While I could wax poetic on the subject forever, let's aim to be more surgical in a hack & slash kind of way with this rough draft of an amorphous idea. I'd intended to sit down and properly start adding structure to the thoughts for the needed governance service of Commonwealth, but Gnolang's open call for defining a new Governance system for a proof-of-contribution consensus project is a good enough excuse to finally start. At least it might catch the right eyes/brains for feedback.
Essential background to the captured perspectives/amorphous model below: for as long as I can remember now Stafford Beer's viable system model, which to some degree is also captured in Ostrom's model for IAD, has haunted me with its simplicity, yet potency to steer an organization via informed feedback loops oriented bottom-up. Alongside these models' impact, Murray Bookchin's ideas on Communalism, a federated model for localized bottom-up self-governance, has also guided my thinking since the moment I thought I invented it as a "non-partisan local constituency union version of anarcho-syndicalism". Instead, I found that Bookchin had already started exploring a philosophy I still claim to believe most if ever prodded for a name for my political stance; opt-in, localized, bottom-up, informed, rooted in the commons, and reciprocal, that's my stance, call it whatever you'd like, except impossible.
Theory of Commutative Social Capital: Social-Proof == Reciprocity && Reciprocity == Social-Proof
Not to get too cheese, but everything in life has some level of give-and-take. Some satiation being met of one party by a counterparty, with varying measures of reciprocity associated with the relationship. This is true in a person-to-person capacity, a person-to-group capacity, a group-to-group capacity, and every permutation of <actor>-machine imaginable (and yet to be imagined). Effectively, Actor-network theory underwrites/captures our ever-evolving networks of relationships and social masses.
We've grown accustomed to a world driven by algorithms computing various contrived social-proofs, each geared solely to categorizing us for sale to capitalism, while few prioritize the root of the social in the social-proofs they collect: the person the encapsulated social capital is derived from.
We've come to dullen ourselves to the machining of the social capital being generated, and the direction of its flow, while if nothing else now understanding better than ever the power of social capital as TAZ-like moments emerge through our connected world.
But when you stop to then ask "What is a social-proof?", you see that like most other things, it is without definition if not for a relationship to another entity, or more often entities. In my opinion, this makes a social-proof a measure of reciprocity of the relationship, with reciprocity representing the action of establishing or otherwise exchanging social-proofs. One state, the other event or action. To some extent JAK's savings points model or BitTorrent's Peerwire Protocol, particularly its choking algorithm, captures a rough idea of what reciprocity==social-proof && social-proof==reciprocity might look like in action, where reciprocity within the network comes with its own form of reward for acting in good-faith/standing.
Edit from future: finally circled around to watching Jae's vid and the logos completeness theorem seems weirdly relevant to this idea.
- logos->physics->logos->physics- proof->reciprocity->proof->reciprocity
Governance Foundational Ethos
Before I get lost too much in thoughts demanding summary, I'll return to the point at hand: giving structure to the idea of a DAO-of-DAOs, or to draw from Bookchin, a "commune of communes". But before a structure can be even loosely proposed, some guiding principles need to be defined, which may in the end be all this piece starts to do since I have mountains more citations to attempt to collect/digest before an interface/prototype was intended to be in the works.
Principles-Of-Proof (Quick Draft)
Principle 0: Organic entities (people, flora/fauna) come first!
