Yishu released the Green Paper and launched the first community management consensus mechanism

Yishu is a blockchain-based writing tool with self-publishing and copyright protection functions. Recently, Yishu released a green paper for comments, namely the Yishu community management incentive plan, which comprehensively introduces the details of Yishu team building and community management, and each detail corresponds to one or more incentive strategies.

Yishu is a homegrown community project born from the Babbitt Forum. Starting from the founder Zhu Zhiwen sharing every technical article, it attracts, encourages and cultivates like-minded development and management talents. Born in the community and driven by the community, this is one of the fundamental differences between Yishu and other projects.

The normal operation mode of community projects

There are three common modes for community project operation. The first is the product-led foundation mode, of which the Linux Foundation is a typical early representative. However, there are many problems with the foundation mode in actual operation. Some are hijacked by companies and become a cover for commercial companies to make profits. Some are controlled by multiple companies and the decision-making efficiency is very low. This is also the reason why the industry lacks trust in the Bitcoin Foundation.

The second type is dominated by commercial companies, which open source some products, but the decision-making power still lies with the company. Profits come first, and open source products are part of the strategic layout of commercial companies. Well-known companies such as Google and Facebook have many excellent open source products. For example, Google's Android operating system has occupied more than half of the market share of smartphone operating systems since the first open source version was released in 2007. As a result, Google has taken a leading and dominant position in the emerging industry of mobile Internet. Microsoft, which used to fight against open source software, has also begun to embrace open source, and China's BAT also has many open source products.

The third is the community model, where all products are open source and the decision-making power lies with the community. Products come first, and everything is for product development, promotion and popularization. The most typical example is the Ubuntu operating system, which is completely driven by the community, and all profits are returned to the community to promote product innovation. To date, in the field of desktop operating systems, Ubuntu has a high market share and has made outstanding contributions to the popularization of Linux systems, but it is not profitable overall. Its parent company Canonical makes profits by selling licenses for tools and other software and providing paid services to commercial users to make up for these shortfalls.

Yishu realizes community autonomy based on blockchain

The reason why Yishu is a standard community project is not only that the project is completely open source, but also that the community management is as autonomous as possible. Zhu Zhiwen, the founder of Yishu, believes that

“The innovation of Bitcoin is not only reflected in the technological innovation, but also in the innovation of the reward rules for community management, which is why people put forward the concept of DAC (distributed autonomous organization). Bitcoin and other blockchain products are such DACs, but they are powerless in areas other than product development and operation management.”

The reason is actually simple. The development and operation of many digital currencies do not have an open and transparent support system. "The biggest reward that participants can get is to gain status in the circle, and then rely on their status to get paid indirectly by some companies. Therefore, it is natural for individual developers to be kidnapped by companies." Based on this, Yishu referred to the management experience of the Ubuntu community, integrated the concept of DAC into it, and developed a collaborative platform based on the Yishu Chain. Through smart contracts, the contributions of developers and operators to Yishu products are monetized, thereby realizing the true autonomy of the Yishu community.

"I am a loyal fan of Ubuntu. I have been working and developing entirely based on Ubuntu for 10 years since version 6.10. I have witnessed its growth with my own eyes. I use it for everything from servers to desktops. It can be said that Ubuntu has become an integral part of my life. Ubuntu's community management is exemplary. It has always emphasized meritocracy. Everyone can contribute to the community. It is this incentive mechanism that has led to the prosperity of the Ubuntu community. The community committee consists of 8 people, 6 of whom do not work for Canonical (Ubuntu's parent company), and the 8th is Mark Shuttleworth (founder of Canonical). This decentralization of community power has won wide recognition and trust from community members."

The first community management consensus mechanism to realize contribution monetization

How to monetize contributions? Yishu’s method is to quantify development and operation work through tokens. The specific quantification process and details are the Yishu Green Paper mentioned at the beginning. In order to eventually create a professional technical, management, and operation team with strong strength, standardized operations, and efficient operation, Yishu Green Paper is designed according to the three levels of core team, contributor team, and support community, and according to the two dimensions of time and contribution. It takes contribution as the only consideration standard, and lists in detail the methods of resource allocation, development rewards, operation rewards, terminal promotion, etc., providing reference and guidance for every user participating in the construction of the Yishu community, so that contribution rewards are open, transparent, and traceable. Once the Green Paper was released, it caused heated discussions in the community.

An interesting point is that Yishu stated in its white paper that the core team will be limited to 57 people in the future. The source of this number is also very interesting.

"One person can coordinate up to seven people at a time while maintaining high efficiency. In this way, one general coordinator coordinates seven people in development, design, management, and operation. Depending on the actual situation, each of these seven people can coordinate up to seven people. The result is 7 x 7 + 7 + 1 = 57 people." This is an idealized state, but the power of the core team is weakened from the beginning. In the initial stage when there is the most control, great emphasis is placed on putting the community first. This also shows Yishu's determination and confidence in community-based operations.

When asked, "What made Yishu choose to take the path of complete community operation?" Zhu Zhiwen, who has many years of experience in open source products, said, "This is not only the result of learning from excellent international open source communities, but also the summary of Yishu's experience in the process of operation and sharing. If you want Yishu Network to become one of the safe and reliable networks available to everyone, you must take the path of open source, and the best way to do this is naturally to use the concept of DAC and implement it based on blockchain. And this is also a way to solve the current shortage of blockchain talents and cultivate R&D and management teams. Of course, this is only the right way, and it may not be a smart way."

Why is it the right approach to cultivate talents? Zhu Zhiwen further explained:

“We don’t need to explore the reasons. We can know by comparing the results and looking at the projects that have received the money. The money did not help some projects solve the fundamental problems. On the contrary, after a long period of time, they had to repeat the path of Yishu, building communities, training, and incentives. Software development is technology-driven, and blockchain research and development is even more so. Even for experienced people, it takes several months to adapt. It is terrible to think that you can get things done just by getting the money.”

Every industry that is in the limelight is inevitably impetuous. The overall development of blockchain requires practical work and projects that truly develop underlying standards. At the current stage when the blockchain industry is short of talent, a method like Yishu that releases a community management consensus mechanism in the early stages of a project, encourages, supports, and guides users to participate in community construction and cultivates various types of talents, is an excellent way to obtain seed users and also provides some inspiration and reference for future community project construction.