Candidate's Program

Period	Council Mainnet Term #1
Author	0x2bc

Introduction

I am 0x2bc in the Joystream community and I would like to join the mainnet council.

First of all, I have an in-depth knowledge of the Joystream. Being a community member since April 2021 I have held multiple roles in the project, including Storage Worker, Distribution Worker, and Storage Lead. I was nominated as a Founding member as early as 2021 and kept active since that time.

Secondly, I have the necessary expertise to launch the first council on the mainnet. I was a part of the council on Carthage, which was the most comparable network to the mainnet in terms of its procedures and parameters. Through this, I acquired invaluable knowledge, like how to roll out WGs and how to prevent errors during the launch. Additionally, I was a member of the previous councils on Rhodes for more than 5 times which greatly contributed to my understanding of "how the system works" and "how it should work".

Finally, I have a clear understanding of where the Joystream DAO should be headed. Based on the original vision of JSG and my own extensive experience in the crypto space I drafted a long-term development plan.

A few following paragraphs provide a detailed explanation of the next steps that I would take if I were elected as a Council member. If you like my vision feel free to give a vote for my candidacy.

See you on the mainnet!

Short-Term

It's crucially important to have a proper head start. Though it may look simple in terms of "what to do" and "how to do", the process should be handled with reasonable caution. The previous council (I was part of this) launched Carthage and now we basically need to follow the same procedures with some adjustments based on what we have learned.

We are still finalizing this step-by-step guide, but it's already relatively well-developed. The main priorities for the mainnet council over the term, in no particular order, should be:

• Get the storage and distribution system up and running
• Get the forum working
• Set budgets for the groups, and if required, the council budget size and replenishment rate
• Establish workflows, tasks and reporting requirements with Leads and other CMs

Parameters for first term

+ Be sure to look at this section as it was recently updated

This is my suggestion for the composition, salary, and tasks of the Working Groups in the first term of the mainnet.

• Tasks for #1 Term
• Composition of WGs and initial salaries
• Lead Job Descriptions

Middle-Term

Once things are settled down a bit, let's turn our attention to the backlog, re-establish processes and standards across the DAO, and enhance the infrastructure. These are the main directions I would focus on for the horizon of a few months. Though some items may appear unrelated, I still consider them important to include in the scope.

Governance system

We have to revise all DAO governance processes and standards in light of the transformations brought by the mainnet launch and make sure they are up-to-date and properly carried out. This includes, but is not limited to

• Proposal guidelines
• Reporting process
• Budgeting process
• Process for managing grants
• etc

Documentation

We need to review our docs, particularly outdated information from Carthage and Rhodes. Resources to check:

• Handbook
• Notion
• GitHub Community repo
• etc

Scores

Scores are the way to measure how well the system is operating overall, as this is a key signal to the council about whether it is doing a good job or not. Given such a signal, the council would be able to change policies and reallocate resources to increase performance as measured by this signal.

In the later stages of mainnet, the market capitalization of $JOY is effectively this signal but in the early stages of mainnet we have to find some more substitute.

We need to connect WG scores and product metrics to create a comprehensive system of measuring performance and tie it to the compensation of senior roles in the DAO. This way, we can gauge the success of the project as a whole and make sure we are on the right track.

Carthage/Rhodes metrics as a base for the future development:

• Carthage Scores
• Storage_OKR_1
• Storage_OKR_2

Roadmap

Roadmap defines a goal or desired outcome and includes the major steps or milestones needed to reach by the Council and the DAO as a whole.

We've got some iteration on the Community roadmap before, but the document is still quite raw. Likely we underestimate the amount of effort and work that needs to be put into producing an outstanding roadmap.

We are now ready to take the next step and create the initial version of the document. After that, we must receive feedback from the community, leads of the working groups, JTF (Joystream Task Force), and industry experts. Once this is done, we can start putting the roadmap into practice.

