We had a great turnout for our first brainstorming session. People across the globe participated in the discussion. As the session progressed we developed clarity on what a mission statement is and what it isn’t.
A good mission statement answers the following questions:
Why does ENS exists?
Who does ENS serve?
How does it serve them?
The emerging perspective of the group is that a mission statement is more to rally the troops than a marketing slogan for future users.
With that preamble out of the way, here are a few mission statements that we came up with as group. There were about 2x more discussed, I’m choosing to highlight all the statements that had at least one +1.
To provide a truly unique, human-readable identity across all of web3.
To create the future of online identity, for everything.
Enable people to work, play, and organize using decentralized, censorship-resistant tools that require no permission
The mission of ENS is to connect identities consistently to make the internet easier and more accessible for everyone
Your name for the future of the internet
To provide complete ownership of identity as a public good for all - across the web and beyond.
Map human-readable names to machine-readable identifiers from across the web
Lead the way to an accessible web3, where everyone can easily interact with DApps, DAOs, and smart contracts.
The global empowerment of people, organizations, and smart contracts through continued development of a decentralized, human-readable naming standard as a global public good.
For those who weren’t able to participate, here’s your chance to add a few more options by replying to this thread.
We will also hold another session next week at a more eastern hemisphere friendly time.
I think that the mission statement must not be for ENS, but for ENS DAO (subtle difference, but important IMHO).
My proposal is:
We believe that an open, decentralised, reliable and accessible identity system is a fundamental building block of the future of the Internet. Our mission is to operate, maintain, improve and increase adoption of the Ethereum Name Service in ways that protect and promote decentralisation and inclusiveness.
I like this as it speaks to the reliability of ENS which is very important. It also mentions “protecting decentralization”…this should be a vital component of the DAO.
I also like this one. It’s easy to comprehend because it’s straight to the point. Maybe a combination of this one and the proposal from @vrypan. Wording from both of these could be used to create a solid mission statement.
If we want to scale and have wide adoption, mentioning DApps, DAOs, smart contracts will not do. Even metaverse is tainted by FB and web3 is not something people understand still.
I feel we need to appeal to wide audiences, with simple but clear messages, e.g. “Your Digital Identity Here”, or “The Future of You” etc. You may find it cheesy, sure, but I don’t see my sister getting and ENS with “DApps” messaging.
I think that we are confusing mission statement with tagline.
The mission statement is usually a short paragraph that describes our core values and what we want to do. A tagline is a short memorable, catchy phrase.
A user will first see the tagline. The tagline makes sense, they like the service, the use it.
But if they want to join the DAO or invest in ENS, then they will need to read the mission statement. What is this group of people, what they believe in, what they intend to do (or not do)?
I don’t think it’s cheesy. If our goal is to help spread adoption, we need to use language that people already know and understand. If not, we risk alienation. The mission statement though is allowed room to be a little technical because it shouldn’t also have to function as marketing slogan.
This has happened, which I think was addressed during our last Zoom.
I’m in the plain English camp. Our Mission Statement needs to explain our purpose is to meet a need, even if the reader doesn’t realize a present need, because the need is the future, Web3. Telling the world how technically smart we are doesn’t get us there, it turns them off; it must be easily understood by a child 10-16, something umeboshi.eth’s sister can understand, because that is our future audience.
My proposal is that we identify our audience, take our ideas that we really want in it, remove the technical jargon, and edit it to be simple,short, concise and to be easily understood by our target audience.
I think the mission statement should focus on/mention the concept of self-sovereign identity as I believe this is the core reason ENS has such a passionate community. Options 3, 6, 9 all touch on the concept of self-sovereign identity but none of them are explicit enough in my opinion. Unfortunately I did not attend any of the meetings but I do hope to attend any in the future.
