71.8 ETH has been transferred to the campaign’s address, the largest single donation made to the fund. 0.2 ETH has been transferred to the anonymous NFT donor, as a reward agreed upon by the collective.

The motivation for Player #733 was fueled by a desire for a happy ending to S2, following a season of absolute chaos. CTG is the most fun I’ve had onchain and offchain in a while, but not without its psychological warfare and sleep deprivation. The most interesting social experiment I’ve participated in to date. Dylan calls it “cutthroat’.

                                               ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

I was eliminated on Day 8 by a sniper attack in the last few minutes, alongside many of my tribe mates. In the spreadsheets, night 8 was called the “red wedding”. What a game. I was still smiling ear to ear and also slightly relieved that I could finally sleep properly. On Day 9, I was just starting to readapt to my regular life when the telegram chats started buzzing again a few hours before final voting.

Several jurors and I realized just how much scheming and deception had been going on this whole time, we were upset! Butthurt! We had just uncovered evidence of a mole that had used info against us, and were maybe even the ones who eliminated us, how dare they! At the same time we identified at least 2 jury NFT whales, and you just know “King Wilbert” was hunting the chain. At this moment another level of the game unlocked for me, of course everyone was playing the deeper game! I had been hypnotized by the tribal kumbaya, the “winning is a team sport” comments; how could I have been so silly? with my single player NFT and my jolly attitude.

Many had made their spicy motives known or were so secretive they’d created much suspicion, causing significant distrust and fragmenting collaboration. There were psyops, there were hit lists, there were screenshots, group chats dedicated to certain players/groups not winning, secret cross-tribe alliances, misinformation, NFT sales, antics, cabals and whales oh my! Everywhere I looked, us vs. them and winner-take-all strategies were becoming the norm. We had finished playing our toy games and had entered the arena of the larger, meta game that is CTG: who wins the pot. But this is a game and games must be played.

With these latest realizations, it became clear the most likely endgame would not be a wholesome player winning, because they would likely be outvoted by the large cabals or whales - probably the same folks who used their ways to climb to the top, fairly. Simultaneously, myself and others were thinking about who to vote for, who “deserved it”, what did that even mean in game theory? We didn’t feel aligned with the cabal or whale win. David Phelps, many jurors and I felt there could be another outcome. It seemed we were getting back in the game.

We announced the new goal on twitter and started a public group chat, but waited to acquire the player NFT until we had enough offchain support in the next few hours (hopefully 50+ people). Otherwise we would delete the chat and call it a a day. Within ~1 hour of sharing on socials, we had Player #733 volunteer their NFT for this finale showdown. “Are you sure?”, ‘Positive!’ they said. In 12 hours, nearly 100 jurors had coordinated in a public group chat, soft committing their vote. I think the speed at which the initiative grew is evidence of how many S2 players related to the vibes of the desired outcome, or simply also felt there was no better option to vote for.

Fighting the cabals, whales and others was nothing personal, just as I’m sure their actions to try to win were nothing personal as well. By the time players had started canvassing finale support, the Free Alexey & Roman train had already left the station and the people were on a mission. As my non-playing friend observed: “when eth nerds see the opportunity to coordinate for something bigger than all of us, we take it”.

What it really came down to was coordination games. Players agreeing the best outcome for themselves was the one where they did the same thing as other players. I believe this jury proved that positive sum outcomes in maximally game theoretic situations are possible, albeit unlikely. This required at least 20 jurors to be highly active in the telegram streets, promoting the cause and sharing the deets. This literally would not have been possible without the mass coordination and teamwork.

I do not expect S2’s outcome necessarily sets precedent for future seasons, as I believe this was a potion of unique circumstances that made it possible. First, many S2 players were highly competitive and equally deceived by cabals/whales and the dynamics of NFTs, thus motivated for an outcome they were more aligned with. Second, the theme was Anon Island, so we were larping anonymous and private tech, which was very fun, but in the end didn’t feel great in light of third, (maybe most important) the timing.

