDGES END
-----------------------------------
-----------------------------------
Relevant links:
- Forum Q+A
- Aggregated pledges
- Application
- Supporting documents
-----------------------------------
-----------------------------------

[Matt Osborne]

Here is a high-level breakdown of Go Immutable pledges as of October 3, 2018

TECHNICAL
We've changed system admin teams several times (once an attempt at enterprise-level support) and recently rebuilt our infra from scratch. Additionally, our servers did go down for a handful of minutes after we terminated our relationship with Rackspace (wow, what a coincidence ). We don't consider that "top notch." Most importantly though, both our rebuilt infrastructure and retooled support are now at a place we consider "top notch."

We pledged 4 testnet servers back when FCT was $30ish. This was dumb. No other way to put it. We are currently running 1 server because our capital is much better spent elsewhere. If there is a need for more servers on the testnet, we can step-up.

DEVELOPMENT
*We've worked closely with several development ANOs and look forward to continuing this relationship. I bother the crap out of them with questions. They can attest
*As far as establishing a platform to track ANO progress, Matt formed the "ANO Contribution Committee" and the committee decided to use Factomize as the platform.

SALES/END-USERS
We've been working our tails off to bring on enterprise clients/Fortune 500 clients. We've also had some conversations with the public sector. These sales funnels are long, unfortunately. However, we have a ton of good things in motion.

COMMUNICATON
*We've provided a breakdowns of Go Immutable's progress on our blog:
https://medium.com/@greg_9853
*We use Basecamp and Trello on a daily basis

FCT PRICE
*Well, my modeling was accurate, unfortunately. FCT is at $5. As pledged, we are fine operationally and would be happy to run more servers.
*Also, we have not sold any FCT into the market (not that this was a pledge).

PLEDGED EFFICIENCY
*Adhered to this pledge

[Matt Osborne]

HIGH-LEVEL NON-PLEDGED CONTRIBUTIONS (as of October 3, 2018)

*Partnered with Liberty Advisor Group (100+ consultants, Fortune 50 clients, public sector connections, etc.). GOI has been providing value to Liberty clients from a blockchain perspective. The goal is to onboard them to Factom. Yes, NDAs preclude us from talking about much of this, unfortunately.
*Public sector Factom conversations happening (that's all I can say)
*Building up sales channels outside of Liberty connections (logistics, pharma)
*Member of CompTIA Blockchain Cornerstone committee (along with Microsoft, Dell, and a half dozen others). CompTIA has licensed over 2 million IT professionals. They are second largest IT credentialing company (Microsoft #1). We are helping craft CompTIA's blockchain programs.

*Spoke with half a dozen law firms about obtaining legal support for community
*Helped establish Legal Research Working Group (grant recipient). Work with legal on decentralization, foundation, etc.

*Still working with insurers (Lloyd's) on getting custom insurance for Guides. As you can tell, we keep on moving up the ladder. We finally got to Lloyd's after a dozen or so hours of work/conversations.

*Marketing committee co chair through September
*Constructed list of industry PR contacts
*Provided community with marketing roadmap (20 plus pages)

*Formed "ANO Contributions Committee"
*Reviewed all 21 pledge campaigns, google forms, and forum posts from ANO Round 1. Consolidated pledges into 40+page Word document
*Currently leading this process (yep, literally the one you are doing right now :smile)

*Constant participant in all things Governance (grants, standing parties, tiering, voting procedures, etc.)
*Attended vast majority of Guide meetings
*Attended all ANO meetings
*Constant provider topics to be discussed during ANO meeting
*Multiple in-person meetings with ANOs. Many more phone conversations.

[Matt Osborne]

Links to Go Immutable Monthly Updates
(Note: We switched to quarterly updates in October 2018)

Update Archive
May 2018
June 2018
July 2018
August 2018
September 2018

[Matt Osborne]

GENERAL STATEMENT ON INITIAL PLEDGES (originally posted October 3, 2018)

The price drop in FCT has hit a lot of ANOs hard. Go Immutable is no different. Additionally, with a project as young as ours, things change. An endeavor that seemed like a good idea at the time may not make sense a few months down the road. Therefore it's Go Immutable's position that ANOs not so much be measured based-on adherence to their pledges, but instead be measured on whether they provided the equivalent amount of time/effort/energy/output that their initial pledges would have required. For example, the price of FCT forced an ANO to mothball a DEV project. Fine. But, did the ANO find other, less costly ways to further the project? Did they participate in committees? Did they help on testnet? Did they write content for the neutral website? Are they providing value on Factomize? Basically, are they moving our project forward? If so, a failed pledge is not a big deal in our eyes.

[Matt Osborne]

Q4 Go Immutable Update

1. We are lowering our efficiency to 30%

*Go Immutable has dedicated a tremendous amount of time and effort to furthering the protocol since its launch. We estimate we're near the to in regards to contributions made to the protocol. In our opinion, we've drastically exceeded our campaign pledges and have been a key player in regards to advancing the protocol.
*Additional FCT revenue will be put towards endeavors that will grow the protocol as opposed to GOI member payouts
*We also strongly believe in incentives. By "incentives," we mean "rewards." For those of you that are psychology/human behavior nerds, you already know that providing a proper reward structure creates desirable behaviors. In the Factom (R) Protocol's case, a proper incentive structure would encourage ANOs to dedicate more resources (time and money) to helping the protocol grow. That's a huge win for all ANOs, FCT holders, etc.
*Without a tiering system, efficiency is a messy topic. Therefore, here's our view:
*Under-performing ANOs, in regards to their campaign pledges, should raise their efficiency
*ANOs that are on par with their campaign pledges should keep their efficiency at what was pledged
*ANOs that are overachieving should lower their efficiency
*An ANO's efficiency needs to be inline with the value they provide to the protocol
*This methodology ensures three things:
*ANOs operate under a "prove it" model. Meaning, they are judged by their actual output.
*ANOs are incentivized to provide more time and resources to growing the protocol
*All efficiencies are inline with value provided to the protocol
*We'll be putting our money where our mouth is on this one and leading by example

2. Enterprise Client relationships
*These are progressing. Nothing to announce yet though. We need to be careful about his after having a CIO question us about one of our previous ANO updates on Medium. They obviously value secrecy. We'll do our best to communicate effectively with the community about our progress.

