WHY: Crypto just like anything else is only worth the amount of utility it creates. Having decentralized
open source hardware projects as well as decentralized factories and having an incentive layer for
everyone to work together to efficiently produce as much value as possible as well as maintain the
designs, is a great way to add utility and value to crypto. It would also allow people to buy and sell things
created in a distributed decentralized manner as well. Which would also create value as well as
efficiency. Over all this would be a great use case for crypto, DAOs, and perhaps the 1Hive community.
HOW: Opensource is not a new idea, however opensource hardware is new, and it stands to truly
revolutionize the world. However, there is a problem, it is not sustainable.
The reason for this is simple there is no incentive structure, everybody does what they want so there is
no direction, if you need something done you must wait, and often those people end up leaving due to
frustration. Also, people working on the project must work for free and this is also not sustainable. I like
everyone else love Open Source, when it comes to getting free stuff, however when it comes to giving
for free or working for free, then suddenly, I don’t love it as much.
This whole situation has become unsustainable and many opensource projects especially hardware
ones, have either failed or have stagnated.
Then came crypto, it seems to be the perfect solution to the perfect problem. Crypto potentially can
create an incentive structure as well as a community for coordination.
When someone needs to be done they can create bounties. When one community member becomes
very good at creating something they can sell it to another. Say for example if someone built four 3d
printers they can sell three, while someone else perhaps needs a 3d printer can buy one and build 10
drones, they don’t need all 10 and can sell 9 out of 10. Potentially in the future people can even buy
back what they sell, so if you don’t need something now, sell it and buy it back later when you need it.
This can make the open source community much more efficient, which is something that is desperately
needed.
There will be a need for a few structures for all this to occur smoothly. First, we will need a opensource
distributed marketplace for people to buy and sell things, I suggest we use Particl.io ‘s solution, since it is
very well done and has been working already for quite some time. Second, we will need a community,
this community will need to have tokens to incentivize as well as fund labor. This includes designs, this
includes hardware and raw materials that are needed for projects, and even scientific research for
specific applications. All of this should be incentivized using bounties as well as buying and selling
though these decentralized markets. This way people can create and consume value without the need
external money, people can do research and design and then buy an open source product for that time
spent. People can also sell products they make in their free time and use that value to demand certain
specific product development.
Overall, I hope to see the opensource community and project to grow and hope crypto can help
Thanks guys!