The State of Governance and Funding Models

Transcript

introduce you. Yes. Okay, I can go. Good. Good morning everyone to the last day of program at the Valley of the Commons. Uh the last keynote uh of this year is given by Rashmi uh who just came this week. um but has been involved in the preparations of the event also and uh we met uh in in Switzerland last year right and then after Switzerland uh you came through here as well sort of common hub I think

it was you actually that prompted me to do valley uh or to do a zoo something uh uh myself if I if I think that this place is is fit for it uh >> yes Yes, it was on the walk to the river. Uh thank you so much. Thank you so much for the nudge. Yeah, it was right. It was the walk to the river and then sitting on the on the beach. Yeah. Uh so Rashmi is going to talk about uh uh state of governance and funding models. Uh governance in Dallas.

Um Rashmi is here uh uh for or representing Metag uh which does research on on governance in web 3. And uh yeah, I'm I'm very excited to to hear your presentation and then have a discussion on uh on I think like I think it is a question an open question in how far like what governance structures are we envisioning and uh in how far do we want them to be uh based on on on web 3. Uh yeah excited to hear from you. Thanks for being here.

>> Thank you so much. Okay. Um, hi everyone. So, I'm Rashmi. It's a pleasure to be here. Um, yeah, I've been here before and it's and it's just a lovely place where you just feel home. Um, like Jeff today morning also reminded me, come on, do we know it's it's just home. You're just talking to your friends and um so it's just nice. Um, so a little bit about me. I'm Rashmi. I work with Marag. I've been with them since for like three years and my longest relationship and so um basically I I I like the way they work. They're a research collective

which also uh do research by doing projects and getting involved with the ecosystem and then they uh write and present their research. Um so to move away from this image and give a little bit of brief intro. Um so I mentioned I work with MERGV. Uh my role with MEGV is of a research engineer. That's my title. So I am mainly uh for like I work with specific project of MEG called Dowstar. And uh what we do is we do DAO uh standards writing and then uh we authored an EIP called EIP 4824 which was for like Dows

you know collect all the metadata of Dows and put it on chain and then uh have it uh be consumed by every smart smart contract ever to make Dows more interoperable with within the onchain ecosystem and offchain ecosystem and regulatory bodies. Um, so I describe myself as a generalist. I I like development. I like engineering. I also like the non- tech part of it. Um, I am a bit too much of an extrovert to just be a developer. And uh, but yeah, I enjoy all things of it. Um, in the beginning of my career, I just liked doing things for like a specific impact or for a project rather than just like,

oh, I'm going to box myself into a front-end development or a back-end development or like a business development sort of thing. Um, I own a company called RWX Labs. That's how I operate. It's a oneperson company and uh it it just gives me a lot of flexibility being in India and working with international projects and companies and nonprofits. Um I yeah also in India crypto regulations are like a bit too tight but this allows me to sort up sort through all that. Um so yeah this is this is briefly I work with metaggov and right now I'm leading ETH India uh which on which I'll talk

about it later. Okay let's get into it. So today's talk is on state of Dows and uh state of governance and uh funding models. So I I don't like much of a slides. So I've just gathered together some materials where we can talk through these things. We can go through it uh briefly and uh discuss what comes up. So through my time in Meragav and uh ever since Meragav started uh we've we've done a lot of uh research on governance.

Uh let me just pull up a page. So uh we've done a lot of research on governance and AI and if you look into our projects there are uh projects like govase constitutions um koi pond and uh many other projects which just tackle the concept of governance and network states and in different ways and how they think about it. So we'll walk through some of the major projects uh from uh metag um and to begin with so governing many worlds was one of the uh

course uh by Joshua Tan our founder and this walks through uh beginnings of the Dao and the concept of it and then and then what exactly is Dao a little bit of prehistory and how did Vitalik define uh DAZA as whether be it decentralized autonomous uh companies or organizations um and a little bit of like open source history of it and how they came to be.

Um I'd like to just start with a question of uh what do Dows mean to you and what does like what do you imagine when a when the word DAO is thrown at you? This might be very heavy but I I would just like to know chaos and Kafka. Okay. Governance. Okay. Anyone else? Yes. Decentralized autonomous organizations.

Uhhuh. Okay. Um I'm just gonna pull up. >> Okay. So initially like Lawrence Lesie is one of the famous person who quoted like code is law but that had like a premise which uh which was which was for like how do we collectively govern ourselves and what are the four modalities of this constraint. Uh it is like the four distinct modalities are law, norms, markets and code. So when we

just say code is law it's it came with the premise that hey when when we are using any software product and say like let's take like a social media platform like Facebook or something um their terms of services and terms of usage are so broad and so impactful that they literally uh are impactful at societal changes. So this is like it comes from that where even if you do write something as a software and if it scales up and if it's adopted by many essentially it kind of becomes uh code is law and um human behavior constrained by like four

distinct modalities which is law uh norms uh norms can be also like culture how do we behave how do we want to behave how do how can we behave harmony ly um with the all the spectrum of collectivism and individualism and then markets. How do we transact within these norms and how can we create laws for us to um play like safe market practices and everything and then architecture code uh with information technology in in enforcable laws uh verifiable laws and everything uh in digital environments like basically software code and everything. Um there was also like decentralized society concept that came

up uh in order to counter react to the hyper financialization of web 3 where everything was just tokens everything was defi everything uh was was like you know we buy tokens we also buy governance rights. So in order to counter react we wanted to create like a sort of decentralized society where soulbound to tokens were introduced. Um and this was mainly like identity credentials uh based on your online reputation and things. Um [clears throat] and then uh this is the doc that I'm going through right now is a brief on the governing many worlds course. So it is

also uh getting into the quadratic mechanisms of like how can each person uh vote within the community and stuff. Um there are many mechanisms that went into it like quadratic voting um and okay what is this? I'm sorry. This is uh okay. Um when it comes to ownership uh the right to use, right to alter and destroy and right to profit and yield uh these things come up like even within

community say when you're proposing it's right to alter and uh and again if you're using a protocol or any comments uh you're using that and who defines the use of it and and can we even verify if you have the right to use it. So and also if we do make end up making any profit and uh like do you have the right to profit or are you just a parts or do you have like the ownership that gives you the right to profit and right to claim the yields of it. Um there are other things like especially harbor taxes and things was a popular concept.

um it's mainly for comments but then uh in some of the pop-up series that I attended there was a talk where could we use harajjo concepts for haraj taxation for like rooms where you know there are only few rooms but uh how can we effectively price the commons is what harajer taxation tackles and um if we consider like rooms or even like a hall or even uh say like we have a sauna and coal plunge thing, how do we effectively price it? Um but I feel in if we were to scope it um and get behind the effective pricing and uh model uh I think it would

ruin the you know experience of using it and uh all of it. that I think these things haraxation is more applicable in like a broader ecosystem level comments than just like uh individual building or a place comments. Um and then when we get into the like spectrum of governance model um we move from like financialized to identity reputation and to market based algorithms. So in like financialized uh uh governance models which is like Dows you have compound uh you have a you have uh

um you have unis swap and all this like where you have like tokens and you can actually purchase governance rights and based on how many tokens you own you can uh you it's like token weighted governance the more tokens you own the more uh say you have and then uh if you move later um in the other spectrum it's based on a reputation where you have like optimism badge holders not it's not just like token voting but you also uh your history of participation in the ecosystem is assessed and uh your reputation is is um assessed and you're given a sort of like identity and then

if you are like either a contributor, major contributor to a DAO or a contractor to a DAO, you can be assigned as a role. Um, and it can be a core contributor or it can be um some other roles might be like delegates and things like that. Um and then on the other side of the spectrum it's market and algorithmic future and prediction markets where like Dowstack was one of the platform where uh proposals you could predict which proposals um would pass and then based on that um the decisions were made. Um, I just want to check in if this is too much in the air

or if I'm okay. All good. Okay. Um, so when it comes to um like I just want to switch to another dock here where Where's the mic? Forgive me. This is just again I I premised this. This is a discussion, not like a lecture polished thought. So, um I hope you don't mind me going through my notes and all that. Um okay, here. Uh yeah, I just wanted to bring

this up like when it comes to decentralized governance um we it was the whole premise like oh we don't want to have monarchies but if we think about like uh how we interact with Apple Meta or Netflix or anything they are monarchies the the way they operate based on like terms of end user license agreement uh terms of services and all the terms and conditions that you click accept without seeing. Uh we can't even we don't even have like choice to alter or like modify. Um and uh the key challenges that come up with this is this sort of model um where major web

two platforms operate like monarchies is like um arbitrary rule making where they can literally in the name of keeping up with uh quality of service. uh they update their rank uh ranking algorithms which there have been many cases where uh these big companies have been sued in like malpractices or uh anti-competitive things and all like that. Uh my legal terminology might not be sound but just like I hope you get the gist of what I'm saying. Um and then there's also like content moderation in the name of like not allowing certain speech come up. We also know the

