No, this is not a letter from Joe Biden.

Nor is it a letter from the President of Ravencoin. Ravencoin does not have a President because it isn't a company. Ravencoin is MIT licensed open-source code found here.

This is a letter from me, Tron Black, the current President of the Ravencoin Foundation. The Ravencoin Foundation is a non-profit that was formed to help the Ravencoin ecosystem. That's ya'll and all of your Ravencoin projects.

So if you read my letter last time, you know that the foundation has some funds we can use to help spur development. We tried using IPFS proposals on the website, but there were a few problems with that approach.
  1. It isn't easy to update with new info and we ran into new info on proposal #002 - See Discord for discussions.
  2. The proposal isn't near the project, and the various projects are in different repositories.
  3. It isn't easy to update the status. If somebody started working on it, how would someone else know that?
  4. There wasn't a way to get feedback on progress. Is someone still working on it? Is it done? Is it paid?

So I looked at Gitcoin which tries to solve some of these things, but it had some problems.
  1. They take 10%.
  2. It operates on Ethereum which has high fees at the moment.
  3. They don't take RVN, so there's additional friction for conversions.

I'm proposing gitRVN which would be like the best parts of Gitcoin that monitors projects and e-mails updates about open projects, and times-out devs that take on a project and then don't complete it. I still like many of the features of Gitcoin. For the right team, I'd invest personally in a project like this that could be used by other teams to incentivize their projects using RVN. The downside, as pointed out by community members is that there are already devs hanging out with gitCoin, and not with gitRVN.

More information and comments about this concept can be found at https://github.com/RavencoinFoundation/gitRVN

So, in an effort to deploy these funds, I started adding funding to issues on GitHub, in a machine-readable and human readable way. And tagging those issues with this tag so they are easier to find.

Hit me up if you have an important issue to be funded. Funding levels are currently guesstimates based on my experience and assuming the efforts of a reasonably experienced blockchain dev somewhat familiar with the project. Estimates like these are never an exact science even when there's an experienced team involved. Please forgive my errors.

This is a start. Github also tracks changes to issue comments (where the funding proposal lives), so people monitoring can see funding increases, status changes, etc. By putting the funding promise in GitHub issues, there can be comments, and a conversation can develop when needed. It isn't perfect, but it is a start. The next step is to be able to aggregate these funded issues and put them on the Ravencoin Foundation website. This may be manual at first, but can probably be automated with GitHub APIs in time.

Funding for Projects
Here is a Ballet Wallet - AA090100 for Ravencoin donations to a Ravencoin Foundation fund used for development:
RCiwkUmjomjLimfg7WetZKWM8zsuX9ATh7

If you want to mine to it, that's ok. If you choose a pool for your miner that is contributing to this address, that's also a great way to contribute. You can send RVN directly to it. You can monitor it using the Ballet Wallet software or any RVN explorer.

What protects these funds for use in supporting the Ravencoin project? As President of the Ravencoin Foundation, I am a fiduciary. "A fiduciary is a person or organization that acts on behalf of another person or persons, putting their clients' interest ahead of their own, with a duty to preserve good faith and trust. Being a fiduciary thus requires being bound both legally and ethically to act in the other's best interests." - Investopedia In this case, I am obligated to use the funds to help the Ravencoin ecosystem because that's what the Ravencoin Foundation does.

Mobile Wallets
There has been a lot of discussion around the mobile wallets. I set up a new iPhone yesterday and used iOS RVN Wallet from the app store. I restored with my 12-words and started the sync from scratch. It took a long time to sync - about 12 hours, but it did sync, and I sent RVN as a test. It all worked. I agree it can use some TLC, but the iOS version works. I don't have an Android phone to test the Android version of RVN Wallet.

P2SH for Assets Status
The coding work for this is complete and paid. Because it affects consensus rules we'd like a security audit before merging the code and requesting the community to adopt the changes. We're talking to Kudelski Security on Friday to get a second bid.

Legal Opinion on Network-derived Funding
The legal opinion from Zuber Lawler, which was generously done pro bono, should be available this week or next.

OpenDAO and RVN
OpenDAO is working on allowing RVN to be used as collateral in the Defi space. This will open up opportunities for RVN HODLers to continue to hold their RVN while borrowing a stablecoin against it. This can have favorable tax advantages over selling RVN.

Ravencoin Interest Grows Exponentially
Since my last letter, Ravencoin hit an all time high. This has created a lot of extra demand on Ravencoin nodes, so I put out a Call for Full Nodes, and a post on How to Run Full Nodes. Some of the interest is because of the restrictions on stocks and Ravencoin's use as a platform for stocks that can't be naked shorted. Some of the interest is from Ravencoin's use as an NFT platform. Because of the renewed interest in the Ravencoin platform, I've been setting up more meetings and handling more calls from people wanting to issue on Ravencoin. With AlphaPoint adding support for Ravencoin, and CryptoSX supporting Ravencoin assets, it opens the door for more projects to use the platform.

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