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> some cryptos like Tezos are governed quite decentralized in many ways. Whenever crypto enthusiasts tell me about DeFi governance, I get excited about the pos

by yunohn 5y ago

> some cryptos like Tezos are governed quite decentralized in many ways. Whenever crypto enthusiasts tell me about DeFi governance, I get excited about the possibilities. Then, I actually take a look at some of the group decisions, and literally all of them are crypto/coin-related, and don’t deal with any /real/ or human problems…

woile 5y ago
Well you have uniswap's vote on the educational fund. Which IIRC was about allocating money to lobby for crypto. https://app.uniswap.org/#/vote/1/1 https://app.uniswap.org/#/vote/1/1
- yunohn 5y ago
  Yes, so you’re proving my point? Sure, it’s about lobbying, but in defense of crypto (Previously known as: DeFi Political Defense Fund), to keep their crypto ball rolling.
  - woile 5y ago
    yes, indeed. I just thought this case is slightly different, they chose to go out and do politics (true, over crypto nonetheless). But I feel that normally, all the proposals are about the protocol itself, changes rates, etc and this case it's about interacting with other humans.
    - yunohn 5y ago
      Fair enough, I agree there is somewhat of a difference.
jacoblambda 5y ago
I'd recommend looking at Project Catalyst out of the Cardano ecosystem. Of course the proposals are still heavily focused on internal/ecosystem development but there's an increasing focus on building platforms for people in developing regions as well. There has generally been a heavy focus on improving connectivity and access to affordable financial services within the African continent however recently there's been slowly growing focus on other regions with large unbanked or under-banked populations. With the amount of money that is allotted via the treasury for the Cardano ecosystem, Catalyst (and eventually proper on-chain governance when it evolves into that) has funding to comfortably run it's 6 week cadence funding rounds indefinitely at a rate of 15 million USD per round once it finished scaling up. As the network grows the scale will likely increase but regardless I think with the focuses the community has (particularly thanks to West Africa Decentralised Alliance) we'll see increasing focus on improving infrastructure and access in developing regions. And while you could argue that many of the solutions proposed have some net positive effect flowing back to the ecosystem, generally the focus has been on connecting people rather than driving traffic to the network. --- Sorry if that got a little long winded. It's a cool project+community and we've been working really hard to avoid the toxic coin maximalist & self-centred behaviour that's become so incredibly common in the space.
- kristofferR 5y ago
  Thanks for that comment, looks like a really interesting project, I'll read more about it!
- iSnow 5y ago
  Come on. I wish ADA well, but Charles is one self-centered person and the community has erected a cult around him and is super toxic against other projects. After BTC maxis, ADA has the most religious maximalists I would say.
  - trts 5y ago
    As someone who started learning about Cardano recently and has listened to some of Charles' broadcasts on YouTube, I'm not really sure what you're referring to. To me he seems happy to celebrate success in other crypto platforms, has some strong opinions and a libertarian bent, but of course is building Cardano according to his own vision. BTC maximalists are quasi-religious in my experience but Cardano just seems to recognize the inevitable ascension of the blockchain and is building for that future, very similar to Ethereum. Maybe he's full of it; I've encountered other comments criticizing him but none that were deifying.
  - jacoblambda 5y ago
    I agree that Charles is self-centred and that there is a cult of personality around him to a certain degree but it really depends on which part of the community you are in as to whether it's "this is an influential person in the space so let's listen" or "our god king is speaking". The Project Catalyst community, the official IOG developer discord, and even the Cardano subreddits (r/Cardano, r/Cardano_ELI5, r/CardanoDevelopers, etc) to a less extent aren't caught up in this cult mentality so much. When Charles says something stupid, innapropriate, or unbecoming, people are not afraid to address it in these spaces. On r/CryptoCurrency or on twitter it's a different story but Twitter is a cesspool (especially for any cryptocurrency) and while we try to call out the zealots on r/CC, it's not particularly easy. In those dedicated Cardano spaces though, there is a marked effort to avoid the cult mentality and redirect that energy towards focusing on actual projects. Very few people (in these communities) have the belief that somehow Cardano is going to be the dominant cryptocurrency or is going to "take over the world" so to speak. There is a strong belief that the project will be successful and a strong ecosystem is forming around it but not that it renders other chains irrelevant or that it must grow at any cost including via the minimisation or attacking of other networks. The general consensus is that it will make a strong showing and settle into a reasonably solid position in the greater financial ecosystem where it'll be intertwined with and coexisting with legacy financial systems and the other major cryptocurrency networks. TLDR: Every topic/space has zealots unfortunately but looking at their core communities I've found Cardano to be generally fairly resistant to this behaviour. It's not a perfect community by any means but out of all the communities I'm involved in, I've seen more people in the Cardano ecosystem go out of their way to walk others away from maximalist behaviour or zealotry than any other community. I've been around for quite a while and I've seen how the different communities have evolved so I like to believe I've gotten a reasonably comprehensive view of the communities but no person can see everything and in the end this is all anecdotal experiences.
ddeyar 5y ago
Tezos for example has the problem of missing liquidity. So they voted for protocol level liquidity called liquidity baking. A little bit of inflation is used to incentivise liquidity providing. It's an experiment but it shows the power of governance. See https://liquidity-baking.com/ https://liquidity-baking.com/ for current liquidity. For sure it will always be voted on something that is good for the chain or for the token. When its good publicity for a chain to vote for charity-baking you could solve human problems.
kebman 5y ago
How would you change that?
jaggs 5y ago
Maybe take a look at Proof of Humanity? proofofhumanity.id. Real world problem (poverty) being tackled by crypto via a DAO. Very early days yet, but fascinating to watch as it evolves.
- yunohn 5y ago
  “Proof of Humanity, a system combining webs of trust, with reverse Turing tests, and dispute resolution to create a sybil-proof list of humans.” This is their mission, and the rest of the website focuses on ID and such services. Not one mention of poverty alleviation.
  - NiloCK 5y ago
    The connection here is that sybil-proofing is a (the?) major bottleneck to cryptoeconomic UBI schemes.
    - yunohn 5y ago
      That’s like saying SSN (or other gov issued ID) solves poverty.
      - NiloCK 5y ago
        Some people believe that government issued ID in conjunction with a government that implemented a UBI scheme would indeed improve poverty. Andrew Yang wrote a reasonable book about the idea. sybil-proofing in blockchain systems opens the possibility for any person or community to take a shot at implementing UBI. Could someone succeed in creating a token that retains some level of value long term and also consistently tops up at some rate in everyone's wallet? Beats me. But sybil-proofing is absolutely blocking issue on that front.
    - lottin 5y ago
      Are you serious?
      - 5y ago

