It’s time for a discussion about reputation in Genesis👇
Reputation is an important factor in DAOs built on DAOstack:
It’s voting power, it lets you influence the outcome of proposals
Cumulatively it is also the mechanism that fuels holographic consensus and shows people what proposals to pay attention to
The decentralization of rep or voting power, (defined in Genesis as no agent having more than 2 percent) keeps a DAO decentralized and safe(er) from attacks
Reputation cannot be transferred to others, and the amount of overall reputation is not fixed. It can also be rewarded automatically or manually by the DAO. You can read more about DAOstack’s initial reputation protocol in this article.
So far in the evolution of Genesis we’ve had proposals and discussions on some matters relating to reputation, notably around:
How much people should ask for when joining Genesis (the social consensus is to not ask for above 100 in initial rep request)
My conclusion is that we have accepted a norm that says reputation is mostly attached to rep for ‘doing something very visible’. We do not typically reward reputation to the necessary but less visible work that many people are doing in Genesis but who are not being recognised with reputation, a voice and therefore power (examples: giving feedback on proposals pre submission, continually answering questions of newcomers, connecting key influencers or DAO founders MORE). The result of this is a lot of very ‘visible’ proposals and power residing with people who are visible and relatively noisy with their output. From this perspective we may be encouraging people to submit small proposals that have disproportionately high rep compared to longer term proposals (which can be downvoted if they ask for rep commensurate with these smaller proposals). The reality is that people can ask for reputation on any random occasion that they see fit, but we have not built the culture for this.
Some questions I’d like to ask:
Who has power in the Genesis DAO?
Is this an accurate portrayal of value contributed to the mission of Genesis DAO? (mission: to grow the DAOstacm ecosystem and tech and utility of the Gen token) would be great if someone had time to really analyse this…)
Do we have a extrovert-inclined reputation distribution system? ie those who are confident and good at communicating acquire more rep while shy/less skilled at communicating acquire less? If so, is this ok - do we want to foster this culture?
What culture around rep do we want?
Are there any things we need to identify and change at the UI/product level to realise this? A clearer framework perhaps?
What about at the proposal/protocol level? (a revised version of the governance protocol with a systemic mechanism to better regulate the REP flow?)
What do we need to consider at the level of social consensus: for instance, how people are onboarded into the DAO? Feedback has been that even this is not so easy, should we reconsider our objective here?
If we reconfigure rep to be more reflective, what mechanisms do we need (rep decay etc) to keep the balance going forward?
Reputation Reallocation for Genesis Beta/1.0
Also to be considered is the upcoming reputation reallocation for Genesis Beta/1.0 which will seek to reflect currently unreflected effort in building Genesis and the DAOstack ecosystem. This needs to lay the foundations for a more mission aligned and incentivised DAO - further, mechanism redesign needs to incentivise more people to stake into Genesis i.e hodlers or lockers of the GEN token - as @rstef has pointed out - GEN hodlers really care about raising the utility and value of the GEN token.
Right now the DAOstack team do not generally have much rep in Genesis even though they are creating a large amount of value. This is also true for other ecosystem players and for subDAOs like DOrg who are working on the deeper DAO stack. In order for a properly staked and rep-reflective DAO we need to adjust for these factors. We also need to continue work on DAO2DAO relations so DAOs can have rep, vote and stake in other DAOs.What are your thoughts on this?
CTA: please chime in with your thoughts around REP!! And let’s discuss in a breakout
This reality is cool as an emerging early form of experiment as it’s open for interpretation, but, for maturity purposes we should consider changing it IMO
To the point of what archetype DAOists are we rewarding with REP power, I believe we should have more DAO pollinators stewarding elevation of quiet contributors by proposing rep allocation to those and work with them to get them more involved.
Similarly, we should not shy away from friction when we believe accumulation of REP is being abused, I believe the caliber and impact of work should reflect the REP rather than the cosmetics of the proposals as it has been happening so far. We’re past the stage where random medium article creation should be rewarded much if any REP or funding (Unless its of significant impact or interest), content typically comes as a natural part of a bigger and more impactful project. Proposers should be action biased.
Periodic Reflection
We could consider separating REP requests from funding requests and have agile/sprint model for REP allocation where once a month we are putting a call out for GenDAOists to submit simple REP request outlining a bullet point style list of reason for REP earn/slash. These reflection can also serve as call to action to activate people who are hesitant to participate and we’ve got a fair bit of very influential people in Genesis who are in that category.
Rep Scheme
To reduce noise from the main contribution reward screen, we can separate REP requests from funding requests to a dedicated panel similar to how the Scheme Registrar and the Contribution Reward are separated. This will also bring clarity to the discussion around REP and leave less ambiguity around REP earning/slashing.