3. CompTIA Blockchain Cornerstone Committee
*As a reminder, CompTIA is the second largest IT credentialing entity in the world, having licensed millions of professionals
*Mission complete. Educational materials are being created and the Committee has been wound down.

4. We were asked to join the CompTIA Blockchain Advisory Council
*Other companies on this committee include Microsoft, Dell, RedHat/IBM, and about a dozen others.
*CompTIA’s Blockchain Advisory Council (BCAC) will represent the Blockchain industry by bringing together blockchain thought leaders. The BCAC will work together to provide valuable resources and tools to help businesses, executives, engineers, and more to adopt blockchain technology as well as those selling blockchain applications.
*There will be quarterly meetings rotating between various cities in the USA with potential speaking opportunities at conferences and educational workshops

5. ANO Pledge Contribution Working Group
*Collected and publicly posted all pledges from PDFs, Forum Q/A, and official application. This was essential for ANO accountability
*Confirmed accuracy of pledges with all ANOs
*Question and Answer period for all ANOs
*Solution created for ANOs to provide community updates as well as take questions from the general public
*Having concluded its mission, this committee is in the process of being wound down

6. Legal Research Working Group (extremely high-level)
*Decentralization/Security Analysis
*Non-Profit/Foundation exploration
*Trademark/Rebranding/IP solution exploration
*CLA/Licensing Issues

Not going to go into details here since this is a public thread other than to say that this has been a monumental undertaking. Thank you to @Shuang Leng for all of her hard work over the past 4-5 months and thanks to @Nikola for his legal contributions over the last month.

7. ANO and Guide Insurance
*Two more calls about Guide insurance since our last ANO update. We're simply awaiting a quote at this point.

[Matt Osborne]

BLOCKCHAIN AS A SERVICE/ENTERPRISE SALES

• Continued conversations with potential enterprise clients
• Continued conversations with development ANOs regarding partnerships. Development ANOs seeks to sell their their product/service. Go Immutable provides connections to enterprise clients
• Greg attended the CompTIA Blockchain January Meeting.
• Greg attending the BiTA (Blockchain in Transportation Alliance) event held in Chicago in January
  • At meeting, met several logistics enterprises and have follow-up meetings in the works
  • Additionally, met some application providers that were interested in learning more about Factom ® Protocol
• Greg had a preliminary meeting with an organization that has been tasked with reviewing how blockchain may play in 3rd party credit score space. - January
• Greg met with the head of Business Development at the UL Labs in Chicago. This is manufacturing innovations labs for enterprise manufacturers to innovate and learn. The lab was originally funded by the US Dept of Defense and has paid memberships from enterprises like Dow, Lockheed Martin… (see more here). Additionally several universities and government entities are involved. We are continuing the development of this relationship. - January

GOVERNANCE CONTRIBUTIONS

LEGAL RESEARCH WORKING GROUP (latest report)

• Matt is Co-Chair
• Current Projects:
  • Draft of bylaws for Non-profit Foundation
  • Factom ® Protocol GDPR Compliance (Website, Factomize.com, Google Drive, etc.)
  • Governance document clean-up and fine-tuning
  • Proper Committee and Working Group structures in a decentralized environment

Recent Achievements:

• Research on best jurisdiction for Non-Profit Location
• Community-wide Factomize Discussion and Vote to approve Non-Profit Creation
• Factom Inc and Factom ® Protocol Decentralization
• Ongoing dialogue with Factom Inc regarding blockchain industry/SEC matters
• Exchange Committee Assistance
  • Many exchanges require a letter from a lawyer stating that the protocol is decentralized. This is a serious challenge due to regulatory uncertainty. We have introduced several creative solutions to this challenging problem
  • Researched other projects that have received listings on prominent exchanges. Attempted to gain insight from these projects.
  • Facilitating contact with general counsel of prominent exchange (in process)
• Marketing Committee Assistance
  • Facilitated process of logo licensing for marketing committee (merchandise creation)

ANO CONTRIBUTIONS COMMITTEE

• The committee was successful in regards to all ANOs verifying their original ANO pledges
• All of these pledges are now documented in Factomize
• This was the first step in the the new structure of the ongoing ANO reporting process in Factomize (link)
• Committee disbanded due to successful project completion (link)

GRANT ROUND - BACK PAY AND ABILITY TO SELL PROJECTS

• Go Immutable introduced and lead the endeavor for developers to be able to sell finished projects to the community as well as request payment for development work already accomplished
• Discussion #1
• Discussion #2

GRANT ROUND 3

• Due to social repercussions, ANOs may sometimes be hesitant to ask “the difficult questions.” Go Immutable stepped-up to fill this void by asking “the hard questions

GUIDE INSURANCE

• After many months of working with policy writers/insurance companies, was able to receive quote for insurance for Guides (link)

ANO INSURANCE

• Put approximately a half-dozen ANOs in contact with an insurance provider that offers ANO Insurance

MARKETING COMMITTEE

• Greg is member of the marketing committee
• Greg has attended 2 meetings in 2019 and is planning more involvement
• Greg has volunteered to help with marketing 2019 roadmap
• Greg performed audit of paid search marketing endeavor. Due to finding serious issues, recommended the campaign be paused.

