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I agree with this completely, and I agree with the peer comment that pinpoints the motivation for this stance to be these peoples' desire to disassociate themselves with the idea of Bitcoin and/or Bitcoiners.

Up to now, I've pretty much scoffed at this stance. The real breakthrough here is Bitcoin, or so I've always thought.

However, I've recently come across a project that made me realize that the blockchain technology may indeed bring about other revolutionary changes in addition to Bitcoin itself. One in particular is assembly.com and Coin, the blockchain-driven ownership records that formalize projects hatched under the assembly.com organizational framework. I'm most familiar with Assembly, but I wouldn't be surprised if other similar projects are actively underway.

If successful, assembly.com's approach to organizations has the potential to change the way we form companies, for the better. If you're interested in big societal changes brewing around us, I'd suggest going to take a look at how assembly.com works with the technologies that enable this type of organization (git and Github, in particular, in addition to the blockchain). If you've ever read the books of Visa-founder Dee Hock and his ideas about chaordic organizations, you'll immediately recognize this phenomenon. It's pretty fascinating, and as soon as I finish my current contract I intend to start working on an Assembly project.

But as for the power driving the blockchain technology (and thus enabling all of this), I agree completely that this is indeed Bitcoin and its underlying incentives. Pretty amazing stuff...




Assembly is really cool. But one problem ive had with it is how founding a project 600,000 coins for free, even for projects that aren't fully fleshed out. This makes it much more fruitful to start your own projects.


To be clear, those are 600,000 representing only the project you are founding. Each project has different app coins. So each person or group starting a project with Assembly gets 100% ownership of the project they start themselves, nothing more, nothing less.

It's a high-tech, blockchain version of a partnership. What I think is so innovative is the way this has the potential to combine kickstarters with traditional business partnerships, with the blockchain to formalize the relationship.

It's been pretty fascinating watching new projects start up there and gain steam.


(disclosure: I work for Assembly)

I think startups in general are a good analogy for this. Sure, it's more fruitful in terms of percentage of equity to start your own startup than to join one, but it's immensely difficult to get that company you own 100% of to become something valuable.

For a product to succeed on Assembly, it's often really important for a strong visionary to play an active day-to-day role. That initial ownership makes the whole thing more fruitful for them, but only in the cases where they do lots of heavy lifting to make something succeed.

If you throw a random idea up on Assembly and someone else in the community shows up and ships that idea and makes it into a successful business, then you'd have a fortunate outcome without much work, but that's not an expected outcome.

edit: as eric_bullington pointed out (and I should have), it's important to note that the ownership you have over a product you start is only ownership of that product. If that product never ships, the ownership doesn't translate to the success of other products on Assembly.

So, you can get 100% ownership of a thing that is just an idea with a few clicks, or you can jump in on a product like Coderwall that makes $20,000/month, and any work you do will earn you a portion of that revenue for as long as Coderwall is around. Both of these avenues are fun. :)


Are you going to create a new assembly project or join an existing one?




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