Decentralization
Lower the barriers to entry
Story:
Gnosis Chain's approach to onboarding validators is designed to be more inclusive and less costly than other networks, like Ethereum where you need 32 ETH to participare or Solana, where you need a very expensive hardware.
Gnosis Chain lowered its requirements to a stake of just one GNO, equivalent to about $120, and allowed its system to run on any commodity hardware. To encourage participation, they launched campaigns where users could buy a DappNode device, a simple computer suitable for running clients like the Gnosis Chain client, and provided them with GNO tokens to participate in staking on the network.
Thanks to that approach they reached 120,000 validators and 1,700 nodes which makes them one of the most decentralized chains in the space.
Source:
Web3 Talks, Episode #42, Stefan George, Co-Founder & CTO @ Gnosis
Non Timestamped: Apple
Look at decentralization from the perspective of a problem you're trying to solve
Story:
Some projects want to decentralize by default. But decentralization is only a tool to solve some problem which means that for some problems it's not the right choice.
So Questbook, when considering decentralization asked themselves what would they need to do to bring more developers and make the community more vibrant. In their case decentralization wasn't a way since it wouldn't solve any important problem and would only slow them down.
Source:
Web3 Talks, Episode #1, Madhavan Malolan, Co-Founder & CEO @ Questbook
Non Timestamped: Apple
Think about decentralization via spin-offs
Story:
At Gnosis, a discussion about a potential spin-off of Safe had been brewing for some time.
They had a few factors to consider though.
They needed a capable and dedicated team that could continue running the project. They needed to see that this spin-off would help these teams developer the product faster. And they wanted to be sure that it would make the fundraising process, independent of Gnosis, easier for the new team. And the Gnosis DAO would also need to be compensated, since Safe was its main product.
After considering all these factors they decided to spin-off and after around a year the Safe DAO became an independent entity.
Source:
Web3 Talks, Episode #42, Stefan George, Co-Founder & CTO @ Gnosis
Non Timestamped: Apple
Start with decentralization in mind
Story:
Projects don't need to decentralized from the start. Many of them don't need to be decentralized at all. But for some of them it's good to have decentralization in mind and explore different paths they need to follow to achieve it.
Unlock wanted to become decentralized from the start but it took some time to get there. They needed to ensure that the DAO was representative of the actual users, so instead of making an airdrop they made a mechanism where their token would be minted every time someone used the protocol, effectively turning users into stakeholders of the system.
To let stakeholders influence the protocol, they introduced the concept of 'upgradable contracts'. These contracts allowed for the protocol to be updated or changed, not by Julien or Unlock Labs team, but by the users themselves. This collective agreement system was based on the tokens each user held.
With this mechanism in place, if a creator used the protocol and earned tokens, they could vote on the DAO to influence how the protocol works.
Source:
Web3 Talks, Episode #43, Julien Genestoux, Co-Founder & CEO @ Unlock
Non Timestamped: Apple
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