Hello, I’m Fly.
As a new community member and currently not a token holder, I’m curious about the opportunities in the community which don’t relate directly to ROI. How can community members enable innovation or apply their values - ethics or otherwise - directly? What does the OATH need from the community to develop?
So I thought I’d make a little thread to ideate and explore, perhaps garner some words of wisdom from OG members. All contributions and ideas are welcome!
community member can get involved from simply tweeting Oath posts, to fully buying and getting bOATH and participating in governance forum.
I think OATH just needs greater participation from community to spread the word and continue to participate OATH’s social media apps (Twitter, Discord). that alone goes a long way to convince ppl that this project is very much alive.
Hey Fly! Welcome to the community, we’re happy to have you 
I’m gonna take this opportunity to share a little story of how I got involved and ended up working in the ecosystem, maybe it can be of some help to you…
When I first found this community, we didn’t have a token and the only protocol was Reaper Farm. I was relatively new to DeFi, and I’d just been jumping into a bunch of Discord servers and getting active in several communities.
When I joined the (then Reaper) community I immediately found the discord to be one of the most enjoyable places to hang out the space. It was full of savvy DeFi-heads just sharing knowledge and memes and having a good time. There was no talk of “pumping the token” or “finding the quickest way to get outsized returns”; it was just people who were really stoked about decentralized finance and about what the Byte Masons were building.
The sentiment that had been cultivated was one that, above all else, valued the things that I value: Creating a financial system that gives equal access to everyone. Giving people the freedom to control their own finances and giving them access to a completely transparent system. This is why I got into DeFi, it’s why I’m still so (even more so) excited about it today, and it’s why I was so drawn to this community early on.
The ecosystem has obviously expanded a ton since then, but our values remain the same. I hope I can speak for everyone on the team when I say that our foremost mission is to empower people by helping to build a more transparent and equitable financial system for all. I truly think these ideals have spread to grow a community that feels the same way.
Now to your question:
This forum is where the community members who share these values alongside us and each other can formally make their ideas and contributions come to life. It’s a fairly new component of our ecosystem and one that needs time to mature, but over time I would love to see the OATH Foundation be able to branch into and support any avenue that furthers the mission. The focus right now is on developing our protocols and growing our little corner of DeFi, but over the coming years we can imagine something much bigger and much more impactful.
Joining our social groups like discord and twitter, offering your thoughts, and just being generally supportive and constructive is a great start. If you have an idea about a potential project you’d like to take on and possibly get funded, this forum is the place to share it. It’s also more than encouraged for the community to reach out to us or to each other directly about ideas they might have if they’re not sure where to start.
Anyway sorry for the novel, but your question gave me a hit of nostalgia and I wanted to share. Hopefully it was of some help, thank you and welcome again!
Hey Charles, thanks for such a comprehensive response, i really appreciate the effort!
Great to get some context with your story, and nice to hear the values of the community are strong.
I always have loads of ideas, i can think of a few which I’d be curious to explore in this ecosystem. I’m not a developer but am very interested in DeFi architecture, especially inspired andre’s work. Personally I would to dive deeper into architecting DeFi through the lens of Cybernetics & self-organisation, looking at case studies & perhaps forming some kind of research group to learn & imagine new strategies… Do you know of anything like this which currently exists?
Hey Cato, I appreciate the reply. I’m usually more of an observer on public social media platforms and don’t tend to shill any projects, even those i contribute to from a community side. I totally get the need to convince people that the project is alive, but [to go along with the analogy], what’s the purpose of living? Im interested in the higher goals of the community and project - the future it’s striving for - rather than current use case. I think that’s what will keep me here in times where ROI dips.
Hey Fly. Well in terms of values, Charles pretty much summed up the points above.
In regards to community involvement, the best thing one could do is to use the products/services that Oath is dishing out and incorporate it into your defi strategy. Don’t even need to shill anything if the results are speaking for themselves and you are getting what you want from the ecosystem.
Hey Cato, yeah that’s great man.
Totally understand. i’m not so much looking to incorporate products into my own DeFi strategy, more to connect, learn & explore with others who are interested in DeFi architecture. Do you think this could be a viable initiative for this community?
I see. As Oath is still building, yes there is room for the community to get engaged in voicing their opinions about Oath’s DeFi architecture. You can specifically go to the most recent topics/proposals on this forum to discuss in Ethos V2, Oath new tokenomics, etc
Hey Fly! Would love to hear your thoughts - happy to work with you to make cool stuff.
