Seeking DAO in Dali

The veteran cadre came to Dali from Beijing on the evening of September 20 and stayed for more than a month. The reason for coming to Dali is very simple, that is, I have no motivation to work in Beijing for a long time. I need to find an organization of freelancers and work together to have motivation. By chance, I met a lot of web3 friends and came into contact with some theories and applications of web3.

1. Touch web3

The old cadres' understanding of web3 was a superficial understanding of the principles of blockchain and the application of digital currency. During his studies at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, the professor took a piece of the Bitcoin white paper and taught him how to install the wallet. It is recommended that everyone invest only a small amount of money in the digital currency.

Although the blockchain technology on which web3 is based has been developed for more than ten years, it is still in the stage of a spark. A classmate of the veteran cadre, before leaving Beijing, mysteriously said that he was going to participate in the revolution, but he did not disclose anything else. In fact, this is also the normal state of web3 people, not leaving name information, and communicating in telegram and discord when something happens. Some time ago, Dali held a web3 conference. Many of the participants were offline for the first time, and something very interesting happened. I thought the other party would be a middle-aged uncle, but after meeting, I found out that it was a girl.

The holding of the web3 conference in Dali not only achieved some practical results, but also changed a group of people's views on Dali. Dali is no longer just a habitable tourist destination, but also a relatively free and interesting web3 holy land . While people come to live and enjoy the comfortable life in Cangshan and Erhai Lake, they can also stay with web3 and other interesting friends in other fields to do something together. You can live happily in Dali without too much worry, without invoking anxiety, and at a very low cost. The rent can be as low as a few hundred yuan per month, and there are free or a few yuan fast food and a canteen for a dozen yuan. To a certain extent, you will feel a sense of freedom.

Of course, without the need for mythical Dali, no place will be a true utopia under the national system. For example, Nuodeng, a thousand-year-old village in Dali Prefecture, is hidden in the deep mountains. It takes three hours to drive from Dali. Even so, the Confucian Temple and Wu Temple in this village were looted during the Cultural Revolution, and now only empty temples are left. . But Dali does have its advantages. This advantage is that the government has no money and has little ability to interfere with the people. Dali's main industries are still limited to tourism and agriculture, and the main players in these two sectors are small and micro individuals, which are basically tax-free and receive little money. On the other hand, they spend money on public services and environmental governance. A lot of money, so one third of Dali's annual fiscal revenue depends on the transfer payment from the central government. The practitioners of web3 have also dealt with the informatization department of the local government. The person in charge of this part of the government has only an administrative background, and their understanding of informatization is still limited to how many computers are in the computer room and whether it is good to write in the report. , there is no talk of cooperation and supervision at all.

There are currently two co-working spaces in Dali, one is Dali Hub and the other is Dao Space. The veteran cadres visited these two places on the first day they came to Dali, and came into contact with a large number of web3 practitioners and freelancers in other industries, and most of the latter were more or less aware of and involved in web3. On the first day of Dao Space’s office, I met two groups of small partners (WBF and dDAO) pushing their GR15 project on the ground, seeking to raise a dollar. In fact, it is quite cute, because the organizer Gitcoin only based on the number of votes, and then gives corresponding rankings and subsidies. In order to make the organizer's wool, it raised a dollar to allow more people to participate. Veteran cadres donate generously through wallets, because this is indeed a good way to learn about participating in web3. On Gitcoin's website (gitcoin.co/grants/), veteran cadres have discovered many cool blockchain projects that were not known before.

web3 is based on the interaction between individuals and the network based on blockchain technology, and its characteristics also follow the characteristics of blockchain, including decentralization, non-tampering, traceability but anonymous, and individuals can obtain corresponding rights through co-construction. Bloomberg describes Web3 as an idea that "will build financial assets in the form of tokens into the inner workings of almost any online activity." The University of Cambridge defines Web3 as "the putative next-generation web technology, legal and payment infrastructure, including blockchain, smart contracts and cryptocurrencies."

