
Colony is a platform for community collaboration - joeyespo
https://blog.colony.io/the-colony-public-beta-is-live/
======
cwyers
People need to learn how to get to the point, I swear.

> So, what does Colony do?

> Colony is a platform for community collaboration. It lets teams, projects,
> and communities do work, make decisions, and manage money, together.

I read that, and I'm like, what, it's like a CRM/project management for
communities? Keep reading, and it's some kind of a crypto thing, as far as I
can tell.

~~~
Geee
From my understanding, it's project management with free market economics.
Colonies and tasks are funded and whoever completes the task gets the reward.
So, like a colony, it's a self-organising entity that works towards a goal
that is most rewarding for everyone.

~~~
stareatgoats
> So, like a colony, it's a self-organising entity that works towards a goal
> that is most rewarding for everyone.

That's a novel definition of a colony, unless I'm misinformed. Better not
include it in the PR at least, could backfire.

~~~
Geee
I'm trying to define it economically. A colony is something that's independent
from any other authority, thus creating it's own ecosystem. There's no one in
charge, but everyone works on the most rewarding tasks, thus maximizing
rewards for the whole ecosystem.

~~~
cwyers
That is not how colonies work, no. The American colonies had to fight a war to
be independent. Colonies are subservient jurisdictions.

~~~
lazaroclapp
It's using the term as in definitions #2-3 (particularly 3b) here:
[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/colony](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/colony), not #1. They mean colony as in "a colony of
ants", not the political structure.

~~~
ctvo
You mean a colony of ants that has a queen, workers and soldiers?

------
Lucadg
I've been experimenting with Colony and other similar software in the past
months in the hope to let the community decide on some aspects of our project.

In my opinion we are still a few years away from something usable but the
concept of DAOs is really exciting.

The main issue is the high cost of ETH gas, which means just to vote on a
single issue may cost a few dollars in smart contract gas fees.

So we're now looking for aspects of the decision making process which are
worth the cost. We haven't found any so far.

Either way, it's great to be able to be part of something so potentially
disrupting so early in the journey.

~~~
Barrin92
>The main issue is the high cost of ETH gas, which means just to vote on a
single issue may cost a few dollars in smart contract gas fees

I don't understand the logic of this, why does this need to be a decentralised
platform using real currency for transactions?

If you want to simulate a sort of internal market you can implement something
like "colony-dollars" and if anything at the end convert it into some actual
currency.

~~~
Lucadg
The gas is not for transactions. It pays the Ethereum network to execute the
smart contracts.

The idea is to have a decision making app where no one controls the app
itself.

------
thaumasiotes
They're missing the "what is colony for?" section of their site.

------
simonw
Sign of the times: the launch announcement seems to mostly downplay the fact
that this is a blockchain/crypto thing.

I guess the shine really has worn off now. A year ago this would have been
putting the blockchain element front and center.

~~~
simonw
Or maybe I'm being overly cynical here, and Colony (which looks like it was
founded in June 2017) assumes that everyone who sees their announcement
already knows that they're in the crypto space.

------
hrdwdmrbl
Pretty alpha in my quick tour of it. I can't even find a way to browse other
colonies. Also during a few minutes experimenting with it I had to sign in
multiple times with my metamask wallet. A refresh seems to cause it to forget
me.

------
edwinjm
I browsed the website and I still don't know what colony is. I understand it
has something to do with crypto currency. is it a wallet? Is it a miner? Is it
a game?

This is a good example of how not to make a website.

------
toomuchtodo
This is cool! Is there any way not to use crypto, and to use an actual fiat
representation (as part of the BYO Token functionality)? Seems to very useful
for community/coop resource planning, especially if I can plug in something
like Stripe's Connect marketplace-enabling offering for moving traditional
monies around.

~~~
CryptoPunk
If the fiat transfers could be cryptographically validated, then I assume yes,
as Colony is customizable.

In any case you can use fiat backed or fiat pegged crypto tokens, like USDC
and Tether or DAI, respectively. All the fiat-linked tokens I'm aware of are
issued on Ethereum, given they use the ERC20 token interface, so would be
compatible with Colony.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Thank you!

------
birdyrooster
Oh boy I’m so excited to be a colonizer.

~~~
hombre_fatal
Seems to only be a bad word among the Woke. I'd love to be a colonizer of
uncharted lands like Mars.

------
igor47
Product pitch reminded me of Loomio, which is a platform for community
collaboration that I've been using a lot lately. If the headline brought you
here, but then you got confused by all the block chain stuff, maybe check it
out.

~~~
rgbrgb
Interesting. What are you using Loomio for?

~~~
igor47
i bought a house with a group of friends, and we're using loomio to manage the
household -- organizing maintenance, meetings, and various decisions. it's
especially nice for asynchronous decision-making, which should be the only
acceptable kind of decision-making.

i learned about loomio from jason benn's excellent blog, here:
[https://jasonbenn.com/tag/community](https://jasonbenn.com/tag/community)

------
Kinrany
Are there other solutions that aim to disrupt middle management?

Colony seems to be trying to do too many things at the same time. It could be
useful to traditional companies without any decentralization.

------
zouhair
Crypto the new Pyramid Schemes.

