Introduction to Taiwan HyperAwesome Guidebook

Authors- Anon Awesome Us

The Very Beginning

Behind the quirky name, "Taiwan HyperAwesome Guidebook," lies a humble beginning.

tyc, tired of her routine frontend tasks, wanted to initiate a one-person web3 project. The aim was to replace useless online learning and certificates with practical actions and projects.

With a pragmatic mindset, we act first, then perfect it.

The first version of the "Taiwan HyperAwesome Guidebook" was simple and naive.

Our core concern was: “Why do large projects always have issues? Can smaller nonprofit projects be better? How can we support these projects, NGOs, and people?”

We believe most of the rankings lists, like [top X influencers in field Y], are founded on mercenary intent and are foolish. Most of these ranking lists are well-known but difficult to trust.

When we wondered why there wasn’t a better, more legitimate, more credible neutral list, that phrase came to mind: as the g0v manifesto of Taiwan’s civic tech community states: “Don’t ask why no one is doing this. Admit that you are this ‘no one’.”

We realized that even objective ranking lists can be hard to believe. This is the "post-truth" era—believers will always believe, non-believers will never believe.

So, why not revive the old P2P solidarity spirit, starting with those who believe and gradually building our trust network?

Initial "Geek" Design

Michelin Guide

At first, we thought the Michelin restaurant guide was cool. We aimed to emulate its format, finding a group of reviewers in Taiwan willing to lend their credibility. We discussed and publicized evaluation standards and declarations, periodically recommending groups that have a positive social impact in the Taiwan context.

Donation Rankings

Next, we wrote recommendations and listed them in the guide, making it easier for more people to see the people and things we support. We also provided cryptocurrency donation features. To add fun, we designed a leaderboard to gamify donations: donations could accumulate points, and the higher the points, the different avatars and webpage animations users would get. Playing games reduces the fear of making mistakes, giving players multiple lives and fostering healthy competition.

Quadratic Funding

Then we wanted to introduce quadratic funding. In simple terms, it allows donors to allocate resources to different organizations with one click, using a square root sum distribution method. This way, if our guide features trustworthy projects, we can move beyond single donations to distribute resources more effectively, increasing overall impact. In the past, individual or corporate donations usually went to one or two favorite organizations. But perhaps there are more efficient ways to donate, making quadratic funding suitable for individual donations. This allows donors who don’t have time to thoroughly review projects to distribute funds better based on trust.

Self-Reflection

After some debate among us, we realized the above geek approach is not sustainable. How can we ensure continuous participation of reviewers? How can we ensure projects are rich and genuinely meaningful for donations? How can we ensure the guide’s team has enough capacity for sustainable operation? These were issues we hadn't considered.

The New "Awesome" Implementation

After establishing the original version and completing the webpage prototype, we (forcefully) involved mashbean and Frank to adjust the structure. Through constant iterations and debates, we developed the current "Awesome" version.

From Geek to Practical Advocacy

With a revised approach, we acknowledge that we are mere participants within the public welfare ecosystem. We need to change the mindset that a “singular mechanism or technology can solve everything.” As our manifesto states: “Public goods, Harberger tax, quadratic voting—these academic terms are impressive. However, these complex concepts can hinder mutual understanding and collaboration. Let's hide these concepts and focus on practical action. Trust will naturally grow.” Therefore, in the current version, we aim to build a peer-to-peer group method, creating records of trust and good deeds. By considering records as points and group activities as lines, a trust-based network will ultimately form. We’ve redefined the guide. Traditional guides are top-down oracles, often mixed with impure intentions. This time, the guide is authored by activists, with the oracle defined by the growing community.

Key Changes

🪢 ** Mouse Club Grouping**

The "Taiwan HyperAwesome Guidebook" spreads from small nodes, starting with FAB DAO (Formosa Art Bank) or nearby networks. Whether through financial support or effort, good deeds will be recorded on the "Taiwan HyperAwesome Guidebook." The guide’s core consists of friends willing to roll up their sleeves and sincerely recommend others.

✅ Hypercerts Verified

Hypercerts are international digital certification standards for public goods. The creators aim to generate a trading market for these certificates, thereby creating a public goods certification market. However, after various preliminary experiments, we don't believe hypercerts can truly generate a market yet, as the ESG trading era has not arrived. Currently, we use hypercerts as a certification mark, indicating that the group initiator is trusted by "Our Awesome Team." Thus, we keep potential opportunities to connect with international organizations like the Hypercerts Foundation without adopting their complex technical structure.

💰 Supporting Both NTD and Cryptocurrency

No matter how promising web3 is, the current reality is that only accepting cryptocurrency could create unnecessary barriers for many potential supporters. Therefore, supporting New Taiwan Dollar (NTD) is something we will do soon.

👍 Optimized Donations with One Click

We wrote a smart contract based on quadratic funding (details in the appendix), allowing supporters to provide an “optimized” matching donation plan given the fixed donation amount, offering references across various projects. Of course, this is just a suggestion, and supporters can adjust the allocation as they see fit.

Appendix: Changes to Donation Rankings and Quadratic Funding

1. Cryptocurrency Support: Currently, we only support USDT donations on the Optimism blockchain to simplify participant understanding.
2. Quadratic Funding Model: We designed a simple points calculation method, allowing us to distribute donations using a square root sum, encouraging spread within the trust network. Practically, when a supporter donates, the program will automatically calculate and suggest distribution amounts to different organizations. However, this is just a suggestion, and users can freely adjust it.
3. Prevent Sybil Attack: If a supporter donates to a specific organization, subsequent donations within seven days will not be recorded to prevent multiple donations from altering the matching mechanism. No other anti-Sybil attack measures are preset.

🛋️ Collaboration with GreenSofa

GreenSofa is a group dedicated to international cryptocurrency public resources and promoting web3 sustainability. Familiar with cryptocurrency and hypercert concepts, GreenSofa is an ideal action partner to explore reasonable uses of hypercerts.

Conclusion

"Our Awesome Team" shared the initial development journey to invite you to join us in doing good deeds together. Please review our manifesto once more. Friends! Let’s roll up our sleeves, contribute money and effort, and take real action together!