Things just happen in the right way, at the right time. At least when you let them, when you work with circumstances instead of saying, ‘This isn’t supposed to be happening this way,’ and trying harder to make it happen some other way.
Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh
In the last days of my last role a call came from the past and asked whether I was open to exploring new opportunities. The kind of call you receive and pass up, but this person and the timing were a perfect coincidence and it meant that we could explore together. Two months later I am eyes wide open working with the technology that can support a world I have long read about and been excited by.
The logo to the left (or above, maybe) is Aragon’s. The first DAO creator that I explored having recently learned how smart contracts could power the decentralisation of team and product. When coupled with the right contracts and tooling fully decentralised governance and treasury functions can be layered in too. Whether on Aragon, or Colony or DAOHaus or maybe started as a project through JuiceBox, or one of the many other products in the space, there are thousands of collectives spinning up and running in new ways with new governance practices and new funding mechanisms right now. It is a very exciting time to be in technology.
I am an idealist, recently referred to as having Utopian beliefs by a coworker; and I must all be careful of doctrine and dogma when latching on to these emerging technologies in order to give them the best chances of success. Don’t let utopia get in the way of positive change.
The rate of change is rapid, the rate of rate of change is equally rapid, but a common toolset seems to permeate a lot of the new world already:
- Snapshot – In short, Snapshot is an off-chain gasless multi-governance client with easy to verify and hard to contest results
- Dework – A web3-native Trello with token payments, credentialing, bounties and more
- Sourcecred – A tool for communities to measure and reward value creation
- Coordinape – Scale your community with tools to reward contributors, incentivize participation and manage resources
- Gnosis – New market mechanisms for decentralized finance. Our three interoperable product lines allow you to securely create, trade, and hold digital assets on Ethereum
- Discourse – A community platform for civilised discussion on the web
- Discord – Imagine a place…. Where just you and a handful of friends can spend time together. A place that makes it easy to talk every day and hang out more often
These tools all allow the community to communicate freely, bring forth proposals, vote on them, set fair remuneration and recognise everyone’s contributions all within the sandbox of the DAO. The technology provides an auditable transparency and predictable automation that most modern businesses can only aspire (or not) to.
For me what started way back with pure process (Jurgen Appelo’s Management 3.0), complexity theory and systems thinking, through to the Netflix Culture Book, through to The Ready’s Brave New Work and Holarcracy has brought me here, through serendipity. In exploring the tools and the community (which is global and energetic) that surrounds them I came across a Group/Collective/DAO/Coop/Company/Country called Nation3. The strap line is simple.
It’s time to re-invent the nation state
Nation3 Manifesto
Nation3 is a utopia for the digital nomad and the libertarian. In its very early stages it is just finding its feet. It has an energy that reminds me of the real world Utopia Experiment (smaller and more woodland based), but with a support system and technology that may lead to a very different outcome.
Anson Parker is a wonderful advocate and learned resource on the legal frameworks and governance systems that we will need to work with and within with these new nation transcending constructs. He shared a proposal currently being discussed/voted on by community – putting the $300M treasury in the hands of the members.
There is surely an existential rush that these things exist. There is surely a reality rush that these things exist at a we want to be a new country level as much as a we want to run our smallholding level. What is now a niche interest group has potential to grow to much more, and in a global Net Positive world with Corporate Social Responsibilities / Environmental, Social & Corporate Governance being hot topics, there is real opportunity for recognition (another great feature of many DAO company tech stacks) of the contributions that the companies and the individual contributors all make.
I ended up here. In a pop up bookshop not sure how to answer the question “so what do you do?” articulately and succinctly and I suppose non-technically. I needn’t have worried though, Jonathan (the proprietor), whilst not familiar with smart chains and DAOs was intimately familiar with cooperatives, living as he does in a community managed, charity procured, grade I listed, school. He sold me these two books, and suggested that I listen to 26 lectures on the history of Venice (which I will) and asked how the technology I work with could help them manage the charity and specifically the governance of the charity in a tech enabled way. I saw a very real world application of what I have been working on in a very (meta)technical and ethereal capacity, and again I knew that the Universe had my back. (Maybe the universe has run out of storage space and is having to reuse content triggering a rise in coincidences??)
People are flattening society and working out how to work things out and I am very excited that for now I am at the epicentre of a mini part of one way in which the future might get shaped.
As if in each of us
Ram Dass
There was once a fire
And for some of us
There seem as if there are only ashes now
But when we dig in the ashes
We find one ember
And very gently we fan that ember
Blow on it, it gets brighter
And from that ember we rebuild the fire
Only thing that’s important is the ember