How to Attract Aligned Individuals to a New Constitutional Hub
floridamanfintech opened this issue · 2 comments
> Instead of worrying about appeasing the current sloshy-ness (which can be traced all the way to the titanic, fed reserve, etc. aforementioned) around the Cosmos Hub, a full fledged exclusion for some parties is appropriate. Those that discount the minority opinion as "conspiracy theory" will only be a burden on what is trying to be accomplished.
I have to say I do love the principle. Let's encourage these people to sell what they get of their own accord. Then there will be less harsh feelings, and they will regret their own actions down the line. ;)
One thing I'm looking out for: the resulting genesis distribution must be capable of passing (with supermajority, or constitutional majority depending) what must be passed, AND have enough buffer to guard against the distribution becoming diluted again.
Also, it is really up to those who voted NO, to decide on the genesis distribution. It wouldn't make sense if the NO voters don't agree with the resulting distribution. If they would rather use a different genesis distribution, then there is no value to the rejected distribution at all.
In addition, we should be looking outward at how to bring those outside of crypto, who may share similar beliefs, into the sphere of an $ATOM1 constellation. Those who understand the scam of central banks and the like, are less likely to find ATOM1 if they have to sift through the grifter garbage patch elements that are the current Cosmos Hub.
Fully agreed. Please make a new issue to start the discussion about how to attract the right people into our community, those who are aligned and want to participate as equals.
Originally posted by @jaekwon in #12 (comment)
One question new protocols seem to ask themselves is “how can we bring crypto-native developers and users over to our ecosystem?”
Of course, this should be asked by the early participants of the ATOM1 fork as well.
But maybe more importantly, the ATOM1 Hub should ALSO be asking:
“How do we bring new users and developers, who are still outside of crypto, into our ecosystem? And not just anyone, but rather those who are likely to align with an ATOM1 constitution (which would emphasize the original cosmos hub vision of prioritizing security and hub minimalism).”
The general population still doesn’t understand crypto, and often won’t care enough to try to understand it.
What the general population DOES understand is that many of the institutions that dictate the policies and procedures of our society, are not to be trusted.
For example, in the United States, as of November 2023, it is estimated that only 15% of the American population approves of the job that congress is doing: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1600/congress-public.aspx
Roughly 2 in 3 Americans also don’t trust the mainstream media to cover the news accurately and fairly: https://news.gallup.com/poll/403166/americans-trust-media-remains-near-record-low.aspx
We often lose faith in government, media, etc. after we’ve been exposed to the fact that persons in these institutions are benefiting at our expense. In other words, misaligned incentives (something we are familiar with in the Cosmos ecosystem). These problems can often be traced back to the very nature of our money. It is debt based, and the monetary policy is controlled by a few powerful individuals behind closed doors. More of this money can be issued at a moment’s notice, and it can be used to harm society while benefitting only those closest to the money printer.
So why haven’t more people turned to crypto? After all, this is supposed to be the system that promotes transparency capable of shattering corruption.
This issue was opened to start the discussion about how to attract the right people into our community, those who are aligned and want to participate as equals.
I’ll open this discussion with three different topics that hopefully we can expand on in the coming weeks/months. I Believe dissecting these topics could help bring in aligned individuals who are currently both inside and outside of crypto. But I am more so thinking about those that are still outside of crypto and mostly see the space as one big circus.
- Current cryptocurrency ecosystems don’t highlight the problems in society that have led to such distrust in today’s institutions.
Sure, we see twitter pages of protocols using the catch phrases of “finance for all” or “permissionless” from time to time. But they don’t go much further than that.
IMO, there are many valuable ecosystem participants who are missed, when protocols are only speaking to crypto-natives in their messaging. Protocols are announcing that they’ve reduced their block times by a full second, or that they have surpassed N number of transactions, or the infamous “announcement of the upcoming announcement”.
To be blunt, nobody really gives a shit. Especially those outside of crypto.
In marketing, the idea of “latent needs” is prevalent. This is the idea that users/consumers have problems that they don’t realize they have. It is up to a business/organization to shine light on these problems, so that the user/consumer understands how using a product or service benefits them. This is what we should be focusing on to onboard those who are still on the outside of crypto, looking in.
In crypto today, when someone says that a protocol doesn’t have good “marketing”, what they mean is that they aren’t paying influencers to shill them, and they aren’t dishing out money to centralized exchanges to get listed.
