I recently traveled to Warsaw to attend a spontaneous GRIN meeting. I met with Marek and @nagini. It was a great. Poland is a beautiful country, by far my favorite country in the world but that’s another topic. We spent a day chatting, eating, drinking and walking around a bit. There were 3 topics suggested on twitter: Fixing money with Linear Emission, Adoption and whether or not GRIN is cash or gold.
This was my first meeting on a specific topic in years, it is remarkable how people in general changed after COVID. I told the guys how weird it is now when I meet my friends in the city and before they greeted me with hugs and kisses and now they just shake my hand. Before living in Europe I had never greeted a male friend with kisses and now I’m the one who feels weird when my Turkish and Italian friends don’t greet me with kisses. I still don’t understand what the fuck has happened in the last few years for people to have changed so much, but I digress that’s not today’s topic, it’s something else.
Back to GRIN…
About Linear Emission
The topic of Linear Emission is very interesting and I think it will be a topic of interest for the GRIN community for a long time, and not only for GRIN but for all cryptocurrencies in general, especially Bitcoin. Is the Linear Emission the correct path? I believe so but today it’s hard to say, it will take decades of research and experience to find out, but for now I stand by Tromp’s words: “I don’t measure GRIN’s success by its marketcap, but by its elegance, simplicity, scalability, and long term survival”.
Adoption. Is it something that will happen naturally or are there things that the community needs to do?
I do not have all the answers and I do not pretend to have them, but I do have some ideas.
Bitstamp recently published a report about the adoption of cryptocurrency worldwide and the market stats. The key takeaway from the Crypto Pulse report is that crypto is destined to go mainstream. Yet knowledge is the key barrier holding back mainstream adoption. It’s a simple equation: when people know more, people trust more. Bitstamp is trying to push for a “better framework” of Regulations. I think the Regulations will suck, but the funny thing is that innovation in Crypto is unstoppable, and because of that I think we just need to embrace what Mimblewimble brings, and we must be determined to run the race that is ahead of us.
Low hanging fruits
nagini helped me understand better something that seems trivial but has a lot of impact and that is to make people who are discovering GRIN for the first time feel that they can find the information they need about GRIN; whether the person is a miner or an investor or a developer, or just a curious person, it is important that people can easily find what they are looking for and avoid creating this perception that GRIN is an abandoned project. And this can be avoided by having GRIN-related web pages and channels updated and in good state, for example.
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Perhaps it would be a good idea to review these current channels (web, keybase, discord, telegram, etc.) and see how to improve the experience and the organization of the content. Remove dead links and/or replace them with updated information. Ensuring regular posting of meeting notes also comes to mind.
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Also, maybe in the near future we would discuss how to find a way to publish technical research papers on a regular basis. As GRIN is a decentralized project, without any company or foundation behind it, it is difficult to make “official” approaches with universities, but I think an attempt could be made.
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Having someone dedicated to reaching out to the Exchanges and coordinating support for them would also help.
Why do I call this “low-hanging fruit” because, firstly, we already have a role called Groundkeeper, and secondly, to contact unversities, we just need to email friends and family.
Spider orb webs
Spider orb webs are multifunctional structures, the main function of which is to dissipate the kinetic energy of the impacting prey, while minimizing structural damage. There is no single explanation for their remarkable strength and ductility. However, it is clear that topology is decisive in the structural performance upon impact and the arrangement of the different silk threads in the web must also exert an effect. The strength of the web depends heavily on the optimal distribution of the silk (a limited and valuable resource for the spider) among the different thread types and on the appropriate positioning of these threads.
I seem to be stealing nagini’s ideas here, but hear me out. At one point I was saying that I don’t like the idea of shilling GRIN to the Bitcoin maximalists, and nagini mentioned that you have to build an Ecosystem like a spider web because, “what we want is that when they come to us we catch them! Like spiders do with their spider webs“… and that is 100% correct. Resources are limited, and the way we organize and spend those resources must be strategically well thought out, exactly like spiders do with silk.
Since GRIN is decentralized, I think this should be in our mindset, as well as GRIN’s principles.
Community building
The truth is that very few things happen by pure chance, and building a strong Community is not one of them. Building a strong Community requires time and effort. An online community is no different than a “real life” community away from your phone or computer. It’s a shared space where a group of people come together to share common interests, learn from one another, and find a sense of belonging.
In each of these communities, every person who takes part gets something out of it. If 15 people join together every Tuesday night for a local running group, every runner reaps the benefits of jogging five miles. I am more convinced than ever that we must continue to encourage people to create meetings and workshops, even if they are events formed by 2 or 3 people, it doesn’t matter, the important thing is that we can share and give something of value back to others. Marek mentioned a tool similar to Hacker Rank or Code Wars which is very cool, but I would like to expand on the idea and add that having in-person interaction is also very important, as this also contributes to building trust.
Conclusion
The meeting was a success, and I am very happy to be part of the GRIN community. I am very proud of the work that has been done, and I am very proud of the people that have been involved in GRIN. I would love to keep meeting more Community members in person around the world, and I want to invite people to meet in person and to share their ideas and experiences.
Never forget that when You GRINnin’, You winnin’.