Alexey Pertsov’s trial was less than 1 month ago and his sentencing is in ~ 1 month. Many players are early ethereum contributors who supported TC, or were TC users, or knew the devs themselves or simply strongly believe in our right to privacy. As slighted as some players are about being manipulated, everyone is more slighted about the way these trials against privacy devs are unfolding. And how could we play a game that enjoys anonymity while the devs actually building the real thing are standing trial. We want real Anon Island. We felt this was the best outcome for the satisfaction of the most players, for supporting the legal aid, and also to reignite awareness.

~$2M in legal fees are expected in 2024 alone. I imagine without donations, our fellow soldiers are also going into serious debt, simply for writing code. If we aren’t going to support them then who will? The battle against Alexey & Roman is one of the most existential cases brought against crypto, the irl Crypto: The Game. It not only threatens the livelihoods of engineers, but the premise of open source software, smart contracts and our right to privacy. Privacy is normal.

Although being mischievous is not against the game rules - the only rules are the rules of the chain - that doesn’t mean all players will align around that story. The game is played as intended because of what the parameters allow, and no player had an advantage (even sponsors!) Everyone used the strategies that suited them best. CTG is interesting because most of the game you’re colluding to figure out who to slay each night, until the last night when you’re colluding to figure out who should win. In the end what won was a narrative that aligned the most jurors and hopefully helped the future of privacy. While the official winner was anonymous Player #733, the real winner of S2 was the private you.

I greatly enjoyed my time at Anon Island. I told myself I’m too tired to even think about S3 and probably wouldn’t play, but a new fren assured me when S3+ comes around, I’ll be tempted.

PS….for future seasons…TRUST NO ONE.

PPS… huge shoutout to the NFT donor, David Phelps, Vijay Michalik, Jess Houlgrave, 0xJoshuaSL, Paris Rouz, Stani Kulechov, Mark Beylin, Maria-Paula, Alex Masmej, Alexis, Yalor Moon, 0xmatthewb, christian_defi

& all voting S2 jurors.

Most fruits can be accessed quite easily, either the skin is edible (apricot) or the peel is a simple barrier to the juicy center (orange) or there's no recognizable peel at all (raspberries). Yet here we have the pomegranate, one of the most delicious fruits, with some of the most unique qualities and brightest colors, that has evolved to be one of the most difficult to open.

Fruit Evolution

Plants and fruits have evolved in different ways to maximize survival:

• Adaptation to Environment

• Ripeness & Prevention of Premature Opening

• Durability

• Animal Migration Patterns

• Seed Distribution Strategies

Arid environments cause fruits to build tough skin to survive. An obvious example is cacti, which developed a thick stem and thorns (spines) that help the plant conserve water, create shade and protect against predators. A less obvious example is wild tomatoes in the Andes that grew a tougher skin to survive high altitude conditions.

Many fruits use their ripeness - like bananas changing color - as a way to preserve themselves the longest and avoid premature opening. Seeds grow just as the fruit does, so premature opening of fruit could lead to underdeveloped seeds that could result in poor germination and survival. Some fruits attempt offensive strategies vs. defensive survival strategies, like passionfruit, who’s bright coloring attracts more pollinators to help it flourish.

Coconuts are a fascinating study of durability. Most nuts evolved over millions of years to have harder shells, but the Coconut in particular developed a water-resistant husk that ensures it will survive long distance travel over bodies of water, without being damaged by salt water. A unique survival strategy that is specifically useful for coastal environments.

Even more interesting is megafaunal dispersal, the evolution of plants in relation to large animals. It is believed that avocados benefited greatly from large animals like sloths and toxodons, that ate whole avocados, traveled and then pooped out the seeds in new lands where an avocado tree would propagate. Many of the animals capable of megafaunal dispersal are mostly extinct from 13,000 years, yet human cultivation has also achieved similar results today.

It’s interesting to note that not all fruits were worried about animal predators but rather took advantage of animal migration. Mangos evolved to be suitable for large animals but not small animals, as the seed is too big for many to carry distances far enough from the mango tree to continue propagating its species. It’s also quite common for fruits to be fleshy and appealing to specific kinds of animals that are likely to eat the seeds and survive the digestion, then excreted and germinated in new areas.

