Note: The original text comes from Bankless, the original author is Samantha, and the following is the full text compilation.
Coordination is hard.
We've been wrong for millennia - our ancestors probably told us so. Kingdoms rise and fall, ancient religions unknown today burn and die, nation-states conquer and crumble and conquer again. All history is a massive coordinated effort.
Frankly, this has gotten a little messy.
Time and time again, different mechanisms have been tried to entice humans to cooperate for the common good. We've known this since the cradle of civilization (centuries more or less), we needed something to keep people from stealing each other's livestock or killing their clan leaders. And people -- smart people -- have worked on that. Hobbes, Locke, and Machiavelli; Hammurabi, Laozi, and Buddha; Jefferson, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.
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Image credit: Netherlandish Proverbs by Pieter Bruegel
The town could benefit from well-organized weekly community calls with clear action items.
We've struggled with this problem throughout recorded human history.
And we haven't quite figured it out yet, have we?
DAOs are new, but not new in the fight for a better coordination mechanism. In fact, it's a pretty old struggle. It's just that it's very important, and even more so now, because DAOs are our only chance to get it right.
Yes, this is the best chance humanity has ever had to win coordination once and for all.
Below is my interpretation.
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A unique opportunity....
Our current situation is markedly different from the coordinated attempts of the past few years.
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Image Credit: George Washington Crossing the Delaware River by Emanuel Leutze
At least now we have a forum proposal so we can reach a consensus before embarking on the frigid river crossing.
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Enter DAO
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) are the greatest governance and coordination experiment in centuries to gain real community traction.
We have and are building trustless, permissionless structures that allow anyone in the world to join organizations they believe in, develop their talents, and earn wealth doing so. When I say anyone, I mean anyone in the strongest sense of the word. The DAO is immune to age, gender, race, ethnic background, economic status, nationality, place of residence, and any other demographic identifier that might prevent someone from working and earning money for something they believe in.
In a Web3 environment where anonymity is welcomed and encouraged, no information about your background can be used to prevent you from jumping jobs, working and earning money.
That's a big deal.
us"us") solution to human coordination that has been sought since humans began to walk upright. These solutions aren’t just elegantly built on top of code—they’re also our first real chance to achieve a universally equitable work environment.
A fair work environment is one where anyone can work toward what they want to achieve because everyone has the same tools to do so.
Below are some examples.
Age discrimination no longer exists - want to be a leader in governance at 16 or 75? So, go ahead, prove your talent and you'll be in. Also, 16-year-olds don't need parental permission to get paid and open bank accounts - a very unfair rule that still exists in many countries, you know. If workers under 18 can pay taxes to the government, they should be able to open and operate their own bank accounts. If workers over 65 can pay taxes to the government, they should also be able to find paid work without age discrimination.
In addition, DAO also solves the following two problems.
Geographical boundaries no longer exist. What if the DAO you want to join is on the other side of the world? Well, let's go. You get paid and don't have to worry about work permits and visas. If you would like to share your unique perspective, that would also be welcome, or you can keep your time zone anonymous. No one has to know what you don't want them to know. I've worked with people in Australia, Nigeria, Spain and the UAE, as well as people who I don't know where they're from - because it doesn't matter where your home is. Why should we limit our ability to coordinate on something as small as the coordinates of the earth you're standing on?
risk"risk"statement.
They pay and promote people based on the quality of the work rather than other factors. In my own case, I was never asked my age, or if I wanted to have children in the future - but in my traditional work, I couldn't say that, especially in a world where many women live very early After the area where the family started. Let's just say it was a breath of fresh air to say the least.
I could write a whole book on the fair work and coordination structures created by DAOs, but let me pause: we're already well on the road to human coordination. And, we don't have to wait for the next election or coup to improve the system we've built.
Improvements are happening all around us now.
People have power in their hands, and that power is not wasted. This force is busy building community. It's generating ideas, shipping products. It establishes governance structures at the top and day-to-day coordination methods at the bottom. It works there, not fighting over imaginary borders, or wrangling over who is in which position in which government. This power is being put to work: and we are getting a better coordination mechanism out of it.
