Community Council (CC) meeting held @ 15 UTC in grincoin#general channel on Keybase. Meeting lasted 90 min. Notes are truncated, and conversations sorted based on topic and not always chronological. Quotes are edited for brevity and clarity, and not always exact.
- anynomous
- phyro
- vegycslol
- waynegeorge
- yeastplume
- cekickafa
- defistaker
- jankie1800
- On-ramping of active community members
- Community wish-list
Last meeting notes here && Current meeting agenda
No council vote held during meeting
anynomous : For our first agenda point- On-ramping of active community members: How to insensitive or engage potential Grinners from for example social media platforms to become active. Active as in joining meeting, posting on the forum etc. This is needed if we want community members to become active and join sub-teams.
- jankie1800 : different forms of community activism, some fun 'contest' but others can be rally around certain goals or objectives, some thoughts on what drives energy.. the QA stack push by marek was a good example of the community rallying around an objective. so thinking of ways to organize ideas like this and share may be possible
- anynomous : Yep, I agree with that, Nothing is as good as a common cause to unite behind like that QA, which actually got a lot of people stepping up, making an account. If all of those would become active community members, we could fill quite a few subteams
anynomous : I think we touched on this topic many times in the past. Basically we have a good core of active community members, however it is not growing that much. Most people stay on the periphery, e.g. only lurking on Telegram or Discord. The question is how to pull some of these people in... One way to do so is by going back in the archives of our own mind. What was it that tempted you all to join in, to step up and become more than just another lurker?
- anynomous : I can start of by telling what it was for me. Like most, I started on the forum with giving some feedback/criticism to a funding request, I found the deliverables to vague and ill defined. At that time lehnberg invited me to draft a template for more defined Funding Requests... Responsibility and freedom were give, it was a small step but a natural invitation to step up and make my small contribution... That is how I ended up on the forum, the logo took my eye, then I dived into the content and was intrigued. But what got me to go from lurking to participating was that remark by lehnberg
- phyro : It was mostly technical for me. I somewhat understood what kind of design Jedusor wanted to share in the whitepaper and I found it way more interesting than other ideas I've seen in the space. This led me to dive a bit more into how it works and then realizing there's probably a lot more to be discovered.
- defistaker : I responded to a forum post by Mike and began working with the grinnode.live team :)
- jankie1800 : I second the technical value prop of Grin as what rooted me to the project. Also I remember it being fun digging into the lore behind the story of Igno and the ethics of the project key into what I think satoshi was aiming for with btc- staying power for me personally, and I see a lot of that in the community too
- anynomous : That was indeed another thing, the mystery and Harry Potter lore also connected with me. Just a lot of 'interesting' going around when reading the forum.
- cekickafa : Grin logo made me interested. I found it silly a bit and wondered what kinda people use that logo for a crypto project,I lurked in :). But main motive for me was, aware of govts ,regulators intervention someday. I discovered its decentralized and opensource structure. It gave me a sense of confidence to Grin.
- vegycslol : I got into grin after I got fed up with @phyro telling me how great it is
anynomous : So in summary, most of use 'core' community members were basically pulled in by interest and intruige both on the technical side, intruige with the project and its potential impact... The big question is, are similar potential 'core' members still there on other platforms like Telegram and Discord, or would these already have come to the forum and the project on there initiative own🤔
- cekickafa : not much.
- defistaker : I imagine most people interested in telegram also invested or planning to invest some of their portfolio, Grin price in last 6 months maybe a reason for lack of interest.
- anynomous : True, also what you always see is that when the price dips, people complain more than average on the forum. I want to invite all of these people to be part of the change they would like to see in the project... Probably a few who can support on the technical side, but probably many who can contribute in other ways such as arts, memes, marketing, etc.
wanygeorge : Hi guys. Perhaps a way to get lurkers active is to create roles. I know the larger roles are taken care of but perhaps some smaller, simpler roles could be posted
- anynomous : I agree with you @waynegeorge That is why I think we should start sub-teams/ Grin ambassadors. People who are part of a small team with specific tasks, perks, credits and appreciation.
- yeastplume : just a warning with sub-teams is that you can end up with a lot of structure and nobody to fill roles, which make all the structure seem pointless
- anynomous : absolutely true.
