Hello everyone,

I would like to share with you a great article that was posted by the NULS team yesterday that explains the vision of NULS for the future.

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Necessary Steps To Achieve Community Autonomy

NULS future development: the community is our soul

The primary goal of NULS is to build a self-evolving blockchain infrastructure led by an autonomous community. This community will reach beyond those with vested interests, and extend to open-source community contributors, NULS node maintainers as well as the participants and end-users of the NULS eco-system. Producers, users and beneficiaries form a distributed shared economy on the platform. Ultimately, we believe the only sustainable vision for blockchain is an open transparent system which is beholden to the community. For this reason, we invite the NULS community to participate in and inspirationally direct the evolution of NULS. Let us build for the future and let us dream big.

It has been shown, that most successful blockchain projects are driven by communities, as opposed to centralized enterprise-level organizations. The story began with the birth of bitcoin, a project, which one could say, had its provenance in back-room dealings. Yet, driven by the demand of a growing community for a new world financial order, bitcoin became globally recognized and developed real-world acceptance. The community is not a by-stander, it appears, but is the driving force, a group of people who share the same purpose and are willing to collaborate and evolve together. Of course, as the value of tokens is derived from community consensus, so the community has an effect on the token valuation.

Clearly, the community is the soul of future development in the blockchain economy. In traditional business, the majority shareholder tends to hold the balance of power and authority of voice. While some companies have tried to address this imbalance by giving more voting weight to minor shareholders, it is still difficult to achieve any true form of balance. This has led to lack of diversified opinions in board rooms, resulting sometimes in complacency, lack of innovation and a slow realization to capitalize on market trends. A company can seem to be doing everything ‘right’, but prone to missing the ‘big’ opportunity. This was one of the reasons, for example, for the decline of Nokia. One of the biggest advantages of blockchain, and our vision at NULS for blockchain, is that we can organically react to trends. Communities create trends, and thus a community led project is best placed to recognize and capitalize on those trends. In the future, perhaps even at a corporate level, community-led governance may eventually replace corporate-led governance. We may set another trend.

Reaper Ran, NULS Director of Community Operations says “people are the life force of blockchain economics. It is the only way we can adapt, evolve and influence. The community is the power and the perpetual engine of blockchain.”

Imagine the future: NULS community envisioned

Can you envision what a strong NULS global community will look like when it matures?

Through an on-chain management mechanism, different geographical regions will have voted for and established their own local community leaders. These leaders will be in a position to use available resources to capitalize on all areas of growth, including marketing, business development and thought leadership. They may decide to connect with real-world businesses who are interested in collaborating with or starting their own blockchain. Leaders from different geographical regions may decide to collaborate on joint projects. For example, they may jointly agree to support the launch of a particular DApp or product, thus providing instant access to a global market (which in traditional markets would be prohibitively expensive). One ecosystem, one attainable and affordable global market. They may exchange technical ideas with local universities and answer questions from students who want to establish a blockchain startup. Leaders may hold investor meetings, so that holders can learn more from community contributors about the latest NULS technology and market trends. As more member developers join the revolution, the technical possibilities are endless, especially as increasingly more modules are added to the repository library. Whole business categories, health, insurance, social media, gaming – will discover an easy, one-stop-shop solution to all their future development needs. In this way, the ecology of NULS will continue to grow exponentially.

We think this future is exciting, don’t you?

The necessity to divide the work of the core team and the community in early stages of the NULS project
As discussed, the ultimate vision for NULS is a decentralized community led project. There are some steps involved for us to move from where we are now, to the ultimate goal of self-governance and community autonomy. Ultimately, the core team who are necessary for the set up and initial running of the project, are working towards losing their jobs! As the project matures, the introduction of certain mechanisms will gradually weaken the influence of the core team, until their presence is no longer necessary, or they become members of the NULS community themselves.

Initially, we propose a mechanism of on-chain governance (election system) and off-chain assistance (from the core team). The community will elect talented leaders to drive their vision, and those leaders through an on-chain mechanism will have the authority to propose changes to any parameters within the NULS economic system (which must be voted on by the community). They could propose for example, changes to the base-layer blockchain, consensus mechanism, storage or ledger system. Full consensus is hard to achieve, so we have set the bar at 90% for execution.

It is important to note, that anyone can become a leader in the NULS community – regardless of background, location or skill set. Everyone has the chance to become a key influencer in the development of the NULS project, perhaps even one day to lead the overall project. Opportunities are there for the right inspirational people.

