Announcing the Launch of nectar.community
Ethfinex’s community-powered decentralised governance platform
Our goal here at Ethfinex is to create a secure decentralised exchange and a transparent governance layer that underpins the future decision-making of the platform.
Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of nectar.community — a governance platform through which Nectar holders can monitor balances, redeem fees and vote on community governance proposals. Nectar.community has been created for token holders to contribute to the long-term direction of Ethfinex, shaping the vision as we mature.
Both the voting smart-contracts and UI are completely open-source to allow for safe interactions with the Nectar smart contracts. We welcome and encourage new contributions on github.
Last month, we announced the Nectar token as an initiative that rewards trading on our exchange platform. Every month, the Nectar token is distributed to Ethfinex users in proportion to their trading volume. The token is tied to a pool of profits from all trades, allowing users to share evenly in the success of the trading platform.
As of today, NEC tokens holders will be able to calculate their current and future NEC earnings and redeem their share of earned fees on Ethfinex. Token holders will be able to propose and vote for functional changes to the platform, such as token listings and fee structures. Proposals can be submitted right now, and voting on the best proposals is anticipated to begin within the next few weeks.
Governance on Ethfinex
The Nectar governance platform sets the stage for further decentralisation in the future, where NEC holders will be empowered to take a greater role in governance decisions.
Voting
Voting on the platform will initially be through direct voting, but, as we move forward, we have plans to allow users to delegate their votes to other users which they deem to be trustworthy and knowledgeable.
This announcement reflects our belief that governance decisions should be made by those that use the platform and it brings us incrementally closer towards creating a vibrant community-owned Ethereum platform.
Decentralised governance matters because it removes hidden biases and nefarious actors that are common with centralised governance and it provides more transparency into the decision-making process. We believe that our governance layer will empower and reward users, while also surfacing the best ideas for the future direction of the platform.
Conditional bribes are one form of governance mechanism that will see experimentation. The structure of this governance mechanism could, as an example, provide a reward for participants in a community to vote for one choice and a public bribe encouraging an alternate choice. Experimentation could look to learn how community members behave when additional conditions are imposed, such as varying the choices, rewards, and information that community members have access to.
The future of smart-contract enabled on-chain governance is in the early stages. As a leader in the space, Ethfinex is proud to be member of the Aragon Labs working group where we will continue to test how various governance mechanisms respond to an array of conditions.
In keeping with the ethos of the Ethereum ecosystem, the Nectar governance platform and the findings from the working group are both open-source initiatives.
In the near future, we will be announcing a lower minimum amount to begin trading on the platform and we are working hard to dramatically decrease verification wait times, all in attempt to remove the barriers to entry into our community, which is our greatest asset moving forward.
Head over to the Ethfinex discussion boards to start shaping and refining your ideas before submitting a final proposal for the entire community to vote on!
