Dear members of the EOS Community,
ECAF is delighted to announce the formation of the ECAF Community Fund. The fund will serve a variety of purposes, many of which are yet to be realised but all which the community could benefit from in some way.
Uses of the Community Fund:
We envisage uses of the community fund to be purely at the discretion of the Arbitrator on a case by case basis. However, potential use cases of the fund are as follows.
A type of case has been ruled on several times and consistencies in approach have been identified as a result. Semi-automation has become possible, the development of which could be funded by the community fund. This would ensure swifter dispute resolution for such cases in the long term and bring the costs down for parties involved.
A case is filed which is clearly in the community interest. If the claimant were to win such a case, then it would only be right that they are reimbursed their accrued case costs even if the respondent isn’t available/does not pay the costs. The availability of the fund gives the Arbitrator the flexibility to partially or wholly reimburse either party in such cases. It could even be used to supplement the ongoing case costs before a ruling has taken place. As a community we do not want financial constraints to stop community interest cases proceeding where possible and meaningful.
A ruling results in the movement of tokens. An appeal is launched against this ruling by a new claimant based on new evidence that was not available at the time the case was handled, and that ruling has been accepted. The new claimant wins the case and is able to prove that their property changed hands incorrectly. The other party has since disappeared with the property and is unable to be brought to account. Reimbursing the appealing Claimant in this instance may be another potential use case for the fund.
These are only examples and we do envisage many other use cases of the fund coming to light in the future. It could also be used to fund other community initiatives.
How it is formed:
Lost key case rulings are those in which community members who have lost the private keys to their accounts have had access returned to them. ECAF has decided to deal with them on a flat rate fee basis. Some of the revenue from these rulings could be best used in serving the community interest. As such, ECAF will be depositing 2.5% of all lost key rulings total claim value in the ECAF Community account. This will be taken from the current 15% fixed fee so it will not be an additional burden to the parties involved.
Why start this fund using the revenue from lost key cases? While the claimants in these case have a right to get the access to their property returned according to the constitution and our governing law of the maxims of equity, they are still responsible for safekeeping their keys and by failing to do so are responsible for this category of cases. As such they take time and resources from other cases which are also in the interest of the community to be served. So a small charge seems to be the best starting point to create this kind of fund in the community’s interest, independently from the worker proposal scheme.
In the future Arbitrators handling other cases could also decide to direct some of the fees or possibly some fines into the direction of the fund.
Please note: It is our intention, where possible, to continue this initiative, adding to the community fund by other means beyond revenue received from Lost Key Cases.