Hey bebis, sounds great. I could fire away some sporadic thoughts here or formalise a draft proposal to work from?
Anytime!
That sort of research group doesn’t currently exist in our community at least, would be really cool to get some thing like that going! Feel free to drop some ideas you have here and we can bring it to the attention of the community and maybe start a dedicated discord channel if that sounds like a good plan
either way is fine! maybe we can discuss here a bit and when ideas are more refined whip up a proposal!
Think there would need to be theee groups of ppl.
The first are thise that have connections to other devs, leaders/founders in order to do a case study for defi architecture
The second would be ppl wirh great researcing skills and can find various articles, journals and blogs about certain subjects.
The third group would be those that would compile all of this info and write thw write. Surprisingly, not many ppl can do that.
In the “What is up $Oath fams” subject, Marph stated how Prism finance launched their LSD borrowing service and their tvl sky rocketed to $250M. Would be a great case study to research on 
hint hint
Hey Fly, love that approach.
Actually I am new to the community myself. Even though I’ve been curiously following along for a couple of years I never found the time to actively engage here. With ethos I eventually became involved as a user.
What @Cato says is probably the most straight forward way to get involved:
Your comment about “connect, learn & explore with others” is something that I am very interested in as well:
I’ve always liked the idea of an open, community driven think tank or focus group. I was able to gather some experience with such in the past. Others seem to be open to this as well.
I’m not close enough involved in the community yet to have a strong opinion on where to have such discussions. From past experience and personal preference I would vote for doing so on this forum rather than on the discord (or even the telegram). Those different platforms each have their own strengths. For any in depth discussions discourse (this platform) offers the best experience imo.
That’s how I’d go about it as well. It’s really easy to follow up on topics here while on discord or telegram it’s harder to keep track.
To get things going it might be best to start with collecting and brainstorming ideas and topics that interest you.
Happy to contribute. What do you think?
Great stuff.
Thinking about this research group, perhaps one of the first steps could be to aggregate possible case studies to learn about & explore. It would be really cool to have a little database of everyone’s initial impressions & ideas, so I just made a draft of a questionnaire to start collecting data. Let me know if you have any feedback. Maybe its too long?
https://forms.gle/3YCYF23QwVxmVSSq9
copying in the description at the top of the form:
"Welcome and thank you for your interest in sharing ideas with an OATH CommunityResearch Initiative! Our goal is to push the boundaries of what’s possible in decentralised finance by studying novel architectures, incentive designs, governance models, and more. We hope to explore how DeFi strategems could embody Cybernetics theory or
We are collecting submissions from builders, thinkers, and developers across ecosystems to inform our research. Your perspectives and projects can help shape the future of DeFi. Please use this form to propose an innovative DeFi strategy, mechanism, or application - whether it’s just a concept, already functioning or from the past. We welcome submissions of all kinds - be as creative and ambitious as you’d like.
The goal is for this data to provide a foundation to build an OATH community research initiative. We hope to analyse innovative Web 3.0 case studies technically or theoretically, to imagine new possibilities in DeFi architecture, design & strategy. We aim to harness a range of resources & perspectives; for instance Cybernetics & Self-organisaton, Complexity & Game Theory or Ancient military strategy [e.g. 36 Stratagems / Art of War].
In your submission, we ask for key details like the core components, blockchain platform, current status, and value distribution. Please explain what makes your idea novel and how it moves DeFi forwards.
The OATH community will review submissions and may follow up with select contributors for further discussion. By submitting the form, you consent to public analysis and discourse around your proposal if shared with the group. Thanks for taking the time to complete this questionnaire and contribute your knowledge."
Nice one Fly!
A database is a good goal but it seems like alot of effort for people to submit…? I wonder if the first thing could be to go through fundamental protocols in a communal atmosphere and look at why they’re innovative or historical narratives of development? We could start with Andre’s projects?
It would be ideal if this could be meeting ground for people at multiple technical levels - teaching, sharing & learning. We could have a format where we have a strategy/protocol to research then present to the group, or ask the community which protocol of DeFi strategy we should cover. I imagine sessions could start with an introduction of the strategy, explanation followed by a technical / philosophical discussion on Cybernetics / Strategy?