Facebook and how uh it impacted elections in US and all that. Um and then when it comes to like monarchies especially we want to use the tool but but we don't really want to operate in this system of monarchy. it's just hard and that's where this platform governance and decentralized platform governance as a concept started coming up. Um and uh just to go over more challenges, there's like a holdup problem um that comes in as you keep on using the platform. Like usually if you're a if you're a new user, you're like checking it out. Oh, this feels nice. This is okay. And then you know

what? If I don't like it, I'll just quit. But then you meet other people who are using it. You you just get more integrated in the ecosystem. And then at a point where you just reach uh even if you don't like it or even if you don't like some things you just have to use it because it has become a dependency like uh for WhatsApp you use it to talk to family or telegram you most of web3 is on telegram and even if telegram is reasonably okay but still uh yeah if you don't like it you can't um on this holder problem I I'm just wanted to map like um by the way everything that I'm saying is my personal opinion and not

the uh not the opinions of the organization that I'm part of. Um when I was reading about this holder problem and lock in uh it reminded me of the concept of network state uh where the whole premise is that we can provide community as a service and even the way it's set up is like monthly subscriptions and yearly subscriptions. Um and there it was also it's written that yeah you can exit if someone wants to exit you can exit. And if you think about it in like society

level exit might be moving to a different city moving to a different country moving to a whole getting a new passport and some things like that. But as you do get more integrated into societies and communities, it's becomes harder to exit because it's just not that simple. Yeah, you don't like it, just leave. Um but uh that's why uh decentralized governance like having a say in how you participate and how you wish to participate and having the at least the right to influence a change matters and um and like yeah this is I think we

discussed this before deficit of process legitimacy where anything that they alter banning political figures uh be it for whatever reason it just influences society at a large scale where we just don't have any control. Um and then when it comes to uh platform governance in the context of decentralized governance where we give everyone like a voting rights each each and every user each and every person um it again we again see uh many failures. So funny enough, I think Facebook also did this kind of a experiment where they asked their users to vote on a

referendum in the way back way back I just learned about it. Um but then they also saw like a very small percentage like 3 to less 1 to 2% um don't quote me on the exact numbers but very small percentage of their users actually ended up voting for this referendum and uh it's just like unpaid labor when you are asked to vote the cognitive load of consuming the immense uh information that is required to make a good decision uh is a lot and that's what creates like low voter turnout and then even if you do end up uh what consuming all of the

information and then end up making a good vote um eventually you'll realize oh not a lot of people are able to keep up with the cognitive load required to make good decisions and again it contributes to voter apathy um so yeah here's the example like oh it extremely low turnout which is.3%. Facebook's 2009 user referendum and yeah in web3 Dows it's like 1% to 10%.

And then again in the power concentration uh one token one vote. So in the beginning of it um it seems simple like you know okay participants of this platform or of this protocol or of this comments should be given the right but uh when we combine purchasing of tokens with exactly voting rights it becomes a little bit of tricky. um like right now imagine you vote in your country's elections or anything but your voting rights is not directly purchasable like I can't go and

pay a million dollars and purchase like a at least 10,000 people's votes there are many ways you can do this but but not like as simple in like a structural code in just like one two transactions um but when it comes to Dows and token voting. You can actually do that. You can go purchase tokens and you get voting rights. Um this is good and bad in many ways. We also t like web3 tackled this in different ways where oh uh you have tokens and then you have voting tokens differently and then there was a certain way where you want to gain voting rights but you have to lock your

tokens up and then only you can mint your voting uh tokens which uh gives you the voting rights. So the tokens that you buy still are locked up somewhere and you're not like speculating and selling and doing all that but you get what you need. Um and then uh so yeah forget the name civil resistance. Sorry, do you have a question? Sure. Yeah.

Um, I really was interested. First of all, I I do love the format and I'm I'm I feel like I'm in a classroom and I'm really learning very clearly delivered information despite not having as much of a background in programming. So that's just a general comment. Okay. So you just mentioned how um you were talking about like how you can differentiate in the model. You were talking about how you can differentiate like the function of tokens. Are you talking about like and these are like identical tokens that are amassed by a particular individual and that it's between minting and not minting that they preserve or give up their voting rights or pass over their voting rights.

Is that am I understanding? >> Um sorry I'm just trying to understand. Uh it's when you purchase tokens uh you >> you have like you're you're exchanging with like say ETH with uh a tokens for example and then you get a tokens and now uh you can lock these in in a wa uh to get voting rights. >> So it's not per se like mint and pass. It's just like it's the same protocol governance facilitating this. So you're actively trading a sum and then you're holding some. So that that is what gives you the right to vote I suppose or

>> Yes. >> Okay. >> Yeah. It's not trade. It's just like >> how you go to a bank and put your uh USD in in like a deposit and then it just creates a deposit. >> Now you can hold that uh deposit as a collateral. Say it's if it's like a $50,000 deposit and you can place that as a collateral. >> Got it? Now imagine simply like that you purchased a DAO protocol's tokens. Okay. Um you have your tokens and you're putting it in a wa and then the DAO protocol gives you like okay you have this much amount of voting rights and you can use those voting rights to participate in proposals.

>> Cool. That was amazingly clear. Yeah. >> Thank you. uh forget also if anyone has any find any gaps I know there are so many people who know more than me some people who have written books on governance police labs here and uh Jeff emit like being involved with metica for sure um if you find any gaps or if you would like to add to something that I'm saying please do uh pop up and add I would love that um okay and I think Danielle Um, I was wondering if there would be different kinds of things worth voting

on where you might exclude or include people. If some people are resident in a commons or a DAO, um, maybe voting on the day-to-day things should be more exclusively for them. This makes sense intuitively, but then it kind of might be a slippery slope. uh any comments on that or any thoughts around that? >> Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Um it depends on it is possible and it has been combined with like token voting with hats protocol where you um assign a role to certain um participants and [snorts] it is possible. Yeah. Not everyone is

supposed to be voting on everything cuz they might not have good context or they might have different intent. Uh it depends on the governance design that you choose for and it's programmable and you can really set that up for sure. I want to add that uh at least TDF experience has shown that yeah on daytoday you want to only have people on the ground voting on that but you don't necessarily want to do it to a through a DA you want to do it in a physical circle of people of what are we having for lunch today and yes it's always a slippery slope anything

Um I think you will cover that anyway but since you're on that topic so are there other mechanisms of decision making that have nothing to do with voting? Um so do you think Dow are um able to finally go away from the voting as a decision-m mechanism and if so how >> uh I don't know if uh are fully able to go away from like token worded decision making um but there are other forms of uh ways where

you can do get involved in decision- making. Um so even if you are not a token holder uh most dows the way their governance um model works is um you have a forum discourse forum open forum where all the proposals are put up like this is the change that I want to make and let's discuss this how do you feel about this and so in a discourse forum you do go through comments you do you share your opinions me even if I don't have like a if I don't have tokens in like say Gitcoin or something I can go and say that hey I come from an open source background your the the proposal that

you're discussing impacts open source community so I want to share my two cents and please do consider it you can go and uh yeah comment on the forums um but then if you're new and uh if you are showing in the community like as a new face, it's it's a bit hard to get your point conveyed unless you have like already a reputation in a different community. Um, so yes, there are ways, but it's it's just more like even if you don't have token voting rights, you can just be a participant in the ecosystem. Like for

me I don't have token voting rights in many of the Dows but uh I have worked with them in or maybe I have like done some software development contracts with them so I can just share my thoughts and they you can just get uh get your two cents in but u in the official way it's mostly token rights that because of the way system Um, yeah reputation influence borrowed reputation.

Yeah, these are the top of my answer, but I'm sure there are other ways to >> um, okay, >> I would >> throw in >> answer. Yeah, >> Bitcoin as a mostly and Bitcoin is debatably the first Dow uh, in the original sense of autonomous from decision making from human decision making. So the only decision in Bitcoin is uh who upgrades to a new uh uh version of the code and who doesn't like if not all of them update the we have a fork. Uh but yeah, arguably that's a it's a DAO that mostly deals without voting, at least

not token based voting. It's it's hash rate uh uh uh upgrades or well depending on on who has how much hash rate uh uh they take decisions, miners take decisions on what what software to run. >> But yeah, coordination less uh dow. >> Yeah. >> Yes. >> Voting less doubt. That's one example. Thank you, Felix. Um, okay. So, coming back to this um yeah uh so power concentration becomes one of the failure modes uh when it comes to token voting. uh because you

will see in the later examples that I'll share uh we also did like a uh retro analysis of a DAO uh most of the times at the time when the DAO launches the token the power concentration is set up and it remains largely the same over the years and it doesn't change much even though you are asked to delegate even though you're asked to redelegate even though some people do end up selling their tokens or selling their voting rights but largely the power concentration remains the same. Um and uh yeah even though you do end up delegating

it kind of again this is personal opinion it kind of becomes like delegates become politicians where they have to work for the same protocol. They have to have the best interest but the implementation of those best interest and the approaches of those best interests might not be agreed upon by everyone uh consensually like um all the delegates might not agree upon one single approach is what I meant to say. So again yeah um times over delegated where um say a delegate who is

