Ephesus is Liberated

Proposal 175 finally executed in block #1,775,446. It was was created in the beginning of March, and needed the approval of all three councillors for four consecutive Council terms to pass, followed by a five day gracing period.

The changes may at first seem rather small compared to many previous releases, but looking at it from a long term perspective, the two main changes are actually big:

  • Removing sudo is arguably the biggest change that could be done in terms of governance of the DAO
  • Adding a holistic and scalable way for the DAO to pay its creators through the governance process is a huge step towards quality content being made by and for the platform generally and/or specific "Apps" (gateways free to establish independent revenue sources and target audiences)

Keeping in mind the training wheels are off with Joystream being on mainnet, changes to the runtime will be increasingly smaller. The bigger ones will be on the infrastructure and ecosystem side.

Creators Incentives

As alluded in the previous post, the creators are the "winners" of Ephesus, and finally getting the incentives and tools they need.

Whereas there is not that much more to say about the removal sudo, much more can be said about enabling the new Update Channel Payouts proposal – especially combined with the other features being rolled out. Some being part of Ephesus and others not.

Direct Channel Payments

Although still in its infancy, any platform Member can now tip creators, for a specific video or a channel, directly along with a message. Once fully integrated it will make it easy for communities of fans and creators to interact.

Youtube Partnership Program

Although not part of Ephesus, the Youtube Partnership Program was release a few weeks ago. This allows creators to publish on Joystream seamlessly, and get paid to do so.

Update Channel Payouts

Whereas the name might not draw any crowds and the documentation is still lacking (the handbook will be updated soon(tm)), the proposal allows the DAO to pay thousands of creators in one single proposal. Without having to pay any attention to what happens on the governance side, the payments will show up on their "Activity" page, on gleev.xyz or any other App, to be withdrawn at their convenience.

Atlas and Orion Updates

Also not really a part of Ephesus, updating these tools makes it easier for crypto entrepreneurs to create and deploy new Apps, making Joystream available to larger audiences.

Roles and Actions

Whereas Validators, and anyone else running one, may want to upgrade their node, it's not required.

Anyone running a Query Node, will see it crash some time after the upgrade unless you take the time to upgrade it now. Luckily, you don't have to re-index. Simply pull in the master branch, build-packages.sh, and run the query-node/reset-processor.sh script.

This is especially important for any Storage Providers or Distributors lagging behind.

Everyone using the joystream-cli should also update. However the changes are rather small, and a few more will be incoming.

If you have any questions, join the Discord and ask!


Disclaimer

All forward looking statements,  estimates and commitments found in this blog post should be understood  to be highly uncertain, not binding and for which no guarantees of  accuracy or reliability can be provided. To the fullest extent permitted  by law, in no event shall Joystream, Jsgenesis or our affiliates, or  any of our directors, employees, contractors, service providers or  agents have any liability whatsoever to any person for any direct or  indirect loss, liability, cost, claim, expense or damage of any kind,  whether in contract or in tort, including negligence, or otherwise,  arising out of or related to the use of all or part of this post, or any  links to third party websites.