Video: devolution + safe

Apps
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Yeh everything (including ad revenue) will be redistributed in the form of Social Credits. There’s no way for me to directly profit from the app.

I (the app) may also charge a small amount for voting. This could provide an additional layer of security by preventing SPAM votes. I looked into this before, but I was concerned about creating barriers to entry. However, when we vote for something, we need to fund it anyway.

EDIT: I also want the profits from all successful farming attempts made by the app to go back into Social Credits…yet another complication.

There’s so much to think about. I still need to figure out how to do Smart Contracts on SAFE. In other words, I need a section of the application which nobody can modify, which has unique permissions to write to an MD, and can sign any operations it performs. As mentioned before, it’s not 100% necessary, but really helpful for certain features. Perhaps one of the core dev’s can provide advice on the subject?

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Hey @Glen_Simister, fantastic and very inspiring project you have. It’s very ambitious and you have done a great deal of work. Good to see :slight_smile:

I agree that gamification is potent for engagement, and also agree that it would be desirable to maybe shift towards something with a bit more inherent meaning in it.

I’ll try look at this from fundamental view:

We’re basically talking about a digital tax here. Some might oppose to that term, but for the sake of the discussion, let’s call it that for now.

Anything that can be done on this digital platform, and where it isn’t obvious that it absolutely should not require any payment whatsoever, can have this tax.

This opens up a lot of possibilities.

Anything from dating apps to invoicing services, book keeping, legal advice, Airbnb, Ubers and so on…

So, I don’t think there’s a lack of sources for the tax. But from a system design perspective, there’s a lot to consider.

It seems to me all these features would not be feasible to provide from a single provider, for various reasons. That leads me to think that the system should be modular in a way that independent services can integrate with it.

That way there can be n different invoicing service providers, developed and maintained by independent actors, and they can all hook into this digital system of yours (the platform) and community members can choose to use any or all of them.

So that way the developers of the platform do not need to race with competition, do not need to be experts in 1000 different business areas, and always try to keep community members staying with the built in service instead of some other one.

But there needs to be some clear benefit, reason, path for these services to hook up to the platform, so that they naturally tend to do that.

So, this system is supposed to be scoped to a physical location, a community, and then there’s also the question if there might be nested communities, i.e. within a precinct or some current bureaucratic delineation (which might map naturally onto a single community instance of this platform)? Will people go together in neighbourhoods as well? How do the different nested levels interact, should that be taken into consideration somehow?

As for “Smart Contracts”, this is an area I’ve been specifically interested in within SAFENetwork.
Multi-sig is coming (and as an explicitly non-quotable estimate gave it; perhaps in alpha-4), which would allow for some of this.
If you want realtime computation which do not rely on participants to be online, then there’s the route of forming a computation network, with secure membership and a consensus protocol.
So, how that would look like is for example that client machines can run an executable, just like we run the SAFE Vault, where they connect and form a network (much in the same way), but instead of network agreed logic on storing data, it could be anything that your system needs to perform.

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I checked out your gitter discussion link and discussion with Melvin and in particular your comments re solid/safe value exchange & solid vulnerabilities without safe. I also noticed that mediaprophet aka Tim Holborn/Ubiquitious was also engaged in the conversation. Have you met Tim H? Tim was 1 of 5 people who started https://www.w3.org/community/credentials/2014/08/06/call-for-participation-in-credentials-community-group/ with Melvin and was involved in other w3 foundational work with Tim BL e.g. RDF, semantically interlinked online communities (SIOC) etc. Interestingly you and Tim are 2 of 36 in Tim BL’s address book pod demo at the 2018 Dweb conference.

I note and agree 100% with your gitter solid chat comment “So not so much about data ownership - at least for onboarding - later that can be the icing on the cake for some. Instead I think we show developers and early adopters the benefits of Solid apps: apps that can use each other’s data are more powerful, and will become more focused on delivering what users need rather than on harvesting their data and attention. “
I have recently connected with Tim an Aussie. We are working to align his knowledge banking model`which my ULB (universal lifebank/knowledge model) & CommunityLink open data ecology (CODE) network model. My objective is to deploy an integrated solid/safe(plume/drive/github)/solidpay engineering solution via Project “Sensors” (safe enterprise node solid regenerative system) to the Redland “enterprise” smart city and a Health Access solution as a systemic start point for both safe and solid. As part of our discussions I have provided Tim i. the link to your designing safe/solid social networks discussion with Hunter Lester and his comment re the difficulty “to try and convince SOLID people that they are building on a vulnerable stack and move over to SAFE.” ii. introduced the work you have done with safeplume as the basis for a “sensors” architecture/testnet discussion to deliver to the CODE au national IOT business case introduced previously.

