Decentralized Governance/Lobby

Governance models for public, permissionless, blockchain-based networks.

Luke Duncan

@lkngtn

@rflxvty_twitter the intention at Aragon is to create a modular approach to organization governance, that way there does not need to be a one size fits all approach and new mecanisms can be created and sill work with existing infrastructure. So for example instead of using the basic voting application to make decisions, a delegative/liquid democracy application may be created and used insead, and it would still have all the same benefits of being able to interact with the vault and payroll applications that have already been built on (AragonOS)[https://wiki.aragon.one/dev/AragonOS/].

The long term strategy for Aragon is to create an opt-in digital jurisidiction, the value of which would largely be determined by whether the jurisidiction is effectively governed. We are very much commited to building governance mechanisms that work beyond simple organizations, and are particularly interested in creating solutions which work well for blockchain networks.

From a product management perspective the best way to do that is to work directly with potential users, so we are reaching out directly to projects to help us identitfy and prioritize specific mechanisms and working with them to safely test and transition governance over to token holders by progressively granting more authority to these voting mechanism as we become comfortable with the results.

Griff Green

@GriffGreen

^^^ this is the right approach IMO

There is no single decentralized governance structure that will work for all orgs. We need to just keep building tools to let groups experiment

And out of these experiments we will learn a lot... hopefully we will land on a few decentralized governance structures that can compete with a benevolent dictatorship :-D

Brendan@Reflexivity

@rflxvty_twitter

Yes I agree it should be modular and it's not one size fits all. And yes so many ideas that are worth trying. My goal with the blog posts over the next few weeks is to make the trade offs a little more accessible to project teams. I'm in New York for Consensus Invest tomorrow so if there is anyone you think I should reach out to that would be great.

Rhys Lindmark

@RhysLindmark_twitter

Great governance overview from Fred Ehrsam: https://medium.com/@FEhrsam/blockchain-governance-an-overview-dc6a3e66594a

Luke Duncan

@lkngtn

Not sure what happened to the first link, I think it got deleted and republished: https://medium.com/@FEhrsam/blockchain-governance-programming-our-future-c3bfe30f2d74

I think he wanted the url to match the title.

Definitely worth the read! Very insightful post.

Griff Green

@GriffGreen

https://youtu.be/9RtSod8EXn4?t=2h33m58s I thought this was great... I love the vocab he creates

Griff Green

@GriffGreen

http://www.reinventingorganizationswiki.com/ another great resource (Thx for the reminder that i need to read this @RhysLindmark_twitter :-D

Rhys Lindmark

@RhysLindmark_twitter

:smile: All the teal, all the time.

Brendan@Reflexivity

@rflxvty_twitter

Vlad Zamfir on governance: https://medium.com/@Vlad_Zamfir/against-on-chain-governance-a4ceacd040ca

Brendan@Reflexivity

@rflxvty_twitter

Worth getting to the bottom of what the Ethereum process is. I'd be happy to volunteer to document it. Reto from Melonport referred me to Carbon Vote (http://carbonvote.com/) used during DAO hack, Yellow Paper Committee (Gavin Wood) and Ethereum Improvement Process. I tend to agree that trying to cut node operators out of the hard fork process is not going to work. Ont he other hand Zurrer (see video above) sees node operators (keepers) as having a bigger role.

Carl Youngblood

@cayblood

I've been thinking for a while how cool it would be to start a company focused on providing governance solutions to failed states. One of the first things I think you would need to do is prioritize features. What are the most critical aspects of a functioning democracy that you would want to build first?