Principle 1: People come from communities, and communities come from people
Principle 2: Communities seek equilibreum; fail with reciprocal imbalance
Principle 3: Transparency!; Imbalance most often stems from information asymmetry
Principle 4: Vertical mobility of the equilibreum should be prioritized
Principle 5: Governance at varying levels should be self-similar in structure, but flexible/adaptable in implementation
Principle 6: Proposals should be kept focused, minimizing state change to what's essential
Principle 7: Proposals should be branched, tied to sessions, and participation bonded
Principle 8: Governance changes should be versioned, reversible, and cherry-pickable
Principle 9: Governance should defer to reputation authorities/contracts defined by the community
Principle 10: "Parties" should be discouraged, but per-Proposal voting blocs enabled
Principle 11: True and False are not enough; Votes are balanced ternary defaulting to 0 until 2/3 vote
Principle 12: Feedback loops determine inertial frame; Reflect on KPI and forward guidance often
Principle 13: ♥
Musings On Principals
Re: 2 & 4: this "measure of equilibrium" or "measure of reciprocity" idea is still very loosely formed with no clear value mechanic/definition yet determined. To define with more precision, but ultimately respecting 9 in design philosophy
Re: 5: I'm a big proponent of constructal theory and feel it will forever remain the most elegant solution to evolving systems, which means yes... technically more elegant than my wizardly hero Stafford Beer's even
Re: 6: this I just feel is true, riders ruin perfectly good legislation and should be avoided/negated
Re: 7 & 8: originally formed as an idea I had that I dubbed Githubberment... 10 years ago?!... ughhh, I'm old :\ ... I'll aim to rehost that on this blog (edit: done) so I don't lose it to the internet's memory hole, but TL;DR: it imagined legislation being digitized, and the legislature and its sessions/terms as acting like branches in a Github repo, merged back to main on acceptance while leveraging the various features of Github for consensus development and transparency
Re: 9: Chainlink is top of mind with this one, with their adapter, reputation contract & service agreement model being elegant and perhaps of consideration in system design
Re: 10: prefer delegation based on domain authority on given sessions/proposals instead of fixed positions of representation; democracy should be as direct as possible, as it's a reciprocal action providing each group member with a way to weigh in with social-proof on the evolution of the group's present and future collective social capital and helps avoid elite capture through member awareness and participation
Re: 11: this alludes back to 7, with
0results moving onto another session for further deliberation, and participants in the discussion accruing weight based on tenure in the unresolved discussion, and socially-proofed value of their engagement. Loomio comes to mind as a source of inspiration to draw fromRe: 12: will to some degree require a better measurement definition as mentioned re: 2 & 4, but some mechanisms can be designed without clearly defined value mechanics, at least in abstract
Re: 0-4 & 13: ♥
Structural Constructs (Quick Draft)
I won't likely be able to whip any kind of attempt at a real interface out for this off the top of my head, as cool as that would be lol. But I am happy to start finally collecting these thoughts in one place, giving more form to some ideas that seemingly both Gno.land and Commonwealth are exploring at the same time, at different layers toward different outcomes, yet sharing the desire to see a DAO-of-DAOs, like Bookchin's description of Communalism as a "commune of communes".
I will say that I do think SSI/DID should be core to the system. How that would work I'm not sure, but I definitely intend to explore what Animika Labs has going on for the SSI/DID component of Commonwealth now that I'm aware of it/more aware of the CosmosSDK world in general, since that might shave off... most of the engineering cycles I'd anticipated for it.
With that in mind... I'll see what I can summon even if just to start a dialogue on loose thoughts:
Spitballed Constructs/Considerations
DAO
IdentityDocument,AmmendIdentityDocumentReputationAuthority,AmmendReputationAuthorityForge,DissolveJoin,LeaveSession,SessionCohort,SessionScheduleProposal,ProposalMeta,VoteProposalAccept,ProposalReject,ProposalContinuationFederate,UnfederateBranch,MergeDelegate,InviteSome means to add/remove/upgrade functionality/state of DAOs modularly.
Reputation
TotalSupply,BalanceOf,Decimals(ERC20?... maybe just for oversimplification here)ProofProcessor,ProofQueueMerit,DemeritCreditComputation,CreditBalance
Example/basic reputation contracts should be provided as a reference implementation and to suggest some reputation best practices. Particularly anything to do with the imagined ProofQueue, ProofProcessor and CreditComputation hooks, or any similarly core hooks/state that emerge through discussion. Principal 9 should be accounted for in its design. Imagined as an ERC20 here, but not committed to that idea entirely, just simplifies the idea of a floating balance.
A DAO/Sub-DAO should be able to define its own "social-capital accreditation objectives" (see the Social Insurance 2.0 overview for an education/recruitment-oriented version of Open-Accreditation that could perhaps be adapted/generalized). This aims to assume that there can be no real "one size fits all" approach to defining social capital/governance, with its definition by necessity stemming from the group its part of (education accreditation makes for a decent example of why, given the per-field bodies that determine accreditation criteria).
