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title: Universe Guide Primary Topics to Explore
tags: [Universe Guide]

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# Universe Guide Primary Topics to Explore

March 29, 2022
*Not a comprehensive list, but a bunch of ideas we might explore and work on over the coming weeks.*

1. **Tone and quality of information.** I'd like to consider/critique the Jordan Hall and Trach interviews. Specifically about the tone/feel/vibe of the conversations and the *fidelity* of the speakers visions as it might relate to defining the north star of the UG. I won't do this here, but I would suggest that Trach's interview was open, invitational, creative, and mythic, whereas Jordan Hall's interview was narrow, prescriptive, obtuse, and banal. I would like to remember to encourage each other to stay mythic and avoid banality! 
    - How are the metaphors related to the mental models? To this point, how are the aesthetic elements of the visual design system correlated to the conceptual elements so that there is coherency at every strata of the project?
    - What are the conceptual considerations of lorecrafting? What kind of intention might we set in relation to the world-images presented by Trach and JH in consideration of the invitation we hope to extent to the would-be contributors?
2. **The role/importance of NFTs in our universe.** Is this beyond the scope? Maybe, but we might address the ecosystem-wide preoccupation with NFT-gated universes. 
    - Is this what we are doing? How might we differentiate ourselves from this degen activity, or capture the mechanisms to fold back into our regen dough?
    - Lots of ideas will be generated soon from the comic+auction design sprint. Would be nice to hold space to consider some of them and how they might be integrated into the UG.
3. **On Lore: Lands of Lorecraft.** Will we orient our inquiries towards something greater than marketing? How might we approach the larger mythological and narrative drives of the stories we are putting out into the world? [Already a spicy brain download on this topic](https://hackmd.io/@TravisWyche/On-Lorecraft) that I would like to shape and integrate into the UG.
4. **Biological, evolutionary, scientific metaphors as they are applied to Web3 and DAOs.** Related to the *Three Body Problem of DAOs* I am beginning to outline and Trach's vision of Siphonophore (or coral, or other colonial interspecies cooperations). DAOs are not natural formations, quite the contrary. How might the evocation of scientific, empirical, and "natural" metaphors inhibit our collective ability to engage with the true potential of this technology? 
    - Biomimicry metaphors: the DAO as a body.
    - Evolutionary metaphor: the DAO as a progression/procession.
    - Archive fever and phylogenetic patterns: the DAO as a material manifestation of a morphogenetic field.
3. **The architecture of the contributor submission flow.** How will people submit contributions? Will we risk to describe this process in any detail or will Edition 0 just be the call to action for someone else to solve this problem? The danger here is that if left to their own devices the solution might just be more of the same (degen NFT-gated low fidelity metaverses that capture attention for stupid causes). We have a responsibility to increase the fidelity on these points. We might invite others into our conversation to make suggestions, critique what we have, and point towards things we haven't considered. Might we start the open-sourcing now?
    - How will the forking of the content work, of the designs and content and repo of assets? (*what is said*)
    - How will the forking of the tone/vibe/myth of the UG work? (*how it is said*)
    - How will individual or community accountibility to the open-source memes work? (*tracking who said what*)
    - How will the sub-DAO architecture be proposed, to create accountibility and oversight back to the mother DAO? (*understanding that everything that is said will be said by Gitcoin*)
    - How will we protect from cultural [capture](https://spengrah.mirror.xyz/f6bZ6cPxJpP-4K_NB7JcjbU0XblJcaf7kVLD75dOYRQ)? That is, how might we provide a system of submission that anticipates malicious actors derailing the myth/lore?
    - How will we protect from fantasy capture? That is, how might we provide a system that maintains a strong tether to real cryptoeconomic ideas and avoid getting lost in the LARPing?
    - How will the contributor compensation mechanisms be defined? Yearn, Coordinape, etc... how will the mechanism value high-quality artistic and lorecrafting contributions beyond the explicit KPIs, to avoid being reduced to (only) a marketing appendage for Gitcoin, to instill the importance of a collective storytelling for the wider ecosystem? Basically, how will we avoid putting art, myth, and deep philosophical learnings in subservience to financial/business interests once we release the content to the public?
4. **IMPACT.** Probably requires a deep dive to define this term and align behind a shared meaning... I can try to generate some ideas this week. References the *Impact DAOs* book, the impact KPIs that might be used to measure the success of the comic/UG/auction beyond monetary upside, and how greenpill regen crypto can/will make an impact on the world. This is a low fidelity term that we should crank up to 11!
    - What is impact? How do we observe it, track it, visualize it to be legible?
    - Is this about putting intensities of qualia (qualitative or subjective values) in relation to metrics of quanta (quantitative or object measurements)? If we want to pursue this, then let's define the qualia and quanta of the term and how it relates to our north star. This might lead to more terminology that we need to define and unpack.
    - This pursuit will strengthen the UG by making it more explicit, and also obviously extend that explicit definition out to other Gitcoin/Owocki projects, raising the sanity water line for everyone. This is a good goal to shoot for!
    - These projects impact us as makers, influence those around us, and will soon making big impact in a larger arena/aperture. It's important to understand what this means and to wield it with care and delicate intention.
5. **Decentralized Science (DeSci) as it relates to sci-fi/fantasy lorecrafting.** The canon of our sci-fi might set a precident that literally and directly influences the canon of empircal science. I observed this research at ETH Denver and it's very premature, even behind other Ethereum projects. It's also a wonderful opportunity to elaborate the *phase shift* or thresholds between science fiction and science fact (because they are increasingly blurred, especially within the crypto space). This is very related to the architecture definitions. We might take this UG project very seriously in considering how it might shift the empircal canon of **truth**, facts, evidence, justification, objectivity, or even **reality**. This is why I like to think of lorecrafting as *agile imagination software* and points to the need to redirect the narrative of the metaverse so that it doesn't become captured by perverse/degen desires. *Truth is at stake* lol.
6. **Curation: How are DAOs chosen for future comics?** This is provisionally answered: through the Impact DAO book. But it points to a larger set of issues, of how the comic series will be archive in the UG and influence the next generation of Impact DAOs which will influence the next generation of lorecrafters, etc etc infinite etc. We should step in and step up to the responsibility of how this curation happens by ruminating upon how the Impact DAOs build up an explicit regenerative stack that Gitcoin evangelizes in return for that DAO/protocol extending their resources (not necessarily financial) to supporting the ongoing deep dive research we are entering into here. This is about more than comics; it's about making the regen stack explicit through a variety of transmedia vehicles, and the UG will serve as an important index for stitching all these ideas together. (This is also why it's very appropriate to be published in the way we are pursuing.)
7. **A Taxonomy of Molochs!** Should we explore the Phantasmagoric Moloch idea in relation to other cosmogonic models? I'm currently iterating on this for comic #4, but it feels like we could jam on this a bit. With this, there's a question of audience and attention (as the most precious resource). We need to put the breadth and depth, short-wide and long-narrow, into relation to consider who we are addressing and what kinds of fidelity they might need/want in order to get pilled, to contribute, to feel empowered to change the story, or feel safe enough to be constructively critical to the ideas (rather than emotionally reactionary).
    - Might we use the UG to sketch out so many different flavors of Moloch to demonstrate to the community how far we can take this meme/concept? 
    - Might we challenge the idea of Moloch with critical alternatives? ETH Phoenix? ETH Bot? Can we add more characters to the Gitcoin pantheon before the Edition 0 release?
10. **FIDELITY.** Currently working on a longer form brain download on this topic, as it feel very relevant for our convo and to scope the comic+UG+auction initiatives. More on this soon.