Tim has introduced me to John Bruce to demo how the CODE model can provide a commercial path to market for Inrupt (with a model similar to maidsafe). I’m working on that communication. I’m keen to define/show how the current work underway by yourself, Melvin, Tim H, Maidsafe with RDF etc and others can deliver to/be leveraged by the CODE model, business case and investment case which provides the commercial/systemic incentive “for solid to move over to safe” (or create a “Sensors” server – solid/safe stack?). I note your later gitter comment “I’m certainly one who has been prevented from doing more experimentation because each time I’ve delved into Solid or Solid server etc, I’ve encountered one problem or another, and I only have limited time”. It would be great for you and Tim to connect. Happy to provide an intro and context as appropriate.

The Devolution app looks terrific and might provide the NFP CDC (Community Development Centre) smart city operator with the natural stepping stone path to our community imarket interoperable physical & virtual community vision… smart cities providing the starting point to create a sustainable network of communities through the safenetwork with systemic revenues streams.

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Hi @happybeing - I was contacted by Ian / @CommunityLink pre-christmas and have been helping him get a grasp of the ecosystem constituents / frameworks, etc…

It might be useful for you to connect with @CommunityLink as to get a good understanding as to where he is at, what his up to; and what it is he is trying to achieve. He seems to be very committed to helping safe make meaningful progress…

Timo.

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@Glen_Simister the concept of employing an economic mechanism via voting charges, is interesting…

How are you planning on modelling this?

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@ubiquitous I’m not 100% sure yet but i guess I would like to replicate the way the safenetwork charges for write operations. Of course, I can also charge for other stuff such posting updates etc. Providing users realize there is a benefit to using the app this shouldn’t be an issue. I’m a bit busy with other stuff at the moment but i’ll look into it in more detail when i get a chance.

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@ubiquitous Tim, just to clarify, you and I have known each other on Solid chat for a while - there I am theWebalyst (my github handle) so I’m reasonably familiar with your postings, much as I am with Ian’s (@CommunityLink) here.

@CommunityLink Ian, thanks for the update. It sounds like you are making some useful connections and getting more clarity on how to get where you want to be.

I have my hands full making and playing with building blocks, and I don’t want to divert my limited time from that so I’ll remain an interested observer, helping out where I can rather than becoming more involved personally with any particular project.

Good luck with John Bruce, that could be an interesting conversation. I don’t know him really, and I don’t feel comfortable yet with Inrupt given it is dependent on future funding rounds that I assume will mean VC investment, and what appears to me a dangerous business model from the viewpoint of decentralisation. I hope to be proven wrong, but so far I see nothing concrete to dispel my concerns about that. The responses to my concerns have been few and not convincing to me, so I’m more focused on building (on SAFE and the bridge to put Solid on SAFE) now that my time is even more limited. I could do with help rather than spread myself any thinner :wink:

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Very cool!

Has this been uploaded to any of the alpha or community networks? So it can be tested with multiple users etc?

Great stuff, glad to see more things coming out :+1:

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Cool, will watch shortly.

What sort of marketing will you be doing?

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Thanks @whiteoutmashups . I haven’t yet as i’m still making lots of changes to it. I’m happy to upload it later if anyone wants to look around.

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Thanks @goindeep. I haven’t really thought about marketing yet as still so much dev stuff to do.

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Totally understandable.

Would you be against me or anyone else doing that for you? Would be interesting to have up and see parts of it live

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Whoops wrong thread…,

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Would you be against me or anyone else doing that for you?

Sure, by all means :wink:

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What was the driving force for this project? To me it looks like an implementation of the venus project or chinese social credit system. I don’t get why so many different credits are used instead of only safecoin?

It is a very interesting project and much work has obviously gone into it even before we know if the safe network will actually materialize. Do you have sponsors that were asking for this product?

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@whiteoutmashups BTW I tried to upload the files using the Web Hosting Manager but kept running into some strange problems, and then ran out of credits. I’m sinking a few beers now but i’ll try again over the weekend. cheers!

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Amazing :space_invader:

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Yes it’s kind of wonky sometimes, don’t give up!

Takes me at least several tries each time as well but eventually goes through.

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Hi Glen, the Devolution app looks terrific and might provide the natural stepping stone path to an interoperable physical & virtual world build around solid and safe. Some thoughts…

I think your point about putting enough heads together to revolutionise the political landscape is a critical which one which must be addressed upfront!! Having a clear picture upfront of the political system we want to support will assist us to design systems which enable this system/need, make it easier to get there and mitigate the risk of unintended consequences. The obvious question from here is … “what is the political system/landscape we would like the devolution/solid/safe solution help create”??

We talk of decentralised autonomous networks but what does this mean in context of the desired political system & global user ecology need? These are fundamental “Knowledge & Organisational design” issues which need to defined upfront and incorporated in our collective engineering build if we are to maximise the solid/safe opportunity. So great work in integrating these critical design issue upfront, as illustrated by your “safe.devolution” examples of international, national, business, community and citizen users applications which will be interconnected through APIs and following functionality description!!

The Principles of a Pluralist Commonwealth defined by the Next System Project appear to align with the devolution model & enabling structure you are thinking through. The paper defines two critical but distinct challenges and asks the questions

i. What system design might ultimately achieve and sustain the values of equality, genuine democracy, liberty and ecological sustainability _as a matter of inherent systemic architecture?_

ii. How specifically might it be possible to move forward, especially in difficult political times, to lay foundations for a transformation in the direction of a serious new systemic answer?