Some fruits even have seeds that can attach to animal fur that can be carried longer distances, while flowers like Violets and Trilliums produce oil-rich elaiosomes that attract ants, so ants end up distributing the flower seeds. Wind is also a common seed distribution mechanism, with some fruits having evolved to benefit from windy conditions, such as samaras from maple trees, those little wispy things that fly around like helicopters in the wind to spread maple seeds.

Fruits also employ a variety of physical protection strategies to ensure longevity that vary from exterior features, to toxins, to camouflage. Roses and blackberries developed thorns to protect themselves from being eaten by predators. Meanwhile Cherries, Apples and Peaches seem to be okay being eaten, but wanted to ensure the survival of their seeds. So they contain amygdalin in each seed that can turn into cyanide when chewed and ingested. Strangely, the squirting cucumber launches its seeds as far away from the plant as possible, and with such force that the seeds end up burying themselves far from the sights of animals.

Back to pomegranates

Pomegranate seeds are more than just the glistening jewels on top of your salad. This magical fruit seemed to adopt a plethora of strategies to survive and thrive.

The main animal migration patterns that benefited pomegranates are actually us humans who cultivated them and drew great cultural significance from the fruit, where they eventually ended up on trade routes. Pomegranates originated near the Himalayan region including Northern India, Iran and Pakistan, with cultivation dating back to at least 3,000 BC. They were revered by many ancient cultures like the Egyptians as symbols of prosperity and ambition and drew them on their walls.

Most religions also have a special place in their hearts for pomegranates. In Judaism it is believed the pomegranate has 613 seeds, which corresponds with the 613 commandments in the Torah. Christianity often depicted pomegranates signifying resurrection, in relation to Virgin Mary or Jesus. Islam refers to pomegranates in the Quran as seeds brought down from paradise, and for Persians pomegranates symbolize fertility or eternal life.

To endure the climate in its native region, pomegranate trees can handle extreme heat and cold. The fruit exteriors are sun-reflectant and they have deep root systems for conserving water that make them heat tolerant. The pomegranate has a dual layer that mitigates opening when not ripe, working hard so the fruit and seeds aren’t opened prematurely.

The interior husk is interesting as the pomegranate is one of the only fruits that grew to protect all of its seeds at once (exterior) as well as protecting its seeds individually (interior husk). This dual protection mechanism ensures that seeds are preserved until the fruit is opened and allows the pomegranate to double up on safeguarding against environmental impacts (ie, harsh winds) and predators who can’t easily access their fruit. However, here’s where things start to get interesting. The pomegranate fruit itself is synonymous with each seed, a rarity for fruits. The fleshy edible bits only exist as casings around each seed, and each fruit a gold mine of seeds!

Of all the fruits mentioned, the most unique thing about pomegranates is the seeds. Whereas fruits like tomatoes, watermelons and pumpkins have many seeds as well, they have other edible material and eating the seeds doesn’t add much value to the experience - you could pick out each watermelon seed and still enjoy the watermelon fruit. Yet pomegranates are both the fruit and seed in one! In fact, pomegranates have the highest number of seeds of any fruit, sometimes up to 1,500 seeds!

When you think about it, all of the fruit survival methods mentioned above are really just seed preservation strategies. Most fruits contain seeds that are not intended to be eaten but are a byproduct of the fruit's seed distribution strategy for longevity. Seeds that are the fruit themselves are usually harder like almonds. If the seeds are surrounded by fleshy bits like in Lychee or Kiwi, they usually have one or few seeds. Pomegranates stand out and furthermore, lead the way in survival-resistant mechanisms. Do fruits with many seeds inherently evolve to have more optimal seed preservation strategies?

Colloquially, women’s bodies are also constantly protecting their seeds, in particular during ovulation. During this time body temperatures tend to rise slightly and women sometimes feel unwell, as a result of the immune system exerting more focus on protecting eggs from illness, than the host itself. I wonder if similar to pomegranates, does a woman’s survival instincts kick in more, the more eggs she has? Is this why humans have survived this long?

Punica Granatum, Hakuna Matatum

To top this all off, pomegranates are one of the most super of super foods. Filled with antioxidants, pomegranates help our bodies manage stress, they’re anti-inflammatory, support joint and skin health. Regular consumption of pomegranate juice is shown to improve heart health, cholesterol and reduce the risk of diabetes and slow cancer progression. Not to mention pomegranate peel extract was explored as a covid cure.

