Dear Web3, Voting isn’t Governance
San Francisco — or SF if you actually live here — has a vibrant scene of in-person Web3 events for people to network, present their projects, and demo new products. I meet lots of people working on projects in lots of ecosystems — Solana, Terra, Cosmos, Juno, NEAR, Harmony, Avalanche, and probably a few others (but I’ve never talked to anyone building on Ethereum…). You’d think the conversations would vary, but they don’t. Without fail, when I talk about Mode3DAO, the first question I get is, “what are the modes of governance?!?!” It seems voting has become synonymous with governance. If only it were that simple…well, if it were there would be no reason for us to be doing what we’re doing, so…yay?
What is governance? A good starting point might to think about a government. A good example would the U.S. government…ok, not good, I mean, it kinda, sorta works sometimes? Either way, we can all agree — it’s complicated! Voting is really the last step of the legislative process. It takes years for a proposed bill to wind its way through various sub-committees to the body floor for debate, then often back to various sub-committees, getting modified every step of the way until if both Houses of Congress vote “Yea” the bill goes to the President to be “signed into law”.
One problem though — that’s just the legislative branch of government. The U.S. government has three branches: the legislative, executive, and judicial. We often equate Congress with government, but it’s simply the branch that makes the laws. The executive branch enforces the laws, and the judicial branch interprets the laws. Not to turn this into remedial civics class, but you probably also recall that the executive and judicial branches are compromised of many organizations that fulfill different roles in the government — or governance process. Voting is bit a small cog in Rube Goldbergesque machine of regulations, laws, and people. Just like Game of Thrones, minus the dragons.
So government is complicated. Is there a simpler example? Perhaps you’ve been a member of an organization that utilized Robert’s Rules of Order. In short, Robert’s Rules of Order provides a process for a relatively small number of people to discuss and debate a topic in a structured environment in order to reach a decision. Think of a group of people small enough to fit in a large conference room. That size is a good use case for this process. But what’s the purpose? To reach a decision. And that’s what governance simply is — it’s the process of a group of people agreeing to a decision or an individual making a decision who was been given the authority to make that decision on behalf of the group.
For a conference room of people, maybe there are fewer than 10 decisions. Robert’s Rules of Order provides the necessary structure to debate the topics in a constructive process. But what happens when it’s not a conference room but a small theater of people? Or now it’s a stadium? Or now it’s multiple stadiums scattered across the globe? Enter Rube Goldberqesque machinations to intrigue even Tyrion to put down the wine.
Now that we’ve established governance is more than voting — so what? If you’re a DAO it matters — a lot. Because a DAO, by definition, should utilize a Mode 3 governance model. Almost all organizations are Mode 1. Very, very, very few even reach Mode 2 (I personally tried to implement a Mode 2 model in a past role and met so much resistance I abandoned it). So what are the modes?
Most people are familiar with Mode 1. Mode 1 is linear and hierarchical. You have a manager, and that manager has a manager, etc. until you hit the top rung of the organization. Ever step on the ladder, those individuals have more authority. Decisions flow up the ladder to a particular individual.
Mode 2 is very similar to Mode 1 with one key distinction — authority is not held by an individual but a role. Many individuals can share that role with any having the authority to make a decision. The decision flow is still linear.
Mode 3, on the other hand, is very different. You might visualize Modes 1 and 2 as being 2-dimensional. Mode 3 goes all 3D on us. It’s not hierarchical. Instead, think of every member as a node. And every node is connected, bidirectionally, with all of the other nodes. It’s a sea of nodes. Every node has attributes: role, responsibility, authority, etc. A node initiates a request for decision which flows to a node that has the matching attributes.
Well, that’s Mode 3 in a few sentences. It’s a lot more complicated than that. A lot more. It’s why Mode3DAO exists. Think of this post as a teaser. Decisions are coming. And so are the tools to enable people to make decisions with true Mode 3 governance. Coming soon…
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