Philosophy¶
The ETOPay project was started with a few basic principles and they are also the guiding values which will continue to motivate the team and all its contributors to work for this project.
Core principles¶
The following core principles summarize how the team looks at things differently:
Self-realization¶
Identify the problem: It is always important for us to identify the core problem on the technical front and approach it as an engineer with fixed boundary conditions. It is crucial to understand and realize the crux of a certain system to also get to the core of the underlying problem, rather than waiting for anyone else to explain to us their view of the system and problem.
Awareness¶
Look for solutions: Look around at other people, who might have faced the same problem and look at the solutions they are using. Look at other solutions in totally different systems but with the same problems and see if they are a fit for your problem. Most of the times, the buck stops here and the problem is solved with a possible solution being discovered. But, we do care for one more core principle which influences entirely as to why certain solutions are not the best fits.
Fairness¶
Is it allowed? Not just in terms of legal, but in terms of morality as well. It is very important to consider the sentiments of each and every human and especially their rights, when they interact with our systems. Legally speaking, there might be some grey areas, but morally there are plainly some things which we cannot just allow on principle. And mostly this is how we judge the solutions and the philosophies behind them, as how they would affect us and in turn our customers.
Dexterity¶
DIY: If there is no solution which is legally and morally correct, or no solution technically at all, then it becomes the time for us to get our hands dirty and dive in completely to solve the problem from its roots and come up with a solution that provides us a way out of the problem once and for all. Resources become no concern as the best available methods, processes and people get attracted to us when we approach a well-aware core problem with fairness also in focus.
Community¶
One-for-all and all-for one: We strongly believe that we should be rewarded for what we do. And this is also sometimes a driver and motivation behind searching for solutions. In addition, we also equally strongly believe that we do not want to become gate-keepers but path-finders and light-bringers for others like us, searching for solutions in the dark. Putting back our efforts to the community, in a way which allows a beautiful, sustainable ecosystem to flourish makes complete sense, when we start contemplating that, the solutions would themselves never exist, if not for the base provided by the same thriving community.
With these core principles guiding us, we just rinse and repeat at every opportunity that comes in-front of us either as a special request, challenge or self-discovered problems. We are affirmed more than once that this belief in the core principles has potential to rescue the world trapped under various gate-keepers to a truly decentralized and fair ecosystem.
Hence, it does not come to us as a surprise that, all which we are building fits perfectly in the Web3 context, which also strives to unite over marginalizing or dividing people.
The ETOPay story¶
began exactly with the simplest of problems: How is it possible for a person to pay another person for goods and services offered on a platform in a way where the platform is not a gate-keeper?
With this started our search for solutions and we concluded that there is no platform as such which respects their end-users and their rights like data protection, but rather tries to exploit as much as they can from their users.
We started developing ETOPay and we realized that we actually are just using various solutions, which are already available in the community, but just presenting and connecting them in a way that makes it fair, legal and transparent.
Taking guidance from our core principles, we have decided to go open source with our solution and give it to the community, not just to help develop it further with us but also use it everywhere, where they encountered gate-keepers. To employ it in a way which guarantees fairness and transparency to their end users, baked right in the solution.