an economic model based on fork mechanism

[supercooker]

I am not sure if it works, just a little hopeful.
Here I use 'sprite'(synonyms are elf, fairy) to refer to the works,which can be artwork, product technology, process and so on.  I use 'designer' to refer to their various author roles.
A designer for a sprite, is a writer for a novel, a director for a movie, a manager for the management framework, a seller for sell policy, Jobs for iPhone, IceFrog for Dota.

This model tries to use fork mechanism to take place of employment. Owners of the sprite no longer interview and hire a designer, but allow everyone to create a branch and work standalone on it, then they watch and transfer their investment to good branches.
The following is a simple draft:
step 1: The designer finishes his design and leaves, this sprite is sold to public in the form of stocks. The income of the designer is (stock_price_on_leave - stock_price_take_over) * his_shares_of_stock.

step 2: These stockholders become new owners of the sprite, and they declare that everyone is allowed to create a branch and work standalone on it.
A new foked sprite contains the DNA(design paper, source code, etc) of parent sprite and its stock copy. These stocks still belong to parent holders. The designer need to buy these stocks to get the ownership of the new branch.

This is a grant behavior. The grant price maybe affected by the property of the child branch. For a special niche branch, the price will be low, while its development direction is restricted, just like the scope of business of a shop. For a branch that allowed free development it will be higher. Another approach is to allow the designer to pay gradually by the upper limit of its market share.
Stockholders of the parent sprite declare reserving a part of stock shares to benefit from the growth of the child branch(say 20%). They enter this reserved space on granting and has priority to buy back the remaining parts(80%) when future the designer throwing.

The grant price is determined by consensus. After the designer buys in more than 50% shares,  he is allowed to repurchase the remaining at an average price of the former. The earlier entered gain larger reserved space as bonus while the later are squeezed.
To make this pricing method work, an upper limit of shares is needed for each stockholder so that nobody has leading voice, and some measures are needed to prevent unions.

The designer's bargaining chip is, leaving and taking features to its competitor branches, and holders facing the stock falling problem as the sprite's copyright protection period gets near.

step 3:Multiple branches appearing in fork period may confuse users, parent holders may constraint their behaviors(naming, pricing, interface, etc) to reduce the chaos, and may do more to reduce the brand value volatility.
On the other side, parent holders may copy(or share) more resources for child sprites. For example, guiding users to permit the inheritance of the user data, like questions and answers on Quora, friends and chat history in Instagram.

step 4: Child sprites get independent and some branches stand out. One among them is chosen as default for common users to switch to next generation, by voting or bidding. Now most parent holders have entered a child branch. Then go back to step1.

From the aspect of block chain, the designer releasing a version, is a little like the miner digging out one block. Holders are responsible for evaluating the block, or say,  determining the coin bonus for the miner. Then they dominate the fork behavior of this block.

Holders can choose not fork or fork in a lazy way. In the beginning of step 2 above, they can choose to form a traditional company and hire a designer, when their branch has big advantages in competition. This model is not able to prevent monopoly, but to increase the pressure on monopolist. Once a branch starts to chase it by frequently forking, the monopolist will find itself fighting against the world.

Designing is a process of output, designers tend to leave when they complete the design, and they know when they completed. If they wouldn't, they in fact become holders, and will face the same problem.

[1714808575]

1714808575

[Hydrogen]

Interesting concept.

Could there be a built in mechanism to promote equality? In society, there are those who work longer hours, take bigger risks, who are more skilled & talented who reap bigger rewards under meritocracy. Would an algorithmic based economy benefit by applying small fees on the most hard working and productive members of society, to fund the activities of the opposite end of the spectrum?

The format appears to promote individual contributions, rather than team based application. I for one have always liked the pay scaling mentioned in the book Moby Dick. Where Captain Ahab and each sailor was entitled to a hard percentage of the ship's total profit. With the size of each share being determined by the overall risk and contribution to the ship's mission.

There is vagueness surrounding the contributions a member would make under your proposed model. What could the contributions be in terms of them having intrinsic value. The format could be considered similar to the pay scaling used by platforms like youtube to determine how much advertising funds publisher's of content should be entitled to.

Its an interesting idea and I like when people are thinking about things. 

[Ucy]

I guess you are looking for sustainability of open-source projects with the economic and approach.   I think the right incentives actually matters in this. The substantial part of the incentives/rewards need to go to people who are solving problems and making useful contributions otherwise you probably won't make useful things, have products to sell and attract investors.

By the way, who owns the new improvements in the fork? I guess if it's heavily improved it could be considered a new product different from the original and the original owners may not be able claim copy right on the new. Or some part of the income could always go to those original owners.


It's an interesting idea, especially now open-source models need to be made economic viable and sustainable. What seems to drive the traditional model more is competition and zeal to make more money. You could create a better open-source model that drives people to keep creating better products.

[lovesmayfamilis]

OP, are you the owner of a Reddit account? Why does it seem like your message has been copied? I'm not entirely sure what time frame my computer is showing.
   Someone, please check if my guess is correct? What was written earlier? Is this a forum post or a Reddit post? https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/qq2ksi/an_economic_model_based_on_fork_mechanism/