After a survey, workshops, iteration and final inspiration from our incredible community, we present here an answer to the original question.
What is Pocket’s DNA?
Pocket’s DNA is encoded in Unstoppable Open Data.
Unstoppable is a force.
It springs eternal and you know it when you see it. It’s undeniable.
It’s grit and determination that just won’t stop.
It’s resilience through adversity.
It’s a sovereign crypto network, decentralized on every dimension, built to stand forever.
Open means unlimited possibility.
It’s the uncapped potential of being optimistic and permissionless.
It’s participatory and welcoming, thriving through different perspectives and creating a true meritocracy.
It’s authentic and human, and it’s the impact and profound change that are possible when transparency and candor power collaboration.
It’s open source code you can verify and trust.
It’s an open organization and an open internet. It is web3.
Data is our passion.
High performance with no drawbacks is our destiny.
Open data with 99.999999% uptime, accessible to everyone.
The fastest round trips and no waiting for responses.
Cost-effective data and an obsession with quality mean you know it just works.
Pocket understands this trilemma of Reliability, Performance and Cost because we’re the ones that defined it. We inspired a community to join us in this mission and a whole category of new infrastructure providers to pursue this mission too.
This passion and our vision are what bind Pocket together. Inspiring us to be more than the sum of our parts. Together, we are inspired to build a future where the world’s most important digital infrastructure is owned and governed by its users.
Because that’s not just the future, it’s what we’ve always been. It’s in our DNA.
Pocket’s purpose is to power unstoppable open data and open infrastructure governed by its users
Pocket’s DNA, Purpose, Mission, Vision and Values statements:
DNA Statement:
Pocket’s purpose is to power unstoppable open data and open infrastructure that is governed by its users
Our purpose:
Provide the world with unstoppable open data
Mission:
Empower developers with access to the most reliable, performant and cost-effective data
Our vision:
A future where the world’s most important digital infrastructure is owned and governed by its users*
We strive to be:
A values-driven, collaborative, open-source community that is transparent, inclusive and adaptable.
We bring our values of community, inclusion, transparency, collaboration and adaptability into our behaviors when we are:
Highly Aligned Loosely Coupled, Assume positive intent, Default to open, Ideas over Egos, Faster Learning beats Better Planning
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Having this alignment around DNA begins to unlock higher leverage opportunities for all of us to contribute to Pocket.
For example, Unstoppable Open Data aren’t meaningless buzzwords. Each word describes a high leverage area for the different contributors to Pocket:
Unstoppable is about ensuring the long-term resilience and vitality of the project, which is primarily the role of PNF as the credibly neutral steward
Open is about Pocket functioning as a permissionless, open source community and using our culture to attract new participants and help them to thrive. This is an extremely high-leverage area for the community to take the lead and have ownership.
Data is about the way in which we empower developers to get reliable, performant and cost-effective data from the Pocket Network protocol. This is the highest leverage area for PNI and other builder teams to play their role.
We will unpack all the DNA concepts and how they will drive further alignment on an open community call this week. We hope you come and join us on the call!
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A contest to bring Pocket’s DNA to life
DNA also creates the opportunity for refreshed narrative and storytelling around the Pocket brand. To illustrate, we have created a simple visual example of how Pocket DNA might be communicated:
Pocket DNA - Final Example.pdf (3.3 MB)
However, this is just an illustrative example.
Starting this week, we will open a contest for the community to suggest ideas and designs for the future brand, personality and design aesthetic of Pocket. Pocket’s DNA is inside of all of us, so we want everyone to share what it means to them and how they think we can best communicate our DNA and the wider Pocket story.
More details on the contest, how to participate and the type of ideas we hope to encourage will follow in a forum post from @Dermot later this week.
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Living and measuring our DNA
Lastly, DNA is the building block of life. It’s about how we live and work each day. But how do we measure life and vitality in Pocket? To do this, PNF has defined a North Star metric that we think best reflects the many elements of our DNA.
The North Star metric of Pocket Network is Protocol Revenue.
Protocol revenue is the right guiding metric for Pocket because it best represents value creation and capture from across the entire ecosystem. It is a shared metric for which we are all responsible. It’s inherently focused on creating value for customers, and on closing the loop so that value flows back to ecosystem participants and to the POKT token. Revenue is the key building block for a sustainable network economy, which in turn is key to ensuring that Pocket is truly unstoppable. We will provide a wider and more detailed set of metrics that will help us understand performance across numerous dimensions, but we want to take this opportunity to state clearly that protocol revenue is what we will use as a network to track progress along our future path.
With this north star metric lighting the way, DNA now moves to perhaps its most important phase: aligning on specific goals, priorities and investments in pursuit of protocol revenue. In the next week, PNF will outline an Ecosystem Thesis which includes ambitious goals for the network and some keystone projects that we will sponsor to quickly accelerate along this path.
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We look forward to seeing you on the community call and discussing our DNA, sharing more about the design contest and seeing your ideas and designs, and presenting a thesis for the big, audacious goals for Pocket in the coming months. We hope you’re as excited about it as we are.