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The Science DAO Framework (SDF) is a software framework for building decentralized [[wikipedia:Learned_society|scientific communities]] as [[DAO|DAOs]]. Each Science DAO (sDAO) is specialized for a particular academic discipline. An sDAO is designed to give researchers platforms for collaborating, learning, sharing knowledge, reviewing papers, debating, and earning credit for contributions.
SDF is agnostic about how large or small, how open or closed, any particular scientific society should be. SDF gives such groups the power to set their own standards and policing mechanisms. The goal of SDF is to improve traditional journals and academic research organizations by providing useful contemporary IT tools to improve their operation and governance.<ref>Craig Calcaterra (2018 May 24) "On-Chain Governance of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations"  SSRN: <nowiki>https://ssrn.com/abstract=3188374</nowiki> or <nowiki>http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3188374</nowiki> (Retrieved 2023 April 11)</ref> <ref>Craig Calcaterra & Wulf Kaal & Vlad Andrei (2018 February 18) "Blockchain Infrastructure for Measuring Domain Specific Reputation in Autonomous Decentralized and Anonymous Systems", University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) Legal Studies Research Paper No. 18-11, Available at SSRN: <nowiki>https://ssrn.com/abstract=3125822</nowiki> or <nowiki>http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3125822</nowiki> (Retrieved 2023 April 11)</ref>
== Overview ==
[[Science DAO Framework FAQ|Project High-level FAQ]]
[[Science DAO Framework FAQ|Project High-level FAQ]]


The Science DAO Framework (SDF) is a software framework for building decentralized scientific communities. SDF uses the general DGF system for building [[DAO|DAOs]] by specifying their [[Governance|governance structure]]. Scientific societies can use the structure to choose the governance style that best matches their goals based on their stated principles and values. A Science DAO specialized for a particular academic discipline allows its members to collaborate, learn, share knowledge, review papers, debate, and earn credit for your contributions. The goal is to improve traditional journals and academic research organizations using contemporary IT tools.<ref>Craig Calcaterra (2018 May 24) "On-Chain Governance of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations"  SSRN: <nowiki>https://ssrn.com/abstract=3188374</nowiki> or <nowiki>http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3188374</nowiki> (Retrieved 2023 April 11)</ref> <ref>Craig Calcaterra & Wulf Kaal & Vlad Andrei (2018 February 18) "Blockchain Infrastructure for Measuring Domain Specific Reputation in Autonomous Decentralized and Anonymous Systems", University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) Legal Studies Research Paper No. 18-11, Available at SSRN: <nowiki>https://ssrn.com/abstract=3125822</nowiki> or <nowiki>http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3125822</nowiki> (Retrieved 2023 April 11)</ref>
SDF uses the general [[DAO Governance Framework|DGF]] system for building [[DAO|DAOs]] by specifying their [[Governance|governance structure]]. Academic societies can use this structure to choose the governance style that best matches their goals, based on their stated principles and values. DGF allows complex accounting mechanisms to assign meaningful [[reputation]] to members based on their contributions. Separate types of REP tokens are minted and distributed for writing articles, reviewing articles, governing the organization, and for making general comments on all of the previous actions.
 
= Overview =
This project is a pilot implementation (SD-4) of a framework (SD-3) for dynamic self-governance of decentralized scientific organizations.


The initial Science DAOs include some of the subjects most relevant to building decentralized networks, including:
The initial Science DAOs include some of the subjects most relevant to building decentralized networks, including:


* Peer to Peer Technology The decentralized society for research, development, and sharing of P2P tools.
* [[Peer to Peer Technology sDAO|Peer to Peer Technology]] The decentralized society for research, development, and sharing of P2P tools.
* Decentralized Governance The decentralized society for analysis and development of new approaches to the organization and guidance of decentralized networks.
* [[Decentralized Governance sDAO|Decentralized Governance]] The decentralized society for analysis and development of new approaches to the organization and guidance of decentralized networks.
 
