Hello, CommitPool family!
November is here, and we are closer than ever to bringing you a fun (or maybe not, depending on how you feel about exercise), usable product. We hope that everyone is hanging in there (staying positive and testing negative, as they say) and, as always, we are very much hoping that everyone is managing to stay safe, sane, and productive!
Outreach Update
As we continue engaging with a wide variety of other blockchain projects, we’re constantly astounded by the technology in this space and excited to work with other teams on issues like scaling, the Oracle Problem, and auditing. We are also recently active on our Twitter account (@commitpool), if you’re into that kind of thing (one thing that would be really useful: help us guide development by letting us know what kind of activities you’re into lately!). We’ve also written up a nice introductory blog post (and Twitter thread) that offers a little bit of insight into CommitPool as a project. As an additional reminder, please join our Discord server if you’d like to chat, and don’t forget to invite your friends. Who knows, maybe if this whole social media thing goes well, we’ll start an Instagram account, and you’ll get to see our dogs (quasi-likely) and/or dance moves (unlikely).
Development Update
We have working code! We’re currently testing it internally (which is probably a good thing, since we hit the Infura API limit pretty quickly), which means that it’s in debug mode—we lowered the commitment time to two days just for testing, merged indoor and outdoor biking (you’re welcome, Peloton), deployed to ropsten, etc. As with any application, there were a few bugs that needed patching, but so far, we’re pleasantly surprised by how functional and robust the CommitPool dApp actually is! If things stay positive and we don’t manage to break everything over the next few weeks, we hope that our next update will include an invitation to test a private beta.
Funding Update
CommitPool is actively in talks with a number of organizations regarding funding. At the moment, we’re looking for seed funding in order to cover operational costs, as well as exploring a few incubators/accelerators. Our pitch deck is currently circulating around and we’re hoping to lock something down soon. We’re excited by the prospect of being able to put even more time, effort, and resources into helping this project live up to its full potential.
Thought of the Moment
What exactly is a commitment? As we were working on our introductory blog post, we found ourselves needing to affirmatively define a commitment. This challenged us to articulate, at the bare minimum: what is a commitment? For example, is a simple internal promise to do something enough, or does that promise actually need to have teeth? The root of this idea is the notion of credibility. There’s an argument that a nominal commitment (i.e. a commitment that has, actually, no chance of being fulfilled) meets the letter of the definition, but not the spirit. The question must be asked, then: what makes a commitment credible? One working definition we have is that a truly credible commitment comprises:
A declaration of intent by the committer;
A way to measure or otherwise assess the outcome; and
A way to impose a meaningful cost on the committer if the outcome(s) falls short of the desired intent.
What do you think? Please let us know, as we’re (understandably) very interested in perfecting our conceptualization of a commitment.
Thank you all—stay committed, my friends!
The CommitPool Team
commitpool.com
@commitpool