If we chose to be strict (and we should IMO) to a standard onboarding procedure, we should not rely purely on ‘social consensus’, Is it possible as a part of the scheme registrar to limit the max REP units a new address is able to request unless it’s requested by an address that is an existing REP holder @dOrgJelli?
We should consider a “Onboarding squad” - pollinators that will be happy to assist pro-actively with onboarding process and will be rewarded for that.
More members of DAOstack core team should be involved even if only in voting and boosting capacity and they should definitely carry much more REP weight than they currently do, this in turn will potentially reduce the barrier of communication between the broader community and the DAOstack team and will establish a more solid the foundation for the project to gain traction and the vision to crystallize and be amplified through the various community channels.
Maybe we can have a slush fund of Rep that people can only give to each other… within reason? Say: 2% of Rep every month can be distributed to people in 0.15% increments for work they’ve done which isn’t captured in proposals.
Possibly, but I don’t see a problem with this. If there are some people who are better communicators or better at getting proposals passed, then people who have less success should just work with these people. I’ve found some success submitting proposals: I’d be more than happy to work with people to either get their proposals submitted and passed, OR even submitting a proposal and giving the funds to anyone who is interested.
I’m not sure I agree… our community should be inclusive and open to everyone, but ultimately, I want out community to be composed of amazingly talented people who can deliver independently.
interesting idea… not of fan of the overhead though. Accountability as is has been a problem, I can’t imagine coming to a consensus around group Rep distribution would be easy… but open to experimenting. Maybe we can spin up a Genesis test DAO for this purpose… OR just do this exercise for the previous month and see if we come to any consensus.
another interesting idea which I like a bit more although we would need to think about the details of this a bit more…
Again, I disagree. For weeks I was reaching out to new members trying to give them small tasks and proposals to do… not a single person (out of >30) took my offer. I’m not sure it is the onboarding process that needs to change, but our target market.
This is a perspective that has been floating around for a while, and it’s one that I currently believe in, so here goes nothing:
I agree that reputation (perhaps the name should just be changed to voting power) is important, and I think DAOs should treat it differently depending on their goals.
The GenDAO is, in my view, a Commons DAO: it exists to allow a group of stakeholders to maintain and improve a shared resource. Other DAO archetypes might include small business DAOs, like dOrg, or activism DAOs, focused on promoting some cause.
In a Commons DAO, voting power should be given to people pro rata to their stake in the commons. To maintain and improve the common resource optimally for all its stakeholders, it must be those stakeholders making the calls. If a subset of stakeholders or some other cadre hold the keys instead, there are two big problems:
the cadre has the power and incentive to skew the commons toward their interests only, and
the cadre lacks the information needed to make optimal decisions even if they want to, since they only know their own preferences and can at best infer the preferences of others.
The less reputation reflects the actual distribution of stake, the bigger these problems are. This means that when new people become stakeholders in the commons, voting power should come with that stake.
I think the Genesis DAO, if it’s going to have power over future GEN minting, exists to manage the common resources of the GEN token and its use-case in the DAOstack software platform (and I suppose any future, non-DAOstack uses). Stakeholders in the GEN commons are the group of people legitimately using the GEN token: buying it, spending it, and holding it. Legitimate buyers and spenders of GEN are mostly people using DAOstack’s prediction system or DAOs themselves using GEN to fund their staking system. Holders are people “invested” in the GEN token. (These groups can overlap.)
Given all that, I’d propose that the Genesis DAO should be willing to grant reputation to anyone who can demonstrate:
they are regularly buying and/or spending GEN for legitimate purposes (whether as an individual or as a Reputation-holder in a DAO), or
they are committed to holding some amount of GEN for a long period.
It’s worth noting that Genesis itself has bought and spent a modest amount of GEN over the past year, as part of running its prediction system. It did that via proposal, and so you can think of that buying and spending as “belonging” to its Reputation-holders during that time–that buying and spending demonstrates those Reputation-holders’ stake in the GEN token economy.
I recognize that this would be a radical change from what we’ve been doing, but if Genesis is ever going to be in charge of minting GEN, I believe something like this is the best approach. I do think there are worlds where minting GEN and managing the GEN commons isn’t the DAO’s purpose–where instead Genesis is, for example, an activism DAO promoting and developing decentralized governance generally. If that were the case, the DAO should not be granted the power to mint GEN, and I’d advocate for a different approach to Reputation, something more similar to what we’ve been doing.
The dandelion perfectly symbolizes Genesis’ mission of DAOifying the world: it releases many seeds that create many more dandelions. Additionally, the flower possesses a complex, fractal structure, consistent with the nature of holographic consensus.