There appears to be a big opportunity for a protocol to completely revamp the “marketing” approach. Instead of having a social media presence that only talks about its big new partnership with an obscure crypto company that no one’s ever heard of, why not put out content that appeals to a bigger audience?
Producing simple 2-3 minute videos on Twitter covering or explaining the issues being created by the existing systems, with no mention of cryptocurrencies, would make for more shareable content. These could be done in the style of the “NowThis” group or “Afterskool” like so (I am not advocating for either of them politically. I am just referring to their delivery styles):
https://youtube.com/watch?v=3gkjWxCl6zE
This format could be used to cover things like:
How Ukrainian officials were spending 10s of millions of dollars on luxury Swiss real estate during a time the US was sending them $billions to fight a war (and the pentagon not knowing where the weapons they were sending them were ending up).
These types of clips could be attached to a thread explaining how the system we are attempting to build with ATOM1 aims to make these types of corrupt activities much more difficult.
With the stats in distrust aforementioned, we should be focused on making the ATOM1 Hub a landing spot for those who are distrustful of the status quo.
The media produced doesn’t need to be purposefully bombastic, but rather, explained clearly and concisely. Something that would be easy to send to your parents, if you were trying to get them to understand a situation.
Jae Kwon is one of the few crypto founders that is willing to talk on these sensitive subjects. We hear people call him a “conspiracy theorist” and the like. But the truth is, the majority of citizens now understand that conspiracy theories, often have at least some elements of truth. Most crypto projects seem to be bending over backward to be politically correct or virtue signal to stay in the good graces of institutions like Blackrock and the WEF, in hopes they can secure some partnerships and funding.
While there needs to be a healthy balance between being pragmatic and critical, it seems as if much of the industry has strayed too far from the original ethos of the crypto movement. We should use Jae’s track record of being willing to question things, as a badge to wear proudly, and not something we have to apologize for.
This strategy casts a wider net over the disaffected population, and we can bring them closer to a constitutional hub at a steady pace.
Of course, we need to not always approach topics from an American-centric perspective. I am just doing so because I myself am an American. This would ideally be an effort led by an international team.
If success is found in this method, we could always add additional avenues of reach. Such as, how Zerohedge has recently added debates to their arsenal.
The ATOM1 Hub should be a cultural hub as much as it is a crypto hub. It should aim to push societal issues forward, and allow people to organically find crypto as a potential solution to these problems.
- There is no meaningful commerce in current crypto ecosystems.
Guys…. Look around you! People are buying and selling items on blockchains like crazy! Well, mostly just NFTS and crypto domains. But still, it’s happening. This initiative to fork the cosmos hub is certainly a political fork. Perhaps this hub could benefit from its own “political economy”.
I believe the logical next step is some kind of commerce consumer chain. I am talking about commerce of physical goods. This could start very small, as a micro-economy, but could have the potential to grow into much more.
Of course, selling things this way isn’t very convenient for merchants. Businesses need to be able to sell their products in their local currency, so that they can pay the bills necessary to grow and sustain the operation. But if we have a Hub that has distinguished itself as something of a political/social movement, built on the foundations of prioritizing security, as in, security of an economy we are aiming to build, then that may hold some weight with aligned merchants.
For instance, I am currently in the process of setting up a farm (a real one with animals and stuff. not the crypto yield-farming stuff lol). While I know I won’t be able to sell everything I produce for crypto tokens, I would be thrilled to be able to contribute to an economy that stands on principles that I personally align with. Allocating certain items I produce as blockchain-exclusive products could serve as something unique.
Just to be clear, I’m not taking about reinventing Ross Ulbricht’s Silk Road for illegal drug commerce. I’m talking about legal consumable products. The type people order from Amazon and such.
This may sounds small and insignificant. But I think it makes an impact for two reasons:
First,
think about the nature of interactions between all of us crypto natives. It’s on Twitter, Telegram, etc. and we’re communicating behind cartoon avatars with silly user names via text. There’s certainly a feeling of disconnect there. I believe buying a few products from your crypto pals could reinforce the moral, which is certainly needed as we’re here to build + participate in an economy capable of challenging the existing dishonest economies. This is quite the task.
And who knows, in a few years, we could find ourselves doing 25% or more of our shopping on an ATOM1 consumer chain.