The key things they identify are
i. Need for development of new institutions especially local (which aligns with your community start point and approach where “people use the app to elect a local IT official/company. The local IT official has control over how it works and has access rights to certain parts of the app.) This also aligns with the CommunityLink Open data ecology model which involves a community owned and operated CDC (Community Development Centre) model as the community imarket operator which starts with a smart city solution for Council to create systemic income streams from DPER (default progressive expenditure reduction) efficiencies which can only be delivered by a solid/safe based solution… Business/Industries can form their own Industry Development Centre’s (IDC) as well but more of this later.
ii. A new strategy of building institutions, politics, culture and power from the bottom up is both possible and important – the only way, ultimately, to ground meaningful democratic and participatory power (David Irvine has previously described it as rebuilding interlinked communities of trust and which devolution could provide the framework for.)
iii. No one has yet come up with a serious model that might achieve both efficiency and self-directed management – and an equitable, ecological sustainable culture and system. All have flaws.

Which leads to the next big questions… How do we put enough heads together? Who should be involved? What will we achieve as an initial step? How do we fund it?

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I agree with your local community focus in order to create an proof of concept. I note that formalising the best way to integrate business, national communities, which is still a WIP, will require not only the IT solution but also an Organisation, legal and governance framework/methodology which is inbuilt to the “product” and common across the multiple communities you are seeking to engage.

This paper introduces an ”Organisation model & Legal and Governance framework/methodology” for self-organising citizens, regional, industry, national & international communities to establish their Hub/community operator and “formalise” interactions to support establishment of a Pluralist commonwealth within a safe/solid enabled CL open data network (in context of the Global Challenges Foundation search for a Design model for global cooperation ). In essense communities establish their “community entity/campus (similar to your approach where “people use the app to elect a local IT official/company) becoming partners within a national & global Limited Partnership (which provides the intra and inter community legal framework) whilst managing their localised data ownership, upgrades, security, risk and smart community transition . This enables inter community data sharing and closed loop automation within a decentralised autonomous network (i.e. safe) within and across multiple communities to support pre-defined “smart community, industry or consumer solutions” as you describe for things such as such as voting, and medical services.

Some excellent comment/question & very good points from require real design consideration
@sotros25 I particularly like its comprehensive approach to community building and management. It looks like you’ve really leveraged a systems view to think through a lot of the strategic interdependencies. A couple of questions: What is your plan for launching this dApp once the Network goes live? Are there categories of or specific communities you would approach first? Would you think of this as an institutional tool (something NGOs or NPOs, for example, might use), or would you target more general “consumer” specific communities Ike a meetup.com)? Perhaps a hybrid strategy with potential for commercial/corporate use cases as well?

@Oetyng It seems to me all these features would not be feasible to provide from a single provider, for various reasons. That leads me to think that the system should be modular in a way that independent services can integrate with it. That way there can be n different invoicing service providers, developed and maintained by independent actors, and they can all hook into this digital system of yours (the platform) and community members can choose to use any or all of them. So that way the developers of the platform do not need to race with competition, do not need to be experts in 1000 different business areas, and always try to keep community members staying with the built in service instead of some other one.

Multi-sig is coming (and as an explicitly non-quotable estimate gave it; perhaps in alpha-4), which would allow for some of this. If you want realtime computation which do not rely on participants to be online, then there’s the route of forming a computation network, with secure membership and a consensus protocol. So, how that would look like is for example that client machines can run an executable, just like we run the SAFE Vault, where they connect and form a network (much in the same way), but instead of network agreed logic on storing data, it could be anything that your system needs to perform

@bochaco One additional thought, and probably again a question to you about how you envision this can evolve, I think one key aspect of such an app/model/concept/…, would be the possibility of getting credits from what you are good at doing, so it would be good if I can get credits from helping someone else with some stuff which I can then get for getting help from someone else that I’m not capable of doing, well…that’s what money was supposed to be for if I’m not wrong.

The Redland enterprise smart city project describes the Codemap/smart product matrix “microworld” methodology being designed to address a number of these issues and bring IOT suppliers, Industry Access, Regional Access hubs, National data administrator, International Foundation governance, Local Community Development centre, Council & residents (Personal residents account/UIA) application within one “modular” business & investment case and create a sustainable platform for the co dev team. The objective is to capture the generic application templates which are connected though API’s in the manner you illustrated e.g.
safe://devolution.int // international,
safe://devolution.business.int // business
safe://devolution.uk/ // national
safe://devolution.bobsmith.uk.tq10 //local

which are recreatable in the cloning manner you describe … with the appropriate organisation/legals around it. All this is getting a bit long winded so I will comment on a number of other key issues/questions raised including how do we make money/commercial model, token economic issues, how to bring people around this with funding etc in further communications.

Looking forward to discussing further :grinning:Once again great work!

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