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Spengrah (Spencer): Anticapture
Community Members from the Audience
Anticapture Framework
Anticapture is a framework that gives language and a mental landscape to processes through which groups can spread power wider and "remain resistent to capture"
If power is shared then it is harder for a central agent to take over an organization
One component of a DAO –antifragile, anticapture are things decentralization can help us with
nintynick coined the term in a conversation about the framework
Anticapture Background
Came about in the last six or seven months when DAO conversations started exploding and started seeings lots of DAOs that are defined by tokens (as well as other projects calling themselves DAOs without having a strong argument that they were DAOs)
Investigating the question about "What is a DAO?" while working to figure out why they aren't DAOs – "More of a feeling than any other intellectual exercise I'd gone through"
This investigation took several directions and led to notion that taking action is what's important for groups of people that are working
These groups are taking actions together
🌱 "It's a little bit easier to talk about verbs instead of nouns or things that are action oriented rather than the organization that's doing the action itself." 🌱
Easier to reference and think around the actions instead of the organization doing these actions
As soon as you start questioning whether an organization is a DAO the folks become defensive and difficult to have a meaningful conversation
Notion of actions unlocked a thread
Foundation of any group getting together and doing anything:
They are taking action
They are taking actions that use, leverage, or impact shared resources (belong to the organization and not just an aggregate of individual resources)
In a DAO, shared resources are anything in the treasury, but also governance mechanisms because DAOs are self-owning
Actions Framework
🌱 "Networks of people that are taking actions that impact their shared resources." 🌱
Actions have 4 phases and are cyclical and also recursive (each phase comprises other actions and phases of actions within itself):
In a network of people, all individuals are taking actions that bubble up and aggregate into organization actions that are being taken
Four Phases of Actions:
Propose - put options on the table for what the action will be
Decide - decide what action to take, but this decision isn't the end stage
Execute - actual rollout of the action
Evaluate - after execution, there is some degree of feedback where the organization measures, and this leads into the next action
Key distinction between decision and execution
Levels of Capture
When we're talking about Anticapture, what is it that we're referring to that isn't being captured? The treasury? The organization? The governance?
All of the above – all shared resources
Capture resistance is important because this means that it's less risky for an individual to take their own money shared with other folks
Lowering this risk means we get more people willing to do this and increase the amount of shared resources
Can do exponentially more when you do things together– increasing returns to capital and other resources when pooling together and collaborating
If stuck within captureable organizations then the risk of entering into mutual engagements with others is far higher and therefore we'd see less of the overall benefits
The more capture resistant an organization is (from perspective of members) then the easier it is to trust each other without additional context
Trust is a big issue, and so addressing issues of trust allows for increased coordination
🌱 "If something is capture resistant then you can operate together with other people without having to trust them." 🌱
Higher the capture probability -> higher trust required for coordination
Capture can happen in lots of ways –a 51% attack is one way, but can also be captured by code exploits
OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) Loop
Similarities and differences to OODA Loop?
Feedback at each step in the loop so can break out of it if something requires it
At a higher level, there are differences in the Anticapture phrases and the OODA Loop
Anticapture phases are more observational
Different frameworks for different purposes
Anticapture is more about identifying where an organizations operations can break down or where they need to be strengthened
Fractal Nature of Actions
In every motion there is the cybernetic process we have to learn as large groups of people, and each of these contain opportunities for capture
Several wargames to think about capture scenarios
Fractal and recursive nature of actions came from conversation with Tracheopteryx
Hope that the Anticapture framework can become a shared vernacular and understanding where folks can discuss topics with a shared language
Evolve to a community-driven framework with potentially a "Wiki style" with bi-directional links
Creating a Wiki that's hosted on Radical that folks can fork and read there and establish a shared vernacular and shared language that we all can reference as we engage in a larger conversation
The Execute Phase
Question: How does the need for consensus relate to the decision making processes?
