"Why not have a DAO all to myself?" I say to JP. A software encasing that contains my instructions for managing the various rule systems I have to interact with, and which can communicate with other DAOs and smart contracts on my behalf. It's more than a wallet because it's an entity that I have created, and its boundaries and surface adapt to what I have to negotiate. It fits the space I inhabit in a world of rules and obligations. But I control it, not those who impose the rules.
"Like an Iron Man suit", he says.
"Well yes", I reply. His metaphor is pretty good, I decide. "Although that could be confused with Starkware".
I'd like a suit like the one that Tony Stark wears, one that slides around and fastens with a soft metalic click. It would feel lighter than it appears and more comfortable. I would wear it like a shield; protecting me from adversaries and hiding my identity. The best thing about that suit is that I could do things I couldn't do before. I could fly, lift very heavy things, and manoeuvre effortlessly around the place (once I had the settings figured out). The suit would recognise situations before my own brain could process them. I could make an impact in the world in such a suit. Or I could just give it tasks and take time off to think. Did Tony Stark ever nap in his suit?
Back to my solo DAO, which is not a material shiny casing but a thing that lives on a blockchain. Right now DAOs are not slick advanced technologies so much as steam punk craft renditions of an alternative communal past we never lived yet try to conjure back into existence. Web3 is charmingly early and late at the same time.
Like the Iron Man suit, my solo DAO is an automated interface with the world that enhances my capabilities and can be modified on the spot for the task at hand. I have control. I can be anonymous. My DAO is set up to deal with the things I need to pay, communicate with, govern or be governed by. It can have legal status, like a Trust, that allows me to do things in other DAOs without fear of litigation. It can pay my taxes in real-time through an API that connects to the Australian Tax Office (one day maybe), but only gives them the information they can ask of me under law.
There was a point when we used to talk about having avatars that went out in the world to do things for us. We didn't have DAOs back then so we didn't think of these things as assemblages constructed through DAO tools, but now we have these so we may as well make them fast, adaptable and really secure. Others are asking similar questions:
Aaron Soskin from Govrn tweeted: “Can you have a DAO of 1 person?”
Safe has been talking about multisigs for individual use, which is also a step in this direction.
We are constantly required to interact with authorities, our membership of groups and our obligations to others. We have tools that are provided by the state to help us do this, such as e-government and national identity. The individual therefore exists in an administrative technical context (and complex) and yet the systems we are required to use are imposed on us. There is no technical construct of our own that can interface with these authorities. At the moment we are subjects in a socio-technical stack. Instead we could plug into the institutions we interact with by using tools that operate on a shared standard that is collectively maintained and updated. The same construct could also be used to interact with things that are non-state obligations, alliances and affiliations.
I attempted to articulate the solo DAO at the weekly govbase call, which provoked a good discussion on interfaces and organisations. People implied that a solo DAO seems antithetical to the ethos of DAOs. We have spent much time and effort figuring out what good governance is inside DAOs, seeing them as cooperatives/mutuals. Although important, I resist the notion that DAOs are restricted to community or organisations.
A Western standpoint makes a clear distinction between an individual and the community but we don't need to start from there (see my earlier work on device use and relatedness here). DAOs enable us to think relationally; acknowledging that our self is bounded by obligations, which exist as layers of rules and ties to others. There can be non-human ties too. In this case it might be our responsibilities to a protocol, which are manifest through a node, or staked tokens. Moving away from the Western individualist standpoint helps to understand DAOs. Indigenous standpoint and posthuman feminist standpoint are other ways into thinking about DAOs and identity. As Kei Kreutler writes, “Composable identity approaches identity as inherently relational, providing modular tools for individuals, groups, and organizations to present themselves within technical systems”. More on this another time.
A sliver of context: I saw M Ward play his Helicopter song last week at the Brunswick Ballroom and it's partly triggered these superhero fantasies. "I arrive through a window, I leave through a hole in the wall…”