Challenge accepted!
I will start by analyzing Genesis’ current makeup in order to evaluate the relative winners and losers of the current Reputation distribution. Following, I will revisit the concept of the GEN Circular Economy, and dive into the various monetary tools available for its use. Finally, I will present a Reputation distribution of that adheres to the results of the prior analysis
Winners, Losers, and Fair Representation
DAOstack Technologies
This largely sums up the team’s representation: If Reputation was truly allocated based off of time and value contributed to the project, in a fairly distributive manner, than DAOstack’s full-time team members would be the biggest Rep holders. Oren would be our biggest whale. The team is arguably underrepresented proportional to their work effort.
In regards to GenDAO 1.0, a bigger question that I have, that is as-of-yet unanswered, is whether the DAOstack team would/should vote as a bloc or as individuals within the new Genesis Alliance. Personally, I advocate for bloc-voting, with organizational representation. There is no way to hit an absolute majority in a DAO that has hundreds of stakeholders. I discuss this at length here. Fractalizing (voting as organizational blocs) is a resilient solution that will enable us to hit absolute majority.
Unaffiliated Pollinators of the Genesis Alpha
Certain members of the Genesis Alpha community have arguably been the biggest winners of the current Reputation distribution, and are over-represented. Others, as noted, have received less Reputation relative to the strength of their contributions to the DAOstack project and the GenDAO. I don’t really buy the narrative that the “more extroverted” individuals have disproportionately higher Reputation, but I believe that certain individuals have been submitting smaller proposals asking for Reputation in order to retain a proportionally higher amount of voting power.
A number of solutions have been posited by the previous posters, such as a “Reputation assignment sprint”, “Rep Slush Fund,” or “Rep Assignment Scheme,” seem to me to add too much overhead. Other orgs have reached more creative solutions: dOrg, for instance, rewards Rep proportional to the value of the proposal’s allocated funds. Nevertheless, all of these ideas sort of miss the mark, in my opinion, as they aren’t actually analyzing Genesis at the organizational level. They fail to articulate any particular solution that fits within the broader concept of an Alliance.
Do note that I’m not advocating for a complete abolition of Reputation distribution based on meritocratic contribution by notable individuals – only noting that our distribution function should follow the form of Genesis in its consistency. We are structurally designing an Alliance – not managing a collection of unaffiliated alpha testers – and we should apply consideration at this organizational-analytic level before giving consideration to individuals.
I don’t want to present Reputation distribution solutions at this point as an additional segment requires discussion – the future Alliance organizations – but I will revisit later.
There are a number of organizations within the Genesis Alpha that are neither fairly nor unfairly represented at this time, but somewhat invisibly represented as their collectivity is unrecognized. If anything, Genesis collectively loses when its constituent agencies are not visibly represented, as this is, in my opinion, the most efficient means of ecosystem onboarding. Think about it: would a newcomer to blockchain want to join Genesis directly, or a local DAO (such as the CuraDAO, or PragueDAO) that is creating and executing relevant, local proposals? We miss ecosystem onboarding opportunities when we shoehorn folks into Genesis rather than a constituent member DAO that better represents their diversely subject needs and nature. This being said, there are still individuals out there who don’t necessarily belong to any DAO in particular, and I would like to continue to facilitate their respective onboarding (I will discuss later).
I am an advocate for the prioritization of DAO to DAO features that improve and/or mitigate this invisible loss, as various orgs have already stated their interest in these features at the interface level. Some notes off the top of my head:
DAO Incubator – Same as above. Their original plan was to jerryrig a multisig but I convinced them to wait. They’ve actually been working on a standardized process for organizations to onboard to Genesis.
GenDAO – possesses Reputation in dxDAO. Needs to be able to use it.
PragueDAO – GenDAO will have Reputation in the PragueDAO being the first org to fund it.
KyberDAO – considering fractalizing and potentially wants to have multiple DAOs making up a master DAO in their next experiment iteration
CuraDAO – Wants to vote as a bloc in Genesis, but also to form a pan-Carribean DAO that consists of members from each island. They already have interested members from Trinidad that want to form the second DAO of the “Carrribean DAO.”
Token Holders
At last, the economic backbone of Genesis! However, this segement is hardly homogeneous. What’s important in understanding token holders and/or users is the money velocity of their holding, as this is the largest variable determining value and by extension, measure of support for the DAO Ecosystem (albeit not the only one). While many people may already understand this, it’s important to emphasize that the differences between trader, holder, speculator are ultimately an expression of time horizon: a holder believes in a long-term appreciation of token value (against fiat), and traders/speculators on shorter horizons. Holders, by definition, are more loyal, and tend to believe more in the project; speculators could care less.
