If this is your first Trig Time, you'll find out I like to start with a mutual understanding of terms and concepts.
So let's kick it right off with some background:
Origin
Greek protokollon (“first glue”) - the first page of a scroll that validated its authenticity. The OG identity and provenance management system.
This later expanded to cover the entirety of all rights, rituals, and ceremonies of diplomacy and governance. It was, in the purest essence, a set of communication & coordination rules that would produce a fair and reasonable result when followed.
It still was required for individuals to maintain and enforce the rules so that everyone followed propriety and got what was deemed fair representation.
Modern Evolution
With the rise of technology and the looming future of interconnectivity, it became clear that we needed to have similar protocols for computers to be able to communicate with each other and get expected results, just like humans had developed for themselves millennia earlier.
All a protocol was at this point was still just a set of rules surrounding communication, process, and coordination that produced an expected result.
Computer protocols allow applications to interact autonomously, enabling more people to utilize them with fewer points of centralization. Most people still rely on the centralized application providers (platforms), however.
Blockchain Protocols
This is where things start to get weird. What makes something a blockchain protocol is still not yet well defined. One clear factor is that it activates the economic layer. Nothing about a protocol up until blockchains ever had any kind of value-capture mechanism. The value created was always extracted or otherwise funneled away by the external actors utilizing the protocol.
This left it up to volunteers to raise funding and partner with beneficiaries to coordinate the development of said protocols. There is no investible path for protocol development.
Suddenly blockchain changes that by activating the economic layer and enabling protocol usage to be tied directly to economic incentives. This is the direction and focus of Farcaster as it pursues protocol-hood.
Is that all it takes to be a protocol?
Added all up, this is my best summary of the evolution of protocols:
A set of rules that enables interoperability (classic Greek)
A formalized set of rules that enable machines to interoperate autonomously across distance, time, and scale (modern evolution)
A set of formal, self-executing rules that enable autonomous coordination among machines, humans, and economic actors— without centralized control (blockchain protocol)
Good catch.
We are talking about blockchains, after all. Should decentralization be a core component of a blockchain protocol? - I would say most certainly yes!
But that's just my opinion, and the debate between a protocol and a platform rages on! Many, many, many words have been written about this, and many more will be written in the future. Of this I am certain!
Suffice it to say, however, that there's another key component to modern protocols that has to be considered: they often have to be upgraded. Upgradable protocols means someone(s) has to be in charge of maintaining and updating them so that everyone using them has a clear expectation of how they work.
This may or may not be a entirely separate thing from a blockchain protocol, but we need to at least acknowledge that it exists and is necessary. Maybe we call it a decentralized protocol.
Well, when looking at the classic definition, the goal is to enable interoperable coordination between two or more parties.
Makes sense.
What about a modern protocol? Well, we all want to participate in them because they comprise the foundation of the internet. Most of the applications we use every day rely on these protocols in one way or another.
Ok, but what about a blockchain protocol? Well, this one is both easier and more complicated.
Easy: To gain access to the economic value generated by the protocol
Complicated: The economic value of a protocol and how it will capture and redistribute that value is not always clear or simple to quantify and tokenize. Every situation is unique, no there is no guaranteed way to succeed.
Right now there are more experiments in progressive decentralization than there are actually decentralized protocols. There are some protocols that have, to some degree, solved for the value capture. Surprisingly few, however! Most protocols are still built and funded by a centralized group of builders with a vested interest in the success of the protocol and external funding that keeps development moving forward.
What's exciting to me in all of this is the idea of creating self-governing and self-funding protocols that enable themselves to exist. This is the ouroboros of technology. Things like protocols can't stay the same forever. They are often never truly complete as they can only be built for what is possible today and remain open to changing for what becomes possible in the future.
Much like my vision for DAOs, I feel that there is a lot of work to do in order to solve for the foundational components that will enable these robust, capture resistant, non-exploitable protocols that can scale. These kinds of systems rarely exist, however. Just because we have the technology to program these protocols doesn't mean we have figured out how to build them yet. And you never know you've failed until the system fails.
"Success" is measured in time between failures.
This is the work of Nearchos. Let's build protocols!