loudest who is more popular who's social uh and hence they are more relatable and they're more understood then they get more uh what's delegated to them and uh there's epistemic degradation too sometimes even delegates it's it's a lot of work uh where later down the road uh Dow also came up with delegate compensation uh program where delegates were being compensated for their work and how they participate and everything. Um so it's largely the premise of like

decentralized governance is based on wisdom of crowd and uh I forget the name of the theorem but uh there's a theorem that said it's the wisdom of crowds and and is more better uh at coming to a good decision- making than an individual. But there's a caveat to that. uh it means that it it only is true if the individual is better at making decisions more than at more than 50% of the times like they make a good decision more than 50% of the times. So um so that's why all these problems come in where we just

end up replicating the inefficiencies of democracy democratic governance into again platform governance in a decentralized way. Um and then again if we move into the security vulnerabilities and governance attacks um by just taking token control you can literally um say put up a proposal pass it and and delegate all the treasury money to you and um and also humans are humans too right so there are many cyber security vulnerabilities that come up if you're working in like DS which have a large amount of TV uh like millions of dollars and

things like that. Um and then also bribing attacks where borrowing voting rights where um like you can lobby for a proposal to get passed. It's just the same thing that we keep seeing in democratic governments. Um and then legal and regulatory uncertainty. Um okay so there was an interesting theory that uh we found out why why Dows did even exist and um why did we even want Dows and we also had like legal rappers come up um like when we researched when we did a retro

analysis and uh we found out that the main reason for decentralization was um to avoid regulation regulatory liability Because at the beginning of the Dows when it started it was a very uncertain time for crypto tokens uh everything that was going on in web3. So it was better to have a legal DAV rapper and uh say that we collectively own this. No one no single entity or no single person is liable uh was safer than to go with traditional uh company entities and where you had more reg KYC requirements filings a lot of

that. So, Delaware and Wyoming, we had like legal rappers which helped them create Dows and things like that. Um, did anyone have a question? Should I speed it up? Should I go up? >> Okay. I wonder and I've been wondering since the beginning of the house uh why there is relatively little uh uh interaction between digital democracy or liquid democracy scholars uh and and DAO architects because so my my PhD supervisor was one of them or is one of them. He's looking

into uh platforms used by pirate parties and uh podmos and other [sighs] party structures that want to have more liquid uh democratic forms and main finding being that it's not the technology like the issue is not technology is not ripe for it but the issue is border apathy and and stuff like that that technology can't really fix that easily or or rather brings it to the four more. Um, and then basically last 10 years of DAO uh uh building is just that plus clunky interfaces and uh hacks. Um but really I I keep on being surprised how

most if not all of the DAO world can be so stubbornly ignoring uh findings uh uh uh from the system there clumsily trying to imitate it. I don't get it. Yeah. It's not just Americans. It's also there also it's Yes. Yes. Yes. Uh uh Americans are ignorant. Uh but [snorts] ah okay, Americans are ignorant. Uh Europeans are the ones using these platforms or or having developed them.

Pirate parties is more a European thing. I think at least in in in politics proper. So Americans being ignorant uh don't even know about or want to hear about European projects. Is that it? she's talking um it's about power and like the way in in some ways I think the dynamics that you're describing are um highly relevant to let's say a very large population um that is given very kind of absolute choices right so like when you're talking about voter apathy two-party system that that is built on the back of everything is kind of like a a um what is it a behind the curtain type of

dealings like you mentioned the lobbyists and the kind of monopolies and all this other stuff like that is in the US at least what what generates voter apathy however the trend shows over and over and over again when more people show up to vote in the US it always swings more left I know it's our version of left okay um you know yeah you're right yeah and then and then when the less people vote it's always to the right because and then if you look if you break down the demographic even more the people that always show up are also the people that have the closest relation to to the power system that they're trying to produce, which then goes all the way back to the fact that those were the first land owners and they were the first ones who determined what the state was. So, it is a kind of

like it's it's a power cascade simply, but like in your country, YouTube, where like it doesn't matter if a party, correct me if I'm wrong, in the election, it doesn't matter if if a certain party gets the most votes. It's they have to actually cross a certain threshold of the majority. Correct. Right. Like you have to get over 50% and if not, you it's forces a coalition. like they have to. So I'm I'm just wondering like even like if you were to just take like the most bland direct analogous thing you would you could redistribute the power of what a token is in terms of voting.

>> Um redistribution is a different different thing. Um like I I understand I've always wondered too like even in um software development practices uh corporations big corporations say like even the meta or Apple the way they work is they have a software development protocol one is like agile workflow or waterflow workflow where a a way of operating is not just set in stone and there's There's a I have to write this out and publish this but my ideal way of working of a DAO would be something like an

agile workflow combined with DAO governance where uh where we combine the software development practices of agile development and then DAO governance where as the community as uh as we live through uh times and we can just keep on updating it's agile where it means adapting to the reality and uh one of the reasons why we have we are in the condition where we are is uh air drops were the start of it all in my understanding where once distributed it's hard to take it back. It's hard to uh taking back is not not uh legible answer at all but it's hard to ask

people like you know think about your voting rights. It's important you know uh delegate or redelegate or give up or something like that. Let it be in the market supply. It's just hard. So these changes uh happen over time and yeah it's also in the past five 10 years even yeah it's been slow in these things too I think yeah air dropdrops once you drop the tokens and even airdrops is assessed by based on the participation because who are you going to airdrop to your community members who have been active participants and if the active participants the people in academ IA who do not have more knowledge um or who did

have more knowledge weren't active participants of this protocol they kind of are not eligible for that even though they do have the knowledge they can do participate in consulting and there are many DAO consulting forums that did come up but again uh not to digress I'll just uh come back um okay so there were some emerging innovations and governance solutions to just like token voting even the spectrum and everything where um we had biccameal where there's a one council and then there's a core council like yeah optimism token house where it they voted based on token voted rights

and then citizen house one person one vote powered by NFTs um and then hybrid governance structures etc Um there was also jewelry system. I I on the top of my head I can't say which exact DAO did do this but uh there were a lot of experiments to tackle this voter apathy and making sure token voted governance just doesn't take it all. um market-based epistemic supplements were like futuri and there was a time I think one or two years ago futuri got really popular um

but it's for me it's a bit unrelatable personally where how you would assess exactly a proposal's impact and its market impact and bet on it but people who are more close to a DAO especially if it's a D5 or it's a financial financial asset facilitating thing. Uh it's more quantifiable for people who are close to it. Um uh then there's deep in tokconomic architectures. Let's read through it.

um physical infrastructure networks managed by two-sided platform incentives via burn and mint. Uh I have some vague understanding but I'll I will come back to this later. Sorry. Okay. And then we went through this we went through this Okay. Um, okay. So now we went through the

spectrum and we also discussed a little bit of uh decentralized platform governance and things like that delegation and representative models by camera market based. Okay, if you were to go through go to a comparative analysis and uh look through a governance model and their strength and vulnerabilities. Let's look. Okay, so one token one vote where voting weight equals token holdings. This is like highly capital alignment where it

was uh we discussed uh the financialized uh way of governance and uh it's simple to implement even in smart contracts and it's more of for like compound and unis swap governance and all they implemented this and uh in liquid democracy where we could have revocable wood delegation I we had to keep on delegating at a certain interval and make sure we don't lose our voting rights. um was with like Gitcoin and then I know we also had VGTC if someone can help me here. Uh

voting rise GP uh Gitcoin so that was there and um quadratic voting was also a thing. um cost of n votes equals n credits. Just because you don't uh you you buy x number of tokens, you don't immediately get the same number of it. You square root it and that's what your voting power is. Um and then role based protocol one was one of the most popular for this. um like based on who is involved in the DAO they are assigned role and based on their role they get to vote I think this is simple enough to

understand in role based uh governance systems um here it requires in the initial who is given a role why are they given a role are they is it reassessed are they still in the same position to hold that role um and but here the strength is like clear operational facility like if developers vote on uh Dow proposals which implement the technical changes and if it's a broader change um for like maybe implement a new token or implement a new add a new swap pair um that would be more of like market participants and not

just developers. So here people who are close to the knowledge to make that decision making uh get the better um better edge at making good decisions. Um okay so I can share this a bit more. I also worked with Q protocol. Um but it's it's the their governance system was like sorry Did something happen?

>> Conviction waiting. Ah yes. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Uh I mean there are many way many things to add I guess but conviction voting is one that was developed by Jeff among others at the very least. No, Zaram just advertised by Jeff and applied to everything under the uh moon and the stars and the sun and so on. Um fun stuff. >> Yes, I will.

>> Comes with issues. >> Maybe Jeff can briefly share conviction voting. I'd love to. Sorry to >> no >> actually I thought I saw on there timocracy was that or was that timocyc >> democracy I think here somewhere >> I don't know but I read it as timeocracy and I was like damn I wish we called conviction voting that because I mean it makes you know so the the idea of conviction growth was actually a response to some of the early issues in DAO voting experiments like Aragon uh one of the early sort of Dowo platforms was seeing basically what was a lastm minute. Um so the Dow is open or the

vote is open all week. uh all week it would be pretty much yes by pretty much most of the vote and then in the last few minutes if the whale disagreed they would come in and just put all the votes on no and it would switch in the last 10 minutes and then the vote would be over and everyone was like wait a second this is just kind of a a time attack on something that we don't actually need to all cast at the same time I mean we have certain technical debt with voting systems like we need to count them all at the same time because it's pieces of paper and pen or you know um but with blockchains we now have global distributed state that tracks the time.

