I'm willing to fund the effort in the short term as proposed, if Steemit will agree to some kind of reasonable performance contract, but I don't want to end up in a situation where our guys create code, their guys create competing code, then they just decide to go with their code cause "it's ours, it must be better" (and in any event, it results in a lot of lost programming effort).

If we deliver a product that provides real value to Steem and Steemit, I think it's only fair for Steemit to make a reasonable payment, as they benefit far more than we do. We're actually quoting at below our "normal" rates for fixed-cost blockchain work, as we do have some stake in the results and we hope this can lead to more opportunities in the future.

Some people have also suggested crowdfunding all or a portion of the work costs, but I think the expense and time overhead make that option less attractive in this particular case. That said, I do think it would make sense in the long run for Steem to have some kind of worker proposal system like BitShares has. It's been very successful, IMO.