The future of the Guardians

Why do you speak about a big centralized organization, while the scope is not set?

No one is suggesting such a structure. Otherwise we would be here.

See the step-by-ste guide how we can come up with the proper solution.

Let’s stert with A.

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I couldn’t agree more with you Markus. This is about specialisation and decentralisation on one hand against generalism and centralisation on the other.

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Seems to me saying the Guardians should do everything (almost) is inherently centralist. Let them do what they’ve shown they’re good at!

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No it’s not. The capacities have to be managed by the movement, while keeping each group to a smaller size so it can efficiently work towards its goals.

So as we have one group at the moment (Guardians of Cardano) the limiting factor on what services we will be able to take is our size at least.

Why a shadow Foundation? You totally misunderstood the message then.

I don’t understand “capacities have to be managed by the movement”, if the goals are to be achieved by smaller groups what value is added by the overall management?

from what I know it was never ever discussed otherwise. So no topic and no problem. I agree.

Sounds like a good idea. We have reddit, this forum and general as well as dedicated Telegram channels. What else is in you mind?

I love the Owl concept and the idea behind of it. and it can be a nice story and motivation for the whole ecosystem. But what means "once we have… " ?
“We” are not here to care about this x-thousand people. We will not “have” them, but they will freely decide to join or leave the community. I’m pretty sure that many of them are much more skilled in certain topics they can start to contribute and work on.

Tried to read this couple of sentences multiple times, but it still is not clear to me. Real decentralization does not come from “our identity and the original cause”
If it’s about a general idea about the blockchain movement + all the ideas explained by charles + the technical parts explained from the researchers and engineers we may add some suggestions based on our community experiences. But this in my opinion does not require any funding or special activity.

This is a very important sentence. “we might all believe in” in my opinion directly points to the “lowest common denominator” concept instead of “who will follow me with ambitious ideas?

From what I know there are already quite a lot of initiatives. Real professional ones like IronX or voluntary ones like the Explorer projects. There are around a dozen external, Cardano related github repositories. There is a wiki, two individual vLoggers collaborating for a podcast, and a very long list of announced and ready to become stake pools. (sorry if I forgot someone important)
The question now is: should they all join the Guardians initiative or should they grow for their own and with whatever name, motivation and strategy they want?

depends on what you try to imply with it. In my opinion it’s not that we must do at least something. We as a guardians group can try to find a consent way (see lowest common denominator concept). We absolutely can’t - and shouldn’t even try - to set this scope for the whole community or ecosystem.

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There is no overall management in the sense you refer to it. Any overall management implies centralization, which we fight so much.

There is a movement with goals and a number and variety of decentralized teams who join the movement and pick up responsibilities.

The limiting factor is always the group itself. It’s size, competence and capacity of its members. And of course the possibility for being financed or not.

All groups act in a decentralized organization together with certain level of collaboration. I believe Charles if I understood him well was referring once to such groups as Cardano hubs.

The Guardianship movement is manifested via the decentralized organization of Guardians groups (see some example names above). This movement needs the constitution in respect to what it believes in, what it’s mission is, which are its core values and what is its ultimate mandate.

Then you have various groups such as the “Guardians of Cardano” who grow out the movement and based on their individual and unique characteristics pick up some of the roles & responsibilities they may share with other groups.

As of now, we only have the Guardians of Cardano group so this group will have to agree and pick up whatever duties it feels comfortable with.

This is why I wrote a few comments above that it’s important to distinguish between the (1) Guardianship movement and the (2) Guardians of Cardano group. It can be a bit confusing to be fair with you as of the naming :slight_smile: But always interpret in the context.

Will prepare some slides on this proposal to debate to have you and anyone else who might be lost at this point to better understand.

This was the plan anyway to come up with a clear communication, content and a variety of options to debate, but today somehow it broke out of our internal discussion. Maybe too early and it creates more confusion now, but by time we bring clarity to all these different options and thoughts.

The only thing which would be nice is not to rush things as there is really no need for that.

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As always I appreciate the efforts and passion involved. I am enjoying participating in this community and look forward to the future.