by yunohn 5y ago

woile 5y ago

Well you have uniswap's vote on the educational fund. Which IIRC was about allocating money to lobby for crypto. https://app.uniswap.org/#/vote/1/1 https://app.uniswap.org/#/vote/1/1

yunohn 5y ago
Yes, so you’re proving my point? Sure, it’s about lobbying, but in defense of crypto (Previously known as: DeFi Political Defense Fund), to keep their crypto ball rolling.
- woile 5y ago
  yes, indeed. I just thought this case is slightly different, they chose to go out and do politics (true, over crypto nonetheless). But I feel that normally, all the proposals are about the protocol itself, changes rates, etc and this case it's about interacting with other humans.
  - yunohn 5y ago
    Fair enough, I agree there is somewhat of a difference.

jacoblambda 5y ago

I'd recommend looking at Project Catalyst out of the Cardano ecosystem. Of course the proposals are still heavily focused on internal/ecosystem development but there's an increasing focus on building platforms for people in developing regions as well. There has generally been a heavy focus on improving connectivity and access to affordable financial services within the African continent however recently there's been slowly growing focus on other regions with large unbanked or under-banked populations. With the amount of money that is allotted via the treasury for the Cardano ecosystem, Catalyst (and eventually proper on-chain governance when it evolves into that) has funding to comfortably run it's 6 week cadence funding rounds indefinitely at a rate of 15 million USD per round once it finished scaling up. As the network grows the scale will likely increase but regardless I think with the focuses the community has (particularly thanks to West Africa Decentralised Alliance) we'll see increasing focus on improving infrastructure and access in developing regions. And while you could argue that many of the solutions proposed have some net positive effect flowing back to the ecosystem, generally the focus has been on connecting people rather than driving traffic to the network. --- Sorry if that got a little long winded. It's a cool project+community and we've been working really hard to avoid the toxic coin maximalist & self-centred behaviour that's become so incredibly common in the space.