Brendan@Reflexivity

@rflxvty_twitter

Hi Carl. Welcome. Just a gentle reminder that we'd like to keep this forum for discussions on governance for public, permissionless blockchains. There will no doubt be relevant ideas from failed states etc. so by all means introduce them in the context of blockchain governance. In fact my intro blog post was just that. It will be challenging to discuss this when so many people in the blockchain world come from such diverse political backgrounds. Almost all governance decisions will create winners and losers in economic terms. But yeah it seems attractive to search for a minimum viable product (MVP) of governance. In fact each network is already doing that. Where there is online governance it's usually explicitly marked as an experiment, with some fail back to offline governance by founders / advisors. It'll be interested to see when we get to a first definition of an MVP, what will we have left out? What are "the critical aspects of a functioning democracy"? And if we can leave bits out temporarily does that mean we can leave them our permanently? In blockchain it seems like we can have offline governance as a catch all. I think this works for now as it's a positive sum game in a growing space. So things are on the whole a little more good natured. It gets trickier when that growth stops - and people are more acutely aware of what they are gaining / losing with each decision being made. My take is the time for MVPs will run out faster than we think. And no network is protected: the irony has been pointed out before, but the ones that thought most about governance (Tezos, Otonomous), are finding their their chosen MVP model for governance was flawed. Web3 is growing 2-3 times faster than Web1. Failed states are usually those that failed to respond to change. Only networks with governance models that facilitate change will adopt fast enough. So I think there is a distinction here: we already have somewhat fragile MVPs, but there is now an urgency to find the MVPs of more robust governance models.

Brendan@Reflexivity

@rflxvty_twitter

Time to scope out those Aragon tools: https://blog.aragon.one/introducing-aragon-nest-1aa8c91c0566

Johannes Jensen

@LocalCurrents

Hi Everyone! Great idea creating a channel for this exciting topic. I am currently preparing an article on the topic invoking a new methodology for distributed governance models inspired by German philosophers Niklas Luhmann and Jürgen Habermas. Super exciting to see the many interesting angles to solving these emerging issues.

Luke Duncan

@lkngtn

Thought the group here might find this post I just published interesting: https://blog.aragon.one/thoughts-on-governance-and-network-effects-f40fda3e3f98

Thoughts and feedback very much appreciated! :)

Rhys Lindmark

@RhysLindmark_twitter

Generally dig the direction (governance token = defensible). I'd mention the "blockchain-enabled early adopter financial incentives" to your thoughts at the top on diminished network effects: https://medium.com/@RhysLindmark/macro-blockchain-1-the-end-of-aggregation-theory-ad199a0c03d8

Also, I'd love to see a follow up on the experiments happening with various governance models that you describe.

Luke Duncan

@lkngtn

@RhysLindmark_twitter me too! I think each of those modes deserves a whole deep dive, and very excited to get some implementations out into the wild that can be tested an analyzed.

Luke Duncan

@lkngtn

Regarding early adopter financial incentives, I think its a powerful force but ultimately begs the question how do you make it sustainable in the longer term? Personally I think that line of thinking leads straight to a crypto universal basic income (which I’m a huge fan of), but I think jumping straight to that conclusion skips too many intermediary steps and takes focus away from what the immediate next steps are…

Rhys Lindmark

@RhysLindmark_twitter

Yeah, I'm not really arguing for cryptoUBI, just arguing that part of the reason for diminished defensibility (increased exit) are those early adopter financial incentives.

Luke Duncan

@lkngtn

definitely!

Brendan@Reflexivity

@rflxvty_twitter

@lkngtn great post. And great feedback Rhys - made me go through the agg theory idea again to see how tokens / decentralization / governance might impact the theory. You both spurred me into action to get my post out. Hopefully I'll get it out tomorrow.

Luke Duncan

@lkngtn

Looking forward to reading it @rflxvty_twitter :)

Rhys Lindmark

@RhysLindmark_twitter

Yay, spurring each other to action!

Rhys Lindmark

@RhysLindmark_twitter

Btw, I'm going to start experimenting with hosting "Decentralized Governance" group calls (aka Masterminds/Circles) to try to help everyone here co-evolve this field.

