Preamble
I was chatting with @annika about the concepts below and she mentioned it might be worth sharing on the gov forum, so here it goes. This post is meant to be a knowledge transfer and represents my limited vantage point. Please treat it as just a data point + part of the knowledge transfer.
Definitions
- Socialware - Mechanisms that create assurances through human relationships, incurring a high social coordination cost.
- Trustware - Mechanisms that create assurances through technology, incurring a low social coordination cost.
- Hyperstructure - crypto protocols that can run for free and forever, without maintenance, interruption or intermediaries
Credit for these definitions: Orca: socialware to trustware , Zora: Hyperstructures.
TLDR
Gitcoin started as socialware (high social coordination cost) + more trustware (low social coordination cost) has evolved over time.
Once Trustware runs all of the core operations of Gitcoin’s products, then Gitcoin is a hyperstructure (a crypto protocol that can run for free and forever, without maintenance, interruption or intermediaries).
The four phases of this evolution of trust @ Gitcoin are:
- Socialware
- Modular socialware
- Trustware at the center with socialware at the edges (hyperstructure phase)
- Growth via network effects
As Gitcoin Progressively decentralizes over time, I believe it’ll move from centralization to a decentralized and modular set of protocol-based codebases.
The evolution of socialware => trustware of GitcoinDAO
The Gitcoin Hyperstructure
As noted above, Hyperstructures are crypto protocols that can run for free and forever, without maintenance, interruption or intermediaries.
Once Gitcoin Grants is run primarily on trustware, I believe that it has fully become a Hyperstructure.
Here is a more-artistic (and less technical) visualization of the Gitcoin Hyperstructure by IamJvck, created via this design bounty.