DAOs are failing, forward, but still, failing. Most of the old guard is not doing too well. (DXdao, Aragon, etc.) Others are mostly permissioned (multisigs), governed by other entities (foundations) or too dense for the light to intuitively get in (Maker). Principal agent problems, mismanagement, failure at equitably recognizing and retaining contributors are some of the issues that plague the space. Carrot on side, some of the innovators and most experienced of proposal driven governance actors have rugged themselves. It is clear, the ever-present default, proposals, are not it.
Disincentivised, anarchic, execution agnostic, continuous governance. Possibly the first maximally decentralised and economically coherent DAO structure.
Fugido is a Decentralised Organization protocol that instrumentalizes fungibility to facilitate fully trustless and explainable collective efforts. It accomplishes this primarily by means of three low-complexity devices: membership, majority vote and inflation.
Fungido is a type of DAO where DAOs are composed agents constituted for enacting change. Such an agent is to be considered both decentralised and autonomous only if it can initiate and execute actions without systematically depending on the consent or input of any one atomic party. Notionally, this exigence applies to its processes as well.
An organisation is a membrane that moves forward. This, “organisation”, necessitates determinations of belonging and inter-subjectivity within a systematising order.** **
Membrane. An organ that employs binary determinations to separate between in and out. A good way to think about it are access badges. All access badges constitute an organisation’s membrane. Fungido membranes are a list of tokens and required balances. Maintaining membership depends on satisfying these criteria. Membranes are versatile, can be hardened, loosened or used to define specialised organs or autonomous sub-sections.** **
No movement without energy. Directed energy expenditure is a precondition for any forward. Energy is fungible, convertible, divisible and storable. Can be concentrated or diluted. Can be measured and transferred and most importantly, can explain power relations. In Fungidos, energy expenditures take the form of local fungible token allocations that settle to a central, still fungible, store of value. This consolidates anarchic local movements into discernible unitary agents. ** **
Governance costs. Changing direction expends energy. The need for governance should be strong enough to justify the energy expenditure. Buying, holding, selling a token are, I would argue, forms of governance participation. Fungido takes this understanding and places it as its operating core. As such it lacks the hallmarks of contemporary DAOs. It has no treasuries, no top-down budgets, no defaulting to proposals; unless it wants to. What it does use instead is belonging criteria and fungibility operations. This amounts to a minimum viable structure, non-prescriptive about sense-making and without central points of failure.**
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And this is the key reason and possibly the most obvious differentiator between Fungidos and any other DAO structure I know of. Fungidos do not use proposals. Not by default and importantly not as a one-size fits all vehicle for consensus, recognition and redistribution.
A big problem with proposals is that they have hidden costs that increase exponentially with size. Governance forums are akin to ad-hoc parliaments, delegates are representatives, discussions are public consultations, and proposals, laws. Looks like it works, the familiar sights of government at work are emitted. But this is a tragedy. This highly skeuomorphic default is irrevocably tethered to paper based bureaucratic primitives. This limits what a DAO is and renders much of the current experimentation useless. Internet native organisations should look more like networks than parliaments. The sore point being that it blocks the natural agility of digital value and demands of human agents to seek approval as a first step when it should be the case, as I think the core concept implies, that contribution should be permissionless and continuous. To summarise, proposals are skeuomorphic and paper era nostalgic devices, they externalise costs to participants and arbitrarily condition recognition and redistribution.
