Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash
Blockchain technology is driving innovation all over the place.
I see new projects popping up all the time offering new ways to do things in this digital world. Sometimes it’s brand new ideas, other times it’s just improving upon pre-existing technology or ideologies.
One ideology I’ve seen rekindled lately is the idea of collaboration.
What do I define as collaboration and why did it need to be rekindled?
Before we jump into that, though, I just want to make sure you are subscribed :) It helps us out a ton and allows you to get instant access of all our future newsletters directly in your inbox! Win-win!
The Death of Collaboration
To be clear, I don’t think collaboration has died. But it has taken a major hit in recent years.
Why?
Is it cliche to blame covid?
I don’t actually blame a virus, but I think the virus revealed something within our society.
Let me ask you a question. When was the last time you collaborated on a project and it went really really well?
You might actually have some positive experiences, but odds are you can think of at least one time collaboration was a disaster. Especially in academic environments.
I believe the cause to any collaborative disaster comes to a simple lack of communication.
Without effective communication, teams trying to collaborate will inevitably fail.
Individuals won’t understand their role and responsibility, they won’t effectively or efficiently ask questions, and if a disagreement pops up, all bets are off.
Through the rise of the internet and cloud based technologies, virtual collaboration is not just possible, but it gets easier every year.
Virtual collaboration, however, still doesn’t really solve the communication problem.
Sometimes it can help. I for one, can communicate way more efficiently and effectively over virtual channels than trying to think on my feet out loud. But it’s not for everyone.
So virtual collaboration doesn’t help the problem, but it isn’t the root issue either.
But if that’s not it, what is?
The Root To Collaboration Disaster
Let’s jump back to the communication issue. I’m going to throw my theory out and then we’ll talk about it briefly.
I don’t think our society knows how to disagree anymore.
Today, it’s not “normal” to be friends with someone you disagree with. Nobody “disagrees” they just “dismiss” and move on with life.
The problem with this is you are now part of a cult. The only people around you are the ones with the same beliefs and morals as you. That’s why we see such extremist behavior in the world, especially on social media.
It is extremely toxic.
What I loved most about the book, Bandersnatch, is that it highlights a group of men gathering together every week, who call themselves friends, who collaborate constantly, and who disagree on almost everything.
Without those disagreements the main character in the Lord of the Rings would be named Bingo.
Think about that for a second.
The whole point of all of this is for us to recognize there is a major problem with collaboration in our society. But I believe I’ve seen a rekindling of it on the blockchain.
Rekindled Collaboration
Because of blockchain technology, artists of all kinds can now collaborate on projects in brand new ways.
Thanks to built in royalties on NFTs, artists can collaborate, mint an NFT, and collect their share of the sale automatically because of the blockchain.
It’s beautiful!
Because of this, I’ve seen all sorts of projects collaborate.
Poets putting together long collaborative works together, fiction writers getting together to each write a chapter for a book, digital artists teaming up with authors to create amazing rare book covers, popular NFT projects teaming up to release combined NFT works, and the list goes on and on.
It is really powerful, and I’m excited to share how Spatium is preparing to get involved and help facilitate more and more collaboration and community.
Spatium’s Community
As I’ve mentioned before, one of the blockchains we’re built with is DeSo.
Well, DeSo has just released their full version of the Deso Chat Protocol (DCP). This expands upon their already unique on-chain messaging protocol. This is the technology we’ve utilized for the Dragon protocol. But it is also been used for almost 2 years now by Deso users to send private messages to each other fully on-chain.
The new and improved DCP now expands upon this feature to allow private group messages fully on-chain!
But wait, there is more!
It also is multichain! They must have taken my advice 🙂
You can actually send messages to people on Ethereum using their address or ENS name directly from your Deso account now! Or vice versa.
This will roll right into our strategy of becoming multichain as we plan to expand books into the Ethereum ecosystem!
This will enable a ton of powerful tools we plan to release. Some of these ideas we are going to implement very very soon. Here are just a few:
For Authors
Every Spatium author will soon be added to a unique Deso group message for just the authors.
This will be fully on-chain, and a way to communicate, collaborate, and ask questions.
A unique, fully decentralized, private online community for all of our authors!
We plan to expand this to the context of Vibehut too where authors can get on video calls with each other and form web3 writers groups just like CS Lewis and Tolkien!
For Readers
One feature I’m super stoked for is book clubs!
Every book collector will have the ability to join a book club for the book they just bought.
This will also be easily facilitated through Deso group chats fully on-chain.
This means, you don’t have to read a book alone anymore!
You can discuss all the things you love or hate with other fans! I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I don’t care how good a book is, it is 10 times better when you can talk about it with other people.
Other Future Plans
Those are our main initial plans, author communities and book clubs.
The really cool thing here is it’s built using Deso and it is multichain.
Why is that cool?
Well, for starters, all the messages being stored securely and encrypted on-chain, means that any app can utilize the technology.
I know we’ll work hand in hand with an app called Squadz, which is building an awesome version of Discord where you can create and join different Squadz based on criteria like owning an NFT, creator coin, or maybe even an association.
The second reason it’s cool is that the Deso Chat Protocol is heading multichain while we are too. They already support Ethereum and ENS for messages, and soon they plan to add Solana and Near.
This means when we are multichain, if you buy a book through Polygon or Ethereum, then you can join book clubs with that address, no Deso account needed!
The same will eventually be true for Solana too!
We will do a longer post and video demo once this is implemented and ready to go on Spatium.
Until then, we’d love to hear your ideas, excitement, questions, or concerns!
Thank you all for reading, and once again, if you aren’t subscribed, it means the world if you would. And if you are, please consider sharing this newsletter with someone else!
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