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