OrgTech Review #16
Moloch DAO replicated in Aragon, Colony launches developer colony, dOrg building DAOstack fundraising module, and more!
Previously on OrgTech Review
Most clicked: Dynamic Governance - Where Cybernetics Meets Sociology, Introducing Gauntlet, The Era of Legally Compliant DAOs.
Project News
Aragon
Aragon Network Vote #3. Voting begins July 25 16:00 UTC and will last for 48 hours. Eleven Aragon Governance Proposals (AGPs) were submitted and eight were approved for the final ballot. The proposals include Flock funding for Autark (AGP-73), a new DAO to govern the Nest grant program (AGP-70), and a 'quiet ending' period for Aragon Network Votes (similar to DAOstack's) to prevent last-minute vote flipping (AGP-64).
Aragon Fundraising & the return of the commons. Aragon Black released more information on its DAICO platform (formerly Apiary). The tool will allow patrons to stake tokens (DAI or ANT) on a given DAO and receive a DAO governance token in return. This token entitles the patron to certain rights within the DAO, such as a vote on funding decisions. A customisable token-bonding curve defines the price of staking and allows the DAO to access and allocate funds. Aragon Fundraising is expected to go live in a few months.
1Hive's "Dandelion Orgs" request for funding approved by the Nest program. Luke Duncan (Aragon researcher) and his 1Hive team will spend the next 5 months replicating Moloch DAO's functionality by building 5 new modular Aragon apps. The popular "rage quit" mechanism will be executed via the Redemptions app, demoed here.
Demo of upcoming Frame release 0.2 with Aragon Agent integration. This will allow users of Aragon DAOs to engage with any other Web3 application or DAO. The official release is estimated to arrive in a few weeks.
Aragon upgraded its apps through on-chain vote. Ahead of the upcoming Aragon Network vote, ANT holders participated in the first ever vote to upgrade the apps of the Aragon governance organization.
Aragon Nest mid-2019 update. An extensive update on the progress of Nest grantees, featuring Autark, BrightID, DappNode, Pando, Frame, and more.
Autark / Open Work Labs - June 2019 Update. Autark is nearing completion of the work they received funding for via Aragon Network Vote #1, which includes better communication between Aragon apps, commenting, user profiles, reputation, and project management applications. Check out their AMA here.
Aragon Black Monthly #3: Anonymity & Transparency. A philosophical exploration on the differences between transparency, anonymity, pseudonymity, and privacy, and the role of blockchain in a world of mass surveillance. Features an interview with BrightID.
Bounties Network
Bounties Explorer now supports comments, threads and notifications. These UX improvements allow users of the gig economy platform to communicate without having to rely on other channels.
Colony
A Colony for Developers. Colony launched their own developer's colony, which will reward CDEV and reputation to any developers who contribute to Colony's open source repositories. The developer dashboard integrates with this colony so that all you need to do to start earning is login and link your Metamask and Github accounts.
Colony also launched their Discord.
Commons Stack
Conviction Voting: A Novel Continuous Decision Making Alternative to Governance. Jeff Emmett explains conviction voting in more detail, the continuous voting mechanism in which your vote accumulates more power over time if you don't change it. With continuous voting, vote buying becomes more expensive and voter apathy is less problematic because members with consistent preferences can set and forget. With the conviction mechanism, last minute vote swings are eliminated and long-standing minority opinions are protected from sudden inflows of wealth. You can check out a discussion about this article between the Commons Stack team, Glen Weyl (Quadratic Voting researcher), Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum founder), Luke Duncan (Aragon researcher), and Rich McAteer (Humanity DAO founder) here.
DAOstack
Gnosis has Stepped Back from the dxDAO. Gnosis has cut all ties to the dxDAO, the DAO it launched to control the auctioneer powers of its DutchX decentralised exchange. While Gnosis never held any voting power in the dxDAO, the company has now also archived the DAO's Github and Twitter accounts and has given up admin rights to the DAO's Telegram and Discourse communities.
DAOstack introduces dHack, a novel hackathon format to be launched at ETHBerlinZwei. dHack aims to decentralise decision-making around selecting winners, distributing rewards, and to allow for continuous funding post-hackathon through ETHBerlin's Continuity Fund DAO. Berlin Blockchain Week attendees will have numerous ways to earn reputation in the DAO.
Genesis DAO-funded PragueDAO governs a physical space, to become an incubator. Initially, the DAO will govern "non-critical elements of the space" for legal reasons. The space has been open since July 1 and aims to launch its incubator around August.
DAOstack's Alchemy now allows DAOs to modify their own structure. The scheme registrar scheme enables adding, editing, and removing elements of a DAOstack DAO. Read more how to use schemes in this technical introduction.
DAOs Marching Forward Part II. DAOstack's communications lead recaps on new DAOs in the DAOstack ecosystem.
dOrg
dOrg are working on a fundraising module for DAOstack, which will use bonding curves and facilitate more transparent DAICOs (like the Aragon Fundraising app). Check out the spec here and give them feedback here.