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i understand, but we both know what sparked us to take action, and it boils down to a lack of communication towards the community, and no i dont want the remaining CF members to be held accountable for what has transpired, it would be refreshing to see that they start interacting with the community again, participate on the forum and talk to us.

Nothing, you are entitled to your opinion and i respect your opinion Andy, as i do Rob’s.

Don’t be, we all should be able to share our opinion. Even if we disagree,

Thank you, this meant a lot to me Andy I want you to know i appreciate what you said.

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Can’t agree more, people can do their voluntary work based on their passion, but as the expectation adds up, no one has enough time and effort and funding to satisfy all the expectations.

In the end of the day, we are just bunch passionate community members.

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Great Jobs, Guardians:+1::+1::+1:

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I think this is confusing indeed, and if I understand the difference between the two maybe a bit contradicting as well.

For instance, when you say “we can all be Guardians”, do you mean we can all be part of the Guardians of Cardano (= open group) or we can all be part of the “Guardianship movement” you described by forming our own groups?

@Bullish Morning :slight_smile: I’m going to read this carefully today and will definitely join the discussion.

Valid points and reasoning all round from what I see so far…

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I’d like to highlight once more that I appreciate all the time, effort and other resources that the individuals behind the Guardians of Cardano (GoC) initiative have invested. :pray:t2:

The functioning of Parsons and the Cardano Foundation was the primary reason for the GoC to be formed, a cause that has clearly found broad support throughout the Cardano community, IOHK and Emurgo.

Now that Parsons has resigned, the GoC’s main objective (warranting a change of direction of the Cardano Foundation) appears to be achieved. Although monitoring of the actual results of this change of leadership is definitely still important as well.

Personally, I think if the Cardano Foundation picks up its initially intended role, the GoC initiative could be put to rest and we should all just support them (while holding them accountable). IMO there’s no need for a counter-initiative in that scenario, and having an entity around that is constantly openly criticizing it is probably counterproductive.

In the scenario the Cardano’s Foundation will still not perform as we all hope, setting up a broadly supported community initiative to form another foundation could definitely be considered. Though that’s a whole different cookie, and arguably not something that should be a direct result of a group that just pressured the chairman of a rich foundation to resign.

I just don’t think it’s a good idea for the GoC to broaden their scope and search for funding right now, particularly now that there’s actual movement within the Cardano Foundation. We should be skeptical, but also give the new chairman a bit of time to get their ducks in a row first. I see no reason not to give him the benefit of the doubt for now.

I also think there’s nothing wrong with the GoC being a closed group and not being decentralized for the purpose it has had so far. The fact that it has a clear, narrow focus and is reasonably transparent made many community members support the initiative. Anyone that had similar goals but thinks they should be achieved in a different way can just ‘fork’ the idea and set up their own initiative, as @bercinho also pointed out.

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In the telegram group chat, it was discussed how the GoC structure may look like with respect to option A), B) and C)

( A) We have charity organization which has volunteers who work for free.

( B) We have non-profit organizations which has members who are compensated on a fair standard market rate and their expenses are covered.

( C) We have profit organizations where the members can make additional income beyond their time invest and expenses when meeting certain KPIs.

I agree and GoC / new entity structure ideally should have following objectives as pointed out by Bercinho.

Such an organization would be incentivized via regular compensation from the Treasury (OPEX cost), it would be elected via liquid democracy, have a clear multidimensional structure, agenda & mandate, goals & targets and corresponding measures & metrics.

Adding to that, the GoC / the dedicated virtual community ideally should be formed and come from at least 6 continents in overseeing all the Cardano related matters.
My observation on several challenges community is facing at the moment:-

  1. Most of the passionate member in community are pulling a 9 to 5 job, hence they might not be able to commit their time fully in playing the GoC role. We need a bigger team size in GoC to fill the resources constraint issue.

  2. The passionate members who wish to contribute are unsure which priority area to focus on, there aren’t much guidance from the 3 entities, everyone is running around like headless chicken in shaping the direction and that may slow down the effectiveness of cardano adoption in long run. If we want to compete and win the dragon boat race, everyone has to paddle in synchronization and the paddle strokes has to be aligned to the drum beats. We need to move forward together collectively

  3. A lot of the users / investors are not able to relate still the potential of blockchain and what cardano can do for them. They come in just to speculate the price. Some of these people are quite IT savvy in my knowledge and they have not found any reasons yet in maximising their talent in this space. We need to find an opportunity to empower them.

