November 13, 2018 . 5 min read

1. Announcing the STORE Governance Peer Review Process & Working Group

Storecoin is pleased to announce our first peer review and working group, focused on governance. Through this, we will bring our community together to learn about and provide input on a full spectrum of governance issues. This process will take place through public comments on prepared documents and via a public email group, a final spec generated from the working group, and ultimately culminate in the third Storecoin GovCon for ratification of the Storecoin governance model.

Thoughout history, we have seen a common pattern. When trust in markets grows, the number of participants in those markets grows, and trade and commerce expands. Governance systems that constitute rules engines for enforcing contracts are one of the most tried-and-true ways to inject this trust.

Storecoin believes that one of the most powerful opportunities of cryptocurrency is to expand global trade and commerce. The fundamental attributes of cryptocurrencies - liquidity, ease of transfer, potential to reduce costs and fees - make them suited to not only enable the types of transactions that happen today, but enable a growth in truly global commerce.

At the same time, this outcome of expanded trade and commerce is not a foregone conclusion. There are many countervailing forces that actually challenge the adoption and use of cryptos by existing market actors.

One of those anti-adoption forces is the uncertainty and risk that arises from unpredictable governance. Most of today’s cryptocurrencies have governance processes that are either opaque, unclear, overly minimized, or promised for a later time. In most of these cases, there is simply not enough information or clarity for existing economic actors to be able to understand the governance model; make a judgement about whether it will serve their businesses’ interests; or price risk associated with future changes.

Storecoin is attempting to do things differently. We believe that well-defined governance, built with community input and buy-in from an array of different types of stakeholders, will be significantly better suited to inspiring the sort of confidence necessary for a crypto to truly involve today’s economic actors and, in so doing, expand trade and commerce.

For the past 4+ years, we’ve been researching governance systems - both within blockchains and beyond. When the federalists were working to frame the US constitution, they came to believe that the only way to prevent centralized consolidation of power was a representative democracy backed by a system of checks and balances. We’ve come to believe that the only way to allow a cryptoasset governance system the flexibility it needs to evolve while simultaneously being able to achieve finality without centralization is to build a governance of checks and balances.

Even more importantly, however, we’ve become convinced that any system of governance needs stakeholder input, development, and ratification to truly represent the needs of the community and ecosystem invested in that cryptoasset.

From Satoshi’s email list to early bitcointalk and p2p foundation threads, open, peer review has been at the heart of how crypto protocols develop.

For that reason, we’re thrilled to announce our first Governance Peer Review Process and Working Group. Our goal is to share our ideas so far, solicit feedback from the Storecoin community, and integrate that input into what will become the Storecoin charter.

Our peer review process will be open, global and designed to attract the best minds from around the world to strengthen our Governance model and build the committed community who will become the first participants and “citizens” of that governance. It will also set the template for future Storecoin peer review processes around Economics, Security, Consensus, and Distribution designs.

Here’s how it will work.

Storecoin Governance Peer Review & Working Group Process

1. Early next week, we’re sharing our Storecoin Governance Working Paper as an open Google doc where readers can add comments and discuss comments. This paper explains our most current thinking and proposed approach to building a checks-and-balances governance.

2. Over the next ~10 weeks, we’ll be sharing a series of posts that dive deeper into specific areas of governance. Some of these will be conceptual (such as why we’re focused on a checks-and-balances approach), while some will be detailed looks at how a particular part of the governance process (such as proposing a change in monetary policy) would work in practice. They will be published both on our blog and with partners. We’ll keep track of important feedback when you comment on or tweet about these pieces.

3. For those who want to engage directly with our team, we’ll be hosting a number of AMAs and/or video chat sessions where we can answer questions directly.

4. For those who want to be even more deeply involved, we’ll be convening a Governance Working Group that will discuss numerous governance issues in a deep and ongoing way. Each week, the Storecoin team will post an update to the working group and publicly sharing key issues flagged last week, proposed discussions and changes and more.

5. After the Peer Review Process has been completed, the Storecoin team, working in conjunction with the Governance Working Group, will take the updated thinking and turn it into a draft Charter, which will have its own peer review process and be ratified at a governance convention next Spring.

6. After the Peer Review Process has been completed, the Storecoin team, working in conjunction with the Governance Working Group, will take the updated thinking and turn it into a draft Charter.

So, what happens from there? In the near future, Storecoin will host its first GovCon in San Francisco. Research papers will be accepted to extend ideas for the protocol across Governance, Economics, Security, Consensus and more. These papers will serve as the foundation for the first set of proposed changes to Storecoin.

By 2021 – through a formal ratification -- we plan to launch a decentralized Governance of checks and balances that will coordinate all changes across features, security, key leadership, and monetary policy.

You, our Storecoin community, are an essential part of this process. Here’s how you can contribute:

1. Pay attention to storecoin.com/govreview - This where we’ll link to everything connected with the Peer Review Process and Governance Working Group.

2. Review and comment on the Governance Working paper - shared here as a public Google doc. You can send in questions by emailing [email protected]

3. Join the Governance Working Group - to participate in in-depth conversations with the team and members of the Storecoin community around specific governance issues, send a request to [email protected]. We’ll invite add you to the Group. (if you join, we’ll automatically make you a part of the Storecoin Community and send you a fresh #💰 tee-shirt)

4. Comment on or tweet about the articles/posts/deep dives we share - all social engagements with ideas or questions will be incorporated as feedback. Be sure to mention @StoreGov.

5. Participate in AMAs - and other public Q&A sessions (exact timing to be announced)

If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected] or tweet @StoreGov.