So actually I think this allows us to go from voting for Danielle's question to more signal processing because it's not uh we cast a vote and then a decision is made. It's you are adding to the collective signal over time and you can view that signal over time whether it's growing whether it's decreasing. uh and then at any point we can choose to act on that signal. So it's not a single point in time votes are cast and now it's over. It's kind of like liquid democracy. You can lend your weight to this proposal and if it gets enough weight and then we all agree this is the thing to do great we do it and if it doesn't then you can see it kind of like fading from the group um preference base. You have more

the underlying idea being that conviction acrru and decreases over time right so if you set your conviction let's say you have a thousand tokens uh that would mean your conviction maximally can be a thousand but it takes time to get there and also to go away from there right if I change my uh allocation at first I still vote for uh option A which now I decide I don't want to. So over time it decreases my emphasis on or my my allocation to A and goes more to B. But that that takes time because then if if it's 10 minutes uh until end of the vote, I can change uh

my allocation, but it takes like let's say a day to to fully reallocate my vote. So I can't I can't do uh time attacks anymore. Yeah, depending on on on on how much delay you have for reallocation, but you introduce a a time component into changing uh uh opinion. Um um it seems to me the issue in that situation which I don't know super well is the fact that there's a whale in the first place who has disproportionate

say rather than like a time issue. >> It does not at all counter putoaucracy in itself. Um yeah just to add to that I I think um for me why I also asked the question about is there another way than voting because voting has a particular idea of decision making it's interest so there's an interest and everyone's interest should be expressed and therefore it's a fairer and better system but that relies on a lot of assumptions for example that yeah individualism and the expression of

freedom and needs and desires has to do with your own freedom and that makes a better society and it might I don't know um it also lies on relies on this old discussion between freed men and free men about shareholders and stakeholders it also relies on on um um companies and their logic so what Philix said before also there are so many people who have thought in depth in response to problems in communities big and small ones about what is a decision who who can make a decision and what do we actually need do we need everyone do we need the decision to move on yes sometimes we do sometimes

not but I think what's missing there's a lot of um math and it's great but also there is a lot of theory and a lot of concept and a lot of history lived history that could help to get out of this um framework of a decision therefore you know we come to a result therefore we can move on and I think therefore I I'm always sus a little suspicious of this or I'm sad that it's so stuck in this trajectory it's well in well the majority of the market is yeah okay cool then show me the dow that actually um where what can we do?

>> So So why is it not out there? >> I I still provoke him. Wait. Okay. Okay. >> You're not done, but we'll Yeah. Okay. Um I think uh uh Dows and and the stuckness on on voting and uh on on governance tokens in the end uh whose value is a vote is a classical power speaks to truth and not truth to power. Truth to power is what we're trying to argue for. Hey, there's 200 years of of uh uh academic thought on this uh uh maybe worth looking into. And maybe your technical solution is not really what we need. But if you have the technical solution and it is tied in

with billions of of dollars, uh you don't want to hear that this is the wrong way. And I think that is simply what we're playing through here is >> this is the solution. Now what's the question? And uh uh we find out that uh uh actually the questions that these structures are able to answer are not very interesting but a stubbornness of capital to make it work or at least a cosplay to make it work. And the I just wanted to add one more thing is like I know I'm cool even if we do want to change with the knowledge player throw of knowledge that we have.

Um we started off as like an MVP and then we kept on evolving and it's been evolving and I'd like to say that I would want to believe that it's still evolving and changing and upgrading. Um, but the thing is there's so much market dynamics at play that it's unttrackable and we don't know what the impact of that change would be. So it's a bit slower to get upgraded even at the technical level change because even if we do want to do a technical change, we would have to put it to a proposal and they're like show us the impact. Can we make sure this failure mode doesn't happen? It's just uh yeah once we get to track it yes you would say you would we would think I

also would think like yeah everything is on chain you guys let's just track it let's just do large scale data analysis build data links warehouses track it all but it's again um again a thing that we need to do I hope we do it and we need to map the market dynamics and what exactly that has impact on. Um so yeah uh but it's nice that we do care about this and we do want to improve and we can't ignore the plethora of knowledge that we have.

Uh Jesse had something. So Daniela, I this is it's intriguing what you're saying about being stuck on voting and maybe I'm stuck on voting. I'm not super in the DAO world. I sort of am aware of it. I'm like seems interesting. Seems overly crypto or something, but my where I my like operating assumption is we need more democracy. We don't have enough of it. And when I think democracy, I think voting. And there's all kinds of inefficiencies or whatever, but the most of those inefficiencies are because we don't have enough of it. And

if we had more direct democratic control over capital, that would help everything magically somehow in my mind. Uh, and I'm sure I'm half wrong about that. Uh, but yeah, like when you say alternative things to voting, like what do you have in mind? >> Yeah, that's a fair question. And also just to say this is not a critique because I think all the experiments we have to do something and no one can do everything. So this is not at all to say ah let's not do it. I think it's super important. So for me um trying to speak a language that that might resonate then like with what you are doing. So if you believe that you can move forward and

why do you have a da why do you have a government you want to reach something you want safety you want growth you want whatever so if you believe you reach that goal with democracy and I'm with you and if you believe voting is the right way you still um make the assumptions about the individual the interest fairness but what if you have you can create meaning for communities like say maybe it's not so important what you think here and there but there's an agreement and we have to kind of get this meaning from somewhere we have to produce this and we have an agreement on we want that there is less crime and maybe we don't know what this

means I might think everyone should have healthcare someone else might think no everyone needs to work in fact we don't know but maybe there are forms of meaning a cruel or systems that help us make meaning and then instead of us voting we give information in a different way. So I don't have the language for that but maybe if someone can add to this or think and put a language to it maybe you >> that's how I mention it. >> Yes that is actually one of the proposed solution in of the in the research that we did uh it's called sensemaking and uh we yeah collectively um reach out to the EOS system participants

get where their opinion and uh feedback is and then we collectively sense may across different verticals and parameters. Um I will just pull up so okay so now we're in these two part of it like so governing many worlds and these two things are covered I know we completely ignored the time what said there's not at all five minutes but to skip here um since we are already in the thick of it and discussing problems and possible solutions Um, GAVAC is the initiative that uh, Eugene,

one of our research director led. This is the just pull up. So the the thing is that we need the premise of this is we have had uh, immense governance experiments. We started it, we uh we iterated over it and uh we still are not able to find a stable enough dynamic within the governance where we can agree upon and we can stabilize and we can make decisions reliably as a collective. Um that's why we started seeing like major Dows taking uh giving up control or like their labs or foundations taking control

from the Dows to the labs itself where okay you Dows it's not efficient enough it's not reliable enough we don't know where the we are we are entering deep bare market and we don't want to let the malicious actors that might have different incentives remain who remain still remain in the DAO active participation to be the decision makers. So we are taking up control. So there are a lot of uh governance these experiments did not instill confidence uh still and there was a need where we wanted to accelerate governance where we find uh where we where we do a research on what exactly

are the problems what different solutions could come up how many different DO governance models can be come up and still put some money and and test it out and then prove like a really good use case for governance because if we do end up not doing it uh in the coming two years it would be seen as Dows as a failed experiment. So we didn't want that to happen and Eugene led this initiative governance acceleration and uh it's not it's not that we always have to decide on every goddamn thing and maximalize governance on every edge and node. It's just that

on the important stuff especially when it comes to right when it comes to impactful decisions we have to be able to identify them first what exactly is impactful and then use the right tools to facilitate and process it. Um so uh oh in this if you learn through it like it came from governance is dead because even the participant in governance uh like Dows just did not feel comfortable or they were just burnt out with the amount of invisible labor they had to do and they knew that it wasn't unsustainable and it started was from like just throwing around oh you know what governance is dead you it's

it's not going to survive. But then we kept on experimenting and then uh I think A16Z and some other folks uh introduced progressive decentralization where you do not start just as a DAO but you start you decentralize slowly as as you make more societal impact as you make more ecosystem impact and then you share your token voting rights or whatever governance system that you have. Um, yes, Erin, >> can I ask can I ask a quick question about some of the research that was done here? Did they look into any of the like psychological aspects of decision fatigue? Because that seems like you just said that that's what triggered

when you said you don't have to vote on every goddamn thing because I mean >> every day you're asked to make a million decisions in your life. And so then if you're involved in multiple Dows and there's all these constant um proposals coming up, you know, I can understand why people just nope out and just say I I don't care or I I don't have the bandwidth for this. So did any of the research that was conducted here kind of because you were talking about this like other options than voting like the sensemaking maybe that makes it a little bit less burdensome. Uh just curious. >> Yeah. Yeah. Actually that did surface like it came off as like fatigue voting fatigue that I share here. Um by the way governance acceleration this whole research was conducted in a methodology

where every governance participant is interviewed across different questions and verticals and they're prompted over it. Uh if you do want to participate you can still participate and I think this platform can put it up. Yeah, this this was the way we conducted this research. It was it's harmonica where you continue where you do all these things blah blah blah. Uh and then AI asks uh some basic governance template questions and then based on your answers it asks you to clarify it takes into that direction. So it's not generic survey of like Q&A where we trying to gauge uh what exactly do we

want to ask to a large group of surveying people but AI decides if you are talking about voting rights isn't biggest issue for you it would keep asking you uh on on that issue and get more out of you on that topic. If someone else is talking about, you know what, you guys, I don't like I don't have enough money to buy uh token voting. I want to be able to buy more to voting rights for to I'm just making up an example, but you get the point. Um this was the way it was done. Um so this is a good research survey platform and all of this research was

categorized and then surfaced into problems and uh you see here proposed uh raised by raised by is like all the people who raised these problems. I'm so you you there. >> Okay. >> Uh this is interesting and also something I'm uh I I work a little bit at is um trying to help people vote on things and having AI explain uh the rules in a simple, you know, uh demographic based explanation.

