An Open Letter to Guests of the Show
Dear Guests of the Show,
TLDR: This is a letter to you the guests who have been on this show to outline what Clayming Space intended to be back in 2018 and how it is moving toward that vision — a call to action, to be part of this journey, if you choose to do so.
I hope you are all well and keeping safe in such onerous times. I wanted to reach out and let you, the guests who’ve been on this show, on what Clayming Space has always intended to be since 2018 and how it is moving forward towards it.
Where it started & now heading
Clayming Space always intended to be borderless where people in the space community could discuss about their diverse viewpoints & subject matter. To be truly borderless though, the closest thing one can think off is the internet and since hearing about web3 back in 2016, the intent was to make this happen. While 2018 was a perfect time, the tooling for humans to coordinate & organise borderlessly were just starting. Now three years later, there has been some progress with this tooling in web3 but, there is still a long road ahead.
Unlike 2018 however, it is a good time to start especially for a borderless sector such as space. People in the space community love to romanticise the hope that fictional universes like Star Trek and other science fiction subcultures bring to the community but as someone who has worked in this industry, we’re far from it because we’re caught in our vestiges of the past. The Cold War was not only the start of the “space race” but its culture has imbued within the industry. This culture unfortunately prevents us as a human race to solve actual problems such as crowded orbits & space debris.
With this focus in mind, Clayming Space is moving toward a spacing guild with a progressive decentralisation approach of the guild (with a possible DAOs (or) Decentralised Autonomous Organisations structure). While there is no expectation for people to join on day one — as this experiment grows, the logical solution to the guild is decentralising its governance. The guild’s barriers to entry are low but the barriers to participation can be high, depending on the subject matter. You can join the guild as yourself (private individual); as part of your organisation; psuedo-anonymously (or) anonymously.
The Guild’s Focus
The guild’s focus is two fold:
- Building web3 tooling for the space industry. This starts by building the Watchtower protocol — a risk pricing engine to help solve the crowded orbits & space debris problem by crowdsourcing the data science involved in determining the probability of possible space collisions. This is to hopefully create a space debris market like the ones there are for climate finance and carbon offsetting. I am in touch with some subject matter experts in the sector to assess its viability but always seeking for others to be involved. For intuition, the best way to think about this protocol is a data science competition to determine the probability of collision of a possible collision (conjunction) event. There are other ideas in mind such as using web3 identity for space assets but this requires Watchtower to be viable.
- Building culture. More specifically culture associated with the social sciences of the space sector. There is already a podcast with a focus on this aspect. Its available on Audius, Anchor and YouTube. Others will involve cultural projects on world building, science fiction, cypher punk and any ideals behind the spacing guild. This can involve digital and physical art, poetry, film, etc. This can be web3 based as well — yes, NFTs.
Web3 and Ostrum
I wanted to hightlight one more thing before I go into how you can get involved, if you choose to decide and, that is the “promise” of web3 and its potential. Granted web3 is in another hype cycle at the moment and that cycle is starting to go down. And just like at the end of the prior cycle, when Clayming Space started in 2018, its making a move toward a guild.
If you glanced over the definition of web3 on wikipedia, it says,
“…an idea for a version of the Internet that is decentralized and based on peer-to-peer technologies such as public blockchains.”
To me this has always meant, an internet for the people and by the people as long as the people participate just like a democracy only works if the people participate. There is no country-led or corporation-led movement here, its people-led as long as they participate. Granted there are technical barriers to understanding it for the people but now more than ever, those educational resources are plenty abound.
So where does Ostrum come into this you say?
For those not aware — Elinor Ostrom is the godmother of governing the commons. In economics, the commons
…is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth.
and common pool resources (CPRs)
…is a type of good consisting of a natural or human-made resource system (e.g. an irrigation system or fishing grounds), whose size or characteristics makes it costly, but not impossible, to exclude potential beneficiaries from obtaining benefits from its use.
Examples of the commons include fisheries, forestries and even the Moon — and this is the aim behind the Moon Treaty/Agreement.
The commons don’t really work at large scales like the Pacific Ocean or even the Moon — in fact, Elinor Ostrum argues this in her own book — and comes to the conclusion that while her principles of governance works in small-scale CPRs like fisheries and forestries, a combination of private markets and the state (public) works better for large-scale CPRs — however you define that large-scale CPR. My understanding of this limitation from reading her work is because of information assymtery. As a complex adaptive and dynamic system grows, it needs more information, creates more information and stores more information and traditionally, it needs more entities to manage that flow of information. In the case of a government and/or corporation, this is solved my having more people in the middle (middle managers).