ONCHAIN GOVERNANCE IMPLEMENTATION WORKING GROUP

• Spearheaded the creation of the “Onchain Governance Implementation Working Group”
• Matt will offer to be Co-chair
• The Discord group has been set-up and will begin work when the grant round is complete

CORE DEVELOPMENT PUSH

• Go Immutable has been very vocal about the imperative need to scale-up mainnet robustness as quickly as possible
• We have had many conversations with ANOs about this and have encouraged technical-savvy ANOs to submit Core Developer grants during grant Round 3. Thanks to those that stepped-up!

CONTINUED PUSH FOR ANO ACCOUNTABILITY

• *Introduced clause recommending that an ANOs efficiency be inline with the value they provide to the protocol. This was accepted by the community (link).
• Supported Cube3 in lowering of efficiency (link) after they had outperformed their current efficiency

VIDEO CREATION NETWORKING

• Go Immutable reached out to former ANO Block party. Former Block Party member Jon was formerly the co-founder of an international VFX with over 600 full-time employees (the company was eventually sold). Go Immutable hoped to tap into some of their industry connections for cost-effective solutions.
• Jon provided contact information of two videographers, which were passed on to the community in the Factomize Marketing Video grant

GENERAL FACTOMIZE DISCUSSIONS

• Go Immutable was one of the most active ANO in regards to Factomize discussion participation
• Example: Trial ANO Period Factomize Discussion
  • Originally introduced the idea of a Trial ANO period
  • Conversation yielded the potential establishment of a new working group to explore integrating a “confidence/no confidence vote” for all ANOs at a future date

[Matt Osborne]

Efficiency Update: @Greg Forst recently announced he would be taking over the role of marketing chair. As outlined in his post (the section titled "efficiency"), Go Immutable already contributes a ton of hours to protocol growth and cannot justify Greg running the marketing committee without Go Immutable receiving added compensation. Therefore, Go Immutable will be dropping our efficiency to 15%. We hope that this efficiency drop is temporary, as the current plan is to submit a marketing grant during the next grant round that builds-in Go Immutable's compensation via the grant.

[Matt Osborne]

As mentioned 3 weeks ago, Go Immutable lowered our efficiency due to @Greg Forst taking over the marketing committee role as well as the number of hours Go Immutable as a whole puts into the protocol through various other contributions. As also previously mentioned, Go Immutable's plan was to submit a marketing grant and have Greg's compensation be part of the grant. We are putting the finishing touches on a grant and will submit it tomorrow. As a result, we are now raising our efficiency back to 30%.

[Matt Osborne]

Preface: We've noticed from other ANO Updates that it has become difficult to tell which work an ANO performs falls under a "grant," and which work is put towards justifying an ANO's efficiency. Therefore, we're going to softly propose the new below format of "Efficiency-Related Work" and "Non-Efficiency-Related Work (grants)." Hopefully, this makes for easier reading as well as evaluation an ANO's Contributions.


EFFICIENCY-RELATED WORK

LEGAL RESEARCH WORKING GROUP - MAJOR PROJECTS

1. Non-Profit Bylaws (current version)
The standing parties recently voted that the bylaws were ready to be taken to a Wyoming-licensed attorney for review. We are currently working with a WY-licensed attorney. Once the attorney has provided feedback, we will present the third draft of the bylaws to the community for discussion and potential ratification. The timeline for discussion to begin is a week or two. Other high-level steps needed include (in no order): (i) Assessment of risk for potential Non-Profit Directors, (ii) election of directors, and (iii) the actual formation of non-profit.

For reference:
Discussion on the first draft of bylaws
Discussion on the second draft of bylaws

Huge thanks to @Nikola Nikolov and @Shuang Leng for all the hard work in getting the bylaws to this point.

2. GDPR
@Matthias Fortin is project lead for the Factom Protocol compliance with GDPR and is doing a phenomenal job. The LRWG is providing assistance where necessary. Thanks to @Alex , @Valentin Ganev , and @Steven Masley for their technical contributions; the GDPR attorney had some very technical questions.

For more info on GDPR, please read the GDPR Project thread

3. Decentralization Comparison Grid

The SEC stated that both Bitcoin and Ethereum are sufficiently decentralized (they are no longer considered "securities"). While the SEC's public statement is not legally binding, it does give us a target for which to shoot. @Shuang Leng has created a Factom/Ethereum grid comparison in regards to decentralization (assistance provided by LRWG). If Factom can get on the same level as these two projects, then we should be in great shape. We are in engagement talks with a lawyer at a very well-respected global law firm in order to get an outside review of FCT's decentralization status.

LEGAL RESEARCH WORKING GROUP - MINOR PROJECTS

• Monitored legal/regularity updates. For example, the May 9th FinCen guidance
• Provided feedback on Factom Governance (1.4 and 1.5)
• Reviewed other community documents (e.g., grant Round #3 document)
• Helped @Anton Ilzheev with Open API license
• Provided feedback on “Website Committee" Formation
• Had an introductory call with Factom Inc's new general counsel. The call was great. We are looking forward to working with Ted.

