On the fourth program on On Blockchain, Liu Qingyi continues his in-depth discussion with Newton founder Xu Jizhe on “community economics based on blockchain.”In this episode, Xu reveals his thoughts on community operations.
Interview Highlights
Q: How has your long-term open-source campaign helped create the Newton community?
A: The Open source movement can be traced back to Richard Stallman, who is my good friend, who started the Free Software movement in 1983.
Around 1995, part of the movement split off, arguing that Free Software sounded too abstract. After that, it was simply called “open source.”
In the first half of 1998, I and two college classmates pooled money to buy our first personal computer. In the latter half of the year, I learned about Free Software and liked the idea.
In 2005, I met Richard Stallman in Beijing. That year, I was working for Sina.
In 2005, Sina was China’s top internet company. BAT were still weak.
Sina’s CTO was Li Yibo, my leader, and a GNU fan.
I said, “Richard is coming. We should put him on direct video broadcast.” He agreed.
So I promoted Richard while at Sina.
The idea was crazy at the time, because it was only entertainment stars doing live video at the time.
From then on, I made great efforts to promote free software in China.
There were three main steps in the promotion process: the technology, popularizing free software licenses, and promoting the community culture.
You will find that many people making free software are not after money.
I met many friends through open source communities.
At that time there were many Meetups or similar explaining open source, as with Bitcoin today.
At the end of 2008, I started my first business, promoting open-source software full time.
At the time, I thought open source was so wonderful, and I had to bring it to more people, so I created a community called Zeuux.
In the three years until early 2011, it became clear that there was no business model, and we couldn’t make any money.
I lost more than 300,000, but I was still happy and made many friends, including some overseas.
After finding that there was no business model, I went to work at OkBuy.
I learned about Bitcoin in 2011.
I think Bitcoin is actually the same idea as free software. The process from software development to hardware development to economy is very natural, so with regard to free software tech, legal licenses, and community understanding and recognition, as far as I was concerned, doing blockchain was of great help, even critical importance.
Q: Should blockchain businesses make full use of existing open-source blockchain resources?
A: My work now on projects in the blockchain era is much smoother because of what I was working on in 2005.
Later I had many exchanges with Richard, the Python creator Guido van Rossum, and important early contributors to BSD.
Technologically speaking, Bitcoin and Ethereum are free software.
Their developer and community culture form one continuous line.
Blockchain entrepreneurs should make full use of existing free software. Bitcoin is a mature technology. Ethereum’s developer community, infrastructure, and choice of code tree planning licenses are all very professional.
Current blockchain developers should first make full use of existing open-source blockchain resources.
Second, they should abide by licenses.
There exists a strange loop now.
Many peoples’ thinking is still about technological exploration, always looking for original creation, hoping to write new code from the first line. I think that’s absolutely impossible.
If you were going to write out every line of code, including P2P networking, various encryption algorithms, to make a complete, sufficiently stable code tree, it would take at least 2–3 years.
Now, at the stage of internet commercialization, you’ll find entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos, who never emphasize who wrote something. Even the operating system isn’t necessary, rather you bring things together to do something.
So for future blockchain projects, we should absolutely use existing tech and actively integrate ourselves into international free software communities.
Standing on the shoulders of giants, rather than trying to be a giant ourselves.
After use, you should follow the license, otherwise it will turn into a black box after you use it, in the guise of one’s own intellectual property.
Q: Where does the domestic open source movement need to improve relative to overseas?
A: First, it is too pragmatic.
For instance, if I have to solve a problem, I’ll use Linux if I can, or else I’ll package my own solution.
A hack can be found, but in the long term, that won’t contribute to larger international communities.
I think that everybody should follow licenses, but many Chinese companies, even big ones, don’t.
Second is a full understanding of the culture of international communities.
We shouldn’t always try to form closed groups. I can always feel special in closed groups, but a sense of belonging is harder to find in larger communities.
I think we need to not only understand the existence of legal licenses and culture, but also their reasons.
Many people only go as far as understanding the thing, and whether or not it works, and don’t consider the deeper question of how it becomes free software.
One of our upcoming focus points at Newton will be to create a global developers community.
Q: Can the open-source movement regard tokens as an incentive mechanism?
A: I had also thought about that at first, but my later conclusion after consideration and deep discussions a few months ago with people like Brian Behlendorf (head of Hyperledger), and many such global project leaders, was that the feasibility would be low.
Taking Bitcoin as an example, it’s already been several years since its creation in 2009 to the present day.