The web3 in today's context can be traced back as early as 2014. The essence of web3 is to subvert, and at each stage, there will be new concepts with the popularity of new applications. In the early days, it was cryptocurrency (crypto currency); then there was decentralized financing (DeFi), where individuals exchanged currencies or made investment and financing without the participation of banks or governments; and then NFT technology provided extremely diverse possibilities, Including art investment income, GameFi, mortgage loan, etc. The term “DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization)” first appeared in an article published in Bitcoin Magazine in 2013 by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin related to blockchain technology. Buterin asks, “It’s just the interaction of people and contracts.” Something that is not taught today in any orthodox management school. Messari founder Ryan Selkis said that in the world of crypto, 2022 will be the era of community DAOs, with the potential to revolutionize the way communities and companies are governed.

2. Getting to know DAO

During the time I worked in Dao Space, I saw a lot of interesting projects, most of which were about DAO. This is also because of the business background of the veteran cadres, and it is easy to understand the application of blockchain in management. The governance of DAO can be divided into two types, one is on-chain governance of the blockchain, and the other is off-chain governance. On-chain governance is the best embodiment of code as law. For example, the governance of the Moonbeam network is governed by a community of token holders, including core developers, application developers, collectors, users and other contributors. , Open discussions on governance forums such as Polkassembly and support the improvement of proposals based on community suggestions. All proposals and referendums are completed on the chain according to code rules, and there will also be many interesting mechanisms, such as adding belief values to voting weights. (vote_weight = tokens * conviction_multiplier), and the number of tokens together affect the decision. The voted tokens will be locked, and a lock-up period can be set in the next step. The longer the lock-up period, the higher the belief value, the higher the voting weight. If the tokens are not locked, the voting weight will drop significantly.

Off-chain governance is to use tokens only as a tool to manage ownership and voting rights, and the actual governance still depends on the system. For token distribution, good planning can make DAO bigger and stronger. In this regard, researches related to Tokenomics have appeared. For example, the dDAO that has participated in the past will record all the contributions to the DAO as points, which will be converted into tokens for a certain period of time. It is difficult to quantify and record the workload, and it may never be possible to satisfy everyone. Considering factors such as fairness and effectiveness may be antagonistic in itself. The following is a record of dDAO's points, which is very interesting. It is very similar to Ren Zhengfei holding a small red book in the early days of Huawei to record everyone's equity.

The seemingly utopian DAO actually solves two major problems in the business world, one is personnel incentives, and the other is the life cycle. In the business world, games are almost always played in the form of companies. A good company often gathers a group of people because of the same mission, vision and values. After the company has continued to operate for a period of time, it can still retain people through appropriate incentive mechanisms. , It is difficult to recruit people and use good people. In addition, it is necessary to adapt to changes in the external environment. When the company is too focused on political struggles and ignores the development of the industry and the company, the emergence of disruptors will make the company and the Its employees all drink the northwest wind.

In terms of personnel incentives, good incentives can spark a prairie fire, and inappropriate incentives can ruin a good hand. Huawei is a world-class technology company from China that makes the Chinese proud. However, the founder Ren Zhengfei does not understand technology. He only does one thing and divides the cake. Since the end of the last century, he has practiced full stock ownership. Later, it was changed to virtual equity, and TUP (Time Unit Plan), a time unit plan, was introduced when there were more and more shareholders who were sitting on their own shares and equity incentives were not enough. The purpose is to implement Huawei's "striver-oriented" "This core value. Looking at it now, this practice is quite common, from every major Internet company to hot pot restaurants and supermarkets on the street, all of which are competitive and can gain a firm foothold in the market. DAO is essentially emphasizing the separation of powers and profits. In the development process, tokens will be allocated to contributors. Contributors holding tokens can vote to decide the affairs of DAO and realize the benefits. Therefore, there is no absolute leadership in the governance structure of DAO. And absolute ownership, which is very in line with the current conditions for the healthy and sustainable development of business.

