This is an inevitable and accelerating consequence of the basic incentive design of the system to which you are a leading contributor.
The economic gravity of $DOT is steadily sucking air out of the room like a black hole at the centre of the ecosystem.
The ‘community’ stumble on the roadmap and then Parity/Fellowship absorbs the talent, resources and ideas into the singularity.
This is not a criticism of Parity, just an observation per the conclusion to The state of DotSama.
You can see this effect everywhere when you recognise the pattern - see Polkadot App for onboarding will have a similar effect due to scope creep on ‘community’ apps such as Nova.
The great irony is that this is the Web2 playbook playing out in the home of Web3 per Chris Dixon’s famous post “Why Decentralisation Matters”.
Centralized platforms follow a predictable life cycle. When they start out, they do everything they can to recruit users and 3rd-party complements like developers, businesses, and media organizations. They do this to make their services more valuable, as platforms (by definition) are systems with multi-sided network effects. As platforms move up the adoption S-curve, their power over users and 3rd parties steadily grows.
When they hit the top of the S-curve, their relationships with network participants change from positive-sum to zero-sum. The easiest way to continue growing lies in extracting data from users and competing with complements over audiences and profits.
Where this leads
In the end, the incentives lead in only one direction… to all the air being sucked out of the room.
Unless it’s not obvious, long term this isn’t a good look for anyone.
Here’s a useful visual metaphor.
What can be done?
Acknowledging the issue is one thing, knowing what to do about it is another.
The two most powerful forces in existence are $DOT and Coretime Demand.
The ONLY thing that will mediate the crushing power of basic incentives will be a necessary resistance.
This will come from consolidating talent, resources and capital into something approaching a rebel alliance through a strategy known as “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
These groups will then play positive sum games related to driving coretime demand see Rethinking incentives with coretime bounties, collectives and recoupable loans
All else is rearranging deckchairs on the titanic.
The good news
On a positive note, in Web2, there is no way to achieve this balance at scale.
Nor is there any practical way to iterate towards this in Bitcoin or Ethereum.
In this ecosystem, with the tools, talent and resources at our disposal we have a chance to buck the trend… to do so is the ultimate validation of a Web3 thesis. There is a lot at stake.