Genesis 1.0 | Mission, Principles, and Structure
In this blog we set out our proposed vision and structure for the Genesis DAO, version 1.0, which will aim to improve the adoption, UX, and architecture of the DAOstack project. Should the Genesis DAO accept our proposal, the DAOstack team will begin building out this structure for Genesis.
The Mission and Principles of Genesis 1.0
Our proposed mission statement for Genesis is to expand the DAO ecosystem through DAOstack adoption and the increasing utility of the GEN token.
In the medium-term, we envision Genesis as the leading ecosystem fundDAO in which reputation (rep) holding members effectively control monthly revenues to fulfill this mission.
These revenues would include:
- A locked GEN (LGN) token budget
- DAI or ETH coming from the DAOstack team, provided by the initial token sale funding
- DAI or ETH from the sale of LGN
- Potential revenue from the ArcHives registries, which Genesis is expected to control
In doing so it should:
- Onboard new members to be active stakeholders in the DAOstack ecosystem
- Fund projects that improve the theory, architecture, UX, and real world adoption of DAOs that use DAOstack
In the long-term, we think Genesis should aim to bring about a world where DAOs enable people to collaboratively govern and own the platforms and organizations where they invest their attention.
In order to achieve these medium and long-term goals, we believe we must establish a common set of principles, maintained through social consensus, to guide our actions. Our proposed principles for Genesis are:
1. To value the decentralization of power and wealth and collectively aspire to DAOify the world
Our view is that centralized institutions, such as large corporations, are largely responsible for most global unrest. In many cases, they are incentivized to seize authority, capture regulatory bodies and leverage these powers against the common interest. We believe DAOification will lead to greater overall prosperity, and should be Genesis’ foremost moral compass.
2. To value those who have skin in the game
Skin in the game means having something at risk when taking a decision. In order for Genesis to make smarter decisions in managing its resources, we believe stakeholders should generally be staked in the GEN economy, and we’ve devised a reputation generation scheme that rewards those who lock GEN tokens with voting rights.
3. We want those who contribute work to have skin in the game
Builders, growth teams, predictors, and other contributors of the DAOstack ecosystem should be rewarded in GEN for their efforts, which they can lock to generate voting power. This aligns incentives across different interest groups, further strengthening Genesis’s economy.
4. To be biased towards action over discussion
While discussion is important, conversations should generally have an implementation aim leading to increased DAO adoption, improved architecture, and so forth across the DAOstack ecosystem. Working groups and research should evolve into use cases, and iterate based off of live trials and empirical learnings. If you see a problem, act!
5. To design for minimal viable bureaucracy
Every organization has operational bylaws that prohibit or restrict certain actions from being taken. In Genesis, we’ve witnessed this already, with the requirement that new members undergo a social-identity verification. We do not believe that we should attempt to eliminate these sorts of policies altogether, but to optimize for a reduced bureaucracy whenever possible in order to support effective social scalability. This being said, having no operational rules makes it hard to undertake cohesive collective action. Since organizations have the natural tendency to go over-ruling, we aspire for a minimum viable bureaucracy.
6. To act in good faith and resist bad faith actors
There are many social attack vectors for any type of organization, and DAOs, being new structures, are especially vulnerable. We expect Genesis members to hold each other mutually accountable for acting in good faith, creating and delivering proposals as promised, while simultaneously taking action against malicious actors, such as a stakeholder who tries to sell their voting power and on-chain bribery attacks.
7. To increase the value of GEN
While it may feel uncomfortable to state this outright, GEN is the lifeblood, the “collective attention token” of the DAOstack ecosystem, and a valuable GEN token leads to more grants administered across all verticals. Being able to raise and defend the value of the GEN token, and by extension, the value of our collective intelligence, is vitally important to jumpstart a long-lasting, decentralized ecosystem.
This potential vision and accompanying principles as well as a new crypto-economic structure will be submitted to the Genesis community to vote on before November 21 2019.
