πΎ Archived View for klemperer.flounder.online βΊ journal.gmi captured on 2021-11-30 at 20:18:30. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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Work-in-progress. Might change the format.
Discovered the Moloch DAO via a recent online conference.
Read the whitepaper and the official documentation after watching the first two talks from the conference if you want to understand why this is so interesting. (Ignore anything not about Moloch DAO Version 1; there are many imitators and clones with similar names.)
Two things to keep in mind during your reading. Moloch DAO is punk, or at least it was at one point. Also, a Moloch DAO is a kind of corporate entity, like an LLC or C-Corp. But the first Moloch DAO is, unfortunately, called "Moloch DAO". It's as if the first LLC was called "LLC". Super confusing. Going forward I'll use ππ ππ ππ π»πΈπ to refer to the first Moloch DAO.
The following assumes you've read the Moloch DAO Whitepaper and understand the difference between a Moloch DAO (Version 1) and the ππ ππ ππ π»πΈπ.
A Moloch DAO, as the whitepaper suggests, is a method of solving a specific coordination failure that results in the underinvestment in public goods. The underinvestment in public goods phenomenon is very well understood because it happens all the time. In fact, it's all certain kinds of economists talk about. Roads are the classic example of a public good which tends not receive sufficient investment absent some kind of coordinating mechanism like a state (which can tax and spend). The ππ ππ ππ π»πΈπ is set up to invest in the "roads" of the Ethereum blockchain. Members stand to benefit collectively because they hold lots of ETH. So it all works out extremely well.
Indeed, it's really tidy. To recast what they're doing using the road analog, you'd have to have a set of people that somehow have an asset which increases in value the more people use the road (assuming it's been built). The road is still a public good. Lots of other people get to use the road, not just the ππ ππ ππ π»πΈπ folks. The ππ ππ ππ π»πΈπ members do stand to benefit individually if lots of people use the road. This is not too different from what happens in the brick-and-mortar world. There, a state builds the road. And the state ends up benefiting from the road on the back-end because people use the road to make more economic activity happen and the state gets a cut of that via taxes. The ππ ππ ππ π»πΈπ is seeing like a state, in a certain sense.
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I'm interested in other settings where spinning up a Moloch DAO could solve collective action problems. I'm sure you can think of some.
It's helpful, I think, to compare the utility of a group setting up a Moloch DAO to the utility of a group setting up a collective hosted on OpenCollective (or a nonprofit with a bank account). Setting up a Moloch DAO gives you something more like an open-ended Kickstarter. If the amount of money raised is enough to fund the project, it's funded (after a vote). People can withdraw their money at any time.
OpenCollective does not offer this kind of feature at all. Moreover, any tech-savvy person can participate in a Moloch DAO. It's not limited to people living in OECD countries with a bank account or credit card.
Here are some thoughts about tinylog.
Learning more about the "journal" or "tinylog" format. An example is alex's journal.gmi on flounder.online. (Update(2021-08-21): Actually, these things are slightly different.)
alex's flounder.online journal
The flounder.online gemfeed documentation mentions the format in passing, suggesting that the format is suitable for microblogging. Found a more lengthy discussion of a similar format ("tinylog" or "tiny log") on bacardi55's site.
flounder gemfeed documentation
On the topic of microblogging using gemini, there appears to be a mature gemini-based Mastodon/Birdsite replacement called Station. At the very least, Station is a superb illustration of gemini's use of TLS client certificates for authentication.
Here are some quick notes on "Politics Surrounded", a chapter in the book "The Undercommons : Fugitive Planning & Black Study".
Introduces the idea of the surround, a privileged form of social collectively. The surround is defined indirectly and negatively. It is certainly not a group consisting of one or more individuals.