In case you missed the first two parts where I summarized the opening and the first key-note of the Democracy 4 All conference, I leave the link below:

https://mirror.xyz/ostanescu.eth/itToDfTgurk3sl7tETV7I0NdwAqEHq9f1JlEEucUXyo

https://mirror.xyz/ostanescu.eth/rDXLOZKCBp767GYGenk4OuOuwygXcYTmX7I-wYbKuMs

Today I will summarize the first panel - Blockchain Powered Democracy: from DAO to Self Sovereignty with Alessandro Pericò - CEO & Founder Āut Protocol , Sebastian Rodriguez - Product Manager at Polygon ID, Grace Rachmany - Founder at Voice of Humanity and moderated by Adam Christopher.

Being in the early phase of the FTX drama, the panel started with this question:

Grace stated that what’s interesting is that FTX was a centralized exchange, and made the case that most of the organizations that have been bleeding in crypto were the centralized ones, not the decentralized ones. She continued mentioning that this is not the conclusion the governments are going to take.

The lack of transparency is what the fight is about. This event is a shake-out and will be interesting to see how this will impact organizations that are real DAOs because the ones that are DAOs have to show what they are doing.

She continued by saying that we have these non-democratic organizations (e.g. FED, ECB, IMF, etc.) that were not elected by anyone, and their activity is opaque to us.

Thus, this is one important lesson that we need to learn from the FTX story - you don’t know what is happening with the financial basis of your democracy and you don’t know who’s doing what.

Sebastian used the example of Marxism, where the traditional economy is the thesis and Web3 is the antithesis, we still need to reach a third stage which is the synthesis.

This means that we have already found some decentralized solutions (DAOs, DEXs, etc.) and basically we try to break and move away from all the old structures. However, this is done in such a radical way that it seems we have forgotten some of the previous learnings like transparency, accountability, due diligence, etc.

Sebastian also mentioned the need for an identity layer that can legally bind a person to his actions online.

Alessandro continued by stating that he does not see a particular link or effect that the FTX situation could have on the DAO space. All businesses have a life spawn that brings them to one of two situations: either the business will fail or it will become a monopoly that absorbs all the others. FTX is a great example that decentralization is the most natural course of action.

Adam then brought in the argument that there is a risk when:

Grace answered that she doesn’t think that it’s an identity issue. The identity issue is that we don’t know if someone has multiple wallets. In most of the DAOs, we don’t have democracy.

We have plutocracy - 1 coin 1 vote. If one believes that this is fine, maybe they don’t need SSI. If you want real democracy you need to know a few things: is this person actually a member, how many times did he vote, are they an expert? You don’t need to know their name.

SSI means that even if you order something online, the company doesn’t need to know your name - just if you have the money and where to send the package. Or maybe if you are old enough to be allowed, if we are talking about age-restrictive products.

Grace hopes that what SSI will provide is knowing more about who that person is - are they an expert, are they someone with skin in the game? And what is that mean?

One of the greatest things about DAOs is that we are playing with money, Grace continues. People are going to lose money, people are going to make money.

‘‘We are not playing with weapons, with our water supply. It’s in the end an experimental space.’’

For example, if you are talking about water, and we need to build a hydroelectric dam to make electricity there are people with skin in the game that work at the hydroelectric company, who are experts. But they are not the same people that live by the river. There is where SSI can say who are you, what is the impact on you of a decision, and then how you get rights that are related to that decision.

Grace concludes that this is much more important than the realm of money.

Sebastian then lied down the use cases of SSI for DAOs and decentralized governance.

1. Anonymous access - private access control. I want to participate in a community without disclosing too much about myself.

2. Proof of Humanity + Proof of Uniqueness - prove you are not a bot. Proof that you are not a farm of trolls. 1 person - 1 vote.

3. Reputation-based governance - what the panel refers to as no identity/ no identity layer, what they mean is that people have accounts. They don’t have identities. Eg. You have your Gmail account, and your DAO account - but these are just instruments. They are artifacts provided by different service providers that fragment your identity and that they control. This is not an identity, it’s just an instrument of interaction.

An identity is unique across all domains. So you would hold your identity as something of yours independently of what application or system you are connecting to.

This means, like, in the real world, you are carrying your reputation with you wherever you go.