Reputation should be harder to gain than it is to lose. It should treat inactivity as a form of reciprocal deficit, demurrage-ing reputation upon future interaction, or in some other way binding vote-weight to social-proofed participation and contribution, while allowing for a time-decay on non-participant accounts. Harberger licenses also came to mind, but may not be ideal for this application (though could play a role somewhere; capturing to not have to sift through YT likes to find again)
Bonding should also take place on a per-Proposal level, leveraging early social-proofs as part of an unresolved Proposal with ongoing deliberation as being indicative of being a stakeholder in the outcome. This should balance bonded weight against the importance of valuing the perspective of larger groups who may/will likely lag but be stakeholders in the outcome as well. This balance will be tricky, but all the more reason why its implementation should be treated in the abstract/interface from the governance model's perspective, leaving the choice of weights up to the referenced contract implementation and its currently defined state.
Social-Proofs/Reciprocative Actions
Share,Respond,Spread,Hide,Augment,DiminishClaim,Unclaim,Vouch,Contest,RetractOffer,CounterOffer,Consent,Reject,RevokeConsentReportType,Report,RetractReportProofType,ProofGiven,ProofRecieved
Admittedly mostly spitballing some ideas above. Proofs should aim to conform to an open standard of some kind IMO if a suitable enough one exists. I've always loved the idea of Mozilla's Open Badges and in earnest started defining a curriculum with the help of ChatGPT not long ago just to try integrating something with them. Not sure how applicable it would be but something aiming to allow established social capital to follow users across platforms would be ideal.
Unlike the Proposal which should remain balanced ternary defaulting to the 0 state until 2/3 vote, social-proofs represent a binary claim being made. That said I suspect accounting for ProofType to allow some flexibility in what true/false implies would likely be worth considering. These types should then aim to define the true/false dichotomy of their proof type, along with any kind of undo or revert to unknown/undefined hook(s) that might be relevant to the construct. Keep general, but perhaps enable new type definitions built atop core defs?
Reciprocity & Social Capital
Give,TakeLend,BorrowRecall,Repay(social-credit/loan; needs better definition)Spend,StakeSuggest,RequestExchange,Swap
Reciprocative actions (previous section) interacting with a community/service/network/federation/etc establishes social-proofs as per the Reputation contract's accreditation objectives criteria, and generates or extracts social capital accordingly (via some evidently still undefined mechanism). Once reduced to social capital, a subset of reciprocative actions specific to the utilization of social capital can be performed (loose list above).
Surplus social capital should aim to be lent in order to aspire to a growing/expanding equilibrium instead of hoarding/elite capture, with the mechanisms of that depending on the DAO/Sub-DAO's functionality/purpose. Demmurage could play a role. But again I defer to Principal 9 as a key design consideration throughout this component.
Information Asymmetry
Sometimes I feel like Clair Cameron Patterson on his crusade against lead in fuel when I think about information asymmetry because it's everywhere... everywhere!
The mind-boggling part of information asymmetry to me is that it's easily remediable in each case with the same thing: transparency! The difficulty is just the overwhelming number of channels that it's able to persist in without proper examination and negation by clearly defined mechanisms. This unfortunately will not become clearly defined here, now.
That said one key element for enabling more transparency has less to do with simply the accessibility of information, and more to do with ensuring it's delivered to the stakeholders most inclined to be impacted/mobilized by it in a world of endless noise. To this end, adopting a kind of pub-sub model allowing community members to subscribe to meta types of interest and be notified when tabled proposals impact those opted-in interests would be a great first step. This was something I saw being done ~10 years ago by a Canadian local Civic Engagement project called MaMarie.
Wrap-Up & Next Steps
If you're still reading, for a bit more background on the founding ideals of Commonwealth, the draft of the 95 Statements aims to capture a clear set of ideals and observations that aim to steer the goal. Would love feedback on this to turn it into a founding 95 Statements that could outlive the Commonwealth project and create a guide for future projects to draw from.
The above is largely rooted in thoughts already floating around and pertains more to what I'd imagined for said Commonwealth project, but could be a start to a DAO-of-DAOs model more generally. That said I will keep sifting through bookmarks, capturing more ancient thoughts, and in earnest attempt to finally properly give definition to an amorphous concept that's haunted me for... at least 10 years it would seem... ughhhhh. No wonder they've started playing the tunes I listened to in high school on the classic rock station...
None of the above would be refined enough to start diving into code, but with some feedback, I'll aim to refine the model further, while hacking on code for more achievable toys to get used to Gno, Gnoland and the CosmosSDK world more generally.