For the life cycle of a business, there may be many factors that affect it, including macro market fluctuations, advances in technological development, etc. Under the circumstance that personnel are fully motivated and the organization has vitality, a business may go through the cycle to open the second life curve. However, more businesses will choose to monopolize interests because of the solidification of personnel interests, or lose the opportunity and ability for transformation and development because of bureaucratic organization. Maybe some people will protect themselves and switch industries or companies in a timely manner, but most people follow the company to the end of the monopoly and the moment it perishes, laying off layoffs and layoffs. If we compare the two leading companies in business that are offensive and defensive to each other as a hero and a dragon, how many warriors have defeated the dragon through the ages and then become the dragon again. This has become the norm. The race between revolution and reform is often All accompanied by violence and gore.

The form of DAO is more loose and flexible. At this stage, it is like an interest group. It will not lock people up like the existing company employment system, and there will be no profit-seekers greedily guarding the production materials and refusing to share them. Instead, everyone is welcome to join at any time. and exit. A person can participate in different DAOs at the same time, and can withdraw from dissatisfied DAOs, join other DAOs, or create new DAOs with others. In this regard, there is also the proposal of SubDAO, which is a DAO created or derived from ParentDAO, just like the expansion of a company to establish a subsidiary company. In fact, the characteristic of DAO is not how long it can survive, but that its conversion mechanism can smoothly avoid the long or severe pain of the company system. Contributing to the DAO in a way is equivalent to changing personal capital from a single investment to a better portfolio. If information technology can liberate human hands, then DAO is to further liberate human beings from the organizational structure and fully release the productivity of individuals.

3. Establish DAO

The advantages of DAO are so great that veteran cadres are also trying to build a DAO for the poor culture. In addition to the incentive effect through tokens, it also makes people feel more involved and gain experience value. The way to build is also very simple, directly use COLONY, the tool for building DAO, and similar tools include BitDAO, Aragon and DAOstack. Directly issue tokens on it, and the issued tokens can be transferred to the digital currency wallet.

After the tokens are generated, the governance mechanism of DAO is simply designed as follows:

Overview:

The token holders of DAO include developers, contributors and users, who form a community and govern DAO to promote the development of DAO.

in principle:

Because it involves spontaneous collaboration, it is very different from traditional corporate organizations. You can refer to Vlad Zamfir's article on blockchain governance "How to Participate in Blockchain Governance in Good Faith (and with Good Manners)"

Be open and inclusive to token holders who wish to participate in DAOs and who are affected by governance decisions

Be open and transparent in the decision-making process

Be an actor at all times, always considering the moral impact of your actions (or omissions)

Be patient and magnanimous in interacting with other token holders, but will not tolerate violence and harm in words, actions or behavior

main component:

Proposal - Token holders propose a course of action or matter, and the Council votes on the proposal.

Council - The council is voted by token holders according to the weight (number of tokens), and a five-member council is formed. It is the responsibility of council members to vote on proposals, which will be implemented after they are passed.

Wallet management mechanism:

The DAO does not set up its own stablecoin vault, and the various expenses are reimbursed by the members themselves instead of the vault, and the income is divided in real time (it can also be changed to monthly or quarterly). Token wallets are centrally managed and exposed in real time. The common treasury has been removed, and it is hoped that financial power will still be given to decentralized individuals, reducing friction and increasing efficiency.

Incentives:

The first stage: There is no business and cash flow at this stage, and the contributors can only be paid according to the market value of the workload, and the tokens are anchored in RMB at 1:1. Market value calculation method 1: For a single job, calculated according to labor hours, per hour entry-level 200 yuan, manager-level 400 yuan, director-level 800 yuan; market value calculation method 2: For a project, according to labor hours or refer to equivalent projects The total market value (passed by the council) is estimated by means of the method, and then the proportion is calculated by voting (or the method of conjoint analysis), and distributed to the contributors proportionally.