MARKETING COMMITTEE

• Greg created Marketing Committee Roadmap Document - 2/19 (thanks to @Brooke Glew and rest of the marketing committee for input)
• Greg worked with the marketing committee to finalize and release to the community by 3/20
• Greg took over the management of the paid marketing grant
• Greg had marketing Chair transition call with @Ben Jeater and @Vince
• Greg had a call with @liveanddie (Rami) to discuss new member activation and marketing in general
• Greg had a call with MaxLamba (@Keith Pincombe) to discuss email marketing
• Greg had a call with Siverpro (@Jens P Kåven) to get an update on the Paid Marketing Grant in order to ensure a smooth transition of the grant
• Greg demo’ed a social advocacy tool - Bambu, floated concept to several community members for feedback - 3/19
• Greg created an "events" research document for potential events in which the Factom Protocol could participate
• Greg had a call with the founder of the Voice of Blockchain Conference and gathered information for potentially getting involved in the event
• Greg gathered information from the Blockchain in Transportation Alliance (BiTA) about the Factom Protocol becoming a member
• Greg has been working with @Matthias Fortin with input from the marketing committee regarding posting to all social channels
• Greg worked with MaxLamba (@Keith Pincombe ) to get graphics created for social posts
• Greg attended and lead all marketing committee meeting (2 per month)
• Greg created documentation that was required for these meetings
• Greg created draft dashboards to automate the pulling of marketing data for analysis. This involved connecting data sources and leveraging tools to automate the collection from several platforms. This will be the foundation of ongoing reporting for the marketing committee. Thanks to @DanG and others for helping drive this
• Greg has created an audience research document that is in the process of being converted into a digestable document that can be leveraged moving forward. This document will be fluid as we find winners and losers. (thanks to @Brooke Glew and rest of marketing team for input)

ONCHAIN GOVERNANCE WORKING GROUP
Matt created the Onchain Governance working group with the goals of:
(i) Laying out an actionable plan to implement onchain voting
(ii) Adding FCT Holders as a standing party

Note: Go Immutable created the group, recruited the necessary technical talent to join the group, and helped move the dialogue forward. The heavy lifting in regards to finding a solution though was done by @David Chapman @Valentin Ganev @Paul Bernier @Niels Klomp @David Kuiper @Matthias Fortin @Julian Fletcher-Taylor @Who @Tor Paulsen . Big thanks to everyone, this was definitely one of the more complex tasks the protocol has undertaken to date.

The standing parties voted 26-0, with 2 abstentions in favor of the proposed solution


WEBSITE COMMITTEE
*Matt was elected by LRWG to be our group's representative

GENERAL CONTRIBUTIONS
(i) Greg attended CompTIA Blockchain Council calls in February and April (CompTIA is the second largest IT credentialing company in the world)
(ii) Greg attended 3-day in-person planning meeting for CompTIA Blockchain Council in March
(iii) GO Immutable Contributed 101 FCT to Triall after Grant Round 2


NON-EFFICIENCY-RELATED WORK (Grants)
Go Immutable recently proposed a "Comprehensive Strategy & Execution" market grant. This grant was approved by the standing parties. For details on the grant, please read the marketing grant's Factomize thread

Thanks for reading!

[Matt Osborne]

Go Immutable will be pursuing a large development opportunity and has reduced its efficiency by 20%, which is in line with the typical efficiency drop by ANOs that are pursuing development opportunities. We are extremely excited about this opportunity as we think it will pay huge dividends for the protocol. The opportunity is currently subject to NDAs, so details cannot be provided at this time. We will update the community as soon as possible.

Thanks,
Matt

[Matt Osborne]

Hi everyone. Here is Go Immutable’s 2019 Q3 update:

EFFICIENCY-RELATED WORK

MARKETING COMMITTEE
(@Greg Forst is Chair)

Meetings (lead and organized docs pre and post)

• May 28th
• June 11th
• June 25th
• July 9th
• (July 23rd there was a meeting and Keith lead the meeting, Greg assisted with setting up the agenda but was not able to attend)

Other Work

• Social post creation and scheduling (copy, assets, posting in discord...)
• Website pop-up work
• Google Analytics - validate retargeting setup
• BITA (Blockchain transportation Alliance) membership processing
• Email to Andrew Yang campaign to discuss collaboration
• Calls with @DanG
• Communicate with Choco and Whatsitlike on research project
• Creation of BITA Press Release
• Worked on “audience” document
• Communication with BITA
• Reddit posting organization
• Expo EU event input for booth creation
• Blog budget, coordination and voting setup
• Pulling Social Metrics for report
• Created 2 blog post - June recap and Wachsman announcement
• Blog coordination (access, needs, etc...)
• Pegnet education so can post about it on social
• Coordinating with website committee on blog, roadmap, logos, etc.
• Communication with Kompendium on BIG assoc
• Communication with Motion Factory
• Communicating with Maarten on Factom Badges
• Coordinating Factom Badges Blog Posts
• Coordinated getting featured in Blockfolio weekly blog post

LEGAL RESEARCH WORKING GROUP
(detailed LRWG update can be found here)

Exchanges
Work with LRWG, Factom Inc, outside counsel, etc. regarding getting FCT listed on more exchanges. Please read here for more detailed update

Non-Profit

• Manage relationship with WY attorney. Educated him on Factom. Provide feedback to his bylaws comments.
• Proofing of bylaws prior to presentation to the community
• Working with an insurance agent to get an insurance quote for the (future) Directors of the Non-Profit

Intellectual Property
Prior to shifting all focus to exchanges, the LRWG had begun analysis of all the IP issues surrounding the Factom protocol (TM, logos, code license, etc.). Questions were provided to outside counsel. This is currently paused due to higher priorities elsewhere as well as budget restraints.

Outside Counsel
Manage day-to-day relationship

GDPR
Provide support to @Matthias Fortin when necessary

DEVELOPMENT
As some of you know, Go Immutable is partnered with Liberty Advisory Group, a consulting and professional services firm that services enterprise and multinational clients. Some of their clients can be found here. Liberty provides many services, one of which is cybersecurity. You can find more about their cybersecurity offerings here. If you navigate to the “About Us” page, you will see that “Cybeta was built by US intelligence-trained experts. Our cadre gained their skills from decades of experience at the DoD and U.S. National Intelligence communities.” If you then put two-and-two together, you may begin to see why we are not able to share as much as the community may like.