Builders Scope

Given the wide range of tasks and limited staff of Builders WG, it is essential to prioritize our upcoming projects and distribute our limited resources effectively. What we have in scope now:

• Pioneer (UI fixes)
• Security (runtime tests, fixes)
• WG Tools: curation interface, CDN performance monitoring
• Block Explorer
• Status Page
• Community GW (hosted atlas or alternative)

Intellectual property

Let's find out which intellectual property and digital assets will stay with JSG and which will be transferred to the DAO. Here is a list of things currently owned by JSGenesis which will presumably be owned by DAO.

Some more questions on this:

• Usage: How will we use these new assets?
• Payments: Who will pay for the services? What's the procedure?
• Asset protection:How will DAO protect their assets? Each time new members join the Joystream DAO council, it is important to ensure that they do not misuse its resources. These individuals will possess privileged information, which could cause harm to the DAO if it is not managed responsibly.

Joystream Task Force

The idea here is to maintain a group of experts (Joystream Task Force - JTF) who lend their skills, guidance, and knowledge to Joystream DAO per demand, for a wide range of questions, starting from Strategic planning and ending to Marketing and CDN network improvement.

Some info on JTF is collected here:

• General description
• Storage JTF

So far we have only Storage JTF properly set up. We will make a list of topics that require the formation of specialized JTFs, then construct a precise outline for each new JTF and start deploying them.

Public testnet

It was an initial idea of the JSG to launch a long running public testnet, which has sudo perpetually, which aims to be the primary playground where developers, infrastructure providers, testers and workers can practice and learn, and also the final testing group for new runtime upgrades.

I believe Joystream DAO should assist JSG on that. The one very simple reason is that we can use this testnet for our own experiments. Community members who hold positions in the mainnet can assume the same roles in the public testnet, with rewards adapted to the situation.

Gateway Fees

There is no definite price that DAO has determined for its CDN network. We need to determine what would be our fees for Gleev and new gateway providers.

There are few different approaches that we can use:

• Cost-based model that incorporates our actual costs along with a markup
• Competitors-based model that adjusts our prices to match those of our rivals
• Different complex models. For example, we can look into more intricate models that involve offering lower prices in the early stages to gain a quick rise in market share, and then increasing them as we become more established.

Cost-based model can use parametric functions of the following variables:

• Cost of storage (TB per month, in USD)
• Cost of distribution (TB per month, in USD)
• Total bandwidth available (max garanteed bandwidth across all distributors, mbps)
• Coverage (covered regions)
• DAO overhead costs (council salaries, etc)

We can negotiate internally (within the community and JTF) which model we should use and then communicate it to the market.

Customer Development

Joystream DAO didn't do any proper customer development before (or at least I'm not aware about this) so it's time to run one. Customer development helps businesses to gain unique insights that they can use to improve service.

It will help to find answers for these important questions: What are the essential customer groups that we should target? In which locations should we begin our search for customers? How do they currently address their issue? What do they think of our solution?

Integrations

Integrations are ways or methods of connecting external projects to Joystream. These can include creation of apps for mobiles or smart TVs and also with viable 3rd party projects which are beneficial. Wallets and other stuff are relevant.

Let's explore further in this field and see if we can come up with any solutions that can be implemented quickly.

Debts

+ Be sure to look at this section as it was recently updated

I think it is essential that the effort put in by the Builders Working Group should be rewarded. They have done an incredible job and everyone is really appreciate that. Therefore, it is necessary to settle any debts accumulated during the Rhodes-Carthage and Carthage-Mainnet transition periods. Unfortunately we cannot afford to do all of it at once, as this may cause a collapse of the tokenomics. So we should aim to pay it off in the mid-term.

Questions to consider:

• Will we use story points or hourly rates to determine the compensation?
• What is the USD rate per hour? 50 USD?
• Should we implement a vesting period?
• What is the list of BWG employees with associated number of hours/SP they worked during the period?

More info

Grants

Let's initiate a scheme in which grants are given to people or companies looking to develop dApps on Joystream. Each application should be accepted by the majority of the Council and the amount of the grant will be assessed on an individual basis.

Exchanges

The DAO should enable community members who are working full-time to exchange their JOY salaries for USD (or other fiat currencies), allowing them to sustain their lifestyle and devote their full attention to the project.

