Live data from Hacker News

Colony: A platform for open organizations

colony.io

31–40 of 181 posts

Re: Colony: A platform for open organizations

#32
I had this idea a while back but it’s difficult to get the incentives right. In the real world how does the work get checked it’s been done?

I think about replacing local government with this for example. I can easily see my local bins not being collected and even more worryingly a list of outstanding issues (like an overwhelmed github project) that never seems to go down. I’m glad they are doing this though and I intend to help I think.

Re: Colony: A platform for open organizations

#33

I know smart contracts are based on being able to prove that you solved some given task. The task can for example be to find a value which hashes to match the one in the contract. However, that task is not so interesting within an organisation. Can someone give an ELI5 of how I can prove that I did a job which is more complex than the one above? For example, to implement a new feature in a software system, sell a pro…

For anything that's not mathematically provable on-chain, the contract will need input.

The way you'll prove something that needs social validation is by getting approval. So Colony is all about reputation, propositions, dispute resolution, etc.

Check out their tl;dr:

https://colony.readme.io/docs/off-whitepaper

Re: Colony: A platform for open organizations

#34

This concept seems interesting, and great at first glance, but the more I think about it the more I’m skeptical as to whether it would be a fair system. It looks like a true meritocracy, but a computer does not fundamentally understand merit, which I assume means that it is left to people to recognise the merit in others. I can imagine this would lead to the same politics as you get when peer feedback influences bonu…

> I also worry that it would be too easy to game for certain people.

I wouldn't call this gaming the system. It's well-known that in order to be successful it's often not enough just to do good work. You also need to tell others about your work as well as negotiate for yourself. Negotiating isn't cheating but an essential part of human communication that can be learned if you happen to be not particularly good at it.

> We already have the case that men are more likely to ask for raises, which is a contributing factor to pay inequality.

This made me wonder if framing the question of pay inequality along gender lines is making the right distinction. Maybe, it's not necessarily women earning less than men but rather introvert or shy people? There are men who daren't ask about a pay raise either. Those probably earn less than more outgoing men, too.

So, by framing this question solely in terms of gender we might be glossing over a part of the problem because that way one of the main causes for pay inequality remains hidden behind gender labels.

Re: Colony: A platform for open organizations

#36
post #35

So where is the actual signup for this? The homepage does not make it obvious...

Welcome to the world of blockchain startups! There is no signup nor product, but please subscribe to our newsletter and download our whitepaper! And don't forget to pay into our ICO!

Re: Colony: A platform for open organizations

#37
This looks useful, but I couldn’t find any source. It seems like a centralized, closed service but yet it advertises itself as a platform for openness. How is that? For instance, does colony.io use colony.io to develop colony.io? And, if not, why not?

Re: Colony: A platform for open organizations

#38
post #4

This is the first Ethereum based project I've seen that seems halfway interesting (and I'm one of those "cryptocurrency doubters"). It doesn't somehow recursively relate to Ethereum, doesn't over-rely on blockchain buzzwords, and can be explained in a sentence or two. While first reading the page, I didn't realize that it was even an Ethereum based project until the very end, which I liked. At any rate, I'm intereste…

It's interesting that I'm on exactly the other side - it seemed halfway interesting until I realized there's some kind of cryptocurrency involved (and only figured that out while reading this comment).

The org stuff looks interesting - the crypto stuff makes me more suspicious of it's present and future because of the possibility of a money grab.

Re: Colony: A platform for open organizations

#39
post #28
post #19

I worked with the Assembly team that basically did this, without the complications of smart contracts/etc involved. This is a hard problem for a number of reasons.

What are those reasons?

The contract between the things that are provable on-chain and the actual real world where people are not so straight-forward to interact with is the point where you realise that only a small percentage of this model is actually a tech problem and is mostly a people problem, at which point tech-led startups are ill suited to being the complete solution.
Post reply on HN