@garyschulte I currently am approaching where you were when you first started. I’ve just figured out where all the relevant discord/github/youtube/fellowship resources are that could help me learn protocol testing. Now, I get to start learning the stuff.
It was encouraging to read your perspective!
Does not matter, how you do that. You can just calculate eth paid/earned.
Point is - Ethereum is decentralized marketplace of doing distributed ledger records, and you cannot build decentralized marketplace by having centralized actors controlling development process of it.
On any marketplace there are service providers & customers.
What we are building is a protocol that allows these true core ecocystem players to have a voice and form bottom-up process.
I don’t know any better ideas how to solve this, and frankly, I don’t think anyone has.
@beylin, what’s the self-interest incentive to do this?
I think especially in the American business mindset it is considered weak or undesirable to be honest, frank and negative online. We have some Ethereum-related influencers who don’t shy away from being real, but I think even those are considered odd balls in many circles. Their reputation has taken a hit.
Based on my personal experience, when I was posting negatively on Farcaster I almost ended up getting ostracised.
I think the fact that Anoncast was popular for a while just showed how much self-censorship is necessary to be part of that community. It’s sad honestly for an ecosystem that prides itself on being “censorship resistant.” Is Anoncast the right tool here already or could there be a cultural innovation that lets everyone within Ethereum speak more freely? I’d favor if we’d discover a cultural innovation!
I personally think it is important that people don’t self-censor with their real identity. I constantly self-censor for various reasons. I’m trying to change this ofc.
At the same time, in our space, you have this self-promoting meme of “we can all be like Satoshi, we’ll argue anonymously so that our argument has to be refuted based on its quality, not by questioning our integrity/motivation.” So I think many people will say that being anon = gud.
Is fixing the issues as simple as you say?
- “Bravery should be celebrated publicly:” Maybe I’m too pessimistic looking back but I don’t think this is currently happening. Within tech gladly it is happening, e.g. Pirate Wires and All-In podcast really celebrate bravery and entrepreneurship. But this meme hasn’t reached crypto yet IMO. And also these podcasts are political overloaded so many people may not like them for their politics.
- “healthy immune response to sociopathic tendencies and centralizing power:” This is tricky in practice IMO. A hit dog will holler and often those with power are stronger than those who complain about an accumulation of power. At times when I went against power concentrations I’d always get hit back too. Some people are outright crazy, e.g., they pose as super threatening, or they DM my home address, etc., “just going against them” IMO is not easily implementable as a collective immune reaction.
Would love for you to get into the specifics here
I agree that we should strive for openness. There was a moment a few months ago when people started being very vocal about things they don’t like about EF. My impression so far is that the EF listened, so it was worth it. But it took many months or even years of frustration to reach the critical mass that made people vent.
The challenge is - how to keep this culture going so you don’t have to wait for the straw that breaks the camel’s back. I personally don’t know any bigger (1,000+ people) organization that has such a culture, because at some point sharing dissenting opinions under your name is an asymmetric bet with a small upside and a huge potential downside.
But maybe there are some organizations that do it well - then it’d be useful to examine them and try to apply it to Ethereum. But even if we manage to do it, it’d take time. So in the meantime, I think having anon accounts is a useful, internet-native way to solve the problem. I wish that we didn’t have to do it, but this is where we’re at.
BTW great post!
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Well what needs to be done is governance.
All major blockchains except ETH have governance and voting.