Go Immutable is currently working with the CyBeta team to implement a Factom-based solutions into their offerings. More specifically, we are helping to provide compliance with NYDFS Cybersecurity regulations. From a high-level, “The NYDFS Cybersecurity Regulation (23 NYCRR 500) is a new set of regulations from the NY Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) that places cybersecurity requirements on all covered financial institutions.”

The key word in there is “all,” as in literally thousands of financial institutions including many of the largest financial institutions in the world. Once the Factom integration is in production, the argument can easily be made that Factom is the most-used enterprise blockchain in the world. We’ll let you speculate on EC usage

We are currently in the process of implementing the solution. Due to confidentiality requirements, we will not be providing a roadmap or specific deliverables, but will do our best to provide updates when possible.


Comptia Blockchain Advisory Council (2nd largest IT credentialing company in the world)
May 29th Meeting - Attended
June 19th - 21st In-person working meeting in Denver - Attended
July 17th Meeting - Attended

Networked with Dell, Redhat, Equinix, etc.

Meetings
Illinois Soybean Association - Technology planning meeting - July
Follow up meeting with ISA in August for deeper discussions
Note: They are the 5th largest producer of Soybeans in the world
https://www.ilsoy.org/
(Soybeans are a $100 Billion-ish market)

Illinois Autonomous Driving Association
Had intro meeting with Executive Director
https://www.ilavassoc.org/

Additional Contributions
*Matt is a Website Committee member and proposed the adopted internal operating procedures
*Factom testnet Server
*PegNet Testnet Server


NON-EFFICIENCY-RELATED WORK

Grants
FACTOM-GRANT-[Go_Immutable]-001 - Marketing – Comprehensive Strategy & Execution
Most Recent update can be read here

[Matt Osborne]

EFFICIENCY-RELATED WORK

MARKETING COMMITTEE
(Greg served as marketing chair through the conclusion of 2019)

Meetings (lead and organized docs pre and post ~2hrs total per meeting)

• August 20
• Sept 9
• Sept 17
• Oct 8
• Oct 15
• Oct 29
• Nov 12
• Nov 26
• Dec 10

General

• Communicate actions for PR and Social media agencies to MC
• Gather inputs from MC for agencies
• Communicate to MC and community for inputs on social media or upcoming news
• Coordinate:
  • Website committee communication with MC
  • Pegnet community communication with MC
  • Joining Govt in Blockchain Association
  • Getting freelancer paid for Pegnet creative work
  • Tech Roadmap

Factom Blog

• Wrote and Published 5 blog posts
• Coordinated and edited 6 blog posts
• 2 other post were coordinated but are still in draft

Committee Reformation Discussion

• Assisted in coordinating and contributing to committee reformation

Created Breakdown of Post-Rebrand Implementation Process and Timeline

• Built timelines of work needed to be done post rebrand
  • https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jIhma0ANSijvBSFj3aK33q1hIlfHqhf4I-mMsz53cCg/edit
  • https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...rLbL8qNj9Mrb0LJl1NXPmW7L4/edit#gid=1709744959

BiTA (Blockchain in Transport Alliance

• August 14 - BITA Networking Event at Redwood Logistics
• Handed out TFA brochures.

LEGAL RESEARCH WORKING GROUP (LRWG)

Preface
The LRWG deals with non-public information provided to us by third parties. All LRWG endeavors associated with non-public info have been excluded from this update.

Exchanges

• Have worked on legal questionnaires from multiple exchanges to help facilitate listings. Some of these run over 100 questions.
• Updated FCT legal document for exchanges regarding FCT’s status as a security
• Worked with relevant parties on exchange listings
• Worked with outside counsel to evaluate FCT legal options

Non-Profit Board of directors Insurance

• Worked with an insurance company to receive a price quote for would-be Directors of the non-profit
  • Note: The Non-Profit has been mothballed due to lack of community funds.

MISC

• Doc 109 - Committees and Working Groups
• General feedback provided upon request

EXCHANGE COMMITTEE

• Due to the overlap between Exchange functions and LRWG functions, Matt has sat in on weekly exchange calls with Factom Inc and a third-party helping to get exchange listings
• Matt has taken over the role of Secretary for Exchange Committee, as attendance by others has been sporadic.
• Helped coordinate FCT transfers from Exchange Committee to pay for listing fees
• Assisted in coordination of upcoming Exchange Committee grant

DEVELOPMENT
Background
Go Immutable is partnered with Liberty Advisory Group, a consulting and professional services firm that services enterprise and multinational clients. Some of their clients can be found here. Liberty provides many services, one of which is cybersecurity. You can find more about their cybersecurity offerings here. If you navigate to the “About Us” page, you will see that “Cybeta was built by US intelligence-trained experts. Our cadre gained their skills from decades of experience at the DoD and U.S. National Intelligence communities.”

Go Immutable is currently working with the CyBeta team to implement a Factom-based solution into their offerings. More specifically, we are helping to provide compliance with NYDFS Cybersecurity regulations. From a high-level, “The NYDFS Cybersecurity Regulation (23 NYCRR 500) is a new set of regulations from the NY Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) that places cybersecurity requirements on all covered financial institutions.”

Update
The NYDFS has delayed its enforcement against companies that do not adhere to the NYDFS Cybersecurity regulations. As such, financial institutions needing to comply with the cybersecurity regulations are in “wait and see” mode. Meaning, if there’s no current threat of fines from NYDFS, then financial institutions are not going to move their compliance solution into production due to the cost and resource burdens.

TLDR: Liberty is very pleased with the solution GOI has built. But, everything is on hold until NYDFS starts enforcing compliance.

This is obviously very frustrating for us. Regulatory uncertainty has hurt the Factom protocol tremendously (e.g., losing exchange listings). Additional regulatory uncertainty (NYDFS) is also hurting us.

