Hello everyone. As you may or may not know, I don't post a whole lot. However, I did want to share this with everyone. I recently got involved with Polytimos. This community-focused currently full-PoW (with eventual PoS and MasterNodes, just waiting for the best time to implement, not when it would cause mass hysteria and chaos...) crypto project, is one that I can get behind.
It was all started with a philosophy, one that I understood well without even having to have it explained. It was founded to be something unlike these ICO launch projects that ask for millions before anything is even complete... Something that says 'Hello, we're here. Eventually, you're likely to notice us. We don't care if that is right now or later, but when you do... You're likely to wish it was sooner. ;)' Heh.
Anyway, I wrote the majority (I think basically 99% if not all of it, though I can't fully remember honestly...) of this philosophy paper for this project, simply because this is how crypto should be, how it could be in the future if we all just WORK TOGETHER and QUIT TRYING TO STEAL FROM PEOPLE. Simple, right?
Without further ado... I present...
The POLY Philosophy - (Polytimos Credo)
Community Philosophy of a Cryptocurrency Project
Intro
Polytimos is a project that was founded on the basis of community. Most people are not really aware what exactly this means, so we have decided to put togeth er this philosophy paper, or a ‘credo’ if you will, to explain a bit on the actions of the team and what we believe those actions will ultimately lead to. We appreciate our community, and hopefully by the end of this paper, the community will see WHY they are appreciated so much, and their extreme importance in a truly open source and community focused project, such as Polytimos.
Open Source - Aren’t all crypto projects this way? What does it mean REALLY?
Almost every project in the crypto space claims to be open source. However, as one delves deeper into the investigation of such claims, one quickly learns that not all projects in the crypto space are ACTUALLY open source. When investigating the source code of many projects, one finds that the project when cloned from the github, and attempted to get working, simply lacks many components necessary, and/or is completely obfuscated, minified, or a tactic is employed to confuse the general public and unable to get to a working state without a plethora of unnecessary work by a developer.
This release strategy and covert lies, is something the Polytimos community wants to wholly avoid. When Polytimos releases the source code for anything, it will be complete, be able to be cloned, edited, and changed. This opens the doors for so many different opportunities. If something is made in a TRULY open source way, any developer that understands the language, can copy, edit, work on or change the code, but they can also completely take over development in the case of the “main developers” not having time, or any other scenario. Anything that is directly related to the core of Polytimos (I.E. the wallet, the directly related core components, algorithm, etc…) will ALWAYS be complete and fully open source. (There of course, can be things that are NOT, but those are generally services released by community members. Those will rely upon the trust of the releasing party, and how the community feels about them whether they use them or not. However, the main core components will all be fully open source, allowing anyone to use and change and compile them without worry of missing pieces. Also allowing for the takeover of the project should it become necessary.)
The nature of a community project lends itself to extention well beyond the original vision of the originating development team. As an open source project grows larger in terms of community and code base multiple contributors can take the project into the future. Any developer with an idea can add that idea to the codebase or build out that idea to fruition and release it to the community. Bitcoin itself has been developed by multiple developers, this was only possible due to it being completely open source.
Open source development is the way of the future, a lot of people claim to know this, but yet they also do things such as described above in making their project not actually editable or extensible. This mindset needs to be removed from the cryptosphere community. Development in the open source world, especially cryptocurrencies, can expect payment in a totally different fashion. Systems which reward development directly will be completed, where people can post jobs, developers can take them, complete them, and get paid. However, also, there should be quite a bit of development done with community donations paid in the coin they are developing. This lends itself to the developer working hard for the project as doing so will ultimately increase the value of their own holdings in said project.
The future system that Polytimos is working towards is a platform to trade services for crypto directly. This service will be a project management system that allows jobs to be posted, others to find said jobs, place a bid, and be accepted to complete the work. Once work is completed, it is reviewed by the poster of the job, then payment is executed to the one who completed the work. Now, for a system such as this to actually be successful, there will also need to be a ‘ratings system’, ‘reputation system’ and resume like structure to be implemented. So that the individuals or teams seeking out talent have a method for evaluating bids and skill sets.
