Research: Optimizing Governance for Parallel Experimentation - Rethinking the Structure of DAOs

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Ken Stanton

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

this.tent@gmail.com

Additional applicants

No other applicants.

[GENERAL] Please specify how many months you expect your project to last (from 2-12 months)

6

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language.

No

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

No

[GENERAL] If YES, please describe what the dependency is and why you believe it is essential for your project’s delivery. If NO, please write “No dependencies.” .

No dependencies.

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

Yes

[GENERAL] If NO, please describe which outputs are not going to be open source. If YES, please write “Project will be fully open source.”

Project will be fully open source.

[METADATA] Category of proposal

DAO

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

The Problem:

The currently accepted concept of a DAO doesn't reach the highest potential for what the acronym "DAO" could potentially stand for:

1. Decentralized. Currently this just means that DAOs lack a centralized entity that controls funds, but it doesn't take into account the fact that the treasury of the DAO is a central single point-of-failure, even if it's managed on a decentralized network... a bottleneck that prevents them from scaling as truly distributed systems. This is not just a problem for maintaining resilience against failures or attacks, but it also plays into the reasons why DAOs can be in danger being subject to government regulations. Ideally, true decentralization would make DAOs look a lot like a bunch of sole proprietors working concurrently in common domains.
2. Autonomous. Currently this just means that DAOs lack a centralized entity controlling funds, but all monetary decisions are subject to majority opinion (democracy) or the opinion of the group with the largest token holdings (plutocracy). If the pursuits of the individual are subservient to the whims of the mob or the whales, who in this scenario is autonomous? Another way of viewing autonomy is whether or not the system can operate without oversight. The system needs the capacity to remain safe to interact with and able to change over time, but does that mean the token issuers / DAO creators are the ones with autonomy?
3. Organization. Currently this just means that people subject themselves to whichever governing authority has control over the system. Any experiments that deviate from the majority of voting power might not be considered. It is true that minority perspectives can sometimes cause damage to organizations, but risks could be localized and only extended to greater parts of the community once they are proven to work on smaller scales. You want to organize so that one person's autonomy can't easily violate another person's autonomy, while avoiding the need for a centralized entity or treasury that accumulates and controls funds.

My Approach:

Lots of relevant information exists in different fields of research that could help us build better DAOs. This proposal focuses on collecting some of that research into a technical report that could hopefully shed light on some important questions:

• How can DAOs maximize the number of concurrent experiments within an ecosystem without falling apart financially?
• How can we structure DAOs that are truly worthy of being called DAOs?
• Can we maximize the benefit to people who are actually working on solving problems and not just token prospectors?

Community Engagement:

This research will be free and open source for anyone interested in using it. Part of the process of refining my report on this topic will involve presenting my work in some after-townhall meetings. I will be open to opportunities for further collaboration after the completion of this project as well.

Demonstrating Impact:

This is about research and analysis. The impact will be in how people use this work, as well as how it shapes peoples understanding of what DAOs have the potential to become.

[IMPACT] How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?

The main way that this project applies to the challenge is by providing insight for the creation of additional not yet existing tools that give Cardano a distinct advantage and improvement of DAO governance.

This is a research project, so the benefit is in shaping people's perspectives in ways that could lead to improved tools and decentralized governance mechanisms.

Exploring the properties of distributed systems from both computer science as well as biology could lead to a greater number of parallel experiments within a decentralized ecosystem. It will also be beneficial to look at how experiments could compose and interoperate with each other. It's important to make sure that we do our best to search the space of possible experiments so that we don't get stuck in a local optimum and miss even better solutions.

[IMPACT] How do you intend to measure the success of your project?

This is research and documentation that could help people improve governance structures in Cardano to optimize the number of experiments within our ecosystem.

Indicators of Success:

• A detailed and useful technical report on alternative DAO structures.
• People using this research in their own project and deriving value from that.
• DAOs of the future structured to innovate better than other types of organizations.

[IMPACT] Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?

What are your plans to spread the project’s outputs over a reasonable timescale?

