ABLE’s Pegasus
Hello and welcome to the first of a series of interlinked posts describing ABLE Nation.
ABLE is a decentralized, inclusive, permissionless nation bootstrapping itself into existence. Whereas “Roko’s Basilisk” motivates with fear and pain, ABLE inspires and rewards; anyone who contributes to the creation and thriving of ABLE is likely to be retroactively rewarded by the community that ends up governing it.
But what is ABLE?
In short, ABLE aims to be a polity whereupon every citizen-stakeholder both enjoys the growth of the nation’s treasury and is incentivized to take action to grow the treasury, and expand the reach of the nation, themselves. It’s a sort of DAO on steroids, the type of thing that has to be one-hundred-percent, head-to-toe decentralized so as to not incur the wrath of the likes of the SEC, but that is nowadays doable in a way where there are no touch points into anything centralized and takedownable, including yours truly, who is merely describing the idea in the hopes that someone takes it on.
Indeed, ABLE does not currently exist in any form but an idea in my mind, transmuted into Medium for your eyes to see. Following the unfolding of the blockchain/DeFi space closely, I have decided the best, and most fair, course of action is to announce in advance, and in style, in the spirit of announcement posts of old, rather than the relevant crowds hearing about some money-making opportunity through the bang of the pistol heralding the release of the contracts and the beginning of the race for yield-profits.
Of course, ABLE is much more than a DeFi degen game. It is an experiment in evolving the social order, our global game of coordination, into what I believe is its next logical step. It is, then, only fitting that ABLE emerges as a fair-launch type community effort, lifting itself by its own shoelaces.
Will you be a shoelace? If the series of ideas presented here find favor in your eye, dear reader, you’re urged and invited to come and join the party.
And so:
ABLE is an open, transparent, inclusive, opt-in, self-governing, emergent, fully decentralized nation and mechanism, where people who have skin in the game see the results of their actions directly affecting them. Very close in spirit to what YFI and YAMs are doing, but with a deeper horizon and more expanded vision (if I may be so bold). The logical conclusion of the entire DeFi space, but declared in advance such that a target is painted, along with a series of steps leading to it, rather than the somewhat random crawl we’re currently seeing, beautiful as it may be.
ABLE is also an invitation:
There is great potential in the DeFi space and its Money Games. Let’s do something magnificent with all this energy.
Something sustainable and lasting. Something that relies on products, communities and human<->dApp<->human interactions that are non-zero-sum and encourage positive value. Something that brings benefit to the entire world, while respecting and rewarding the people who are brave enough to bootstrap it.
This series of posts is an attempt at creating a proper beginning for something that may never see the light of day or otherwise become a household name in 10 years. If the latter, it is important to me that it starts pure. That it starts fair. That the people involved, opting-into the mechanisms and game I am about to describe, also seek something beyond their immediate and personal gain, while being incentivized and rewarded for that behavior in the here and now. That the language used, the technology built, the interfaces designed, all speak the language of openness, inclusion, fairness, and an attitude of sharing, and increasing, the wealth for all.
I’ve described ABLE as a three layer model. These are all live documents that we’ll update as new proposals and information stream in from people who wish to be involved, as well as my own ongoing research.
The first layer describes what I enjoy calling “the money game”. Its purpose is to incentivize people to jump into the fray in a space where the cost of opportunity is high. To invite the first generation of ABLE pioneers and establish the Nation’s Treasury. It aims to straddle a fine line between short-term incentives, medium-term opportunities, and long-term sustainability.
This is how we leverage frothy DeFi energy into what allows layer 2 to come into existence, with its incentives for creating new non-zero-sum interactions — and for that to organically grow into layer 3 — all the while becoming and forming the financial underpinning of the entire structure.
The second layer is all about creating “real value”. It’s taking the Treasury facilitated by the money game, itself partly a signal of the belief of people in the vision, and backing it, and the ABLE token, with growth in participants, funds, decentralized functionality, and community. As much as we may want to otherwise, there’s no nation building to be had without great wealth and power. Layer 2 is about continually accruing this wealth while leveraging it into materializing the full vision.