OTHER

CompTIA
Continue to work with the world's second-largest IT Professional Organization on educating and setting blockchain standards for the IT Industry

• Oct 9 - Comptia Joint Council Call
• Nov 4 - 6 - Comptia End of Year Planning Conference
• Dec 4 - Comptia Joint Council Call
• Dec 12 - Comptia Blockchain Council Call
• Jan 22 - Comptia 2020 Kickoff Call

Soybean Association

• Continue educating and working with the association on how blockchain will be apart of the agriculture industry. Working towards a POC.
• August 15 - Illinois Soybean Association Call
• Oct 22 - Illinois Soybean Assoc Call

Website Committee

• Matt is a representative. The committee is largely inactive and is simply acting in a checks-and-balances manner with the marketing committee

PegNet contributions

• Former Pegnet miner
• Sent 10% of PEG mining rewards to a third-party entity working to get PEG listed on exchanges
• Matt tested Kambani wallet
• Contributions to project Dark Star (shorting on PegNet)
• Multiple non-public PIPs created

Governance Participation

• 100% voting record
• Posts/contributions made in the vast majority of threads
• Attended majority of Guide Meetings

NON-ANO EFFICIENCY CONTRIBUTIONS

• PR and Social Media Management Grant (final recap and vote coming soon)
  • https://factomize.com/forums/threads/go-immutable-2-pr-social-media-management-continuation.2322/
• A final wrap-up and vote will be initiated around the end of January once the contract with the PR firm (Wachsman) has concluded.

 

[Jason Gregoire]

EFFICIENCY-RELATED WORK

MARKETING COMMITTEE
(Greg served as marketing chair through the conclusion of 2019)

Meetings (lead and organized docs pre and post ~2hrs total per meeting)

• August 20
• Sept 9
• Sept 17
• Oct 8
• Oct 15
• Oct 29
• Nov 12
• Nov 26
• Dec 10

General

• Communicate actions for PR and Social media agencies to MC
• Gather inputs from MC for agencies
• Communicate to MC and community for inputs on social media or upcoming news
• Coordinate:
  • Website committee communication with MC
  • Pegnet community communication with MC
  • Joining Govt in Blockchain Association
  • Getting freelancer paid for Pegnet creative work
  • Tech Roadmap

Factom Blog

• Wrote and Published 5 blog posts
• Coordinated and edited 6 blog posts
• 2 other post were coordinated but are still in draft

Committee Reformation Discussion

• Assisted in coordinating and contributing to committee reformation

Created Breakdown of Post-Rebrand Implementation Process and Timeline

• Built timelines of work needed to be done post rebrand
  • https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jIhma0ANSijvBSFj3aK33q1hIlfHqhf4I-mMsz53cCg/edit
  • https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...rLbL8qNj9Mrb0LJl1NXPmW7L4/edit#gid=1709744959

BiTA (Blockchain in Transport Alliance

• August 14 - BITA Networking Event at Redwood Logistics
• Handed out TFA brochures.

LEGAL RESEARCH WORKING GROUP (LRWG)

Preface
The LRWG deals with non-public information provided to us by third parties. All LRWG endeavors associated with non-public info have been excluded from this update.

Exchanges

• Have worked on legal questionnaires from multiple exchanges to help facilitate listings. Some of these run over 100 questions.
• Updated FCT legal document for exchanges regarding FCT’s status as a security
• Worked with relevant parties on exchange listings
• Worked with outside counsel to evaluate FCT legal options

Non-Profit Board of directors Insurance

• Worked with an insurance company to receive a price quote for would-be Directors of the non-profit
  • Note: The Non-Profit has been mothballed due to lack of community funds.

MISC

• Doc 109 - Committees and Working Groups
• General feedback provided upon request

EXCHANGE COMMITTEE

• Due to the overlap between Exchange functions and LRWG functions, Matt has sat in on weekly exchange calls with Factom Inc and a third-party helping to get exchange listings
• Matt has taken over the role of Secretary for Exchange Committee, as attendance by others has been sporadic.
• Helped coordinate FCT transfers from Exchange Committee to pay for listing fees
• Assisted in coordination of upcoming Exchange Committee grant

DEVELOPMENT
Background
Go Immutable is partnered with Liberty Advisory Group, a consulting and professional services firm that services enterprise and multinational clients. Some of their clients can be found here. Liberty provides many services, one of which is cybersecurity. You can find more about their cybersecurity offerings here. If you navigate to the “About Us” page, you will see that “Cybeta was built by US intelligence-trained experts. Our cadre gained their skills from decades of experience at the DoD and U.S. National Intelligence communities.”

Go Immutable is currently working with the CyBeta team to implement a Factom-based solution into their offerings. More specifically, we are helping to provide compliance with NYDFS Cybersecurity regulations. From a high-level, “The NYDFS Cybersecurity Regulation (23 NYCRR 500) is a new set of regulations from the NY Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) that places cybersecurity requirements on all covered financial institutions.”

Update
The NYDFS has delayed its enforcement against companies that do not adhere to the NYDFS Cybersecurity regulations. As such, financial institutions needing to comply with the cybersecurity regulations are in “wait and see” mode. Meaning, if there’s no current threat of fines from NYDFS, then financial institutions are not going to move their compliance solution into production due to the cost and resource burdens.

TLDR: Liberty is very pleased with the solution GOI has built. But, everything is on hold until NYDFS starts enforcing compliance.

This is obviously very frustrating for us. Regulatory uncertainty has hurt the Factom protocol tremendously (e.g., losing exchange listings). Additional regulatory uncertainty (NYDFS) is also hurting us.

