The Gridcoin White Paper Proposal
Introduction
The following is the work of a group of community members who explored the Gridcoin ecosystem, listened to the community, and wrote an updated Gridcoin whitepaper from scratch. Work began in August 2017. Conversations took place on slack, steemit, reddit, CCT, and GitHub. This proposal would not have been possible without the dedication of the following community members: wisecracka, tcblack, noah blaker, hotbit, and jringo. Additional significant contributions and edits came from h202, nateonthenet, timo425, and dgilder. Further contributions came from throughout the community during this months long process of discovery, listening, defining, writing, and designing.
White Paper vs. Blue Paper
A white paper is meant as an informative tool with regards to vision, philosophy, intent, general operation, and overall organization of an entity. It is the introduction paper for those with an interest in an entity. A white paper does not need technical information, though it might sometimes contain more generalized technical details.
Alternatively, a blue paper is the technical paper of an entity or project. Its intended audience is the technically minded, those who wish to dive deeper into the workings of a protocol, and those who wish to contribute to or understand the engineering aspect of a project. It is typically formula rich and in the context of blockchains, defines how the protocol operates.
Rationale
A white paper is the first thing a potential participant or contributor will read in order to get a high level overview of a project. The Gridcoin whitepaper serves to bring clarity to the community itself and as a comprehensive introduction for those completely new to the project.
A white paper gives marketers a tool, contributors a general guide, and community members an anchor of vision and understanding.
A white paper is a requirement for being listed on exchanges.
Process
The creation of this paper began with questions presented to the Gridcoin community in July and August of 2017:
Who are we?
What is your vision of Gridcoin?
What is the value of Gridcoin?
Why do you believe in and contribute to Gridcoin?
What do we as a community stand for?
A #whitepaper slack channel was created in mid august to facilitate the collection of the responses to these questions and to help mold them into a working draft.
From there, the draft was worked into a paper and refined into the paper presented with this proposal.
The poll for this proposal was drafted in #poll-drafts on slack.
Intent Moving Forward
If accepted, the white paper presented with this proposal will become the official Gridcoin white paper.
Minor edits to wording, formatting, and definitions will be made at the discretion of the main contributors listed in the introduction of this proposal. Examples of minor changes are updating the computation power of BOINC and the Gridcoin Network, and updating the developer compensation from $30 to $60 if the currently running developer compensation poll passes.
As Gridcoin continues to grow and further define its utility, structures, infrastructures, and use-cases, major additions and revisions may be required. Any major change to the vision, philosophy, and intent expressed in the white paper will require a follow-up blockchain-based poll for implementation.
When you vote on this proposal, you are voting for the white paper as presented, not a future edit. However, if you find a typo or any major flaw, please point it out. These minor edits will be made to the presented white paper. Suggested major additions or edits, if they are to be included, will require further reworking and a follow-up poll in the future.
Upon acceptance of this whitepaper, work will begin on a blue paper which will detail the technical workings of the Gridcoin protocol. There is no proposed timeline for the creation of the blue paper.
If this proposal and white paper is rejected, feedback from the discussion will be taken into account and changes will be made to the white paper. There is no proposed timeline for making these changes and presenting a second paper to the community.
The Poll
The poll will be 6 weeks long.
Begin Date: 9 March, 2018
End Date: 20 April, 2018
The results of this poll will be considered valid with 5% or greater vote-weight participation.
Should the white paper presented in The Gridcoin White Paper Proposal be the official Gridcoin white paper?
- Yes
- No
- Abstain
Questions and Concerns
While the Reddit thread will be considered the official discussion thread for this proposal, feel free to ask any questions and express concerns on any of the proposal threads. The main contributors listed in the introduction to this proposal will do their best to respond.
The Paper
The proposed paper can be read in full at the following GitHub link. Upon acceptance it will be recognized as the Official Gridcoin Whitepaper 1.0.0.
Donations
The people named in the introduction of this proposal welcome GRC donations for their work.
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It will be split among them.