If a law is coming up for a proposal, you shouldn't need to read the depth of it. You should know like, hey, as someone who stays here, this is how it's affecting you. You can also check out how it's affecting people who have invested money into the commons or whatever. >> But a way of explaining laws that way. What I've been noticing is that it feels like we like the DAO and all of this tech should be a layer below. And surely if we're using AI here and if we're asking for feedback and if we're asking for proposals why can't we have a system which is self a self feedback loop like you vote you can say whether you're happy with the way the vote turned out or not and then if a lot of people aren't you might adapt the voting

structure but you shouldn't even need to know about the tech under the hood. Um it seems that most of the parts are here. Has there been research or any experiments with self uh kind of feedback loops like adaptive uh governance models that use this tech but adjust to feedback from the community? >> Uh not as agile and as uh adaptive to the voting environments as we would want to be. Uh I also think that is a there's a good reason to that. Like imagine if we okay right now in this room we have chairs here we have the screen here we

have speakers we have the background ops there and the sofa there and imagine someone doesn't like it and uh there's a this person is able to convince a group of people again like you know what you guys this would be better if we keep so if we keep the speakers there because it makes it like a home theater system or something. So if we always kept changing uh based on um if we always kept changing the system governance system and structure uh repeatedly we would not be able to surface good governance knowledge like uh this is this is the premise that I have. I also kind of am okay with governance structures changing slowly rather than rapidly um because

um if you look at corporations uh we discussed that they work as monarchies and it's like a hub and spoke model for the technical thing where all the information is collected in one and then it's sorted out and then this the person the hub becomes a good um the knowledge base to maintain and run. Like if you look at if you study HSBC like I think a few yeah last year I was hanging out in Singapore library and they had like many books on HSBC and how they function and how they did become so big. Uh their corporate knowledge and the way they work is so similar to monarchies and

empires where they want to have that knowledge. they want to document everything and they do document everything and they do keep on iterating this. So here when it comes to like monarchy models when the uh people who are participant of the hub don't keep changing and don't keep moving away and they are not always expo exposed to external incentives. rapid change to the structure works. But when it comes to decentralization uh when it's like a mesh model if you would want to say if we kept changing how we gather a common knowledge and it I don't think it would be sustainable

and that is one of the reason why Dows haven't been able to solve the legitimacy problem like we can't reliably say yes this DAO does it well and we can rely on them. There's always we also have to talk to labs, foundations and and the Dows to make sure a decision is cohesively agreed upon, understood and actually will come into implementation before something happens. >> I have one follow-up comment and then I'll pass it to I think you are first.

Um I think on the lens of commons and maybe I'm I'm looking at this a bit too narrow but there are a lot of things that require governance. some which absolutely do not like what we're having for lunch for example there is a spectrum >> I think that if there is a defined way and if we are hesitant to adapt the way we govern ourselves to the different needs of governance you might have the similar problem of one thing doesn't fit all the needs >> so there's a balance I think to strike between being too dynamic that it changes too often >> but also having one monolithic decision that doesn't fit the needs appropriately and people diverge and make their own

solution for another thing. Um, but yeah, it's good. >> That's true. Thank you. Um, there was also I I'm moving way too slow. I'm so sorry you guys. There's also so many things that I wanted to cover where constitutions where DAO started coming up with like, hey, you know what? Let's set up a constitution. Uh, and uh, let's actually just go into it. Let me speedun. So here, um, Usenet Usenet if you know it it was a previous gosh English predecessor of uh worldwide web and uh this is what uh we used to share information news in a network. Um

and uh so there also they used to declare sort of like a constitution because they wanted to share information and if you you can't just be spamming the whole network, right? It was expensive that so they started creating constitutions and it was more of like declarations of goals. Yeah, we want to share this news but for what purpose? you want to achieve a you know clean air or something and values and what are our values what are what we as a community stand for and what you as a community participant have a right to share or participate in what way and contribute in what way. So, Dah has also started creating this and uh um when we analyze

these documents um the two unique aspects of these documents was they often governed significantly more resources than previously observed online communities. Like previously observed online communities used to just say hey you can't share about these topics and these don't. You have to share it in this template and not these. um anything that you're sharing should be backed by reputable source or something like that. But um these dows uh web three dows and web three constitutions govern more resources. They they cover how a treasury can be used. Say like you have a you have a a treasury proposal cannot be more than a million dollars per

transaction for example or um and then if we are making any change to the constitution the quorum is super high it should be 80% or more. So things like these are uh different more resources that are set up uh in this constitution and uh they are also used in conjunction with smart contracts. So it's not just like a law. The enforcement is not just by people and decision makers. It's also by code and code architecture. So these were the two most unique aspects of web3 constitutions and we analyzed about 19 DAO constitutions and observe a number of common patterns and uh yeah we ended

up creating they vary from like 300 were blog posts just like and two legal charters and the rigorousness of these contributions also were differing. We have a data set of this I can share these links later and you can go through all of them. Um so yeah um with the premise that yes we have to write laws and code and program everything should be programmed. Um as it became important we also realized they they cannot govern communities as a whole. We also need to have like a you know how we enter this home and you have like guidelines that you leave your shoes outside kitchen is here we cook vegan

vegetarian food or something and uh we some of our members are allergic so let's not make let's make sure that we don't include peppers or gluten in in our food. So these guidelines are guidelines but when it comes to constitution it's more rigorous. these this is how we want it and this is how we how things will be um and uh yeah it's just for like good governance and how the community wants to be data sets and methods we classify if it's open free inclusive and or can it be amended can or once written it's just set >> oh sorry um I wanted to ask uh two

things So first how these are enforced if they are not when the guidelines are not parametric don't apply you know to something that could be basically decided by a smart contract and what is the best way in which those deal with conflict resolutions and also if you had any kind of comments on citizen house of optimism and which basically it's an experiment in a way to make active you know contributors have a representation that is soul bound so is one person, one vote and it's interesting experiment in how you know basically by your own contribution you can actually have a voice and yeah they even apply to even to apps and to chains in the optimist

collective. >> Yeah. Um so enforcement of constitution um it's some of it because it's combined together with smart contracts say if it's something programmable it was usually programmed but when it comes to like decision-m and what's our intent and what our values are it largely relied upon the proposers delegates who vote upon it and if it's something aligned or not aligned and uh things like that. um conflict resolution it if it's in a more serious case it depended upon the juris jurisdiction of the legal rapper that they used um else they would form a council and then they resolve

conflicts within themselves um I don't have any comments on citizen right now but maybe more on that later I can share um and then what else Yeah, if we go through these um yes, some of these cone goals, values and rights mainly and their goals usually varied from creating a technology that hey we're a DAO and we hope to create this coordination technology or this thing or etc. And uh their goal sometimes also was like to spread a technology and some on the other times it was just like creating

um devoted to other goals. And then on the values it was more open sometimes decentralization free inclusive I won't dig deep into it but yeah feel free to read upon >> go on you had a question. >> Okay. Uh >> okay sure. Um and then decentralization was the core value where we even though they had a constitution even though they were a DAO we didn't want to end up making a centralized decision where like only a group of people end up making decisions that was the thing um rights again members shall not have to make a proposal create a proposal in these way

where first you discuss it in forums second it goes on to like off-chain voting which was one of the common governance uh model where First a proposal discussed in forum then it goes to temperature check like how does a community feel about this if you take it seriously. Uh uh this was usually snapshot offchain voting and then when the temperature check passes it would go on to off onchain voting where yes we are serious about this and we need to make a decision on it right now and that's how we ended up finalizing a proposal and implementing it. Um, yeah.

Right to exit a community, yeah, etc., etc., sell your tokens or things like that, sorry. Okay. Towards computational constitutionalism because this was combining constitution was combined with smart contracts. Um it can be computational constitutionalism. Um and there are there are a lot of ways where we can go about it like we had Aragon, we had Dow House, Snapshot, Snapshot had

different voting mechanisms like oh you can either vote yes or no. On some proposals you can vote uh yes, no or abstain. And some other proposals you can choose a priority order where oh I want this is my first preferred option. This is my second preferred option. This is my third. So computational constit constitutionalism was a thing and many dowo tools came up with different solutions and how they want to implement them and some of them were really really popular and well adopted well received.