In order to optimize for collaboration and community participation, we will be focusing early on modular, sharable specifications. There are elements of the dynamic framework that are common to a wide variety of specific DAOs. This common subset forms what we refer to as MVPR, Minimum Viable Protocol Requirements.


When we say MVPR we refer to the specification of an algorithm that implements the abstract governance framework described in this paper.
SDF is itself a decentralized organization whose membership is open to the global public. Power in the the organization is dynamically determined by participation, judged by the community.
 
Science DAO Framework is itself a decentralized organization whose membership open to the global public. Power in the the organization is dynamically determined by participation, judged by the community.


== Mission ==
== Mission ==
Promote understanding and discovery using the tools of science.
Promote understanding and discovery using the tools of science.


== Transcendental values ==
== Motivation ==
''Main article: [[Transcendental values]]''
''Main article: [[Motivation for SDF]]''
# Seek Truth.
# Share Knowledge.
# Govern Wisely.


== Fundamental Considerations ==
SDF is devoted to using DAO technology to decentralize the development and dissemination of scientific knowledge on a global scale. There are many pressing problems which serve to motivate this undertaking. Private capture of the process of scientific development can impede healthy intellectual discovery and human advancement. For example, five privately owned publishing houses, such as Elsevier and Springer, have centralized the majority control of official scientific communications.<ref>Vincent Larivière, Stefanie Haustein & Philippe Mongeon


* Individuals are creative, and have goals and needs
(2015) The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era, PLoS ONE 10(6). Available at https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127502 (Retrieved 2023 April 19)</ref>
* Individuals can choose to coordinate their actions
** This can be considered a social phenomenon
** These actions and reactions aggregate into group behavior
* Group behaviors have effects
** Individuals within the group
** The group considered as a whole
** Outside the group


We desire to build a system with the following properties:
The solution to many of the issues threatening the healthy development of the institutions of science requires improvements to the existing frameworks of scientific societies. New technological platforms can encourage scientists to collaborate openly, govern their editing processes transparently, and accurately account for credit for discoveries and factual verification.


* The system accrues benefit to its users, both internal and public
''Cf., main article: [[SDF transcendent values]]''
* The behavior of the system can be steered by the collective will of participants


We call such a system a Self-Governing DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization).
== Key Concepts ==


= System Design =
=== REP tokens ===
We conceptualize an MVPR DAO as a group of experts, who will operate a self-governing DAO in order to provide some service to the public.
Science DAO participants are awarded with [[Reputation|reputation tokens]], for contributions which their fellow participants deem valuable. Reputation should be non-fungible between [[Reputation#6. Limited Domain|domains]], meaning that one kind of reputation token has no power in Validation Pools for a different kind. SDF has to following distinct domains:


In an MVPR DAO, each expert takes on responsibility in the following areas:
* aREP - article authoring reputation
* rREP - reputation for reviewing articles
* cREP - reputation for commenting on articles, reviews, or other comments
* gREP - governance reputation, which determines power to make changes to the DAO's protocols


* Work products -- Providing a service to the public
aREP is associated with writing articles. In a Science Publishing DAO, an article is a post in the DAO's Forum. An article's citations would make weighted [[Forum reference mechanisms|references]] (positive and negative) to other articles. The weighted, annotated citations give us the peer validation mechanism that determines a paper's importance in the scientific society that is governed by the DAO. A work product which receives favorable review shall attribute aREP to its authors, as well as to the authors of the works cited, in a recursive manner, up to some (configurable) depth.
* Reviews -- Policing the behavior of pseudonymous peers
* Governance -- Voting on DAO operating parameters, and possibly other software and content
* Community -- Engaging with the processes that informally support the group's activities.


The following are common to all these domains:
rREP is associated with reviews. A reviewer receives rREP for contributing a review that is validated by the DAO. Reviews can be solicited by anyone, including authors of articles, academic societies, or universities who employ the authors. Standards for fees, including no fee, are determined by the particular sDAO.


