OrgTech Review #12

May 21, 2019

Previously on OrgTech Review

Most clicked: Dumb on Purpose - A Behavioral Criticism of Meritocracy, Introducing Humanity DAO, Blockchains are Bureaucracies par Excellence.

Aragon Network and Token Primer. Luke Duncan presents an overview of the organizations using Aragon today, the Aragon Network governance process, and the mechanisms behind the upcoming Aragon Court.
Released Aragon 0.7.2, with improvements to the labelling system and a new help and support system.
Released aragonUI 0.38.0, with a new TokenBadge component and compact mode for IdentityBadge.

Important Updates to the Edgeware Lockdrop (May 2019). Edgeware's Lockdrop contract has been launched on the Ethereum mainnet, they have extended the Contribution Period Length to 90 days (instead of 14), and they have a new early participation bonus schedule, new timelock bonuses, and more inclusive signalling.
Commonwealth have released a multi-chain governance portal, with interfaces to attest identity, discuss proposals, run for councils, govern protocols, and conduct meaningful conversation. This portal is currently only available for Edgeware, Commonwealth's own protocol. Check it out here.

The Results of Gitcoin and Microsoft's virtual hackathon. $67k in prizes distributed, 81 projects built, and more.

Launching Kleros Escrow: Crowdsourced Justice for Secure Online Commerce. The article runs through a few simple examples of how Kleros' new Escrow tool can help secure online transactions and resolve disputes. Check out Kleros Escrow here.

MolochDAO: a primitive solution. MetaCartel (the team who last week forked MolochDAO for their own data sharing use case) present an overview of the MolochDAO system, which they praise for its simplicity.

Random Walks Across the Aisle - Introducing Certainty Through Randomness in Electoral Systems: Random sample voting can result in more representative, informed, and incorruptible governance. It's also much cheaper (a sample of 16,587 can be extrapolated to 900M with 99% confidence), which means a society can adopt more frequent votes and "continuous elections" that keep representatives more accountable. However, random sample voting may struggle to gain legitimacy in a statistically illiterate society and continuous elections may generate too much volatility.
Who Owns my DAO?: DAOs have two irreducible dimensions which complement each others' weaknesses. The social layer of DAOs is owned by many (Decentralised) and, through legitimacy (which prevents forks) and adaptability (which provides resilience), protects the autonomy of the automation layer. The automation layer is owned by none (Autonomous) and, through transparency (which fosters trust) and self-enforcement (which prevents undue concentration of power), protects the decentralisation of the social layer. Understanding the nature of ownership helps to set these dynamics in context.
Digital Cooperatives are the Future: DAOs can obtain defined legal personalities (and benefits such as limited liability) using the structure of a membership corporation. This "digital cooperative" model is how Nexus Mutual operates.

On The Horizon - A new publication from Work Futures on Platform Ecosystems: "We will uncover and share the techniques of platform ecosystems, to understand the dynamics of self-organizing systems of increasing complexity, and to explore the boundaries of markets, governments, and new forms of governance for open, distributed, and decentralized business ecosystems." Despite no mention of them, this resource manages to be quite relevant to OrgTech and DAOs. Check out this report on the "Evolution of the Platform Organization" (Sections 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says: The US National Labor Relations Board argued that "The drivers had significant entrepreneurial opportunity by virtue of their near complete control of their cars and work schedules, together with freedom to choose login locations and to work for competitors of Uber”. However, a former board chairwoman has criticised this "permissive" view of entrepreneurship, which ignores that drivers have no control over prices/marketing.