What is Olympia

by Robert

Olympia is a large release focused on taking things to the next level in terms of organising all the people and activities that go into governing Joystream. This also includes the incentivising and onboarding of new contributors, which is an important aspect of this phase of the Joystream journey. Olympia comes with major improvements to several areas of Joystream, and in this post we will cover the most important updates to

  • Pioneer
  • The Runtime
  • Onboarding experience
  • Testnet incentives

Let's get into it!

Pioneer V2 (Governance app)

Pioneer is the governance application that allows people to participate in the DAO that powers the Joystream platform. This means they are involved in planning, working, collaborating and deliberating through activities like

  • Running for the council
  • Participating in the council voting on and discussing proposal
  • Submitting proposals
  • Applying for roles and working in working groups
  • Interacting on the forum
  • Creating, funding and working on bounties

Take it for test run at dao.joystream.org

The Runtime

The Runtime has been updated in many ways to make these on-chain activities possible. There's new staking logic as well as council & election implementation. Also, perhaps on a more exciting front the forum now has additional features, NFTs are added to the blockchain (although they're not launching yet), as well as the bounty module where any member can add a bounty. Last but not least there's also a new proposal implementation, with lots of new types of proposals.

Onboarding experience

We've spent the last 3 months planning, writing, filming, designing, editing, and coding what we hope is the best onboarding experience in all of web3. The idea is simple: take a complete newcomer and turn them into someone who understands and is excited about getting involved in Joystream.

There are all sorts of details that have been considered, such as different types of users going through a tailored onboarding experience based on their interest for example.

The onboarding experience is live, and you can take it for a test drive right here!

Testnet incentives 3.0


Incentives 3.0 is the latest iteration of our testnet rewards scheme. Here's how it will work:

All workers will be earning $JOY and $tJOY directly for doing bounties, working group, working group leads, and validator activity, as well as referring friends.

Once you earn X amount of $JOY, you will be required to go through a quick verification process in order to unlock the ability to continue to earn more $JOY. This process is simply to ensure you are who you are say you are, not an American citizen, and not already verified using another account.

You can read more about the details in the handbook here, as well as a deeper 20 minute video explanation by Bedeho, the Joystream founder, here.

Referral program

Joystream is placing a bet on the idea that you, the person already aware of the project, can help us attract more high-quality contributors. Going forward Joystream will be rewarding verified referrals disproportionately well. In fact, even the person that gets referred gets rewarded, in order to incentivise both parties. There are very effective mechanisms in place to combat any potential sybil attacks, bots, and other attempts to abuse the program, which allows us to offer great rewards and still be confident that those rewards will only go to those who actually deserve it.

Going forward, if you refer a person that gets involved in the Joystream DAO, earns enough $JOY tokens to warrant going through the verification process, and successfully doing so, you will receive $1,000 in $JOY tokens, and your friend will receive $200 worth of $JOY. There is no cap of how many people you can refer. These terms may change in the future, but for now we couldn't be more excited to be able to offer this opportunity.

You can read more about the referral program here in the handbook.

Summary

We are excited to release these new runtime, Pioneer, onboarding, and incentives updates. Last but not last we'd like to thank and congratulate everyone who has been involved in making this fairly complex release possible.

Go team Joystream!

Pioneer V2
Onboarding
Testnet incentives handbook
Referral program