Creating impactful outcomes

Example areas that a disbursement process may focus on to create impact

Ecosystems can each have their own set of principles, values, priorities and other areas of impact that they could be trying to address or support when disbursing treasury assets to different areas and initiatives.

There are a variety of different ways an ecosystem could create impact for its community members and other members of society. Some of these potential areas can include:

• Supporting ecosystem principles & values - A set of principles or values that the community members have or that are more formally adopted by an ecosystem.

• Addressing ecosystem priorities - Prioritisation of the most important problems and opportunities that will help an ecosystem achieve its longer term goals.

• Creating positive impact - Outcomes that generate a positive impact for other areas that society values such as the environmental concerns, human welfare or other public goods.

Initiatives that receive treasury funding to generate any of these outcomes could end up doing so in a multitude of ways - sometimes intentionally and sometimes not! One initiative may not be successful in addressing certain ecosystem priorities it was trying to address but might have been very successful in supporting and fostering strong principles and values held by community members and the outcomes generated ended up attracting more people into the ecosystem who shared those values. Others may succeed in addressing numerous ecosystem priorities however could still have more substantial success in other areas such as making impact for an environmental based public good outside of the ecosystem.

Thinking about what will create any meaningful impact from the use of disbursed treasury assets will be useful for exploring and analysing how future contribution efforts towards different initiatives can be measured against the impact they generate. Effectively identifying when funding is being directed towards impactful initiatives will help make it easier to continue directing funding to initiatives that are consistently generating meaningful outcomes.

Supporting ecosystem principles & values

Individual community members may join some ecosystems based on the principles and values being exhibited from the ecosystem. An ecosystem may be doing this formally through a written set of principles and values, mission statement or constitution. Alternatively these principles or values may come from the community in a more bottom up approach where they are being demonstrated through the social and working dynamics of the community.

Example principles

• Decentralisation - Distribution of control and decision-making among a broad group of stakeholders rather than a centralised authority.

• Transparency - Prioritising open and transparent processes, from codebase accessibility to governance decisions.

• Security - Ensuring the highest levels of security to protect data integrity, users information and their assets.

• Privacy - Respecting user privacy and providing mechanisms for anonymous or pseudonymous interactions.

• Open access - Allowing anyone, regardless of their geographic location or socioeconomic status, to have equal access to the network and protocols.

• Open source - A commitment to making codebases publicly available for scrutiny and improvement.

• Modularity - Designing the ecosystem to be adaptable and extendable, so new features or upgrades can be integrated easily.

• Resilience - Building redundancy and robustness into the system to ensure it remains functional under any stress or attack.

• Innovation - Committing to a pursuit of ongoing research and development to support technological, social and scientific advancements amongst many others.

• User-centric design - Prioritising the needs and experiences of end-users in all phases of development.

• Sustainability - Making decisions with long-term viability in mind, including environmental sustainability.

• Verifiability - Ensuring that transactions and data are publicly auditable.

Example values

• Community empowerment - Creating a sense of ownership and involvement among community members.

• Ethical conduct - Upholding ethical standards in all activities, including partnerships, development, and community engagement.

• Inclusivity - Striving for a diverse and inclusive environment where everyone feels welcome and heard.

• Collaboration - Encouraging teamwork and partnership both within the community and with external stakeholders.

• Integrity - Maintaining consistency of actions, values, and outcomes, standing by commitments even when it's challenging.

• Trust - Building and maintaining the trust of users, developers, and other stakeholders through consistent and transparent actions.

• Sovereignty: Empowering individuals to have control over their own data, assets, and decisions.

• Responsibility - Being accountable for the ecosystem's impact, whether social, economic, or environmental.

• Fairness - Implementing algorithms, governance models, and features that help to generate and maintain equitable outcomes.

• Excellence - Striving for the highest quality possible for code, user experiences and community interactions.

• Flexibility - Willingness to adapt to new technologies, regulations, and community needs.

• Experimentation - An open mindset towards trialling new governance models, economic theories, or technical solutions.

• Resource efficiency - Effective and responsible use of community assets and treasury funds.

