Turing-Complete Governance

In general, governance power should be given to those who are truly invested in making good governance decisions and contributing to the community in the long term.

A DAO succeeds if its technical properties grease the flywheel of decision-making, community building and participation, rather than staying the center of attention.

-How preferences are aggregated to produce decisions

The procedures we have in society for coordinating people to make a decision together are limited by our tools, and by what we can understand, verify and calculate. While it is undesirable (and impossible) to attempt to fully specify the soup of human desires and values in code, there are things that computers do better than humans do—even simple t... See more

-How created value is allocated

The role of managers, for example, is a coordination mechanism to ensure people are broadly aligned and doing what they’re supposed to.

At the moment, the usual structure of a DAO is an organization whose on-chain protocol involves using a token that allows the holder to vote on governance decisions. Usually, 1 token = 1 vote. This token-centric method of governance bundles ownership and governance rights in that one asset, in a bid to align power and responsibility.

It is fiendishly difficult to get lots of people to make decisions and work together both non-hierarchically and effectively.

-How membership is granted

Blockchain-enforced execution of agreed contracts using consensus and transparency can, in numerous cases, reduce the need for the bureaucratic and hierarchical layers—the slow processes of legal and social recourse—that usually exist to coordinate humans to make decisions together.