Why Create a Commons?

Structuring a resource as a commons is an attractive alternative to private ownership or so-called "public" ownership (by a government) because of the increased participation it provides.

The following software components can be used to define and manage commons. I'll mention the circumstances in which each is appropriate.

Attention Streams

Uses: Defining and updating the social contract for a commons.

Different social contracts can be proposed, and the leading one takes effect. Social contract choices must conform to topic rules set by the initiators of the commons.

Tokens

Uses: Collecting fees; determining the right to vote on parameters. (See "Median Vote," below.)

A token can have a fixed supply, or grow and shrink as needed in the case of an "Augmented Bonding Curve." (See below.) Fees are set in the token. It's in the interest of token holders to grow participation in the commons (See "Unitap," below) and lower fees as this will increase the value of the token.

Fees must not be set too low, however. If fees are too low to maintain the commons, the social contract can be disputed and replaced. The topic rules (see "Attention Streams") should forbid tokens and fees that fail to achieve desired effects such as limiting resource consumption or funding the maintenance of the commons.

Median Vote

Uses: Setting numerical parameters such as fees, limits, and allocation percentages.

The numerical answers from Median Vote can be crowdsourced either from unique individuals or token holders (by token weight or the square root of token weight).

Median votes can be continuous: a person can change their vote several times (or not at all), and the outcome can be measured periodically without resetting the votes as with time-bound elections.

A median vote can be used to allocate fee income. For example, it can set the percentage that will be allocated to a universal dividend with choice to attract new participants. (See "Unitap," below.)

Setting parameters continuously with Median Vote is a light-weight way to make small updates to the social contract.

Augmented Bonding Curve

Uses: Funding a growing commons.

If a commons needs to fund its operation, but fees don't make sense, an Augmented Bonding Curve can be more effective than donations because it rewards early contributors if interest in the commons grows.

Using fees is preferable to an ABC if commoners can easily identify how and when to apply them, because a fee structure can outlive the growth phase of a commons.

An ABC loses its ability to raise more funds when interest in the commons stops growing, but a transition is possible: the token sold by the ABC can be reused to collect fees if a way to collect them is eventually identified.

Unitap

Uses: Distributing access to more people.

Unitap allows anyone to choose a limited number of kind of tokens to receive as a dividend. A commons can regularly divert a percentage of its tokens to Unitap to attract new participants. Several such dividends from various commons could add up to a basic income for recipients.

Aura & Conviction Voting

Uses: Selecting maintainers of a commons.

A social contract may designate maintainers to use some of the fees to maintain the commons. Such a contract would need to be replaced whenever a maintainer needs to be changed. It would also require commoners to have expertise in selecting maintainers.

As an alternative, Aura can be used as a decentralized mechanism for experts to select maintainers on an ongoing basis. In this case, the domain would be the set of maintainer candidates, and Aura players would be experts in evaluating candidates.

Aura provides resiliency against corruption through the use of "teams" of Aura players. Teams must gain the approval of the public consumers of Aura answers. Commoners can use Conviction Voting to suggest teams and determine the relative strengths of their inputs in the Aura algorithm. This allows Aura's answer to the choice of commons maintainers to come from a healthy mix of teams.

Aura can choose a single maintainer or divide the role among several maintainers according to what's specified in the social contract.

Commons maintenance

Maintainers can use some of the same components for their own operations.

For example, Attention Streams can be used to discover uses for maintenance funds and Conviction Voting can be used to approve spending proposals.

Thanks

Michael Zargham and others for their work on Augmented Bonding Curves and Conviction Voting.