OTHER

CompTIA
Continue to work with the world's second-largest IT Professional Organization on educating and setting blockchain standards for the IT Industry

• Oct 9 - Comptia Joint Council Call
• Nov 4 - 6 - Comptia End of Year Planning Conference
• Dec 4 - Comptia Joint Council Call
• Dec 12 - Comptia Blockchain Council Call
• Jan 22 - Comptia 2020 Kickoff Call

Soybean Association

• Continue educating and working with the association on how blockchain will be apart of the agriculture industry. Working towards a POC.
• August 15 - Illinois Soybean Association Call
• Oct 22 - Illinois Soybean Assoc Call

Website Committee

• Matt is a representative. The committee is largely inactive and is simply acting in a checks-and-balances manner with the marketing committee

PegNet contributions

• Former Pegnet miner
• Sent 10% of PEG mining rewards to a third-party entity working to get PEG listed on exchanges
• Matt tested Kambani wallet
• Contributions to project Dark Star (shorting on PegNet)
• Multiple non-public PIPs created

Governance Participation

• 100% voting record
• Posts/contributions made in the vast majority of threads
• Attended majority of Guide Meetings

NON-ANO EFFICIENCY CONTRIBUTIONS

• PR and Social Media Management Grant (final recap and vote coming soon)
  • https://factomize.com/forums/threads/go-immutable-2-pr-social-media-management-continuation.2322/
• A final wrap-up and vote will be initiated around the end of January once the contract with the PR firm (Wachsman) has concluded.

Thank you for trying to push the community and protocol forward in so many different vectors. IMO, you and your team are invested in making this a successful project.

With so many things listed above, what do you think is the most beneficial to the community?
Also, is "marketing" working, are you happy with the results we're getting, and what are those results? I’m more a business/operations person but know a talented marketer if you’d like to talk to him? Let me know. Thanks

 

[Matt Osborne]

With so many things listed above, what do you think is the most beneficial to the community?

Hi Jason. It's totally fluid. If you had asked me this question a few months ago I would have told you one thing, if you ask me it two months from now, I would say something different. At a high level, if we're to be successful, we have to execute both internally (governance, exchanges, core dev, etc.) and externally (get enterprises to use the protocol). if we are to be successful, we have to execute in every area.

Also, is "marketing" working, are you happy with the results we're getting, and what are those results? I’m more a business/operations person but know a talented marketer if you’d like to talk to him? Let me know. Thanks

In order to achieve what we would consider "successful" marketing, the protocol would need a full-time team of several people as well as a large budget. Obviously, no one is fulltime, or even parttime, and there's no budget. There have been a few grants obviously, but outside of that, there are zero resources for marketing, which means the needle is not going to get moved very much.

 

[David Chapman]

Background
Go Immutable is partnered with Liberty Advisory Group, a consulting and professional services firm that services enterprise and multinational clients. Some of their clients can be found here. Liberty provides many services, one of which is cybersecurity. You can find more about their cybersecurity offerings here. If you navigate to the “About Us” page, you will see that “Cybeta was built by US intelligence-trained experts. Our cadre gained their skills from decades of experience at the DoD and U.S. National Intelligence communities.”

Go Immutable is currently working with the CyBeta team to implement a Factom-based solution into their offerings. More specifically, we are helping to provide compliance with NYDFS Cybersecurity regulations. From a high-level, “The NYDFS Cybersecurity Regulation (23 NYCRR 500) is a new set of regulations from the NY Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) that places cybersecurity requirements on all covered financial institutions.”

Update
The NYDFS has delayed its enforcement against companies that do not adhere to the NYDFS Cybersecurity regulations. As such, financial institutions needing to comply with the cybersecurity regulations are in “wait and see” mode. Meaning, if there’s no current threat of fines from NYDFS, then financial institutions are not going to move their compliance solution into production due to the cost and resource burdens.

TLDR: Liberty is very pleased with the solution GOI has built. But, everything is on hold until NYDFS starts enforcing compliance.

Were you paid for this development?

How was Factom utilized in this offering? In other words, what was the value-add to the software? And how did Go Immutable, a team without dev experience, help CyBeta integrate Factom?

 

[Matt Osborne]

Were you paid for this development?

We have not received payment yet due to the delay. We're obviously not happy about that.

From a previous update: "The NYDFS has delayed its enforcement against companies that do not adhere to the NYDFS Cybersecurity regulations. As such, financial institutions needing to comply with the cybersecurity regulations are in “wait and see” mode. Meaning, if there’s no current threat of fines from NYDFS, then financial institutions are not going to move their compliance solution into production due to the cost and resource burdens.

TLDR: Liberty is very pleased with the solution GOI has built. But, everything is on hold until NYDFS starts enforcing compliance.

This is obviously very frustrating for us. Regulatory uncertainty has hurt the Factom protocol tremendously (e.g., losing exchange listings). Additional regulatory uncertainty (NYDFS) is also hurting us."

How was Factom utilized in this offering?

From a previous update: "Go Immutable is currently working with the CyBeta team to implement a Factom-based solutions into their offerings. More specifically, we are helping to provide compliance with NYDFS Cybersecurity regulations. From a high-level, “The NYDFS Cybersecurity Regulation (23 NYCRR 500) is a new set of regulations from the NY Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) that places cybersecurity requirements on all covered financial institutions.”

Factom technology is ideal for proving that a specific action took place at a specific time. This is crucial for regulatory reasons (i.e., proving compliance). We see regulatory compliance as one of the top use cases for Factom. We also are hoping to implement digital identities for added security, but we're not there yet due to the delay.

And how did Go Immutable, a team without dev experience, help CyBeta integrate Factom?

We partnered with a development company that built the integration. Just like how you personally can't code yourself, but hire people that can.

 

[David Chapman]

In your Q/A thread I asked you to show some code for the development project to which you responded:

This would insinuate that you think we are lying... No need for me to post my thoughts on that, you can probably guess my response

Let me first say, I don't think for a second that you're lying. I believe this was a real project and I believe code has been written.