When it comes to understanding whether this group as a whole is fairly represented, one should apply the various time horizons as well as give consideration to time-of-purchase. For token sale participants–the GEN token has ultimately amounted to a nightmare. There has been a near total loss of value due to the ~90% decrease from the most expensive crowdsale tier (~$.94). For holders (who were token sale participants) this is neither a negative nor a positive: their time horizon is long enough that the paper loss is seemingly irrelevant (do note this will be a total loss if/when they realize their respective paper losses, or if the project fails completely… but for now, by definition, they are content, given that they are still holding). In contrast, for traders and speculators, this is a catastrophic loss. Ironically, the cause of this loss is the speculators themselves: many have sold at small or significant loss due to their short time horizons; they do not care for the project in the long-run, or their belief in the team’s capabilities has shifted. Of the token holders generally, the only winners are the new holders who are now buying GEN: for them, accumulating a long position at such low prices viz-a-viz the token sale is an unbridled opportunity.
In the case of representation, token holders has been entirely ignored by the current Reputation make-up of GenDAO. Of the aforementioned segments, token holders are arguably the biggest losers, and least represented: most token holders have endured significant loss while Alchemy and the stack at large have been under development, providing the relevant utility for the GEN token as the collective attention token and laying the framework for the GEN Predictor’s Network. In my view, the planned token locking scheme that generates Reputation is a good means of correcting this lack of representation; returning the value that sale participants put into jumpstarting the GEN economy is better – If we adopt a strictly materialist perspective, every action taken since the token sale has been an act of redistribution from sale participants to the other segements. Understanding the full range of options available to ourselves to revive said value requires an extended economic discussion.
Commons, Coordination, and Circular Economy
I believe @ezra_w is on the money here. While it would be helpful for GenDAO to be profitable (which I will discuss), it is at its core a non-profit entity that’s providing nonrivalous, (largely) universal goods and services to the DAO ecosystem. Beyond the Commons, it can also be imagined as a Utility or Coordinator DAO given its active role, however, I lean most towards Alliance as it is most aligned with our organization-analytic thinking. Although it has already been discussed, I will dive, for illustrative purposes, into a handful of the Commons goods and services Genesis will aim to produce as outlined in the Genesis Alliance Miro.
Moving forward I’ll be referring to the above diagram and its related planning as the “Genesis Strategy.”
Governance Modules – this is rather straightforward to imagine the need for. Different DAOs will have varying needs in relation to the governance elements they require. GenDAO currently has three schemes: Contribution Reward, the Registrar, and Generic Action, but these are by no means exhaustive. We can imagine, for instance, an escrow scheme that sets aside funds and designates an arbitrator; we can also imagine small rules changes for already existing schemes, such as a Contribution Reward that does not allow the DAO to go into debt (proposals would automatically fail if there are insignificant funds in the DAO), or an iteration of the Genesis Protocol, which is merely an MVP for the holographic consensus process (hence being version .2). The key takeaway here is that these more nuanced elements will need to be brainstormed, built, audited, and added to a registry that DAOs can use for installation. Braimstorming will require paid DAO designers, which will require grants; building will require developer power (familiar already with Arc’s modular structure), also requiring grants; auditing will require auditors, or an auditing DAO, and governance for said DAO; and finally the registry of available modules will require governance, which GenDAO can provide in the form of an Arc.Hives Gov Modules registry.
The Arc.Hives – these shared registries are perhaps the “most Common” of the Commons we aim to cultivate, as all DAOs on Alchemy will benefit from registries that identify unique voters, unique DAOs, a common semantics, and safe governance modules that can swapped in an out as modular puzzle pieces, and GenDAO as the institutional keeper of these registries will provide a universal service that every DAO on the stack benefits from. Already we’ve seen through experiments such as the HumanityDAO the benefit of these types of Commons registries; there is a clear value prop for their decentralized governance.
Legal – DAOifying the world is no mild mission, and to realistically carry it out, the GenDAO will need a network of legal experts that cross multiple global jurisdictions, specializing in various legal disciplines, such as contract law, international trade, financial law, corporate law, etc… It will need templated legal personalities that are easily accessible at the application/interface level, it will need binding agreements to operate within legacy legal structures, it will need to advocate for the legislation of blockchain-optimized legal personalities, perhaps even for “DAO” as a legal form itself, and, in my opinion, above all we will need to develop a general Theory of Law that transcends legacy systems and leverages blockchain–and by extension, DAOs–as global institutional trust machines proper. Again, our takeaway here should be that all of these various needs will require financing, likely in the form of grants, and there will also need to be a (decentralized, secure) platform for such legal discourse, and GenDAO (the human network) and the DAO stack (the protocological governance stack, decentralized platform) can and should fulfill these needs, given their Common benefit.