Not only do pomegranates supercharge the meaning of survival of the fittest with their many seed preservation strategies. But they also show an impenetrable focus on reproduction and the ability for the fruit to continue reproducing hundreds of seeds for years. When studying the genetic material of the punica granatum it has become evident that pomegranates experienced two major chromosome events that contribute to their adaptability, resilience and genetic diversity. Furthermore, there is “unrivaled gene conservation” also known as shared synteny, where we can see preserved co-localization of genes on chromosomes across pomegranate species throughout history. Anecdotally, this strengthens the thesis that the need for protection of the innumerable pomegranate seeds may have contributed to maintaining its genetic dominance.

Pomegranate Theory

From the Persian Yalda Night to the annual Pomegranate Festival in Azerbaijan to being one of the most expensive fruits in an American grocery store, it is clear pomegranates are celebrated and culturally preserved by humans.

One must wonder whether the reason for the pomegranate’s reverence is as a result of its unique survival mechanisms and significant potential for reproduction? The analysis of pomegranates relative to other fruits, and the anecdotal evidence of their rarity, mystery and difficulty to access leaves a lot to aspire to. We are left with many questions. Why is the pomegranate the most seeded fruit and thus has the most opportunity to spread its seed globally? Did the pomegranate evolve to protect so many seeds or did the seeds multiply because the pomegranate was so protected?

The coalescence of features lead me to develop the Pomegranate Theory, an idea that highlights the one thing that unites all living things - the survival of seeds and the power of longevity.

Unlike the many-seeded watermelons and pumpkins, you can’t just cut open a pomegranate, you need to pick out each seed/fruit individually or adopt some kind of efficient seed extraction mechanism. Some suggest carving out the top and then slicing the fruit into 1/5ths before splitting it, I’ve seen others remove the seeds in a bowl of water so the white husk comes off easily. I personally have struggled many a minute digging through white seed peels, only to realize I’d been hypnotized by the pomegranny and was implementing a faulty strategy.

To fully appreciate how wonderful they are, I suggest you try to open one yourself and rawdog a pomegranate, instead of buying the cleaned seeds or pom juice. Its remarkability is made tangible when you compare the ease of peeling a tangerine in 1 minute versus the effort of extracting pomegranate seeds, literal rubies of nature, that will take you at least 3-15 minutes, depending on your carving strategy. The gratification is worth it. Usually the things with the most to protect are the most special.

~~

The Pomegranate Theory

That which cultivates the most seeds - seeds of life, seeds of wisdom or seeds of creativity - will survive the longest and the strongest.

[That which cultivates the most, will survive the longest and the strongest.]

~~

Not brought to you by big pomegranate.

Sources:

1. https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/surprising-pomegranate-facts#:~:text=The Romans mistakenly assumed pomegranates,Pakistan and parts of Afghanistan

2. https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/surprising-pomegranate-facts#:~:text=The Romans mistakenly assumed pomegranates,Pakistan and parts of Afghanistan.

3. https://www.alimentarium.org/en/fact-sheet/pomegranate-miracle-fruit#:~:text=Pomegranates play an important role,as possible to be fulfilled.

4. https://red-crown.ca/2015/08/the-most-ancient-of-fruits/

5. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2023.1039211/full

6. https://digitalcommons.morris.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1082&context=horizons#:~:text=The image of the pomegranate,a Bee​(1944).

7. https://digitalcommons.morris.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1082&context=horizons#:~:text=The image of the pomegranate,a Bee​(1944).

8. Chat GPT

But honestly dude *rubs eyes* I don’t even remember what happened last night…

The Pre-Game

Song playing: Old Town Road - Lil Nas 0x

There’s nothing like a good house party to get the night going, especially after a long work week. December 14, 2018 and ETH is bottoming at $84 after a year of down only; next stop? The moon. Little did we know…

Luckily stonks like SPX had also bottomed that week, and thus began the pre-game party that rode the SPX up nearly 40% until March 2020, the pandemic. The Saudi Prince hacking Jeff Bezos phone was a good sign the party was getting stated.

