This working document is less a formalised roadmap and more a compass to be periodically adjusted as we correct course.
We set out a path towards the development of open, interoperable and sustainably funded Network Publics.
The outline takes learnings from Decred's community development, coordinating Edgeware's creative contributions and the stewarding of Kabocha - a first instance of a Network Public.
By developing this on Github every change is historically traceable and can be updated in line with progress.
This is a long post, here are some primers, starting with a few core insights at the heart of the project:
- Market economies are downstream from public goods and yet public goods are degraded by market forces.
- Blockchains enable the creation of sovereign supra-national and hyper-local accounting systems for digital networked publics.
- Token tribalism distracts from the fundamental values that many blockchain communities share.
- On-chain organisations can coordinate, fund and credit reputation to borderless creative talent and work forces.
- The most valuable NFTs will likely not be bought or sold - they will be earned and assigned.
- NFTs can be pooled to create asset backed community token economies.
- Collectively created community rights will enable story worlds that will eventually dwarf the 21st century's most valuable IP and franchaises.
- These insights combine to enable a novel Store of Values design that can sustain and scale digital currencies over the long term.
Here is a 2 minute primer:
- Decent Partners is a digital cooperative that bridges internet native (DAOs) and traditional organisations (Companies).
- We onboard creators and their projects to DAOs in return for a 10% network service fee and assignment of genesis NFTs where relevant.
- Currently we work with Edgeware and incubated Kabocha.
- Earned assets (fungible and non-fungible) are used to develop public good projects that also expand the usefulness of the underlying chains.
- Funds are governed by partners via a multisig wallet.
- Decent's primary focus is on the development of a sustainably funded, collectively owned and openly accessible Web3 media ecosystem.
- The emerging community will work together to establish core values, define open standards and evolve the culture over time.
- Anyone can propose a project to the community via an open and permissionless proposal system we call Root.
- On-chain reputation is developed over time by proposing and delivering projects. This is the path to becoming a 'Partner'.
- Proposals assign some rights (represented as NFTs) to the community in return for receiving funding for their creative project.
- These NFTs are held in a reserve that #neversellsout and represents the 'fundamental' value of Kabocha's currency.
- Partners retain ownership of these rights and can withdraw them at any time once they have delivered their proposal.
- Partners ultimately govern the multisig which ensures governance of the project decentralises over time.
- Initially a UK legal entity exists to onboard Partners and provide legal assurances, this will eventually be dissolved.
- Rinse and repeat...
- (a little later)... a publicly owned, operated and accessed Web3 media ecosystem emerges.
Let's start by defining Web2 media:
Web 2.0 (also known as Participative (or Participatory) and Social Web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability (i.e., compatible with other products, systems, and devices) for end users. Wikipedia
Platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Spotify and Netflix form the cornerstones of Web2 media and have contributed a huge amount to the democratisation of the global creative industries, enabling millions of creators to connect, create and commune as never before.
Once the rebellious upstarts, these platforms are now the establishment, concentrating unprecedented wealth, control and influence in the hands of a relatively small group of companies.
Their ad supported and subscription business models extract ever increasing value from the creative talent on which they depend, whilst creating increasingly perverse incentives for those that use and consume digital media, with profound consequences for all areas of society.
Web3 media by contrast relies on open source protocols and blockchains to ensure public ownership, operations and access.
Whilst defi may have have been the major story of 2020 and constitutes the majority of focus in the Substrate ecosystem, NFTs (non-fungible-tokens) are a core component of the Web3 stack.
NFTs are currently mostly understood through crypto art / media and was one of 2021's biggest stories, expanding the existing crypto bubble and onboarding many new users in the process.
However until recently creators were still separated from the financial networks that their work creates by a first generation of platforms and galleries who operate in a Web2 manner, as gatekeepers, owning the creators' market and taking a cut.
