Video: devolution + safe

Apps
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I’ve uploaded a video about an app i’m developing using SAFE. Feedback welcome.

DEVOLUTION is an open-source application designed to build communities and give them more political autonomy. It enables communities to vote for officials and finance services. Revenue comes from the casino, ads and an unofficial Land Value Tax (LVT). All revenue is redistributed in the form of Social Credits, which are used to finance services or top-up Health/Education Credits. It has a built in education section, job search, and various other features.

EDIT: I’ll probably scrap the casino as i’m don’t think i’ll be able to verify the age or the participants. Instead, the app will charge a small amount of money to vote, which will be redistributed in the form of Social Credits. This will also serve as an additional method for preventing SPAM votes.

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I don’t have time to watch right now, can you write a quick summary about your app? :slight_smile:

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Sure i’ve updated the post

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Thanks, it sounds very interesting. Will check it out!

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Very nice looking SAFE-site with alot of great functions, very welll done. Like where it shows how to develop sites and also register business, education and building houses. You have put alot of thought and effort into that site. I visualise political autonomy maybe something for countries which not have well developted or functioning political-, social-, healthinstitutions and so on, I can’t comment more than that because I don’t have enough knowlege about the problems where this kind of political autonomy could be needed. If possible it would be nice with also adding a shorter video which visualise overview of the SAFE-sites highlights.

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Still watching the video but this looks amazing Glen. Seems like a great project and it’s great to see a site taking full advantage of the DOM API’s. Do you have a Twitter or site that you would like people to subscribe or be directed to?? I’d be happy to tweet about this from the JAMSplayer account. I’ll pop some popcorn and back to watching!

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Thanks Nigel. I haven’t got a website or twitter account. Only my github account https://github.com/glensimister/givemecredit

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Made a couple tweets if folks wouldn’t mind helping circulating with me? :slightly_smiling_face:

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Great. Thanks a lot Nigel :wink:

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@Glen_Simister this idea is interesting! And it’s so vast. Sounds like it aims to build a community of people (like a sort of online society) and a global system of services to offer to them. Like a portal of health/social/entertaining/business resources available to users. I think it’s a very ambitious project, will be interesting to see how it develops through the time :raised_hands: :clap:

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It looks really nice @Glen_Simister! I am very curious about a few aspects:
1- How are you envisioning that communities would manage the bridge between what it’s being done on the app and on the real world, I’ve been trying to understand this aspect on other projects like e.g. DAO or any other things that are supposed to be possible with smart contracts. How do you imagine this can be done? and I’m asking from a completly naive angle as I love the idea of smart contracts for many things but cannot really get to a point where I see it in practical terms yet.
2- Perhaps related to previous one, are you imagining that smart contract would be needed for the parts where you donate safecoins and what you get back based on the credits you have for things like the land projects? I may be getting this wrong though…
3- I checked very briefly your code and I see you effectively have some code using the SAFE API, would you be able to share your experience in trying to learn and make use of the APIs, e.g. where did you start, did you use any of our tutorials, and if so, did you find them useful? what resources mainly helped you with this?

I found the sound level of your voice a bit too low, I tthought it was me but the noises coming from the casino page are much louder.

EDIT: I’m just thinking if we could eventually use this app, on the SAFE Network for our CEP :wink:

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Thanks @Future Yeh perhaps a bit too ambitious for someone who still only know how to use jQuery :grin:. Ideally i would like to crowdfund the project and pay some pros to do the work.

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Thanks @bochaco I can’t write a lot write now because i’m already on beer #4 so i’ll get back to you with more details in the (late) morning :wink:

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I would love both versions of the answers though, with and without beers :joy:

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I’m so ideologically aligned with this project :heart_eyes: Please follow this through because this is what the world needs!

I love the land and housing section where you can purchase land as a group and buy modular like building parts to assemble structures. The whole thing is really brilliant. Great work @Glen_Simister

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In terms of bridging the gap between the app and the real world, it’s the sort of thing that will start slowly but could potentially grow very quickly. For example, let’s say that a community with a population of 5,000 people were to start using the application. They could very quickly buy some land, wrestle with the local authorities, and install some housing modules, solar panels, shower block etc. People could then use the application to register the land and pay the monthly “tax” back into the application. As someone who has lived in a caravan i would definitely be up for this. So now there’s “tax” money going into the application, which can be used to develop and expand the community. I’m particularly focused on land because here in the UK we have a huge concentration of land ownership. I think around 1% of the population own around 80% of land. Naturally, a lack of space and high living costs will put society under unnecessary pressure.

