SUPERALGOS PROJECT
The Superalgos Contributor Mindset
Developing a sense of belonging is essential for long-term success of the project.
One of the missions of the Superalgos Community is aligning all participants of the network under the contributor mindset:
The entire body of work of the Superalgos Project is a free, open-source, and sustainable public good.
We all get to build it, we all get to enjoy it, and we all share responsibility for its proper functioning.
In Superalgos, there are no clients or customers. We are all enablers of the resources we build and are all users.
Grasping this concept is paramount to understanding the dynamics of the community and the workings of the project. This idea is one of the project’s guiding principles built into the design of incentives and the governance system.
It may be counterintuitive for most of us who usually engage with the economy with a corporate customer mindset.
In this article, I will dive deep into this subject so that you can fully grasp the framing that will lead you to become a valuable member of this community.
The Difference With State-Sponsored Public Goods
We are all used to enjoying public goods. Think of the roads you use to commute or the service the Fire Department provides to all citizens in modern societies.
These sorts of public goods get funded via taxation.
State-sponsored public goods come in the form of infrastructure or services that must be paid for by all citizens, regardless of how much or how often they use them. In other words, the cost of producing and maintaining state-sponsored public goods is socialized.
Superalgos flips this logic and proposes a superior system.
No one needs to pay to build the Superalgos Platform or the rest of the public infrastructure — nor to maintain or improve it. Instead, everyone gets to enjoy the public good free of charge.
This miracle is possible thanks to smart design of incentives. Superalgos incentivizes people to contribute to the project and voluntarily build, maintain, and improve the public good.
It’s a carrot-based system, as opposed to government taxation, which is purely stick-based.
As a taxpayer, you feel entitled to quality state-sponsored public goods — and rightfully so — because you are paying for them.
In Superalgos, however, you are entitled to nothing.
Shocking? Bear with me, please. It may sound harsh, but it’s a crucial concept.
Not only are you not entitled to anything, but you share a responsibility to help grow the project and make it work as intended.
Think of it this way:
The adage “there is no such thing as a free lunch” is true. In Superalgos, you don’t pay cash; you pay by sharing responsibility for the destiny of the collaboration.
The Difference With Private Goods
When you buy something from a company, you expect to get what the company promises in exchange for your cash. Fair enough.
In modern societies, consumers have all sorts of protections and legal recourse to demand that the purchased good performs as promised or that a service-level agreement is fulfilled. This is because consumers pay cash for these goods and services, and cash is a physical (or digital) representation of the energy consumers spend to accrue the equivalent value.
When you buy a good or service with cash, you voluntarily exchange different forms of value.
In Superalgos, the public infrastructure is offered as is, as clearly stated by the Apache 2 License:
Disclaimer of Warranty. Unless required by applicable law or
agreed to in writing, Licensor provides the Work (and each
Contributor provides its Contributions) on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or
implied, including, without limitation, any warranties or conditions
of TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE. You are solely responsible for determining the
appropriateness of using or redistributing the Work and assume any
risks associated with Your exercise of permissions under this License.In other words, everyone is free to use the infrastructure and is responsible for how they use it.
But I Bought Tokens!
If you did, that’s great!
Buying tokens is a great way to support the project and a contribution in and of itself.
It’s a valuable contribution because it provides liquidity to the token — the engine that makes the incentives system function as designed. Buying tokens is the perfect way to contribute if you have no time, resources, or desire to contribute work.
Token holders may participate in governance of the project with a number of votes equal to the size of their holdings. We call it Token Power, a measure of the influence you have in relation to the influence of the rest of the contributors.
But there are other ways you may use your token power: to access services made available exclusively to contributors by community members.
Those are the two use cases of the token driving demand, which, in turn, makes the incentives system work.
Now, here’s a crucial point you need to understand:
Holding tokens is like showing a membership card proving you are a contributor to the Superalgos Project.
When you buy tokens you are not purchasing a product or a service. You are voluntarily contributing to the project like other people contribute work or other forms of value.
Buying tokens makes you a contributor like everyone else. Nothing more, nothing less.
Buying Tokens Vs. Getting Token Rewards
What is more valuable?
The tokens you may buy from the market or directly from holders have the same value and utility as those contributors get in reward for value added to the project. In fact, they are the same tokens.
However, people who contribute work get reputation along with token rewards. The reputation you get when contributing work translates into additional power within the Voting Program in the governance system. You may only use reputation for voting.
The project assigns relatively more value to work-related contributions than to liquidity-related contributions as reputation has some value you may spend voting.
Why is that so?
It’s not an ideological stance.
It’s not that we have an issue with cash or are biased against it.
The reasons relate to incentives and the inner workings of the collaboration:
- People who contribute work tend to dive deeper into the workings of the project and spend more time interacting with the community. They acquire a superior understanding of what the project needs to succeed and are thus more qualified to lead. That is why they should have a stronger voice in governance.
- The point above also serves as a protection mechanism against hostile takeovers. Any powerful entity that buys a large number of tokens in an attempt to control the project will still need to compete with the reputation of people who contributed work at the time of voting.