This allows for a number of things when thinking of a community, for example: a small village. In this village, there will be groups deciding different topics of the village. But wherever you do in a group adds up to your reputation. Which then travels with you to another group, and that is part of your identity.

Sebastian said that identity is what others say about you and what you say about yourself. He agrees that we haven’t found yet a way to introduce this into online communities, but strongly belives that SSI can provide that.

Alessandro came back to the question, what if a DAO can be centralized and damaged SSIs that are part of it?

He agrees that these are the two main issues in DAOs nowadays - that DAOs can be centralized and that SSI is one-way communication. This is unfortunately a technical issue, he believes.

We consider DAOs as a sort of decentralized collective/grassroots organization, but that’s not how it is supposed to be, Alessandro argues.

It’s supposed to be a decentralized collective/grassroots organization that uses technology to be decentralized. It uses a technology that doesn’t allow you to centralize certain assets/ resources/ courses of action.

Sometimes we forget that DAOs are not only a philosophical idea but they are a concrete asset that lives on the blockchain, where things can not be manipulated. The fact that DAOs can be centralized is the main issue.

Grace sees DAOs as more of what community you belong to. And it can be multiple communities.

It’s not enough anymore to say: I belong to a nationality and that nationality will decide everything on my behalf. I am going to elect someone to go to the capital, then they will go to the EU on my behalf and then energy policy is going to get decided for me by these entities.

The other paradigm is where you belong to a group, an energy group for example. And this group might be the group of people that have solar panels. Or that don’t have solar panels. Or don’t own a car or do own a car, etc.

DAOs allow you to identify with the groups that make the most sense for you and make decisions on your behalf of yourself. Rather than having one governance model ( capital representatives), you would be having multiple entities acting on your behalf, or having a say in multiple entities.

Sebastian provided an interesting aspect, namely - DAOs have proven to be effective when their purpose is easily programmatic. The rest of the DAOs (those focusing on philanthropy or social) are still trying to find their way.

On another hand, DAOs are in a way the democratization of lobbyists. Non-programmatic DAOs have the potential to democratize these lobbyists and create lobbyists founded by individuals.

Alessandro went back to the original question, on how to explain to the average person the benefits of a DAO, one can start with the example of the two major issues with the current democracy.

Currently, the choices that we are given as a collective are choices that are decided by a small group of people. We are not truly taking a collective choice, we are choosing among choices that are given to us.

Alessandro believes that we should use leverage this technology to shift from this theoretical democracy to a more practical meritocracy.

Sebastian sees virtual life as already borderless. Identities have already moved online. SSI will not bring people’s identities online. They have done that already, in a framework that laid certain relationships of power between those that hold the data and themselves.

SSI aims to give the means to give back control over the data.

One of the main reasons many DAO fail to implement their goals is that they don’t have a connection to the real world - a legal representation. Companies that can act on their behalf.

Grace made a point about living in parallel universes. She believes that this is already happening to give the example of people that moved closer to the land, trying to leave in a sustainable and intentional way. She observed how these growing communities are benefiting from blockchain technology and from decentralization and vice versa.

Alessandro added that we are given a fork choice - either we keep expecting to pursue personal benefits and keep SSI ideas on the paper as philosophical concepts, or we actually implement them without relying on external institutions, then we are ready to go to the third stage of human civilization.

Grace - the cryptocurrency system is threatening the banking system, DAOs are threatening the existing governance system and none of these systems will go out without a fight.

It’s also important to start questioning: who owns you? where is your food coming from? who are the people I trust ? who can control your bank account? etc.

Start getting real is her advice!

Sebastian sees more regulations coming next year but SSI can help implement those regulations without giving too much of our data. Think of KYC, AML, etc.

Alessandro believes that if each individual should be given the choice to decide their role/ part in the community, which will mean that they get the responsability, but also are free to associate, organize, to create, etc., even if this doesn’t mean that we are going to be able to solve all the problems we have today.

However, we would create a more open world, and try not to be the problems that we want to solve tomorrow

🔔 If you would like to be notified when a new article is out of the oven, then Subscribe via the button below.

And if you find the information useful, you could collect this article and use it for future reference. Don’t be shy to share it with a friend!