NULS’s blocks will record the footprints of every community member during his or her development process. Everyone has the opportunity to burst into life, deliver ideas and value to the community, and perhaps even become a powerful voice in the blockchain world beyond NULS, in the wider world at large.

We are inviting great minds who have insights about the development of blockchain to join the NULS community competition and contribute where they can.

Core Team Initial Participation

The core team’s goal is to lay the structure and foundation for the future development of the NULS project. In the early stages, the core team will be involved in delivering exchanges, attracting key business partnerships, establishing relationships with research institutes and universities and raising awareness of the project. They will also train the community leaders in blockchain technology and business.

Disclosure on the usage of the NULS locked tokens by the team and community
At this time, employees of NULS will not participate in the community fund application, fund usage or community campaigns. These are dedicated community resources. Community tokens will primarily be used to fund community leaders and technical contributors. Part of the benefits from this program will flow back into the community fund, ensuring the sustainable development of the community.

Token Allocation

1. Team Funding

20 million tokens, unlocked at the rate of 5% (1 million) per month over the course of 20 months. This is controlled by the core team and proposed to fund:

a. Development of the core architecture of the system

The NULS team will complete the development of the basic module (including the NULS base-layer core, NULS main chain consensus module, storage module, ledger module, network module, smart contract module, cross-chain module and governance module). This fund will support other technical infrastructure such as: APP Wallet, PC Wallet and Block Explorer.

b. Development of an open-source autonomous community governance structure

Funds to improve the community governance module, implement the function of on-chain management system, build an open-source community basic framework and attract quality personnel to guide the community and complete the specific implementation plans of NULS.

c. Form a global community team

Build a solid international team to support the development of NULS projects around the world.

2. Business Development

20 million tokens, in principle no more than 4 million will be used a year. This part is controlled by the core team and proposed to fund:

a. Cooperation with investment institutions and strategic partners

Partnerships and collaborations with institutional investors and strategic commercial partners.

b. Cooperation with strategic agencies

Cooperation with strategic international ratings and governance accreditation agencies.

c. R&D

R&D development partnerships with large universities, industry and institutional researchers and economists. This is part of our very real ambition to position NULS as thought leaders in blockchain.

3. Community Development

20 million tokens available to the community. Community funds will be managed and spent by the community. To date funds have been managed by the NULS Foundation, but this will transfer to the on-chain governance fund.

After the consensus governance module is live (step 1 below), we will implement step 2.

Step 1:

The NULS Foundation launches a global recruitment campaign to select 50 code contributors. When main-net went live, 11 million NULS tokens were locked in for core developer funding. Each developer will receive up to 50% of an agent node commission, and the remainder returns to the community fund.

Step 2:

After the community consensus governance mechanism is live, community core developer positions can be proposed by the community leader. The initial rate of commission for developers is set at 50%, but the council can propose to change the rate and present to the community for vote. The new rate will be executed only if it passes the community vote. The competition and termination of this role will be implemented according to the consensus governance mechanism.

The responsibility of the open source technology community is to maintain, update, upgrade and test the base-layer code and functional modules. They are responsible for operating the base layer facilities and functional modules efficiently.

a. Community leaders

Step 1:

The NULS Foundation is recruiting 10 community leaders from around the world. Two million NULS have been set aside to run community leader nodes. A community leader will receive an income of up to 80% commission from an agent node, and the remainder will go to the community fund.

Step 2:

After the community consensus governance mechanism goes online, the role of community leader will be created and voted on. After election he or she will become a community leader for a particular region and receive an income as outlined above. The initial rate of commission is set at 80%, but the community council can propose to change the rate. The new rate will be executed only if it passes a community vote.

Requirement & responsibilities of a community leader:

(1) Must own 20,000 NULS to create a node.
(2) Responsible for community growth, business development and brand promotion in the region.
(3) Structure and organize their team and promote local development.
(4) Submit a work report in English to the community every two weeks.

The community leaders are required to declare their candidacy and are selected via competition among community members. In principle, elected community leaders may decide to use their 80% node commission to promote their regional community business brand and other development not related to core team work. The core team will provide training and support to leaders in the early stages, but as the project develops, all power will devolve to the leaders and community.

According to local development requirement, the community leader can apply for additional funding. Smaller fees will be decided by the council, but larger fees will need to be voted on and paid from the community fund.