I must get you to teach me that one 
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Sorry you feel that way, thanks for your time and effort here.
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Appreciated
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All good questions there. However, itâs going to take a significant amount of investment in time and money for expert legal to get clarity on them. Imo, this would all be a lot easier the day after official network launch.
That potentially significant effort is a good reason to scope things out now and start to prepare. We will want to be ready to go when MVE hits. I think thatâs when the big âah-haâ moment will occur that this thingâs real and people will be ready to take notice again. It seems like that could be quite a bit earlier than full network launch.
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True - IF â IF the Maidsafe team had the ânormalâ complement of management types. It doesnât and it wonât. It is an organisation of devs and one admin person. So it falls on the community to shoulder almost all the non-dev roles. It is entirely sensible to mke what plans we can and to raise as much as we can to see these plans through. I have no doubt whatsoever that if anything the community is attempting is not going to help advance the cause of a successful launch then a quiet word would be had. So lets carry onâŚ
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Couldnât agree more. While it may be less risk to wait till launch before investing in marketing, waiting to such time is risky in and of itself. Plus, I second that if anything a community foundation proposes is at odds with the aims of the SAFE Network to provide âFreedom of expression, control of personal data, private and secure communications; and a whole new economyâ, such would be dealt with.
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Thanks to everyone who chimed in on the one-pager!!
@dirvine, hereâs a link to the one-pager outlining community foundation aims and key legal questions. Please let us know if your legal contacts would be able to provide their feedback and perspective 
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Thanks you @Sotros25 et al. I will run this by the guys. We have a board meet in a couple of weeks so letâs give it till then if thatâs OK. I will forward it tonight though and that gives us time to back and forth it.
[Edit, sent now, will grab a HO soon with the guys]
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Hi David, hope you and your legal contacts are faring well given the present circumstances. Itâs understandable if they havenât been able to get to it just yet, but any chance your legal contacts can share any perspective on the one pager?
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Ah, I forgot to forward the first thoughts. Let me just get that email, sorry for the delay.
Here it is
"
Interesting concept
On structure, if itâs to be UK based, I would have thought that a company limited by guarantee, maybe even a CIC (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/626088/cic-12-1333-community-interest-companies-guidance-chapter-1-introduction.pdf) might be the way forward. If they go down that route then I think that a lot of governance / conflict issues would be dealt with by the structure."
Hope this helps a bit @Sotros25 we still have to have a face to face to dive deeper, but looks like location is important here and will alter any advice?
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Never heard of a CIC in Canada. Maybe we donât have such a thing. This does seem to capture the spirt of what we were going for very well I think. Like an âalmost charityâ lol. We arenât looking to enrich ourselves directly but at the same time I donât think we fit into the narrow range of things that can be considered a pure charity.
If we go with this approach I would propose we have a re-vote on if we want to issue a crypto token to doners. I think that idea may have failed the vote before cause people were thinking either this token is totally pointless if its a charity cause it can never have value, or its not a charity, and we donât want it to be a for-profit business. I think with a CIC we could have a token that represents stake in the enterprise without a promise that our goal is to make your stake profit you like buying shares in a normal for profit company.
The primary use of these tokens I would expect to be as votes when we have contentious options to evaluate. Like say we all chipped in for a hall but some people like christain gospel and some like punk rock⌠well then we just let people vote proportionally to how much they actually put in so we could have the hall in the first place.
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Thanks, David!! No worries; these are busy times.
After a quick review of the shared link, Iâm inclined to agree that a CIC is likely the best option. It would be helpful to understand a bit more about the requirements to set one up as well as the opportunities/limitations of a CIC. Iâm happy to join on a video call with these legal contacts to get a better sense of those and other factors. Let me know what might be the best way to organize that.
This could be something worth getting some legal input on before running another survey. It would be good to understand whether such a token would be subject to securities law, and if so, what requirements and restrictions would that entail. If considered a security, Iâm not sure what the ramifications would be in the U.K. However, in the US, trying to set things up the right way could add several months to the timeline. It may be most efficient to deal in either fiat, BTC, ETH or MAID for fundraising at the start.
The utility of the token would be a key matter to sort out. This sort of Proof of Stake voting mechanism might be one that could pass the securities test, but weâd need a legal opinion to confidently assert that.
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yes I agree we should get feedback from the experts. However I did notice in section 1.3.1 of that pdf it does seem to imply that a CIC can have âshares.â Does having shares make things too complicated that we would need our own lawyers to protect us? I donât know.
Maybe the way to approach this is to ask what exactly does a âshareâ in a CIC represent. I donât think it can be a cut of some for-profit motive like in normal companies. The only thing I can think of they would be for is just voting when there is a fork in thought of how the CIC will benefit the community. Maybe they serve some other functions? This is really what I would like to hear from an expert on.
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Yes, understanding this will be key. From there weâd have to understand the legality/limitations of tokenizing such shares (e.g. filing requirements, whether and how the tokenized shares can be traded, etc.).
Even if given the go ahead that tokenization of shares is ok, weâd have to figure out how to build the infrastructure for holders to store their tokens/shares, prove their stake, and vote. That in and of itself could require a lot of work unless something existing could be repurposed, I think.
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Thatâs what we call a DAO and they have been around for ages now. I am sure there is something we can basically copy/paste then just edit to our parameters.
Something that would require very little engineering is if the tokens just represented 1 time votes. So if there is something to vote on you can send it to one burn address or another and which ever accumulates the most is what we will do. After that you have spent your âsayâ so if you are sorta ambivalent on something it might be most sensible to let the people that âreally careâ vote on it and save your tokens for something you would more prefer to impact
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Yes, what I mean is that someone(s) with the appropriate technical skills will have to tailor the principles to this specific application. I donât know how âoff the shelfâ the existing solutions are (e.g. has someone made a platform so simple you literally just have to change the name of the token, deploy an already coded digital wallet, etc.) or is there more heavy lifting involved than that, or is the off the shelf solution so expensive it wouldnât be worth it, etc.
I think determining the feasibility of this would rely on what a share in a CIC means. It might actually be easier to say the tokens are just votes (not shares), and every initiative provides the opportunity to buy tokens to vote. However many tokens are sold constitutes the fundraising for that specific initiative as well as allows the token buyer to vote on not just whether the initiative takes place but perhaps also on any specifics about the initiative (e.g. which exchange to list on).
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Good point. Maybe if they are just votes they are not really shares. I mean we could say we will do X if the groundhog sees his shadow and Y if not. Does that make the groundhog a shareholder? No not really 
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Sorry to be a nay-sayer but itâs my suspicion that this entire endeavor wonât end well and will be regretted by all involved. Okay, you can start the slings and arrows now.
well ok if you think so we definitely want to hear why. If there are obstacles we certainly donât want to go in blindfolded. What leads you to this conclusion?
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