Power of Proposals: Understanding SORA's Decentralized Development Process

A few weeks ago, there was an article written about SORA, the Algorithmic Decentralized Central bank that is revolutionizing the economy as we know it.

What we think we know about economics is that men in suits meet up behind closed doors to decide the fate of the world, similar to the Council of Twelve deciding the fate of the West Indian colonies.

You could be right, but SORA seeks to do away with that outdated practice. Instead, what SORA proposes is a decentralized process in which funds are allocated for productive uses in society, based on proposals chosen by a Parliament of Citizens.

Decentralization and Democracy

A Parliament also sounds like part of the status quo, however, unlike normal Parliaments where the members are professional politicians, the SORA Parliament takes from Athenian democracy, more specifically, the concepts of:

• Isonomia (all citizens are politically equal).
• Isegoria (all citizens have a right to speak and contribute).
• and Sortition (groups of citizens are randomly chosen to make decisions, kind of like jury duty).

Through these key concepts, groups of citizens are chosen to join committees that decide on proposals and govern SORA. I won’t go into detail here, but you can read all about it in this article.

The key concept here is the proposal. For example, if you have a proposal that can benefit the community through the productive allocation of funds, then SORA could potentially become an investor in this endeavor, through the generation of capital for productive use, which in turn would become productive through the goods produced and services rendered.

This is of course a summary of a summary in layman’s terms.

The Power of Proposals

But the benefits of proposals within SORA don’t end there. A big issue when attempting “true” decentralization is development.

When a project is launched, it might indeed respect decentralized governance, but the development program follows a centralized roadmap.

On the other hand, SORA has implemented the Decentralized Development Process.

What this means is that anyone can suggest a functionality or implementation to the network, and based on the community’s feelings on the matter, the initial implementation or RFP would then become a proposal that can be merged into SORA’s Github repo and then integrated to SORA or the network’s liquidity aggregator DEX protocol Polkaswap.

As far as this humble author has the knowledge, there is no other project that has such a system in place, and, it’s not incredibly convoluted and difficult with the purpose of limiting community input.

They have gone as far as to write a beginner level guide to generate proposals, and to the people who are interested in knowing the progress and content of the proposals, but not interested in viewing the repo itself (weird right?) they have also published a summary that is constantly updated with new proposals or status changes from the existing ones.

The stable coin XSTUSD, which was recently launched is the product of such a proposal, and there are a few very interesting proposals in the pipeline.

Two Cents of a Franc

“It’s your world, pay attention”

Hunter S. Thompson.

Let’s be real for a moment, a key factor for the adoption and popularity of cryptocurrencies is the price. No need to sugarcoat it. SORA is not a project to flip immediately or to pump and dump, Rome was not built in a day and the big commercial empires that everyone looks up to were not big flippers for their investors when they were up-and-coming. If you believe in the force of the economy toward improving social wellbeing, true decentralization backed by sound economic theory, and a long-term plan, SORA is a key player within the cryptosphere currently.

If, on the other hand, you’re looking for a quick flip, don’t really care much about decentralization, and are a modern-day degenerate capitalist in the pursuit of sweet gainz, look away sir. This is much too complicated, save yourself the effort and duress that looking to the long term brings and godspeed in your endeavor.

This is not financial advice -- although it is a summary of much information available, and a valuable example of decentralization applied -- you are encouraged to do your research, find out how money works, follow your local policymakers and make sure that you keep yourself informed and aware. Finance and the economy have a big influence and impact on your life, the only way to understand its effects is to stay informed and keep your eyes open.