The Developer's Manifesto What Web3 Ecosystems Need to Learn From Open Source Movements-Eomji Park

Transcript

[Applause] so hello everyone I hope you can hear me well so today I'm going to talk about the developers Manifesto what web 3 can learn from open source so first thing uh as uh got introduce I'm OMG many people think it's Emoji but it's oh front of the mend uh I'm a head of research and operations at incor club which is the education Community mainly we focus on on boarding developers and helping early stage Founders across the whole ecosystem and I'm based in Munich yes scientist at Munich so if you're around please uh let me know so that we can grab a beer first so two sides of the same coin so oh uh the previous talk it was really

interesting that everyone was start to say that let's not Reinventing the old Wheels we have been experimenting in human history and it development so we already built the foundation of the internet without Financial incentives not saying that that was the best way but open source was working so now we intr introduced the system with incentives yes struggles to attract and retain developers within web 3 so despite having something Noel like tokens Financial incentives and doubts web still struggles to engage and retain developers so we're going to look into the lens uh more focusing on developer side not the protocol business side so that how like a what kind of challenges open source had and how they recover

that and what we can learn from that um so just in a nutshell like first uh first my question how many of you are Developer or have been developing something previously so some of you a little bit like hey perhaps I can feel same pain points now so we still have po tooling and fragmented ecosystems which have been like a nourishing a lot of innovation across the ecosystem instead of having like a one yesterday we also had several chats I see that like talking about fragmentation Innovation and standardization so now like we are coming to the the stage that if you want to have a broader adoption like what we can do with this fragmented ecosystem and how can we help developers so the barrier is still too high so do you

imagine like AWS or Google Cloud go to the hack tone and explaining Cloud architecture nobody going to do that they said they like a build on AWS but now when we go to hackaton in web two word explaining about blockchain any protocol we normally need to start what is the value proposition of the blockchain decentralized system this going to change in some years but yet entry is quite High because we need to explain people why we need to use this system yet once when they start to they need to understand a little bit different Tech uh deeper technolog to start to use it even and lacking documentation because we are actually developing things very very fast sometimes it got obsolete very very fast then when it comes to developer who are

scarse time to get on board it they start to feel that okay is it really worth my time they will be thinking and another thing is like so that that we were trying to incentivizing people who are engaging with us but too many incentives are sometimes Financial not functional so that it can um like flash back to us that like it doesn't work in a long term so why did open source succeed in creating developer ecosystem while web we are struggling and then we can think about different case study guess what open source project I'm talking about merging discorde is a nightmare so what happened get I guess everyone of you you are um benefiting from G A lot can you imagine the word before G maybe some of you actually

experienced it many of us like perhaps like at school University we already start to use this like Version Control System before foret developers were struggling with a slow centralized Version Control so whole Linux was like using the center Version Control System large team was having like very like a slow like um collaboration a lot of like emerging conflicts and they were losing like some changes and then like there was some irony that you are building a like open source system but relying on centralized version cont we need it a better way but people are a little bit struggling still keep using it but something big happened 2005 Ino lost access to Big keeper which was a um centralized like virsion control system

they were providing service no more and you had to think about oh how can we collaborate the uh founder or who built the Linux we're thinking okay maybe instead of like a going to other system let's build something and then in few weeks they built a g a fast distributed system designed for open source collaboration and they open it up I cannot maintain by myself let's build it together instead of relying on Central server every developer had a full copy of repository branching merging roll back so I don't need to explain too much detail in G but what happened is it completely changed the way to work with software development it was great but not perfect because it has steep learning curve very similar to uh web 3 Now commands like re merge now what we

know what it means but still it was very like a new to many developers and you had to convince them to use the system and understanding what's happening also mistakes like force push could cause serious issues so you need to educate developers I don't know it happened to you but like during my University time at least one project every semester one of your team member push and completely raas the whole repository it was the great part of the education but that happened to professional developers as well and of course huge Enterprise they see that this like opportunity cost of like training the developer so there are some like how to say that registering to this like move and then like when we think about there like handling this in

massive scale of course it's going to provide it going to need not a lot a lot of different tools so how it become first it was inevitable because it was solving huge rear developer problem So eventually people know that it was better of like developers without it can you imagine like just it doesn't work and then it was designed for open source collaboration for open source project so it just made sense and then people agreeing to that e this and more importantly strong ecosystem industry adoption so GitHub gitlab B bucket this kind of projects were building their own toolkit to help developers who doesn't understand G so well or like even some

new beats still we are struggling to making Version Control System understand understood by non Tac users but still it made a huge progress now a lot of students can learn about it very very easily and then we agreed on some best practices and learning so that even though it's open source instead of everyone is like following um their own r a certain point IND industry started to have kind of common Rule and promises that what kind of coming message or like a push we going to do some practices like what is the good thing to do bad thing to do and going through those like Cycles we agreed on like how to work with a git and that become pretty much a rule without any enforcement so what we can learn is like

