The Next Generation of Global Collaboration
We have a logistics problem. There are billions of advanced supercomputers across the globe, constantly generating ideas and solutions to tackle a broad range of problems. Yet, the network that connects these computers often lets ideas go underutilized or unused. How can we hope to solve society’s largest questions and problems, when we throw away most of the answers?
These supercomputers I speak of are our brains, and the network connecting them is the internet. Let’s look at why our current system is inefficient, and how we can do much better.
The problem
For example, imagine you have an idea for a new pastry shop in your area. Here are some questions you start considering: What are the steps you would take to open the shop? Well, it depends whether you want a physical location or for it to be an online business. How much time can you dedicate to the business? Between your current job, family obligations, and general chores and errands, maybe enough time. What paperwork do you need to fill out? How much will it cost? Where will you find the time to do all of this, while still providing for yourself before it generates revenue? It’s too many questions and too many choices. It’s too much! You’ve had enough. You’ve decided to let the idea slip away.
This is the problem with our society. Everyone has passions and ideas to contribute, but unless you’re an “entrepreneur” or always “on that grind”, it is very difficult to pursue most if not all ideas.
How can we fix this? We must create a system that (1) outlines a clear path for what you want to accomplish; (2) connects you to anyone that is interested in your project (investors, employees, customers); (3) and makes implementing your idea as easy as… pie! (get it, because of the pastry shop?)
Luckily for us, this system is already in the early stages of development. It’s called Project Catalyst, and it provides a novel way to promote collaboration and involvement of members in its community. With time, I believe Project Catalyst will be adopted by billions of people, all across the globe.
Of course, I can’t make such a claim without a damn good explanation! Hopefully as I describe how the project works — and what I believe is its natural progression — you’ll begin to grasp the vast amount of power it provides to its users.
Introduction to Project Catalyst
First off, what is Project Catalyst? As written on one of its community-made websites,
Project Catalyst is a series of experiments which seeks to generate the highest levels of community innovation. Catalyst is bringing on-chain governance to the Cardano blockchain by allowing the community to self-determine priorities for growth
In English, this means Project Catalyst is a place to go to create, learn, and vote on new ideas to help the community. In this case, the “community” is people using the Cardano blockchain. The project works with an iterative lifecycle called a “fund”, with each fund consisting of several steps. There are a handful of roles that one can have in this system, but the most important to know are proposers, implementers, community advisors, and voters.
Proposers can be thought of as the traditional entrepreneur. They submit proposals near the beginning of the fund (which don’t have to be fully developed). Proposals consist of identifying a problem, explaining how it will be solved, and providing a budget. During the following few weeks, community advisors and the public provide constructive criticism, while the community advisors also moderate. This provides an opportune time for implementers — the potential employees of the proposer — to identify proposals they would like to be a part of. Then, the proposers are given time to reflect on these comments and improve their proposals. Near the end of the fund, voters (those that hold a certain amount of ADA, the token used on Cardano for payments and governance) can vote on proposals. When the fund concludes, ADA is distributed to the winning proposers (if they are within budget), and also to every community advisor and voter who participated.
Following so far? Here’s where it gets a little more complicated. Each fund consists of challenges, which set up a problem space that the community wants proposals for. Challenges provide a fund amount, which is distributed to the winners. How many winners are chosen depends on the budgets of the top proposals. The challenges themselves are voted for in the previous fund, to make the project as decentralized as possible.
You may be wondering, how is the project funded? The simplest answer is that whenever data is written to the blockchain, a fee is paid. A portion of this fee is set aside for Project Catalyst. This means the blockchain is paying for its own development. That’s a powerful thought.
Can this project really turn into the “next generation of global collaboration”? I believe it can, but there are a few challenges ahead…
Mass adoption is heavily influenced by utility and accessibility. The project must be able to scale, convey the same information across dozens of languages, provide guidance for ideas of every kind, support a wide array of funding and investment structures, and — most importantly — be prepared for automation. That’s quite a lot, but this can all be possible… thanks to a powerful idea I like to call the Root Routine.
