label: Viable Governance: Smart Contract Designing Principles and Primitives
author: sam bacha <[e-mail]>
copyright: cc-2.5-share-alike

Viable Governance at Scale: Patterns, Principles and Primtives for Smart Contract Design

• Viable Governance at Scale: Patterns, Principles and Primtives for Smart Contract Design
  • • DAO & Governance Design Patterns
  • Abstract
  • Axioms and Principles
  • Legal Patterns for Finding Important Laws
  • Systems Based Approach
    • Patterns
    • Anti-Patterns
  • Legal Primitives for Smart Contract Events / Emits
    • Primitves Layer
  • Authors & Contributing

DAO & Governance Design Patterns

View the book with " Book Mode".

Abstract

We provide a set of basic patterns that are helpful in designing incentives for a viable decentralized autonomous organization and/or generalized governance structures that include economic incentives both tokenized and non-tokenized.

Axioms and Principles

• Requirements (the need for a new law) is realized by Principle (the to-be law)

• If you are in the business of producing laws, then the law is a Business Object

• Legal elements are not passive.

• This document does not seek to define an imperative set but rather relational sets.

Legal Patterns for Finding Important Laws

We use the term “pattern” meaning relevant to our protocol, and “anti-pattern” to represent a more subjective interpretation or one that is hard to automate to determine should it be included or not.

Systems Based Approach

Patterns

• Law that addresses a problem that has not been defined
• Law that addresses a problem that no longer exists
• The law addresses more than one problem
• Law that has no stated purpose
• The language of the law is vague or complex
• Law is unable to achieve its stated goal

Anti-Patterns

• Laws that address problems that have not been defined
• Laws that address problems that no longer exist
• Laws that address more than one problem in different domains
• Laws that lack a stated, measurable problem solving the goal, or purpose
• Laws that fail to achieve their goal or lack stated goals
• Laws that lack a citation of references
• Laws whose burdens are greater than their problem-solving benefit
• Laws whose problem-solving benefit and burdens are equal
• Laws whose results cannot be measured
• Laws that interfere with other laws
• Laws that duplicate other laws
• Requires Review
• Laws that are not enforced*
• Laws that violate human rights*
• Laws that are overly vague or complex*
• Laws that have not undergone QA analysis within a specified time frame

Legal Primitives for Smart Contract Events / Emits

Now that we have established legal patterns and a legal classified, we can begin to map out how these relationships present themselves, either by acting upon, being acted upon, events, etc.

Primitves Layer

Primitives
List of Legal Primitive Mechanisms
PrimitiveEvent
ExercisePrimitive
AllocationPrimitive
ContractFormationPrimitive
ExecutionPrimitive
InceptionPrimitive
ObservationPrimitive
QuantityChangePrimitive
ResetPrimitive
TermsChangePrimitive
TransferPrimitive

Authors & Contributing

Sam Bacha, [e-mail]

tags: DAO Legal