Humanity DAO
Episode 9: Humanity DAO with Rich McAteer - Wizard of Dapps (including host Peter Pan of MetaCartel DAO). This episode covers the challenge of scaling up DAOs and discusses the role of unique identities.
MetaCartel DAO
Moloch 2.0: from grant giving to sustainability. While most existing DAO frameworks focus on resource allocation, an APPDAO would enable multiple companies to collaborate on a product and claim their share by leveraging the Claims Token standard.
MetaCartel DAO Rises. With 17 members onboarded, MetaCartel DAO now has 750 ETH at its disposal. These funds are to be used to drive forward UX improvements and use case experiments for Dapps.
Open Law
Streaming Value on OpenLaw|DAO & Ethereum. This summary article provides a step-by-step guide to three open legal tools that DAO participants can use to shift liability from their DAO to a legal proxy.
Panvala
Panvala Beta Release: What Would You Fund?. A year after inception, Panvala releases a beta version of their funding allocation tool. Aiming to be a "decentralized Ethereum Foundation", Panvala holds a public vote among holders of test tokens to choose which projects will receive PAN token grants. Mainnet launch is planned for August.
Wetonomy
Wetonomy's Building Blocks Overview. Building upon their smart contract framework StrongForce, Wetonomy designed an architecture with three main elements: 'Members' classes which define the actions and permissions of participants; 'Units of Work' classes which define tasks and track their progress; and 'Token Flow' classes which support minting, splitting and burning of tokens. This blog post describes these classes in greater detail.
Brain Food
Outsourcing Sybil Resistance in your DAO with Modifiers. Blockada DAO distinguishes humans from non-humans not on its own but by requiring its users to be registered in Humanity DAO. Describing Ethereum as "financial Lego Technics", the post calls for more cross-contract communication and reuse of existing components.
Resolving the Stake-Based vs. Participant-Based Voting Dilemma. Discusses the benefits and shortcomings of stake-based (one token, one vote) and participant-based (one person, one vote) voting mechanisms. With functionality as money, risk management and holders’ representation in mind, the authors propose a dynamically balanced participant-stake voting, using the Gini coefficient to prevent hostile takeovers.
What is a DAO?. This article attempts to break down the various (often conflicting) definitions of a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO). "Decentralisation" can refer to the absence of hierarchy, meaning the DAO is subject to decentralised decision making, or it may refer to the decentralised infrastructure that the DAO is powered by. "Autonomous" refers to the fact that the DAO's rules are self-enforcing, meaning processes can't be stopped by anyone if the smart contracts' conditions are met. "Organisation" refers more broadly to any digital organism that coordinates human activity, including blockchains, ecosystems, and natural resources.
Conspiratus Podcast #5. Recorded live at ZCon1, Sunny Aggarwal of Tendermint/Cosmos and Drew Stone of Commonwealth Labs discuss Edgeware, the governance of ZCash, and the implications of Facebook's new Libra project.
Beyond OrgTech
Study: 25% "don't trust a coinvote as a viable governance tool". That is according to a survey on the governance of Ethereum among 282 respondents, of whom 94% identify as Ethereum community members, 45% work in organisations building on Ethereum, and 24% are developers. The study also highlights challenges and gives recommendations on issues around diversity, collaboration, leadership, communications and tooling.
How to Create a Thriving Global Commons Economy. In this long read, Vasilis Kostakis and Michel Bauwens of P2P Foundation explain how the phenomenon of commons-based peer production may act as a "seed" in a post-capitalist transformation of today's political economies. The authors observe a new institutional ecosystem of value creation emerging, consisting of the three institutions of the productive community, commons-oriented entrepreneurial coalition(s), and the for-benefit association. This article outlines key practices, challenges, and a vision for commons-based peer production.
Blockchain and Distributed Workforce. The report proposes four main categories of solutions using blockchain in HR and work. Firstly, self-sovereign identity, with individuals owning their identities and controlling the use of their personal data. Secondly, "career wallets" with verifiable work credentials such as work history, references, employment history, courses, university degrees. Thirdly, work matching platforms that reduce transaction fees by 15 percent points and more. Fourthly, work payment platforms, which not only run payroll on blockchain but also experiment with new ways to pay, reward and motivate workers.
Events
7 August - 'Real DAO Workshop' by DAOincubator (Berlin)
15 August - PragueDAO Incubator Launch Party (Prague)
19-21 August - DGOV Node at Web3 Summit (Berlin)
20 August - DAOfest (Berlin)
21 August - CodeDAO: The Future of Open Source in the Blockchain Era, featuring ditCraft, Gitcoin, and Samsung NEXT (Berlin)
5-8 September - Enspiral Org Academy, with scholarships available for people working in the decentralised governance space (Belgium)