Polkadot Fellowship

Polkadot Fellowship

Prelude: Decentralization

• Decentralization can come in many fashions.
• Some of my (somewhat) personal opinions.. 💭

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Prelude: Decentralization

1. Technical 🔐

• Can the software be executed in a decentralized manner?

• Can multiple nodes actually run the software and come to consensus?

Notes:

• Nakatomo coefficient
• Most blockchain systems actually already have this.

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Prelude: Decentralization

2. Operational ⚙️

• The software is capable of running in a decentralized manner. But is it actually?
  • Intermediaries, gateways, pools.
• Is the right "software" being executed by node operators?

Notes:

• Metamask

• Mining/Staking Pool getting to large.

• Node operators are a concept here. They have the duty to run the "correct software". But how they come to this decision is something that needs knowledge, which brings us to the next point.

https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html

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Prelude: Decentralization

3. Intellectual 🧠

• How many people know the existing protocol well enough to understand it.

• Which subset of these people make decisions about the future?

• Important to remember that node operators are usually in neither.

Notes:

1. the cathedral and bazaar
2. the papal model

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar

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Prelude: Decentralization

3. Intellectual 🧠

My trust in Polkadot’s credible future should not rely on knowing that Parity, Gav or Shawn will continue to act benevolently.

• This is where a meta-protocol, and rule-based upgrade systems becomes important.

Notes:

Recall how if the governance of the chain decide to upgrade to protocol, node-operators don't have a say in that by default.

This is taking away the "power of default" to be in the hands of the token holders, not the node-operators.

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Prelude: Decentralization

Geopolitical 🌎

• How many of protocol experts/node operators are under the same juristiction?

The Fellowship

The fellowship is a technical decision making body onchain, aimed at alleviating the above facades of centralization, but more so than anything else, the intellectual aspect.

Notes:

• Technical, high focus on core protocol aspects for now.
• decision-making: not saying it has absolute power yet.

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The Fellowship

• Imperfect, not for everyone, opinionated 🥲!
• Strictly better than not taking an action.

Notes:

It is an attempt at solving the issue. We believe it is strictly better than defining no rule around it and letting it be as-is, but it might be sub-optimal.

The Polkadot Fellowship aims to be one example of such an explicit action. The Fellowship is a rules-based social organisation with several aims centred around the support and recognition of the technical expertise needed for technical stability, security and progress of the network.

The Fellowship Lifecycle

1. Initial seed

1. Entry

1. Promotion

1. Continuation

1. Gradual demote every 3-6 months.

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The Fellowship Lifecycle: Evaluation

Evaluation is subjective, based on merits of "core blockchain engineering".

The manifesto provides one such example

1. API and code design.
2. Code contribution.
3. Social interactions.
4. Voting.

• Activity
• Agreement.

The Fellowship Structure

Dan 0: The Candidate

• No requirement, no implication
• Deposit held for storage usage etc.

Dan I: The Humble

• The (potentially) softest of the materials
• Wide range of hardness (1-3 Moh)
• Shares the exact same chemical composition as the material of the highest rank Grand Master—the hardest material—symbolizing the individual’s potential to go all the way.

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Dan I: The Humble

• Clear aspiration to learn and evangelize the protocol.
• Deep knowledge at least one key component.
• Independent, vision-driven contribution.
• Being available and playing a crucial operational role for a network fix.

Dan II: The Proficient

• ~1 Year of experience passed since acquiring Dan I.
• Responsible for research, analysis and implementation of a key component of the system.
• Potentially "on-call" for the same component.
• At least one published long-form semi-technical article concerning Polkadot.

Fellowship: Kusama

• Used in conjuncture with pallet-whitelist and pallet-preimage.
• The fellowship can whitelist certain pre-images, which in turn can lead to faster execution.
• End of the day, it is all (virtual) runtime origins:
  • Fellows,
  • Fellowship3Dan,
  • WhitelistedCaller
  • ...

Fellowship: The Near Future

• Payroll
• Delegation
• Runtimes moved to the fellowship repository

Polkadot Fellowship

Learn more:

• https://github.com/polkadot-fellows
• https://kusama.subscan.io/fellowship