Edgeware launches decentrally-designed and publicly-funded website refresh.

The Edgeware community successfully coordinated a comprehensive rewrite of their public webpage with no hierarchy of stakeholders, including the hiring and funding of development and design talent from within Edgeware.

Designer Johan Steneros and Developer Jan Kraus were the primary staffers on the project, having been selected through previous contributions and presence. The process saw the Edgeware community regularly meeting to develop a scope of work, collectively bargain with Steneros and Kraus for their time and expertise, review the work, and ultimately Commonwealth Labs, the steward of the domain name of Edgewa.re, flipped the switch pointing the domain at the open-source repository of the site on Github.

The planning meetings themselves explored concepting, copywriting, design and UI feedback, all without any one person or group holding approvals, but soft consensus being used instead. These basically large scale co-working sessions required more time to do well; decentralized work can be slower-paced as information disseminates through a community, as well as feedback rounds are larger to enable all who would like to participate in discussions the time to do so.

While the development team and Edgeware community are celebrating their launch, the team has not slowed down on improvements, having recently opened research in a version two that is intended to take a more interactive approach to the design. This V2 will function as a platform for Edgeware dapps to interoperate with, making the user experience for Edgeware citizens ever easier in the complex world of blockchain interactions.

Designer Johan Steneros shared his experience of leading the project in the community-oriented fashion:

Joining the Edgeware agency to help design and execute the Edgeware website has been a great experience overall. Working in an open-source community environment is always a challenge and an adventure. There is no such thing as an end client or boss that takes the final decisions. As a designer in this environment, you are also a decision-maker along with the other community members which is an exciting experience. The process can be a bit slow at times, but I think the results are more accurate in representing the values of all stakeholders. What attracts me most about this decentralized form of working is that responsibility and the disposition of each member are crucial to the team outcome. So if you can get a good team together, there is really no limit to what can be achieved.

This early triumph of using blockchains to both fund and coordinate work is at the heart and soul of Edgeware, whose new site proudly lists it as “The Best Place to Work in Crypto,” and the focus on collective action, ownership, and progress are represented in their latest success.