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If you've been following my journey with @letsdivvi you may be wondering ❓ What's up with $slices ❓ I've mentioned it a few times, but if you follow that ticker, you won't find any liquidity. Just me talking about it! 😆 🍰 Slices are non-transferrable Divvi points, put simply. Everyone doing their part to grow the onchain ecosystem deserves their slice of the pie, and Divvi is building a system to do just that. 🥧 But how? Enter: The Protocol This is why Divvi is building a protocol. If you want a refresh on what that means and why it is significant, check out my recent paragraph that breaks it down and simply as possible. https://paragraph.com/@trigs/what-is-a-protocol ❓ So how do slices fit in to this❓ 👇
So as we identified in the paragraph, a blockchain protocol unlocks access to the economic layer created by the protocol. When Divvi is fully funded, there will be significant economic activity being generated by the protocol. Deep Dive on this later when we look into the tokenomics. As that economic activity grows and Divvi continues to decentralize, there will be some kind of onchain tokenization of the protocol value, and $slices are the ticket to early access. That alone should tell you why you want to earn and hold on to your slices! ❓ So how do you earn slices❓ 👇
Right now there are only a handful of ways to earn slices. As the community around the protocol grows gains more momentum, there will be new opportunities that emerge. To start with, Divvi is rewarding the most crucial of functions needed to kickstart the protocol: 1. Builders registering apps that meet campaign KPI's 2. Users engaging with registered apps to help them hit KPI's These two activities are the central core of Divvi and everything it strives to achieve. ❓ What else can you do to earn slices and where else can you find apps to engage with❓ 👇
There are two more ways to earn slices, although these are limited in supply: 1. Quest on Galxe and earn 2. Spin the Slice Machine daily for a random reward Head over to https://slices.divvi.xyz/earn to jump on these opportunities to throw a few more slices on your plate! You will also find the registry of apps on this page so you can discover new apps to try and earn some slices along the way! *Slices are only earned if you perform an action that fulfills a live campaign KPI. p.s. there may or may not be a Farcaster mini-app with all of this on the way... ❓ Ok, so how do you track your slices❓ 👇
As some of you may know, I've been working with a project lately that is building a protocol. Well, I've been working with a lot of projects that are building protocols, but there's one in particular that I have been dedicating more and more time and energy to. I'm going to share a little more with you about that protocol today, as I am helping them to prepare for some big announcements about the future of the project. 👇
One of the most crucial components to a protocol is a purpose. Why does this protocol need to exist ⁉️ The 'why' for this project is simple: Funding in this ecosystem is just too damn complicated 😅 Every new funding mechanism is mired in red tape of gating, voting, impact analysis, popularity contests, and all other sorts of classic problems that just make web3 funding as bad or worse than trad funding. If only there was a distributed ledger of activity that could be used to programmatically distribute funding based on pre-defined goals... Enter @letsdivvi, the funding protocol. 👇
Divvi gets the job done by using blockchains for what they are best at: programmatic automation. It's a simple workflow: Step 1: Fund a reward vault with pre-defined onchain KPI's (as simple or complex as you want them to be) Step 2: Register apps that can fulfill these KPI's and monitor actual usage Step 3: Builders claim their rewards in proportion to their contribution to overall onchain growth No applications, no manual tracking and reporting. Click. Ship. Earn. 👇
OK the incentives make sense, but what makes this a protocol? If you've read my recent article you will have a little bit of insight into answering that question. https://paragraph.com/@trigs/what-is-a-protocol If you break down the full workflow in a rudimentary way, you can separate out the 'incentives' from the 'protocol'. The protocol side is largely the builders and users. These are the individuals who stand to gain the most from using the protocol. They are also the individuals who will grow to own and maintain the protocol as it decentralizes. The incentive side is the economic value of the protocol. The more funds that are injected into the system as KPI rewards, the more value is being generated by the protocol.
This is all very high-level, but it sets the stage for what is coming next for Divvi: $slices Slices are non-transferable onchain tokens that represent participation in the Divvi ecosystem. Slices are available to builders, product testers, end users, and everyone in between. If you're helping apps bring users onchain, you're earning slices! This is the very first onchain primitive that represents the future of Divvi and the funding protocol it is creating. It's very early, but that's what we do around here, isn't it? If your appetite is whetted, follow the jump to find out more ways you can earn your slice! https://slices.divvi.xyz/earn
What is a protocol? 🤔 Strange question, indeed. Strangely hard to answer. This is a question I've asked a lot of people over the past few years and I still feel like the answer is elusive 🙈 💡 I just published something that my brain has been writing for a long time. It's nowhere near complete, but it at least sets the stage for what I believe a protocol is, and why. https://paragraph.com/@trigs/what-is-a-protocol