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maurelian
@maurelian.eth
Thoughts on the tradeoffs of complexity and community building: Nick Szabo has criticized Ethereum’s complexity using the concept of an “argument surface”. Similar to an attack surface, the argument surface expands with the number of that people can spend time quibbling over. This can bog down a community, and/or open it up to capture. "Governance minimization" requires reducing the argument surface. https://x.com/NickSzabo4/status/1068960876416258049
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maurelian
@maurelian.eth
There is a lot of merit to that idea, but I also think that it misses the powerful flipside, which I like to call the “participation surface”. The participation surface grows with the number of ways that people can get involved in building something. To grow your community you need to grow your participation surface, while also making sure that the surface is spread out enough. You need the right amount of surface in the consensus layer, the app layer, the culture layer, etc. Ethereum has done an excellent job of exposing many ways for people to bring their various skills to bear on building both the tech and the ecosystem.
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shazow
@shazow.eth
Another counterpoint to minimizing argument surface: You get argument constipation. When we reduce the argument surface too much and make a few things so dramatically contentious that they're borderline holy, we're unable to make any progress at all. I guess this is a "balance in all things" situation. (Also totally agreed on your participation surface point.)
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