Over the past year, we’ve seen Ark grow from a small idea with big ambitions to a project that is a real contender to prove itself and build an Ecosystem to stand the tests of time. As many know Ark has a very tight knit, interwoven community that prides itself in coming together to delve into problems and find solutions as a group. The delegate system is a perfect example of this at work, with each delegate providing their own network effect and value given back to the community that really helps to not only further build the fanbase for Ark but also grow the number of developers and entrepreneurs looking to base themselves off the Ark Ecosystem. Today we’re going to be discussing.. Why Is The Delegate System So Good? In turn also providing some more thoughts into what our delegation, The Golden Horde can do to further prosper the Ark Ecosystem.

Why The Delegate System Is So Potent

The delegate system in DPOS projects, specifically the Ark model is probably one of the most fantastic systems in place within the cryptocurrency sphere, the power that it provides to a project and it’s community should not be underestimated nor overlooked. We’ve seen time and time again what the system is capable of allowing and the results that have been born because it’s in place.

To really appreciate the system, you should look at a typical Proof of Work or Proof of Stake consensus. Projects that have this consensus model built into them have been some of the most successful around, take the grandfather of crypto — Bitcoin and other projects such as Ethereum. These kinds of projects indeed have large communities that interact and are passionate about their respective cryptocurrency. The issue arises however that for the typical passionate community member it is incredibly hard to create burgeoning ideas that gain traction amongst fellow members of the community. In these consensus models the people who have the most power are those who forge the blocks and receive the rewards from doing so. You may ask, what’s so different with these systems compared to Ark, why does Ark get so many passionate community members who are able to influence and grow the project so drastically and how is the power distributed in a much fairer manner? The answer all lies in the properties set by the DPOS consensus model.

Can you guess the person in this Blockchain Heroes sketch?

Human Vs Hardware

With Bitcoin and Ethereum, those who have the most power to influence are those who have the most hardware or hash power, hardware doesn’t care what your beliefs are nor where your motives lie. If you have the most power then you’re naturally going to be able to receive the most rewards. In the Ark DPOS model, everyone has a fighting chance at forging Ark due to the nature of the democratic governance system that DPOS provides. Those who care most about the community may not be the ones who hold the most funds, they may not be able to afford power through financial means but it simply doesn’t matter — and this is why time and time again over the past year we have seen so much good be delivered by the community, real humans being able to impact and have a say on the future of the project.

Having 51 delegates with the majority being elected by the community they represent, in a system that cannot be maliciously fixed allows for significant opportunities to those who intend to do good in order to grow the ecosystem being built. For example just this past month along with us getting into a forging spot, we’ve seen two other great delegates get into the top 51. Marc (Aka Cryptology) came into a forging spot, and rightfully so as his work through ArkTippr and other services has shown how much he cares about extending the services available to those within the Ark sphere and thanks to further work, those who may not know about us just yet. There was also Delegate Fun whom looks to build web games based around Ark to attract new members to the community, his games are incredibly fun and definitely worth checking out.

This is a prime example of how if you give the power to the majority and not the minority, positive changes can come. Not to mention that there will always be voters who have interests in different niches so delegates that appeal to the areas which the voter enjoys and grow a sub community within the Ark community. We have seen this for example with Biz, as they have grown a very like minded community and they have done very well in doing so. In the event that a delegate underperforms severely or actively seeks to cause harm, the system of voting again works in the majorities favour and bad actors can be removed from forging as soon as they are spotted.

Why The Community & Voters Should Care About The Delegate System

The community of Ark and those that actively vote for delegates should care about Ark’s DPOS system for a multitude of reasons. Firstly the delegate system shows that having a democratic governance system is potent as it empowers each and every individual in the Ark community, it represents the majority view and gives them the power to dictate what they wish to see happen within the community.

Representatives

Each and every delegate acts almost like a mini version of an extension of the core team. Delegates are often those who have been in the community for a long time, they generally have a pretty good representation of how the project works and can answer many questions that may be posed to them whilst having a good understanding on the vision brought by the team. By having 51 delegates, there are a lot of people that the community can turn to for help, knowledge seeking or ideas to cultivate and grow the ecosystem. This is potent in itself as delegates can be held accountable and act as proper representatives of the Ark Ecosystem. We have seen this through hackathons, Consensus and the Ark one year meet-up where delegates were very much there to represent the project and help current and new members of the community with anything they may want to know. We’ve also seen further fun explainers and contributions at events such as the Biz Faucet, which was a creative way of adding functionality to the system in place as well as be able to show it off to those foreign to Ark.