The arrival of creator owned marketplaces levels the playing field further but also supercharges an already individualistic and profit oriented crypto-culture that masks the real opportunity for a new generation of creative communities to share ownership in the projects they build together.
We shouldn’t think of NFTs as tokenized digital content itself. A core insight is that NFTs are much better understood as encapsulating intellectual property rights to the assets they describe.
All media is going on-chain - Coinfund NFT Thesis.
When you take a step back to see the bigger picture it is clear that the present hype misses a core insight - that generationally influential creators, artists and musicians don't set out to mint and sell their work... what they need is the funding, time and space to make great work in the first place.
The noise around price is a distraction - anathema to the creative process that exists independent and even counter to the profitable business of collecting. In the end it is worth remembering that money always follows culture - gentrification does not precede the artists and the outcasts, it follows in their wake.
In the old world the role of consistently funding bold new thinking was fulfilled by public service broadcasters like the BBC who backed talent before they were famous, an approach that was at its inception revolutionary and widely emulated throughout the world.
Neither commercial nor State-controlled, public broadcasting’s only raison d’etre is public service. It is the public’s broadcasting organisation; it speaks to everyone as a citizen. Public broadcasters encourage access to and participation in public life. They develop knowledge, broaden horizons and enable people to better understand themselves by better understanding the world and others.
Public Broadcasting Why? How? — UNESCO.
Absolved of commercial imperative, public broadcasting rose to become the 20th century’s most trusted and effective communications initiative, able to report on local, national and global news, elevate daring storytellers, document culture, societies and the natural world, spotlight emerging areas of research outside mainstream discourse of the time, continually fund bold technological advances in communication - informing, educating and entertaining young and old minds alike.
At their inception they were revolutionary institutions, but over time their technological advantages have been usurped, their systems of governance have calcified and the creative invention of their contributors has waned.
The privatisation of the public sphere and rise of social networks has left the internet without a solution to the creation of global public benefit institutions, at a point in time when universally trusted, transparently funded and culturally relevant information is desperately needed.
However there is good news - when empowered to follow their own curiosities and passions, it turns out that people are not as profit oriented as many would believe. The internet and the world wide web — and the extraordinary revolutions they have sparked were released as free, open source software, with a central ideal of open access for all.
Facebook is built on open source from top to bottom, and could not exist without it. — Facebook
Real value is not bought, it is built - by collective endeavours focused on long time horizons and a higher calling than making a quick buck.
Digital currencies and open source projects typically fall victim to the tragedy of the commons, where individuals who share a resource act in their own self-interest, depleting or spoiling that resource.
Numerous methods have been used to solve the funding issue across cryptocurrencies, including donations, founders funds, venture capital funding, and various forms of ICO/IEO.
All of these methods come with shortcomings, including agency problems, conflicts of interest, and a lack of ongoing funding.
Decred has solved the funding problem by directing 10% of every block reward into a Project Treasury.
This ongoing solution funds Decred for generations to come.
Decred is the first in what may well later be defined as the third generation of blockchains after Bitcoin and Ethereum. It is one of a new breed that is publicly owned, sustainably funded and transparently governed - with its primary 'use case', being the ongoing funding of open source technology.
For a while, skeptics asked what $DCR's raison d'être was...
IMO the turning point for people realizing @decredproject's ability to bring valuable services to the world was #DCRDEX, which has seen rapid uptake as a privacy-preserving, hard-money #DEX:
On-chain treasuries now posess large public treasuries in the billions of $$$. These treasuries are community owned and operated and are able to fund public goods, using their own native currencies to incentivise creative contributions that further the founding values of each community.
The challenge is no longer fundraising, these projects have enough capital to build for decades. The challenge is now sourcing, developing and delivering quality proposals that can driven meaningful network adoption.
When sustainable funding from community owned treasuries is matched to multi-signature wallets and open source community proposal platforms the costs of coordination are reduced at both a local and global scale, removing many of the bureaucratic elements of existing organisations, enabling contributors to spend less time sourcing or managing stakeholders and more time contributing and being paid for useful work.
