What Style Of Open Sourced Governance And Level Of Transparency Do We Want From Developers?

With various open sourced projects choosing different development models and levels of transparency, ive been thinking about what model is the best. Each has their strength and weaknesses, which I want to talk about. The two basic models I am going to be looking at is the development model that is open sourced, but with one leader basically calling the shots like Ethereum and bitcoin’s no leadership model that it uses. Obviously bitcoin can’t move to a leader type model because the developer, Satoshi isn’t around to give opinions on future and current developments. With Ethereum we have Vitalik who can openly give his opinion which 90% of the time is what the community follows. I think each has benefits and negatives, which makes it interesting to see both experiments proceed in the future.

First I want to go over Ethereum and how its development works. For the most part, it is very similar to bitcoin, with a group of developers who work together moving towards what they think is going to improve Ethereum. Ultimately the hope is these improvements are going to create more use cases and give the platform more notoriety. The difference between bitcoin and Ethereum development comes with how the direction they want to move is decided. From an outsider’s point of view it look like, while other developer’s opinions do matter, it ultimately comes down to Vitalik’s preference on which direction he wants to move. While he doesn’t have complete say and forks can occur, like we are currently seeing with Ethereum Classic, for the most part Vitalik’s word is key.

The benefits of having a platform where there is one person with such great influence on where the project should move, comes in the form of efficient and quick upgrades. There is no year long debates on what different outcomes might arise from the upgrade to the platform, which makes them come quickly. However this strength can also be its weakness, with less discussion on the possibilities of what could happen, something might be overlooked and make the chain vulnerable to attack. There have been some spam attacks recently, but overall the transparency and quick response from the developers has been great. Another good thing about having one person decide where the platform should move is that they can experiment with new and innovative upgrades without having to convince anyone that it is the right decision to make

Bitcoin on the other hand is a much more democratic process when it comes to development. Although we currently have the core team which almost all seem to be on the same page in regards to where they want to move in the future, there are often lengthy debates that could last years about instituting a certain upgrade because all the possibilities of what could happen are mapped out. With a 10 billion dollar market cap at stake, it makes sense for bitcoin to be the more conservative platform in this regard because more is on the line if they mess up. This has earned bitcoin the title of the most secure blockchain out there, but also leaves it vulnerable to competitors passing it up because of the time it takes to progress. Like Ethereum, each point that is a strength is also a weakness in some regard to bitcoin. Due to bitcoin’s extensive testing of BIPS before integration, for the most part the history of the actual chain causing problems has been very limited. However, in regards to transparency from developers, bitcoin seems to be lacking a bit in this regard. Although core is trying hard to be transparent, by releasing text from meetings, they still seem distant from the community at times. Many believe that because some developers are taking money from companies like blockstream, they are moving bitcoin into a corporate entity, but I do believe they have the best interest of making it go mainstream still in mind.

So what model should we take here on steemit? Right now we have a similar model to the Ethereum one and transparency isn’t at a point where it should be. Although Dan and Ned are definitely trying to be more transparent, it can still fall a bit short sometimes of what an open sourced project should have. The platform still is in beta though, so we can’t expect as much transparency and community interaction as a platform years old, because they still have a lot of work to do. I think there can still be actions they can take to add more community interaction and find out what the community wants. Polls pinned to the front page, add a development tab, ect. They are doing a great job for a beta platform but as we grow we are going to need to start examining what development model we want to follow.

At the moment I wouldn’t say either model of governance for open sourced projects is better, they are just different. Each has a strengths, weaknesses and holes that can be brought up by people. Only time will really tell which projects will be successful and what governance models they used to get them to that point. We should definitely keep an eye on how things progress in both bitcoin and Ethereum, so we can see what model fits best for steemit.

-Calaber24p