Do you feel overwhelmed when you see this?
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...but it's not readily available
To be honest, I do worry a little bit.
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Image credit: The Death of Socrates by Jaques-Louis David
They could at least put a rather dramatic poisoning of Socrates into the snap vote, no?
I worry that people new to the DAO won't see that (because) the fight doesn't always seem noble or heroic. It's endless editing in Google Docs, slowly morphing into a sort of mini-constitution; it's late-night DMs answering questions from new DAO members; it's documenting processes on Kanban boards and Notion pages; it's taking place in Discord Lots of discussions, knowing there's a lot to do but not knowing what to do first. Winning a good fight isn't all token votes and roses, and I fear people will get slapped in the face when they realize that.
In reality, fighting this battle can look a lot like hard, boring work.
But my biggest concern is that DAO contributors won't see this inherent need to rebuild, and will slowly allow legacy structures to seep into their channels and their conversations. This slow infiltration can happen in ways we don't realize. Humans are social animals and we learn from our communities. And we all grew up with the centralized system and its surroundings. Sometimes it's hard to see a proposal or protocol, or even tell whether it's "centralized" or "decentralized." People have created entirely new first layers because they disagree on what decentralization is - so how do we figure it out? How do I, someone who has been blessed with unlimited support from my digital and non-digital communities on my Web3 journey, know what is fair?
I never said these questions would be easy. To solve these problems, there is only one way to go, and that is to move forward.
We keep pushing, we keep questioning, iterating, and conceiving. We do everything but can't stop. There is so much to do right now and there is just no stopping.
We can win the coordination game because we can build it.
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Fortunately, we can build our own
So how do we set up our coordination structure? What do we do if no one can figure it out so far?
Nothing but hard work day in and day out.
In my day-to-day DAO experience, it looks like this.
We build things only to see them burn, then collapse, and the cycle repeats. We do this because we know that even if one thing doesn't work out, it can bring us one step closer to success. We burn willingly, knowing that the next attempt will be even better. And when it doesn't work out, we're willing to. We have matches on hand, so we won't shy away from this task. Barren land is just a blank slate on which to build a better structure.
We spend a lot of time educating ourselves. A DAO's idea is as powerful as the sum of its members' ideas. We need to read, watch and listen more than ever. We need to interact with other DAOs, protocols and chains to see what they do and notice if we like it or not. We need to immerse ourselves in the pursuit of knowledge, whether from the traditional world or the Web3 world. If we are all doing this, then it will happen. Growing the knowledge of your DAO by growing your own knowledge is a win-win situation.
We embrace the dull and the mundane for the honorable and the rewarding. No one has ever achieved greatness through project management alone. But there was a lot of project management involved in building Rome, institutionalizing modern religion into what we know today, and passing the 2021 American Infrastructure Act. Making lasting change is not a fun journey from start to finish. Dull things go hand in hand with brilliant things. Ordinary things are interlinked with valuable things. Make friends with tasks you don't like. This is the only way to achieve the tasks you love, and the tasks that lead to results.
We practice the golden rule 24/7. DAOs would not exist without anyone building them. Therefore, we must treat everyone with the kindness and respect we would like ourselves to receive. We send tips, we reply to messages, we respond with emojis, and we encourage members to take time off when they need to. We always support each other. Our members are the lifeblood of the DAO. We must keep them strong.
This is very simple, what are we going to do? construction? study? These are single tasks, but they're not easy -- I'm not sure what they'll look like, or what I want them to look like.
As DAO members, we need to understand how important what we type on our keyboards, what we say on audio channels, and what we say on community calls. When we're worn out, we need to look back at the kings, prophets and conquerors of old.
Because we have the opportunity to do things they couldn't.
This article comes from Tao of Yuan Universe, reproduced with authorization.
This article comes from Tao of Yuan Universe, reproduced with authorization.
