Public Chain: Community and Ecosystem

Baozou Commentary : Just like the hard fork executor said, this decision of Ethereum was not made by a single person, but by the entire Ethereum community voting. The same is true for the dispute resolution of Bitcoin block size, which is guided by such community decisions. However, the investigation found that this community cannot represent the majority of people and does not have the greatest typicality. Therefore, it is hoped that the community can incorporate venture capitalists and mainstream users in the future, and evolve into a larger ecosystem to truly reflect the needs of this gradually developing market.

Translation: Annie_Xu

We often hear the word “community”, which refers to the group of stakeholders who are extremely concerned about blockchain.

The term has recently become the cornerstone of many activities, such as Bitcoin’s “block size” dispute and Ethereum’s hard fork, packaging these activities for the public.

But what exactly does “community” mean here?

Definition of Community

According to blockchain theory, the community should decide the future of a public chain through decentralized management and consensus.

Consensus decision-making is the core of blockchain technology, because the majority can influence its development direction. To some extent, it is similar to elections.

The fundamental characteristic of blockchain lies in its economic stability, and the fact is that a certain group of participants controls the lifeblood of economic stability (economic stability is directly related to blockchain security, but let’s not get off topic here).

The community has great power to determine the future of the public chain and is therefore a very important organization; because it represents the existing management system.

So I did some research to understand the structure of a typical blockchain community, and I discovered that this decision-making body is part of a larger ecosystem.

This community represents the initial participants who play the earliest economic functions in this ecosystem. Most of them are experts and have the advantage of obtaining insider information over others. They have a greater voice and their collective activities can effectively determine the development trajectory of the blockchain.

Introduction to Community and Ecosystem

There is something in the cryptocurrency community that is contrary to popular opinion.

Traditionally, most companies first acquire users or consumers, convert them into their own end users or developers, and then the user groups form communities.

In the cryptocurrency space, the process seems to be reversed.

We first recruited core supporters for the community before gathering a group of end users. This is fine, and perhaps a strong enough foundation needs to be built before the characteristics of the basic technology can be fully utilized.

Generally speaking, the initial participants in the cryptocurrency community are basically developers, exchanges, and miners.

The larger ecosystem involves other participants, including initial participants, venture capitalists, and mainstream users.

Here is a breakdown of the groups.

Taking the recent Ethereum blockchain hard fork as an example, the controversy over Bitcoin block size became a microcosm of the Scaling Bitcoin seminar.

In both cases, the community members were essentially the original participants in each case; it was just that the group was relatively small.

In the case of Bitcoin, the Scaling Bitcoin workshop probably had fewer than 100 attendees. In the case of Ethereum, Carbonvote was used, and only 1,325 addresses participated in the vote; this number is still small compared to the number of ether holders.

Ecosystem Strategy

I hope to eventually use the word ecosystem instead of community because it better represents the market in formation.

I also hope that part of this ecosystem can participate in the future development of the public chain.

Now the large ecosystem is still a powerless and silent majority, just watching the events unfold slowly, while hoping that a stronger and more active minority can guide the market in the right direction.

Ultimately any large blockchain needs to achieve a more stable state where community leadership and the ecosystem work together to increase its longevity and sustainability potential.

Now the initial participants are the community, and they are controlling the direction of the ship, but what about the future?