However today's blockchains have optimised for security, with assumptions focused on a don't trust, verify mindset. This works well in an adversarial environment, however it works against the design of systems that aim to optimise for more experimental and human centric outcomes.
Kusama's relay chain design seeks to solve this conundrum - the protocol offers security as a service to application specific parachains who purchase slot, enabling them to optimise their design philosophies to be more optimistic in their foundational assumptions.
With this in place, the basic building blocks for global, decentralised and permissionless public service media are here.
Decent operates as a digital cooperative ("the cooperative") of creators, developers, entrepreneurs, organisations and networks ("the partners") who collectively contribute, manage and assign a common pool of resources including a dedicated fund ("the creator collective fund") that receives investment from external investors and chain treasuries.
Together these elements form the basic functions of a metaDAO - an entity designed to operate on a layer above the tribalism present in today's crypto-networks, diversifying both funding sources and community cultures. ("The MetaDAO").
Decent Partner's mission is to inspire and empower collective action through the stories of a gobal network of creators, makers and builders who are challenging established thinking and introducing alternatives to existing systems.
Decent Partner's vision is to reimagine public service broadcasting for a networked world.
The fund is initially drawn from public goods focused chain treasuries within the Kusama and Polkadot ecosystem.
The ambition is to onboard other chain treasuries over time, leveraging not just their finances but their unique technological and cultural characteristics.
Eventually we forsee this funding becoming a voluntary ecosystem tax paid on an ongoing basis as noted in this MetaDAO post.
the idea would be to research a range of core issues facing fully on-chain economies that that are setting out to escape centralisation vectors and to create a 'Meta DAO' to address them that benefits from ongoing investment from a range of projects.
Chains commit some funding (say 2%) of funds as some sort of opt-in public duty and others are also invited to contribute.
By decentralising on chain treasuries you begin to get something akin to a global public good fund...
Prospective partners are funded directly via proposals ("the proposals") from the cooperative's fund.
The proposal process is managed using the Root interface).
Contributors joining the network do not need to sign up to a full crypto-wallet, instead they are assigned a 'Seed' which is a non-fungible token.
Approved proposals return value to the fund in the form of attributed NFTs - assets, contracts, licenses and rights ("contributions").
Contributions form the foundation of the fund's underlying value and are pooled into a secure but public vault ("the reserve").
You can view a WIP financial forecast for the fund here.
Decent's approach to 'good governance' is focused on developing trust between its partners through the successful delivery of proposals.
We are also following some of Nexus Mutual's governance templates and linking a UK based company to smart contracts that can bridge the old world and the new, both as a way of onboarding Partners, as a way to ensure some legal assurances and to interface on-chain and off-chain agreements which will become important with the assignment of NFTs.
If funded this proposal constitutes the first approved proposal.
The authors will be elected initially as a council of founding partners ("the council") via an n of m multisig.
Per Nexus Mutual, we will institute an 'Overthrow Control' enabling any Partners to replace a council member at any time.
Existing partners vote to approve or reject proposals from prospective partners.
When a prospective partner successfully delivers a proposal as judged by their peers, they become partners in the cooperative.
This approach ensures a progressive decentralisation of the MetaDAO.
Partners may eventually be granted shared ownership in line with contributions via the issuance of a community token.
The issuance of that token will be subject to the delivery of proposals.
If there is a token it will be backed by the cooperative's reserve.
Decent Partners is the bootstrapping entity for the cooperative on both the digital and real world side, its role is to push forward the cooperative to a point where it is governed by a wide range of partners who successfully propose and deliver projects across a wide range of areas.
- Decent Partners: Decent develops community networks that are funded, governed and owned by the people they represent.
- Edgeware: Fairly launched smart contract chain and publc goods fund in the Polkadot ecosystem.
- Commonwealth: Discuss, organize, and grow decentralized communities.
