Discussion Club - Group Note #1
===

###### tags: `Templates` `Meeting`

:::info
- **Location:** #public-library - VC Common Room
- **Date:** 8/19/2021 2:30 PM (ET)
- **Agenda**
1. Article Discussion `30min`
> [name=Pan]
2. Airmeet Small Group Discussion `30-45min`

- **Participants (your name or discord handle):**
- [name=belgianwaffles]
- [name=Fred.]
- [name=krrisis]
- [name=QZ]
- [name=henry]
- [name=sidcode]
- [name=alisha]
- [name=lanitrock]
- [name=LinhT.Tran]
- [name=Pan]
- **Contact:** Fred (<[e-mail]>)
- **Host:** Linh, Fred, Pan
- **Reference:** - https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/08/16/voting3.html

:::

:books: Summary of Article
---
- **Summary**: Decentralize government (DeGov) is necessary so both public goods and the protocol itself can be properly funded and maintained. DeGov is increasingly getting more and more important, for now mostly restricted to blockchains but DeGov can be expanded beyond that as well.
- DeGov increasingly important for developing and maintaining open source public goods
- Differences between on-chain and off-chain governance (discord).
- Onchain governance can only act within the boundaries set by the protocol/contracts/tokens. Off-chain governance des not inherently share those restrictions.
- DAOs usually require some form of on-chain signaling/vote for things like treasury management and allocation of funds, even if discussion and decision are made off-chain.
- Issue with on-chain voting.
- Instability wihtin decentralized governement - controlled by number of whales. Only coinholder's interest is prioritized in the system. Vote buying, attacks, low participation.
- Massive allocation of funds unopposed (eg. [Uniswap discussion](https://twitter.com/iamDCinvestor/status/1428372688582623236?s=20))
- issue of asking everyone to participate in all decisions: one possible solution is delegation. Problem with delegation is whether representatives are effective, or if just a proxy for big tokenholders
- Ways to fight this:
- Time locks (polkadot). The longer tokens are locked - the more weight the vote holds.
- Reputation
- Vote as sentiment
- Quadratic voting (vote weight equal to square root of tokens)
- Liquid democracy with Delegator-Stewards
- Representative democracy - can be exploited if there's a time lock on picking and choosing representatives. Voters regret, "elect and regret".
- Proof of personhood, KYC
- Other ways of signaling high/low conviction
- Why attacks haven't happened yet
- Strong communities, community spirit and mission
- Social contracts
- Concetration of wealth and overall coordination of decisions
- Immature markets.

:books: Discussion Notes
---
- **Public goods definition**
- Are the gitcoin grants really public goods by the traditional economic [definition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)#Definition_matrix)?
- The traditional definition of non rivalrous, non exclusionary might need to be updated with a broader definition when categorizing digital goods.
- How to improve definition? (see thoughts Alisha [here](https://discordapp.com/channels/562828676480237578/869328105888677958/876780767374630922))
- Benefits everyone equally
- Internal public goods vs External public goods
- Internal public goods: technically a public goods within a protocol (within an environment/restricted public. Example a goods that maximize yield for a protocol and tokenholders)
- Definition matrix [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)#Definition_matrix)
- If you have a boundary (limitations to those it benefits), you could possibly say that it is not a public good.
- Public is hard to define. Public goods in Singapore are (probably) not public goods in Russia. The excludability aspect is almost always a spectrum and the public is often bounded by a geographic or digital region.
- "Good for the public vs. public goods. We should think of things that are good for the public even if it's excludable and rivalrous due to positive externalities. (So in that sense you can see something as Kernel as a public good)"
- Goods that produce good externalities outside of a restricted "public" could be considered public goods to a broader public. Should maximize for positive externalities.
- Prototyping is crucial, even if excludable that's ok if open source!
- Kernel is a good example of this, documentation already fully open/available
- On the 8 rules of Ostrom, more [here](https://medium.com/commonsstack/automating-ostrom-for-effective-dao-management-cfe7a7aea138)
- Open source can offer a unique perspective, a service people want to pay for/fund
- Gospel (more info [here](https://discordapp.com/channels/562828676480237578/869328105888677958/877415552061153320)!):
- People currently see open source as something they can 'donate' to, it's a charity goal. If they would see this more as an opportunity, they could internalize some of the positive externalities.
- People often fail at capturing the value, but there is no doubt the value is there.
- An attempt to formulate a playbook to help companies innovate & rearchitecture their organization - this in itself will be a public good
- Initial writeup by [LZRS](https://www.getrevue.co/profile/lzrs/issues/introducing-gospel-global-open-source-permissionless-enterprise-league-676392)
- Prediction game: the more people make blind guesses, the closer you are to the actual calculation. The amount of computation needed is lower if you decentralize it. Open source: emergent - iterative approach has a more interesting/better result.