There are four types of building blocks that in the current implementation are deployed through the same function, three of which reuse the same DAOinstance contract. The base instance, which is expected to act as the main entry port that custodies the entire balance of the root base value token. SubDAOs which are the same, the difference being their Base Value Token is also the Internal Value Token of their immediate parent. Lastly, endpoints, of which there are two types. The first is the same as the above with the difference being that they have only one member and their only purpose is to act as a sink for rewarding individual agents in local contexts. The second type and the only one that does not use the DAOinstance contract is a (gnosis) safe endpoint. This multisig is initiated with the members of its immediate parent as owners. All safe default rules and capabilities apply. Its purpose is to address any arbitrary needs and uncertainties.** **
Fungido relies on majoritarian decision making. However, since it does not have textually articulated proposals, all latent changes are broadly speaking up to vote at all times. There’s two main types of fungible token votes in all instances. First, a vote to change the in-use, enforceable, membrane. Second, a vote to change the annual inflation rate, or, for consistency: speed of movement. These changes enter in effect when a simple majority is reached. An agent can express multiple preferences which stay dormant until triggered by a simple majority; these altogether paint a range of politically feasible states that add predictability. ** **
The pluralism part is that any member of any entity can deploy a sub-entity with arbitrary conditional access of their choosing. The membrane can be defined in such a way as to create uncensorable autonomous zones free from token holder dominance. It as such grants space for plurality of expression within existing contexts. The result is that affirming the need for novel or controversial direction cannot be censored by the majority. Sure, the big bad whales can meet behind big bad doors to coordinate as to change the membrane and kick out the initiator from higher-level participation, but they cannot eject the initiative body or prevent members from allocating resources to it. Crucially, being ousted by means of membrane redefinition from the higher levels does not affect one's ability to keep their gained or deposited fair share on exit as deposit and withdrawal operations are membership agnostic.** **
The fact that membranes can be changed and autonomous zones can be created is of nature as to foster sufficient flexibility in order to accommodate and containerize specialised external work or cross-dao collaborations. This all arguably gives minorities a good shot at protecting their interests. Afterall, there is no exclusivity anywhere it the system. The root value token can be used by an unlimited number of DAOs. So, any minority interest can always exit and/or instantiate their own. Totally separate organisations will compete for the same value pool or coordinate around specific opportunities such as up-cycling proposal driven entities that use the same token. ** **
I mentioned fungibility and inflation a lot above but did not explain their purpose. I will repeat, it is important: energy is fungible. Fungidos function on the basis of permissionless energy allocations. So, if you want to govern, you have to pay. The innovation here is pay to govern, or rather govern by paying. An equally viable approach, if you want to govern and not only do you want so but importantly need to, is to govern by working. The latter, if done successfully might suffice as income. To summarise. Energy is fungible. Moving anything in any direction necessarily involves an energy expenditure. The movers can start moving at their own cost in hopes of retroactive peer or outcome compensation. They can stop and start so on whatever they want, whenever they want to, but it is not unreasonable to assume that volunteering has its limits and suitable payment can accelerate desired change.** **
Fungidos have one requirement. They need at the time of initiation to be provided with a value base under the form of an ERC20 token. The in protocol deposited such tokens, referred to hereafter as Root Value Token (RVT), are the fuel that powers the organisation. All redistributed value eventually settle back to it. The fuel is metabolised to energy, used for movement and eventually converted back to RVT exchangeable value to be leveraged in the external economy. The direct subject of redistribution however is not RVT but its corresponding Internal Value Token(s) (IVT). Each Fungido has at least one IVT. The relationship is as follows: an IVT can be minted in exchange for a Root Value token. This is true for the core unit entity that settles all RVT withdrawals. The relationship is 1-to-1 as one RVT will always get one IVT. The same is true across all instances irrespective of their level. But there’s a catch. Rather two of them. First, one’s entity IVT is their descendant’s Base Value Token (BVT). BVT is the exact same as RVT, but as the name implies, it does stand as a base of value, but only for higher level zones, and not for the structure in its entirety. All BVTs and IVTs settle as, and can be priced in, the originating RVT.