Going into additional detail for all of the above items is beyond the scope of this (already unwieldy) post. But I believe the above three examples illustrate the nonrivalous universality of the goods and services GenDAO aims to produce and provide, as well as offer a glimpse into the rich sociocultural discourse driving their production, and hint at a realistic Genesis Strategy for transglobal DAOification.
A Note on Non-rivalry and Scarcity
Before diving into the monetary tools available for ourselves in order to advance this strategy, I believe it’s worth calling out the precarious position the GEN economy is currently in. There are multiple circular economies that already exist within the world of cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, that monetize the attention of miners (and in the future case of Ethereum, forgers) through transaction fees and gas costs respectively.
With this understanding, we are entering a highly saturated market. More than this, there is a general misconception that GEN–as a token leveraging the decentralized security provided by the Ethereum blockchain–is not deserving of the same consideration as a layer-1 cryptocurrency. Compare, for instance, the response to MolochDAO by key members of the Ethereum community, versus the collective attention, excitement, and diligence given to any DAO powered by DAOstack. It is not a stretch to say there is a general bias against tokens and non layer-1 middleware. This should not be surprising: after all, as @ezra_w has already pointed out, attention, support, and advocacy is heavily biased by individuals’ skin-in-the-game.
With this understanding, we must find a way to invert the perceived narrowness of our circular economy. If GEN, as the asset of the Commons DAO, is to successfully jumpstart the DAO ecosystem, we must brand it appropriately as a Commons asset. The narrative cannot be about pumping “founder bags,” as those biased against tokens likely claim, but instead about accruing value to a Commons-centric ecosystem. We must, frankly, reconfigure our notion of the GEN Economy to being the GEN Commons Economy, or simply the GEN Commons.
Our Monetary Tools
This is a good start to articulating a full range of monetary tactics that can be effectively used for management of the GEN economy, which I will now do. Readers should understand the Law of Supply and Demand before continuing. Note that a discussion and helpful chart around the supply/demand GEN token mechanics already exists, but the below will dive deeper into the topic.
Supply-side
We can inflate supply by minting GEN. This minting can be selectively targeted: that is, it can be minted to individuals and agencies in exchange for goods and services (the former of which we have yet to really explore; while Genesis has created and raffled artwork in the past we have yet to commit to any large-scale production of goods), it can be minted to DAOs in order to subsidize the cost of their DAOstake (the governance budget used to incentivize the prediction game), it can be minted to token holders for any act that increases the value of the GEN token (such as reducing supply by locking, or providing demand liquidity, or participating in the staking game).
We can reduce supply by burning GEN. This tactic has never been explored, but Genesis could, theoretically, purchase GEN at market and send it to Ethereum’s burn address. Before I mentioned that it may be helpful for Genesis to earn a profit; as a profitable entity it could theoretically buy and burn GEN indefinitely, capturing value as a sink mechanism. If we again consider that GEN should be the token of the Commons, then any value-capture is actually value-added to the Commons.
We can reduce supply by locking GEN. That is, we can create schemes that enable GEN holders to gain Reputation in GenDAO by locking their tokens for any amount of time; perhaps even indefinitely (although the repercussions of such an action have not been evaluated; this would amount to a burn as well, but on the user side and not the DAO side). These schemes can be even more elaborate, for instance, if an individual can demonstrate that they’ve purchased GEN from the market (by providing their Etherscan receipt) and have locked said GEN, we can reduce supply while stimulating demand.
We can reduce supply by increasing staking costs and/or duration for any of the GenDAO parameters. I think this is a fairly weak, inorganic tactic, but is necessary to point out to construct a full taxonomy. If GenDAO increases DAOstake costs from 150 to 300 GEN, for instance, this immediately increases the amount of GEN at stake, and by extension, is a negative supply shock for the duration thereof.
We can reduce supply by advocating other orgs to do any of the above. GenDAO does not exist in isolation, and I suspect as we grow we will accumulate enough soft power to quietly advocate for the above. GEN locking was already explored with the initiation of the dxDAO, and locking generally can be considered a key option for Reputation initiation.
Demand-side
GenDAO can purchase GEN from the market. This is self-explanatory, and has already been done. Additionally, GenDAO can create and utilize schemes that exercise this in a decentralized manner leveraging decentralized exchange services such as Uniswap, Kyberswap, and the DutchX protocol.
Other DAOs can purchase GEN. This is actually necessary, at the protocol level, in order to fuel the DAOstake (governance cost). In a sense, GenDAO is already exercising soft power by requiring every DAO on Alchemy to use GEN for prediction. I suspect that GEN’s defensibility as the de facto Commons token will exponentially increase over the course of the next year if this policy is consistently applied.
