HAUS Party LIVE! Notes: Season 4 Episode 2 (1/27/2022)

--- ###### tags: `Haus Party Live` --- # HAUS Party LIVE! Notes: Season 4 Episode 2 (1/27/2022) Join us for 🎉 Haus Party Live 🎉 every Thursday at 2pm EST on the [DAOhaus Discord](https://discord.gg/daohaus) ## Notes From the Livestream 🎉 **Topics** - Main Topic: Should everything be a DAO? **Hosts & Guests** - Felipe, dekanbro, Vanilladelphia.eth, vengist - Audience guests --- 🌱 Welcome to our metaphorical, infinite garden! 🌱 ## Everything DAOs - If we could push a button and make everything into a DAO, should we? - Asking some questions: - What is the purpose of DAOs? - Why/why not use a DAO? - There are different definitions of a DAO, which then leads to questions like *what kind* of DAO? - DAOs can be used for *extractive* purposes or they can be organizations of humans who are *coordinating* so we'll want to investigate this question - The more organizations that are out there that are coordinated and not under control of any centralized power the better, but this doesn't equate to saying the word "DAO" - *How* are they DAOing? Are they just including "DAO" in their names? - Every organization should be *coordinated, not controlled* - Is it only for people who "get it" or are we aiming for wide appeal? - Aiming to convert every organization into a DAO could be seen as a marketing pitch, but there is still room for many DAOs in the future of work and organization ### DAOs and Organisms - Alan Watts lecture on identity and privacy: [Alan Watts: Future of Privacy and Human Organization](https://www.organism.earth/library/document/future-of-privacy-and-human-organization) - As tech gets better we can copy things better (such as ourselves!) and if we copy ourselves, are we *still ourselves*? - This does happen organically through our cell processes - DAOs should also have this aspect -- Mission, members, and ideas evolve and recycling itself, and if this can't be part then it's not a DAO - If the responsibility is all put on one person, they will need to always be there - If there aren't routes for paths for folks to be replaced then it's *not evolving around itself* and it's not a DAO - 🌱 "A DAO yesterday is going to look a lot different than a DAO tomorrow." 🌱 - Everyone inside is an individual, but the DAO becomes individual as well and it's cells are the members that are recreating and recycling - New members -> fresh perspectives and can move into leadership - Reproduction and replication -> forks (see last week show notes) - What is a DAO: - 🌱 "Having a way for that core nucleus to recycle itself into something different." 🌱 - Keeping the power accountable and challengable is key ### Communities and Moderatorss - Relationship between community members and moderatorss is an interesting power dynamic - Referencing the subreddit */antiwork* drama -- what does it mean if the community can't remove moderatorss? - Moderators have overarching power to greatly impact the conversation and forums (such as a subreddit) but in a DAO the community *can* remove the mods through the built in processes - 🌱 "Being able to fork in a trustless way captures a DAO" 🌱 - Being able to flip the switch from a community governance standpoint and be able to take partial/shared ownership - DAOs can also be a catch-all term for organizations that we're trying to describe ourselves in - 🌱 "DAOs are structures that can evolve and continue to evolve in perpetuity." 🌱 - Introducing new actors, new agents, and new contributors ## DAOists Together - DAOists all together not just a singular DAO and looking at what happens between them - *Autopoiesis* - 🌱 "Transitory wrappers for human organization." 🌱 - System lives in individuals interacting and not just the DAO itself - Correlation of DAOs to natural systems such as the human body - *Autopoiesis* more often linked to cybernetic systems - Need to recognize that DAOs are still technology - 🌱 "DAOs are *human-synthetic fabrications that facilitate new ways of coordinating* but ultimately it's up to the people to make decisions about *how* they're going to coordinate." 🌱 - *Sympoiesis* concept and philosopher Donna Haraway: - Instead of orienting around autoregenerative and auto self-maintenance systems, we need to orient more toward *building with* each other to build structures that are conceptually and physically larger than the parts - Promise that DAOs offer is that they expand beyond shackles and encumberances that we've put on ourselves throughout the evolution of human civilization - Establishing a bond outside of existing structures, but what is this bond and how do we measure it? ### DAO Contributors and Organization - Are there different relationship types? - Are you following a DAO to get updates? Are you highly aligned through a staking mechanic? - The flow of talent between DAOs is an interesting link: - Collaborators putting effort into one DAO and then cycling to another -- organizations aligning through contributors working *across* several communities -> network effect - Natural alignment as contributors move between DAOs and contribute - *Why would we be competing?* if someone is in both DAOs there could be a natural link that is outside of competition - There is occasionally a divergence between users and people building and contributing - By default, most DAOs are open-source organizations (to a certain degree) in order to coordinate properly -- this lends to the cross-pollination across DAOs - [Matan Field: Anti rival, Collaborative Networks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZiHSjRATR0) - Incentive in traditional, hierarchical systems is to hide as much as possible from the consumer and creating opaqueness - Leads to a state of fear instead of generosity - Value add of ETH and DAOs is to incentivize people to open the production process and invite collaboration ### Individuals and Privacy - We tend to lose a lot by keeping secrets - How do we be sure to preserve individual privacy? - We should strive to preserve privacy within organizations but there is also a need for openness - Being open lowers coordination cost whereas going private increases coordination cost - **Audience member UI369 on stage:** - *Game B*: [Game B Wiki](https://www.gameb.wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page) - Game B rewards collaboration instead of competition - Rewards collaboration and giving things away - Will be taken care of *if* I collaborate and give things away - [An Initiation to Game B](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_cyCuCKQhs) - Gets into game