Addressing ecosystem priorities

Ecosystems can choose between a range of different priorities when deciding what potential initiatives could create the most impact for the ecosystem. Good prioritisation will result in addressing the most important problems and opportunities that exist in an ecosystem.

Example priorities

• Community governance - Support initiatives that help to remove middlemen and increase the transition of decision-making power from a centralised entity to a decentralised community.

• Interoperability - Support interoperability efforts that integrate and use various blockchain ecosystems and platforms to enrich the ecosystems overall utility.

• Financial inclusion - Support for initiatives that help decentralised financial services reach more underserved and unbanked communities around the world.

• Regulatory compliance - Efforts that help an ecosystem with regulatory compliance and any associated challenges or relevant policy advocacy.

• Infrastructure scalability: Ensuring that the network is capable of handling increasing load by allocating resources to scalability solutions.

• Technical leadership - Identifying initiatives that help with technical innovation so that the ecosystem can stay ahead with further technological advancements.

• Applications & services - Support the introduction and improvement of applications and services that help to cater for important use cases that are valued by community members.

• Immutable auditability - Support of any system improvements that help with improving auditability so that community trust can be further increased over time.

• Global adoption - Efforts that help to extend an ecosystem's presence in multiple countries and languages to attract a more diverse user base.

• User onboarding - Investing in intuitive user interfaces, tutorials, educational content and resources to foster and encourage more user adoption.

• Security - Conducting audits and updates to secure the network against vulnerabilities and attacks.

• Community engagement - Initiatives that help to actively involve the community in decision-making processes, development, and promotional activities.

• Incentive design - Design incentive mechanisms that engage community members and that function well to create impactful long term outcomes.

• Developer experience - Support the creation and maintenance of APIs and software development kits that developers can use to more easily create their own solutions.

Creating positive impact

Outcomes generated from funded initiatives could also help with creating impact across a number of other areas in society. Generating outcomes that are more widely beneficial to society can make a tremendous difference.

Example areas of impact

• Open source software - Public and freely available software that can be used or modified by any person for their own use cases and development efforts.

• Decentralised infrastructure - Creating resources and infrastructure that advances the current state of the art for the development of distributed networks.

• Legal systems - Improving legal and court based systems and services that can then help to better maintain societal order and justice.

• Voting systems - Improve people's access to and participation in important problems and issues that benefit from more inclusive and diverse decision making systems.

• Charitable causes - Initiatives that help people in need regardless of their background.

• Environmental causes - Generating outcomes that help with the sustainability of the different areas that make up our planet such as clean air, marine life, natural parks and wildlife reserves, oceans and waterways amongst many other areas.

• Public infrastructure - Support any improvements made to public infrastructure such as bus services, subway systems, roads, bridges, public squares and parks, airports or any other public infrastructure.

• Education - Support the creation of educational resources that help with improving society's understanding and access to knowledge covering any variety of areas that are valued by society.

• Publicly funded research - Scientific research and development that help advance the state of the art in different fields that benefit society at large.

Sustainable development goals

The sustainable development goals (SDG’s) were created “as a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future”. These goals also provide similar examples of the types of areas that could help with creating positive impactful outcomes:

• No poverty - Eliminate poverty in all its forms everywhere.

• Zero hunger - End hunger and ensure access to food for all.

• Good health and well-being - Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for everyone at all ages.

• Quality education - Provide inclusive and equitable quality education for all.

• Gender equality - Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.

• Clean water and sanitation - Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

• Affordable and clean energy - Provide access to affordable, reliable, and clean energy for everyone.

• Decent work and economic growth - Promote sustainable economic growth and decent work for all.

• Industry, innovation and infrastructure - Build resilient infrastructure and foster innovation.

• Reduced inequality - Reduce inequality within and among countries.

• Sustainable cities and communities - Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, and sustainable.

• Responsible consumption and production - Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.

• Climate action - Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.

• Life below water - Conserve and sustainably manage aquatic ecosystems, including oceans, seas, and marine resources.

• Life on land - Protect and restore terrestrial ecosystems and halt biodiversity loss.

• Peace and justice strong institutions - Promote peace and justice, and build effective, accountable institutions.

• Partnerships for the goals - Strengthen global partnerships to support and achieve the SDGs.