In the post above, you wrote:

We partnered with a development company that built the integration. Just like how you personally can't code yourself, but hire people that can.

You're correct, I don't code. I do, however, have 18 years running the business and project management side of software development. When you get that level of experience, you start to get a very good feel for how long projects should take, around what their cost could be, and countless other things such as if the idea is even a good one. Getting to this point was hard and I made countless mistakes along the way which I'm still far from immune from.

When you initially announced this development project nine months ago in June, both myself and @Niels Klomp (who we all know has tremendous experience in this space) immediately started asking questions. I suggest everyone read through that dialogue.

Rather than go through the grant process, nine months ago you dropped your efficiency 20% and asked people to trust you.

Now, here's the problem. 9 months for what you now describe as some time stamping sets all kinds of alarm bells off for me. Especially when the project wasn't successful. And especially when you're asking us to continue to trust you to execute. Niels and I worried that this project would not be successful from day one. 9 months later if you want us to continue to trust you to deliver dev projects, we're going to need to review some code. If it turns out that the code we review is as massive as a 9 month project would create and it's well done, we're going to vouch for you.

Or, you can increase your efficiency. We're good with either option.

 

[Niels Klomp]

Guess David already addressed my questions back in the days.

If have 2 questions now:
- Why would you take on the risk of your partner? I mean. Why are you not getting paid for work you are hiring outside people to do and which you successfully delivered to your partner?

If I am building a commercial property and for whatever reason people don't want to buy it, I still have to pay all the people, materials, architect, land etc.

If you are doing this from FCT alone, I am assuming all IP is yours right?

 

[Matt Osborne]

Apologies for not getting back to people yesterday, I just concluded vacation (if there is such a thing as a "vacation" in Factom. Well, I guess one could argue that certain ANOs have been on a vacation for a year or two, but I'm digressing.)

You're correct, I don't code. I do, however, have 18 years running the business and project management side of software development.

How many of these projects you have managed were for companies valued at $100m, $1b, $1b, $10b with tens of thousands of employees at these companies? Any? You do great work on the development side here, no doubt about it. You're a big fish in the small Factom pond though. In the enterprise world, you're a guppy (as am I) with what I am guessing is zero or near zero experience at the multi-billion dollar client level. So maybe check the ego a bit? Thanks

Go Immutable team members and partners deal with these types of clients on a literal daily basis. Go Immutable is at a loss for words as to why someone would think we'd somehow not be able to hire competent developers. I do recall the thread you mentioned. It was ridiculous at the time and is still ridiculous.

We are not in a position to share details about the developers we partnered with. We have honored this and will continue to honor this no matter how many bullets are shot this way. We understand you may have issues understanding this David, as you publicly disclosed a private conversation in the past, only to later delete it.

- Why would you take on the risk of your partner? I mean. Why are you not getting paid for work you are hiring outside people to do and which you successfully delivered to your partner?

1. Payment contingent on product reaching production. With NYDFS regulators delaying things, this has delayed us.
2. This is not a one-off project. Other factors are at play.

If you are doing this from FCT alone, I am assuming all IP is yours right?

Ours and Dev team, at this moment.


I think everyone is hung-up on this DEV project justifying our efficiency. GOI has justified and will continue to justify our efficiency even without factoring in this DEV project. Please see our previous grant update and statements for why.

Everyone seems to be laser-focused on the efficiency percentage as opposed to the actual USD equivalent. If you take the average FCT rice of the last month, you get $2.50. Each 10% of efficiency is 225 tokens. When you do the math, you can see that each 10% of efficiency is the equivalent of $561. Yep, that's it, $561.

So, the USD value between a 50% efficiency and 10% efficiency is a whopping $2245/month. Can we please stop pretending like this $15,000 difference???? The protocol is receiving the $2245 in value and more.

Here's the bottom line:
There are ANOs that have poured thousands of hours of work into this protocol and are being asked to "take one for the team" while ANOs that have done next to nothing appear to be getting a complete pass, have never provided value, and won't provide value. If we're trying to develop the worst incentive, most screwed-up Governance model ever, this would be it. @David Chapman Please justify this model. Thank you.

GOI will not be backing down from this fight. If ANOs feel the need to remove standing from GOI while giving standing to non-performing ANOs, then that is up to them. It will be a blessing to GOI, as we will have 100% confidence that the Federated governance model is a failure and GOI will no longer be spending our time on a project that will be clearly destined for failure.

 

[David Chapman]

LOL.

Thou doth protest too much, methinks.

 

[Julian Fletcher-Taylor]

Hey guys, thought it would be useful to jump into the fray here

The partner on this project is the company that includes members of DBGrow, Layertech, and some other people that I mentioned in a previous update.

To lay out some info on this

• This was done in the format of a joint venture with revenue only once brought online, so no payments were given to us by GoI, and no payments are received by any of us from an outside party.
• There was a specific angle with this project that would highly benefit the protocol.
• This was a good chunk of work from all sides and was managed well from all sides (GoI and partners make good facilitators of projects like this with multiple parties involved).
• Its more than just time stamping, requires a more substantial architecture and our company does that quite well.
• Those on the other side of the table on this were impressed, enough to open additional doors from it.
• Now its a matter pausing and waiting on things outside our control, after which we will move forward. In the meantime we are exploring those open doors mentioned above.
• Given the nature of the project, cybersecurity work for Liberty Advisory Group and the NYDFS, I think thats about all the details we can lay out here.

I hope this is helpful information for whatever decision people make on this project and GoI’s update.

 

[David Chapman]

Thank you for bringing a little more transparency to the table Julian. There should have been updates all along. I'm not pleased with how this has gone down. The ecosystem must demand better. We must all be better.

And we REALLY need to solve the root issue here which is the efficiency and incentive system.