https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/c3f1ku/the_next_phase_for_donuts/
created by jarins on 21/06/2019 at 19:16 UTC
141 upvotes, 40 top-level comments (showing 25)
Hi r/ethtrader,
Reddit admin here. I’m one of the developers who has been working on the r/EthTrader Donuts project[1], and I’d like to share some updates with all of you.
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/wiki/donuts
In the last couple of months, we have been following the work[2] that u/carlslarson has been doing to decentralize Donuts[3]. On behalf of the community, he has developed multiple smart contracts[4] that allow Donuts to be moved to the Ethereum blockchain, along with much of their functionality (including distribution and tipping), and acquired assets (like the subreddit banner and badges). It’s great to see all of this progress.
2: https://www.reddit.com/r/daonuts
As we promised[5] earlier, we will be integrating this implementation of decentralized Donuts into the Reddit UI. This means that Donut balances, as well as ownership of the banner and badges, will be read from the blockchain. We are just starting this work. It will take some time to build and test the integration, but we are hoping to have it done soon.
It is important to remember that this project is still a work-in-progress. This is the beginning, not the end, and the focus should be on continued iteration and experimentation. If you see a flaw in the design, don’t panic! We can always fix the flaws and move forward.
We understand that the community is concerned about on-chain governance. To avoid any unintended consequences, going forward governance polls will be considered as signaling tools, rather than absolutely binding. Once the community is confident in the decentralized implementation, the community can return to experimenting with binding governance.
We started this project to reduce the dependence of online communities on centralized actors and make them self-sovereign — communities that exist on their own and have the tools to chart their own destiny. The r/EthTrader community believes that Ethereum smart contracts is the right approach to fulfill this mission. For that reason, we are committed to supporting the community-led initiative to put Donuts on Ethereum blockchain and we look forward to seeing where it goes!
Comment by DCinvestor at 21/06/2019 at 20:30 UTC*
57 upvotes, 11 direct replies
To avoid any unintended consequences, going forward governance polls will be considered as signaling tools, rather than absolutely binding.
What types of "unintended consequences" are you worried about from governance polls right now u/jarins? We have been using Donuts as a governance mechanism for close to a year now. How will moving the tokens on-chain affect the use of Donuts as a governance tool in any way, and why introduce this restriction on governance polls right now?
Can you offer other examples of types of governance polls which would be valid or invalid? Who will make the decision on which governance polls are valid or invalid?
For example, does this mean that if the community votes to discontinue this experiment or affect the functionality of Donuts, that this moderators of this sub-Reddit and Reddit itself will not honor those results? Can we get your commitment that if such a vote were to be issued and passed that you and the moderators would honor it?
Otherwise, I see no reason to continue with a charade of using Donuts for governance which "may or may not be binding." It seems dishonest and like a waste of time for this sub. The governance functionality should just be explicitly removed (versus hiding behind "not absolutely binding") and Donuts be used purely for non-binding signalling and whatever economic purposes centralized authorities deem appropriate.
You can't allow people to issue governance votes and dismiss the results simply because you don't like them.
Either respect the governance process (which is what Donuts were originally intended for) or eliminate it entirely.
Comment by nullbutnotvoid at 22/06/2019 at 00:14 UTC
17 upvotes, 1 direct replies
When bridge
Comment by aminok at 21/06/2019 at 23:15 UTC
9 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I think direct communication from Reddit is critically important for this project to succeed, so thank you for making this post. When it was just carlslarson being the sole source of information, people were getting suspicious and it was fuelling conspiracy theories about what is, in my opinion, one of the coolest projects in the entire internet right now, and potentially the single most important step toward a more decentralized internet.
Comment by imagranny at 22/06/2019 at 15:04 UTC
8 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Reading this sub since 2016, I rarely comment as I am technically ignorant of the inner workings of blockchain. I continue to be intrigued by the intersection of technology, economics and politics that is the evolving Ethereum world. The donut experiment is sliding more to the political, rather than the technical. In the scheme of the Ethereum ecosystem, what happens in the Ethtrader subreddit is not all that important right now. However, it could be important to Reddit, so be upfront about what this really is - employing smart contracts to attempt to decentralize moderation of a Reddit product. It's not like this subreddit community is going to vote on important technical changes to the actual blockchain. (The technical teams listed on yesterday's Ethereum Foundation blog post would be most qualified to do that.) However, if the mods want to spend time and energy developing the economic and political aspects of the Ethereum blockchain, this is probably as public of a place to do it. Keep all of the activity related to the donut experiment confined to this subreddit for a while longer to flesh out the economic (trade/sale of donuts) and political (binding/signaling) ramifications.
