A few days ago I was thinking about the development of a cryptocurrency and I was thinking about its different stages. I’ll use the three stages made by the first article as reference model:
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Early stage: In this phase is made a technological discovery. Someone use it to build the protocol and launch the project. The first applications appear, however there is no structure, and most of the attention is on what the innovation could do in the future. There is not much community activity because the protocol is matter of a few high skilled developers, reason why the project is mostly centralized. In this phase awareness has yet to form and there is no general consensus about the rules.
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Growth stage: The growth phase starts when more independent activities to sustain the protocol are built (nodes, wallets, exchanges, services). Here, these activities are mature enough to be profitable, or at least to recognize the importance of the protocol. This gives trust to continue, therefore more structures are built and begins to form a general ecosystem. The growth leads other users to join the community and the price start to gain consideration on the markets, which become more liquid.
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Maturity: At this point, the system is totally independent. There are more interest aligned to the protocol and decision are made upon a strong consensus mechanism, which hardly could be changed. The next step is adoption, so the community focuses on scalability and network effects.
If we agree that Grin is currently in the early stage, for me, some sort of centralization is probably inevitable and a complete decentralization is likely to destroy the project at this stage.
It is true that centralized decision making in some way discourages other initiatives, however, it also guarantees a certain level of securece, especially for non-technical people. It is also more flexible and able to respond faster to problems, even if it requires some trust.
Furthermore, there is not enough community engagement and without a leadership and a guide, the remaining people will simply disperse. Leadership is needed right now because it allows the community to have a direction and have time to learn and interiorize principles.
But I agree that, without decentralization in the long term, the project is going to lose any sense. The trust in the core team is a point of failure and an additional unwanted risk for everyone.
I see the trade-off “centralization/decentralization” as a sprectrum, where no extreme is completely possible.
So, rather than pushing more decentralization on decision-making in the early stage, I suggest to use the advantages of centralization to gradually develop a more sustainable network that can bear decentralization when the protocol is more mature (for II and III stage).
The most of the knowledge is in the core team anyway, so changing the current structure wouldn’t change anything, as long as there aren’t volunteers that are able to cover the tasks mentioned in the list.
Disband the team or hastily create rules would only create confusion to the community and to the newcomers. In addition, rules are a difficult riddle to solve, because it’s impossible to satisfy everyone.
It is more important to focus on the things we get along with, rather than the things that divide us, so that Grin can develop its identity and a strong consensus mechanism.
The high inflation rate and the bear market have not helped in grin’s diffusion and I think this is the reason why most people have leaved the project, not the centralization of the core team.
But I expected that the depreciation of grin was somehow foreseen, with the aim to discourage people that are here only to speculate, one of the advantages of Grin in the long term.
So, for me, it’s not a problem of lack of visibility nor the lack of adoption or price decrease and the things I suggest to divide are the monetary problems (management of funds and market price) and the community objectives, as money is contentious by definition.
Even though price and community growth are tied together and converge in the long term, they are moved by different reasons. Profit is one of this, even if true entrepreneurs are motivated by ideals before opportunities.
Or better, it depends on the people one wants to attract to the project, as different types of attention generates different type of incentives. For instance, attention on price could be more dangerous than other because it only attracts speculators, mercenaries, and “weak hands”, forming bubbles (defi trends).
The key is to attract people and entrepreneurs that truly believes in Grin and what it proposes. A steady growth is surely better, when the grin protocol would be ready, attention will come.
Apart of that, feelings and perception around Grin are still important. So, I agree that there could be a lot of improvements to be made, maybe by removing the governance page from the site which could be one reason for the “us” and “them”.
Or removing auto-elected income, which could create a “race of salary” in the community, an irresolvible problem (I would apply one day, if it would be possible). The salary has also psychological implications in terms of entrepreneurship.
Therefore, in my opinion, the only thing we should decentralize for now, is knowledge.
Possible approaches
Github repositories
For me the RFC process is the best option that we have now, at least it has been experimented by the Rust community. But I cannot speak much about that.
Consensus rules
Who decides about the consensus is not a matter now. It would develop anyhow in unpredictable ways, as more actors join the protocol. It is worth to discuss, but in my opinion, it would be a more stringent concern in future stages, when the community is large enough to develop different independent interests.
Use of the funds
I would like to premise that, from my point of view, the donor’s letter is quite clear. Therefore, I suggest to respect the donor’s will and their words. They have donated to the core team, then, they can do whatever they want with these funds, as long as they are comfortable. Without the core team now, there is Grin? How funds will be used is going to be noticed anyhow.
Nevertheless, I suggest to use energies and resources to focus on principles, education and donations in this early stage.
Principles
Principles are what really moves people. For me, they are more powerful than economic incentives and are what allows entrepreneurs to push innovations (along with the rest).
Then, I suggest to focus on which principles the protocol really reflects, strengthening what can be reinforced.
For instance, some of the principles that I consider relevant and that I see in grin are (in that order):
- Security
- Freedom
- Privacy
- Simplicity
- Fairness
- Inclusivity
- Decentralization
- Scalability
- Altruism
- …
They are important because, even though it’s clear that not everybody could understand Pedersen commitments, probably most of us can distinguish (or at least have a perception) whether the protocol’s vision respects what the core team says it’s implementing.
They give a direction. In the long run, if principles and the protocol are aligned the experiment would success, otherwise I don’t think so.
Education
As I’ve said before, centralization of knowledge is one of the main problems for me. We cannot achieve decentralization if there is such an asymmetry on people that know and don’t know what to do. Therefore, funds used for education (documents, articles, courses) are never wasted, because they enrich everyone. Education also strengthen critical thinking, making the community more able to assess problems and reasonable statements.
Moreover, I guess that there are only two way to have competent people that works on the project:
- Attract them with monetary incentives (are they trusty then?) or principles (existing devs in other chains).
- Grow them through mentorship (in this case they surely would be more loyal).
Donations
I suggest to insist with donations, because I think they are one of the keys of money, overall for privacy coins.
Donations are simple. Donations are the free will of people who cares, and they are perfect to reflect intentions and interests.
Having a central fund would always lead to decisions and rules to make, so we end up in the problems just discussed. But, what if everyone builds up a way to accept donations?
The core team could donate too (with the funds it has), to the projects that thinks are fruitful. In this way, nobody would be able to pretend or complain.
Maybe this is only a change in perspective, but in this way everybody becomes volunteer again and, if it receives donations, it is a good reason to continue!
Donations by the core team could also give a good example for others and examples are worth more than any word. It would be amazing to develop a culture based on donations.
Invest
Why not. Some capital, say between 10% and 20%, could be just hodl in bitcoin and grin for future projects.
Indeed, we have not considered yet what would happen if Bitcoin starts again a bull run. In that case, probably a lot of crypto would appreciate, including grin.
However, reverting the process of “have skin in the game” would take a while, since Grin gave up investment appeal, to gain accessibility and fairness.
The growth in price would also change the underlying economic incentives, making more difficult to look for authentic people. Hopefully, if the market increase, with some good principles people would be more inclined to donate.
What else
I know that this propose could be not clear and could seem too much “abstract”. But maybe this is what the community needs first: build its identity and understand where it wants to go.