theory: How do we bring up the whole? - Moving away from organizations stemming from the top-down brain of a CEO - Begin feeling the personality of the organization emerge - [Egregore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egregore) - Emergent behavior coming out of the organization that's beyond any certain individual - **TravisWyche**: Questioning the organism metaphor: - Competitive game theory built into the Darwinian perspective that we should be aware of and question - Top-down empirical approach from the scientific approach itself - As correlated to game theory (which is a keystone of the crypto and DAO community) we have the same obligation to question the theories that are assumptions are based upon - Ther e are different kinds of games: - Games where people are competing, but there are also games that are designed to be broken - There are games about games that become meta-governance levels - There are larger games that we are embedded within: nation states, economy, simulations and simulacras of capitalism [Baudrillard: Simulacra and Simulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation) - DAOs won't necessarily break free from this unless we take ownership over the underlying game structures - How to take accountability for mobilizing these DAO tools not for business as usual ("every business becomes a DAO") but for an alternative - Alternative to the way that we imagine and the metaphors and the composable 🌱 "Legos of our imagination" 🌱 - 🌱 "We need new language for collective hero's journies." 🌱 - [Hero's Journey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey) - Cooperation and Competition -- polarity and spectrum between these - Trauma from running into people playing Game A within well-crafted Game B aesthetics - DAOs allow for challenging this and the systems that we build every day allow for creating alternatives and creating philosophies around the new ideas, but *do we know what DAOs are good for*? - **UI369**: Game B principles can be weaponized for Game A purposes -- still need to have a bit of a rivalrous attitude and not let guard down - DAO design has similar rules like game design - What do we all do with the game mechanisms? - **TravisWyche**: 🌱 "Unless we all let our guard down together. We don't need to improve competition if we all forfeit collectively. There's a lot of conversation about all that DAOs offer us, but there's also an important component of personal sacrifice. We have all sacrificed a lot to be here working together to imagine experimental alternatives." 🌱 ## DAO Narratives - DAO narrative has changed over the last 6 months or so, and will it continue to change? What if it changes into something we don't resonate with? - Do we need to be more on the defensive/offensive about "What is a DAO?" and the purposes of DAOs - There is another angle about being able to shape the narrative - What if DAOs continue to change into something we don't agree with? Do we change our name or do we offensively try to change the narrative? - This is something to be mindful of and cautious about - How do you stop this type of behavior? - Game A option and Game B option - Game B option needs to provide more value than the Game A option, but there is a very real concern with marketing and current influence - *Do things differently* - See this in the contributor space too -- folks who speak the loudest often get attention - Generally looking at what's *built in the bear market* vs. what's *being showcased in a bull market* is an interesting contrast - What ways do we protect ourselves from *brand dilution*? - Since things are open, how do we defend against this in a Game B approach? - Point to whatever truths we have to rely on -- the pillars and values that we stand on ## Coodination and Open Information - Being open adds overhead - To be open and document what you're doing and to have it understandable adds overhead as compared to something private - Comparing to open source software: Having (and maintaining) solid documentation, best practices, contribution guides, etc. is similar situation that adds overhead - Self-organizing complex systems (which a DAO is to an extent) in that it's organized by inflow and outflow - Why to grow? Why not to grow? Is it possible to stay in stasis? Is it true that everything not growing is dying? - Thinking about scaling intentionally instead of scaling to strictly drive profits up - In groups of people who are coordinating, they likely only need to scale the organization enough to keep coordinating - Sometimes mission grows and an organization needs to grow and expand to accomplish that mission - Everybody staying smaller -- change the relationships to scaling and growth - There is a force in the universe giving weight to Game B in the long-term -- it's the game that wins over time - Will confront us in this era -- the impact on natural resources and having limited resources in a world where there is a focus on infinite growth - There *are* limitations to resources in the natural world - DAO space is an opportunity to work *together* and *within* ecosystems they're operating in - **e2t**: 🌱 "The overhead benefits those that come next." 🌱 - **Equilibrium over growth.** - Antifragility and purposeful and intentionality ## Where Should We Go With DAOs? - **Audience member (name not added yet)**: - DAOs in terms of power relations and structures - Traditionally we have notions of power and hierarchy - DAOs give us the ability to organize in collectives to do things that are good for society at large - Idea of mutual aid that sits at the bedrock of the differences between Game A and Game B - DAOs are opportunity to change minds and redirect civilization, but at the end of the day, technology aside, it's about the people - 🌱 "DAOs are a tool for us to be able to coordinate, but it still requires the intention from the individuals that are part of the community." 🌱 ## Resources - [Alan Watts: Future of Privacy and Human Organization](https://www.organism.earth/library/document/future-of-privacy-and-human-organization) - [Matan Field: Anti rival, Collaborative Networks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZiHSjRATR0) - [Baudrillard: Simulacra and Simulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation) - [Cory Doctorow: Walk Away](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkaway_(Doctorow_novel)) - [Hero's Journey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey) - [David Graeber: Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology](https://abahlali.org/files/Graeber.pdf)