Comment by carlslarson at 21/06/2019 at 19:55 UTC*
1 upvotes, 3 direct replies
Thanks for this update u/jarins!
Moving donuts onto Ethereum is a big step. I want to encourage everyone here to understand how it works, the implications and participate in shaping them. To that end we've had two community calls with Reddit this past week with a number of mod and non-mod community members joining. In addition, next week we will introduce a weekly donuts thread. These threads will be a place to focus discussion and work together to shape the system to work for us.
This is a community project and we are the beneficiaries. Ethereum allows metrics, assets, decisions to be independent of centralized platforms. As we take ownership of them, our economy and our governance, we can demonstrate to the legacy web what Ethereum is really about.
While there is now core functionality in place for Reddit to integrate there is still plenty of dev work to do. Please get in touch[1], see tasks[2], or join in on r/daonuts if you're interested to help out testing, documenting, with front-end/React, or writing or auditing solidity.
1: https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=carlslarson
2: https://github.com/orgs/daonuts/projects/1
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Comment by peppers_ at 22/06/2019 at 04:03 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I added a signalling poll due to the interest I noticed in the removal of binding governance polls.
Personally, I'm in support of this. I think the way it rolled out wasn't handled the best it could (I would have preferred a governance poll and the community leading the choice to this course of action), but I do think that removing binding governance removes the potential of unneeded complications.
Another comment:
Reddit has been holding off working on our Donuts for months now because they were waiting on the daonut bridge completion.
Their sudden appearance and this post isn't meant to kneecap our community. Let's not bring animus into this, there was no dark intentions here.
Comment by ElliottWavingGoodbuy at 22/06/2019 at 19:16 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I've been a long time lurker, only recently posting in this sub. The politics behind donuts is clearly a controversial subject, as u/DCinvestor has made clear. However, I think I speak for many others on this sub when I say that this controversy is very hard to follow and form opinions on primarily because I don't understand the whole donut backstory. Such as what the original intent was, who were the primary organizers, how was the distribution decided, what is the goal for the donuts moving forward, and most importantly why should we care? There are obviously some who care a lot more than others, and it would be great to understand why. It's seems like there might actually be something on the line here.
​
I think it would be helpful for someone very familiar with the history and the nuances of donuts to write up a separate (ideally unbiased) post in r/ethtrader that could be used as a resource for people to learn and understand the whole debate. Without that, you'll never be able to stage a vote or even a discussion that's able to represent anything meaningful. Right now, it just seems like a bunch of large donut holders going back and forth on something that everyone is just too uninformed to even try to contribute.
​
u/DCinvestor , you seem pretty passionate about this topic, well informed, and articulate. Would you be able to write something like that up for us common folk? I'm open for anyone to try writing something that could shine some light on the debate.
Comment by Ethical-trade at 21/06/2019 at 19:22 UTC*
15 upvotes, 3 direct replies
An update was very needed. Thank you!
​
Ok but then how can we even take decisions when they are needed? Who decides?
​
How will we be able to determine that the community is confident without a binding voting mechanism to begin with?
​
Then isn't it extremely ironic that our voting system is suddenly made null without any sort of consultation?
​
"*The* r/EthTrader *community believes that Ethereum smart contracts is the right approach to fulfill this mission"*
My understanding is that the r/EthTrader community believes that smart contracts and donuts **could be** the right approach, not that they necessarily are.
If it works, let's keep it, if it doesn't, let's use something else.
Comment by carlslarson at 21/06/2019 at 20:01 UTC
10 upvotes, 1 direct replies
brief overview of the mvp:
Comment by psswrd12345 at 21/06/2019 at 21:53 UTC
8 upvotes, 0 direct replies
We started this project to reduce the dependence of online communities on centralized actors and make them self-sovereign — communities that exist on their own and have the tools to chart their own destiny.
Love it. The anti-facebook, if you will. Platforms should serve communities, not vice versa.
Comment by Nova06Ball at 22/06/2019 at 01:34 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Sweet thanks!
Comment by zerobass at 24/06/2019 at 13:02 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
We understand that the community is concerned about on-chain governance. To avoid any unintended consequences, going forward governance polls will be considered as signaling tools, rather than absolutely binding.
"We understand that people want community votes to have meaning, as that is the point of the entire enterprise. Therefore, we're going to entirely undo that purpose and pretend its for your own protection."
This has been your daily lesson in global politics.
Comment by dont_forget_canada at 21/06/2019 at 23:30 UTC*
6 upvotes, 1 direct replies
In terms of governance properties of donuts: at the end of the day reddit is a private company and they’re going to do what they’re going to do to increase DAU/MAU and make money. I think it’s kind of neat to see admins experimenting with blockchain, replying here, doing outreach calls for feedback. I don’t doubt that PMs and engineers at Reddit want to build a great service and that they don’t care about their mission statement, but they’re still a business who’s going to be conservative about taking risks, especially when it comes to changing a product with an already successful business model and brand attached to it.
