Concretely, using native substrate tools, resources and talent to build both internally relevant and externally valuable R&D functions - innovation labs, that start small, but ultimately are able to draw in multidisciplinary talent, on foundations that enable more fluid exploration due to the emerging potential we have for more liquid forms of funding, democracy and organisation.
We’re not there yet, but we can get there see Root - our in discussion approach to on-chain decision-making, talent recruitment and collective formation which is born of the kind of on-chain experimentation I’m suggesting we need more of.
The primary insight is that those contributing within the emerging polkadot ecology of interdependent and cooperative networks are in fact within an entirely new philosophical, social and therefore design domain, hence why projects pattern matching to Ethereum or other L1s is a losing hand.
In the same way, those looking to fund products via treasuries are appealing to a relatively general audience - voters who may hold stake, but who are naturally more comfortable approving practical and relatable concepts that are ‘proven out’. This is again why the trend is towards a lot of very similar ideas that make sense, but lack an experimental nature, since people focus on metrics that likely don’t matter since they are backwards looking - rooted in the systems we’re trying to replace.
- How many views?
- How many subscribers?
- How active is your discord or twitter?
If we take the position we don’t know what the right metrics are, we begin to focus on exploration - being open minded to what we can compose, rather than getting stuck in endless circular debates about the amount of money and the results, we can free ourselves to find more novel areas and audiences.
I completely agree, but its an even bigger point than just the software and security side. Its philosophically, culturally and organisationally as well - e.g. if Messari were to become a collective within the ecosystem, and they brought their talent within that arena, and experienced the tech and the tools and the funding from the inside out, their experience and therefore output would be completely different.
To reassert the original point, the foundations of the ecosystem are in fact capable of bootstrapping entirely new and original media platforms, forms and narratives.
There are a range of interesting creative teams like RMRK, Joystream and Subsocial building the foundations of sovereign publishing operations whose output goes far beyond the capabilities of a group such as Messari.
These creative projects are the signal for onboarding more experimental creators, academics and technologists for whom price speculation is not the driving motivation. This powers a flywheel for delivering far more artistic projects that will likely interpret the tools in ways that more financially focused talent wouldn’t, since that starting point necessarily filters a world view through a purely economic lense.
This lateral approach is what effective polkadot education will look like - it’s creative contribution, cooperation and play, that unlocks new knowledge, creating foundations for creative output that will be far more interesting, inspiring and ultimately original, than the standard marketing approaches we currently see, and ultimately bootstraps use of the underlying tech in the process.
To achieve this we need to double down on multidisciplinary applied R&D orgs (collectives) that are upstream of the treasuries and therefore voters, that can enable way more experimentation - for example an on-chain media innovation lab - imagine if MIT media lab was born and raised onchain. This is where I’ve spent the majority of my career, and has been the primary focus of our experimentation in Edgeware - the projects funded / bootstrapped there are examples of weird stuff that likely wouldn’t be approved in KSM and DOT simply because it was unloved and deemed worthless due to its relatively low valuation and standing.
Ultimately this convo leads to why I kickstarted the following post - Ecosystem conventions around the funding of R&D by on-chain treasuries. Will respond to your comments there.
Completely agree - real world needs. Actual impact that people can see + feel. Imo, the simplest way is through direct funding - e.g. people earning, or receiving some benefit via local public services facilitated by the tech. If we start in local economies, this can remain experimental, but connect globally and scale from there - tagging @olanod who is developing tools + tech for this.