The second stage: when there is cash inflow, the second stage is entered. There are two options for all cash at this stage. One is to choose the contributors to keep their own cash, and the other is to transfer the cash into the DAO. The cash inflow to the DAO will first be converted into 1:1 tokens to the contributors, and then all Token holders share the inflow of cash in proportion to their holdings. Such a mechanism not only ensures the interests of the strugglers, but also allows early strugglers to still obtain some profit sharing in the future. The problem with anchoring RMB is that the value of 1 token may not be 1 RMB, and the specific ratio may be determined according to the actual situation. For business, it can be short-term consulting services, or long-term growth, subscription-based services to earn membership fees. The way of community learning is also very suitable for today's China, where the education level is generally not high, and live broadcast of short video and fast content is a mainstream acceptance method. In any case, to explore a sustainable way of life suitable for the current society, all knowledge sharing is open and transparent, and the priority is to make the big cake.

The third stage: IDO externally and stop anchoring the RMB. Reaching this stage may require several DAO changes, and may not reach this stage. DAO also has a lifespan. When the lifespan comes, the community help provided by the DAO is less than the contribution of the contributors, so no one is willing to continue to flow the cash obtained into the existing DAO, they may choose to create a new DAO (or through the fork SubDAO).

Many people like to compare DAOs to religions, and there are similarities in terms of individual spontaneity, collective consensus, and the effects that can be achieved. There are three major religions for projects that rely on consensus, such as Spring and Autumn Hundred Schools, and Wikipedia. DAO greatly accelerates the efficiency of consensus. DAOs born for NFTs, such as Pleaser DAO, can raise extremely high amounts of money in a very short period of time. funds. On the other hand, because of its flexibility, DAO will not go astray with collectivism. Everyone can choose what suits them, what they like, or even create one themselves, instead of being forced to obey. Just to talk about it is the reform of state-owned enterprises in the past three years. The original intention was to get rid of zombie enterprises, but through the method of pulling lists, the vitality of enterprises has been eliminated, and in fact, more state-owned enterprises may become zombie enterprises.

China has entered the era of garages, making DAO possible. Many individuals have basic living security and free online space, they can no longer be limited to one company, and can participate in a DAO at any time. It is precisely because they want to fully release the productivity of individuals, all the people who are DAOs, especially the founders, have a decentralization plot and can't wait to give themselves to DAOs. However, decentralization is not the goal, DAO fulfilling its mission is the goal. The current DAO calls for leaders and leadership without precedent in history! Decentralized governance mechanism is undoubtedly what everyone yearns for, but without money, or without enough other incentives, it is not sustainable! The leader needs to give these, so that the organization can have stable business, cash flow, and continue to operate. It can be gradually transitioned in the future. On the way to success, it is not because of who has a high status and the right to speak, and who obeys, but who can promote the achievement of things, and choose whom to cooperate with.

"The Evolution of Humanity" mentions three forms of organization. In the period of collecting society, human beings were small-scale groups with great mobility, and people carried out some production in small families; in the period of agricultural society, human beings formed a large hierarchical organization. The top consists of a single/group of powers, similar to a pyramid to form subsequent power levels, each entity has a different level of management, power or authority; during the industrial society, humans tended to be egalitarian rather than hierarchical, and organizational forms became more and more flexible , such as new concepts such as partnership enterprises, open source communities, and creator economy, more and more tools and platforms gradually empower individuals to complete their work independently. Urbanization is a decentralization of productive forces, destroying the traditional Chinese society's clan relationship, the big family model, and the Confucian concept of filial piety to fathers and sons, and puts individuals in a larger market to find their own position to shine. So there is no need to look at DAO as reactionary and subversive. It is just one of many organizational forms. You must know that China's "Company Law" is only 30 years old. No matter how you form an organization to do things, it is very important. The first chapter of "The Wealth of Nations" talks about the division of labor, which greatly improves productivity.

