Substrate ecology v0.2

TL:DR

Current communication of what is / isn’t a Common Good Parachain - is unclear. This is to expected, but the impacts of these emerging definitions has real impact, on historic development and moving forward and so a definitive effort to share the current thinking of those definitions is vital.

Outcomes

Clarity is needed on the context, terminology, lexicon, parameters and narratives of Substrate’s emerging ecology, even if it highlights irreconcilable tensions between some parachains and emerging common good infrastructure.

That’s what this Substrate ecology aims to begin framing.

From here, we can all better understand the challenges, tensions and opportunities…

Further

Substrate is a technology, but what it enables are more akin to social networks - digital organisations within some bounded on-chain range who are each aiming to survive - by being economically sustainable, operationally useful and culturally relevant.

Problem

So what I’m trying to address is that there are some generally communicated categories of parachain such as Relays, Common Good, System and Parathreads (as you add).

These are both technical platforms that offer different functions and lifecycles per @rphmeier

The multi-chain of tomorrow consists of blockchains that scale and shrink on demand. It contains ephemeral chains spawned by on-chain factories, spun up by contracts and imbued with automated purpose - to complete their work a few hours later and disappear. Our goal in Web3 is not to maximize the number of blockchains. - Blockspace over blockchains

But the tech then becomes adopted within social systems - which also introduces new vectors of development, purpose and evolution that are not predictable, though they can be directed to a certain extent via governance.

As I understood it, originally CGPs did not have tokens, this has since changed.

Then there are the Free Market Parachains.

This categorisation tends to produce economic models that are good for pitching to retail and lead to hypey headlines and the locking up of relay tokens through slot auctions, but may struggle to sustain without financial support.

As I understood it, originally FMPs did not have the right (via social convention) of proposing funding to relay treasuries, this seems to be changing… or is certainly a subject of heated debate.

We’re seeing issues emerge around the Snowfork CGP funding proposal.

The rationale behind the need for common good parachains is that the use case will benefit projects and users across the ecosystem, but the fact that it is not economically viable ensures that it will not be built and implemented unless granted a parachain. The fact that both Darwinia and Composable have built or are building trustless Ethereum bridges demonstrates that there is no need for a common good parachain. At this stage of the game, it would be unfair competition to existing projects that have been building with community support and investment. It’s completely inappropriate.

TBH i think snowfork is exactly the type of project that should receive funding, but since there is no agreed framwork for assessing the relative merits of different chains, nor structures to frame arguments, and how funding may be available to under certain conditions.

Obviously this becomes infinitely more messy with Gov2 - though perhaps more definitive answers will only come through on-chain mandates and precedent?

I also think it would be good if you spent time to write down more comprehensively what you see as columns on the table. I assume the definitions with question marks are not perfectly clear to you?

Yes, am working on that, its just a much longer post, so wanted to share a first outline.

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