Subspace Labs Open-Source Team Handbook for Globally Distributed Teams
The Subspace Labs team finds inspiration and guidance in our shared values
Subspace Labs, the core contributors of the Subspace Network, is a globally distributed team of decentralization maximalists. Our practices and procedures reflect our core values, preserving and realizing Satoshi Nakamoto’s original vision of an open, decentralized, and trustless protocol. Our team finds inspiration and guidance in these shared values. Committing and relying on them empowers us to make deliberate choices focusing on what is important to us.
We envision a future in which our community of users ultimately own and operate the Subspace Network blockchain and nurture its ecosystem. While our code is already open-source, we aim for progressive decentralization at the organizational level. Progressive decentralization refers to a gradual relinquishment of control by incremental degrees. As a part of this effort, we plan to start open-sourcing all of our resources related to the Subspace Network. That means anyone in the community would have access to review, modify, and distribute everything as desired.
Our first step in curating a truly decentralized and open-source blockchain network is the release of the Subspace Labs Team Handbook. This artifact stands as a tangible demonstration of our commitment to our core values.
Our Core Values
Our co-founders, Jeremiah Wagstaff and Nazar Mokrynskyi created Subspace in 2018 to solve fundamental problems inherent in blockchain networks — increased centralization, lack of scalability, and environmental sustainability. After 3+ years of research initially funded by a grant from the US National Science Foundation (NSF), Jeremiah and Nazar created the Proof-of-Archival-Storage (PoAS) consensus mechanism to resolve the blockchain trilemma.
We believe blockchains should be permissionless systems
The barriers to entry should be as low as possible, allowing access to anyone who desires to participate
Our PoAS consensus replaces compute-intensive mining with storage-intensive farming. As a result, farming is energy-efficient (and environmentally sustainable) while having security properties more similar to Proof-of-Work (PoW) than Proof-of-Stake (PoS). In addition, farming has the potential to be ASIC-resistant, allowing ordinary users to participate in consensus with commodity hardware without any additional capital investment or token staking.
We are unapologetic decentralization maximalists
The power to control a blockchain network should be distributed amongst as many stakeholders as possible
PoAS realizes the vision of free-and-fair consensus as described by “one-disk-one-vote” while resolving the incentive challenges that lead to centralization in other proof-of-space blockchain networks. We decouple consensus and computation to keep farming lightweight and resistant to pooling, allowing the farmer storage network to support the Subspace Network blockchain to bloat massively without becoming centralized.
The network should be as egalitarian as possible
Everyone who participates in the system should be treated equally, regardless of the resources at their disposal
“Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” — Lord Acton
Subspace will be a community-owned, community-driven network that embodies democracy, freedom, censorship resistance, and freedom of speech. The central economic property of the Subspace Network also incorporates the same principles — our PoAS consensus mechanism remains ASIC-resistant, preventing the concentration of power amongst a small number of influential figures with more wealth or computational power.
Evident in each step we take toward our vision, our core values are deeply embedded not only in our guiding principles but the technology we’re building in itself.
The Subspace Labs Team Handbook is intended to inspire, guide, and empower our team — individually and collectively. We want to encourage everyone to read — and understand — our core values and share your feedback with us.
Introducing the People Team at Subspace Labs
Our People Team is dedicated to supporting Subspace Labs and individual contributors with navigating the complexities of the globally distributed Web3 working environment in alignment with our core values.
Sky McWilliams
Head of People — LinkedIn
Sky is a crypto native, an industry veteran, and the Head of People Subspace Labs. She is passionate about building inclusive, innovative, distributed teams that exemplify the values of Web3. Her work across various startups in Web2 and Web3 has equipped her with core competencies, allowing her to create people-centric processes designed to fuel excellence and develop leaders in the space.
We’re Hiring!
If you’re passionate about blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies, or the Web3 vision and want to make an impact, please check out the open roles on our career page. Please apply for the position you are interested in through the correct link on our website to ensure our People Team receives your application. We cannot guarantee receipt of your application if you send them via email, LinkedIn, Discord DMs, Twitter DMs, etc.