The Party

Song playing: (T)WAP - Cardi B

Russia and Saudi Arabia started an oil price war in February 2020 and then covid hit. March 2020 was like arriving to a house party early. It’s really shitty until you figure out the scene - where’s the bathroom, where’s the ice, who has the drugs - except everyone wants the drugs (vaccines) and dealer are charging exorbitant prices. And it’s a masquerade.

Only 6 months later Bitcoin and SPX recovered and reached all time highs. Toilet paper was more in demand than the dollar, everyone was shaving their head or making sourdough. Things started to get crazy bro, remember the first DeFi Summer? Compound had just revolutionized DeFi with community governance and frog nation was on the rise. 1 Yearn = 1 BTC was proof of concept that an ETH-based currency could be store of value. And I’ll never forget walking over to play beer pong when I saw Novogratz shilling SUSHI on CNBC. The entire nutritional food pyramid had been tokenized and a snapshot of Lebron taking a shot sold for $200,000.

Rekt.news was founded and flash loans were picking up steam. Web3 was also finally being realized as acts like Twitter banning Trump in January 2021 proved the need for censorship resistance infrastructure. The metaverse was a dream being chased and if you didn’t have an NFT you couldn’t sit with us.

In Q1 2021 we were so high on NFTs, we had convinced ourselves that SHIB at $8 billion valuation was mainstream adoption. SPX continued to soar thanks to money printer go brrr and interest rates were at their lowest ever. Then Coinbase IPO was the local top and we got bored, so so bored. SO bored that Bored Apes Yacht Club was invented in April 2021, as solace for the pandemic soul. It only took 5 months for Steph Curry to join the ape party. Next thing we knew, the rather orderly stablecoin experiment hit 5th gear with new stables like the uncollateralized and unpegged (3,3).

In October 2021, SHIB market cap was $41 billion, about the same market cap as Etsy, and Tesla would soon start accepting Dogecoin. In retrospect, bankers analyzing Elon’s tweeting trends to predict Doge movements is about as ridiculous as taking the 10th shot of tequila before you go to the bar. By the end of 2021, over $17 billion in NFTs were traded, the GDP of Botswana. We should’ve known the party was almost over when dad arrived, Meta. At least we had the friends and anons we made along the way, it was one of the best parties we’d ever been to.

The Hangover

Song playing: The Morning - The Weeknd

Everything that seemed sustainable during the pandemic is proving not to be. It seems crazy how much we believed, some call it mass psychosis, but maybe if everyone is crazy then nobody is crazy. Remember Clubhouse? This hangover will check our hubris.

In 2021 companies like Peloton had their cake, convincing us to buy a bike for $1,500 and pay an additional $50 per month to use it, instead of us buying a $100 classic bicycle. Peloton closed this week with $500 million in losses. Today SoftBank’s vision fund posted a $20 billion loss, only a year after it was the most profitable Japanese company. Meanwhile you can watch the play by play of $4.6 billion of their wreckage on the hit show WeWorked on Hulu! Even our dot-com darling Apple is down 22% this year.

The dollar, oil prices and inflation are at all time high, a monetary trilemma of sorts. While war is the Russia-Ukraine war is the prevailing crisis, The sanctions that aim to punish the offenders are punishing other global vendors.

While it feels like we’re close to the bottom (and maybe we are!) my gut tells me the worse is yet to come. We must still be drunk because a Warhol just sold for $195 million, the most ever paid for any American artist’s work. Professionals like Julian Emanuel of Evercore isi say that we won’t see proper capitulation until the VIX is above 40 or the puts to calls ratio is above 135 (more people betting it’ll go more down than it’ll go up) and Arthur Hayes bought crash June 2022 puts. I heard recently that SPX below 4k would be a free fall, we touched sub 3.9k this week. But how are credit markets? Have we felt enough pain?

The Fed waited until over 8% inflation to start quantitative tightening. On the plus side, medical care and services are only inflated 3.5%. 50 bps rate hikes are confirmed for the next several meetings in the US, meanwhile China refuses to raise rates and Europe is moving slow - is there consensus? Should there be? India is considering shutting its exports of wheat to protect domestic supply, not only is Shanghai locked down but Beijing is close to a quarantine and Europe is literally meters away from war.