- Lemonade Money: Creative studio busy building worlds.
- DatDot: An autonomous hosting network for p2p data systems.
- KodaDot: Universal NFT explorer and marketplace interface for Substrate networks
- Everknow: Next generation smart contracts.
- MoCDA: Advancing the position of digital art in a global context through curatorial insight and education.
- Vacuumlabs: Creators of secure and reliable next generation Web3 financial tools and systems.
- New-Futures: Curated drops from established and emerging artists that explore new possibilities in NFTs.
- Four To The Floor: MTV for the crypto-generation, bringing together the best stories from around the world.
- ACJR: The Association of Cryptocurrency Journalists and Researchers.
- Portico Studios: Community run digital studio, gallery and events space.
- Auto Fabrica: A multidisciplinary mobility design collective.
- Weapons of Reason: Making it easier to understand complex global issues.
- Maia Pictures: Nurturing the next generation of writing talent.
The following outlines a comprehensive but non-exhaustive set of requirements that will enable the cooperative to achieve its mission.
Some of these areas have prospective partners ready to propose funding, some are areas which need new expertise. All are open to further discussion and contribution.
- Cooperative values
- MetaDAO
- Public fund
- Community proposals
- Creative assets
- Reserve
- Creator owned marketplaces
- Creator focused defi
- Marketplace and Backend API
- Interoperability
- Community networks
- Community rights
- Original media, editorial and research
- Apps, Interfaces & Experiences
- Research & Development
- Collective Intelligence
N.B. Where conflicts arise COOPERATIVE VALUES will take precedence.
The requirements have been prioritised via the MoSCoW approach.
MUST
- sustain as a publicly owned, operated and accessible entity.
- be sustainably, transparently and independently funded.
- make all code open source and auditable.
- develop and iterate a binding constitution ("the constitution") that partners operate under.
- ensure that new partners can join and also leave easily.
SHOULD
- prioritise long term thinking over short-term opportunities.
MUST
- be governed by nominated partners who together represent the contributing workers of the cooperative.
- develop governance systems that can be operated by technically competent and novice users alike.
- develop secure, transparent and auditable mechanisms for the discussion, proposing, funding, tracking and reporting of grants.
- utilise NFTs to assign on-chain achievements, memberships and reputation of partners.
- be able to delegate funds, governance oversight and reporting into sub-DAOs established by partners ("subDAOs")
- enable funded partners to receive, manage and track grants in a simple, secure and intuitive UI
- enable partners to hold cross-chain crypto-assets, including currencies and NFTs.
- enable partners to connect on and off with the existing financial system via fiat gateways.
SHOULD
- enable partners to display their memberships, achievements and reputation easily.
- operate initially via an implementation of Commonwealth
- develop its own governance, forum and proposal systems.
- defi protocols to manage their finances.
- interface with the existing legal system via legal contract bridges.
MUST
- be operated as a publicly owned and operated entity.
- commission partners to develop projects that advance the mission.
- be capable of holding a wide range of cross-chain crypto-assets including currencies and tokens.
- be operated in a secure, auditable and transparent manner.
- be managed via an transparent, intuitive and scalable governance system ("MetaDAO").
SHOULD
- prioritise initial investment from on-chain treasuries to ensure transparent public ownership.
- build long term value through the continued contributions of partners.
- be capable of holding traditional assets including equity and property titles.
COULD
- utilise its reserves as collateral for the launch of a community token that would be distributed to partners.
- utilise this community token as the primary distribution mechanism for the launch of a dedicated Web3 media Substrate chain.
- receive support from a range of sources such as foundations (crypto/traditional), aligned funds and public markets.
MUST
- be submitted through an open and intuitive interface
- be auditable and tamper resistant
- be open to anyone, anywhere.
- be approved by the partners.
- assign assets, rights, licenses, contracts or resources ("contributions") in return for commissions.
- require the transparent and timely reporting on the progress and spending.
