Help us write Grin's Mission statement!

Grin is about open source? (got this from ‘open’)
if so:

  • This should be a prominent aspect in the vision
  • should be reflected in the actions of the ‘grin council’ and the companies they own/work for… is it now?

Grin is open source.

But, the word open here has the goal of meaning that the system is ope and accessible for anyone to use.

Trying to synthesize the above comments and a spin on some of the important concepts in @lehnberg larger post above:

Grin records the private transfer of value in a lightweight and neutral manner.

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FWIW, “economic freedom” seems to be meaning a different thing, what we are after.

A lot of great ideas have been thrown out there :slight_smile:, but I think we need to start putting forth more concrete proposals. In the spirit of keeping things simple (no word soups or corporate innovation announcements) I’m going to throw this out there:


Grin: for people, by people.

Grin aims to be an open community that makes sharing and exchanging value easy. While the tools to do this will vary over time, the goal is always the same: to give people a way to easily and securely send transactions to each other without interference from anyone else. Grin is built for people, by people, and that is that.


Expanding on this more so that you understand my thinking behind each sentence and can agree or disagree, or agree/disagree with the underlying intent but provide feedback on if that comes across in the example I provided:

Grin is built by the sacrifice (blood), work (sweat), and courage (tears) of the community. It has no premine so everyone here is here because they want to be and no other reason (imho). Grin will continue to only be as good as the people who build and maintain the project whether that’s the core protocol, the 3rd party ecosystem that supports it’s real world use, or the passionate users who tell all their friends and the world.

We aim, but we might miss… but at least the intention is there.
An open community: where anyone can engage and share ideas, where all are welcome and while we might be hard on the ideas, we are not hard on each other. Contributions at any level are welcome and encouraged :slight_smile:

Security and privacy are cat and mouse games, constantly evolving and adapting. Grin will have to keep up, and that will require a dedicated community to stay alert and vigilant. We’ll need to evolve the tools we use, but if the goal is the same then it’s easy to make those decisions. The benchmark is, does this improve security, privacy, and ease of use. If so, great!
Also, interference comes in the form of a small game such as censoring tx, but also the larger game of fiat on/off ramps deeming some coins as “tainted” or of using public information to provide users with off-chain incentives and discrimination (say a service that gives you a discount if they see that your account spent money at another business participating in a corporate consortium (cartel), or differential pricing if you shop at a competitor or your account is shown to send tx from IPs associated with various parts of the world, or interacting with other accounts that are deemed “good” or “bad” (think China’s Social Credit Score, but for everyone globally due to public information on blockchains :grimacing:

Frankly, I think this is enough. We’re building something cool that we can use and so can anyone else, and we welcome anyone to join us. Almost every other blockchain related project has incentives aligned with the interests of certain stake holders (greed), they’re trying to use fancy terminology and marketing to get people excited about an idea (smoke and mirrors), or they’re so focused on myopic technical specifications that they view usability and community engagement as a detail (a solution in search of a problem, often brilliant, yet doomed to the academic graveyard). Grin is none of those, and while profits, marketing, and technical novelty are great, I don’t think we need to compete on any of those levels and make that the focus for the mission statement (aka the first thing people see when they hear about the project). Grin is for people, by people.


Hope that helps and please let me know if you think it’s brilliant or if it sucks or if it just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever! :slight_smile:

I get this. Grin needs to be easy to explain. Let’s make sure we are not carried away though. I am cross-posting my reply from a different thread.

EDIT: To be fair, I think we need to make it so easy to use Grin that, in the far future, people will not even need to care about privacy and self-sovereignty. I just think we are not there yet and we definitely need to identify what this community is adding on top of the status quo.

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I didn’t mean for ‘my mother’ to be read literally here, poor use of words on my side.

I ever got caught in an elevator with some random person and they asked me what Grin’s purpose was, I think it would be nice to have a mission statement to fall back on that I can be confident they would understand. They wouldn’t need to believe in it, but it helps if they at least understand it, so that any follow-up questions are about the mission itself, rather than what is meant by a particular phrase.

A complicated mission statement in a way defeats the purpose, it’s supposed to be inclusive. I welcome anyone to refer me to a well written and widely used statement that is not simple and easy to understand.

If instead, we prefer a position that’s more akin to “one does not simply understand what Grin’s mission is about…”, we may as well remove any reference to being inclusive or open in the same go, in my opinion.

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@burrrata It’s good that it’s wide, general, short, and easy to understand. But it doesn’t say what we’re working towards. And if it’s too general, it risks saying not much at all. “For people, by people”, might be true about a lot of things that we humans do. If we could narrow our mission down a bit further and give us a purpose, I think it would help us understand what we’re working to achieve. That’s just my personal opinion.

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So going back to my post here, let’s see if we can get some proposals onto the Github issue?

@kargakis, @midipoet, @burrrata, @0xb100d @AdamSC1 (and all the others in the thread who want), how about you share your single one favourite candidate and I can move it over? And they will then be discussed in Tuesday’s meeting.