If there are no exchanges after a certain period of time, the Council should take this responsibility and list JOY tokens by themself.

Normally it takes a lot of money to get a token listed on exchanges. But in our case we have well-known exchanges as our early contributors to the Joystream. This may allow us to get better conditions for a listing.

Exchanges that are our contributors (see the full list here):

• OKX www.okx.com
• MEXC https://m.mexc.com
• GateIOhttps://www.gate.io

Long-Term

Below are the major items I would focus on in the next six months and beyond. Shortly speaking, I would focus on striving for the highest level of excellence for our base infrastructure system, acquiring more B2B customers as gateway providers and discovering completely new market opportunities.

Ecosystem growth

Having a wide range of projects in the blockchain ecosystem is usually a positive sign. The development of this ecosystem will improve the Joystream adoption, contribute to the tokenomics and can potentially lead to more use cases for JOY.

We can direct our energy toward constructing of the ecosystem in various ways:

• Acquiring new gateways customers
• Set up grant program
• Assisting developers with tools and documentation
• Providing expert advice services
• Making partnerships and integrations (mobile apps, smart TV, etc)
• Inventing completely new use cases (cloud storage, etc)
• Developing infrastructure (block explorer, bridge, etc)

Parachain slot

Let's give careful consideration of this item. Do we need a parachain slot? Is that the right time to compete for the slot?

Advantages:

1. Polkadot security (more trusted security to the public)
2. Give creator tokens access to AMM and DFI through XCM
3. Increased public recognition

Disadvantages:

1. $JOY dilution
2. Complexity of implementation for infrastructure
3. Increased block finality latency, 60s ++
4. Inherit failure risk of relay chain itself

Main objections:

• How to get query infrastructure to work when finality is so slow. We need to probably transition to Subsquid for this, as it's too much investment in Hydra for us to be able to justify.
• Using these auctions as marketing is a very expensive way to reach an audience which is not very relevant to the growth of the system. $DOT holders are not going to be the creators that need to come to Joystream.

JOY token & tokenomics

The native asset $JOY captures value on the platform by having to be burned for access to key network features:

• Gateway providers effectively pay for the bandwidth service of accessing the content from Joystream
• Every time an NFT is minted, Joystream takes a fee.
• Every time creator token is traded, Joystream takes a fee

Though in the short term tokenomics is out of our control due to the limited user base, in the long term it's vital to find the balance between demand and supply thus ensuring the DAO has enough funds for salaries and infrastructure maintenance.

JOY token use cases.

We can also carry out some experiments and assess ideas to bring more use cases for a JOY token.

Pioneer

Pioneer - is our state-of-the-art governance which supports on-chain forum, in-depth proposal system, and working groups structure. I would suggest replicating it for the other projects in the Polkadot ecosystem and beyond, and the first step would be to develop a Pioneer "box solution".

If there will be other projects which use Pioneer "box solution", Joystream DAO will benefit immensely. This eventually led to a better security of Pioneer, more functionality and raised awareness of our DAO and video platform among a larger audience.

Let's begin with refining the code, going through the documentation and conducting extra audits. After that, a go-to-market strategy should be implemented.

Some long-long term ideas

It is difficult to make predictions, particularly about the future. These are a few thoughts that come to my mind when speaking about long-long term perspective. These are not action items but rather topics for further discussions:

• Switching from Web2.0 to Web3.0 services in the DAO as much as possible
• Introducting software based and AI workers in Working groups
• Migrating to new blockchains
• And more

References

1. Mainnet: council guide
2. Lead job descriptions for Carthage/Mainnet
3. Community roadmap
4. List of JSG digital assets and intellectual property
5. Purpose of Joystream Task Force (JTF)
6. Storage JTF
7. Long running public testnet
8. Governance system processes and standards
9. List of early contributors to Joystream
10. JSG AMA sessions
11. MainnetParameters
12. Carthage-incentives-draft
13. Goals of JSG vs Joystream DAO
14. Carthage Scores
15. Storage_OKR_1
16. Storage_OKR_2