SHOULD
- ensure that the contributions are liquid assets.
- ensure that where the contributions are not liquid, that there is provision for this.
Partners MUST
- support directly the funding of creative assets ("creative assets") on creator-owned marketplaces (for example, those enabled by Zora's smart contracts ("Zora")
- define advantages of Substrate's technology with regard to the creation and management of creative assets.
- experiment with Substrate's technology to advance the entire NFT space.
Partners SHOULD
- aim to produce a sustainable revenue model from the creative assets it subsidises.
- develop additional use case innovations related to creator-owned marketplaces.
- experiment with creative assets within the emerging aeas of AR and VR.
- connect creative assets into the operations of the DAO to signal membership, achievements and reputation.
- aggregate the creative assets to display the creative assets of partners.
- develop projects that foster collaboration among artists.
Partners COULD
- take an active role in the artistic development process by organising events and experiences.
- seek to fundrise via third party collectors and investors.
- open up to parallel third party curatorial committees that wish to also support creative projects.
- support directly the funding of creative assets linked to legal titles ("creative asset securities").
MUST
- consist of contributions from partners.
- be managed so as to ensure long term sustainability, transparency and viability of the ecosystem.
- be managed securely and openly with regular reporting / audit that ensures public accountability.
COULD
- be used as backing for the launch of a token distributed to partners in line with either past or ongoing ontribution.
Partners MUST
- ensure that every supported marketplace collects artist royalties, co-owner shares and other beneficiaries fees automatically (e.g. a curator) and redistributes them accordingly.
- implement automations to enforce the fees collection not only for the primary sale but also in the secondary market.
- be in the position to recommend which data should or should not be exposed externally.
SHOULD
- implement configurable and flexible smart contract to embrace a variety of use cases.
- refer to acquired know how in this scope, to test the adaptability of the contracts.
- educate artists and collectors about the possibilities available to them. Ideally this should be decided either at the time of an art drop or even better at creation time.
- support a transparent record while retaining sensitive information in highly secured and tamper proof vaults.
- encourage collectors from the crypto or the traditional art market to support AML best practices.
- produce a per-metadata-entry risk profile taxonomy, and ensure the automation applies constraints where it can.
- engage in periodic assessment of the categories of risk and update any related automation.
COULD
- support privacy and opacity, although it should discourage these practices as when the market gets traction it is likely to come under the scrutiny of governmental regulatory bodies.
SHOULD
- develop defi solutions to solve problems for creators in Web3 media.
- develop defi alternatives to traditional media and production insurance with Nexus Mutual
MUST
- produce a comprehensive collection of UI widgets and components to be customised by customers to enable their market place.
- include a series of telemetry information derived from the customer use to feed in the business intelligence analytics
- support integration with the backend API
- support simple creation of NFT and Semi-Fungible smart contracts
- support simple creation of smart contracts on EVM compatible substrate chains and on WASM Substrate chains &
- support the definition of token types for the submitted smart contracts
- support the minting of token types for the submitted smart contracts
- support the preparation of a state change transaction to allow the integration external signing tools
- support the submission of a transaction with a specified number of confirmations
- support the non state change querying for smart contract data
- the subscription for smart contracts events (e.g. via websocket)
- expose a simple REST/GraphQL api
- support the integration with existing popular marketplaces
- evangelise and influence popular marketplaces to embrace our API
- act as a consultancy to onboard organisation on our API
- offer a line of support to organisation integrated with our API
- support the simple definition of functions and parameters to be entered when calling a smart contract function
- support the simple definition of topics subscribing to smart contract events
- implement a number of external APIs for compatibility with web3js
- support a number of substrate chains
SHOULD
- demonstrate and document (via official documentation and blogposts) the simple integration and composability of the API with the UI components on representative use cases (e.g. softspot, zora etc..)
