SourceCred Beta Roadmap

The CredSperiment
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2019 was a great year for SourceCred: we took the project from “prototype” to “alpha”. What that means, is we’ve gone from having zero users to having one user. The system is now live. We’re flowing cred and making it grain.

However, the quality of SourceCred is still… very alpha. Key features are missing; the UI is basically non-existent; it’s deployed using hacked-together scripts and Observable notebooks; and it has almost no documentation.

For 2020, let’s set our sights on going from “one user” to “several”. That means moving from alpha-quality to beta-quality. Here’s my take on what the path there looks like.

Thanks to @sriche for reviewing earlier versions of this roadmap.

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Features

Supernodes

We need the Supernodes system because it allows SourceCred to focus on outcomes and not just activity. Without it, SourceCred risks badly misbehaving at scale or when there are bad actors in the community.

Boosting

Boosting will serve many functions:

  • Helps set the right Cred values on the initiatives and artifacts from the Supernodes system
  • Gives you something to do with Grain, closing the loop so that you both earn Grain and Boost with it
  • Done right, it will be fun :slight_smile:

Optional: On-Chain Grain

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UI + Legibility

UI for inspecting Cred

  • We need a dramatically better UI for understanding Cred distributions
  • Needed features:
    • Can select any user and inspect their cred
    • Can break down cred by time and by type of contribution
    • Can analyze cred in terms of supernodes
      • “who has cred in this artifact?”
      • “which artifacts gave this person cred?”

UI for editing Supernodes

  • Needs to be easy and intuitive to propose a new Supernode, to edit existing Supernodes, to view them all
  • Much as I love Discourse, I think we need a dedicated UI for this, not a series of Discourse templates :slight_smile:
  • Some technical challenges around having a central server vs running serverless.

UI for Boosting

  • If boosting is going to be a key fun mechanic of our game, we need to make it easy and engaging to play.

UI for Grain

  • Each Contributor must also be able to see their Grain balance.
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Deployment

Today our SourceCred deployment depends on a bunch of non-portable scripts that I run on my laptop every week, and also on observable notebooks that I manually create every week.

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This needs to be changed.

Instance System

  • Set up an instance system so we can easily manage and configure deployments

First Class Grain

  • Right now Grain distribution and serializing happens in manual Observable notebooks
  • Add Grain issuance and tracking to the core codebase
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Documentation

Goal: make it easy for people to learn about, use, and contribute to SourceCred. May include, but is not limited to:

  • SourceCred manifesto
  • SourceCred lightpaper
  • SourceCred overview doc
  • SourceCred key concepts doc
  • SourceCred how-to doc
  • Organizing all the ideas in this Discourse into docs
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