【New Standards For Judging the Quality of Web 3.0 Projects】Trust in community governance

New Standards For Judging the Quality of Web 3.0 Projects

2. Trust in community governance          

Introduction

Web 3.0 is also called Web3. There is a difference between the two concepts in the eyes of professionals, and this article does not make a distinction. As for the difference between Web3 and web2 projects, simply put, Web3 has more data ownership than Web2. Most Web3 projects are open-source and lack patent protection, making them easy to imitate. It is very common for dozens of imitation projects to appear at once. For example, after the Bitcoin BRC20 protocol came out, thousands of issuance projects suddenly emerged using this open-source protocol. These projects are a dazzling mix of good and evil.

Web3's coin issuance projects generally issue coins and circulate them in the early stages. The circulation of coins is equivalent to listing. As professional investors, it isn't easy to judge the value of earlier projects. So, how should ordinary retail investors evaluate this? Is there a relatively simple way?

The competitive environments of Web3 and Web2 are similar but also different. In this competitive environment, new judgment criteria are also needed in addition to the commonly used project judgment criteria of Web2.

Web3 emphasizes trustlessness, which does not mean that trust is not required but that it places higher requirements on trust, such as machine-level trust. In a world where the devil and hope coexist, obtaining trust is obviously a vital issue, leading to a new trust judgment mechanism that web2 does not have. This article describes the unique trust mechanism of Web3 from four perspectives: initiative trust, community trust, influence trust, and white paper trust.

2. Trust in community governance    

The evolution of the cryptocurrency community

Community use begins with the Bitcoin system. Satoshi Nakamoto has been in the Cryptopunk mailing list group since he was young, and he has a feel for the community. After Bitcoin was released in November 2009, the Bitcoin Forum was launched. Then, the Bitcoin technical community was established on the open-source project hosting platform GitHub, which has always been a place for Bitcoin technical exchanges. The most valuable progress was the Bitcoin Improvement Protocol (BIP) launch, which standardized technical discussions. After Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared, the Bitcoin forum gradually declined because it had no profit model and relied entirely on the support of volunteers, making it difficult to maintain as an interest community.

The technical community of Bitcoin is the exchange between computing power parties and programmers. In essence, computing power parties are the direct users of the Bitcoin system. Computing power parties as users differ from users who mainly engage in transactions. User's rights in transactions differ from those in the stock market. But in fact, users who hold Bitcoin have no say in the development of Bitcoin. The power of currency holders is not as great as that of retail investors in the stock market. The Bitcoin forum cannot represent users' rights, so declining is natural. Ethereum is different. It is a platform with three parties: the program party, the accounting party, and the user. The coin-holding users here are not dispensable because there are many projects on the Ethereum platform, and competition for users has begun. Users have become the most popular, and users participate in governance. It is a vast improvement for the community. This kind of community is more like a reflection of our current social structure.

Does Ethereum have actual controllers, right?

Ethereum retains the idea of Bitcoin's improvement proposal, called the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP). The processing of proposals is called governance, divided into off-chain and on-chain governance. On-chain governance embeds governance content directly into the blockchain, allowing automated token-based voting. Ethereum is more of an off-chain governance, coordinating issues that cannot be handled on the chain through the Ethereum Foundation. Off-chain governance is an unequal treatment, and the result does not depend on the number of coins held. Although there is a consultation mechanism, it is, to some extent, a "dictatorship" of the Ethereum Foundation. Is this right? For determining technical issues, user voting is not appropriate; anyone can figure it out for matters of interest, so it is feasible to implement on-chain voting. Ethereum is different from Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a mature project, so it does not require much change. If Ethereum 2.0 is launched another year later, the Ethereum platform may be in trouble. There is no Satoshi Nakamoto in the Bitcoin community, right? Wrong. Because the Bitcoin user community is wholly wasted. It is part of the work that Bitcoin has not done. It does not have a community of Bitcoin holders, so Bitcoin will not necessarily win over fiat currencies. Bitcoin is an ownerless system. It is challenging for an ownerless system to defeat the US dollar, armed to the teeth. If, under the same evolutionary conditions, Bitcoin still has a chance, but the competition conditions are unequal, the battle between Bitcoin and the US dollar will become an issue of uncertainty. For this, you can refer to the "Bitcoin USD Standard" topic on the chainless website (chainless.hk). Ethereum has an actual controller whose influence is restricted by the technical community, and Ethereum also has a foundation annual report. Their community governance and "dictatorship" are well combined. It's unclear how it will go, but it can currently gain trust in community governance. There is not only one unified model for community governance. What applies to Bitcoin may not necessarily apply to Ethereum. It is difficult to evaluate who is right and who is wrong. At this stage, the existence of Vitalik in Ethereum has more advantages than disadvantages.

The cryptocurrency community has enormous room for innovation

Since Satoshi Nakamoto did not have a good idea for the community, there is a lot of room for community innovation in cryptocurrency in the future. The current cryptocurrency community Distributed Autonomous Organization (DAO) is unlearned. I wrote, "What Satoshi Nakamoto didn't think of, what he didn't say..." Series Four: The Cryptocurrency Community Has a Long Way to Go" (chainless.hk) explains the reasons in detail. "Dao has no actual controller that can be seen 'on the surface.' For this kind of DAO, Ethereum's Vitalik also joined the chorus. It is unknown for what purpose, but his Ethereum project does not use DAO, which must be a fact. DAO may be used for small and specific things, but some small things sound beautiful, and the possibility of success is not high. In fact, the gap between the level of the cryptocurrency community and the Web2 community is getting wider and wider. cryptocurrency users have gone to Twitter, Telegram, Reddit, and Discord platforms to communicate." The article explains the community issues in detail for readers' reference.

The level of community usage is a criterion for measuring Web3 projects

Cryptocurrency not only changes productivity but also improves production relations. This is the slogan that attracted the author to the field of cryptocurrency. How can to improve production relations? Why do traditional companies lose? These are all inseparable from community factors. Regarding how the community promotes the revolution of production relations, we will introduce the business model of the decentralized standard currency DW20 and the chainless system. There is a simple standard to evaluate whether the cryptocurrency community is effective and whether the project is a Web3 project.

The use of communities is the advantage of Web3. It's easy to distinguish company projects from community projects by the core team size. Among companies with the same market capitalization, Netflix has a core team (company) of 10,000 people, Changpeng Zhao's Binance has 6,000 people, YouTube has 1,000 people, and Ethereum has less than 50 people. It is said that more than 10,000 technical personnel are developing around the Ethereum platform. They are connected through community governance. A good Web3 project has good community governance. More than 80% of blockchain projects do not have a good community and use blockchain ledger technology. Observing the community's understanding and application of the project is necessary. If a project does not clearly describe the community where it is easiest to achieve innovation in the white paper, it means that the team is just a technical team. Its probability of failure is very high. Because without a community, there would be no Web3 project.

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