To address the challenges above, my proposal for something the GoC can look at.

  1. Let’s define first how the virtual governance structure may look like, as I feel the structure of the virtual community hierarchy is of paramount importance in defining its roles and responsibility apart from just eyeballing the 3 entities performance and drive the Cardano adoption. The existing members in the GoC might want to step in and hit the ground running to set up a bigger virtual GoC community

  2. Assuming the virtual GoC will grow 100,000k or more in the future, therefore we need talented people from different background and industry. For Cardano ecosystem to grow, we need influential/talented people to

  • capture the hearts and minds of the followers
  • spreading the words/creating awareness
  • and more importantly making them to contribute back to the Cardano ecosystem
    .
  1. Identify and prioritize the key domain focus area(s) we want to address first in the first 6 months – for example
  • set up the key contributors in different continents in growing the community regionally.
  • identify and prioritise the focus area(s),
  • marketing & recruitment strategy
  • identify the low hanging fruits for blockchain adoption
  • identify the possible path for open source developers to contribute and give extra hand to IOHK/Emurgo,
  • process of resolution path in the event of dispute, etc
  1. In forming the virtual entity/team, B) and C) option might take quite some time, hence we should start off first with A). Gather all members background’ & expertise who wish to contribute to the ecosystem. Use google drive document to capture their profile and background. GOC will study and place them in the right respective roles. Allow an option for the community member who wish to be placed and contribute to a specific domain focus area.

  2. Once the backbone of the team and its basic government structure is in place, we can branch out and expand the team within and outside respective key domain area.

  3. This virtual community members will have to work closely with the 3 entities once it’s being formed and at some point in the future, potentially after 2021, they will be the true guardian of the Cardano, possibly taking some roles from the 3 entities they are playing currently.

  4. The 6 continents virtual community may come from Asia, Africa, North and South America, Europe and Australia with each continent have the same pillar of expertise, roles & responsibility with the other five. Ideally that should be the case as the duplication roles & responsibilities can help to grow the communities within the continent more quickly and effectively – as I am taking the culture, language and timezone into consideration.

  5. Having said that, however due to resources constraint and lack of contributors at this stage, divide and conquer might make sense, it’s good to start off in breaking the immediate focus area(s) roles & responsibility across different continents based on expertise. At a later stage as when we gather more contributors, we can decide again how to re-structure the community into either

  • 6 continents virtual community or
  • 3 regional community coming from 3 different timezone – North/South America, Europe and Asia
  1. In making sure the virtual community as a whole can sustain and last for the next 30 years, there should be a consensus protocol, values or even common process to be adopted within the virtual community. This is to address the situation when we are at crossroads and both parties have different opinion. We need to have these common values/process to be set out early and have it formalised for us to minimize the conflict and set out the expectation. This has be completed in tandem with the focus area(s) identification before we even form the virtual community.

  2. For a start and until option B) and C) are formalized, GoC should come up with a reward or ranking system to place the volunteers for contributing freely in the domain focus area(s). It’s just a little gesture in motivating the participants.

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A group beyond a certain number of members is inefficient and not operational. Look at agile methodology where they believe this number is around 7.

You can’t have an open group for the Community if you want this group to efficiently execute complex tasks that require strong collaboration and discipline among the members.

However you can have a Community movement which anyone might join and form groups around.

In this particular case we speak about the need for the “Guardianship movement” and you may have a look at (1) … (21) being just a few initial draft roles & responsibilities suggested.

This is what requires a wider Community consultation and consensus to be summarized in a constitution of the movement. This approach empowers & legitimates the groups who found themselves around the movement.

What the “Guardians of Cardano” should do, how it should relate to this movement is something the group itself should decide, though in the end providing a statement of the groups mission & agenda for transparency reasons. Of course the group should be true to its image and how it has put itself on the map of Cardano. So we will debate & decide this within our Group. But as it has been exposed yesterday, there are two opposite ideas, being one where the Guardians of Cardano go to sleep as long as someone wakes them up (IMO it’s hard & slow to wake up from a long dream) vs the Guardians of Cardano stay awake, aware and active.