Outreach & Network Effect

Each and every delegate has their own idea that they want to see thrive in the ecosystem, their proposal is a pledge on how they wish to go about promoting and producing their ideas. You can imagine that a typical project has a lot of people promoting the cryptocurrency and the tech but in Ark, you’ve got so many voices that each are able to be used as a point of contact and outreach to the wider community. For example Jarunik commands a large presence in the Ark community, his videos are a nice neat overview of different updates within the community on a weekly/monthly basis and help newer members find Ark. This can also be seen in a variety of onboarding process which most delegates have their own versions of that in turn also help to promote Ark. It’s this cultivation and collaboration of talents are an excellent way to get real work created within the community. Further more each and every delegate have good social media outreach which bolsters Ark’s network effect. We’ve also spoken to Arkade’s Bootlegjim who has given a good example to me of how they also work to onboard new members. They’ve had winners of their competitions who have signed up for the games in the past and ended up being onboarded into the community, their system of paying out in Ark helps get new people interested and is an awesome way to do things!

What The Future Could Hold For Delegates & How The Golden Horde Aims To Evolve

In the future there are many different things that could occur in how the delegate system is run and also what voters expect from each delegate. Personally for us at The Golden Horde, we would love to see a future in which as the Ark Ecosystem grows and in turn the Ark price. Delegates can begin to bring business backed delegate proposals to the community, allowing for various ideas and business solutions to be linked to Ark and give extra rewards to voters. Some examples of this could be:

A Hotel Franchise business utilises the Ark DPOS model and in return for forging and securing the Ark network, rewards voters with free stays at their hotels around the world, they can afford to do this by having a system where each voter can set their payout of Ark/Free Stays to a level at which they are comfortable, using a sliding scale payout system. The hotel gets Ark and the Voter gets Nights at the Hotels just for voting, further more the hotel chain can look to use the Ark Blockchain to integrate it into their business needs, for example creating a reward point currency on a side chain, having their financial transactions run through this chain and use it for record keeping.

This kind of system could mean that the 51 spots are taken up by delegates who all provide varying levels of services to the community, we’ve seen some forms of this throughout Ark’s Delegate history with marketing/community building delegations but we’re still in the infancy of discovering the potentials for the future of DPOS. The voters may not even vote for one delegate, they could very much so split across multiple that pique their interest, garnering benefits from a wide range of services and helping these delegates flourish, this system is very interesting to think about because there truly is an incredible amount of potential for this format to thrive. From chocolate being delivered to voters doors, to branding services providing custom services to each voter, all these ideas are possible. Ideally we would need to see the price of Ark increase, in turn with the network growth in order for businesses to sustain these business models, but the future could truly be closer than expect and it’s something we’re slowly starting to try and implement in The Golden Horde.

The Golden Horde Loot System

If you haven’t heard of us at The Golden Horde you can read more in our introductory article. We’re aiming to provide merchandise revolving around cryptocurrency and blockchain projects you know and love. We’re story tellers at heart and have grown up immersed in the lore of mythical worlds and stories, we believe combining merchandise with an interesting back story, as well as twisting usual scenarios to make them obscure can make artwork fun and interesting to have. We’ve been in the Ark community collectively for more than a year so we know how amazing everyone in the community can be and how close knit everyone is. Our Loot Point system definitely pushes the boat out and that’s fully what we intend to do.

The Loot Point system is simple in concept, our voters can use our scale based payout system that they can set on our website, this system allows the voter to choose how much Ark % they wish to receive as well as Loot %. The Loot Points will be something we are continuously building and expanding the functionality of to incorporate more awesome services and rewards for our voters. As soon as the system goes live in August our voters will be able to start accruing Loot Points and once our Merch shop roles out in September Loot will be fully spendable on our website for sweet artwork in the form of apparel, home accessories and wall art. We’ll also be having Golden Crates launching in the new year that is a further extension of our system with crates of merchandise sent directly to our voters full of surprise Ark themed merch and items from community members.

This is all apart of our evolution as a business and service to the Ark Ecosystem and wider cryptocurrency community, we will be continuously expanding these services and our aim is to provide a variety of web based software applications for use by voters and Ark community members. We will have more information on these services in the coming months so please make sure to check out our Twitter and Medium for more updates.

It certainly is an exciting time to be in the Ark Ecosystem, we’re looking forward to providing you guys with more updates on our progress and we can’t wait to see all the other awesome features created by other community members!

What You Can Expect From Us The Rest Of This Week

Design Lines Featuring Ark In Depth

A deep dive into a variety of our design lines and some of the artwork you can expect to see revolving around Ark. We’ll be releasing this article on Wednesday so stay tuned if you’re interested in having a look at the merch we will have on offer.

Crypto Designathon

A design competition for community members of Ark and Ethereum who like creating art and VFX. The prize pot will be over $2,000 USD and will be a split bot of Eth and Ark. There will be some fun things revolving around this and we’ll be releasing more info and starting the competition on the 7th August so stay tuned if you fancy joining this competition.