In our journey of developing Paribus, we’ve received a lot of feedback from our community, primarily positive and helpful. But, as is often the case when a small team controls a platform, not everyone agrees with our decisions.

At every step, we’ve tried to make the best choices based on the information we had. We’ve always known that, eventually, it would be the community’s turn to take the lead in guiding Paribus. And, as we announced in our recent X-space update, that time is approaching fast with the release of our governance module in January.

An excellent example of the challenges we face in making the right decisions in this rapidly evolving space was the decision on where to launch our governance module. We let the community decide through a poll, and they overwhelmingly chose Milkomeda. So, we prepared to release it there.

However, as we got closer to the release date, we discovered new information that made us realize there might be better choices for the platform’s future. While this disappointed some, we always make decisions based on what’s best for everyone, even if it means disappointing a few.

The silver lining from this delay is that it allows us to release governance on the testnet to give people some experience of how it works before it goes live. It also helps to demonstrate that making the right decision is a challenging process, which is essential for the community to understand if they’re to lead Paribus in the future.

We’ve put a lot of time and thought into developing the governance system to ensure that it gives the community a significant say in decision-making while also dealing with the realities of knowledge gaps. It would be unreasonable of us to expect that the community would be able to govern the platform entirely from day one.

Deniz explained in our recent X-space, “Our goal is to phase out as the core team and give it back to the people who use the platform. We will do this in steps because the transition from what it is today to what we want it to be in two years, or less, takes time.”

He continued, “Not in terms of development but in terms of the change in attitude and understanding that comes with participating in a DAO. It’s not just about staking your tokens, getting rewards, and voting for XYZ. You have to care about what you’re voting for; you have to care about what you’re raising a proposal for, because each of these decisions could make or break the platform.”

We’ve implemented some limits to protect the protocol from accidental or malicious harm. For example, we’ve prevented proposals that call for burning tokens because this could harm the platform’s long-term growth and development.

Additionally, each proposal that passes the vote is subject to a 3-day timelock. This safety net prevents any malicious proposals from being implemented if they somehow manage to bypass our initial checks or are forced through by whales.

We also hope it allows developers to become more involved with taking Paribus to the next level. As Deniz describes, “What I want the governance to do is bring in more developers from the community so they could actually contribute code.”

Adding, “One of the proposals I want to raise is to create an abstraction layer over governance, so rather than picking smart contract actions, you can describe in plain English what the change is. This is something I want to bring in because the simpler the governance is, the more people will get involved, but I want this to be done by a community member rather than the team because I want people to get into the flow of contributing code.”

Given how strongly engaged our community is with Paribus, we are confident that within two years, we’ll be able to transition into a complete DAO, which is an exhilarating prospect. To help maximize engagement with governance, we’ve structured the system to reward only active participants.

While 2024 looks set to be an exciting time in crypto, it’s even more thrilling for us. To be able to begin handing Paribus over to the community at the same time as rolling out our NFT and LP modules will be amazing. We’re looking forward to our best year yet, and we’re just getting started.