Demystifying the Root Routine
To grasp the Root Routine, you must first understand some terminology. A task is a unit of work. Every proposal on Project Catalyst is implemented by a collection of tasks. A routine is the process of completing a task. For example, the task of baking a pie may be completed by the routine of: buying the correct ingredients, mixing the ingredients together in a certain order, and putting it in the oven for the specified duration.
A routine can be comprised of one or more routines, called children or subroutines. Routines can also be referenced in other routines, called parents or superroutines. A parent performs a larger task than its child; a grandparent performs a larger task than the parent, and so on. Assuming a routine exists for every task, there must be some routine that is the great-great-great-great-…-great grandparent — an “ancestor” of all other routines. This is the Root Routine.
By definition, a fully-functioning Root Routine is able to perform any task. If such a routine existed, the world would be drastically different. It would transform the way we work, and radically improve productivity.
Of course, such a routine does not exist, nor will it come into existence any time in the near future. The point of the Root Routine is not its end state, but the process of creating it (if you want to get meta, the Root Routine routine). A proper tool for building, sharing, and combining routines provides the community with unprecedented collaboration abilities, and allows us to most effectively plan the future of Project Catalyst. Welcome to Vrooli.
Vrooli
Vrooli is an open-source project that aims to provide a space for community members to run, submit, comment, and vote on routines. The specifics of how a routine is created is covered later in this article. For now, let’s check out the interface.
There are two main interfaces of Vrooli: the Routine Reader and Routine Runner. The first displays routines as an interactive flowchart, as shown below.
Any node can be clicked, which displays its information.
If a node is a subroutine, then clicking “expand” will open up a view of its components.
Now let’s look at the Routine Runner. The goal of this interface is to make completing a routine as easy as possible. Similar to TurboTax’s UI, the Routine Runner is designed to remove as much friction as possible. In using each subroutine’s metadata, an appropriate interface is chosen for the user. When that interface is filled-out, clicking “Next” automatically takes the user to the next interface. Let’s look at some examples.
A simple interface is one for basic field inputs. This might be used for an automated process, that only needs a few pieces of information from the user.
The subroutine defines what inputs it requires in its metadata. This is used to automatically generate a form with the correct fields.
One of the most common interfaces is for decision nodes. This is any part of the routine that requires the user to manually pick the next step. Auto-generating this interface is trivial.
Another common interface is for connecting to external services. As much as we would like everything to be able to communicate with Vrooli, this is not always possible. In the example below, this external subroutine specifies that it requires the generation of a specific file to be considered complete. The “drag ‘n drop” area will reject any file that doesn’t match the required extension.
Especially in the early days of Vrooli, many routines will have subroutines marked as incomplete. This means that there is some routine that must be completed, but you’re unfortunately on your own this time. An incomplete subroutine may require an output to be uploaded like the previous example. But this time, we’ll say that none are required.
Before viewing for running a routine, you must be able to find one that suits your needs. Vrooli will have a basic search interface, such as the one below.
When a routine is clicked, a detailed view will display.
This view shows the routine’s description, its popularity, and a comment section. It also contains buttons to open the Routine Reader, edit the routine (or create your own version if you did not make this routine), and report if the routine does not meet community guidelines.
Vrooli as a collaboration tool
Vrooli’s potential lies not only from what it’s trying to create, but also from what information it provides. Its visual nature makes it simple to pinpoint missing and complicated subroutines, which can then be turned into challenges and proposals. Voters can view how the proposal fits into the Root Routine, to determine for themselves if it adds enough value to the system. Using flowcharts also simplifies the process of translation, as most of the nuance is represented in visual form.
Most importantly, Vrooli finally brings the power of entrepreneurship to the masses. As the Root Routine matures, it will inevitably become more streamlined and automated. Every time this occurs, it directly reduces the time and knowledge required to implement an idea — the routine naturally improves itself!