"To advance financial sovereignty, through a private, simple, and accessible medium of exchange.”

Choices:

  • Advance made clear we are aiming to move forward the existing levels of financial sovereignty and forces us to think about this in measurable ways.
  • I reduced self-sovereignty to sovereignty, as while there are nuanced differences, the context here should be enough to parse.
  • I chose simple instead of lightweight, as lightweight talks more about the implementation rather than how straightforward it is to use. Advancing or improving your financial sovereignty or being private sound complicated and daunting to average consumers. We want them to know it is simple.
  • I chose simple over minimal, as minimal could project that we are simply doing the minimum to protect their privacy or advance that sovereignty or that the system is not adequately robust.
  • I chose accessible instead of open, as open could just cover open source and outside of that and a store being open mainstream consumers may not know what it means to be open and it is harder for us to define a goal around that. But, being accessible is a clear goal we want it to be easy to find, use and onboard from anywhere.
  • I chose medium of exchange, as I still stand by the fact that we are not ‘money’ by the dictionary definition, and it seems poor for us to reduce the system simply down to its transactions. While medium of exchange is slightly more complicated I don’t think it is too complicated.
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I’m going to throw one more last minute on in here as well, as a second option. Not to replace my first, but just to challenge one to go in a very different direction:

“To give the world the power to make private, secure and independent financial transactions, without barriers.”

I don’t like it as much, but there is some merit to it, as it is technically a slightly broader statement.

I think this is a great idea, that may have been worth us doing early. I’ve pulled together some mission statements that do invoke or touch on more complicated concepts.

Especially a few from non-profits which one could argue are more driven by the philosophical concepts than companies and may be in a similar boat. Here are some I found:

Intel: “Utilize the power of Moore’s Law to bring smart, connected devices to every person on earth.

I think, that outside of a tech audience, a reference to Moore’s Law is no more or less complicated and non-mainstream than a reference to “Medium of Exchange” for a finance product.

DuPont: “To create shareholder and societal value while reducing the environmental footprint along the value chains in which we operate

I think one can argue that environmental footprints and value chains are also not broadly understood terms.

Greenpeace: "Greenpeace is an independent campaigning organisation, which uses non-violent, creative confrontation to expose global environmental problems, and to force the solutions which are essential to a green and peaceful future.

I have no idea what “creative confrontation” is supposed to mean.

Disney: “Disney “to be one of the world’s leading producers and providers of entertainment and information. Using our portfolio of brands to differentiate our content, services, consumer products, we seek to develop the most creative, innovative and profitable entertainment experiences and related products worldwide.

Very long and convoluted I don’t think I could make clear product decisions based on it and I doubt an average consumer understands how a “portfolio of brands differentiate” their content.

Invisibile Children: “To bring a permanent end to LRA atrocities.

A famous charity, I’m familiar with many of their initiatives and it is a short and to the point. But their mission is freeing child solders in Africa, “end LRA atrocities” is a specific industry reference.

Oxfam: “To create lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and social injustice.

I think “social injustice” is easily more complicated of a term than medium of exchange.

Overall, I don’t think medium of exchange is overtly complicated, or restrictive. Especially since we can make sure that our mainstream advertising shows, teaches, and illustrates what a medium of exchange is. People will understand when they see payment wallets, merchants, transactions etc.

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How about “To advance economic freedom…” (or “financial freedom”) instead of sovereignty, as @kargakis noted.
These big words are very intimidating for non native English speakers.

See above ^

I think at this point we’re just suggesting final versions for voting on in the council meeting as well.

"To advance economic freedom, through a privacy-focused, simple, and fair medium of exchange.”

An alternative choice that includes Grin in the sentence:

“Grin is all about advancing economic freedom through a focus on privacy, simplicity, and fairness.”

No, I just asked if I could get a couple of proposals for the ticket. :slight_smile: Happy for the ideas, edits, mixing, to continue in the meanwhile.

How about this one:

Grin fights for the freedom of your money, through privacy-focused, simple, and fair transactions.

Edit: kargakis and Adam gave me some ideas, so tweaking it a bit.

I like this one a lot - fair is a nice addition. I’d propose the:

"To advance economic sovereignty, through a privacy-focused, simple, and fair medium of exchange.”

As I am still personally against the word freedom, but am ok with the economic part.

I think the idea of it being sovereign and fair pulls out the aspects we wanted from “freedom” without all the other nuanced possible meanings and interpretations. I also like the shift from “private” to “privacy-focused” so that people know it isn’t a matter of exclusivity.

Updated the Github issue. If you feel issue layout, copy, format etc on there needs tweaking, comment in ticket and I will fix.

To propose new additions, please comment here instead. This way (I hope) we can keep the discussion fairly organised!

Grin records the private transfer of value in a lightweight and neutral manner.

i actually really like this.

To afford economic, social and political change through a private, open, and trustless monetary medium.