Um yes uh there was also after this research we suggested a template on how you could propose your own constitution. What are the main aspects of a DAO constitution that you want to cover? Um yeah I won't get into this because I still have a little bit more and I think I took more than one and a half hour. Yes sure. I'm wondering if any of the research looked at the user experience of the platform. I'm assuming they all have their own custom like voting mechanisms and interfaces. Yes. And when you talked

about like the kind of customs of a house, like how you take off your shoes or how we prepare food, like the the user experience of the the place where the voting is happening, the decision-m happening is has such an impact. Yes. >> On like engagement and all that. And so I'm wondering if >> any of the research focused on the actual experience of the the people and how that did or did not affect engagement etc. >> Yes. Um yeah, user experience did matter a lot. Initially, every DAO started having their own um governance board uh where oh, you want to vote on this DAO, you come into this specific website and then go vote on

this, connect your wallet, blah blah blah. And then we started having more DAO tools aggregation platforms uh like boardroom like agora and uh compound um compound sorry gosh I forget the name um but yeah we had DAO tools where we aggregated all the DAO platforms and where uh uh if you have voting rights you just connect your wallet you choose DA which you want to participate in Manchester the US UX was considered and the ecosystem was constantly building tools for it for sure. Um and um constitutions I'll just briefly touch upon govbase. This is a

quantitative and qualitative data warehouse where we map a pleotra of governance data. Um here we have tables based on projects like DAO projects what were the platforms software and research uh projects that was used when it comes to governance who were the organization that participated in that what were the different kind of structural concepts and institutions social antologies instances cases where the DAO hack uh game gate and what all happened which impacted ed the DA ecosystem in a major way. Um and documents and constitutional model.

I will open up the air table so we can just have a brief look but it's a very vast database. Um so you see open law it's an active this is I'm not sure if it's uh updated but please view it as historical data and um yeah uh open law it's active it's an online community what category does it belong to it's a product and in subcategory it's an application protocol implements the description website code just a plethora of data. Um, more than

projects which might seem like oh everyone in the DAO ecosystem, you can get into the more nuances of like organizations like Dow Dow was one of the really well adopted platform where it had many Dows created on it. Cardano ecosystem um Yeah. >> So is Medic operate kind of like a think tank in that sense because this is just like open source.

>> Yes. Yeah, it is open source. A lot of a lot of our work is open source. We are a nonprofit organization. Uh >> researchers are funds the is it researched? I mean sorry who funds the research? It's ex incredible like >> Yeah. Uh we do raise grants. >> I see. Wow. >> Yeah. It's a research collective. >> Yeah. There are many research directors who take ownership of the projects. >> And do you guys also like develop bespoke suggestions for Dows and are hired as such or is it really just public knowledge formation? >> We do both sometimes like with a project that I worked for Dowstar to enable and promote uh EIP 4824 um standard. We did develop some DAO

tools. We did help them adopt this. Yeah. In some cases we do in some cases. Yeah, I I want to just look into the social antologies because this might be more interesting. Um mathematical game theory and there was a yeah in one of this um gawak thing uh one of the problem that was shared is that over reliance on game theory. Yes. Over reliance on game theory. Like every time we discussed something it's just like oh you know what game theory let's go about it by game theory. this is how token economics would work blah blah blah and it's yeah one of the it's one of the problem that because we come from

research we come from math we come from developer and it's structured but humans usually are not as structured as we want to be um yeah humans are messy and chaotic and and just feelings Yeah. And always revolving. I'm not saying this lack of structure is a bad thing. It's it's a really good thing. That's what makes us resilient in a lot of nature even. So, but yeah, um just some things that ended up becoming problems in some way. And uh if we look at the urgency tab, we say here which is the most urgent problem that we need to

solve. And people say it's like token voting failure and putoaucracy and lack of clear purpose where Dows don't even want to know what they want to achieve is a thing. And then solutions. Yes. Uh here is where the sense making where Daniela and uh Jesse were discussing sense making is one of the proposed solution that is in production grade. Um and uh voting equity and buyback models are one of the established um solutions where if someone's taking too much control, we just buy back their voting rights. Um there are so many ideas uh some of still

in research mode, some of it in piloted mode. I also had uh created like a hackathon project which I ended up winning in ETH Prague. It was called DAO janitor. Uh DAO janitor it was just adding like a KBAN board to proposals where hey we want to see what is the status of this proposal implementation and how is it going who's accountable for this proposal to be implemented. Uh it was it was welcomed uh by one in DAO and they liked it and but yeah like all hackathon projects they sit in GitHub graveyard but yes um okay where was um where was

the gavak yes and gavak many proposed solutions in different stages um you can see who are the actors and in the web of connection that we have created and uh I I just like this website it's just so good where they are able to map problems urgency of fit and solutions. These are the two three tabs that I used mostly and understood. Uh worldly map is something I don't know how to read this chart yet. Uh it's too much going on for me. Um but then actors is a bit simple enough. is just mapping of who all are the players who participated in this and who's working on what and Sanki diagram

is one of the interesting one where we move from like problems to categorization of those problems to actors sorry problem solutions to actors sorry I'm a bit yeah um so this was gak and uh we there's also okay let me just briefly go through Dows of the world where we also published state of Dows in different countries. State of Dows in Singapore, state of Dows in Korea, state of Dows in Japan.

Um we had different authors take over and each from their own country and wellestablished researchers from their own country. um in Japan sorry in Japan Japan treats Dows as an upgrade to old institutions and not as like a revolution. So we had um uh NFT holders and I think Japan also has a DAO law which recognizes some of the NFT members as members of an entity. Um, and then we in Korea, the most active DAO is a K-pop K-pop fan club and not not not

anything on chain, not anything token, not anything financialized and it's it's really interesting to see. Um and then in Singapore there's not really much of a concept of like Dows but the concept of Dows come up in sovereignty self-s sovereignty um and get implemented in different ways on how organizations operate. Uh and then Taiwan styles um act as like civic tech communities uh that put people before profit uh like kind of more like welfare programs and nonprofit organizations. Um and then DAO laws fail because they grant recognition but skip regulation

and tax. So there was a thing um one of the research paper that we published was uh DAO uh policy trma. Um please give me a minute. I'll just pull it up from a note. Okay. Uh there's also the two people that's summarized in this note which is DAO's mergers and acquisitions and uh DAO TMA. uh since we're on trellma we I'll just discuss this um so DAO trella says that decentralization regulatory clarity and compliance and operational efficiency cannot always come together if you're working on one

edge if you focus on decentralization and regulatory compliance it may not always be operationally efficient and accountable same like the triangle trilma um many reasons for this which the report gets into. Um and there are many proposed solutions to this too which um we can get into that. Uh another is mergers and acquisitions. Uh DA's mergers and acquisitions don't have a large market cap as just in general web 3 mergers and acquisitions.

Uh the reason being there's no clear way to assess a DAO. Uh there's no clear way to categorize the assets of a DAO and evaluate how much it would cost. But it still did happen which are like Nosis and XDI where Nosis acquired XDI side drain to make it Nosis chain and um this was seen as like a hostile takeover because uh the both community participants did not agree on the onetoone token mapping of uh their tokens of XI with Nosis and uh FA protocol and RARI. Yeah, that also happened where um yeah, the token swap was was a bit

disagreed upon. Um finance mergers, Aragon and Wakadini. Yeah, every time that uh it's kind of like you know two communities coming together where they also have financial assets they also have game skin in the game and then they are bought together and said now you all play together and be nice and that always creates conflicts um structural strategic challenges like yeah as I'm valuation it's not easy to evaluate because it's a community but also not truly a community it's community with money and with influence and everything legal and executional uncertainty, public governance and

mergers and acquisition confidentiality like because these Dows by nature everything that happens is public governance mostly. It's hard to keep mergers and acquisition things in a confidential way because announce because yes you're discussing mergers and acquisition but you might it might not actually go through but just the discussion of it might have a large impact on tokens and it might just take all over. Um yes these were the two things on DO M&A and TMA Dows of the world constitutions go based on ENS retro analysis.

Okay, so we did a retro analysis on ENS DAO where we indexed uh all of their existing proposals from forums, from onchain voting, from snapshot. We uh we we gathered like this is literally the data lake that we created from all the governance data publicly available for ENSA. And uh here we assessed ENSAW across various um verticals. One is is the power concentrated is that why the governance uh might not be efficient or something. So here we saw that early power frozen.

Yes, this was supported. Let me start here. Yeah, findings at glance is a good way to go. Yeah, here we see that legacy distributions once the tokens were distributed the power barely moved ever since token weighted democracy paradox um it means that the jinny coefficient is so high that it would just mean if it reaches if it if they only get like 04 it would just mean one single delegate governing everything. um reputation lock in um has a participation crisis and power structure crisis.