* Interactions
gREP is associated with proposals to modify any particular sDAO's parameters. gREP may be staked on new governance proposals. Successful proposals shall attribute gREP to their authors and supporters. Often there is a close relationship between gREP and rREP.
** Exchanged among participants
** Recorded for posterity
* Reputation
** Gained through peer validation
** Staked upon assertions


== UI Software ==
cREP plays an important role in the [[Governance#Soft protocols|soft protocols]] governing the organization. Fundamentally any DAO is a group of individuals. Their behavior is partly shaped by their communication. Comments are the primary vehicle for this communication. Each organization will develop its own culture determining the meaning of comments and cREP. An organization may want its participants to be able to stake their own reputation toward promoting particular comments, and toward suppressing others. Our goal is to enable each community to articulate its own values, in a way that is transparent for the community as well as the public to observe.
The DAO must provide software that allows the public to access its capabilities. This software should provide representations corresponding to each of the areas of responsibility listed above. In the following subsections we will discuss each area of responsibility, and the corresponding functionality we expect.


Ideally the UI software might be formally governed by the DAO itself. However, it might be a point of diminishing returns. The alternative is to allow the DAO community to self-manage the deployment processes for the UI software. We could simply provide recommended defaults with the out-of-the-box UI software, and let each DAO decide how to take it from there.
=== Governance ===
''Main article: [[Governance|DGF governance]]''


In its purest, ideal form this system could support stateless client applications, serving all operational data reliably from blockchain storage. However, blockchain storage is expensive; so in practice, we only want to use it in cases where we really want the long-term guarantee.
SDF follows the general framework of DGF for instituting governance via reputation-weighted democracy. Votes using REP tokens are tallied by the [[Validation Pool|Validation Pool smart contract]], which mints and redistributes REP based on outcomes. DGF provides executive, legislative, and judicial governance.


This means that we must implement a separate, off-chain stateful layer. There are a variety of options for this off-chain data layer, which we will explore in due time. For now we merely specify that such a layer must exist.
== System design ==


There are both formal and informal processes (hard and soft protocols) associated with each of the above outlined areas of responsibility. Hard protocols are specified by code, and enacted by running systems, whether on or off chain. Soft protocols refer to patterns of participant behaviors.
=== UI Software ===
Each sDAO must provide software that allows the public to access its capabilities. This software should provide representations corresponding to each of the areas of responsibility listed above. In the following subsections we discuss each area of responsibility, and the corresponding functionality we expect.


== Smart Contracts ==
Ideally the [[Front-end software|UI software]] will be formally governed by each sDAO, itself. However, this might reach a point of diminishing returns as smaller sDAOs will not have the resources to keep their UIs up to date with changing standards. The alternative is to allow the broader DAO community to manage the deployment processes for the UI software. SDF provides recommended defaults with off-the-shelf UI software, giving each DAO the power to select from basic useful parameters.


* Availability SC: Enables DAO participants to declare their availability
In its purest, ideal form this system could support stateless client applications, serving all operational data reliably from blockchain storage. However, blockchain storage is expensive; so in practice, we only want to use it in cases where we really want the long-term guarantee.
** To produce work
** To review work
* Business SC: Enables public users request work products of the DAO.
** This smart contract will accept certain parameters that will function to specify the proposed agreement.
* Review SC: Enables DAO participants to review one another's work
* Forum SC: Enables DAO participants to discuss, propose, and vote on modifications to the DAO operating parameters
 
= Key Concepts =
 
== Reviews ==
A goal of the DAO is to deliver quality results to its customers. To achieve this, experts submit work products for review by other experts within the DAO. Each reviewer then submits a review, which itself is subject to review.
 
== Governance ==
The MVPR parameters are designed to allow customization of the rules that govern the operations of the DAO.
 