Designing routines: a practical example
Now that we know how routines will be displayed and used, let’s see how they are created. On Vrooli, this will be accomplished with a drag and drop builder, in an interface that looks very similar to the Routine Reader. For simplicity, this article will only show the generated flowcharts.
A flowchart is a diagram that describes how to complete a routine, through a network of links and nodes. Flowcharts in Vrooli are a little different than your typical flowchart. Each node is one of five types: (1) a link to another flowchart; (2) an indication of an incomplete section of the flowchart; (3) an automated process (may still require user input, such as confirmation buttons and text fields); (4) an external service; (5) or a decision.
Let’s start with a simple, incomplete routine flowchart for starting that pastry business. This flowchart immediately begins with a link to another flowchart, which is common for a routine at this level of abstraction.
Now let’s peek inside the “knowledge management” flowchart. As you can see below, this flowchart only consists of links to other flowcharts. Generally, this makes the flowchart more approachable and easier to understand. Flowcharts at lower levels of abstraction will tend to be more complicated.
The “knowledge management” routine is one that will likely be used in most flowcharts, as it outputs the documents needed to convey your idea to other people. It also serves as an opportunity to decide for yourself if the idea is worth pursuing. Let’s add that to the pastry flowchart.
Before continuing, I’d like to address a small conundrum. A routine as complex and important as knowledge management will surely have many different flowcharts, and seasoned proposers are likely to have favorites. A way to accommodate this is with a “priority list”. If any nodes in a routine match the description and the input/output types of a preferred node in the user’s priority list, then it can be swapped out. Not only would this allow for favorites, but it would also give users the capability to enhance the performance of old flowcharts without creating their own modified version.
With that out of the way, let’s get back to the pastry flowchart. You’ve completed “knowledge management”, and have decided to pursue the project. Congrats! The next process is to create the “business entity”. What does that mean?
In traditional business, there are many steps you must take to legitimize a business with the law and the financial industry. With blockchain-based businesses, this is much easier. While there are still legal requirements to handle (curse you bureaucracy!), the financial aspect can be easily automated. Token builders such as this site allow you to create native assets and NFTs. These could soon be used for patenting your idea, creating tokens that users can invest in, generating contractual investing (such as Kickstarter) rules, and much more. For the sake of our flowchart, let’s assume that this process is fully automated. All it needs is some documents created from the knowledge management section, and possibly a few selections from the user.
With those processes complete, you can finally create a proposal for your business. By following the flowchart, you can be certain that your proposal will be conveyed exactly as you envision it in your head.
Assuming your proposal is funded, the next steps will vary greatly between idea types. For this case, let’s say that the following steps are advertising, buying a property to host the shop, and renovating the property to your liking. In this example, the advertising and property buying will be external services. This means that the process is completed elsewhere (e.g. another website, in-person). Let’s also say that renovating is an incomplete area of the flowchart, meaning you would have to determine the renovation plans and execution yourself.
Once those steps are complete… congratulations! You are now the proud owner of your own pastry shop. Bon Appétit!
Closing thoughts
If you extrapolate the natural progression of this improvement, what happens to Project Catalyst? In the most successful case, proposers and implementers would become one and the same. In other words, the process of submitting and implementing proposals becomes so easy and accessible that anyone — no matter their expertise, availability, or entrepreneurial spirit — can contribute their ideas and be compensated for them. The project would become the most efficient and effective way to provide anyone with income and a sense of purpose. This is the next generation of global collaboration.
If you’d made it this far, hopefully this post has instilled hope that equality of opportunity is achievable, and that we can all have a part in creating the world we want to live in. For anyone already in — or perhaps joining — the Project Catalyst community, I will be submitting proposals that align with this future, and spreading awareness of the greatness that can be. Hope you come along for the ride. 🚀
Personal links: matthalloran.info
