As part of the Waku Virtual offsite of 2025H1, we wanted to review and attempt to draft vision, mission and principle statements for Waku.
Waku originated from Status and is part of Logos, it naturally inherits their principles and manifesto.
However, those are difficult to practically apply to the work that the Waku team is doing, and the vision for Waku itself.
Hence, we proposed to work together in drafting vision mission statements and principles for Waku, that expresses more clearly how Waku contributes and is aligned to its parent entities.
Part of this exercise, we run a presentation with the Waku team to get feedback for this present recommendation. The presentation slides can be found here Waku Virtual Offsite 2025 - Vision, Mission, Methodology - Google Presentaties
We first reviewed why would one want to write such statements, by defining purpose and audience for a:
- Vision statement
- Mission statement
- Set of principles
Definitions
Vision statement
Expresses a world we are longing for, and the impact we want to see on humanity beyond a technology product. Rallying people behind a shared vision of the future.
Mission statement
Expressing how Waku team contributes to the vision, further identify our tribe and potential contributors, users and advocate can identify themselves as able to participate in this specific mission.
It acknowledges there are many ways to reach the vision, and the mission defined the selected way.
Set of principles
Agreed principles that contributors are aligned too; core values that expresses the team’s practices. Practical initiatives to applying Status and Logos governing principles.
Includes good software practice that the team wants to commit to, can be updated based on retrospective. Also acts as an open contract to our way of working to the external audience.
During the sessions, we came to the following conclusions:
- The vision should be specific to Waku, while enabling Logos. It should aim to be credibly neutral in regards to Logos.
- The long list of properties (censorship-resistant, private, open, sustainable) is difficult to include in a short statement, the word “decentralised” expresses best the sought after properties, even if not perfect. “Privacy” would be a worthy addition
- While Waku is indeed focused to “communication”, it actually enables “interactions”
- The list of principles is best kept short.
- There is a up-down relation between Vision, Mission, Principles, Priorities, Milestones and Deliverables. High-level to low-level. Long term goal to actionable steps.
Recommendation
Applying the results
Once set, add the statements and principles to several places:
- README.md
- CONTRIBUTE.md
- Websites
- Social platforms
As well as review marketing slogans to align with them.
For principles, work with the team on applying them in the day-to-day work, by engaging conversation and updating some processes.
Vision
A world where freedom of expression and privacy are guaranteed for anybody, anywhere.
Mission
Build decentralised protocols that enable private communication and interactions.
Principles
Open is the only way
This work is too important to be done in a silo - It will take all of our efforts combined to succeed. This projects relies on the feedback, accountability and collaboration of all those who share our vision. We must use public platforms to build a public good.
Specifications Are the Product
Specifications are how we share our ideas; Software is how we test them. We need both. Our work is not done unless it can be shared across the community.
Build to Learn
We’re not just building software—we’re building our understanding. Every feature we ship, every user interaction, every performance metric is data about what works and what doesn’t.
This means choosing the small experiment over the grand architecture, the quick prototype over the polished solution, and early feedback over waiting until its “good”. It means being willing to build something “wrong” if it teaches us what “right” looks like.
