lombra-early-notes/lombra - launch_and_first_year_plan.md

# Launch and first year plan

## Goals

- Achieve a small community of at least 20 people
- Deploy fundamental infrastructure, run it successfully for one year
- Learn and evolve from there

## Motivation

In a world of increasing authoritarianism and collectivism, some of us long for more freedom. Freedom to trade, transact and socialize, with no third parties stealing our wealth, imposing rules on us without our consent and violating our privacy.

Governments force us to use their currencies. They tax our work, our property, our relationships, our consumption, our capital, our deaths. They impose absurd and unfair rules on us for the benefit of their cronies and themselves. They restrict us to keep us under control. They threaten us with forced economic penalties, violence and social rejection.

We want to do business freely. To flourish and prosper by working voluntarily for each other. To join likeminded, productive individuals towards a great future. To reach voluntary agreements with our peers, without forced third parties. To keep all the well-deserved fruits of our labours for ourselves. To choose our currencies and our rules.

We don't want to bleed our value and energy to parasites by force. Nor to have violent third parties telling what we can or cannot voluntarily agree with others. Nor to be told that we need permission, licenses and blessings to run our businesses. 

We don't want to wait for our masters to be compassionate and give us permission. We will build ourselves the life we want.

## Organization

### What is lombra and why joining us

lombra is a private union of free-trading bitcoiners and cypherpunks. Its goal is to create a space where its members can progress through true free trade.

lombra is of private property, and is fully managed and ruled by the lombra board. 

lombra is composed of members. Members of lombra pay a yearly fee and enjoy the services provided. They also commit to following certain rules to maintain their membership. 

lombra is for-profit and invite-only. The lombra board charges for membership and for the provided services. It also determines who can or can't enter.

lombra does not aim to become an all mighty service provider. Our humble aim is to act as a foundation and a safe space for our members. It is up to the members of lombra, and not its board, to do great things. We are simply creating a space where you can do them.

By joining lombra, you are entering a network of powerful individuals. You can buy and sell. You can find partners and hire workers for your business. You can seek knowledge and advice. You can access escrow and mediation services for your trades. lombra provides identity, monetary and court systems to reduce friction and make all of this possible without state intervention. 


### lombra board

The lombra board is composed by three members. They own lombra. 

The board has the following powers:
- Decide who can join lombra, as well as expel any existing members.
- Change and update the member rules of lombra.

The board also has the following intentions:
- To be clear, transparent and honest in its management and ruling.
- To execute calm, thoughtful and long-term thinking governance.
- To provide the best service to the members of lombra.
- To attract individuals of the highest quality to the union.
- To enable and ease interaction, trade and collaboration across the members of the union.
- To protect the members from any bad practice that happens within the union.
- To maintain the core services of lombra up and running with the best service level.

The board meets monthly and communicates to the members through the monthly board announcements.

Members can communicate with the board at any time through ???.

### lombra members

Members are the greatest thing of lombra. As a union, lombra is only as valuable as its members are. Interactions through members are the true outcome of lombra, and why it was created in the first place.

Members of lombra are admitted on an invite-only basis and are picked carefully. There is no single definition of what a lombra member looks like, but here are some general pointers on what defines someone as an attractive member for lombra:
- The member is aligned with freedom-respecting and capitalist ideologies, like libertarianism and classical liberalism, anarco capitalism, cypherpunkism, austrian economics or bitcoin maximalism.
- The member rejects opossed ideologies like communism, fascism, socialism and social-democracy.
- The member earns his living in the private sector.
- The member respects private property, individual freedom, freedom of speech and the non-aggression principle.
- The member is willing and eager to engage in trade and business with other like-minds in a private fashion, without concerns on whether his state allows the trade or the privacy of it.
- The member rejects government fiat currencies and considers Bitcoin a superior form of money that leads to a better society.

All members must have a PGP identity and be listed in the lombra directory.


### Rules and intentions

- Board governance
- Member benefits and obligations

### Information repositories

- Rules
- Members directory
- Monthly meeting notes
- Yearly update
- Operating procedures
- Service information repositories


### Regular ceremonies and communications

## Execution

- Found lombra board
  - Start accounting book
  - Set up our Bitcoin, GPG and SSH identities (with Trezors if possible)
  - Write and sign partners agreement
  - Start lombra PGP key
  - Start multisig

- Start org services
  - Prepare basic infra for rules and communications
    - Hosting provider account
    - Wiki for knowledge management
    - Mattermost for comms
    - Kanboard for task management

- Start financial infra
  - Start bitcoin + electrum + lightning node
  - Start LNBits
  - Accounting, onboarding and safety utilities

- Start additional services
  - Monitoring and alerts

- Onboard first members
  - Seguro
    - Marc
    - Dyneema
    - Hackbert
  - Quizas
    - Shaman
    - Jacopo
    - Sliv3rr
    - Zehks
    - Chavo
    - Nicomanso
    - Bitmaker
    - Czino
    - Reckless Satoshi
    - Jose Antonio Bravo y Fernando Serer
    - Alekqs y Alfre Mancera
    - Daniel wordpress
    - Gzuuus

## North star beyond first year

- Higher member financial commitment
- More services
- Larger community
- Lobbying and common interests defense