Ongoing supply chains, oil prices spiking and foreign inflation isn’t helping the case. Argentina has 55% inflation and 49% interest rate. Take that in. Even the companies you thought had their shit together 6 months ago are facing frenzy. Twitter and Meta have announced hiring freezes.

Crypto’s high beta exacerbated the impact on the web3 community. While many say The Unpegging of UST was obvious, and there certainly was a lot of vocal criticism, it’s easy to see why thousands of investors would support the idea when most of our nation states rely/relied on similar mechanisms. It’s hypocritical for Yellen to disparage UST in congress when the Federal Reserve has played the same games with gold and following Bretton Woods. Any attempts to hinder token innovation that strives away from that model is an attack on monetary rights.

This is one of the sad truths, had there been enough of a bailout like 2008 perhaps Terra/UST would have survived, but they took on too much debt while not enough people cared. I wonder what would’ve happened had more of the Ethereum or Cosmos community been involved? What if it was similar to EIP999, would UST have been bailed out? Was the issue bad debt or just bad marketing? Some called it an attack, I would call it the invisible hand. But just like you always invite back the guy who drank too much, people can always return to Rome.

Experts like Zoltan Pozsar feel these events are larger than simple inflation, we’re experiencing a global repricing event and what he calls Bretton Woods III. What will be the new global reserve currency? Which commodities will become the backbone of our future economies?

Our hearts say to keep partying - the web3 revolution and new monetary system are the new frontier - but our bodies say we need to rest.

The Recovery

Song playing: Don’t Stop Me Now - Queen

What should make us feel better is we’re not alone. Misery likes company and the company is filled with suits, nerds, retail and funds.

Hydrate

You’re likely dehydrated, physically and financially. However, if we’re heading to a rumored recession and the Fed follows through with its QT starting this month, the drought will continue.

A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. While Q1 2022 saw 6.5% US GDP growth - down 1.4% from Q4, it’s not negative growth. So if a recession is coming, it’s likely not to be in 2022. Plan for at least 12 months of runway if not 36 months.

If you’re a start up, learn from comrades Consensys, Status and WeWork and prioritize long-term sustainability. If you’re a regulator, listen to the voices of the innovators instead of the capital allocators. If you’re an institution, take the lessons from the gamestop short squeeze and support the nerds and meme artists building the world’s new technologies.

Vitamins & Electrolytes

A hangover always gets better with some gatorade. Treat yourself to standard self-care practices - take an exercise class, meditate, read a book, pay with fiat. Lastly, treat yourself to that ginger shot and green smoothie, it’s cheaper than making it yourself!

The crypto market is 24/7 behind devices that heat up our gonads and hypnotize our eyeballs that it’s easy to forget the real world. It might be time to take a break from the metaverse. We didn’t deserve $150,000 SOCKS yet. Do you have clean white socks for the summer?

Rest

Burnout is real and many have been building from the 2018 bear market through 2022. Take this time to rest, recharge, ideate. We used to say bear markets were good for building as cope, but now we know it’s true. Ethereum alone tripled its market cap from peak to peak (2017-2022). If that’s not proof of concept that build, play, rest, repeat works, I don’t know what is.

Rebuild

Good jobs reports mean a lot of people want / need to work, this is great for crypto because most of those web2 and fiat contributors are probably bored and in need of a new revolutionary mission to get behind.

But we can’t just hire crypto experts, we have to create the pipeline of 0 to hireable to make sure we’re growing the pie of talent. The plus side of an economic slowdown is more time. Let’s take the time to train new contributors to go 0 to hireable so we poach less and recruit more.

Another plus side is most funds have finished raising. Whether it’s a16z, Variant Fund, Sequoia Archetype or others, most funds spent the last 12 months raising so they could support more founders. So while the economy slows down, expect venture capital to stay sharp. The biggest bets are made in a bear market.

https://twitter.com/cburniske/status/1524840747005923328

This is not financial advice.

DAOs in the wild opt for one of two approaches to giving users membership and voting power:

• token-based governance approach, where users hold/delegate/stake/earn tokens to be members of the DAO

• social-based governance approach, where members are sponsored, contribute to the DAO or sign covenants to become members

These mechanisms vary in how permissionless they are for new members, voting rights and thresholds for participations - for example holding a DeveloperDAO token to be a member or holding 10M UNI to be able to make proposals to the DAO.