• I plan on organizing my research and working on a first draft after proposals are submitted and finalized. (If you're voting on this proposal, check my progress here!)
• I'll probably lead some breakout rooms after town-hall meetings to discuss the paper and hopefully gain insight into what it might be missing.
• Since I've already put a lot of effort into related research, 6 months after voting and approval should be plenty of time to polish my results.

How and with whom will you share the outputs/impact and opportunities that will arise as a result of your completed project?  

• Everything will be made available on the linked GitHub page.
• Everything related to this project will be open source under either the Apache-2.0 or CC-BY-SA-4.0 license depending on whether it's code or documentation.
• I plan to make myself available for further discussion and collaboration after completion.

How do you expect to use the results generated from the project in further research and development activities?

• Some of the broader applications of this work will be of direct benefit to my Dims (Distributed Idea Management System) project.
• It should also be compatible with my other research project: Unique Pseudonymous Identification of DReps through Joint Content Creation in the DRep improvement and onboarding challenge.
• Both this and my DRep research will eventually be considered in the context of my Distributed Idea Management System, Dims!

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?

I've been a member of the Cardano community since the end of 2017, and I've been participating in Project Catalyst since the first public round (Fund2). I'm pretty much a generalist when it comes to anything dealing with science, logic, culture, behavior, communication, and the comparative analysis of complex systems. Universities aren't a very adequate option for people interested in pursuing deep and practical cross-disciplinary studies, so I simply spent 8 years taking every class I found interesting at a community college (where professors tend to care more about teaching), and I've been pursuing knowledge independently ever since... As someone who was home-schooled for most of my childhood, I tend to learn better on my own anyway.

I've been programming since I was 12. The properties of scalable distributed systems have been a focus of my studies for more than a decade now. I've also had opportunities over the years to witness and take note of how perverse incentive mechanisms almost universally degrade the efficiency of governing bodies, and also note when various approaches create a more optimized situation. I've been living in Malawi (southeast Africa) for over 2 years now, partly because of Cardano's focus on Africa. I'm also in the Cardano community partly because of Cardano's focus on Africa.

This, and my other projects, are independent. Funds are mostly required only for personal expenses so that I can devote my full time to Cardano related research and development. All my progress will be freely available online. All I can say about steps and process is that if I have enough money to hire a motorcycle taxi and order something at a coffee shop at least two or three times a week to get work done, my productivity will increase. Being able to pay my bills is also a good motivator.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?

The goal is to provide detailed research to the community on improving DAO structures so that they have more impact through greater levels of experimentation and the exploration of how ideas interact with each other.

Most of the thought-work for this project is already done, I just need to put it into a format that will be useful to others as well as formalize some of the concepts I'm thinking about.

The validation is in community feedback and testing the ideas in real projects once this research is complete.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed breakdown of your project’s milestones and each of the main tasks or activities to reach the milestone plus the expected timeline for the delivery.

Milestones:

1. (Within the first two months) Finish a first draft and give a presentation of the ideas in this proposal to the Catalyst community at an after-townhall meeting. Get feedback and iterate.
2. (Less than six months after project approval) Repeat the process in step one at least one more time with integrated feedback before submitting it as a completed project.

Note:

This project is just a report and presentations to help people see the bigger picture of how this integrates with my other work. A lot of the ideas are already formulated and just need to be written down and reviewed by the community.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.

1. A sequence of at least two drafts.
2. The final polished report and an open source repository of all the work and related material.

( All of this information was provided in sections above. )

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

All the funds for this project go to time spent so that my wife and I can pay our personal bills and buy food. There are no additional costs to budget.

• Roughly $1000USD per month for 6 months of work (only applies to time spent).
• ₳20,000 is not much more than the minimum proposal amount.
• The possibility of improving people's approaches to decentralized governance.

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

This proposal is for ₳20,000 (just 133% of the minimum allowed for Fund10) for six month of work (roughly $1000USD per month at the time of writing). This is would be adequate to cover rent and the basic necessities here in Malawi (and maybe have a little extra).

There is a lot to be gained if decentralized governance systems can increase the amount of experimentation and discoveries being made in the Cardano ecosystem.

[IMPORTANT NOTE] The Applicant agreed to Fund10 rules and also that data in the Submission Form and other data provided by the project team during the course of the project will be publicly available.

I Accept