Thread by @benohanlon

Discussion 🆃🅷🆁🅴🅰🅳

1/ #Blockchain projects ARE startups, right?

🧠 Here's some ideas borrowed from @ttmariemia for how projects can leverage financial tools and startup philosophy to attract more devs and drive adoption

CC @DavidMRoebuck @nicknayfack

2/ A decentralized economy and its governance won’t be built in a year, or even five years

- Enigma was invented in 1923
- The first personal computer in 1971
- 1984 saw the Macintosh
- 2007 marked the first iPhone

💎 Groundbreaking innovation takes dedication and time.

3/ Are #blockchain projects #startups?

𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗽 𝗈𝗋 𝗌𝗍𝖺𝗋𝗍-𝗎𝗉

𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘯

"a human institution designed to create new products and services under conditions of extreme uncertainty"

4/ What they need for both short and long-term success is…

- auditable and measurable metrics for defining success, learnings, and pivots

- a governance system for accountability

- a scarce but secure source of operating capital

5/ Each point has a waterfall effect!

- a personal stake in the outcome (equity ownership)

- flexibility and freedom to pivot on short iteration cycles

- retention of talent and reasonable avoidance of high turnover in both the core team and its governance

6/ AND to build a proper ecosystem you have to reduce barriers to entry for developers.

- pay them for their time spent learning

- make it easy and quick to apply for grants

7/ REMEMBER developers pay up-front to learn a new codebase and apply for grants.

- have a public framework for that work you want to fund/ see

- have a public system of collecting and recording metrics for each project

- celebrate failures, but obsessively capture learnings

8/ #Blockchain projects need auditable metrics to justify continued access to stable capital in order to have flexibility and freedom to pivot

Consensus on metrics is paramount; if the community, the developers, and anyone else doesn't agree with your metrics they're useless

9/ IMPORTANT

Consensus, as it relates to governance, is not about agreeing on the outcomes for the crypto project

It's about agreeing on the metrics that define success

10/ Three A’s of Metrics: Actionable, Accessible, Auditable

Actionable - demonstrate clear cause and effect, otherwise, it’s a vanity metric

Accessible - make the report as simple as possible so that everyone can read them

Auditable - ensure that data is credible

11/ Account for a startup's uncertainty factor by;

- stage-gating grant money by releasing funds based on achievement of key milestones

- provide coaching and support to startups; the quicker they can learn the more likely they'll build something useful"

12/ Get creative on how you fund projects

🧰 Leverage tools to grow unspent funds through strategic investments

✨ Instead of burning or capping Dev Funding, it could go to a fund managed by a financial advisor who would invest in businesses, stocks, etc to earn ROI

13/ Be strategic

You could dictate that investments had to grow the ecosystem in a way that benefitted the cryptocurrency.

For example: if we want permissioned transactions to go mainstream, maybe we invest in cell phone companies that build phones on top of 5G tech

14/ THE END

Credit to @ttmariemia's ideas borrowed from her @ZcashFoundation @ElectricCoinCo proposal on Medium. Give her some claps! CC: @derek_hsue @nic__carter @zooko medium.com/coinmonks/refr… $ZEC

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