distrikt community update #2
On July 27th, distrikt launched and gave you a glimpse of what’s to come. Now we get to experience a whole new chapter in its journey: seeing the platform perform live, supporting more and more users, and taking on new challenges.
After receiving so much valuable feedback and interesting questions, it’s time address the most frequent ones.
Sustainability and funding
The question “what is distrikt’s business model?” appeared quite frequently in our community channels, so let’s go into more details about it.
distrikt is supported and maintained by The Open Internet Foundation, a Swiss not-for-profit organization. The Open Internet Foundation(OIF) has secured donations of 6 million CHF and 40,000 ICP. The 40,000 ICP have already been locked in a neuron for 8 years. You can see the neuron creation here.
These funds have been donated by Aurel Iancu, co-founder of distrikt. His generous donations make distrikt a self-funded project and ensure we have enough runway to complete the roadmap. distrikt is fortunate to have Aurel’s support going forward, it certainly gives the project a head start in achieving a sustainable future.
The Open Internet Foundation will use these funds to set up financial mechanisms that will sustain distrikt and keep the platform free for its users. Initiatives like the staking of the 40,000 donated ICP will help distrikt cover needs such as the required cycles for the platform’s computation and storage.
Advertising is not one of the mechanisms that will be considered by the OIF moving forward, but once governance tools are implemented, users can decide for themselves.
The DKT token
distrikt will have its own native token called DKT. The DKT will be a utility token that grants governance rights of the distrikt platform and aligns incentives for all participants in the distrikt ecosystem.
Unlike most other crypto projects, there will be no private sale of the DKT tokens. More than 60% of tokens will be distributed to the community via public fundraising, airdrops, and grants.
Points
distrikt will also implement an in-app reward system based on points. Points will be awarded to users for valuable contributions to the platform. Users will be able to redeem points for DKT in the last week of each month.
Decentralization
We will consider distrikt truly decentralized the moment it has incorporated the tools that empower people to participate in the governance of the platform in an open, decentralized, and permissionless manner. These tools do not yet exist in this initial stage of the product development but they are on the roadmap and a truly user-governed platform is the ultimate goal for distrikt.
These are very early days in distrikt’s journey to decentralization, with the platform still in its MVP stage. We are, nonetheless, constantly working towards a version of the product that allows users to become active decision-makers regarding things like product development, or the management of the community. Until then we will regularly check in with users, conduct polling, and request specific feedback in order to make sure that our actions are aligned with their best interests.
Roadmap to decentralization
Points: The first tool that will allow distrikt to test the decentralized waters is the point system. Once implemented, it will open up an array of use cases and engage the community in new ways, such as empowering users to take on moderation or verification tasks.
Governance: The next step is implementing the token design and governance tools. This means that you can expect the initial version of the distrikt’s governance features to cover basic needs such as submitting proposals, voting, and assigning implementation. As we add layers of complexity to the governance features, we also accelerate the transfer of decisional power from The Open Internet Foundation to distrikt users and token holders through specific governance features such as liquid democracy, fast-track voting, and ambush attack prevention.
To encourage good proposals and prevent spamming, a pre-defined amount of DKT tokens will need to be deposited with the proposal. If the proposal passes the voting stage it will generate a reward in points for the one who submitted it. If the proposal does not pass the voting stage, the deposited DKT tokens will be returned in 90 days. This creates an opportunity cost that will discourage spam-like proposals while incentivizing well-thought-out proposals.
Voting: Token holders can stake DKT tokens and receive voting power on governance proposals. To prevent short-sighted voting outcomes, the minimum lockup period will be set at 6 months. On the other side of the spectrum, the maximum lockup period will be set at 4 years.
The voting power is proportional to the number of tokens staked and the lockup time. The rewards received for staking DKT tokens are also proportional to the number of staked tokens and the lockup period. Longer lock-up is rewarded by up to 400% multiplier for longer commitments.
Coming soon
We were amazed by how quickly our community embraced distrikt and we certainly learned a lot from watching people interact with the platform in these early days.
Based on the valuable feedback of our early adopters we added quite a few things to our roadmap and the team quickly got to work on optimizing and addressing the issues that distrikt users have signaled. We’ll be releasing quite a few new experiences:
Android app
We’re getting ready to release the distrikt Android application and we’re so excited to open up distrikt to a new wave of mobile-first type of users! You can expect the mobile app to have the same features as the web app, only a more native experience.
Verifying accounts
As distrikt continues to gain traction the community has signaled the need for a profile verification process to help prevent malicious actions from impersonators. Verified profiles will soon be available for companies, brands, and public figures. These accounts are a priority because they are the most likely to be leveraged to harm the distrikt community.
Discovery feed
A new discovery feed will be rolled out by the end of September. This feed will allow users to browse through the latest content posted on distrikt and enable the discovery of new content and new profiles that a user can connect with.
Image attachment and custom cover photos
Along with the discovery feed, users will also be able to add images to their distrikt posts and replace the pre-defined cover photos with their own photos. We’re all eager to see the first distrikt meme in its natural habitat! :)
Moderating content
Users can report posts, comments, and user profiles. In this initial stage, moderation is being handled by the distrikt team, but we are in the process of designing a moderation system that will allow us to empower users to become moderators. As the job of moderating is a service for the benefit of the distrikt community, it will be properly incentivized via points that can later be exchanged for DKT tokens.
Once governance tools are implemented, moderators will be proposed and appointed by users, and their responsibility will be to respond to reports and take appropriate action if the content is deemed as harmful to the community. When enough users flag the same content as inappropriate, the content will be sent to a randomly selected set of moderators for review.
The number of moderators will be proportional to the average number of active users. The ratio of the number of moderators vs the number of active users is initially set at 1:2000. This ratio, along with most of the things proposed by the distrikt team, will eventually be subject to changes made by the on-chain governance.
Keep in touch
Please reach out to us on any of our communication channels and let us know what you think. We appreciate constructive feedback and your questions are always welcomed!
