Hey there fellow people!
Apologies for missing a week of the newsletter (find reasons at the end).
We realize this really has been less of a newsletter and more of a notification for the weekly podcast, and would like to adjust that. We will begin publishing a few essays of more depth to this intimate following. There’s one related to the topic of DAOs that’s been sitting on the shelf for far too long that will publish here ~soon~.
Deep Dive 5: Unpacking decentralization and autonomy in DAOs with Michael Zargham
A post shared by @square1.tech
Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are one of the foundational concepts pioneered by those in the crypto ecosystem. The idea for these new forms of organizations have served as inspiration for idealists with visions of more equitable governance structures.
All decentralized protocols and cryptocurrency networks wrestle with the question of governance both on the technical and the human level. While DAOs today generally imply the use of governance of cryptocurrency systems, Zargham makes the point that this question of decentralized governance is as old as human coordination.
This is one of our favorite concepts to explore in this crazy world of magic Internet money. We're including a slew of links below.
Blockscience Blog: https://medium.com/block-science
DAOs, DACs, DAs and More: An Incomplete Terminology Guide, Vitalik Buterin https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/05/06/daos-dacs-das-and-more-an-incomplete-terminology-guide/
Thinking in Systems Donella Meadows, https://wtf.tw/ref/meadows.pdf
Engineering a Safer World, Nancy Leveson, http://cs.utep.edu/isalamah/courses/5371/Engineering-a-Safer-World.pdf
Small is Beautiful, Ernst Schumacher, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1117634.Small_Is_Beautiful
A theory of Justice, John Rawls, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/129237.A_Theory_of_Justice
Exit, Loyalty and Voice, Albert Hirschman, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/149033.Exit_Voice_and_Loyalty
Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/478.Bowling_Alone
The Ethnography of Infrastructure, Susan L Star https://www.ics.uci.edu/~wscacchi/GameLab/Recommended%20Readings/ethnography-infrastructure-Star-1999.pdf
Governing the Commons, Elinor Ostrom https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1048424.Governing_the_Commons
Coutnerintuitive Behavior of Social Systems, Jay Forrester https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of-management/15-988-system-dynamics-self-study-fall-1998-spring-1999/readings/behavior.pdf
(Excerpt From) The Cybernetics of Cybernetics, Margaret Mead https://asc-cybernetics.org/CofC/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/mead.html
Best,
JD
PS: We were late to publish this week for a few reasons. The Square 1 host has been focused on executing a plan to launch a new defi protocol and our sound engineer just finished his masters thesis titled Electronic Music and its Place in Nature.
Duncan
