The Rise of the Dawn Network - Status Report
evelopment of the Dawn Network continues, and I just want to report the progress and general sketch of the state of affairs and where we are going.
I had some very long discussions over Skype with both @ebryans and @frankbacon yesterday - well, it was quite eye-opening actually talking to Frank, in particular, who in person, is not the same joker as his posts might suggest... though just to be clear, he and I most definitely and strongly share our spiritual vision, and have a lot in common in terms of things that have gone on in our lives.
More relevant though, was the very long discussion I had with @ebryans, as he is our chief fundraiser. I explained to him a lot of things, especially about the Refractory Token Ledger and this new concept which I am calling Rock Paper Scissors Consensus Protocol.
During the discussion we became fairly clear on exactly what the plan is, and firstly, the design that has been partially implemented by @faddat, which essentially amounts to an abstraction (superset) of Steem's content monetisation model, is the first cab off the rank. Not just because it is nearer to being ready, but also because it is essential for the way in which we will enable people to fund development by what they get back.
We have a provisional plan for 32 initial Validators who will be composed of 12 workers building and managing the development process, and 20 open slots for those who will be seeding the development. We are currently working on estimates for the exact costs for each element of this, and once we have defined the budget, we will be setting the price for these 20 validator slots.
Validators will have the option, of course, at any time, to delegate or indeed trade the cryptographic token that grants their authority in the network to others. There will eventually be a framework for enabling this exchange process to be on-chain. Possibly in round two, after the initial estimated 12 months to complete implementation of RPS/RTL, we may expand the number of validators, if there is a need for a second round.
The monetisation of the provision of hosting service is something else that is on the agenda for this first 12 months of development. It is vitally important that there be reward for providing content hosting. We want to avoid the error in the architecture of Steem that sees the situation where hosting RPC nodes for users to access the network are so scarce.
Ideally, by this point in the process we will be extending the development to include the market in network relay, storage monetisation, computation services (VPS hosting, etc), derivatives exchanges (distributed exchanges), anonymous tokens, operating systems.
The second round of funding will be aimed towards building a completely open source hardware platform and operating system that is tightly integrated into the Dawn Network. We will be building some of these early, such as the Dawn Tractor, a turnkey Validator node (router) and small PC, but we will be aiming towards building a completely open platform, with open drivers for all hardware devices, which will include a smartphone, tablet, laptop and full sized desktop computer.
Ideally, the second round of development will be purely through blockchain currencies, and we should have the initial derivatives marketplace operating at that point, which can then be used to implement more conventional forms of shared ownership of the development process in the future, in the network itself.
You can see the draft plan for the ownership structure here: https://quip.com/RpZHAahm90MZ
If you are interested in joining the development discussions, you can also come to our chat at https://chat.anisotropic.systems
@l0ki thanks for this update. I've been following DAWN since day 1. Can you give me the new chatroom where peeps talk about it ?
I see your name already on the user list that you have been in (and I recall you chatting even). riot.im. the redirect from https://chat.anisotropic.systems as i dropped in the end of the post above still works.
THANK YOU! Now I remember . I got to bookmark this.
I hope I don't sound like I'm trolling by giving my opinion here but I think Dawn could seriously use a new logo... To me, maybe because of where I'm from, it looks like a road sign, and a hazard one at that... It's displeasing to the eye and the association makes me think "avoid".
Sorry if I offend anybody, just offering some advice.
Not at all, this is good and valuable feedback. Yes, ironically the shape is actually derived from the Serbian Cyrillic letter D as used on... ta dunn... street signs. And yes, yellow and black is often used for warning or caution, especially by animals like bees.
We are not by any means settled on the logo, it's just something I spun up quickly to use as a preliminary branding. It is better than what we had before, but it still conforms with the need for something that is unique and very distinctive, it evokes the shape of the sunrise... Probably what will happen is it will be revised to be a simplified icon of a sunrise, more literal than it is currently.
It does reflect my own personal aesthetic though, I like industrial things. Dawn is not lovey kissy UBI socialistic stuff like many of the recent new chains that are appearing. It's a robust machine that you can rely on. We are probably going to call the first piece of hardware the Dawn Tractor, for example. Probably we will reshape the branding soon to be something that highlights the agriculture - oriented naming schemes and concepts we are working with, since agriculture is about the production of living things.
Edit: It just occurred to me that you probably were not aware of the fact that this symbol is used for the letter D, so you can see it, here it is:
It may well be, actually, as I mentioned your comment to the group in our chat, that this 'scary' icon might be beneficial for eliminating silly people from joining. We are far from having anything to point much at, except a lot of first-draft work.
Branding is far from settled, that is for sure. We are in the initial phase right now, building the proposal and finding the seed funding. If it becomes obvious that this 'hard' looking symbol is inappropriate, it will be changed. But at this point there is no reason I can see, and I personally LOVE the logo.
I agree, professionals know that the point of branding is not appealing to everyone. Trying to be "mainstream" is a bad idea. But feedback and development are both still useful obviously.
this is why it is great we have steem to work with :)
Right. We are not targeting the broad audience with this. This is targeted squarely at anyone with an industrial/commercial mindset, who understands that this system, if it even fulfills 10% of the potential, is so incredibly disruptive to the business model of almost everyone. I mean everyone, banking, logistics, media, agriculture, communications, IT, etc... It replaces the machinery at the base of the building, it's a new foundation.
It should be intimidating and scary, like the borg cube or something.