With regards to Smart Contracts, they’re not 100% necessary for the local stuff but for any national or international features, I think they would need to be used. For the local features it would work something like this…

People use the app to elect a local IT official/company. The local official will clone the app, and their name and post/zip code will be a part of the URL e.g. safe://devolution.bobsmith.uk.tq10. People who live in that post/zip code will use this URL. The local IT official has control over how it works and has access rights to certain parts of the app. This allows them to make changes to the code and install updates. Community members can elect a new official, who will clone the app, and redirect members to the new URL e.g. safe://devolution.janejackson.uk.tq10. Now Jane will have the access rights. The restricted areas/datasets can be used to store the encryption/decryption keys which can be used to verify certain operations such as redeeming credits, generating random numbers for the slot machine, or verifying correct answers when a user sits a course. I don’t know how to do any of the permissions/crypto stuff yet so i’m open to any advice or info. I hope that makes a sense (it sort of does to me).

Regarding the SAFE API stuff, I posted this a couple of weeks back… My attempt at a simple CRUD app (safe://simple.crud)

If I get a chance I’ll update/improve the CRUD app and make a youtube tutorial for newbs like me.

EDIT: yeh sorry about the sound quality. The slot machine sounds were way too loud. I may need to put a warning on the vid :grin: What I will probably do is do what @tobbetj suggested and make a shorter video and sort out the sound levels.

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Thanks Glen for making this very ambitious project.

First I watch video and thought, that one group/community is for people from different places or countries and now you explained, that it is mostly for certain location like village.

What are benefits for people lived in one community ?

So one option is, that people will have secure place to make deals and can decide to together grow vegetables on small collective garden ?

It is interesting to need gamble to visit a doctor. In UK exist some online medical service already ?

I will follow your project.

Good luck.

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I probably didn’t explain this very well as i haven’t yet formalized the best way to do it. For now i’m only really focusing on local communities but i want it to include versions for national and international communities. However, they will have different features.

Let’s say, for example, there are 4 applications which are interconnected through APIs. e.g…
safe://devolution.int // international
safe://devolution.business.int // business
safe://devolution.uk/ // national
safe://devolution.bobsmith.uk.tq10 //local

Naturally, the international version will include the social media platform as it uses linked data + webIds, which are built into SAFE.

The business app provides business registration, profiles, scoring and reviews. You can apply for jobs, receive (paid) direct marketing emails, and upload ideas using GiveMeCredit alternative patenting system.

The national version will include voting, funding national services, and the healthcare section (where private service providers can register and be found).

The community version will include all features.

I still have a lot of things to think about. If we put enough heads together we could revolutionize the political landscape. I think the SafeNetwork alone will be a massive step forward :wink:

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Thanks @Glen_Simister, Devolution is a powerful idea and your demo very impressive, and effective in showing what might be achieved. The UX looks really good, logical, comprehensive and I think, the result of lots of hard work, and obvious skill! I wish I had your ability with front end work.

I only watched about half of the video, so I apologise if anything I ask is covered there. I didn’t want to sit through the politics, relevant though it is, I think it is a distraction from what you are creating and what Devolution can enable. So I may have missed stuff in the second half.

I’m interested to hear more about the background - how you got here and where here is, and what’s next.

So… how long have you been working on this and how long has there been a demo - it feels so polished both in terms of the ideas, scope and the demo, that I imagine you’ve been working on it for a while. Like Maidsafe!

Did you model it on anything wrt intentional community etc?

I wonder how it has developed and what you’ve learned along the way, whether you’ve had help, how you built it and why. What else is needed and how you plan to go about that?

It’s so ambitious I imagine it may need some smaller incarnations to grow both in capability and in people’s awareness. Do you think?

An area that springs to mind is as a vehicle for online collaboration on software to start with. There have been a few initiatives in that area, including on this forum, but they don’t seem to stay the course. Sometimes this is to do with a lack of people with time or focus, but maybe there are other reasons why this is hard too. Another example that I recall is I think called CollectiveOne, but its a while since I looked at that. Have you looked at those kind of initiatives?

I’m really not sure how something like this gets of the ground, but it’s an awesome project, good luck. :slight_smile:

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This sounds to me like an excelent example of how the versioning on only-appendable immutable data system can be used, i.e. the URL wouldn’t need to really change but just the version you are pulling from the same URL.

I actually meant that probably your voice was too low level, but I’m not a video/sound expert :slight_smile: I just had to turn the volume of my laptop to the max to hear you.

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