The Evolution of NULS Continues
As a global, open-source project driven by the community since its establishment, NULS has the intention of practicing the decentralized spirit of the blockchain space as a community-based blockchain project.
It’s not easy to become a real community-operating project, but the NULS core team adheres to this original intention, abandoning the noise of the market, to continuously cultivate the underlying infrastructure and community construction of the blockchain. After more than two years of hard work, the community operation mechanism of NULS has already produced initial results.
1. Community is the Soul of NULS
Bitcoin was born in 2008 and was only popular in circles of geeks initially until its community grew stronger and expanded. As of today, there are over 32 million Bitcoin users in the world with a current market cap of US $165.5 billion. It is the community that populates and spreads Bitcoin. Without the community, Bitcoin would not be the king of the blockchain world.
NULS knows that for the long-term development of the project, it is necessary to build a good community, which is the soul of any blockchain project. Since people are the soul of the community, the construction of the community must begin with people.
The first holders of NULS were seed members of the NULS community. To involve more people in community publicity and to make more people join the NULS community, NULS launched the quarterly contributor selection activity in the first quarter after the initial establishment.
Quarterly contributor selection is held once each quarter. Winners are elected by the community to reward the most outstanding contributions during the quarter. The activity has been opposed by some community members, but this tradition continues in the NULS community.
After the quarterly contributor selection, the NULS community set up the role of NULS Ambassadors, which is opened for different countries. NULS Ambassadors take the responsibility of building and expanding the NULS community in their countries.
There have been community members from nine regions and nations who have participated in the NULS Ambassador Campaign, with votes up to 16.5 million during the election cycle. Community members of different nationalities, occupations, and ages have achieved global collaboration within the NULS community. This means that the construction of the NULS community has entered a new era.
After the Ambassador, the contributor role NULStar was created. NULStars are spokespersons of the NULS community in certain cities or regions. They participate in offline gatherings and online promotion to seek cooperation opportunities for NULS, and are the backbone of the NULS community to expand to more cities and regions.
The NULS community has grown from hundreds of people to tens of thousands of people. The roles of various contributors set up by the NULS community clarifies the responsibilities and obligations of the contributors and provides an effective way to participate in the construction of the NULS community.
In the future, NULS will continue to adhere to the idea that community is the soul of NULS, and constantly improve the roles and mechanisms of contributors to encourage more people join the NULS community.
2. Embrace Developers
While blockchain is still in the earliest stages of development, the technology updates and iterations are very fast, and there are many uncertainties in the overall development of the industry. To keep up with the technology and deal with various uncertainties in the future, NULS must encourage excellent developers to join the community.
In July 2018, the NULS core team announced the community developer recruitment plan shortly after the mainnet launch, a prelude to the construction of the NULS open-source technology community. In November, NULS hosted the Singapore Open Source Technology Meet-up, and announced the NULS CCC (NULS CODE CRAFT COUNCIL) for the first time.
In July 2019, NULS CCC completed the first organizational structure optimization and changed its name to NTC (NULS Technology Community). Based on cooperative experience of the past, the new organizational structure will further improve the cooperation efficiency among core developers.
At present, NTC has 22 developers from 8 countries, including the United States, France, Bolivia, and Australia. NTC member, Berzeck, participated in the overall architecture design of NULS 2.0, and led the development of the NULS 2.0 core Nulstar. NTC member, Moshe, designed and completed the development of the blockchain explorer and several dapps with nuls.world Every developer of NTC is actively involved in the research and development of the underlying technology and products of NULS, and gains due rewards.
Through NTC, NULS utilizes a set of management and cooperation systems for developers, which can help the NULS community effectively attract excellent developers to join. In the future, NTC will continue to improve the relevant systems of developers, clarify development tasks and reduce collaboration resistance, to keep NULS leading in technology and innovation in products.
3. Establishment of a Community Governance Mechanism
In a centralized organization, a team with internal managers and systems work together to achieve efficient team cooperation and ensure the normal development of a project. A decentralized community project, without the centralized operation team, must rely on effective community decision-making mechanisms to ensure normal development.
In December 2018, the NULS community developed a Community Charter and NIP (NULS Improvement Proposal). The Community Charter specifies the responsibilities and powers of NULS Foundation, the Council and NTC, outlining conditions and generating a mechanism that includes roles of relevant members; NIP describes the implementation process of improving suggestions or adding new functions for the NULS network.
Based on the NIP and Community Charter, the NULS community released the management and use process of community funds. This provides community self-management for the use of 20 million NULS in community funds, and also guarantees the development incentive of NTC members, so that the technology and product development of NULS can be carried out smoothly for decades to come. The establishment of these mechanisms ensures that the Foundation continues to be self-driving and further advances the development of the NULS community. Members of the community who want to contribute to NULS can do so through these relevant processes.
In July 2019, NTC member Berzeck created a proposal of a supply cap of 210 million NULS based on the NIP and Community Charter, which was widely debated and supported by the community. After a month of public discussion and two 15-day votes held by the community, the proposal was passed with a 97.23% approval rate.
From project research and development to community operation, NIP and the Community Charter play a great role, which proves that the establishment of an efficient community decision-making mechanism is essential for the future development of NULS, and is also the basis for the realization of community operation of NULS.
To continuously improve the community decision-making mechanism and realize the most efficient community operation, the NULS core team and NTC will launch a community governance tool on NULS 2.0 main network. Afterwards, community decision-making, such as Council elections, Ambassador elections, and proposal voting will be carried out through the community governance tool.
The launch of the community governance tool will enable the project research, development and community construction of NULS to enter a more comprehensive community-based operation stage and make the governance of the NULS community more perfect and efficient.
4. Conclusion
In 1859, Darwin put forward the theory of biological evolution in The Origin of Species, which shocked entire academic and religious circles. Darwin said:
“Survival belongs to neither the strongest nor the cleverest, but resides instead with the most adaptable species.”
In July 2018, the NULS main network was launched and the community concept of “openness, freedom, autonomy, and evolution” was written into the genesis block. Under this idea, the NULS community has made the major decisions affecting future development time and again.
All of the community governance options and opportunities, such as setting up a contributor role, embracing developers, and establishing community decision-making mechanisms, are provided to make NULS realize community-based operation and to enable the ability of self-evolution.
The blockchain is still in its infancy with too many unknowns in the future. Only self-evolution and continuous adaptability can advance the evolution of a new species and ensure that NULS will overcome uncertainty and live in the future.