I believe there is a big value for such a Guardianship movement and especially with Proactive / Preventive operations and not only Reactive one.

Would such a movement have existed we would have never ended up in the 2-3 years of “Babylonian Captivity of Cardano”.

But it’s fine it didn’t exists back then as the Community is just growing & forming now.

Nevertheless the Community needs such movements IMO to allow its members to find a cause they are happy to contribute to, which fits their skill sets and they may see that their efforts bring value to the Ecosystem.

Within such movements the groups and individuals who participate are basically forming a decentralized virtual organization, in which certain functions like funding, governance, collaboration, etc. might be shared & coordinated till a certain extent. This requires careful planning, solid infrastructure and continuous improvement.

So IMO the focus should not be on the “Guardians of Cardano” group, but the “Guardianship” movement.

Please try to comment mainly on the movement as this is the big thing, not the group itself.

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Yea I agree with Proactive/Preventive approach.

We can limit the decision maker to 7, however these 7 key contributors who might be pulling 9 to 5 job may not have enough time/energy to grow the community. They definitely need more people under them to plan out events, recruiting, educating, overseeing, etc.

Essentially the key contributor should manage its local community and activities at regional level. Once in a month these 7 key contributors will group together virtually to strategize the movement. It can be 7 or any small arbitrary number representing

  1. regional from 3 different timezone
  2. or 7 continents.

To grow the GoC community under the key contributor across the globe, we may want to use some kind of ranking based hierarchy while B) and C) are not available. There will be tasks and responsibilities assigned to the lower contributors in the ranking system. They will climb up the ladder in the ranking as when they completed the tasks/assignments. Thoughts?

There is no GoC Community proposed.

There is a Guardianship movement suggested with decentralized Groups.

One such group is the “Guardians of Cardano”. Other groups might be formed like “Gladiators or Cardano”, “Knights of Cardano”, …

As these groups are formed around the same movement, naturally they would have to synchronize, interact till a certain extent. Read above the decentralized virtual organization part.

The movement constitution is initially set by a Community wide consultation & consensus.

During the operational stage the governance, funding and other questions have to be worked out for this virtual organization.

It is simply more efficient to have certain limited level of share of governance, funding and corresponding infrastructure. But only limited till an extent that groups are self organized, independent and autonomous.

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I widely agree with this whole message.

But in my opinion the excludes certain points proclaimed for the “active Guardians” idea in this message: The future of the Guardians.

Mainly
(1) auditing of the CF: the movement can keep thousands of eyes but not write audit reports
(2) external advisory: same here
(6) everyone can and should DYOR but how this should end up in one objective overview? I assume that there can be online tools that allow the collection of technical key figures and facts and present them clearly. But the critical point is the interpretation. Dangerous if it is supposed to take over a single institution (the guardians rating agency), and therefore in my eyes a case for DYOR from then on. And ideally - similar to the Explorer projects - there are several independent projects in the community that form themselves freely, define and name their ethics and rules. If one fails there are still others there.
(8) same here even if I consider it much more difficult to support this with automataed technical tools. Rating such things is a very hot topic and I wouldn’t even want to touch it with a 6-meter stick.
(9) same here
(12) same reason as 1) and 2)
(13) same here
(14) and here

(18) is a very special point: this SWAT team.
I would rather prefer terms like mediator to avoid giving the impression that all problems have to be solved like the first one. And a mediator has to be prepared for a very long time for this special moment and task. Imagine a football judge nominated for the championship finals, and his twitter history is full of ideologies and fan-stuff for one of the teams. This is my main concern why so many of the nominated important roles and ideas for the whole ecosystem doesn’t play together with this point 18.

All other points looks good to me for a guardianship movement

So I could support the idea to contribute and elaborate - together with the 3 ICO entities - some ideas, guidelines to form a much better community. But we must think VERY carefully about the contellation of additional project ideas. The power of decision, the initiatives, the contributors, ideas, … have to be decentralized, which means organically come from their side, and not being planed from the Guardians.

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The GOC community was used to refer to the group name you all mentioned.

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