This is not the case for startups and small councils because the degrees of seperation are smaller and there is less information assymetry. But when you have people in the middle in monitoring and managing resources (whatever they may be), over time uncertainity and emergent properties (such as individual motivations, agendas, etc.) arise that give rise to inefficiencies (such as information assymtery and collusion) in the system. This results is a slower system, cartels/clubs, etc. This creates the drawbacks when managing large-scale CPRs.
This is where web3 comes in to help. Plain and simple, web3 reduces this information assymtery and the middle managers while also allowing a democractic approach to governing the commons. For the first time, in history, we can break the limitations Ostrum herself came across and there is a quiet movement that is happening that you won’t see on forbes, financial times or any other major media, technology company, saturday night live skit, wall street or venture capitalist organisation.
As a primer, an introduction to DAOs and how it can help achieve the commons vision, I’ll attach a link to this panel below:
DAOs: A New Way of Governing Common Resources
This is where Clayming Space has always intended to move and will be doing so with its first open-source project — Watchtower — to building the first foundation block for the space industry.
How can you get involved?
Firstly I will say, this idea can be a challenge for most to fathom and there is no expectation for you to join and/or particpate. If you don’t want to — this will be the last message.
However, if you do want to get involved and/or dip your toes into it, there are a few ways to do so, ordered from easiest to hardest:
- The simplest is helping organise the guild. There are a lot of admin, structuring, etc. involved in setting up the guild on and off the internet and if its something you’re keen to contribute to — it is open for contributors.
- The second is being a podcast host. Since, Clayming Space’s vision is about diverse voices in the space community, your voice matters. This would also be a minimum requirement to join the guild — more below.
- Thirdly, you can make a proposal on what you believe the guild should focus on, in its early stage. While, the guild is not setup to be a decentralised democracy, that can change depending on the level of people involved and more importantly activity. Saying this, there has been plenty of evidence (mostly in the web3 world) that decentralisation of governance from day one can be a challenge for long-term sustainability but happy to try and be the outlier on this front.
- Finally, the Watchtower protocol. There is no expectation for you to be involved in this project as its rather comprehensive and involved. There is a need for subject matter experts in dispute resolution in space law but not yet a dire constraint. The focus at the moment with Watchtower is it mechanism design and building out the software programs.
There is only one criteria as part of being in the guild and that is being a host of the podcast once a year. The cost to you is a simple recorded call (Zoom or whatever you want to use) chatting/interviewing someone in your subject matter or even your work. This is a way for you to create discussion and awareness about your subject matter expertise.
Costs to You
Just thought I’d reiterate the costs to you for being involved.
- A simple recording of a call with someone in your subject matter or your work.
Contributors Tiers
At the moment, there are two tiers of contributors:
- Core Contributors
- Casual Contributors
Core Contributors
These contributors will eventually be provided a full time salary for helping build and maintain anything associated with the guild. In addition, the first handful of core contributors will be given the title of being the founders of the guild. Currently, this is just me at the moment.
Casual Contributors
These contributors aren’t expected to contribute on a full-time basis. Free-riding is a usual issue in the commons and this tier tries to account for it. A good gauge of casual contributions is an hour per week of contribution but this is not a hard requirement. My experiences working in DAOs is that casual contributors come and go and there is generally no obligation to stay in the long-term. This works well for people who prefer freelancing, contracting and project based work. As Clayming Space grows, paid-bounties will exist for casual contributors.
Whether you choose to be a core or casual contributor, being an early contributor will be rewarded and there are no life-time appointments for future governance council elections.
In conclusion,
I hope this letter gives you some perspective on where Clayming Space is headed. I will be having the first community call on the 15th January (invite link enclosed) next year as a way to commence things off by answering any questions and gauging interest from any that wish to participate as a core or casual contributor. If the timezone does not suit you— the call will be recorded and posted on the Clayming Space YouTube channel. The call will happen on Clayming Space’s Discord server.
I wish you all a happy 🎅 holidays 🎄 with your families and friends and with lots of 🎁, ✨ and ❤️.
Warm Regards,
Vikram 🤓