== Reputation ==
DAO participants shall be awarded with reputation tokens, for contributions which their fellow participants deem valuable. Reputation should be non-fungible among domains, meaning that one kind of reputation is distinct from another. We can begin with the consideration of the following distinct kinds of reputation:


* AREP - Work product reputation
This means that we must implement a separate, off-chain stateful layer. There are a variety of options for this off-chain data layer, which we are exploring. For now we merely specify that such a layer must exist.
* RREP - Review reputation
* CREP - Comment reputation
* GREP - Governance reputation


AREP is associated with work product. In a Science Publishing DAO, an example of work product would be a paper, along with associated citations, research data, scripts, and interpretations. The weighted, annotated citations give us the peer validation mechanism. A work product which receives favorable review shall attribute AREP to its authors, as well as to the authors of the works cited, in a recursive manner, up to some (configurable) depth.
=== Smart Contracts ===
* [[availability smart contract|Availability SC]] - Enables DAO participants to declare their availability to review
* [[work smart contract|Work SC]] - The main work most Science DAOs perform for fees are initially reviews of articles. Enables public users to request work products of the DAO.
** This smart contract will accept certain parameters that will function to specify the proposed agreement between the public user who pays the fee and the member worker who fulfills the work contract.
* [[Validation Pool|Validation Pool SC]] - Enables REP-token-weighted democracy.  
* [[Forum|Forum SC]]: Database that records the entire history of the sDAO. Holds all article posts (aREP), review posts (rREP), and comments (cREP). Provides a platform where participants can discuss, propose, and vote on modifications to the sDAO operating parameters (rREP). All posts are linked by weighted references that determine the value of each post. [[Judicial governance|Judicial governmental review]] is partly enabled through the ability to reweight posts by subsequent [[Forum reference mechanisms|references]].


RREP is associated with reviews. A reviewer receives RREP for contributing a review that
=== Hard and soft protocols ===
There are both formal and informal processes ([[Governance#Hard protocols|hard]] and [[Governance#Soft protocols|soft]] protocols) associated with each of the above outlined areas of responsibility. Hard protocols are specified by code, and enacted by running systems, whether on- or off-chain. Soft protocols refer to patterns of participant behaviors.


GREP is associated with proposals to modify the MVPR parameters. This is what we consider governance of the hard protocols in the system. GREP may be staked toward new proposals. Successful proposals shall attribute GREP to their authors and supporters. It is likely that there will be a close relationship between GREP and RREP,
== Applications ==


CREP may play an important role in the soft protocols governing the organization. Fundamentally a DAO is a group of individuals. Their behavior will be shaped partly by the communication that occurs among them. Comments will be a central vehicle for this communication. Each organization may develop its own ways of associating meaning with comments. An organization may want its participants to be able to stake their own reputation toward promoting particular comments, and toward suppressing others. Our goal is to enable each community to articulate its own values, in a way that is transparent for the community as well as the public to observe.
* [[Peer to Peer Technology sDAO]] - The decentralized society for the analysis, development, and sharing of P2P tools.
* [[Decentralized Governance sDAO]] - The decentralized society for analysis and development of new approaches to the organization and guidance of decentralized networks.


== Notes about Implementation ==
== Code ==
These reputation mechanisms will be encoded as smart contracts. Such contracts run on a block chain and thus provide a resilient, distributed ledger where we can store the records of group participant activities.