A system as above will be created either by Polytimos, or by another open source team, and will be partnered with Polytimos. Which brings us to our next section; the importance of community, reaching well outside the ‘single’ community of a project.
‘Community’ - The Importance of Cooperation in open source projects
As important as the individual crypto community of a single project is, the importance of working with OTHER projects is equally if not more important for the success of an open source community project. Working together with other projects who maintain a similar view on the nature of working in a true community focused open source fashion, allows for a global community to expand much wider, reach many more, and overall be much more successful than one that does not retain such a view.
The reaching out of one open source community project to another to provide a cooperative and positive experience towards each other, not only lends itself to the expansion of the communities involved, but also provides the people in the communities a way to network, expand their own knowledge, and get involved with the advancement of the projects. In a lot of cases they will also be paid for these efforts, in those communities that truly foster the overall open source experience.
The necessity of working OUTSIDE the ‘corporate mindset’ of thinking that things should be hidden, and ‘owning’ the things that one is working on… must be instilled into the minds of the people in open source communities. Basically… a lot of the crypto projects out there these days, are doing something very similar to the ‘typical’ corporate structures, but calling them open source and treating them as if they were. They take their corporate structures and mindsets, and rebuild them on blockchain technologies. This is NOT the way forward. This is the way to keep everything the same. If this is what you are looking to do, then an open source community developed project, probably isn’t for you. Taking this ‘corporate mindset’ and attempting to force it into the open source community, is the exact OPPOSITE of what should be happening. Isn’t the goal of the open source community project that of the collective whole? Yes, and changing things starts, with not being the same.
Working in an open source world
The idea that one should work for a ‘good company’ and get a ‘good salary’ is something that we have never understood. In our opinion, working for a single company rules out 99% of one’s options. Why work for one company, when you can work for 15, 20, or even 50 companies at once? If a single company has problems, and your whole retirement account, all of your income, and your entire life structure revolves around this company… you’re screwed? Right? This leads to a similar scenario to that of the 2000-2006 tech boom and subsequent crash. Is not the idea of the open source movement, to make things like this not happen? The answer to that, is yes.
So, the question is begged then, how do we make this happen? As mentioned above, a system where bids can be placed on multiple jobs available by a wide variety of open source companies working together, could be a great start. A system such as this could easily be built atop a decentralized web platform allowing anyone to put up jobs, and anyone else to complete them, essentially working for multiple people at once. Cutting down on the worry of ‘having all eggs in one basket’ that should be a more prevalent worry of those working in a single company.
Aside from an actual platform that allows this, it can happen without one as well. A simple community forum can be a good place to have jobs listed and accomplished by other members of the community. Eventually, a totally decentralized platform will be able to take over the hosting of such things, but until then the existing centralized platforms will be used until the transition to one that is not centralized is a possibility. We must work with what we have until what we want is available.
Community ‘Team’ Community Management
The community may implement a ‘team’ that are those in the community with more gumption and/or free time with which they would like to contribute to the project. This leads to the feeling of being a part of the core of the project, and is an acceptable way to engage the community. There may be a location on the community boards or chat rooms where one may ask to join the team, provide their skillset, and be included into the ‘planning’ and ‘preparation’ sections of the development ideas.
The community team may have their own private areas to discuss plans and ideas that they do not yet want the public to have eyes on. This is totally acceptable in a community project. Just because the project is open source, doesn’t mean that all ideas should be governed by everyone. It simply means that once the ideas are completed, they are given out to everyone in as much detail as possible, and upon implementation to the core of the project or whichever aspect they are built for, they are provided to everyone in the same fashion as they would be to a developer that would be adding to them.
Being ‘first’ is not as important as being best. Build the idea, implement it, then let it be seen by all in its entirety. This allows for greater security, greater innovation, and larger reach. Take a look at the ideas of Linux Operating System and how it is developed. There is an extremely large team of people that work on it, they are included in the team simply by asking to be and providing some necessary work to the project and their skills to the existing team.
