In 2023, we're seeing new and promising general-purpose, permissionless smart contract platforms launching in the interchain. This document is meant to cover thoughts on community management, avoiding trolls and toxicity, maximizing cooperation, and underscoring the landscape to expect as a sovereign-but-permissionless chain.
To set the stage, let's briefly zoom out and talk about the advent of public, community computers that have arrived in our lifetime.
In my lifetime, I saw the birth of the internet, and the confusion that hit the masses in the early day. We didn't know what to do with this thing. It could be argued that we didn't see the concrete possibilities, not because it wasn't properly explain, but because the idea was so incredibly broad and far-reaching, that it evaded us for decades. While we were building Geocities pages for fun, we didn't anticipate that online maps would be a regular part of daily navigation. Or that online deliveries would supplant in-person shopping for a signficant portion of the younger generation.
Blockchain is very much the same, and an extension to the internet, baking in the exchange of value. This massive upgrade is also so broad and incredible, that we're having a hard time wrapping our heads around the use cases that may become commonplace in our lifetimes.
In 2023, there are a few places for smart contract innovation. The mothership is Ethereum, but due to the fat protocol bet and the amount of value/security locked there, this isn't the ideal locus to rapidly iterate on "big" ideas. Big ideas include foundational changes to account systems, on-chain rewards, automation, block times, transaction and gas limits, etc.
For builders who have been attracted to the modern (open-source) space race known as web3, there are more intrepid ecosystems for ideas that can't wait for the timeline needed on Ethereum's roadmap. That's not dunking, it's just a separation. Cosmos and "the interchain" of zones is one such place that's arguably a better fit. The interchains offers punctuated experimentation that might otherwise challenge essentially immovable fundamentals in more established platforms like Ethereum.
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