How to Bootstrap a Proof-of-Stake Community
If you’re waiting for the next wave of blockchain innovation, don’t blink — it’s already underway. Hundreds of independent projects are designing, building, and growing next-generation blockchain networks. And we’re happy to be supporting some of them on Lunie!
In the last year, we’ve spoken with 40+ teams who are working on an independent proof of stake blockchain project. There are technical differences between their implementations and economic systems. But all are using staking and delegation as a key function. Some are fast, others are faster but, at the end of the day, they’re all working towards a vision of a decentralized multi-chain future.
This post is for teams who are thinking of or are already building a public network. We encourage you to consider the following:
Build On The Shoulders Of Giants
Even though building a new consensus algorithm from scratch might feel like a good idea, it’s probably not. There are great frameworks available for building your own blockchain. The Cosmos SDK and Polkadot’s Substrate are both great options. They provide power, flexibility.
Check out the documentation for these projects before you decide to build anything from scratch.
Make A Plan For All Your Stakeholders
Building a proof of stake community requires thoughtful consideration of all potential stakeholders. There will be at least three important stakeholder groups to account for. Developers, token holders, and network operators (validators). Articulating a clear value proposition for each stakeholder group will help make sure your project a success.
Chances are that the participants in your network are trying to keep up with many other networks too. Identify one communication channel for each of your stakeholder groups so everyone knows where to go for important updates.
Incentivized Testnets Are A Must
If you’re running a Proof of Stake blockchain, an experienced validator set is absolutely critical, but before you’re ready to start running public testnets, make sure you do a few private dry runs first. These never go as planned and provide extremely valuable learning opportunities for all parties. After a few successful public testnets consider starting an incentivized testnet program.
Incentivized testnets are competitions where network participants compete for a chance to earn tokens and gain public recognition. Most of the successful incentivized testnets focussed on validator performance, but you should also consider how other stakeholder groups can be involved too.
How can you include folks who write documentation, build community, and perform other important non-validator related tasks?
Set The Stage For Governance
Launching a public network is a huge accomplishment, but getting to mainnet is only the beginning. You’ll need a strong plan in place to create a resilient and decentralized platform. Thinking through an engaging governance system is something to consider early on. Who do you expect to take part in governance? How accessible does this system need to be? Will everything be on-chain? Who will coordinate the Zoom calls?
Having a functional and productive governance system requires a lot more than what’s written in a codebase.
Remember To Take Care Of Your Users
End-users need simple, accessible tooling and clear, easily-accessible documentation. Hoping that the open-source community will develop everything for free will result in a fragmented user experience. Invest in more than core engineering and marketing.
If you want your project to be popular, make sure users have simple tools they can use to accomplish their goals. If your team isn’t able to build everything on their own (and even if they are 😉), reach out to other teams in the space for potential support and integrations.
How Lunie Can Help Your Community?
If you’re bootstrapping a community and you care about providing a great user experience for all your stakeholders, get in touch with us. We can help with documentation, software development, design, community building, strategic planning, and more!