I would encourage you guys to check out @the_vanman_company on Instagram. They have some unique messaging, and have built up a social media following that is very fine tuned to their ethos of “most things we consume are poison”. Their eggshell tooth powder is awesome for brushing your teeth with btw 😊
But they are a good example how topics 1 and 2 tie together.
Second,
Jae Kwon mentioned in suggesting to open this issue that we should consider how to get people into our community to participate as “equals”. This is certainly tricky in today’s crypto landscape because if you aren’t a technical person you can’t contribute to a network in an equal manner. I do think however, that if we open this commerce avenue, it engages the community in a whole new way. It would encourage them to participate and feel like part of the ecosystem. This could have a network effect that is not found in any other ecosystem.
The technicals of this endeavor could be a whole ‘nother topic. What tokens could be appropriately used as money? Could/should a privacy feature be added? How do we minimize the trust issue? How would disputes be settled between merchants and purchasers (would probably have to be based off of mandatory reviews)?
- Scale voting power in favor of the delegators
At the end of the day, validators are infrastructure providers. They can certainly play politician and advocate for their yes’s and no’s on their props, but they have too much voting power in the current Dpos governance system imo. I don’t believe a voting machine voting for a delegator, should be weighted the same as that delegator actually voting. I propose that votes cast with non-voting delegator tokens, by validators, should be worth only 50-75 percent of an actual voting delegator.
I think this gives governance a better flavor. Everyone seems to have a bad taste in their mouth already with the current governance in the Cosmos. I believe this gets back into the idea of how to get people to participate as “Equals”.
I think we want to avoid people feeing like “their vote doesn’t count”. This is the feeling of our nation state systems in many regards. And this I believe, ties back into the stats of discontent and distrust mentioned earlier.
I could elaborate further on any of these 3 topics, but I believe this is enough to get the conversation started.
What are your thoughts and ideas on how to bring aligned people into the community to participate as equals?
should be worth only 50-75 percent of an actual voting delegator
is interesting. For the GovNo governance-only chain I suggested we tested this out immediately. #71 (comment)... actually to have a second proposal type, a "sentiment proposal" that gives validators 0 voting power (except their self-delegations).
This is nice because it doesn't rely on an arbitrary %... why 50 or 75%? You really need to vote, or you can miss out quick! But what about liquid democracy type solutions? Don't we want the ability to delegate? And this was the original premise, that how you delegate is how you vote. There is simplicty there as well, but we also suffer from the fact that our delegates are necessarily also validators (instead of having purely political delegates independent of validators).
The compromise you are making is interesting. If it means that air-drops and slashing are also likewise affected by the %, then it all seems fair, as long as it doesn't change. If it starts changing, then I think everything goes out the window. High high a % is allowed is how lazy one is allowed to be due to how much one can trust their delegatee. Since these are still early days for crypto it makes sense that this be relatively low, like 50%.
But for split coordination as in GovNo chain, I think we can go ahead and have no delegation at all, since all hands sound be on deck at this moment, and evertyhing is potentially new.
On further thought, I think what we want is for proposals to pass both measures... with delegation, and without. That way the validator set is in support as well as the stake base. Less than 1/3 of the validators must veto. How much of the non-delegated stake must be in support, whether a simple majority, supermajority, or "constitutional majority" isn't always clear, but requiring a supermajority for all decisions as a baseline can help minimize conflicts and keep chains conservative.
This is nice because it doesn't rely on an arbitrary %... why 50 or 75%? You really need to vote, or you can miss out quick! But what about liquid democracy type solutions? Don't we want the ability to delegate? And this was the original premise, that how you delegate is how you vote. There is simplicty there as well, but we also suffer from the fact that our delegates are necessarily also validators (instead of having purely political delegates independent of validators).
50 - 75 percent seemed to jump out at me. It still seems like it would be enough to reach quorum for most props, but is a significant enough reduction for delegators to potentially override ATOMs that are being voted with by inactive delegators. Someone better at math than me could probably figure out an appropriate solution. Maybe 66% would be best.
As far as wanting the ability to delegate the responsibility to the validator, I believe this solution still allows for that. I don't think delegators are as likely to campaigning for/against chain upgrades, as they are for/against major procedural changes like ATOM2.0.
It seems like this solution would allow for the original vision of having the ability to delegate, while placing a little less power in the politician's (validator's) hands. How much of a democracy do we have when people feel as if their votes don't count?
Of course, would still say validator's votes are worth 100% of their weight in their own self staked tokens