DGF transcendent values

The goal of the DGF project is to create a governance framework for creating DAOs. In particular we believe primary DAOs are a powerful tool for helping humanity to thrive in the long run. The properties of a primary DAO that are valuable are

• Decentralization of power
  

Individuals have autonomy and appropriate power. Appropriate means the DAO is regulated through democratic power weighted by reputation.

• Organization
  

Group harmony is achieved through wise governance

• Individual privacy
• Group transparency
• Openness
  

Members are continually free to join and exit the group.

Any organization's long term coherence and integrity is dependent on thier members sharing common values. To maintain decentralization, these values should be transcendent in the sense that they are not formally and explicitly described. This prevents the gaming that naturally occurs when people compete for power in the group. Inner group competition leads to differentiation as some win and some lose, which leads to hierarchies of power, which eventually leads to a centralized power structure. Therefore a decentralized group requires its members to serve a set of transcendent values. This page elaborates the DAO Governance Framework project's transcendent values.

Transcendental values

• Decentralized organization
  • Individual power and freedom
  • Group harmony
• Decentralized knowledge
  • Individual privacy
  • Group transparency
• Open decentralized ownership
  • Equity control of essentials
  • Meritocratic competition for inessentials

Comments

Overview

We value decentralized organization for the following reasons. Individual members have greater average power in a decentralized group than in centralized groups. Individuals have greater average freedom within their group. Individuals have greater opportunity to assert their power and freedom in service to their values and goals.

Decentralized groups are more powerful than centralized groups because they have greater stability in the long term. This is because decentralized groups do not depend on any particular individual members. Individuals are integrated when the group is organized so information at the edge is incorporated, so decentralized organizations tend to make better decisions for the common good.

Decentralized organization is achieved through governance. Wise choices are necessary in designing each DAO's governance structure, to serve individual and group interests.

Centralized groups are more efficient in short-term behavior because decentralized organization requires maximum redundancy. In a DAO, every member must monitor and regulate the behavior of every other member because there is no central authority. So historically, centralization has outcompeted decentralization in many situations.

The only reason we have the potential to create DAOs at this point in history is because of the great leap in power recent advances in IT tools are giving us for individual storage, processing, and communication. P2P tech is emerging which can achieve this maximum redundance at scale.

Centralization's very quality of efficiency leads to instability – the lack of redundancy makes it fragile and open to disruption. Decentralization is more sustainable. It's redundancy and connectivity allows information-at-the-edge to be communicated to the entire group. Decisions are made with more perfect information.

Discussion of points

The specific statement of DGF's transcendent values was chosen for the following reasons.

Individual privacy is enabled by cryptography. In particular zero-knowledge proofs, including public key asymmetric cryptography and digital signatures, allow DAO members to participate and share knowledge with the group without revealing personal information.

Group transparency is necessary in a DAO. Inasmuch as decentralization of power is enacted, the protocols and software and IP of the DAO must be held as common knowledge. Transparency of group information is important for preventing group oppression of the individual.

Open decentralized ownership means anyone can join at any time and use their talents and resources in service to the DAO's goals, and everyone is free to leave at any time, taking their talents and earnings with them.

The term essentials means all the material or immaterial resources that the group believes are necessary for each member to thrive in the group. What this means depends on the group. For example, from a global perspective on humanity, most people would agree that air and water and food to prevent starvation are essential. From the perspective of a citizen in a developed democratic country, education and access to government power and justice are considered further essentials. For a for-profit DAO focused on a narrow job, equal opportunity to using the REP tokens they own to participate in the work smart contract is essential.

Inessentials are everything not essential. There is competition for all inessentials in free markets. However, the freedom of these markets is limited to protect what the group believes are essential.

Tensions

Each of these values are in tension with their paired opposite. The group and the individual need each other for their very existence. Giving the group greater power makes it possible for them to suppress individual freedom. Giving the individual more freedom threatens group cohesion. The group and the individuals are both served when both are more powerful. But when one side wins, they both lose. Therefore formally defining the distinctions is dangerous. For example, what is public information that should be transparent vs. what is individual information that should be private. Formally defining the distinction leads to group competition over the definition, which undermines the stability of the group. Instead the members should protect the value of maximizing both – maximizing what is public information and maximizing what is individual privacy. See Main page: Transcendental values thesis.)