DAO or DIE: Part 1 of the Why DAO Series

Humanity’s future lies on one simple question: can we work together, or will we destroy each other?

Nations including the United States, China, and Russia have more than enough nuclear weapons to end human civilization. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) can solve this — plus many more collaboration problems that plague society — and we need them now… Because in the modern era, the difference between collaboration and catastrophe is the difference between fireworks and a fiery death 🔥💀. Welcome to Part 1 of the “Why DAO” Series, which lays out the master thesis for the utility of DAOs.

Poor Collaboration is the root of all human problems

Humans are highly social, and we derive our success as a species from our ability to work together. But there are countless cases where the best action for an individual is different from the best action for a group, whether it’s a group of just 2 people or an entire nation. In the classic prisoner’s dilemma, it‘s always in the best interest of each person to take the selfish course of action, even though this leads to a result that’s worse for both participants. There’s no internal solution to the prisoner’s dilemma, or the many other collaboration problems:

• The security dilemma that explains international arms races, wasted resources, and war
• The tragedy of the commons that explains pollution, environmental destruction, overfishing, and why nations are largely unable to collaborate to solve climate change
• The volunteer’s dilemma that explains why people can die in a crowded street without anyone calling for help
• The free rider problem that explains why public goods are under-funded
• The game of chicken that explains why even relationships between people or groups with a common interest, like a married couple, often fall apart
• In general, all cases where the negative externalities of an action committed by any person, group, or nation are not felt by them.

The solution to these coordination problems must come from an outside entity. It is only by enforcing even greater penalties for snitches that criminal organizations like the mafia solve the prisoner’s dilemma. The United Nations is the organization which attempts to solve coordination failures internationally.

Unfortunately, the U.N. lacks enforcement power and is centralized, being run by a single person, the secretary-general, who “acts as the de facto spokesperson and leader.” The five permanent member nations of the U.N. Security council — The U.S., the U.K., China, France, and Russia — each have an exclusive veto power on any binding decision undertaken by the U.N. This means that the U.N. is unable to effectively mediate most international disputes, because any resolution that’s against the interests of one of these 5 powers can simply be vetoed.

The U.N. has other branches aside from the security council, but they’re all incapable of enforcing international collaboration because they can only make nonbinding recommendations with no penalty for noncompliance. So, it’s not the U.N. that has kept relative global peace since World War II. There are a variety of factors at play, including the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), which explains why nuclear weapons haven’t been used in conflict since World War II.

MAD isn’t enough to prevent Nuclear War

MAD hypothesizes that no nation in possession of sufficient nuclear weapons will use them against another nation in possession of sufficient nuclear weapons. This is because if they did, they would be retaliated against, and both nations would suffer catastrophic destruction.

While MAD is a powerful deterrent, it requires collaboration to prevent war. The U.S. Nuclear Umbrella protects all of NATO (most of Europe and more), Japan, Australia, and South Korea with a promise to retaliate with nukes if any “umbrella nation” is hit with nukes first. This umbrella extends MAD and is bundled with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which effectively prevents umbrella-protected nations from acquiring new nukes.

The problem with MAD is that when the time comes for the victim nation of a nuclear attack to retaliate against its attacker, it’s no longer in the victim’s best interest to do so. This is especially true for an attack against an “umbrella nation.” As Foreign Policy writes, “Would a U.S. president really risk Washington or Chicago to save Paris or Berlin? Long after they had left office, a few former U.S. officials suggested the answer was almost certainly no.” MAD also requires all involved leaders to be rational, life-valuing, and informed actors to prevent war.

DAO or DIE: DAOs can prevent nuclear war

Any system which relies on such a centralized entity is prone to catastrophe. A single person, the president of the United States, has the unilateral authority to unleash 37,500 Hiroshimas worth of nuclear devastation (see addendum 1). Scientists have simulated that just 100 Hiroshimas worth of nukes detonated in a hypothetical war between Pakistan and India would be “catastrophic”, leading to “cooling of several degrees” that would last for years as well as “up to 70% ozone depletion.” As time goes on, the probability that a nuclear war will occur increases under the current system of centralized nuclear weapons control. It would only take one crazy, evil, or mistaken (mistakes have already nearly caused nuclear war) leader to end it all.

