Network Steward Charter
Anyone considering becoming Network Steward will need to publicly declare themselves to be a candidate. Upon declaring candidacy, a proposal should be publicly shared. The proposal should outline the basis and intentions of the Network Steward if elected. Please find suggestions for how to structure a proposal, as the criteria for evaluation is public.
Short term impact
Short term impact constitutes the project's capability to help the achievement of the PKT project's immediate objectives. For example, a project to search for breakthroughs in wireless technology may be well aligned with PKT's objectives in the long term but will not bear fruit for a significant amount of time. Specific questions useful for evaluating short term impact:
Will this project facilitate PKT’s roadmap? Will this project help PKT to distinguish itself from other blockchain projects? Does this project provide a piece of infrastructure which is considered necessary?
Long term impact
Long term impact constitutes a project's capability to pay dividends to the PKT ecosystem over the long term. Long term impact is important because it fosters a snowball effect of returns on the investment of Network Steward funds. Specific questions useful for evaluating long term impact:
Will this project help advance "infrastructure operator" roles? Will this project provide key infrastructure/institutions necessary to the emergence of a healthy ecosystem? Does this project bypass a tragedy-of-the-commons problem which blocks the natural emergence of a piece of key infrastructure?
Scope and use of resources
Use of resources is the question of how "expensive" a project is and its ability to fit within the budget. Short and long term impact will be evaluated with attention to the impact/cost ratio. Note that volunteer time/effort spent by the Network Steward, or their team in order to oversee the project will be taken into account, so all other things being equal, a few large projects are preferable to a large number of smaller ones. Some questions which may be useful for evaluating scope and use of resources include:
Do the metrics for success justify the amount of effort placed on the project? Does the cost for effort seem to be a good deal (attention shall be given to the skill sets of declared participants)? Are there competitive aspects with the project to promote efficient use of resources?
Risk control
Risk control is about the question of how likely a project is to fail at delivering the expected result. Projects which are inherently more risky will be evaluated more stringently on their proposed risk control. Specific questions useful to the evaluation of risk control include:
How evenly is the effort spaced over the milestones of the project? How evenly is the payment spaced over the milestones of the project? How well did the candidate specify success criteria for the project? To what extent are the risks defined and planned for in the project proposal? To what extent are the difficulties and potential blockers moved to the early parts of the project? What evidence is there that the Network Steward is capable of delivering?
Hazard control
The objective of the Network Steward is for the community to elect someone who will build or oversee projects that benefit the entire PKT ecosystem equally without unfairly benefitting any one participant over any other. Hazard control is about preventing any incentive or the perception of an incentive which would promote a corruption of the process from its objective. Public perceptions are almost as important as the real thing because the perception of hazard discourages new participants from joining the PKT ecosystem and encourages existing participants to submit projects which are at least as corrupt as they imagine the average project to be. Some questions which may be useful to the evaluation of hazard control include:
To what extent is the project safe from any real or perceived conflicts of interest? To what extent are the results of this project equally advantageous to all participants in the PKT ecosystem? To what extent does the proposal structure the project such that success will be more advantageous to the applicant than failure? The use of milestones, deliverables and evenly spaced payments conditioned on deliveries is encouraged. To what extent does the project control the risk of arbitrage profit opportunity for the applicant? An example of arbitrage profit opportunity appears when there is a lack of market agreement on the cost of the deliverables which the project will produce. Logo design is a good example of a deliverable for which there lacks market agreement on the cost. While PepeiCo saw fit to spend one million dollars on their logo, the Nike logo was bought for a mere $35. In the case of such an expenditure, the overall community may be unable to verify whether a project constitutes a million dollars worth of diligent effort or a $35 drawing sold at a markup. Did the applicant declare and control for any potential conflicts of interest?
Potentially unacceptable projects
Some projects may be judged by the community to be unacceptable under any conditions. An intuitive example would be a proposal to build an assassination market which is blatantly illegal and contrary to the objectives of the project. These judgements will be made by individual voters. Some questions which are useful in the evaluation of acceptability:
Does the project seem more likely to benefit the PKT ecosystem than to harm it? Does the project seem unlikely to cause significant damage to the perceived legitimacy of the PKT ecosystem?
Delayed milestones
While it is not in the interest of the community to rush projects, it is important to guard against the possibility of candidates applying for projects and then not doing the work - planning to abandon the project unless there is a precipitous increase in the price at which they can sell PKT.