kristofferR 5y ago
Thanks for that comment, looks like a really interesting project, I'll read more about it!
iSnow 5y ago
Come on. I wish ADA well, but Charles is one self-centered person and the community has erected a cult around him and is super toxic against other projects. After BTC maxis, ADA has the most religious maximalists I would say.
- trts 5y ago
  As someone who started learning about Cardano recently and has listened to some of Charles' broadcasts on YouTube, I'm not really sure what you're referring to. To me he seems happy to celebrate success in other crypto platforms, has some strong opinions and a libertarian bent, but of course is building Cardano according to his own vision. BTC maximalists are quasi-religious in my experience but Cardano just seems to recognize the inevitable ascension of the blockchain and is building for that future, very similar to Ethereum. Maybe he's full of it; I've encountered other comments criticizing him but none that were deifying.
- jacoblambda 5y ago
  I agree that Charles is self-centred and that there is a cult of personality around him to a certain degree but it really depends on which part of the community you are in as to whether it's "this is an influential person in the space so let's listen" or "our god king is speaking". The Project Catalyst community, the official IOG developer discord, and even the Cardano subreddits (r/Cardano, r/Cardano_ELI5, r/CardanoDevelopers, etc) to a less extent aren't caught up in this cult mentality so much. When Charles says something stupid, innapropriate, or unbecoming, people are not afraid to address it in these spaces. On r/CryptoCurrency or on twitter it's a different story but Twitter is a cesspool (especially for any cryptocurrency) and while we try to call out the zealots on r/CC, it's not particularly easy. In those dedicated Cardano spaces though, there is a marked effort to avoid the cult mentality and redirect that energy towards focusing on actual projects. Very few people (in these communities) have the belief that somehow Cardano is going to be the dominant cryptocurrency or is going to "take over the world" so to speak. There is a strong belief that the project will be successful and a strong ecosystem is forming around it but not that it renders other chains irrelevant or that it must grow at any cost including via the minimisation or attacking of other networks. The general consensus is that it will make a strong showing and settle into a reasonably solid position in the greater financial ecosystem where it'll be intertwined with and coexisting with legacy financial systems and the other major cryptocurrency networks. TLDR: Every topic/space has zealots unfortunately but looking at their core communities I've found Cardano to be generally fairly resistant to this behaviour. It's not a perfect community by any means but out of all the communities I'm involved in, I've seen more people in the Cardano ecosystem go out of their way to walk others away from maximalist behaviour or zealotry than any other community. I've been around for quite a while and I've seen how the different communities have evolved so I like to believe I've gotten a reasonably comprehensive view of the communities but no person can see everything and in the end this is all anecdotal experiences.

ddeyar 5y ago

Tezos for example has the problem of missing liquidity. So they voted for protocol level liquidity called liquidity baking. A little bit of inflation is used to incentivise liquidity providing. It's an experiment but it shows the power of governance. See https://liquidity-baking.com/ https://liquidity-baking.com/ for current liquidity. For sure it will always be voted on something that is good for the chain or for the token. When its good publicity for a chain to vote for charity-baking you could solve human problems.

kebman 5y ago

How would you change that?

jaggs 5y ago

Maybe take a look at Proof of Humanity? proofofhumanity.id. Real world problem (poverty) being tackled by crypto via a DAO. Very early days yet, but fascinating to watch as it evolves.

yunohn 5y ago
“Proof of Humanity, a system combining webs of trust, with reverse Turing tests, and dispute resolution to create a sybil-proof list of humans.” This is their mission, and the rest of the website focuses on ID and such services. Not one mention of poverty alleviation.
- NiloCK 5y ago
  The connection here is that sybil-proofing is a (the?) major bottleneck to cryptoeconomic UBI schemes.
  - yunohn 5y ago
    That’s like saying SSN (or other gov issued ID) solves poverty.
    - NiloCK 5y ago
      Some people believe that government issued ID in conjunction with a government that implemented a UBI scheme would indeed improve poverty. Andrew Yang wrote a reasonable book about the idea. sybil-proofing in blockchain systems opens the possibility for any person or community to take a shot at implementing UBI. Could someone succeed in creating a token that retains some level of value long term and also consistently tops up at some rate in everyone's wallet? Beats me. But sybil-proofing is absolutely blocking issue on that front.
  - lottin 5y ago
    Are you serious?
    - 5y ago