This may not be fully exhaustive but it captures most ways a user’s DAO membership can be dictated today. Yet despite how one might acquire the governance rights in a token-based vs. social-based DAO, they all have one thing in common - they’re static.

How dynamic can we get?

Some DAOs use tools like CollabLand to create token faucets in their discord, to reward top contributors or Coordinape for DAO members to review other member’s contributions in the community. These are great ways to get more voting power into the hands of contributors, but it’s not a good way to moderate it or take it away. Our vision of protocols as the future of work is also contingent on acknowledging and valuing user contributions in some autonomous fashion.

DAO membership should be fluid, we need to begin designing DAOs that capture the dynamicism of participating in web3, and acknowledge the low switching costs of working between protocols.

Questions to wonder about:

How can we decrease voting power or kick somebody out of a DAO?

How can DAO members maintain a threshold of behavior in the protocol not just voting power?

How can we change the DAO’s membership over time?

How do we ensure DAO participants - who have significant influence over protocol governance, culture and longevity - are still best suited to make decisions in the interests of the DAO?

Being a member of a DAO should be a privilege not a right.

Anyone can purchase a protocol’s token, attend a town hall or join a discord channel. But not everyone should be able to have perpetual, unadulterated rights to a protocol’s governance or maintainence of a treasury (extremely important jobs!) simply because they hold that token or used that cat pfp.

One of the only - if not the only - DAO mechanism that removes a member on-chain is guildkick in MolochDAOv2 that lets members vote to remove another member, usually if they’re behaving maliciously, and as a preemptive defense so the DAO doesn’t need to potentially ragequit funds. However, this is incredibly hostile behavior and doesn’t meet our need for fluidity in DAOs - guildkick would be a static proposal, submitted when the time is right, not an autonomous solution.

Reputation-based DAOs

Holding a token can signify interest and skin in-the-game but simply holding that token doesn’t prove enough commitment to the protocol or DAO’s well being. A user’s interactions with a protocol and community is what should matter for DAO membership and voting rights - reputation.

DAOs can start attributing commitment in their protocols based on Network Participation, Governance Participation and Community Participation. Instead of relying exclusively on token ownership, DAOs should require their engaged members to partake in the protocol and DAO and develop reputation.

If the whale investor won’t stake their tokens, should they be a governance whale? If they don’t have a protocol POAP, can they even sit with us?

DAO membership should be fluid.

With token-based voting, users have low switching costs - they can buy/sell any token and participate in any DAO with the snap of their uniswaps - but DAOs aren’t currently afforded the same fluidity.

A DAO needs changeable membership - where a user’s membership is contingent on their continuously meeting reputation metrics, instead of a static one-time event or purchase. If they stop meeting those minimum on-chain requirements, they should no longer be a part of the DAO. Imagine how curated our DAOs could be if they automatically updated their members lists to always include the highest-quality, most engaged members. Just like you have to be a citizens in a country to vote.

Let’s play this out:

Alice joined BobbyDAO that oversees Bobert Protocol. Currently Alice is a $BOB whale, she gets to submit proposals because she meets the $BOB threshold and she can swing votes pretty easily, but Alice has yet to stake BOB in the protocol, nor attend a community call! Alice is ngmi.

Lately Bob has been considering strengthening his DAO. He thinks reputation-based mechanisms could help, so that more $BOB stakers can have a say in the protocol instead of $BOB holders who may not actually care about the protocol’s best interests. He decides all users who staked their $BOB for at least 30 days in the last year can continue to be DAO members. If at any point in time a user falls out of that 30/365 ratio, they will no longer be a DAO member. If the same user restakes, they can be welcomed back into the DAO and thus Bob hopes to retain top protocol contributors in his DAO.

The future of DAOs are ever-changing bodies that can be programmatically maintained. Members are the lifeblood, that can either focus the DAO on its mission or take advantage of the DAO. A DAO’s members who don’t organically develop a reputation in a protocol may be misplaced, that could lead to plutocratic or autocratic outcomes in a community.

