I disagree. We are just transacting arbitrary data… what we decide it means is up to each user. One persons two grins does not have the same meaning as another’s. And with second layer stuff grin could just be used as a ledger to register on’s And off’s and not be used for currency at all. Its just private way to send specific numbers to each other. It just happens to do currency stuff as a way to fund the miners.
“Improve” sounds simpler but maybe not so strong? “Reclaim” is probably wrong for some people who would argue that we were never financially free. I don’t have a different suggestion atm:/
I like “lightweight” over “simple”.
The goal of the mission statement isn’t to be read by everyone and be simple.
It’s to guide the project and be clear though.
That’s my only point.
We keep on dumbing down some of the words in the mission statement because of a concern of it not being easy for everyone to understand. That’s not typically the goal of a mission statement.
Seeing as the people who care about the mission statement, and will be most impacted by it are the kinds of people who would get engaged in the discussions, I’m not sure we need to be quite as conservative with the word choice?
I would be shocked, if someone who followed the cryptocurrency space, and cared enough to read our mission statement either A) wasn’t familiar with mediums of exchange, or B) didn’t have the inquisitive nature to go look it up.
2 Likes
Yeah I agree here. Reclaim doesn’t seem to fit.
And improve is a bit light.
How about “Advance?”
“To advance financial sovereignty”
What I am saying is that I don’t think the use of “medium of exchange” over the use of “money” is that bad and I think I can prefer it over time, I just think that money is a superset of medium of exchange and we probably care about store of value and unit of account.
Advance I like! Still not sure about self-sovereignty over freedom. FWIW in the crypto sector, financial freedom has been thrown out many times.
Yeah, but I think that’s a huge mistake - and part of why many consumers believe that cryptocurrencies are positioned as an investment to help them make money and be free of debt. Rather than a tool of exchange or a store of value.
Actually Grin’s monetary policy is exactly for deterring speculation and making it fairer to participate anytime during its lifetime, so we probably are not after most of the current “investors”.
Also, “freedom” is way more understandable than “sovereignty”, especially to people whose native language is not English.
1 Like
to empower freedom through an open, minimal, and private financial medium of exchange
1 Like
That’s what I’m saying. You don’t want to conflate the ideas here.
But, freedom is a complicated word, there is “freedom of” “freedom from” “freedom to”
and “financial freedom” is overly used as a promotion for retirement savings, living off dividends or getting out from under debt.
Just do a search for the phrase and see the results.
2 Likes
If you can say something in a simple and easy to understand way, there’s no point in saying it in a complicated way. I thought the whole point was that we were supposed to be simple. 
Being simple, to me, is not dumbing things down. That’s making the project more approachable and inclusive.
And while we could focus on talking to ourselves and our existing community, I would rather take the opportunity to draft a mission statement that more people can identify with and rally behind. Even if they don’t fully grasp the nuances of medium of exchange or the meaning of sovereignty.
1 Like
I have no issue with simple. I’d love it if we find something simple.
I’m simply saying that often, the “simpler” words lack the nuances, which can create misunderstandings and ambiguity.
It’s probably important that we don’t let the pendulum swing too far in either direction between simplicity and clarity.
(I think) The point is an immutable ledger where nobody know what information your sending. The currency part is primarily for the miners, and is just the first, most basic usecase.
It’s just an encrypted Public, immutable, global clock and Message board. With a fee to transmit
1 Like
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.
2 Likes
FWIW, “economic freedom” seems to be meaning a different thing, what we are after.
A lot of great ideas have been thrown out there 
, 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
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 
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!
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.
1 Like
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.
2 Likes