- People who buy tokens may remove the value they add to the project (liquidity) at any time simply by selling them. People who contribute work may too sell their tokens; however, they can not remove the value they added in the form of development, improvements, and maintenance! The latter type of contribution is permanently locked into the project, while the former is unbound.
Incumbencies and Duties
The Superalgos Project and the community do not offer products or services you may buy for cash. We only build, improve, and maintain the public good.
Independent users and teams within the community may offer services like trading signals. However, they don’t sell these services for cash. Instead, they offer them for free — albeit not as a public good. Instead, they make these services available exclusively to contributors. These services, like the infrastructure, are offered on an as-is basis too.
Users and teams have no obligation to provide any service whatsoever. Instead, they do it voluntarily because they get incentives to do it. Providing these services is a contribution in and of itself, like contributing code or liquidity.
As a token holder, you may access these services when and if they are available. There is no service-level agreement, no particular commitment, and no obligation towards you or anyone else.
It may be hard to wrap your head around this crucial concept, as we’re all wired to think within the corporate customer frame of reference. But all of this is a consequence of shifting the framework from a stick-based system to a carrot-based system.
Everything around Superalgos is voluntary. The whole system is predicated on your freedom to choose how you wish to engage with the community.
The model of making services freely available to contributors instead of selling them to outsiders for cash keeps the community honest and focused. We know that if the services are not good, we will not be able to retain people that join us to participate in the Social Trading Network.
Also, this model prevents scams that may emerge in a permissionless network, for instance unscrupulous people willing to sell shitty signals or overpromise on what they can deliver.
How Does All This Affect Work?
The work within a permissionless open-source project fueled by voluntary contributions is organized differently than your average startup or company.
There are no managers, bosses, or teams responsible for specific tasks. There are no schedules. There is no payroll. There are no employees, and no one follows orders.
Instead, people contribute in their free time.
Contributors tend to engage with aspects of the project they may find interesting. No one tells them what to do. They have an entrepreneurial mindset. Their availability may vary.
They communicate over public groups but may also interact with each other over private working groups.
Coordination is organic and spontaneous. Some contributors choose to take leadership roles, organize teams, and maybe even set up a roadmap. Others take on smaller tasks, solving an issue or contributing fixes.
Contributors who acquire significant reputations tend to assume responsibility for sensible roles, like managing the workflow of the code and contributions in the repository or the token distribution process.
Does This Mean That Superalgos Is Unreliable?
We hope not.
This incentives system and collaboration framework lead us to build the best open-source trading automation platform, so we are confident the system works. In the current phase we are building the first open and token-incentivized social trading network, a revolutionary concept never heard of before.
That said, as a community we can’t take anything for granted.
The system will work as long as the community believes in this alternative way of doing things, predicated on freedom. It will work if we all pull together in the same direction.
If the correct incentives are in place, there will always be people willing to contribute to improving the infrastructure, and there will always be people willing to offer services to contributors.
It’s all about setting the right incentives and delivering something of value that people want to use.
We don’t make any promises. Instead, we deliver. We have built an organism that improves itself, and we are confident we will succeed!
Who Do I Complain To?
No one.
Remember, you are responsible for advancing the project just as much as everyone else. If you feel like complaining, you’re in the wrong mindset.
Now, here are some ideas if you ever feel something is not working as it should:
- If it’s an issue with the software, go to the Superalgos Support or Develop groups and clearly explain the anomaly. If you don’t get a solution in the groups, please document the case and open an issue on GitHub.
- If your concern is about the functioning of the project or a particular aspect of the collaboration you may go to the most appropriate community group and openly discuss the matter. Clearly explain the issue and ask if other people share your concerns. Maybe you can help set up a team interested in solving the perceived problem or producing the desirable change.
- If you believe someone other than you may have the tools, knowledge, or time to address your concern, you are always free to offer an incentive to stimulate contributors to work in a certain direction. Community members often open issues on GitHub describing what they would like to achieve and offering a bounty in tokens for the team who accomplishes the mission.
- If the community doesn’t seem to have the resources required to produce the change or work you expect, feel free to go out and bring in the people that may be up for the task. We are always welcoming to new developers and talent that may be interested in contributing.
- Feel free to hire a team. If your team contributes improvements to the project, you may claim rewards via the governance system.
In other words, be proactive. Look for solutions. Do not expect others to work for you. Instead, offer your service to the community.
Mastering Contributions
You just read an article in the Mastering Contributions series exploring some of the crucial aspects of the Superalgos Collaboration. To continue your journey learning about how to contribute to Superalgos, just keep reading:
- Why Contribute to Superalgos
- How to Contribute to Superalgos
- Why We Reward Value Creation Only
- What Is and What Isn’t a Contribution that Adds Value
- All About Proof of Value Reports and Teams Formation
- The Superalgos Contributor Mindset
- The Good Governance Citizen
- More Thoughts on Governance and the Allocation of Rewards