It will be necessary to build software tooling that is capable of constructing a consensus view of the state of the DAO. This will need to access block-chain data encoded by the smart contract(s) as they ran at the time each block was written. The smart contracts themselves may change over time. Our goal is to encode these changes such that it is possible to reconstruct the entire computational history of the DAO. To maximize the flexibility of our initial contract, we will implement a set of hyper-parameters. In other words, the smart contract will express a dynamic algorithm; by changing the parameters of the algorithm, the behavior of the algorithm can be modified.
== See Also ==


Broadly speaking, upgrading the underlying smart contract itself produces a hard fork. The best case for such a scenario is that the new contract is (sufficiently) compatible with the previous, and that all participants are able to upgrade to the new version in a (sufficiently) timely fashion. A design consideration for this project will be to attempt to reduce the probable costs of such a hard fork, by introducing some kind of internal versioning scheme for the blockchain code and data. TODO: Articulate the relative weight of this forward-compatibility consideration versus the competing design goal of avoiding excess complexity.
* [[DAO Governance Framework|DGF]]
* [[SDF transcendent values]]
* [[Social DAO|Social DAOs]]


= References =
== References ==
<references />

Latest revision as of 11:33, 9 May 2024

The Science DAO Framework (SDF) is a software framework for building decentralized scientific communities as DAOs. Each Science DAO (sDAO) is specialized for a particular academic discipline. An sDAO is designed to give researchers platforms for collaborating, learning, sharing knowledge, reviewing papers, debating, and earning credit for contributions.

SDF is agnostic about how large or small, how open or closed, any particular scientific society should be. SDF gives such groups the power to set their own standards and policing mechanisms. The goal of SDF is to improve traditional journals and academic research organizations by providing useful contemporary IT tools to improve their operation and governance.[1] [2]

Overview[edit | edit source]

Project High-level FAQ

SDF uses the general DGF system for building DAOs by specifying their governance structure. Academic societies can use this structure to choose the governance style that best matches their goals, based on their stated principles and values. DGF allows complex accounting mechanisms to assign meaningful reputation to members based on their contributions. Separate types of REP tokens are minted and distributed for writing articles, reviewing articles, governing the organization, and for making general comments on all of the previous actions.

The initial Science DAOs include some of the subjects most relevant to building decentralized networks, including:

  • Peer to Peer Technology The decentralized society for research, development, and sharing of P2P tools.
  • Decentralized Governance The decentralized society for analysis and development of new approaches to the organization and guidance of decentralized networks.

SDF is itself a decentralized organization whose membership is open to the global public. Power in the the organization is dynamically determined by participation, judged by the community.

Mission[edit | edit source]

Promote understanding and discovery using the tools of science.

Motivation[edit | edit source]

Main article: Motivation for SDF

SDF is devoted to using DAO technology to decentralize the development and dissemination of scientific knowledge on a global scale. There are many pressing problems which serve to motivate this undertaking. Private capture of the process of scientific development can impede healthy intellectual discovery and human advancement. For example, five privately owned publishing houses, such as Elsevier and Springer, have centralized the majority control of official scientific communications.[3]

The solution to many of the issues threatening the healthy development of the institutions of science requires improvements to the existing frameworks of scientific societies. New technological platforms can encourage scientists to collaborate openly, govern their editing processes transparently, and accurately account for credit for discoveries and factual verification.

Cf., main article: SDF transcendent values

Key Concepts[edit | edit source]

REP tokens[edit | edit source]

Science DAO participants are awarded with reputation tokens, for contributions which their fellow participants deem valuable. Reputation should be non-fungible between domains, meaning that one kind of reputation token has no power in Validation Pools for a different kind. SDF has to following distinct domains:

  • aREP - article authoring reputation
  • rREP - reputation for reviewing articles
  • cREP - reputation for commenting on articles, reviews, or other comments
  • gREP - governance reputation, which determines power to make changes to the DAO's protocols

aREP is associated with writing articles. In a Science Publishing DAO, an article is a post in the DAO's Forum. An article's citations would make weighted references (positive and negative) to other articles. The weighted, annotated citations give us the peer validation mechanism that determines a paper's importance in the scientific society that is governed by the DAO. A work product which receives favorable review shall attribute aREP to its authors, as well as to the authors of the works cited, in a recursive manner, up to some (configurable) depth.

rREP is associated with reviews. A reviewer receives rREP for contributing a review that is validated by the DAO. Reviews can be solicited by anyone, including authors of articles, academic societies, or universities who employ the authors. Standards for fees, including no fee, are determined by the particular sDAO.