- **How can you make things sustainable?**
- You need leaders & ownership!
- You need prolific creators (coders, writers, ...)
- Have a clear vision - point out the self-interest for orgs
- Storytelling to make it cool to care
- Incentivization is crucial
- eg. the Commons Stack + TEC
- Reputation is an important part of this

The importance that we work toward [[DeGov]] with blockchain [[Governance]]

[[DeGov]] is necessary because it helps protocols grow carefully and ensures that public goods in the space are properly funded

[[Public Goods]] are research that improves the chain and its community, funded by treasuries.

[[Off-Chain Governance]] sometimes isn't possible because external assets can be controlled by on-chain [[smart contracts]]

Dangers of [[DeGov]]
- [[vote buying]], attackers, [[whales]], coin-holder interests are prioritized
- [[delegation]] of votes (letting someone else make te decision for you) can mean that you are not voting for decisions that you take part in:
- *we have achieved unbundling: the borrower has governance power without economic interest, and the lender has economic interest without governance power**.
- [[timelocks]] as in [[Polkadot]] - wrapped token workaround. [[timelocks]] are like a paywall.

### Limited governance
- [[on-chain governance]] only for applications, not base layers
### non-coin driven governance
- Proof of personhood - kycing
- Proof of participation
- quadratic voting ([[OlympusDAO]])
### reputation

## [[Amazon]]

The expansion of infrastructure in supply chains due to private growth is a positive externality that benefits the whole sector, and the public.

Gitcoin does not need to strictly follow the traditional definition of a public good. If there's positive externalities it's worth considering, even if the good is not accessible for everyone.

Groups make better decisions than individuals - open-source libraries - [[charity vs public good]]
energy as a public good
asynch meetings

The "prediction game"-experiment: Give one person a minute to try try and calculate the number of M&Ms in a jar. Take 10 people to blindly guess the number of M&Ms in the jar. The average guess of the group gets more accurate as the number of participants increase. The amount of indiviual work gets drastically lower as it's distributed.

LZRS is a vector
[[Gospel]] - guiding companies to experiment with company restructuring for the internet era. A moment that's already happening, companies are increasingly publishing open source and inviting external contributions. DAOs are at the forefront of this.
- OSS as a concept was unthinkable in the past for companies.
- Companies are allocating time/money to maintain and improve OSS libraries and reference implementations.
- Similarities can be drawn to the industrial revolution were factories used steam engines to power factories prior to electricity. The real growth happens when companies embrace the new technology.
- By running a company with the principals of a OSS project, adapting internet native behaviors they can improve their productivity and max out capacity. Needs more research.
- Gospel is a playbook for companies and enterprice, building out a bigger body of research in order to make companies comfortable working this way.
- increase production of knowledge work through distributed system
- More cores have lower clock speed
- trade-offs - less efficient, but more resilient
- waiting on other nodes for activation and syncing (and bandwidth)
- ramping
- bringing people in to contribute to problem solving can actually scale systems way better than a centralized structure
- Prolific people do really well on the internet. People who constantly create and output will succeed.
- Jocko Wilinck
- Extreme ownership
- pitching it to companies

- How do you get orgs to hop onto the idea of growing a public good
- Lani -
- creating a cultural standard
- Henry-
- No one wants to be a maintainer - the longer you maintaing a project, the less recognition you get for managing it.
- Kris -
- Incentivization should not feel bad - people should be paid for the work they do.
- treasury
- Token Engineering Commons
- rewarded for work
- GitcoinDAO
- Corporate Social Responsibility is a way to do it

- **Question**
- Thoughts
- How do you manage an OSS and keep it aligned with the collective/original plan?
-A strong vision is key if you look at mass movements the key is multiple strong leaders and prolific people. At the end of the day a community is only as strong as the people that step up.
Importance of storytelling, DeGov and leaders.
Be prolific, produce constantly.
Reputation.

## Side Details
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