In case you missed the first two parts where I summarized the opening and the first key-note of the Democracy 4 All conference, I leave the link below:

https://mirror.xyz/ostanescu.eth/itToDfTgurk3sl7tETV7I0NdwAqEHq9f1JlEEucUXyo

https://mirror.xyz/ostanescu.eth/rDXLOZKCBp767GYGenk4OuOuwygXcYTmX7I-wYbKuMs

Today I will summarize the first panel - Blockchain Powered Democracy: from DAO to Self Sovereignty with Alessandro Pericò - CEO & Founder Āut Protocol , Sebastian Rodriguez - Product Manager at Polygon ID, Grace Rachmany - Founder at Voice of Humanity and moderated by Adam Christopher.

Being in the early phase of the FTX drama, the panel started with this question:

Grace stated that what’s interesting is that FTX was a centralized exchange, and made the case that most of the organizations that have been bleeding in crypto were the centralized ones, not the decentralized ones. She continued mentioning that this is not the conclusion the governments are going to take.

The lack of transparency is what the fight is about. This event is a shake-out and will be interesting to see how this will impact organizations that are real DAOs because the ones that are DAOs have to show what they are doing.

She continued by saying that we have these non-democratic organizations (e.g. FED, ECB, IMF, etc.) that were not elected by anyone, and their activity is opaque to us.

Thus, this is one important lesson that we need to learn from the FTX story - you don’t know what is happening with the financial basis of your democracy and you don’t know who’s doing what.

Sebastian used the example of Marxism, where the traditional economy is the thesis and Web3 is the antithesis, we still need to reach a third stage which is the synthesis.

This means that we have already found some decentralized solutions (DAOs, DEXs, etc.) and basically we try to break and move away from all the old structures. However, this is done in such a radical way that it seems we have forgotten some of the previous learnings like transparency, accountability, due diligence, etc.

Sebastian also mentioned the need for an identity layer that can legally bind a person to his actions online.

Alessandro continued by stating that he does not see a particular link or effect that the FTX situation could have on the DAO space. All businesses have a life spawn that brings them to one of two situations: either the business will fail or it will become a monopoly that absorbs all the others. FTX is a great example that decentralization is the most natural course of action.

Adam then brought in the argument that there is a risk when:

Grace answered that she doesn’t think that it’s an identity issue. The identity issue is that we don’t know if someone has multiple wallets. In most of the DAOs, we don’t have democracy.

We have plutocracy - 1 coin 1 vote. If one believes that this is fine, maybe they don’t need SSI. If you want real democracy you need to know a few things: is this person actually a member, how many times did he vote, are they an expert? You don’t need to know their name.

SSI means that even if you order something online, the company doesn’t need to know your name - just if you have the money and where to send the package. Or maybe if you are old enough to be allowed, if we are talking about age-restrictive products.

Grace hopes that what SSI will provide is knowing more about who that person is - are they an expert, are they someone with skin in the game? And what is that mean?

One of the greatest things about DAOs is that we are playing with money, Grace continues. People are going to lose money, people are going to make money.

‘‘We are not playing with weapons, with our water supply. It’s in the end an experimental space.’’

For example, if you are talking about water, and we need to build a hydroelectric dam to make electricity there are people with skin in the game that work at the hydroelectric company, who are experts. But they are not the same people that live by the river. There is where SSI can say who are you, what is the impact on you of a decision, and then how you get rights that are related to that decision.

Grace concludes that this is much more important than the realm of money.

Sebastian then lied down the use cases of SSI for DAOs and decentralized governance.

1. Anonymous access - private access control. I want to participate in a community without disclosing too much about myself.

2. Proof of Humanity + Proof of Uniqueness - prove you are not a bot. Proof that you are not a farm of trolls. 1 person - 1 vote.

3. Reputation-based governance - what the panel refers to as no identity/ no identity layer, what they mean is that people have accounts. They don’t have identities. Eg. You have your Gmail account, and your DAO account - but these are just instruments. They are artifacts provided by different service providers that fragment your identity and that they control. This is not an identity, it’s just an instrument of interaction.

An identity is unique across all domains. So you would hold your identity as something of yours independently of what application or system you are connecting to.

This means, like, in the real world, you are carrying your reputation with you wherever you go.