gREP is associated with proposals to modify any particular sDAO's parameters. gREP may be staked on new governance proposals. Successful proposals shall attribute gREP to their authors and supporters. Often there is a close relationship between gREP and rREP.

cREP plays an important role in the soft protocols governing the organization. Fundamentally any DAO is a group of individuals. Their behavior is partly shaped by their communication. Comments are the primary vehicle for this communication. Each organization will develop its own culture determining the meaning of comments and cREP. An organization may want its participants to be able to stake their own reputation toward promoting particular comments, and toward suppressing others. Our goal is to enable each community to articulate its own values, in a way that is transparent for the community as well as the public to observe.

Governance[edit | edit source]

Main article: DGF governance

SDF follows the general framework of DGF for instituting governance via reputation-weighted democracy. Votes using REP tokens are tallied by the Validation Pool smart contract, which mints and redistributes REP based on outcomes. DGF provides executive, legislative, and judicial governance.

System design[edit | edit source]

UI Software[edit | edit source]

Each sDAO must provide software that allows the public to access its capabilities. This software should provide representations corresponding to each of the areas of responsibility listed above. In the following subsections we discuss each area of responsibility, and the corresponding functionality we expect.

Ideally the UI software will be formally governed by each sDAO, itself. However, this might reach a point of diminishing returns as smaller sDAOs will not have the resources to keep their UIs up to date with changing standards. The alternative is to allow the broader DAO community to manage the deployment processes for the UI software. SDF provides recommended defaults with off-the-shelf UI software, giving each DAO the power to select from basic useful parameters.

In its purest, ideal form this system could support stateless client applications, serving all operational data reliably from blockchain storage. However, blockchain storage is expensive; so in practice, we only want to use it in cases where we really want the long-term guarantee.

This means that we must implement a separate, off-chain stateful layer. There are a variety of options for this off-chain data layer, which we are exploring. For now we merely specify that such a layer must exist.

Smart Contracts[edit | edit source]

  • Availability SC - Enables DAO participants to declare their availability to review
  • Work SC - The main work most Science DAOs perform for fees are initially reviews of articles. Enables public users to request work products of the DAO.
    • This smart contract will accept certain parameters that will function to specify the proposed agreement between the public user who pays the fee and the member worker who fulfills the work contract.
  • Validation Pool SC - Enables REP-token-weighted democracy.
  • Forum SC: Database that records the entire history of the sDAO. Holds all article posts (aREP), review posts (rREP), and comments (cREP). Provides a platform where participants can discuss, propose, and vote on modifications to the sDAO operating parameters (rREP). All posts are linked by weighted references that determine the value of each post. Judicial governmental review is partly enabled through the ability to reweight posts by subsequent references.

Hard and soft protocols[edit | edit source]

There are both formal and informal processes (hard and soft protocols) associated with each of the above outlined areas of responsibility. Hard protocols are specified by code, and enacted by running systems, whether on- or off-chain. Soft protocols refer to patterns of participant behaviors.

Applications[edit | edit source]

Code[edit | edit source]

See Also[edit | edit source]

References[edit | edit source]

  1. ↑ Craig Calcaterra (2018 May 24) "On-Chain Governance of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations" SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3188374 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3188374 (Retrieved 2023 April 11)
  2. ↑ Craig Calcaterra & Wulf Kaal & Vlad Andrei (2018 February 18) "Blockchain Infrastructure for Measuring Domain Specific Reputation in Autonomous Decentralized and Anonymous Systems", University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) Legal Studies Research Paper No. 18-11, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3125822 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3125822 (Retrieved 2023 April 11)
  3. ↑ Vincent Larivière, Stefanie Haustein & Philippe Mongeon (2015) The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era, PLoS ONE 10(6). Available at https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127502 (Retrieved 2023 April 19)
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