Several tools for DAO collaboration have to be mentioned, one is Discord and the other is Notion. Discord is a community communication tool. Different from the traditional WeChat group and QQ group, Discord can give members a more diverse identity, and communicate to a certain extent like a post bar. It can create modules of various themes for members to communicate with pictures and texts, and can set up voice channels. For meeting discussions and sharing. All text content will be synchronized to the cloud, and new members can access the historical content of all modules after being invited to join. Notion is where the community displays and implements its work. All content is open. Members jointly maintain community information and dynamics, track work progress, and upload work documents and meeting minutes.

4. Miscellaneous talk

I want to talk about Dali. From the perspective of incentives, Dali is the most suitable for landing DAO. First of all, let’s talk about the incentives for workers, which can be divided into four main aspects: money, growth, living conditions and autonomy. Each aspect will not be discussed, but different people value these four aspects differently. Dali is a very interesting place. The mountains and rivers are good here, but the people are not rich, the government is not rich, and the people are relatively lightly tossed. Just taking nucleic acid as an example, the people will definitely not be able to afford the money, nor can the government afford the money, so there is no need to do nucleic acid in daily life here in Dali, and some people have not done nucleic acid since the outbreak of the epidemic. Young people who come to Dali will value living conditions and autonomy more, because if they value money, they will stay in a big city as a social animal and will not come to Dali. Therefore, DAO, which relies on free prostitution in the early stage and does not require work, is very suitable for young people in Dali. And for young people, in addition to family support, Dali can also provide a similar universal basic income (UBI). Young people can become volunteers in exchange for free accommodation and meals, or they can go to places such as Ciyuanzhai for free vegetarian meals. , UBI guarantees their basic life. Dali is also the same as DAO, for people to come and go, they can stay for a long time or sojourn, and they are all free.

Either strategy or direction is extremely important. Previously, veteran cadres focused on looking at globalization, but after watching it for 100 days, they found that although he is a direction that can be developed, he is far away from individuals and is only something that a small number of people can do. In contrast, web 3 is a disruption about everyone, enough to generate strong interest, so the prospects are much better. It is very interesting that globalization means communicating with people of various countries, but how to communicate with them? The software has all been blocked, and there is no way to have a direct conversation. The government's defense against the subversive web3 is like a flood-proof beast. In contrast, Japan has proposed Web 3.0 as the pillar of economic reform. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that the country is locked in a new era. Seeing that the new leaders are all Chinese and male, losing the important feature of diversity, it is inevitable to be full of worries about the future.

The decentralization of web3 is by no means a Garden of Eden. Many friends in Dali have had their wallets stolen, and veteran cadres are no exception. In the evening when an old cadre was not in front of the computer, the ether in the wallet was inexplicably transferred, leaving only a few other worthless digital currencies. In the transaction record, you can clearly see the details of the transfer and the received wallet address, but you don't know who the other party is, let alone explain it. The reason for the theft may be that the private key (mnemonic) stored in the computer has been stolen, or it may be that the wallet is connected to a phishing website. The lesson is profound. When walking in a decentralized world, you must first ensure your own security. The wallet can be in the form of a cold wallet or a multi-signature wallet.

The friends I met in Dali thought that the veteran cadre had stayed in Dali for many years, but no, the veteran cadre came to Dali for the first time and only stayed for more than a month. This time was very interesting and will be missed in the future. . DC of poor culture: https://discord.gg/eUCbJGhe

refer to:

https://docs.moonbeam.network/cn/learn/features/governance/

https://seedao.notion.site/SeeDAO-SIP-2-a4720f18c068455785a7a9ee5fd626ee

https://seedao.notion.site/SeeDAO-dd3a7b69b5844f00839a0efd23ba812f

http://www.yndali.gov.cn/dlszf/c107296/202202/05994f340024472584c13cee4c4a20db.shtml

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/JfB0lHKfi4g6v4xatSKJ3g

https://tokenengineering.net/explore/