# What’s next for FEEDweave?
## Becoming a community-built social network
_This post describes how FEEDweave can become a community built, owned and operated social network._
Last Friday, I launched [FEEDweave](https://feedweave.co/) and wrote a [developer tutorial](https://feedweave.co/post/47zeUWFxruVhf9l-IZpxw-I7No7up2wSGekw7gQFwhE) about how I built it.
As I described in the announcement [tweet storm](https://twitter.com/Iiterature/status/1225815674326540290), FEEDweave was built as a proof-of-concept to demonstrate the potential of Arweave as a substrate for composable social software. See for yourself by checking how people are using the [app](https://feedweave.co/) and its on-chain [data](https://explorer.arweave.co/app/FEEDweave).
Since FEEDweave was built in a few weeks by just one person, beta testers didn’t fail to mention how they felt the experience was rough around the edges! Indeed, FEEDweave could use a lot more work to feel like a well-designed and developed social platform.
But instead of building out more functionality by myself, **can we make FEEDweave a community-built platform?**
In traditional centralized applications, the founding team or company is usually solely responsible for maintaining and improving the product. They are also the only ones that benefit from the application’s success, rather than sharing upside with early contributors or users.
Open source projects, on the other hand, are built by their communities, but often suffer from “tragedy of the commons” problems. The incentives to contribute aren’t clear, putting in question their long-term sustainability.
Blockchains are a new computational substrate for launching autonomous applications that are open and allow anyone to contribute. Most importantly, programmable tokens enable solving the incentive problem by distributing the ownership and value of the platform to its community.
Can we create a **new kind of project** that combines the best parts of open source and companies:
* Passionate Internet-native communities of users and contributors
* Sustainable funding and incentive models that reward participants equitably
## Work to be done
FEEDweave needs some more basic functionality to feel like a _real_ social network. How can we build it as a community?
First, I’ve created [github.com/feedweave](https://github.com/feedweave) and moved all the code repos there, so the project feels like a real community organization.
I’ve also created a new repo, [feedweave-dev](https://github.com/denisnazarov/feedweave-dev), and modeled it after Ethereum’s [EIP process](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-1). The repo will serve as a forum for the FEEDweave community to discuss and decide upon **FEEDweave Improvement Proposals** (FIPs).
Based on initial user feedback, I created [four drafts](https://github.com/denisnazarov/feedweave-dev/issues) of FIPs of the most commonly requested functionality by beta testers. Contributors are invited to help implement an existing FIP, or to suggest their own.
* [FIP 1: Comments support](https://github.com/denisnazarov/feedweave-dev/issues/1)— FEEDweave currently supports only top-level posts, with no way to thread a discussion related to a post.
* [FIP 2: Editing support](https://github.com/denisnazarov/feedweave-dev/issues/2)— Blockchains are immutable, append-only data structures, but editing can be implemented using append-only diffs, similar to git.
* [FIP 3: Upvote support](https://github.com/denisnazarov/feedweave-dev/issues/3)— Upvotes will allow showing post popularity and enable building recommendation algorithms.
* [FIP 4: Improved onboarding](https://github.com/denisnazarov/feedweave-dev/issues/4)— Current onboarding requires uploading a wallet file. It’s not secure or user friendly.
Implementing FIPs 1-3 will add key social network functionality and also contribute three new reusable widgets back to Arweave.
_If you have other ideas of how FEEDweave can be improved, don’t hesitate to start a new FIP._
All proposals so far are modeled as reusable components (data legos) that can feed into the broader Arweave ecosystem.
The intent is to also create a symbiotic relationship between FEEDweave and Arweave, and leverage network effects beyond just using Arweave as infrastructure.
## Sustaining development
FEEDweave shouldn’t have to rely on the good will of its contributors to survive.
A healthy ecosystem should incentivize and reward its contributors for participation, and crypto offers new ways of doing that.
The goal of FEEDweave is to sustain its own perpetual development and upkeep of the application and infrastructure.
Although it is the early days, and there aren’t many examples of successful crypto funding mechanisms, there are lots of promising early ideas being worked on by great teams.
Here are some ideas of what we can do:
* [ARCA DAO](https://medium.com/@arweave/announcing-the-first-community-run-arweave-ecosystem-fund-dao-a3ca9ef6fa6f): apply for grants to the community-run Arweave ecosystem fund DAO
* [SourceCred](https://sourcecred.io/): leverage a new reputation protocol for open collaboration
* [OSCoin](http://oscoin.io/): participate in a new crypto-economy that rewards open-source projects through inflation funding
* FEEDweave token: organize as a DAO and issue a native token for governance and to reward participation
Since FEEDweave is a social network, there is also opportunity to experiment with new crypto-native business models to reward maintainers, moderators and content creators.
## Contribute
If you are interested in contributing to FEEDweave development, please make a post introducing yourself on [FEEDweave](https://feedweave.co/).
For community discussion and to coordinate development, check out the [feedweave-dev](https://github.com/denisnazarov/feedweave-dev) GitHub repo. Contribute to an FIP you may be interested in, or propose a new one!
For real time discussion with other members of the FEEDweave and Arweave community, join us on the Arweave [Discord server](https://discordapp.com/invite/DjAFMJc).
If you find these ideas interesting, feel free to share this post with your network to help spread the word.
You can follow [@FEEDweave_](https://twitter.com/feedweave_) on Twitter for ecosystem updates.