- phyro : I guess the question is how to get people excited about Grin again. If you're excited, you're going to do things on your own... perhaps the simplest way is to get new people into Grin and making sure they understand how it differs
- anynomous : @phyro Definitely, having technical understand leads to appreciation of Grins technical beauty and simplicity. Maybe we could somehow incentivize people to make the dive. E.g. Grin academy, some extra achievement on the forum if you complete... free grin sticker, just some lose thoughts. E.g. If you complete you can get a digital crypto wizard hat. Basically this would be people studying the documentation and answering a final test or something.
anynomous : There were multiple reasons why this initiative had a hard time getting of.
a) lack of (potential)-members
b) lack of clear definition and help from councils
c) lack of incentive, perks, recognition etc.
By tackling these I think we might be able to get 1-2 sub-teams, I am not hopeful for much more at this moment. But 1-2 teams for the coming year would already be a great contribution to the ecosystem.
- phyro : who's going to be in the teams though? I don't think we have enough active people here and a team would likely consist of inactive individuals. My guess is we need an influx of new users for anything like that
- jankie1800 : really in a way this meeting discussion could be categorized as a 'community' sub-team, as we are discussing ways to energize and get the project out. I don't think moving over to the #community channel to discuss tactics would be out of reach as far as activity as many already contribute to this discussion. the subteam can provide a space for organized thoughts, plan in person meet ups and events. Also further discussion on bounties etc
anynomous : One important thing to mention, is that a lot of people are actually kind of hesitant to step-up and contribute, because they do not know they can do so. A lot of technical discussions and so going on, which they might not 100% get. So they need to know that all kind of skills can contribute to the project. I am just not sure how to make community members understand that. Mostly people who are now not on the forum but on Telegram. Basically there is a technical firewall that might repel some potential contributors, not all might be able to understand the technical wonders of Grin. Who said it again, it takes a genius to understand the simplicity of Grin.
waynegeorge : Another idea to get more people active is to have rewards? Perhaps there could be a pot where people get rewarded in grin for various things they do, whether creating a picture or a feature, no matter how small
- anynomous : Ok, so we should start with small bounties again.
- phyro : I'm skeptical one can build a community around monetary contributions
- anynomous : You cannot, but you can spend pennies for incentivising. Also you can give non monetary rewards. E.g. stickers
- phyro : @anynomous oh right. I have nothing against these or even monthly meme contests and such. The only thing I'm skeptical is if the people contribute only for these things and don't stay around because then it's like buying a community member for a few days
- anynomous : I agree with that, I just think people like to work for small perks, even digital perks
- waynegeorge : I liked the bounties program
- defistaker : One successful bounty programme in the past was Grinnode.live bug bash challenge, It drew some people from outside. https://grinnode.live/challenge/0
- vegycslol : My view is that to get more people you first need to have great and simple UX. Another thing is that if we want to bring new people in they need to have a reason to switch, to me that reason is interactive transactions. So imo the best way to attract new people is to have wallet that my mom could use and it's fancy
- cekickafa : Underlining the slatepack tx. P2P with using telegram,whatsapp can bring more people. Becuz it is interesting. Different than Bitcoin and this feature, you cant send to a wrong address and no amounts.That can get interest.
- phyro : a gui wallet is one of the things that can be tackled after pibd. This is also something people can help contribute to (including myself)
- anynomous : On the long run, having two great GUI wallets would help a lot. Now those less technical might skipp grin-wallet as well as the node, while they are actually great.
- yeastplume : yes, will probably start thinking about GUI wallet over next couple of months as PIBD becomes more complete
anynomous : So, in summary: Most of us got into the project by being intrigued with the technical side of Grin, the possible implications as well as the intriguing lore and mystery around the project... Possible solutions to invite people to contribute:
- Let members learn more about the technical. We need to stimulate this in a way, e.g. extra recognition, status, digital perk like a crypto wizard hat. Grin Academy, reuse the existing good documentation.
- Bounties, such as pennies in Grin, stickers, or other small tokens
- Get something to pull the shared energy behind. Example the QA proposal, some bigger goal to which all can contribute.
- Challenges, e.g. Grinnode.live challenges, running nodes, bug bounty challenge, meme contests
- Irritate them by shilling Grin, so they will check it out themselves. Disclaimer, might only work for @vegycslol
- Make sure those who are not technically gifted know they contribute in other ways. E.g. artists, marketing
- Physical meetups, one great way to pull people in the rabbit hole and to get the shared enthusiasm going
anynomous : I think we can work the above, I will bring it to the other council members, it is time to start some activities again. One fun example of non-finacial token would be cryptomancer wizard hats NFTs, only for those who complete the Grin academy. Might become worth a lot in the future
anynomous : Our second agenda point of today: Wish-list by the community: Now and then community members ask on KeyBase, the forum or Telegram for certain functions or tools/scripts or fun things. Compile these requests, make small Grin bucks bounties for these?
