Towards self-governance

If we're heading towards a decentralised world, more will be at stake than ever before for the online communities that inhabit it. A core problem involves the need to facilitate broad-based and representative decision-making within these communities. Contribution-weighted governance enfranchises community stakeholders and allows for healthy growth.

The new polling and donuts features on the sub have been added as a way to experiment with one form of community-based decision making. They reflect the motivations behind previous attempts to try this out (ethtrader dao and then the r/recdao project). A core component in these was a karma derived token. While it can be improved upon, sub specific karma is a reasonable proxy for contribution. This metric represents "work" that can be leveraged to do sybil-resistant governance.

My own interest in the Ethereum project is based largely in the belief that people should have influence in the systems that affect them. While polling & donuts don't use Ethereum as the r/recdao project did (could they?), they offer other advantages. Iteration and feature development happen fast. And being integrated into Reddit means the user experience can be first class. These new features are a great opportunity for this sub and also for the wider understanding of how to optimise for healthy online communities.

My role

As a moderator my first and most important principle is to allow free expression of ideas. In support of this there is also a duty to protect against spam and manipulation. While we all influence what this sub looks like when we vote on content, give feedback, and vote in governance polls, my own desire is to see r/ethtrader:

• promote the Ethereum project and ecosystem
• encourage and support sound and reasoned investments and strategies
• be welcoming and entertaining
• explore ways to improve itself
• decentralise itself
• be self governed

I'm happy to expand on any of the above - just ask in the comments. Thanks for reading!

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