There has been a lot of talk about wanting Steemit.com development to be completed faster. Two months ago, @ned proposed a great idea that would help speed up the Steemit.com development process - bounties. Unfortunately, I feel that we as a community dropped the ball on delivering a key feature that Steemit, Inc. needed to incentivize more development. We have created all kinds of awesome apps, but we never gave Ned his bounty management system!

Several users (myself, @knircky, and @dantheman included) have been creating 'informal' bounties to incentivize the community to complete various tasks, but a formalized bounty system would drastically increase participation in the bounty process.

I know the main reason that the bounty system died was that the bounty milestone payments for 2 and 3 were not enough to cover the amount of work required to implement the systems being proposed.

What I propose is that instead of developing a full-blown 'ideal' bounty management system (with all the bells-and-whistles), we just create something basic. Let's not let awesome be the enemy of good. At this point something is better than nothing. As long as it works and does the job, it's better than what we currently have!

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Here is the proposal for a simple / easy to build bounty management system:

Bounty Fund Raising Posts

• User creates a post with whatever subject and content they want
• User defines the collection period: 24h or 24h + 30d
• User defines a unique bounty ID (example: "MyNewBounty")
  Note - this does not need to be unique across all user's bounties - just the bounties that this user has created.
• The community can upvote the post to contribute to the bounty
• The community can transfer SBD/STEEM to the user with the bounty ID as the memo to contribute to the bounty as well

Bounty Proposal Posts

• User creates a post with whatever subject and content they want.
• User defines the details of the bounty, including the bounty amount and payment terms.
• The community can discuss and participate in the bounty via the comments.

Bounty Definition Posts

• User creates a "decline payout" post to add the bounty into the bounty system
• The bounty definition post should use a unique tag (defined by the developer)
• The subject must follow a specific format, defined by the developer who implements the system
• The body must follow a specific format, defined by the developer who implements the system
• As part of the body, the content will include name/value token pairs that define:
  The bounty subject
  The bounty amount
  An expiration date after which the bounty will be automatically closed (required)
  The bounty id (unique across all the user's bounties)
  A link to the bounty post describing the bounty

Bounty Status Update Posts

• User creates "decline payout" posts to update the status of the bounty as needed
• The bounty status update posts should use a unique tag (defined by the developer)
• The subject must follow a specific format, defined by the developer who implements the system
• The body must follow a specific format, defined by the developer who implements the system
• As part of the body, the content will include a value that defines the status:
  Raising Funds
  Open
  Locked (another user is exclusively working on it, a bounty claim is being evaluated, etc.)
  Completed
  Void

Front End Bounty UI

• The bounty UI would collect and process all "Bounty Definition" and "Bounty Status Update" posts from the blockchain
• The bounty UI would render all of the bounties in an easy to view manner
• The bounty UI would show the reputation of the user proposing the bounty
• The bounty UI could be linked to from either the hamburger menu or the Steemit App Center
• Ideally filters and sorting should be included
• A page where the user can generate the markdown text for the "Bounty Definition" and "Bounty Status Update" posts by entering the necessary parameters into a form.

Payments, Disputes, Etc.

• The purpose of the Bounty Management Forum will just be to display the bounties. It will not handle payments or milestone verification at all.
• Users are transparently interacting with other members of the community through the blockchain. (Hopefully that will be good enough.)

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This is a rough proposal, and there are still a few details that would need to be worked out. I think it provides the framework for a system that could be developed relatively easily in ~2 weeks though.

I know that the original "milestone 1" bounty is no longer available. I am just creating it in the hopes that a community developer can take it and run with it to complete milestones 2 and 3, which as far as I know are still unclaimed.

This is an open proposal that anyone in the community is welcome to implement.