Stakers can purchase GEN. Theoretically, members of the GEN Prediction Network (the stakers who are actively looking for opportunities to profit from the prediction game) would want to purchase GEN in order to use it for its true utility. An interesting item to note is that stakers receive a higher % of the DAOstake the more they stake: with this it’s rational to stake as much as possible on every proposal in order to receive a proportionally higher amount of DAOstake if a staker is convinced the proposal will pass. I’d say currently stakers are discounting for platform risk given the ongoing Redemption errors, over time this discount should diminish as Alchemy (and additional interfaces) are progressively stabilized.
Speculators can purchase GEN. Speculation is the number #1 motive driving most cryptocurrency projects currently; one only need look at Bitcoin’s market cap and note its lack of utility to understand that this is the norm, and not the exception. Speculators are largely divisible to two categories: retail and funds, and I believe GenDAO should develop and leverage marketing outreach tactics that target both. To be frank, all that’s really needed is one fund interested in purchasing tokens to jumpstart the GEN Commons Economy we’re imagining. One thing to note is that GenDAO can create additional incentives for a fund to purchase GEN, for instance, a locked bonus from the GenDAO treasury. We have a growing, increasingly defensible network, a platform that is a first mover in a brand new growth industry (multiple industries, even), a defined mission, and the capacity to create carrots for speculators; I believe we can easily create a strong value proposition for token buyers, and I will discuss some options below.
GEN adoption can be widened. In order to create a closed circular economy for the GEN token, it should have a variety of uses beyond prediction, as every time it is exchanged for another currency it loses value. We need a wide network of vendors across every dimension of life that not only accept GEN as payment, but also hold it and use it themselves; I believe many of these vendors can be jumpstarted ourselves or by a profit-seeking fund (the DAOfund, perhaps?). This is the aspect of GEN, as a Commons token that I believe requires additional discussion, tying into theories of the Common and political-economic subtraction as posited by (post)modern political economists such as Negri, Ostrom, Badiou, Zizek, etc., while simultaneously evaluating current attempts towards Digital Commonwealth, such as the NOCODE initiative stewarded by Francesca Bria in Barcelona, or the Cities of Change movement. But this again, is beyond the scope of this post; I merely bring it up to encourage interested parties to keep an eye out.
And now, with an understanding of (1) the segments making up the Genesis Alpha. (2) the representative fairness of their respective Reputation distribution during alpha, (3) the Commons-centric goods and services needing undertaking by the GenDAO to accomplish its DAOification mission, (4) the need to redefine GEN as the Commons token, and (5) the monetary tools available to ourselves for management of the GEN Commons, we can move on to (6) the need to jumpstart the GEN Commons by utilizing said tactics, (7) new segmentation in Genesis Beta based off an organizational-analytic level, and (8) the application of those tactics to new segments in GenBeta and (9) GenBeta’s Reputation composition, mutatis mutandis these applied tactics.
New segments, better DAO
Here I articulate the new organizational segments that will make up Gen1.0:
New orgs, already established – I believe there are many Ethereum projects that can benefit from the GenDAO commons, including but not limited to, MakerDAO, 0x Protocol, Chainlink, Status, and the like. DAOstack’s bizdev team has already had conversations with many orgs in the space, and we continue to look for overlapping, collaborative opportunities that can collectively benefit the whole. Generally, orgs already in the Ethereum space are open to collaboration. This being said, I don’t believe we should limit ourselves to the Ethereum space, but also legacy businesses, non-profits, institutions, co-ops and the like. The growth potential for non-blockchain orgs is much higher outside of our technobubble, and we should actively develop methodologies for onboarding and feedback mechanisms that demystify DAOs and empower legacy orgs.
Experimental orgs and pilots – some of the Genesis Strategy services we imagine lend themselves to the creation of new DAO orgs that we will need to bootstrap ourselves. We can imagine an InsuranceDAO, not unlike Nexus Mutual, except utilizing the GEN token, which coincidentally aligns with the Nearest Person Principle DAO regulation some jurisdictions are exploring. We can also imagine an AuditDAO, or Decentralized Security Network, or an EventsDAO, not unlike the Decentralized Marketing Org (DMO) that @jer979 is already exploring (many of the proposals submitted to GenDAO currently are events-related; it’s worth noting we’re getting quite good at spreading the word).
Unrepresented orgs – I believe orgs without org-level representation such as dOrg, Bitfwd (KoalaDAO), and Ethfinex, that have members in the GenDAO already, should be recognized at the org level. I’ve already discussed this.