developers can adopt something if there makes life easier like no wonder why everyone does that not only developers standardization drives adoption it was good in the beginning anybody trying a little bit different things but when you're working on mass adoption coordination standardization it may make us a little bit slow or a little bit centralized at certain point point but if we can balance that well this is the only way we can actually push the adoption so that this calization just wasn't enough if it was creating a lot of pain point to people and of course Community LED like Innovation worked out and that's something we can keep remind ourself sometimes we feel like it's failing but it's not it worked out

previously and we can make it next one it works on my machine guess what it is it's the docker so back then developer saying like oh can you test that oh it's not working anymore like it works on my machine that do a huge pain point for developers struggle with inconsistent environment could behave differently in development testing production like you had to spend a lot of time for like a nonsense like nonsense problem to serve which was not critical for your product deploying application require complex configuration you were spending on configur configuration rather than actually developing and then you even were not sure if you're going to be

working on your client or like user end so give me one package that runs everywhere like everyone was like a thinking what could be a solution in 2013 Soloman built a doer to standardize application environment container was allowing application to run identically across the development testing and production many of you must have experience using that and also like uh virtual machine it was much more lightweight so everyone can use easily but like they also had a similar struggles you can see the certain patterns all the adoption like Enterprise were slow to replace the traditional deployment method again they see the huge opportunity cost you have a large group you need to change their mindset you need to change the workflow and also you're going to have some like

failing against people who got really used to all system standardization and compatibility issue so competing like container Technologies cost of fragmentation this is something we do a lot at the moment as well in like mple l1s and different l2s you will see that even though they called compatible some core things are fundamentally different that developers cannot bring their skill one to another so they had a similar issue as well and then that brings of course like a um coordination issues that eventually someone had to like migrate to more like a adopted workflow and of course security isolation concerns and most importantly like they also had a problem with the business model and monetization like they were

struggling to balanced open source adoption with a financial sustainability there's a lot of open source project even though they're used by million people that if someone pay just $1 do a year they should earn million but because it's not they actually struggle financially a lot there's a several project you may perhaps name that why they are struggling to provide their services what Ur tried first like again they solved the problem people had to use so we need to really think about what value we are providing deployments become much much simple but also they were improving their developer experience a lot to make a superior option to use this one so they're like they provide easy to use clay or like great documentation which is really

important and then that was building huge ecosystem that people can learn and use a seamless um those like industry adoption was like very similar to get right like you start to have a different ecosystem player who are building or like you can integrate with a multiple different things it integrated with a kubernetes that like it become very like simul pipeline to use um and then like a important thing is another like open standard so they were like working on this initiative so that it become interoperable uh interoperable everywhere so what we can learn very similar that developer up what makes their life easier standardization works but also ecosystem integration is

accelerating their growth and monetization is important even though people come here for value and philosophy if you don't make make this business sustainable we cannot continue building this project so we need a little bit thinking about how to monetize them one last example so managing thousands of container is chaotic you already had a little bit hint in previous slide it the kubernetes so Docker made deployment much easier now you don't need to worry about different environment it's just going to work but managing hundreds or thousands of container or chaotic so team had to manually deploy scale multiple across the things and it just doesn't work so no standardized way to orchestrate

container in large scale is pain so how about that's automating it interestingly Google like huge congrats right so Google had already serve this problem internally with the Bor um that was already managing millions of container in 2014 they decide to open source this one the successor of the b as a Kutis giving the word standardized way to manage cont container why why they were doing it like let's think about it like a Google had a older way and older reason to make it as a paid solution that people can use Google had of course another plan why not make this as a whole industry standard so Google open source it to drive industrywide adoption and make it

as a standard so also that way they knew that like it can be only like ensure its longevity so it going to survive long term while they have other product Focus so for them it just like makes sense to do that perhaps you can see that with old the AI like maybe some company going more like a open source some company not it's not there completely giving up their mods they had a different reason and different way to keep the longevity here bring the Innovation while they can benefit from it in different way Al this is a very nice way to give back it was still like not that easy that uh kubernetes is still complex architecture with a many components you need to understand and again Enterprise were like resisting a lot in the beginning and the UN need to handle like mer Cloud

was still very complex but again one thing I wanted to bring up as a point is like the the good governance of the cloud uh Cloud native Computing uh Foundation was bringing the um Contra between corporate sponsors open source contributors and guess what who did it like Linux guys did that so what Kuban did did well they were not Reinventing the whe they were building on top of proven technolog Bard sometimes we think about um how about building consensus from the scratch we have already a lot of L1 L2 Solutions maybe sometimes we don't need to build things from scratch and also we don't need to build exactly same project one more time why not like working on that