The alternative to such a centralized process is each nation switching to a national nuclear DAO to make the decision to fire nukes collectively. DAOs are Decentralized Autonomous Organizations without any central leadership. The unique benefits of DAOs are especially useful for a nuclear DAO. The Decentralization aspect of DAOs is crucial so that the nuclear DAO can’t all be compromised at once, and the Autonomous part is crucial so that this organization can operate independently of the government, and continue functioning even if the government no longer exists due to an enemy attack. DAO members could be located in geographically dispersed locations and in bunkers across the country, perhaps with anonymous identities.

Crypto is an ideal tool for this DAO to use, since it can’t be destroyed by an enemy attack. Even if the country’s internet infrastructure was wiped out with an EMP, and centralized government websites were taken offline, this DAO could still communicate using satellite internet and the uncensorable blockchain. Such a DAO would dramatically reduce the odds of one crazy, evil, or mistaken person from ending civilization, because it would take an entire DAO to vote to approve any nuclear attack.

Central points of failure put nuclear stability in jeopardy by giving outside powers exploitable leverage. The use of DAOs is vital to future-proof nuclear weapons stockpiles and prevent nuclear war. DAOs can also be used to enable international collaboration, and prevent relationships from deteriorating to the point of war. The nature of the blockchain, where code is law, allows for immutable agreements that can’t be broken.

As more technology is integrated to a greater degree with crypto, a wider array of off-chain agreements can be brought on-chain. In the meantime, an international collaboration can make use of a combination system of oracles and prediction markets to ensure collaboration. The potential DAOs have to solve international collaboration problems will be explored in a future article in the Why DAO series.

The Great Filter will destroy humanity… Unless DAOs save us

The Fermi Paradox is the conclusion, based on mathematical probabilities, that there should be advanced alien life, and we should have observed some signs of them by now. But we haven’t. The leading hypothesis to explain this is called the “Great Filter”, which theorizes that some stage of the process of becoming an advanced/interplanetary species is highly improbable to achieve, leading to the extinction (filtering) of life before it can become this advanced. As Astronomy.com writes, “Perhaps advanced civilizations usually eradicate themselves via some sort of technology run amok, such as malevolent artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, or a doomsday machine. Humanity is already more than capable of destroying itself via global thermonuclear war.”

Today, nuclear stockpiles capable of ending humanity are only possessed by a few nations. But as technology continues to improve, with resources of all kinds getting cheaper, the inputs needed to create nuclear weapons will become cheaper and accessible to more groups. The same effect is also happening with advances in other forms of technology like genetically engineered diseases. Humanity needs DAOs because they prevent catastrophe resulting from single points of failure and enable collaboration, providing solutions to many of humanity’s current collaboration problems.

It’s not just nations that can suffer from poor collaboration — it’s every relationship we enter into as humans. Stay tuned for future articles in the Why DAO series that focus on other ways DAOs enable collaboration. DAOs can provide a plethora of benefits including granting sovereignty, enhancing freedom, and enabling collective organization of the masses.

Looking to join a DAO? DXdao is the most decentralized DAO in existence, and anyone can join! To get started, simply join our Discord and introduce yourself. You get out of DAOs what you put into them.

Addendum 1: 37,500 Hiroshimas is my conservative estimate based on the public U.S. stockpile of 3,750 warheads. Modern nuclear weapons can be 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The U.S. has dismantled 88% of its stockpile, removing older nukes while retaining newer ones. The contents of the U.S. nuclear stockpile are unknown, but it’s likely that the remaining nukes are more powerful, leading to my conservative estimate that the average nuke in the U.S. stockpile today is 150 kilotons.