Anticapture creates the linguistic tools to describe this in a non-prescriptive way
Focusing on first principles so that folks can build things that make sense without having the framework proscribed to them
Most important phase for capture resistance: if someone has unilateral power to execute it doesn't even matter if there was discussion in the Decide phase
Execute phase is most vulnerable to capture for this reason, so it is critical that executive power is decentralized, distributed, and autonomous (can't be changed by an outside actor)
Distribution of power (decentralization) is one of the most impactful ways to resist capture threats from within the organization
Accountability is another approach
Delegation can happen provided that there is a degree of accountability
Consensus can be more splintered as long as there is accountability
Levels and layers of capture risk
If someone has all the executive power, then there is already a huge degree of capture
Even if this is distributed, there could then be a potential risk where influentional folks are able to influence and capture (in either Decide or Evaluate Phases)
Domains of influence with regard to who can do what
One reason DAOs have taken off because governance and finance (treasury) are two very high consequence domains in executive power and smart contracts automate to remove need for trusting single actors with these processes
The Evaluate Stage
Potential attack vector that takes less forcefulness to do
If able to understand how a community comes to understand where consensus will happen and if it's good or bad
This can occur even in DAOs where folks have force of reputation or charisma and can drive the agenda even without abusing smart contracts
🌱 "The evaluate stage is the propaganda stage." 🌱
Layers of capture risk: Executive power is the most impactful and we protect against this by distributing executive power but can still have people influencing others for their own agendas and capture what's going on that way (in Decide or Evaluate phases)
Question: What defines the people who are able to make a decision for a DAO? What happens if half the DAO disagrees – who decides what decisions should and shouldn't be made?
Depends on the DAO protocol and which stage the decision making is happening
Usually this degree of split is an exception in DAOs
If someone makes a decision and then onboards others onto the decision, who decides what direction the DAO takes?
Nobody and everyone – there isn't a single person who can say who has power
We need to aggregate all of our signals into one
One way that this can happen in Moloch DAOs: things are discussed in prior stages and there is often a high degree of consensus even before proposals
If there is a 50/50 split on a proposal, there are a few things that can happen:
Put the proposal to the DAO: Every person in the DAO can vote with their weight
If there's a huge split (such as 50/50) then there could potentially be Rage Quitting and a fork where they create another DAO aligned with their values
Permission and Permissionlessness and Governance
Moloch DAOs have a reasonably unique feature in that they're permissioned and the question of who gets to decide things is a lot easier in a permissioned DAO
There are tradeoffs here – lots of great things about being permissionless participation environment, but a tradeoff is that the game theory becomes more difficult to reason about since you're in an adversarial environment
For example, one person onboarding others to swing sentiment toward their favorable outcome is possible in a permissionless DAO and this is then a capture vector that those types of DAOs need to be aware of
Question: How could a C-Corp structure work as a DAO?
DAOs are flexible, and ultimately are a tool for serving the needs of the community
Yeeter platform as an example:
Folks are joining a DAO through some kind of a Stake and then getting Loot (non voting share)
Allows for Shareholders (Board of Directors – managing proposals) and also can incorporate Loot (via a Snapshot, for example)
LexDAO GitHub has resources that can be helpful here
Question: Are DAOs Democracies?
Ultimately up to whoever set up the DAO – could go highly democratic such as "one person one vote" and DAOs can have different intents such as being product focused or process focused
Comparing DAOs to governments where there are lots of different government structures. How do DAOs relate to democracy?
Can you have a system that is democratic some time but also reverts to non-democratic when the stakes change? Are there ways to change governmental structure?
This itself could be an exciting topic for discussion
There is a perception that DAOs are plutocratic, but it's open to interpretation
For DAOs with token voting: Whoever has the most tokens has the most power, and tokens be purchased, but this is often a two body structure:
Typically has multi-sig signers vs. token holders
DAOs are even better than democracy because they're composable
Current Events
Anytime someone has a token or an NFT they feel like they're in a DAO which is interesting if the community is forming for a purpose, but what happens when there is an NFT reveal and everyone is upset that it didn't meet their expectations?
Is there something here? Should folks have exit rights after reveal? Was there malice behind this or was it incompetence?
This is a form of capture even if it was unintentional
In one sense it's "buyer beware," but could also provide an exit opportunity for buyers who don't like what is delivered
Asset capture vs. ideological capture
Rage Quit refund policy (for NFT reveals)
Ukrainian token drop:
Hinting at a token drop where there could have been the first state sponsored DAO but then they changed their mind and moved away from the token drop. What happens if people want a refund? Is this a form of capture?
Element of reputational risk, but this is reasonable when your existence is at risk
🌱 "This space has created a culture of distributed power – a DAO culture – but unless we embed that culture and those concepts and that philosophy into the structure and technology of what we're using, then that culture will be captured by other people who swarm in and call things 'DAOs' that aren't really DAOs and do other things to rug other people or capture organizations." 🌱
Imperative that we get better and more explicit about how we're distributing power in a structural way and not just a cultural way
Having a mission that is anticapture is critical, as are the linguistic tools for different stakeholders
There is a lot of cultural and intellectual values, but we need to ensure that these are ingrained in the tools where we don't need to completely rely on each other
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