Users will buy many tokens, join many discords, try many DAOs and ditch many DAOs, few will stick around and use their tokens in the protocol, and even fewer will become long-term contributors. The metric of success of a DAO isn’t how many members it has, it’s the quality of proposals and it’s ability to retain contributors in the protocol (or whatever else the DAO is managing). A helpful member today may not be a helpful member tomorrow, and we can build DAOs with members that walk the walk. That’s why it’s important to keep our DAOs dynamic and allow membership to evolve.

Luckily, most interesting reputation metrics are on-chain or accessible via oracles, and can be fetched for DAOs to use in their governance systems.

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https://twitter.com/chipfranklin/status/1443664452239298584

Meanwhile the same profiteering puppets make decisions over human rights, infrastructure, health care and other essential services, while balancing their own conflicts of interest. That’s really the issue with governments, not the controversial mandates or their execution, it’s the inescapable COIs.

Just because a mandate is to provide neutral services, doesn’t mean administrators are themselves neutral. Incentives of government officials do not align with incentives of a “government” and thus so frequently they are consumed with corruption.

Why do we pretend like self-interests of government officials don’t exist and why are we surprised when their molochian desires appear?

Despite the potential altruism of government martyrs who choose to represent social contracts of a state, an individual’s game theory is not the same as the expected game theory of the public’s well-being. Providing public goods doesn’t equal no incentives.

A reason officials often seek corruption is because they do not rid themselves of self-interests by being a member of the government, they are simply pretending they cannot be corrupt. It’s like we collectively took an oath that pretending they couldn’t be corrupt would make them less corrupt, rather than accepting natural human gluttony.

Mass incarceration for bad behavior doesn’t always lead to less of the bad behavior, it often has the opposite effect and makes the bad behavior more dangerous. For example, the decriminalization has often been more successful than criminalization; like the decriminalization of illicit drugs in Portugal that reduced the social cost of drug misuse by 18%.

In the government’s case, our solution should not be to try and force unwavering altruism, but rather accept elements of self-interest and bake the right rewards into the job to provide public benefit yet mitigate harm - decriminalize corruption.

DAO as an anti-government, government

Milton Friedman believed in decentralized approaches to running societies such that “governments” should only oversee monetary policy and free markets should decide all other services. I view DAOs as the solution: efficient coordination of free-market behaviors to optimize public interests.

We typically expect these things from neutral governing bodies representing the people:

1. Public Goods Funding - ie. education

2. Economic Assistance & Emergency Aid - ie. welfare

3. Financial Regulation - ie. monetary policy

4. Security & Justice - ie. military

These same objectives are mandated by protocols in Web3. However, DAOs let us programmatically motivate public goods without aggregating all workers under an opaque “government” structure. In fact, most DAO members do not work at the same organization, sometimes have conflicting goals, yet manage to harmonize around the same mission.

Anyone can be rewarded for their efforts in a DAO. Instead of mass denial of self-interests, DAOs embrace the reality of incentive alignment between participants/contributors.

In that lens, DAOs are the capitalist public goods allocators, the free-market’s project manager, the programmatic invisible hand.

DAOs are the free market implementation for providing public goods. The mandate of a DAO smart contract can be partial to a protocol’s well being, while DAO contributors can be rewarded with private incentives to drive their own business models - eg. as grants, full-time funding, knowledge-sharing or social reputation. The underlying social consensus of a DAO aims to balance the DAO’s goals with contributor incentives, not hinder the existence of these mechanics.

Moreover, inherent transparency of DAOs makes it near impossible to feign non-corruption, since any/all behavior can be checked by voters or observers. Smart contracts allow members to be voted in/out without notice, assess on-chain conviction or ragequit. The modularity also means there is little loyalty to one proposal or another, the only loyalty is to merit and accountability.

“The people have responsibility, the government doesn’t have responsibility”

- Milton Friedman

Incentivize members of governing bodies in such a way that they do not need to abuse their power to be incentivized, and furthermore cannot abuse their power. DAOs.

https://twitter.com/nope_its_lily/status/1444375731551674368?s=19

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Other Sources:

https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/friedman-government-problem-1993.pdf

Milton Friedman lectures on youtube