COULD
- support a number of non substrate chains via bridges
Partners MUST
- produce a tool to support cross chain provenance for substrate chains
- introduce a series of automated questionnaires to acquire feedback from interoperability focus groups
- engage the collective with a fast prototype trial of novel approaches for interoperability
SHOULD
- produce a tool to support cross chain provenance for popular chains that support NFTs
- produce a tool to support cross chain identity profiling for substrate chains
- extend a graph indexing facility to operate cross chain for substrate chains
- engage with R&D and collectively explore and experiment via targeted POCs novel forms of interoperability
- derive additional requirements by engaging an inclusive collective (not developers only) interpreting their response and reactions
COULD
- produce a tool to support cross chain identity profiling for poular chains (DIDs could inspire this work)
- extend a graph indexing facility to operate cross chain for popular chains
Partners SHOULD
- develop creative networks as Layer 3 DAOs with entities such as MoCDA, FTTF, New-Futures, Auto Fabrica, Weapons of Reason.
- prioritise long term development of emerging talent and ideas over more established or 'mainstream' talent.
- enable artists, creators and organisations to easily fund, govern and manage their own entities.
- enable creative assets to be packaged into higher order entities ("community IP").
- enable the issuance of loans, backed by creative assets ("creative collateral") to enable additional sales.
- enable speculation over a creative asset.
- create indexes of creative assets.
- implement a risk management solution to provision for mitigations.
COULD
- support preferential trading with Edgeware and any chain within the partners sphere of influence.
- trade its tokens on third party exchanges.
- engage in promotional distribution strategies to drive adoption of its tokens.
SHOULD
- be researched, defined and documented as a new form of collective rights management that empowers digital creators.
- interoperate with existing legal entities and contracts.
- enable the efficient, transparent and cost-effective re-distribution of profits to community rights-holders in the underlying creative assets.
COULD
- be profitably licensed by 3rd party media entities, services or organisations.
Partners MUST
- empower a network of creators to develop and deliver original media, editorial and research.
- define the full-stack of Web3 Media for 3rd parties via educational materials, research and communications.
- ensure that all content remains publicly accessible.
- ensure that content is not only english language but ensure broad access to a global community.
- develop and share media content across multiple social channels, networks, press & media to promote our activities globally.
- create original series that capture the stories of the creators, makers and builders in and around the community.
- make educational, inspiring and entertaining content that connects and engages with a global audience.
- experiment with new mechanisms for the discovery, distribution and utility of creative assets - for example NFTs embedded in series triggered by audio.
MUST
- develop bespoke apps, interfaces and experiences for creative networks that utilise the Web3 media stack.
- experiment with interfaces that connect across multiple platforms.
- develop experiences that bridge the digital and real world.
COULD
- create a service that aggregates the output of all creative networks through a globally accessible service.
- develop a publicly owned, operated and accessible Web3 media streaming service.
Partners MUST
- develop partnerships and relationships to further the mission.
- define KPIs to track the success of any partnerships and relationships.
- review and report on progress every three months.
SHOULD
- research Async's composability model for Substrate chains.
- research Customisable Smart Contracts
- research Foreign Technology (Haskell, C)
- research and metadata access
- research content streaming
- research scalability and parallelism
- research social scalability and governance
Partners MUST
- research, define and document the key components of full stack Web3 media (e.g. NFTs, storage, streaming, identity, reputation)
- agree on a series of valuable community metrics that can be derived from the collected data
- address any opportunities and/or challenges on a monthly base with the wider collective.
- define a series of metrics to collect from the various APIs and services
- collect information from social media
- define a series of heuristics to activate on top of the collected data to infer community metrics
SHOULD
- shape the analytics backend traversals over graph indices
- produce a series of reports and graphical representation of the acquired data and business metrics
- activate a series of clustering techniques to identify unexpected patterns in data
- develop analytics for Web3 media
- produce a risk profile associated to NFTs
- produce a risk profile associated to collectors and investors
COULD
- produce a risk management tool for the partners and affiliates organisations