A team does NOT mean, a company… This is not to say that a company can’t do things FOR the project, build on top of the project, etc… But a team doesn’t have to be a company, and in fact, it is much better, if it isn’t. Companies are held to a more strict set of laws, and are generally based in a single location. A community team can be based all over the world and does not have to be held to the same laws as a company does. Not only that, if the company has any issues, and potentially goes out of business, what becomes of the coin? Community teams do not have these issues.
Release Structures of a Community Coin
A true community coin is released in such a way that everyone has the same (or as close as possible) chance to obtain coins as anyone else. What this means in most cases, is that the project is launched in a ‘no-premine, no-ICO, no-instamine’ fashion. Generally, the PoW phase (mining phase) of the coin will last quite a while and be as fair as possible, allowing multiple people to mine the coin at or close to release, and obtain a fair amount of coin based on their investment into their mining power. Yes, the argument can be made that this lends itself towards those of the community that have obtained more mining power, however, there is not currently any situation that is more fair than this in our opinion.
Launching a coin can only be done in so many ways, and currently the launch done in the described way above, is the most fair option for a coin looking to be a community focused project. There are many stories of people who have started their crypto ‘careers’ by mining on a single computer, slowly working their way up to having a small farm, then medium, and in some cases getting to the point that they have a fairly substantial amount of mining hardware. This is only possible when dealing with a fairly released project.
The other methods of releasing a project, are not only not as fair, but could potentially be illegal as well, depending on the exact nature of the release, the location of the team doing it, and various other factors. Anything that could be seen as illegal in any way, should not be done by a coin looking to be a community based project. ICO released coins in many cases in the past have proven themselves to be blatant scams, any coins that do ‘pre-sales’ of any kind, are in most cases greedy people looking to make quick money. Same can be said for any of the included methods that are NOT implemented by a ‘fair released project’. (ICO, premine, insta-mine, huge dev fund, etc…) This is not to say that in certain cases these have NOT been scams, because obviously there are exceptions to any ‘rule’, however, the facts are that most of the coins released in these ways end up becoming some sort of loss for those involved. There are many cases in the past of people getting taken advantage of in this manner by all different kinds of people, projects, etc. It is the goal of a community project, to not cause people to lose money, but instead, to slowly build up a solid market, community, services and assist those who got into the project in becoming more financially stable than they were before the project.
The community based project is one that seeks natural growth. It will probably not be one that sees big hype at the beginning, nor big movements in price. In fact, more likely than not, community projects with a fair release, may go unnoticed for quite some time by most, may hit an exchange or two and see the price drop for a period of time. However, people who understand how this scenario usually plays out, will not worry during these times, and will do what is commonly referred to as ‘HODL’, simply holding tight and awaiting the results of the community and community team’s efforts in services, functionality, and overall enhancement of the economy and value of the project. The market will hit a point in most cases that it will ‘bottom out’, or hit a point that most miners will refuse to sell, or that the people of the community will have ‘stronger hands’ and begin to see the upcoming plans of their partners in the community. There will be a ‘rallying’ of the community to hold out, await the news of new services and developments, and the market will generally begin to turn around. These times are also usually much more ‘stable’ of a rise, as the rise was natural, and the value of their coin is actually the ‘true’ value. This leads to much more trust, and much more likelihood of the people of the community to continue holding, and rallying to support those working on services, leading to a generally exciting and stable price and volume increase.
Being Patient is key
If one has been around the cryptocurrency space for a decent amount of time they will quickly realize that patience is severely lacking in the overall consensus. Meaning most people in the space are out to ‘get rich quick’ and many of them are ones who do not understand the fact that most of the projects seeing large prices immediately, big price movements quickly after release, and other things of this nature, are ones that will more likely than not leave many people quite displeased. People lose money, get upset, and sometimes leave the space entirely.