It is worth considering that there is still no blockchain project to form a large developer community using tokens.
Big token incentives are a double-edged sword for a blockchain project.
First, there were many failures during the early years of blockchain development. Almost 90% of blockchain entrepreneurs greatly underestimated the difficulty.
Most tokens make most people too fickle, diverting their strength.
Second, if a project doesn’t manage token incentives well, it will lead to a profit-seeking mentality, which is not conducive to community development.
It is very important what a project puts at the core. If the core is making money, what you’ll get is profit-seekers.
Seeing great profits, even occasional ones, the community will fall apart.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about making money. That’s not a contradiction.
The core of a blockchain project must be idealism, then you can use tokens as a practical incentive tool.
Newton has always emphasized teamwork as its core, “allowing everyone to benefit directly from economic growth.”
Once you recognize this, then we can work together.
Then, together, with this model, we can talk about governance, collaboration, and motivation.
Once the tokens are in place, a core question is whether the project founders can put forth and hold to a clear vision, then use open and transparent incentives to govern the community.
We aim to be practical idealists. Tokens are the real part, but they must still serve the ideal.
Q: How do you solve problems of effectiveness and management in a decentralized organization?
A: Just in terms of effectiveness, centralized organizations are definitely the most effective, because in a decentralized organization, the cost structure, cost effectiveness, and so-called fairness are more difficult to reconcile.
That’s an extreme example. The opposite extreme would be Bitcoin.
Nakamoto’s governance of the Bitcoin community reached the highest realm: governance without action.
Later, the Bitcoin community could not reach this level.
There are two kinds of blockchain projects: Bitcoin, and all other blockchain projects.
The most important feature of Bitcoin was its start from scratch.
Nakamoto had no financing or coin exchanges from anyone, so he could disappear. He took the first opportunity to turn Bitcoin into an open network.
This practice can’t really be copied to new projects though.
Other projects raise some amount of Bitcoins or Ethereum through token exchanges, so someone must be responsible.
The founders can’t just disappear — or if they do, it’s called running off.
At that time, the premature opening of the network was in fact irresponsible.
In my view, in the end, blockchain projects will break down the boundaries between companies and organizations.
A company can be understood as a circle. Inside is the company, outside is the market.
Only Bitcoin has no circle. Other projects may make the circle’s border permeable, so everyone can participate.
The inner circle is still the core, but their significance is responsibility, not control of the project.
These are some of my basic views on project governance.
Q: What have you learned in community operation and management?
A: On the one hand, you will get the most out of a project by putting your heart into it, being honest about its vision, and use open and transparent governance.
In most blockchain projects, what we call “community” is actually a company.
They concentrate on office work; nobody knows about the current state of development or decisions. Decision making is a black box. When the black boxes accumulate to a certain extent, it reaches the point of no return.
With open, transparent community governance, that doesn’t normally happen.
Communities require a proposal or mechanism to systematically and comprehensively explain their pro’s and cos. Bitcoin has its Bitcoin Improvement Protocol (BIP), Ethereum has Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIP), and Newton has the Newton Evolution Proposal (NEP) mechanism, allowing the community to make open proposals.
Problems that arise can be identified, discovered, and solved at an early stage, and the natural flow of communication within the community prevents problems from accumulating.
The Newton founding team, who created the NEP protocol, have defined NEP categories such as governance, economic model, personnel appointment, and community governance.
After the launch of the NEP system, anyone can propose any idea to Newton.
Another concept of community operation is called vibrancy.
The lowest realm of community operation is a sense of participation.
In fact, in existing frameworks, it is impossible for a company’s fans to participate in their decision making. That’s only a feeling of participation, not the actual thing.
The second realm is resonance.
Here, community members not only have a sense of participation, but strongly agree, creating a chorus of praise. This is called resonance.
Q: So how do you reach this stage then?
A: The traditional structure of a company is a pyramid.
The founder is at the top, as the referee.
The foundation of this kind of governance is fear. KPIs dictate that if user growth doesn’t meet targets, one can be fired.
Community management is not like that. Its structure is like an inverted pyramid.
The founders are at the bottom, serving the community.
Their task is to build the venue, then help everybody find their own place and grow the community naturally.
Founders should use this mentality to put themselves at the bottom, and devote themselves to building the venue, bringing people in through true participation.
At the beginning, Newton only had my own proposals. I put forth an idea, which then caused more and more participation.
If everybody hits a solid piece of glass, it will eventually break. This is the power of vibration.
So distilling community governance to one key point, it should be vibrancy.