So some of these hypothesis low redelegation turn as we support once people they they get their voting rights distributed it's hard to redelegate and redistribute those voting rights. So the power concentration again becomes more and more relevant and low participation, high cognitive and time costs was one of the thing uh one of the reason why we believed okay governance is not that inefficient.

There was mixed evidence on this because some there were some efforts from ENS where they shared summaries and like here too like we have a chat bot if you want to just go in through all of this research and ask just chat with the AI agent and understand what exactly is happening you can do so. So there was many efforts to reduce the cognitive and time load of it. um that we can't fully say. Yes, low passation happened because of the cognitive load to evaluate communication fragmentation. Yes, the one of it was supported um um any reform proposals.

um h reforms and routine proposals pass at nearly identical rate like more than 70% but the outcome distribution I'm so sorry I and just need a more clarity on this but I hope by reading it you can understand um I just wish I had some water but uh it's okay Well, the def factor centralization weak small holder voice where small token holders just felt like their voice didn't matter and they just did not participate and um factional politics,

informal aligned groups where it was kind of like yeah uh they organized into nine distant voting clusters and we also analyzed delegates voting patterns and we realize that they come up to nine voting clusters. So, thank you so much. Treasury risk is a disc is a we couldn't hypothesize like we can't fully

hypothesize hypothesize cuz uh I think we just analyzed we just analyzed just making just transactions lose that and yeah we can compare flows and you can add flows and you can make sure you can also analyze we didn't want to map it cuz it was more a little bit than that mass than that then direct these were these were the five vertebrales that we analyzed ENS upon um this was before their major structural change where ENS labs took style. Um, no comments on that.

can't [laughter] but yeah this this was a research where we suggested hey this this is the overview we can find some solutions but yeah GAVAC we briefly went upon uh SPC DA workshop um so we recently conducted uh science blockchain like SPC DAO was one of the um it's in Stanford. Gosh, I'm so sorry.

I'm I'm a bit tired but SPC DAW workshop is one of the most uh popular workshops in the DAO system uh usually hosted by Maragov uh at the Stanford University and uh we conducted a workshop and the whole theme of it was farewell to Dows. A lot of speakers spoke on it and the main the main gist of it um is that we proclaimed Dows are popularly conceived are dead and bit farewell to token holder governed blockchain organizations which we were complaining which we see saw a lot of problems with and uh we hypothesis that Dows must evolve as a legitimacy infrastructure

and first build legitimacy and then operate. Um and then we've dows one of Dows failed to deliver guarantees, reliability performance robust accountability and uh version two of Dows decompos into technical guarantees and legible coordination systems to enable superior information. This also involves using AI agents and stuff like that. and uh model experimentation is like yeah in the age of AI agents is what we believe it will help bring back the Dows and reduce some of the problems like decision-m fatigue and we can also consume large amount of information that we need to consume to make a good

well-informed decision. Um this is the farewell to Dow's article and funding models. Um h so if you want if you're a DA and you want money to run how do you raise how do you get money? Um this is one of the good article on DAO funding where different funding strategies are you launch a token you go to VC um or you go to p investment dows like metacartel dow house or moolok dows where they invest in you um and provide some money as a dao um

and then nftts one way uh dows could raise money is like buy NFTs and they could be an asset and grants and crowdfunding. Dows could raise grants. They could also open up a crowdfunding platform like say give ET and raise money for that. Real world assets too. Uh a DAO and DAO members hold some sort of asset. They lock it up. They can yield they can earn some yield money on the assets that they own and then that's how they can fund themselves.

These are some of the ways that a DAO can fund themselves and get some funding. And if they if you're a DA and you have money to distribute uh Gitcoin published as one of the really good books just mapping many funding mechanisms. Um I will skip to page page 12. So you will see direct grants just sending a few amount of dollars and quadratic funding is a mechanism sending from dollars matched with the number of votes that money would that project gets retroactive based on the project's performance you award them some money

and there's so many other uh funding mechanisms that if you want to distribute money to your members or to the project that you want to help help uh support you have many different mechanisms that you can choose from and this book is a really good resource where you can assess pros and con cons and uh of different mechanism thing >> I want to ask yes uh does RPGf still exist I mean are there still uh retroactive public goods funding uh >> programs out there >> I mean it was all the hype in what 22 to 4.

>> Yeah. 224 five to some extent even. >> Yeah. >> Um yeah, I can't I can't think of any on the top of my mind. Um Stellar did some public goods RPGf Stellar did it. >> Um optimism is to do it. Optimism is really good. optimism PGF but can't think of any at the moment. >> Namada tried to but other issues.

>> Sorry, >> Namada had a big >> Nevada. >> Namada would have had a big potter like 33% of their overall tokens but then >> their token launch went >> disastrous. >> Nice. Um yes. Um, thank you, Skil. Uh, I did not know about Numata, but >> Namata is a a privacy project in the Cosmos ecosystem. It's tied to ANOMA. >> Oh, okay. >> An is the bigger project that works on intents. Namada was the first one that was privacy shields. Uh, interesting tech.

>> Yeah. >> To honest uh uh [panting and sighs] token launch maybe. Yes. Um, yeah, Cosmos knew for some reason I I could not get my mind off Ethereum and just stay in Ethereum. But still am still am in the Ethereum ecosystem. And uh, coming to my the end of my keynote presentation. Uh, thank you all for bearing with me and thank you all for those who didn't bear with me and also had to step out. [laughter] So um but yeah it was a long discussion.

I think I started at 11 >> 11:15 I think. Yeah >> 11:15 and it's 1 100 1 p.m. >> Um we covered a lot and I hope I was able to provide the spine to the discussion. If I didn't please ask me I will share all the resource materials that I have. Um I'll also just write it down and can provide you um uh this this goes from like past research to very recent research that we did. Farewell to Dows is the most recent uh research an article published that we did. Um if you have any questions please do ask. Um I think we're not ask

questions now. You can come up to me later or just ping me. Um I have just like five minutes of your time that I want to take. Um so this year I am so happy to share with you all that I am part of organizing this one of the flagship largest conferences of Ethereum called Devcon and the way I [laughter] thank you. Um wait how do I how do I okay I guess this is present. Okay. So yeah um Defcon you it's of four days this year. Um it's from 3rd November 3rd to 6th of November in Mumbai and the four uh the second day

is which is 4th of November is what I am in charge of programming. Um, Defcon has this parts uh where they delegate a part of programming uh in the name of community-led sessions and I am part of ETH India and uh my job is to surface the context of India and how uh India functions in in like crops aligned what is the best uh digital republic infrastructure in India and just bring that all to the stage of DevCon and help them synergize with Ethereum and help Ethereum synergize with India and make it all nice and uh this is my pleasure and I would I am inviting you all to

Mumbai to come yeah experience defcon with the people that you know and love and then you work with and you know India is so rich in context that you can also like you know since you're already there you can just hang out and travel around for a bit um I'll just go a little bit of information that I have. Defcon is for 4 days. We have nine application tracks. We have 14 community hubs and uh which run all four days. Um community hubs are like just like this. Right now for this week we were talking about governance and we had like a space of 30 people where we had presentation mics and all of this similar to like this in the large venue of Devcon. It's happening in one of the

biggest venues in India across India. It's owned by a billionaire Amani. Uh and yeah, they when they get married there, they close the whole city and some roads. They're that influential and big, but it's one of the state-of-the-art venues. Um and community hubs are like this like today in this room for this week, we have been discussing governance. And similarly we would have hubs like this about this space and they'll be discussing things like privacy things like agents things like prediction markets I'll go into more details on which community hubs are there and uh why Mumbai why Mumbai was

selected India many many developers many crypto people uh ranks number one in chain analysis uh crypto adoption index blah blah blah etc geo World center. Yeah, it's uh one of the closest. Uh the airport is in the city. Takes 10 15 to 25 minutes to reach to the venue from the airport. Not too far. It's a the thing I also share how you can get there and what is the ETA and this I'll skip if you are yeah these are various zones within Mumbai like how every area how every city has a different zone um from that zone to the venue how much is the

ETA if you are walking if you're staying in BKC oops if you're staying in BKC see on near the airport belt, it's a walkable distance or a 25 minute commute to the venue. Uh if you're in central Mumbai, it takes you 15 to 25 minutes blah blah blah. Google maps can help you with this. Um but why would you be even be in this zone is here like in Anderi it's food media energy. Uh by the way, Mumbai is where the Bollywood is where we have the biggest media um industry something.