uh and then contributing and building better one together and also like a we need to make other players involved in using together making a community is not about just having ethers and we like uh blindly like aing on coin it's rather like we agree and working on together in towards the same value so that make sense to have some adoption by utilizing different web three Tex te and most importantly strong governance model we already have a dow structure and everything but we need to make sure that this is helping us to make a long-term sustainable goal and securing the strategy in effic efficient enough up yet

decentralized so this is the three thing like a standardization driven adoption which all three of them in the end they all go towards the standardization and the neutral governance ensure longevity and you can see that it was the Google project but how governance worked in the end it was like open source Community Linux jumped in and ecosystem wide collaboration wins because now everyone see the reason to use what do we have that web 2 does not have we have talken token sometimes we often like very hesitating to talk about this especially when we are very developer science driven but token itself is actually product we need to really understand this and we need to utilize it first of course it has a utility pay for Network Services unless

it's mem coin uh it's an equity all the participants are having this like token to join your governance and also it's a treasury like this is really important aspect sometimes we don't talk about that's the budget how Foundation operate and like support you so like there is a reason I understand a lot of project try to defense the price and many people community are Focus ing on that because it's also treasury to fund operations so early adoption of the protocol often rely on token holders for activity and driving the token value because you want to capture all this value but if you don't support developers you are losing your initial utility and function as Equity treasury or go like

sideway we now have a radi token which is helping incentivizing via ownership so like a open source Community was struggling how to pay them out so when you look look into the history like of each project often they rely on like a corporates like paying for them or people are paying to like patn system you know so open source contributors were like a working often just based on passion and they were not getting paid in blockchain we have a different way to recognize and track their contributions and pay through token and contribution is like um also not only like we're going to go a bit later but also not only they're just contributing they have a say how it going to work work so you can actually incentivize people who are

building system participating to the governance and decide how the project should go instead of like they're going to be different people who are building and different people who has the same and then you can see that like a uh many open source projects still struggles that they were depend on a few key maintainer and corporate Bankers but in blockchain it's much easier to Fork not necessarily we are encouraging forking like every second time and we have a different opinion but also some projects um were abandoned when corporate sponsor pulled out but we have like a token so like we have a less dependent on one backer paying you but we have a token we had which has intrinsic value to support the uh Treasury and that one Community Driven

governance model is helping us to have decision making power is distributed but also helping Builders to have a say and then you can see even based on contribution perhaps you can argue that who should have strong um V voice an Innovative funding Mech mechanism we can um a little bit play around so like a many open source projects struggle to secure funding um but like a you can see that like a let's say like critical project op SSL like have maintainers working for free despite its used by millions and you can only imagine that um they can do that if they super super love and they actually ear money from elsewhere but otherwise we cannot expect that happen but now we

have interesting funding mechanism everyone is experimenting around which token and blockchain allowed which is quadratic funding and also Dow we can utilize that in different way just like it there's a little bit Pro I I'm see I'm very mindful of time so I will be a little bit faster but like this one you know we have a token we can do what we are doing bad first we are over relying on toomics for engagement so that speculative participation happen but no long-term developer commitment and we are surprised come on I gave a million Grant but why nobody is building because we didn't build a good economies around so that they're not incentivized to stay longterm and we over complicating

governance structures so they're like hey just you sometimes don't want to vote for every single thing and this even actually becomes centralized decision making at certain point and people start to be very tired of it and again still very poor developer experience in toing I know in the audience some of you are working on developer experience this is really important thing because if developer struggles with a poor documentation how much expensive token you have how much token you give they will eventually leave because it just doesn't make sense for them in their opportunity cost in long term we need to make it easier not harder blockchain is really complicated like technique or products our users are developers and those developers are

technical enough to understand your product but still they don't want to like sabotage their life they can happen only in very very early stage when they're very curious about the tech so your early stage you know like advocat you realize that your documentation sucks but they stay but remember when you go to mass adoption very different characters coming in so other developers who are still curious but they are very conscious about time they're not necessarily most aligned with your design principle for them if you don't make their life easier they will live so last thing I wanted to say is that we need to focus focus on enabling than incentivizing it may sound sometimes same it's not necessarily so when you see that developers coming to your

ecosystem you need to help them to succeed you need to help them to make Revenue either they make a business if they're developer if they don't want to make business they should earn successfully and recognize their contribution so we need to enable them but if you just think that if I pour the money they will stay Easy Money easy go so that's the thing I wanted to say and everyone uh I hope that like we can build this ecosystem together and if you have any questions perhaps I will take it later I will be staying till tomorrow morning is so feel free to reach out I'm omj Park you can find me easily on Telegram and Twitter thank you thank you [Music]