- anynomous : I can give one example. Recently a user asked for a simple Python scrypt to generate a Grin wallet from any entropy, so mnemonic, or something else. This was not the first time someone requested this to me. This is technically very doable, even for a scripter like myself. For such small but desired tasks we could put small bounties... Again, not payment of any kind since the reward is neglectable compared to the time it would take... For now we should list such request somewhere on Github
- defistaker : I have a repo for grinwish list, https://github.com/stakervali/grin-wishlist... I can pass the ownership to grincc
- anynomous : @defistaker We can share the ownership. For now it would be a seperate section for non major milestone related wishes
phyro : I love the approach @deeev showed. He simply opened a PR with whatever he considered would be a good addition to the project, addressed the comments and things got merged.
- anynomous : @phyro what you describe is the ideal case. This probably only works for seasoned programmers, but I love it... So really, small and fun things which can be easily converted in a bounty, might not be program related even
- yeastplume : every single member of the core team with meaningful contributions over time did this. every one... then you have the people who come in screaming about all the great things they're going to do, waste everyone's time for 2 weeks, get bored and disappear ... but I digress
- anynomous : Yes, you also have those unfortunately.
The main point I want to make is that contributions can be on many technical levels, e.g.
- Level 1: I do not understand Grin at all,...but I dig the spirit, so I help with marketing
- Level 2: I somewhat get the technical and even reply or ask on the forum in the hope to contribute
- Level 3: I get the technical of Grin and actively participate in the discussion
- Level 4: I do not understand Rust at all, but I do some testing and might be able to make a simple fun scrypt
- Level 5: Actual software engineer who contributes to the core code, awesome, you are a rare phenomena
Basically, all of these people are in our ecosystem, they can potentially contribute, many might actually WANT to contribute. We should enable them to find tasks they can take on, and show appreciation, invite them etc. All of the above can be reached in one way or another, challanges, non technical bounties, technical bounties Funding Requests... I think a second example, an open source block explorer... Third example, a Grin open source payment processor. These are the ones I can remember seeing on the forum in recent year
vegycslol : I'm planning on creating an open source block explorer this year
- anynomous : Awesome, do you need a bounty😉 Personally I think it is fine to have a bounty for something like this. I mean you also worked on the example exchange for free (at least I do not remember a bounty being there). I love free contributions, but at the same time I think it is fair to give some rewards.
- vegycslol : I mean everyone needs money but I'm not doing that for the money, I'll do it because i want to see grin succeed. That being said i think it's important that people who want to get paid get paid
- anynomous : Ok. Well in case you would prefer some compensation or bounty, just give a shout.We all need to live of something in the end no matter how much we love our pet projects, like grin. Are there other example of tools, functionalities requested by Grinners that anyone can think of?
anynomous : An example that comes to mind is messaging via the wallet (preferably same size messages as transactions), can be completely of chain, just a message via Tor.
- cekickafa : That is interesting. But why?
- vegycslol : What's the benefit of a wallet supporting messaging?
- anynomous : It would be fun, also it gives more reason to run a 'mobile' node all the time and it pulls people in the wallet environment. But the otherway around also works fine, sending transaction via e.g. Signal...So this is not a must, just fun... Anyhow, if any other requested funtionalities come to mind, lets list them here.
anynomous : Any last contributions, thoughts before we wrap up this meeting?
- vegycslol : Yes, it would be great if more people would help test new features to help the devs. We don't want production code to have bugs
- anynomous : Yes, you are right about that. Trying to become a bit more active on the testing front myself, but we need more
- vegycslol : If anyone doesn't know how to test, ask here and someone will help
- anynomous : Is it worth a small tutorial? Maybe for the future we can make a small video of that as well @cekickafa or a bounty for it.
- phyro : https://github.com/mimblewimble/grin/blob/master/doc/build.md
- anynomous : lol, never read that myself
- phyro : it's usually just making sure you can build a git branch and then run the executables
- vegycslol : Usually what you need is to have things installed to build the code and then know how to checkout git branch
- anynomous : I will link directly to it from Grin Hub
- vegycslol : If someone has a problem installing build dependencies i can share nix script which does that
- anynomous : Yes, can I add it to the Grin Hub, code an tools section @vegycslol? Or you can make a pull request
- phyro : @vegycslol I suggest you open a PR with updated shell.nix and potentially update build.md with a section for nix
anynomous : Ok, time to wrap this up for now. Thank you all as always for contributing here, and hope to see you all next time 👋
Meeting Breaks
- Call to action: community testing
- Community activities and events strategy