The second catch is what I have so far mentioned in passing: inflation. Inflation determines the speed at which energy is expended, income issued, or to keep the metaphor going: is the metabolic speed. This anarchically governed issuance is also not unlike state run deficit. It primarily functions as a self-regulatory mechanism but also tempers the risks associated with token governance as it renders “classical attacks” unprofitable. The reason being that internal tokens, inflation over time given, are always in greater numbers than their underlying base. The depositors can swap IVT back to BVT and eventually RVT, however, this operation will always incur a loss as internal tokens act on withdrawal, as shares, and, inflation over time given, 1 IVT < 1 BVT. This is how everything is paid for. Internal tokens are Wrappers on deposit at t0 and shares on withdrawal at t+1. The difference of value, captured through inflation, is the totality of what the movers, shakers and producers are paid with.** **
In the digital, but more so in fully transparent and deterministic environments: ‘action produces information’. Trust or uniquely identifying traits are not central in markets, transport or any systematising, expectedly deterministic order. What programmable blockchains can do is be a canvas that makes it possible for any operating logic to be encoded as a finite bell-curved range of possibilities which lends itself to habitual summary. And having been endowed with a view as to what is in the interest of the collective and individual, as well as information about the latest actions and future likelihoods, one can eventually instinctually project and continuously adapt to outcomes more efficiently. Firms where all actors are owners and can to different but known degrees directly influence the distribution of resources and the story it tells about itself are possible. This is how this kind of ship is steered: for each level or independent body an inflation rate is operationalised. Like interest rates in the economy, but decided on directly by taxpayers to the known, quantitative degree to which they pay taxes.
This is the global view. The local picture is foundationally composed out of the same two pieces as in the case of all other instances: inflation and membrane. Inflation is the metabolic speed, or rate of value distribution as compensation for past or future effort. The membrane is the boundary which serves to define the organisation and clearly delineate what and who is in or out and to what extent. The membrane also customises the experience of being in as it is reasonable to expect for it to point agents to locally relevant means such as tools, workspaces and communication channels.
Back to action produces information, there is a wide range of likely relevant types of signal. One is the preference profile of co-members. The extent to which one’s allocations coincide with personal gain will likely matter. The extent to which different agents’ preferences coincide over time is also likely to raise eyebrows. This overall results in sybil-indiferent yet context relevant identity in the sense that internal allocations are semi-fungible: it does matter who makes the allocation. In some instances, particularly for new initiatives, small, symbolic allocations are likely to become norm. Conversely, the reduction of a particular preferred flow by an attention worthy agent will likely become a shelling point for critical engagement on the merits and future of specific efforts or directions.
"Essentially, a mechanism is credibly neutral if just by looking at the mechanism’s design, it is easy to see that the mechanism does not discriminate for or against any specific people. The mechanism treats everyone fairly, to the extent that it’s possible to treat people fairly in a world where everyone’s capabilities and needs are so different."
-V.B.
Fungidos are neutral to the degree the underlying value base is. Fungible things, in general, are neutral. Their distribution fully conveys their potential for equitable outcomes. Nothing can compete with known inter-dependent quantities as generalizable vehicles for describing state of affairs and their potential. And, since most of the described actions impact resource distributions, and there is no choice but to “put your money where your mouth is”, intentions are hard to hide. This helps not only with collusion resistance but also with self-awareness and generalizable benchmarks. And, since the overall philosophy is “pay to govern” and all movement is redistributive by nature, it is unlikely for bribes or any other such economic attacks to hold much sway.
Since the speed at which energy reaches its point of consumption depends on inflation rates along the path, all questions pertaining to when and if something will happen are constantly renegotiated. Also, there is no default execution engine. What, how and if execution occurs is left up to the distributors as value is in the eye of the beholder. Fungidos do not have fixed inflection points, milestones, KPIs or exclusive roles. At least not by default. Legitimacy and authority will tend to be conjunctural, to loosely follow the money and its corresponding narratives.
Lastly, it is unknown at this time who are the many potential operators that are at home in this perceived uncertainty. It will likely initially be adequate mostly for open source software development as well as any of the other more swarmy and permissionless activities. Grants programmes are also likely a well fitting use case.** **
The structure and everything outlined above evolved within the linked implementation. As such, it never had specifications, it is not audited, it is not sufficiently tested or good looking, nor does it hold any regard for gas efficiency. If one is to wonder why things as they are the likely answer is: for no particularly good reason but that it looks like it works and changing it would have required more energy than available. That said, I have no clue if this specific implementation will work in practice. And while I have developed several clients for it in the past, none so far are sufficient to intuitively command the attention of the user. At this moment I guess the target audience is limited to mechanism design geeks. Principal agent limitations are to be blamed.