Being patient, in a community developed fairly released project, is something that we have seen play out extremely well in the past. In fact, quite a few of our existing community team for Polytimos, have done very well in the past with patience. There have even been times that a project looked ‘dead’ for months… causing even the most seasoned and strong hands in the community to contemplate selling… however, months or even a year later, the people who did NOT sell during those ‘low’ times without much going on, have come to be VERY pleased when something seems to come out of nowhere and the project becomes extremely successful and makes everyone who stuck with it significant returns.
This is simply how things go… Sometimes even a takeover of a project can happen where the original creating team leaves the project entirely, people start screaming doom and gloom and woe is me, and many people dump. This in turn makes the project seem dead, there is hardly any good news, and people write off the project as a loss or sell to recuperate as much as they can and move on… However, even in these extreme cases a community takeover can take place, where the community simply picks up and moves the project along. (Yet another benefit to a fully open source community based project is the fact that this is possible.) There have been times in our team’s experience that the takeovers have happened, then a project went on to be far more successful than any thought possible. These have been the projects that have in some cases made the most return in our experience. These types of things are not possible with a project that obfuscates its source code, and/or has total control over every aspect in the hands of a corporate entity.
#Semi-Conclusion and Team Statement of Existing Team
This whole paper was written with hopes in explaining some of the more commonly misunderstood aspects of the ‘community project’. It is our firm belief that community based projects that are fully open source, and hide nothing are the best in existence in the crypto community. They have the options of being built by anyone, there are services built by many for the use of others, and the reputation of those building said services are all that matters. Yes, these projects may take a little longer to become something one brags about in terms of gains, however, they are also much more likely to see a long life and overall beneficial scenario for those involved.
The team that is currently working on Polytimos and related services, comes from all different locations of the world, all different backgrounds of expertise, and varying methodologies in their approach to certain situations. The approach of Polytimos’ creating team has already attracted the attention of a couple well known crypto entrepreneurs who are now assisting the initial team in moving the project forward. Many in the team are very well connected and have been around the space for quite some time.
The team that exists now, may not be the team that develops everything forever, but as explained above we firmly believe this is a good thing. However, on the opposing side to this… The existing team has absolutely no inclination to do anything other than continue the development of the project, expansion of the community, and overall enhancement of the visibility and usability of the platform of Polytimos.
There are multiple ideas in place in the team, and anyone is welcome to speak with them and get the details. The team will not, however, post about the ideas in a ‘road map’, as we believe there is no use in such things other than providing dates that will in a lot of cases end up becoming lies. Ideas will normally be presented either upon completion or upon realization of the definite possibility of becoming complete. This means there will be no false promises coming from the team. We firmly believe this is the correct way to move forward, and will lead to more trust from the community later in time.
If any sort of ‘pure idea’ announcement IS made, it will not include completion dates, aside from potentially estimates, and only if the ideas are those that are for sure possibilities. If an announcement is made purely with ideas, it will be directly explained as such, as to lead to no confusion. Making promises of things in the future in the cryptocurrency space, we firmly believe is something that will most of the time end up becoming a lie. The space is such cutting edge technology, and changes so frequently, that any sort of promise of future development months in advance is more than likely going to be different by the time the estimated completion date arrives. Generalized statements on a potential overall goal are fine, however saying that any specific things will happen at a given time is usually something that ends in falsehood.
The team of Polytimos would like to say thank you to those of you in the community who have supported the ideals in the presentation of this paper and the release of the project, and to those of you who have contributed input or assistance in various fashions to the project. We sincerely hope that you will continue to do this in the future. We will say that we will continue to develop services and do everything we can to ensure the success of the project, and hope that you will join us on this sure-to-be fun and exciting ride.
Polytimos DOES mean ‘very precious’ after all, we believe it is up to us, to make that a reality! Anyone looking to join the community team of Polytimos, simply reach out! We may start providing some sort of generalized structure and names to the people of the team, and giving them specific jobs to handle, etc. However, there will always be room on the community team for more people, more ideas, and more overall success to the project as the outcome! Thank you, and here’s to the future of our very precious crypto project, we wish you all much success and happiness!