Proposing and Supporting Community Initiatives Made Easy
Ever since the release of Particl Desktop 2.0 and the Particl Marketplace on mainnet, it has been possible for any Particl user to create and push proposals to the network and get them voted by the community. That’s all thanks to the in-app Community Proposal system that uses SMSG, the same network used to display listings and carry orders on the marketplace, and off-chain voting.
However, this proposal system has fallen short of becoming a true and solid tool for community governance for a few reasons. First off, it didn’t create any permanent voting record that could be used to prove the outcome, in retrospect, of any proposal. Additionally, it didn’t give the ability for people to raise funds for community-led initiatives and projects. Finally, the in-app Community Proposal system is currently only available in “market-enabled” wallets, meaning wallets that have the Particl Marketplace enabled. This has prevented everyone without funds on a market-enabled wallet to participate in any sort of governance.
These issues have led the community to instead push proposals, especially proposals that require funding, onto other platforms such as the Particl community forum. While this gave more flexibility to proposers, this has also created its load of disadvantages such as spreading proposals all over into different platforms.
For this reason, the Particl team has just released the CCS framework which is now available on Particl’s official website.
What’s the CCS Framework
The CCS proposal is a community crowdfunding and governance system to which a brand new on-chain voting mechanism will be added at a later time. The framework is based on Monero’s and Zcoin’s own CCS framework (dubbed ZCS for Zcoin), which is open-source and available for all to use and fork on Github, and has been tweaked by Particl developers.
The CCS framework allows anyone to propose initiatives, projects and, later on, protocol changes that benefit the Particl ecosystem and community. It increases the decentralization of both the governance of the project and its funding, something the team has been wanting to do for a long time.
This new system uses Github and a user-friendly interface to make it as easy and effortless for anyone to let their voice be heard by the rest of the community.
The CCS Framework and its Many Benefits
The CCS framework allows anyone to push their own proposals to the network and get the community talking about it. Here are some of the main benefits it introduces.
More Decentralization
The CCS further decentralizes the Particl ecosystem by giving more power than ever to its community. Anyone can now propose ideas, projects, or initiatives and get them independently funded.
Do you have an idea, feature, or initiative that you want to see come alive? Then now you can take the lead and make it happen! You have full freedom over what you can do, even including hiring an independent developer or development firm to complete the task at hand and get the bill funded by the community!
More Transparency and Accountability
As the CCS framework uses Github as its back-end and to host discussions, all comments, feedback, and counter-proposals are permanently logged for all to see. The same goes for any modification or edit to proposals, there is no possibility to stealth edit proposals to fool or mislead anyone. The CCS framework is as transparent as it can be and forces proposers into full accountability to the Particl community.
A Central Place to Find Proposals
You don’t need to be looking at multiple places at once now, the CCS framework is now the default place for all proposals to be logged and presented to the community. This will make it easier for anyone to see what are the currently active initiatives, proposals, and community votes (coming at a later point in time).
User-Friendly Interface
Forget about the clunky process of dealing with proposals on a forum, a Discord channel, or straight on Github. Yes, the CCS framework uses Github as its backend, but it’s supported by a user-friendly and easy-to-use user interface that anyone can understand.
Funds Escrowed by the Particl Team
Don’t worry about scammers or impersonators. All funds sent by the community to support any initiative are escrowed by the Particl team and only released upon completion of the task.
Perhaps a proposal is rather complex or requires funds to be disbursed upfront? Then you can set up milestones so that the Particl team only disburses funds upon their completion. An upfront payment, in that case, would have to be the first milestone of a proposal. That should provide the community with confidence when sending funds to “strangers with an idea”.
(Future Feature) On-Chain Voting for Protocol Changes
Since Particl’s inception in July of 2017, the community has come up with a slew of proposals and ideas that would affect the Particl protocol. These can include staking interest rates, the default number of RingCT mixins, and so on.
Take note that, since protocol changes are pretty major modifications to the ecosystem, these will require a strong consensus within the community as well as a general approval from relevant Particl team members. This is to ensure the security of the network, the feasibility of proposed protocol changes, and to keep in mind all potential drawbacks resulting from a specific change.
What’s Next
Next on the CCS roadmap is, as probably evident by now, the new on-chain voting system which will allow the community to provably reach consensus whenever it needs to be reached.
The new voting system will have many benefits over the current off-chain and in-app voting system of Particl Desktop (Community Proposals section in market-enabled wallets), all of which will be explained in detail in a future blog post.
As it stands right now, the new on-chain voting system still requires a few tweaks before it can be integrated into the CCS framework, but that should be dealt with rather quickly.
Let’s Take Particl to the Next Level Together
Now’s the time to get active and creative. The new CCS framework finally makes available the tools necessary for the community to take the lead on various initiatives and improve the ecosystem in an infinite number of ways.
The Particl team is committed to escrow the donated funds, support efforts by the community, and encourage the growth of the network in a more independent way for the foreseeable future. The team is very excited to see what the community will come up with and happy to be able to increase the decentralization of the network to higher levels.
Let’s grow the Particl ecosystem all together and dramatically expand its potential.