The third layer is, in many ways, an emergent phenomenon of 1 and 2, leading to the fulfillment of the ever-evolving vision. All of the collaborations created, all the novel opportunities available to ABLE nationals, all the wealth and heft of this new type of entity, coming together to form something greater than the sum of its parts.
Should we succeed in realizing this vision,
ABLE becomes the currency of a new global nation.
— Not that Libra nonsense or a “blockchain-Yuan”.
ABLE becomes a money and monetary system that works for you, with a Treasury you have a direct stake in, and a transparent monetary policy that takes care of you and your interests.
— Gone are the days of old elites slowly draining you of your buying power.
ABLE becomes a fully decentralized and distributed digital nation,
with no point-of-failure touch points in existing polities or social structures,
while growing tendrils that bring the value inherent in ABLE into these older and outdated structures.
Eventually, this decentralized, global, self-governing digital nation will compete with existing physical-boundary nation-states as well as with existing centralized digital nations (FAANG), both vying for control over people using these similar services.
***
ABLE starts now, with you reading this. There are currently no founders, no team members, no VCs, and no promised token allocations. There’s no alpha to leak, and no advantage to be had beyond having read this post before others. The few people I’ve consulted with before posting this may join the fun, but other than them — and now, you — no one even knows this exists, let alone holds any of the Tokens. The token contract does not even exist.
This is the ground floor, and you are it. ABLE’s Pegasus all the way.
What does exist are the plans I’ve shared with you above.
We may end up building ABLE Nation exactly to their spec, but it is more likely that these plans will be refined, altered, and change completely as more people join and more wisdom accumulates in the various communal venues we congregate in, in a process that is open and transparent.
Transparency is something I’ll insist on being a cornerstone of this operation; this is an experiment, and one that I wish will be beneficial even if it fails, informing future attempts until we get this done right.
How to engage?
I’ll mainly be hanging out on Discord and Twitter here:
- Discord: https://discord.gg/aeDyCc2
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/nation_able
And discussing governance with you all here:
- Discourse: https://gov.able.finance/ [note: I do not own the domain. A friend who was excited by the idea registered a few to protect them from being taken. Another set up this Discourse instance.]
I know everyone likes a good Telegram channel:
If you want to take on any roles or simply hang out, come chat with me there.
You can follow yours truly here:
https://twitter.com/DorKonforty
A non-exhaustive list of talents needed:
- Smart contract developers
- Product managers
- UI designers
- Frontend devs
- Branding/marketing experts
- Community managers and ambassadors
People who want to collaborate on, or partner for, Layer 2 applications
I intend to find and enlist an experienced CEO to coordinate people and taskify activities from the people who come talk and play with me on one of the channels above. My role in this will then be complete, aside from participation in the sanity-council serving as an addon to the community governance as described in the governance doc [published soon]— if you vote for me for the role.
If no interested parties come to support this idea, projects like YAM or YFI can simply pick at it and take the elements they’re interested in. I’ll be happy to see the ideas I shared implemented in whatever projects aim to use them to create new opportunities and wealth for all.
So, there you have it. A vision from the mind of a crazy person, a dream capturing the will of the Internet, an act of pretension so powerful it may just manifest itself into existence.
I’d like to thank the following for helping refining the idea, being excellent soundboards, and all around supporting my hallucinations:
My good friend and man of mystery Tracheopteryx, who has espoused similar visions for a long time, and who I’ve enjoyed thinking about this all with.
My dear friend Eran Haggiag, who has been nudging me towards realizing the best version of myself in critical moments of my life, including this one.
My new crush Gal Hochberg, who, when I pass through the gauntlet of his questions around tech, finance, incentives, and their intersection - and survive, I know I’ve done something right.
Let’s do this.