The need to jumpstart the GEN Commons Economy
I do not believe the Genesis Strategy will work, frankly, if the GEN token’s value does not return, at minimum, to the token sale level of ~.94 cents (USD), with demand liquidity to boot. In addition to fairly representing token holders moving forward, I advocate that we allocate Reputation towards present token buyers, with the intent to remedy our economic malaise. Luckily, as discussed, we have many tactics at our disposal to achieve this. In addition, a comprehensive budgeting of the Genesis Strategy should be prioritized, so we can begin talking specific numbers and collectively make better, more disciplined funding decisions with the 40m GEN available.
Segmentation and Distribution
.We now, more-or-less, have the following segments:
DAOstack Technologies
Unaffiliated Pollinators of the Genesis Alpha
Agencies of the Genesis Alpha, unrepresented
New orgs of the Genesis Commons
Experimental orgs and pilots
Token Buyers
With two exceptions, each segment is an organization; if we move the Pollinators into their own DAO, then we have but one non-org member of the GenDAO Commons: Token Buyers. I think this is ok, given that token buyers is a largely heterogenous block that also includes every other segment (should they choose).
Here is my proposed pie:
20% of the Reputation will be allocated to DAOstack Technologies. As discussed, in my ideal fractalized model, this would be distributed as a bloc, rather than on an individual basis, but I could also see it distributed on a loose departmental or work basis, with Communications, R&D, and Mgmt/Founder segments. According to a quick guesstimation exercise, DAOstack Tech has ~15% of the Reputation in GenAlpha, and weighting this up to 20% is consistent with balancing for more realistic representation.
10% of the Reputation will be allocated to a Pollinators DAO. There are two strategic reasons for this % allocation. First: the Pollinators have proven to be a great onboarding system for people who wish to learn how to use Alchemy. I do not want to forfeit this important on-ramp, and I think we still need an outlet for individuals, and not organizations, to join the GenDAO (although, I still see great value in org members also being represented as individuals in the Pollinator DAO). Secondly, this allocation is much lower than the Pollinators in GenAlpha, who control the vast majority of Reputation. As we’ve discussed, this allocation is unfair proportional to the efforts of other groups, and ought to be curtailed. While there has been some discussion of removing inactive Pollinators, I do not think this is the best approach; what may make more sense is for the Pollinators to inflate the Reputation of their most active users. This all being said, we can imagine this DAO as being nothing more than a fork or ongoing version of the GenAlpha as is; albeit without the power to mint GEN and needing to request funding from The Genesis Commons rather than receiving it from DAOstack Technologies.
30% of the Reputation will be allocated to current Agencies of the Genesis Alpha as well as New Orgs of the Genesis Commons. My assumption is that there will be ~10-30 orgs that fall into this bucket. I would like to see these orgs fit into some general framework, hitting pre-specified criteria with a common application form. In general, I’d say they should be projects and organizations of positive rapport, who possess an active interest in DAO participating and want to join in the collaborative stakeholder driven governance of the Genesis Commons, with the understanding that they are paying for a service they will benefit from and a network whose energies they can redirect if dissatisfied. I believe that well-funded orgs should consider becoming patrons of Genesis, in return for the Commons services it is actively incubating and accelerating, perhaps we should have some sort of standardized membership fee that matches in full or in part DAOstack Technologies’ bi-monthly contributions, similar to MolochDAO’s application fee. Perhaps Genesis can offer favorable terms in return to the most lucrative patrons, such as the ability for other projects to lock their native tokens (Ethfinex, Gnosis, Kyber come to mind) for Reputation, or even bid directly to increase their respective share of the 30% Org allocation.
Experimental orgs and pilots will not initially receive any Reputation. If we are to adopt an experimental mindset, our assumption should be that many of these pilots will fail. A second assumption I’m making is that said pilots will probably have overlapping membership with many of the above categories; the DAOfund experiment, for instance, is managed by @eric.arsenault, who is a member of Genesis, and same with the DMO, MemeDAO, etc… This being said, if pilots can demonstrate their sustainable feasibility, I see opportunities for them to join the GenDAO Commons as New Orgs (discussed above) or token holding/buying orgs (discussed below). So there are already on-ramps to facilitate this particular group.