How the Structure Supports the Mission
Aligning Incentives | Reputation Distribution
Since authority in DAOs is decentralized, a DAO’s mission cannot be enforced from the top down. Instead, there are two key parts to achieving a mission like Genesis’s:
- Align its stakeholders through common interests.
- Generate a coherent social consensus, or in game theoretic terms, a “Schelling point” around which people will naturally act. Consensus can quickly become self-enforcing. The first part of this is agreeing on the mission, principles of the Genesis DAO, and also on our objectives.
To reiterate: we propose that Genesis adopt a reputation structure whereupon its members have a common interest in spreading the adoption of DAOs, the DAOstack platform, and use of the GEN token. Genesis 1.0 should be structured so that anyone with skin in the game of the DAOstack ecosystem can join and receive reputation. For now, we propose to focus on a few core stakeholder groups, with the following target reputation distribution after one year:
Genesis 1.0 will launch with an initial reputation distribution made up of Genesis Alpha members and other people and teams that have done work for the ecosystem. It will also launch with a mechanism that allows anyone to lock GEN and receive some reputation for doing so, the specific mechanics of which we have initiated a detailed discussion here. Our hope is that these proposed changes will lead to a DAO whose members are highly aligned with and motivated to accomplish its mission.
Aligning Incentives | Funding
Genesis needs funding in order to attract a strong community of developers and contributors. At its current stage, Genesis receives monthly funding of $40,000 USD equivalent from DAOstack. The goal, shared by both DAOstack and Genesis, is to increase funding up to $70K/month by the end of Q1’2020 with contributions from other entities. Members of Genesis 1.0 will govern these funds in line with the mission of the DAO.
As stated prior, we believe the best way for Genesis to accomplish its mission is to form a community of stakeholders with skin in the game, the group with the strongest vested interest in this mission. In the following model, value is designed to flow through to the GEN token, so any GEN holder that promotes the functionality and adoption of the DAOstack protocol and the DAO ecosystem around it is contributing to the increase of the GEN utility. We introduce two ways for participation, both involve a combination of locking GEN tokens and receiving reputation (voting power) in Genesis 1.0:
- Lock GEN for reputation
Monthly reputation auctions will be held for a year in which stakeholders can decide how much and for how long they wish to lock their GEN tokens. In every auction, the monthly reputation minted is distributed between all GEN lockers, in proportion to the amount and time GEN locked, with the ability to lock for up to 24 months.
2. Funding module to bring more funds into Genesis 1.0
We’ve initiated work on a funding module that needs improvement. The plan is for LGN to be minted at a predefined price per token. For this module, contributed funds are sent to a contract controlled by Genesis 1.0 and configured to release the funds gradually to GenDAO 1.0’s wallet over a predefined period. However, the feedback we’ve initially received by testing and explaining this module to interested parties is that it is perhaps too complex. With this, we are seeking community input. We still think a module of this sort is valuable for fundraising from parties interested in collaboratively governing Genesis, and will advance discussions with the Genesis community on how to best utilize the allocated LGN budget, reaching a concrete funding plan in the coming months.
Timeline and next steps
In summary: in order to achieve the mission of Genesis we need to create the right incentive mechanisms to attract the necessary players, that is, an active community of proposers, voters and stakers as well as funders. Assuming this transition is approved by the the Genesis Alpha, the next blog post will announce a call for proposals that support the Genesis Mission, accompanied by detailed KPIs and tactical objectives, which we would also like to see passed by proposal.
If the proposals on the reputation distribution and mission and objectives pass, Genesis 1.0 will soft-launch on November 21st. The accompanying reputation readjustment and mechanics will be made to the current Genesis instance. A Genesis 1.0 Manifesto (whitepaper) will be published by the end of December 2019, and we expect to be operating as a fully fledged DAO with an active coalition of builders, growers, and alliance members in the years following.
🌟 We invite individuals and organizations aligned with the mission of Genesis 1.0 to introduce yourselves to the Genesis DAO, or explore Alchemy, DAOstack’s interface for DAOs.
💬 Are you an individual, team, blockchain or non-blockchain project interested in joining or funding Genesis? Please fill out this form — we will be in touch!
