---
version: draft-2021.09.13
---

# DAOsclerosis: a defenestration of Governance

View the book with "<i class="fa fa-book fa-fw"></i> Book Mode".

----

[TOC]

## **Summary**

We introduce a proposal to replace the current regime of quorum based on-chain voting with a new voting regime: Majordomo.

Majordomo is a tribute based governance system. In exchange for delegation of governance voting rights, a *tribute* is paid to secure this right. There is no opt-out of delegation. The *majordomo* regulates protocol parameters as well as appoints *tribunes* through a *patronage* system. A patronage system is the mechanism of dispensing grants or favors to an address (i.e. a person or persons). Grants can be currency, privilage (e.g. privilaged access to a non-public protocol feature), grants of patent (e.g. extending a franchise right to establish a subsidiary on another chain), etc.

## **Background**

## **Motivation**

This is the problem statement. This is the **why** of the YIP. It should clearly explain *why* the current state of the protocol is inadequate. It is critical that you explain why the change is needed. For instance, if the YIP proposes changing how something is calculated, you must address why the current calculation is inaccurate or wrong. This section may also include why certain design choices were made over others, and can include data from previous discussions and forum posts.

## **Specification**

1: Seperate the DAO into two discrete entities
1a - Sushi CoOpL this is responsible for regulating human behavior/actions
1b - Sushi DAO: this is responsible for the actual protocol

By seperating the responsibilites of the DAO into two clear objectives we can reduce risk of having anti-pattern propossals or actions taken.

2: Sushi DAO Proposals must be formalized in order to be formally considered

## Axiom: Institutions are defined as stable patterns for regulating human behavior.
In an opt-in organization like a DAO, a constitution serves as a contract for participation—by participating, one implicitly or explicitly agrees to abide by the organization’s constitution. By regulating decision-making in an organization, constitutions help us set the rules for how we make rules, modify existing institutions, and even design new institutions. Good constitutions help institutions adapt to new circumstances, new memberships, and even new code (e.g. if any underlying smart contracts are changed).

----
> *Components of an Institution, its Constitution and Technological Infrastructure/Tools*

****

### Defining Patterns

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.

#### Anti Patterns for Governance Proposals
Proposals that addresses a problem that has not been defined
Proposals that addresses a problem that no longer exists
The Proposals addresses more than one problem
Proposals that has no stated purpose
The language of the Proposals is vague or complex
Proposals is unable to achieve its stated goal

## Viable Governance at Scale

### Axioms and Principles for Governance Actions

* 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


* Governance / Legal elements are not *passive*.

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

## Patterns for Finding Important Governance Patterns

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 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 governance patterns and a classification system, 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 (possible) Governance Primitive Mechanisms

Primitive Event
Exercise Primitive
Allocation Primitive
ContractFormation Primitive
Execution Primitive
Inception Primitive
Observation Primitive
QuantityChange Primitive
Reset Primitive
TermsChange Primitive
Transfer Primitive

## MajorDomo

Moderation is not an ideology. It is not an opinion. It is not a thought. It is an absence of thought
In other words, the problem with moderation is that the "center" is not fixed. It moves. And since it moves, and people being people, people will try to move it. This creates an incentive for violence, but we should not look at this as a moral problem, rather as an engineering problem. Any solution that solves the problem is acceptable. Any solution that does not solve the problem is not acceptable.[^5]

sing a coinvote in this manner legitimizes any outcome of the community process, and \[provides a convenient default\](https://pagefair.com/blog/2015/the-tyranny-of-the-default/) for users to converge on. Otherwise phrased, most users will likely accept most outcomes of most coinvotes, so rigging such votes can allow a malicious actor to impose their will on an ecosystem where the majority of honest actors disagree (but follow along anyway, because the vote appears clean).  This, along with the direct benefit provided by many consensus rule changes to actors within the system (consider for example the setting of block rewards, or the setting of block size / participation hardware requirements, or the setting of minimum stake, etc.) means that tampering with such votes is often directly financially incentivized.

> Populations will accept vote outcomes regardless of how bitterly they disagree with the outcome or how nonsensical it seems… if they accept the process.

> deciding whether there is an attack in the presence of a credible threat is a non-trivial social consensus problem vulnerable to false flag attacks to stall progress.

### Glowing in the dark

Glowing in the dark, flying or sewn into the story with phosphorescent thread. In other words, infiltrators being spotted. Or being so obvious in their work that it may be impossible not to spot them. Infiltrators have been a thing since humanity started forming groups and the notion of counter-intelligence is as old as humanity itself [^4]. This remains a credible threat especially in systems that depend only on capital (i.e token holdings) to determine voting weight.

We can conclude that on-chain token-based voting systems essentially emulate plutocracy.  If they do not directly emulate plutocracy, perhaps through some external system of identity, they can be made to emulate plutocracy through the buying and selling of constraints on user actions.

Schemes like quadratic voting, that have been proposed in a blockchain context, explicitly allow vote buying and attempt to mitigate its impact through an identity-based scheme.  Such schemes may have unforeseen properties in a blockchain environment, where identity is a murky concept

It is unlikely that schemes that work well for in-person voting, boardroom meetings, or even coordinator-based protocols will simply port to blockchains without substantial additional work on defining and proving adversarial resilience to both technical and economic attacks in a blockchain-specific context. 

It is clear that applying mechanisms that work in traditional information sciences or economics is not sufficient to analyze and represent the equilibria that will actually emerge when a given game is deployed (and matures to importance) in a permissionless blockchain environment.

###### tags: `DAO` `Legal`

**Definition: A condition A is said to be necessary for a condition B, if (and only if) the falsity (/nonexistence /non-occurrence) [as the case may be] of A guarantees (or brings about) the falsity (/nonexistence /non-occurrence) of B.**

**Definition of "sufficient condition**
Definition: A condition A is said to be sufficient for a condition B, if (and only if) the truth (/existence /occurrence) [as the case may be] of A guarantees (or brings about) the truth (/existence /occurrence) of B.

[^4, What Glowies Mean: Online Spies, The Atlantic](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/what-glowies-mean-online-spies/617717/)

[^5] Curtivs Yavin, Formalist Manifesto

- [Affective Priming in Political Campaigns: How Campaign-Induced Emotions Prime Political Opinions](https://academic.oup.com/ijpor/article-abstract/23/4/485/708041?redirectedFrom=fulltext)

- [The Law of Deliberative Democracy: Seeding the Field](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2367870)

- [The Left’s Next Culture War: Using Corporate Rating Indexes](https://capitalresearch.org/article/the-lefts-next-culture-war-part-2/)