What I’m about to say is with the full understanding that I personally hate the state of moderation on reddit wit large, and think subreddits like /r/worldnews /r/politics /r/canadapolitics /r/bitcoin and so on are censored, corrupt and politically spun so far it will break your neck: I think it’s naive to presume that reddit’s final goal here is to create a direct democracy in thousands of subreddits. They’re a private company with a lot of business oriented goals and they’re not about to fully hand over the “keys to the kingdom” sortospeak to millions of anonymous users. Not *fully* anyway. Even if you could build a system to do this to reduce cheating, allowing users to directly vote on *anything*, it sounds like a very bad business decision from the perspective of reddit’s leadership. To me it sounds like Reddit wants to support direct democracy *in some capacity* but isn’t sure about *how* to do it or what the *consequences* are of doing this, so they’re being cautious about how they go about it.
To /u/dwindlingfiat - You’re more than welcome to go through my post history or mod log and find examples of me “spewing lies” but I think you’ll be hurt to find even one example of that. I don’t work for reddit, I *use* reddit. I’m not some product manager making decisions about how to govern donuts.
That said, as a moderator I’ve said a number of times that I’m not against reducing payouts to moderators. I don’t moderate to profit nor should anyone, so if they reset donuts or remove moderation donuts I’m fine and even in favour of that.
To /u/DCinvestor - I agree with your sentiment around pressing *reddit* into being more transparent about the donut project. I agree with it because it’s possible they’re making decisions internally about this project without realizing how it impacts what users want the project to be. I’m not surprised there’s friction here because I’ve never seen any WIP software engineering project that didn’t generate tension/problems when it was released to users before a solid specification and list of goals was established (i.e. users were told they were getting X but a PM somewhere along the line changed it to X+Y and then just Y).
What I *don’t* agree with you on is your characterization of carl. He doesn’t work for reddit and he isn’t making decisions about the service, because... *he doesn’t work for reddit*. He’s doing what he can do from my perspective, sharing his opinions on governance, working on the token project (which is open source so it’s not being engineered behind closed doors). I will go as far as saying I think you’re unfairly witch hunting here because of your classification that carl has to “man up”. Carl mods the subreddit and contributed to a decentralization open source project. He isn’t the CEO of reddit making business decisions for them. I’m all for projecting dissatisfaction and sharing feedback but name calling directed towards a non-employee of a company over a decision that company made seems mis-placed to me.
Comment by krokodilmannchen at 22/06/2019 at 05:53 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I suggest a governance poll on stopping the whole experiment and restart after *every milestone is reached*, and no more ad hoc decisions. We could go live when:
1. Infrastructure is ready. Smart contracts, maybe redistribution of original donuts.
2. UI is fixed. Available on old, mobile, and some kind of leaderboard with locked/unlocked donuts.
3. Governance is clearly laid out: what are the steps to a full self-sovereign, as u/jarins likes to call this, r/ethtrader.
Might come up with some more.
Comment by etheraider at 21/06/2019 at 19:24 UTC
6 upvotes, 3 direct replies
If donuts break the top 100 in CMC.....then well know were in trouble
Comment by [deleted] at 22/06/2019 at 10:34 UTC*
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
[removed]
Comment by AndDontCallMePammy at 22/06/2019 at 17:11 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Only people in social credit score can vote lolol
Comment by cfcstar at 23/06/2019 at 20:35 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
how about an electoral college? I hear that works
Comment by foyamoon at 25/06/2019 at 19:18 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Tl;dr.
Just remove them
Comment by Sif_ at 27/06/2019 at 02:42 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Ive been out of the loop for a while. What can we do with donuts at the moment? Selling them is not an option anymore right?
Comment by oldskool47 at 21/06/2019 at 20:04 UTC
8 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I had a dream last night that we banned donuts altogether. Then there's this. Big thanks and ironic timing :)
Comment by ParticlMaximalist at 21/06/2019 at 19:21 UTC
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
cool
Comment by CommunityPoints at 21/06/2019 at 20:03 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
/u/oldskool47 tipped 1000 Donuts for this post!
Comment by RelaxPrime at 21/06/2019 at 21:28 UTC
5 upvotes, 2 direct replies
We are just starting this work. It will take some time to build and test
Ok, so no progress from 4 months ago.
going forward governance polls will be considered as signaling tools, rather than absolutely binding.
And no more binding governance.
Excuse me but wtf
Comment by swissthoemu at 21/06/2019 at 20:51 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Wow!