But yeah, we make huge movies, really popular movies, you know, and uh we al Mumbai is also a financial hub of India. Um like how New York, Wall Street is there, we have Dal Street in Mumbai uh similar to that. Um we also if you go to the Dalad street we also have like some bull statue there too. Um that is one of the reason why Mumbai was chosen like I attended some of the uh internal like defcon bridge building meetups where we were discussing this with in some of the offices of uh these financial hubs in Mumbai and it's just easier for them to bridge build and since we're inviting a lot of projects who work within the

Ethereum ecosystem who might want to enter uh Indian market Indian web3 market and one of the way is through these financial institutions. Mumbai is one of the best way best places to do that. Um and then yes we have nine tracks that shapes the stage. We the all the talks uh by defcon will be categorized under these nine tracks. Core protocol privacy and consent user builder agents rights freedom governance security. Sorry. Yes. I would like to uh uh well on one hand value of the commons is going uh Na and I at the very least and Orion are already uh opted in and uh we have discount codes uh we're

awesome. So we have five people going already and uh now given you present the the tracks right now is there still a opportunity to speak in particular the futures worth building would be interesting for me. Yes, please. I think the >> I know the application form just says application closed. Send an email to this. Please do send and just ping me and I'll just share it with the Defcon team like hey you guys this is someone I know who would be really good fit and I'm not guaranteeing it. I'm so sorry. I know this is recorded but I can just share.

>> Thanks >> thanks. Um >> I think we'll we'll pre prepare several talks then. >> Yes. And also if not on the main stage there are really good community hubs organized. So I'm we can for sure community hubs could also be a good place where you could speak uh and yeah the the synergy of the community hub is also different than the main stage. >> If it's well suited I think Defcon will for sure evaluate each and every speaker application. Um and I'll I can just say hey one of the new speaker application is here.

>> How about side events like are the four days uh the main reason and the only reason uh to stay in Mumbai or is there something before after? >> Oh there are side events. Um there's a DI security summit happening um on November 2. This is on DeFi and then there's web 3 uh privacy congress uh defi security summit. is yeah >> sponsors and we have so many where's the speakers

so these are the past year speakers but we do have DSS speakers being released soon so D5 summit this year will be on November 2. >> So yes, >> that's a lot of guys. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Who are we? Who are we spotting?

>> Women. >> Ah. Yes. Yes. Yes. Three women. Four. >> Four. Can we have a five? Five. >> Five. >> So, can we push a little bit? >> Yeah. Uh, like we have like you want women speakers to be there? >> Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Um >> so >> yes yes yes >> yeah this is uh >> in defcon there will be definitely way

more women and like even the core team has women representation and stuff like that >> I was notified by stage tech either we use microphones for our discussion or we end the live stream. Oh, okay. I'll just I'll just give give me two minutes to just wrap up my DevCon presentation, please. [sighs] >> Uh, okay. Okay. So, we have nine tracks and we have some talks that have been announced so far.

Some of the speakers that are announced, Justin Rake, Sep from Polygon, Zack of Aztec, Griff Green, we all know and love the DAO fund, the DAO, uh Fatal May, uh from Iran, uh Audrey Tank and everyone uh these are the announced stocks. Uh other named that are carry will be there. Vitalic, Stani, Tarun, Danny, Ryan, Aya, Joseph, Luven, U Puja, Shiram Kanan Raja Ding Vladine Mud Gupta, Tarun, Chitra, and yeah, again, so cool names that we know and love. Um, and so the hubs are the part,

forgive my AI, but the hubs are the part that feels like a campus, but yeah, uh, imagine just like we're in a small pop-up city. Just it's your office and you want to discuss about the topics that you're interested in. Um, each hub gets a physical room. One it's one topic is discussed across the four. Content stays educational only. It's not like shilling. No, nobody can come and just shill that project and then just it does doesn't become a shilling zone. Um, each hub now also gets like a I'm not I will confirm on this but this is something each hub getting the dedicated stage session is something that we're discussing but I'm sure it'll

devcon will announce it for sure. Um, these are the 14 uh accepted community hubs. You can pick the community hub that interests you. You can get involved as deeply as you want. Um and for the future building, I think Zuzone, I know Yami is the one who is organizing and leading Zuzone. We can put it put it in touch. Stay in touch. >> Yeah, we're in touch. >> The we were in touch with Yummy. She was uh considering to come to to Valley. Ah yes she was yeah >> I'm sure noticed but uh yeah >> yes uh she's coming later in October something but yeah prediction markets

fragmentation rollups and one coordination problem and agent token rights open source security residian networks etc. uh all of this. >> Oh yes. Okay. So 14 community hubs are privacy hub, security hub, EIP, P2P networking, resilient networks, token rights, open source builder hub, prediction markets, DIHub, onchain art, agentic hub, fragmentation, zoo zone and India hub.

So these are the 14 hubs that have been accepted this year for Defcon and would love for you to join us. Um and community-led days. Okay. So this is the part that I was discussing. Day two is programmed by ETH India and day one will be by buildgill and the main defcon first day and then day three is by security secretaries academic uh from EF um and it's a research day and the topics and are mapped through research and surfaced. Day four is where we will have a job fair. Yes, we are in a deep bare market but this is the opportunity where you can if someone's looking for work they can find this in careers where

you and your friends you can share it with your friends. Um depth is one of the women led uh communities which is hosting this for everyone and I'm sure that they'll do amazing job. Um and ETH India here on day two is what we what I shared that it's a local building and we want to highlight Indian ecosystem and synergize between Indian context and Ethereum and then the city it's it's Mumbai and the it's a food city first Mumbai is really good known for that good food and you can have various food and Um if I can just share a list of cafes or

something that might be better suited for your palette or anything. Um and also uh this is just before Diwali like sixth is when Devcon ends and 8th is when Diwali starts. Diwali is one of the biggest festival. It's known as festival of lights. be celebrated very grandly and you will see the city light up and everyone celebrate it and I'm sure you'll have many opportunities to participate and celebrate Diwali with us. Um and stay longer if you want to stay longer and go. Uh elephant caves uh rock cut temples like big rock cut temples where like uh oh my god the boulders were carved into temple

architecture and the nuance designs and everything. Goa yes you can go to Goa for city before uh and and stay there for like a three weeks or even a month. Hampy is from my state where you can see the Vijayagara Empire uh rune and how it was uh and understand Vijanagara Empire was one of the empires that had a major hold in southern part of India. I am from southern part of India. So yes, we growing up we used to learn so many like cartoons and stories from Vijanagara Empire like Tinali Ramun was one of the smartest minister who used to advise king and he used to be so clever. So

thanks um >> I want to add to stay long ago further. Yes. >> Uh Valley is going to likely uh uh uh go to Orville after >> after Mumbai. uh both uh as a source of inspiration for what we're uh trying to build here and as a as a place for decompression and uh maybe yoga classes and or meditation. >> Love that. Love that. Oral for context is um is a pop-up city before we had named it pop-up cities. They have their own currency. we they we share a lot of

principles and values with them. Uh Pondicherry is a union territory and it has a little bit of nuances on how to get there because you just step in and you are taxed differently or the travel you Ubers are not operated in the union territory and you just step out. Yeah. All good. So it's just a two three kilometer radius which is all good I and easy to travel to once you just know how to do it. Um but Oruroville is a must recommend. I've been there. It's lovely. It's lovely to spend time. Um another yeah Kerala uh Kerala backwaters tea hills.

These are just a short list but India is vast like really vast and you can go out. >> Yes. Um I for my you have sold I I'm sold already. So whatever the weather is, whatever the um I think we are in already. So that >> Yay. >> Hear that Defcon team. Thank you so much. Uh I love it. >> Okay. With the mics. Okay. If you don't want to use it, don't. I'm not blaming or putting the gear to anyone. If you want to mock me about this, it's also okay.

We're not mocking you, Dan. We just keep on forgetting it and then reminding each other uh that we should use the microphone. Um >> yes. So I think there's a one last slide. Uh yeah, financial capital, India's financial capital, Mumbai, uh Ethereum also has an Indian base. ETH Mumbai, ETH Kolkata, ETH Gujarat. We have so many communities that are popping up in every state just because right now Defcon is landing in India this year and I work with Defolio with Eth on Eth India and Defolio are the organizers of one of the largest Asia's hackathon ETH India and um

w they have they have maintained their legacy and they still continue to do so and this year they are combining with Defcon and doing it as a conference. uh and we are inviting some amazing speakers um who are really big names in the Indian ecosystem outside of web3 um so we can synergize with the web3 world and financial and tokenization world this year before I even traveled here uh we had a one of the biggest conference called global fintexfest where tokenization was discussed seriously uh in India and uh a lot of RBI and sebi sebi is sec of India um they discuss tokenization carefully and

there are so many bridge building things that are going on um from the Ethereum side and it's really inspiring to do that and we can actually see the change um yes welcome you all to DevCon uh from Valley of the Commons we have some discounted tickets I believe I will let Felix share that information with you and uh thank you all. It's been a pleasure and with this I end my keynote of the week of the popup and thank you.

>> Thank you Raj. [applause] >> Yeah, we're going to Mumbai. if you want to go to uh we still have a couple of 50% off uh uh discount codes. Uh we will probably have a telegram. I think we already have one. Uh we'll have a group and uh try to coordinate around uh accommodation and uh logistics and stuff but also about uh what we want to bring to DEFCON and and what impressions we want to leave there and and what uh what proposals we want to make, right?

uh to our audience. Uh come speak to me, send me a DM or whatever. Uh yeah, and that was uh the last keynote of of the valley. We will still have several sessions in the afternoon. Uh but for now, lunch is ready since uh 10 15 minutes. I'm hungry. I'm going to go there. Uh see you later for uh the open market, right? Yes.