Imagining Citizen-Led Immigration-style onboarding for Blockchains

Originally posted at Commonwealth.im.

Summary: In Canada, 5 citizens can raise a meaningful pool of funds and consent to integrate and guide an immigrant and family for their first year- in a process described as citizen-led immigration. In this post, I show how we can use a similar structure to rapidly grow Edgeware in a selective, non-extractory process that is likely win-win.

When a user first learns of Edgeware, participating in the network requires EDG. Specifically a participant requires enough EDG to overcome the existential deposit to the creation of an account, and also enough EDG to participate meaningfully in voting, proposing, and paying the fees for these actions.

Most users begin via purchase by exchange, lockdrop or signal participation, and occasionally from grants or tips from the treasury.

To add to that list, I propose that we offer the infrastructure for pay-it-forward style donations to would-be Edgeware citizens.

Sponsor User Story

1. An Edgeware user voluntarily donates some EDG to a Sponsor Pool.
2. Other users contribute, and every time a threshold of say, 10–100 EDG is reached, the list of users that contributed that batch of 10–100 are linked as a Sponsor Group. Sponsors may receive NFTs or Remarks.
3. These Sponsors ideally join a community channel or receive some organizing capacity either specific to that group or to the full set of Sponsors.
4. Once in this group, they interact with, mentor and build relationships with new Edgeware users on the system and opportunities. After some time period, these new Edgeware citizens are encouraged to donate and sponsor another round themselves, the cycle repeats.

On the other side of the relationship..

1. A user expresses interest in participating in Edgeware.
2. The Sponsor Pool of EDG transfers an amount required to pay for attestation transaction fees.
3. That user attests other blockchain activity, Github contributions, or social media account attestations and generates their on-chain ID. Edgeware wants productive, contributing citizens.
4. Additional referral behaviors are offered to increase the EDG they can be awarded from the pool (Tweet a promotional statement that you’re now an Edgeware citizen.)
5. Users are onboarded to an organizational tool that connects them either with their specific Sponsors or a Sponsor-monitored channel.
6. After user benefits and is onboarded, now-citizen is encouraged to pay-it-forward in any capacity they can.

I think the idea is fascinating because:

• It leverages our robust on-chain ID.
• It builds relationships of trust, interdependent support and gratitude- community.
• Offers a non-extractive path to participation in Edgeware.
• Creates a foundation of on-chain relationships and states that can be leveraged by other projects — NFTs, Reputation protocols, Governance functions.
• Supports the onboarding of new citizens directly into working groups where they can contribute in different ways than sponsoring directly or funding future sponsors (they may not have the EDG to do so after obtaining ‘citizenship.’

Accessories to this program might include a leaderboard of the most productive Sponsors with lotteries attached. The imagination is the limit.

The key challenge is making this process Sybil resistant, as EDG is directly allocated to new applicants.

I believe that applying to this sponsorship program is the best call-to-action we can place on the new Edgeware site. Users could have the option to ‘purchase’ citizenship (via exchanges, otc, etc..,) or apply for sponsorship.