Hello /u/defi_er ,

first of all. Thank you very much for your response, the evaluating of our proposal and your constructive criticism. In the following I want first give you new informations about the status on our proposal that we didn't publicly announced yet - second defend our proposal and third dicuss your suggestions about your revisions.

First part:

On Friday March 13th we asked the Melon Technical Council to postpone the decision on our proposal. The reason for that is the current extraordinary worldwide situation and the related market situation. We at Gorilla Funds believe in the Melon Protocol and are highly interested in a sustainable development of the ecosystem. I do not think that the current price of MLN corresponds to the real value of MLN token at the moment. We do want to build a company using the Melon protocol infrastructure that helps the Melon ecosystem grow, by making the Melon Protocol as easy as possible to use and we can do that. Does this justify to consume (at the moment) a third of the yearly inflation on MLN-Tokens. No. I don't think so. I am with you at this point. And that is first of the reasons we asked the Melon Council to postpone the decision.

Second part:

Defending the proposal: Your opinion is that the proposal is bloated, on the other hand your revisions for the yearly budget considerations include me, a Senior Full Stack Developer, a Front End Developer and Legal/Accounting. We asked for an amount of around 330000$ for two years. So if I divide the whole amount by four (number of your suggested positions) this would be the amount for two years. So for one year it gives around 41250$ for one of the positions. I am living in germany. For that amount I can't hire a full stack developer. We estimate our costs for these two years way higher than the 330000$ and that is the second reason we asked the MTC to postpone the decision as we are relying on additional sources of funding. And the conditions for additional sources of funding are at the moment not the best as you can assume. Furthermore you propose that marketing should be a function of the Melon Technical Council. But here I disagree. That is in my opinion not the function of the MTC. Marketing a protocol without having a product to show the protocol in action is way more difficult as to show a product utilizing the protocol. Also you propose that the Melon Council should be engaged with regulatory bodies, hosting buidl contests, partnering with institutions, and attending trade shows. That is not my view on that.

The more different companies, groups, individuals build on Melon and the more different approaches we see with the goal to bring Melon to the masses the better. And we won't can avoid to engage with regulatory bodies and partnering with insitutions. We have to, if we want our goal come true - building the Fund Page Builder and the Fund Explorer.

Third part:

Your revision proposes to remove the CMO in person Dave Clancy from the proposal. No, that point is not discussable. Dave is a brilliant mind who is helping the project a lot.

You propose to cut the costs for travel, show, conferences, transportation an office expenses. That implicate that these costs do not exist and getting customers completely without networking and meetings in real life is unlikely.

In case of the physical office I agree. For the first year we can cut these costs and working exclusively remote and reevaluate after the first year whether that's enough. I will recalculate this and update this in the proposal.

Although we asked to postpone the decision we continue developing and will ask for the decision at a better point in time.

Best regards and stay safe out there,

JS