40% of Reputation should be allocated to Token buyers: 20% to those who lock GEN, and 20% to those who purchase and lock GEN. This is perhaps the most controversial and complex aspect of my proposed distribution. The token locking part is clear (albeit the specifics are not; how long, for instance, should I lock my GEN in order to qualify?), but the “buy and lock” component is not. Let me explain: I can provably purchase GEN on a decentralized exchange, such as IDEX or Kyberswap, and provide the receipt/screenshots of my “buy and lock.” GenDAO can then approve/disapprove my “buy and lock” proposal. In addition to this, GenDAO may offer a bonus for being a demand liquidity provider in this regard by selectively minting tokens to people who buy and lock certain quantities of GEN. One final note: all of this could be abstracted into a simple interface that (1) buys the GEN (2) locks the GEN (3) submits a proposal requesting Rep proportional to the GEN purchased and locked. We should strongly consider this implementing this policy and building such an interface: I believe a tool/application of this type could very well be primarily responsible for jumpstarting the GEN economy from its weak valuation today.
Alternative Distributions:
There is a final segment, or segments, which I have not yet discussed, that should yet be considered for inclusion in the above pie. There is the idea of locking ETH for Reputation, or WBTC, or even specific tokens whose project networks we want to penetrate in some regard (this worked to some extent for the dxDAO – various influencers in the Ethereum community have been actively monitoring its progress); individuals are also good candidates for this. Adding additional utility to another projects’ tokens is a good way to get their attention, and signal good intent. I discuss this strategy in mine and @ezra_w’s D2D Reputation Sharing paper:
Promotions are a common tactic to boost cryptocurrency network growth. The airdrop is one such example. DAOs that seek to grow their network can giveaway REP similarly.
Both qualitative and eventually quantitative curation algorithms may be used by recruiters who seek to giveaway REP to agents or agencies whose attention increases network size or growth rate. Imagine if new DAOs–curated lists–could be algorithmically bootstrapped with a predetermined membership of the most highly curated combination of people; eg. the highest REP holders of every DAO. It’s worth mentioning that airdropping tokens has already been discussed as a tactic for hostile network acquisition; REP could be given away similarly to acquire the collective attention of another network or a select few agents.
If a DAO airdropped REP to a curated list of incredible people, how many stay and start immediately adding value to the network? What if that DAO was well endowed?
Another method to consider, which I will not discuss in too much detail, is the idea of bonding curves and combining the GEN Commons with another economy. I believe that if another project or token was willing to give fair terms that honored GEN tokens for, at minimum, their token sale value ($.94) or their current value (whichever is highest), GenDAO should consider such an arrangement. There is obviously a Reputation component to such a merger which would require a high level of negotiation.
Another option is to reward Reputation to people who provide liquidity to the GEN token, similar to MGN and its relationship to the dxDAO locking initiation (see above link).
Finally, if we stretch our hands towards the improbable, perhaps there is a future wherein multiple token economies are bond to each other, and GenDAO truly becomes the Commons DAO, in both Reputation distribution and decentralized monetary institution of the entire Ethereum middleware ecosystem. Only time will tell if such a vision is feasible.
Note that, in spite of the length of the above, all I have tried to do is provide a meaningful sketch of a fair Reputation distribution. I believe I have done the necessary work for a complete-ish analysis: I have analyzed the fairness and representation of the current Reputation distribution by segment, which is considerably divergent from our envisioned GenDAO (yet consistent with the freeform nature of the GenAlpha experiment), I have discussed various monetary tools for managing our Commons treasury, and the need to improve our stituation, but foremost, I have tried to align form with function by envisioning GenDAO as a Commons DAO that provides solutions for the overlapping needs of a varied Alliance, and in doing so have tried to keep said analysis within the organizational (perhaps even institutional) level. But above all, it is a sketch, and subject to change.
I believe, wholeheartedly, that if the Genesis Strategy is applied, and we work to maximize its impact to the best of our collective abilities, we will be able to reverse the state of the GEN Economy, exponentially grow the project, and become the de facto platform for decentralized coordination on the Ethereum blockchain. We already have the protocological tools for resilient scalability, as articulated by Matan Field’s holographic consensus, but we have been missing a holistic strategy, of which a fair, representative, and tactical Reputation distribution is a key item. While our understanding was rather limited 14 moonths ago, I believe our wild experimentation has yielded enough insights to look through the glass darkly and articulate the next great structural iteration of our collaborative intelligence.
"could extreme decentralization get on the way of valuing expertise?" @papa_raw suggested we can raise the cap if 2% feels extreme and asked if I have a proposed raise.
This question led me to read most of this DAOtalk thread, and instead of an answer/proposed value, I have another question and an overwhelming feeling about the points raised in other comments above. Let’s talk about rep again?
1- Wouldn’t a cap on reputation limit the Holographic Consensus incentives? Is it possible that by creating this rule in such a new experiment we are producing blind spots for how organizations could keep the decentralized ground in other ways?
“I will start by analyzing Genesis’ current makeup in order to evaluate the relative winners and losers of the current Reputation distribution” @papa_raw, could you provide quantitative results of you analysis, please?
