Automatos is an experimental journal about DAO design and related philosophy. Topics include community management and design, novel business models for DAOs, and organizational applications of DAO tooling.

Launched from PubDAO, this essay collection has also been an experiment in how a media DAO can incubate a publication, and how such a publication can be engineered with web3 tools to empower the content creators behind it. While much of the content of this first volume is a commentary on our efforts within PubDAO, the scope of Automatos is wider and draws from experiences in multiple DAOs.

This first volume of Automatos was managed by Clinamenic, and will have nine entries, written by MoreReese, Leo Nasskau, and Clinamenic, released in palindromic order:

• Entry 1 - "Toward an Open-Access Service DAO" (Clinamenic)

• Entry 2 - "Content as a Decentralized Service" (Clinamenic)

• Entry 3 - "PubDAO, Makers, and Managers" (MoreReese)

• Entry 4 - "Automating the Middlemen of Communities" (Leo Nasskau)

• Entry 5 - "Solving Community Tensions with Centralised Holders" (Leo Nasskau)

• Entry 6 - "Building for True Community" (Leo Nasskau)

• Entry 7 - "Progressive Autonomization - A Provocation" (MoreReese)

• Entry 8 - "A Sufficiently Decentralized Work Arrangement" (Clinamenic)

• Entry 9 - "Trust and Trustlessness" (Clinamenic)

These entries will each have a collectible edition of 20, within the Automatos Volume 1 Manifold contract. Because this volume has three authors, each entry’s edition will be distributed as follows:

• 13 to the author of the entry

• 3 to the PubDAO Treasury

• 2 to the second author

• 2 to the third author

Each of these entries will share the same royalty breakdown, meaning that the sale of any entry will benefit all authors. The breakdown, totaling 10%, is as follows:

• 1% to PubDAO treasury

• 0.9% to volume manager, in this case Clinamenic

• 8.1% divided among the authors of the nine entries, or 0.9% per entry, so:

  • 3.6% to Clinamenic

  • 2.7% to Leo Nasskau

  • 1.8% to MoreReese

This is yet another experimental feature: can PubDAO incubate publications like Automatos, which then go on to generate risidual revenue for PubDAO, revenue which can then be used to incubate future publications?

In addition to each entry having an edition, each volume will have a Capstone edition. Because we are so early in the development of web3 publishing, and because there remain questions about the legal viability of certain applications of tokenization, we at PubDAO can only conjecture as to the eventual utility of these editions, beyond their commemorative value and the support they enable for content creators.

The Capstone edition will have the same royalties arrangement, and will have an edition of 5, distributed as follows:

• 2 to the PubDAO Treasury

• 1 to each author, so:

  • 1 to MoreReese

  • 1 to Leo Nasskau

  • 1 to Clinamenic

While the decision to tokenize Automatos was primarily motivated by the need for contributors to be compensated, this decision is also decidedly open-ended beyond that. We don’t know if giving entry collectors the ability to vote on future editorial decisions will be a tenable approach, and we don’t know what other utility ideas await us in the future, but opening the doors into such a broad field of possibilities feels very much in the spirit of Automatos.