#dgov April Updates 🚀
Hi friends, Max here.
Hope you’re doing good and found some time for rest recently =) Meanwhile, lot’s of interesting updates happened in the space.
So once more we’ve tried to gather the updates within our range of vision. If we haven’t covered your project or initiative — please get in touch and we’ll resolve this.
1. Coordination
Amsterdam Meetup
‌Organized #dgov meetup in Amsterdam on Apr 16 together with Blockchain Talk, special thanks to Luuk Weber. Discussed intrinsic motivation and incentives in DAOs, teaching/learning soft governance, science fiction on DAOs. You can find meeting notes on our forum.
‌FYI: you can host local #dgov meetups, we’ll help with promo and organization. Here’re some tips.
DAOcon Recap
The first ever DAO Convention, called “DaoCon Zero” was held last week in Split, Croatia. Organized by Blockada (co-organizers of blocksplit.org, blockconf.io and Ethereum Magicians Council of Paris) and supported by Ethereum Foundation, it brought together members and representatives of DAOstack, Aragon, DAO Incubator, LeapDAO, Kleros, AMPnet, Status, Aave, Tenderly, Fluence, Limechain, Aeternity, BridgeDAO and numerous other blockchain projects from different parts of Europe.
Developers had an opportunity to learn how to create a custom DAO, arbitrable smart contracts, decentralized app backends, and use IPFS and Zero Knowledge Proofs. Entrepreneurs and legal professionals learned about business models and DAO legality; made their first Aragon DAO, and designed a DAO Canvas. There were many other talks covering topics spanning from Self-Sovereign identity to design and DeFi.
Overall, 200 attendees over two days used this opportunity to learn about DAOs and make important connections with partners, infrastructure providers, and users.
Liberland 4th Anniversary Celebration
‌Liberland’s 4th Anniversary was celebrated on April 13–14 in Sombor, Serbia and Liberland on the Danube, with a lineup of speakers from around the globe. Notably in the dGov arena, Alex Zak of DAOstack presented the DAO-as-a-service that Liberland will offer to any company incorporating in the jurisdiction. While Liberland is not yet recognized by international bodies as a country, they are implementing sophisticated means of decentralized governance on the EOSIO platform, and the Ghostbusters group showed off the testnet version of the e-voting platform for the representational government. Grace Rachmany of DAO Leadership presented on the State of Decentralized Governance, and made suggestions to the group about how to implement government systems for the emerging nation. All videos can be found here.
‌Also in April, Liberland relased its sovereign cryptocurrency, the Liberland Merit, based on a BTC fork.
‌On the second day of the festivities, the group of approximately 80 people set off in boats to drink champaign and Liberbeer. As expected, the Croatian police trailed the group and did not allow anyone to disembark on the territory of Liberland. Although Croatia does not formally claim the land and the abandoned floodplain is unused, they prevent anyone from coming ashore or arrest and detain those who do.
‌The next Liberland meetup is May 7 in Prague.
OrgTech Review Top 3 Highlights
Fostering Worker Cooperatives with Blockchain Technology: Lessons from the Colony Project: The scarcity of worker cooperatives can be attributed to non-conducive legal environments, scarce financing options, and coordination problems that only grow worse with scale. OrgTech (and Colony specifically) promises to revitalise cooperatives by providing intuitive platforms that solve these problems.
Introducing Distense — A Decentralized Code Cooperative. “It’s the first for-profit company governed and managed solely by its contributors run on the Ethereum blockchain. Anyone, anywhere can join and work anonymously for Distense. The only requirement to contribute is that you can complete the work.”
A Relative Value Model for Governance Tokens: Coinfund’s founder outlines how governance tokens can be valued based on their “decisiveness”, i.e. how often a stake can overturn the outcome of a vote.
Subscribe for a weekly newsletter here to get all updates and articles and thanks to Jack Laing for doing it.
Forum Highlights
- Intrinsic motivation and incentives in DAOs? Discussion on Aragon, DAO Stack, Colony
- Teaching/learning soft governance, examples of #occupy wallstreet and ethereum governance
- Science Fiction on the DAOs
- Scalable collaboration using network of small DAOs connected by bounties
- Ethereum Governance Survey — Call to Action
- AGP analysis and suggestions for improvement
Upcoming events
- Sociocracy Online Conference (May 2, Online)
- Computational Law + Blockchain Festival: Berlin Node (May 4, Berlin)
- Liberland meetup Praha (May 7, Prague)
- Steps 2019 (May 10–11, Barcelona)
- #Dgov Network Meetup (May 16, New York)
- Open Education & Digital Citizenship (May 28–29, Lille, France)
- Web3 Summit (Aug 19–21, Berlin) — might have a dedicated dgov track!
- Floating Man (Aug 13, Liberland)
- Massive Adoption Crypto Festival (2020)
2. Education
‌On the DAO Landscape Report we have some drafts — would love your comments and contribution (become an author!):
- Glossary (including 8 DAO definitions)
- Taxonomy of DAOs & DGOV providers (work in progress)
- Network-based Governance Case Studies (4 starter, more to come) (work in progress)
- Huge Reading List (books, articles by topic and more)
First version should come before Jun 1st and then further work will happen to extend it.
3. Incubation
‌DAO Incubator updates:
- 12 mentors, 11 application
- Conducted an online workshop: DAO Crash Test #1 (Report here)
- Follow the progress on https://twitter.com/DAOincubator
4. Regulation
‌Last week we’ve witnessed lots of legalise in the crypto space. Not only are we observing more and more legal questions popping out (e.g. does a DAO need a legal entity, what legal accountability, responsibility do DAO members have?), there is a whole legal revolution incoming!
If previously crypto space was considered anarchistic, we’re now facing an era where people are eager to understand why law exists, how it functions, and how it might be changed to become more human.
A presentation about legal issues was held by Marina Markežič and Anja Blaj at the BlockSplit Conference a couple of days ago. The presentation started with various definitions of a DAO, legal applications regarding blockchain and opened numerous questions regarding DAOs. “Legally DAO” turned out to be a topic that triggered a vivid discussion, concluding with basic principles for DAOs which we are co-creating today.
‌by Anja Blaj
5. Having Fun
Regular collection of memes from Pedro Parrachia and the Ministry of Memes.
Support the Movement!
‌If you’re enthusiastic about the distributed governance — go give us a hand. Here’re some tips on what’s going on:
