Questions for the Polkadot Community

[replghost]

Hey!

@batman

There is a social cost to taking any sort of risk to do anything of value and it’s a feature, not a bug.

I think maybe I wasn’t being clear enough with the way I put things. I’m not trying to say any of these things are good or bad - it’s neither a feature nor a bug. It’s a very valid opinion to say that the social cost is a good thing, and I can see many reasons why it is so. It’s just as important to understand the deficiencies of such a setup, because that may work against the larger goals.

It’s more that we need to understand how the system works in practice to see how we can adjust for different behaviors and outcomes, so that we can iterate towards a better system.

Are we doing well enough today to get to the following outcome:

@shawntabrizi

Polkadot should be a place where people can find success for themselves. This attitude of a “gold rush”, like when people build a startup in Silicon Valley is good. It attracts high quality builders, high quality products, and as a result high quality users. We must show the world that Polkadot will reward impactful results. That you can still become a DOT whale even if you missed on the ICO. That Polkadot can be a place for you to fund your work, build a business, and change the world. We must reward handsomely, and let the market decide the winners. Not use our resources to keep projects/ideas on life support.

Probably not, so we should figure out where to adjust.

@batman

Is this still true for most proposals after the Decentralized Voices program?

Yes, very much so

@batman

Again, reward being tied to risk is a feature, not a bug. There are lower risk, lower reward ways of contributing to the ecosystem by starting small or joining existing teams.

I agree, there are many ways to get involved. But again, I’m not talking about whether one way is a “feature” or a “bug” - instead, are we (Polkadot) getting the results out of the system that we want today (status quo)? If the system is ok today, then no changes are needed. Alternatively, maybe we just need education or encouragement for people to contribute more. Perhaps we need to do a deeper dive into why people are or are not contributing more. Whatever path we go down, risk being tied to reward should still be the case.

@batman

When you say “standards of what gets funded” - do you mean that the needs of the ecosystem evolve or something else? If it’s the former, it seems like a good thing.

I don’t mean the “needs of the ecosystem” as there is no way to get consensus on that at the present. I just mean factors such as the level of detail/specification required in proposals, the hourly rates, the commitment to open source, the focus on hourly-based actions vs impact.