If you're interested in joining a call next week, please note your availability here: http://whenisgood.net/catpd5s

(Also, note that this is part of a larger "ETHCommons" vision outlined here: https://twitter.com/RhysLindmark/status/941095501784428545)

Thanks and let me know if you have any questions! (This is experimental :smile: )

Luke Duncan

@lkngtn

@RhysLindmark_twitter is this the same call as cryptoeconomic primitives one, or a seperate one?

Rhys Lindmark

@RhysLindmark_twitter

Separate!

Brendan@Reflexivity

@rflxvty_twitter

https://medium.com/@reflexivity/decentralized-governance-part-2-governance-and-ai-kitties-7e10f3bc3f66

Alex Stokes

@ralexstokes

@lkngtn @RhysLindmark_twitter what is the cryptoeconomic primitives one? that sounds interesting!

Rhys Lindmark

@RhysLindmark_twitter

@ralexstokes you should join: https://gitter.im/Curation-Markets/Lobby (and check out https://medium.com/@RhysLindmark/18-mike-goldin-adchain-token-curated-registries-an-emerging-cryptoeconomic-primitive-682b442a7822 or https://medium.com/@RhysLindmark/6-simon-de-la-rouviere-on-curation-markets-7ef131df859e)

Brendan@Reflexivity

@rflxvty_twitter

Governance post by Vitalik: http://vitalik.ca/general/2017/12/17/voting.html

Luke Duncan

@lkngtn

Great post. I think the conclusion that it’s not an either or proposition but a balance that needs to be struck is something I strongly agree with.

Rhys Lindmark

@RhysLindmark_twitter

Hey all! We're going to run one meeting:

2pm Mountain Standard Time (GMT -7) on Thursday. Join here: https://hangouts.google.com/hangouts/_/n3mzpeytlnemldnxbc45lkvlkae

The goal of this "kick off" meeting is primarily to: connect with others who are working on decentralized governance, chat about current challenges/experiments, and share learnings. (They're being loosely modeled off of the ETH Core Dev meetings.) They will be publicly livestreamed (transparency!). We'll be running them as "lean coffee" meetings, where we crowd source an agenda, vote on it to prioritize, and then timebox each agenda item. Here's the Trello board that we'll use (feel free to add cards to the "Circle #1") list beforehand! https://trello.com/invite/b/z17lLfm7/aa2a1fa4d9f17488c01bc0201d246eee/decentralized-governance-circle

Thanks all, see some of you on Thursday, let me know if you have any questions, and remember that this is a shared experiment :)

Brendan@Reflexivity

@rflxvty_twitter

Great - really looking forward to it.

geleeroyale

@geleeroyale

Hello community!

Rhys Lindmark

@RhysLindmark_twitter

Yoyoyoyoyoyo!

matrixbot

@matrixbot

@geleeroyale:matrix.org In case you are using Riot - this room has been succesfully bridged to: #gitter_decentralized-governance=2Flobby:matrix.org

@geleeroyale:matrix.org ;-)

Rhys Lindmark

@RhysLindmark_twitter

Woaaaahhhhh. That's awesome. I don't exactly know what that means, but I'm super into "cross platform interoperability" (Gitter, Riot, Rocket.chat, Slack, etc.)

geleeroyale

@geleeroyale

It means you can access this room in riot as well - or any other client supporting the matrix protocol

Rhys Lindmark

@RhysLindmark_twitter

Chat in 8 min here! https://hangouts.google.com/hangouts/_/srtf7pbfgve4lmmoq4sud3slsqe

Rhys Lindmark

@RhysLindmark_twitter

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DLIHUQuh2szG5UR0cdAX6XBEn7uNcIGmGWsP8bTY-TI/edit?usp=sharing

https://trello.com/invite/b/z17lLfm7/aa2a1fa4d9f17488c01bc0201d246eee/decentralized-governance-circle

Brendan@Reflexivity

@rflxvty_twitter

Thanks a million, Rhys. Great call. Looking forward to doing it again. Loved the format, Trello, minutes, timers etc. It's a great way to do things... if I can stick to timing ;-)

Video is here for those who missed it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no8fB2cZ--g

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