This allows for a number of things when thinking of a community, for example: a small village. In this village, there will be groups deciding different topics of the village. But wherever you do in a group adds up to your reputation. Which then travels with you to another group, and that is part of your identity.

Sebastian said that identity is what others say about you and what you say about yourself. He agrees that we haven’t found yet a way to introduce this into online communities, but strongly belives that SSI can provide that.

Alessandro came back to the question, what if a DAO can be centralized and damaged SSIs that are part of it?

He agrees that these are the two main issues in DAOs nowadays - that DAOs can be centralized and that SSI is one-way communication. This is unfortunately a technical issue, he believes.

We consider DAOs as a sort of decentralized collective/grassroots organization, but that’s not how it is supposed to be, Alessandro argues.

It’s supposed to be a decentralized collective/grassroots organization that uses technology to be decentralized. It uses a technology that doesn’t allow you to centralize certain assets/ resources/ courses of action.

Sometimes we forget that DAOs are not only a philosophical idea but they are a concrete asset that lives on the blockchain, where things can not be manipulated. The fact that DAOs can be centralized is the main issue.

Grace sees DAOs as more of what community you belong to. And it can be multiple communities.

It’s not enough anymore to say: I belong to a nationality and that nationality will decide everything on my behalf. I am going to elect someone to go to the capital, then they will go to the EU on my behalf and then energy policy is going to get decided for me by these entities.

The other paradigm is where you belong to a group, an energy group for example. And this group might be the group of people that have solar panels. Or that don’t have solar panels. Or don’t own a car or do own a car, etc.

DAOs allow you to identify with the groups that make the most sense for you and make decisions on your behalf of yourself. Rather than having one governance model ( capital representatives), you would be having multiple entities acting on your behalf, or having a say in multiple entities.

Sebastian provided an interesting aspect, namely - DAOs have proven to be effective when their purpose is easily programmatic. The rest of the DAOs (those focusing on philanthropy or social) are still trying to find their way.

On another hand, DAOs are in a way the democratization of lobbyists. Non-programmatic DAOs have the potential to democratize these lobbyists and create lobbyists founded by individuals.

Alessandro went back to the original question, on how to explain to the average person the benefits of a DAO, one can start with the example of the two major issues with the current democracy.

Currently, the choices that we are given as a collective are choices that are decided by a small group of people. We are not truly taking a collective choice, we are choosing among choices that are given to us.

Alessandro believes that we should use leverage this technology to shift from this theoretical democracy to a more practical meritocracy.

Sebastian sees virtual life as already borderless. Identities have already moved online. SSI will not bring people’s identities online. They have done that already, in a framework that laid certain relationships of power between those that hold the data and themselves.

SSI aims to give the means to give back control over the data.

One of the main reasons many DAO fail to implement their goals is that they don’t have a connection to the real world - a legal representation. Companies that can act on their behalf.

Grace made a point about living in parallel universes. She believes that this is already happening to give the example of people that moved closer to the land, trying to leave in a sustainable and intentional way. She observed how these growing communities are benefiting from blockchain technology and from decentralization and vice versa.

Alessandro added that we are given a fork choice - either we keep expecting to pursue personal benefits and keep SSI ideas on the paper as philosophical concepts, or we actually implement them without relying on external institutions, then we are ready to go to the third stage of human civilization.

Grace - the cryptocurrency system is threatening the banking system, DAOs are threatening the existing governance system and none of these systems will go out without a fight.

It’s also important to start questioning: who owns you? where is your food coming from? who are the people I trust ? who can control your bank account? etc.

Start getting real is her advice!

Sebastian sees more regulations coming next year but SSI can help implement those regulations without giving too much of our data. Think of KYC, AML, etc.

Alessandro believes that if each individual should be given the choice to decide their role/ part in the community, which will mean that they get the responsability, but also are free to associate, organize, to create, etc., even if this doesn’t mean that we are going to be able to solve all the problems we have today.

However, we would create a more open world, and try not to be the problems that we want to solve tomorrow

🔔 If you would like to be notified when a new article is out of the oven, then Subscribe via the button below.

And if you find the information useful, you could collect this article and use it for future reference. Don’t be shy to share it with a friend!