The Dark Side of the DAO: Technocracy

Technocracy is the deep, dark secret of DAOs that no one else is talking about, & there's a main reason for that.

Technocracy is the dark side of DAOs, No one talks about it. How did it come about? How to solve? It is worth our constant exploration.

Technocracy exists in almost all DAOs. Even some DAOs that seem to be very successful at present, there are still a small number of people who have a huge influence on proposals and decisions. If an ordinary DAO member has a very good proposal, as long as the core members or founders don't like the proposal, it will be difficult to pass. From a social/cultural perspective, it is easy to understand that the community often learns about the attitudes and speeches of core members or founders before voting, and is influenced by them. Whether we approve it or not, this is what is happening every day in the DAO right now.

Technical bureaucracy is actually social/cultural. We now have blockchain decentralization, but what about social/cultural decentralization? The decentralization of social/cultural and the formation of this vibe is very difficult for most newly launched DAOs.

Just DAO it, easy to produce technocratic

Just DAO it is a relatively common mode of creating DAO at present.

What is just DAO it mode?

Currently the common DAO creation mode is divided into the following steps:

Step 1: Spark, suddenly there is a spark of inspiration, an idea that changes the world.

Step 2: Recruit, form a small team.

Step 3: Exit to community, distribute tokens through airdrops, IDO, etc. to form a broad community.

Step 4: just DAO it. Vote with tokens and initiate various proposals, this is DAO.

The disadvantages of just DAO it?

First, the four steps of just DAO it allow you to create a DAO quickly, maybe weeks, or even days. But this DAO has a high probability of generating centralized social/cultural and vibe. Because the community simply doesn't really understand the product and doesn't know what to do next. The community can only trust the founder and the core team. Before the community votes, it will subconsciously observe the words and see what the founder and core team think.

Secondly, just DAO it will not produce a "mission-driven" DAO. Because the "mission" generated by just DAO it is the mission that the founder and core team thought up before there was no community, not the mission of the community. It is a "mission" given after thinking about it for several days, not a mission to really solve problems and create value for society.

Gitcoin's efforts to eliminate techno-bureaucracy

Kevin Owocki, as the former CEO, completed the transformation of Gitcoin from a corporate system to a DAO, which was very successful.

Owocki believes DAOs don't need a CEO. Of course, everyone knows this now, but how many people know exactly how to do it?

First of all, Owocki's greatest contribution to Gitcoin DAO is to step back from a decision maker to an ordinary member of the community. Only then can a group of leaders and core contributors be given the opportunity to emerge. And, more importantly, give them the psychological security to be bold in trial and error and innovative experimentation, and learn from it.

Secondly, before Gitcoin's transformation from a corporate system to a DAO, Gitcoin spent more than a year helping a large number of community members truly understand Gitcoin products and become product experts. It is these talent reserves that enable a large number of contributors to promote the development of new products from the bottom up after the transformation of DAO.

Through the above efforts, a decentralized social/culture is formed, and the community no longer relies on a small core team. So Gitcoin DAO largely eliminates the existence of techno-bureaucracy, of course, we do not dare to say 100%.

How can technocracy be eliminated?

Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom's extensive research on sustainable management of the commons can provide us with a theoretical basis for eliminating techno-bureaucracy.

Ostrom's 8 Principles of Public Management

Ostrom's Code of Conduct can be converted into a DAO template through some tools and processes for effective DAO management. We will give a practical example of how to solve techno-bureaucracy in Part 4.

Ostrom's 8 principles of public management are as follows:

The commons needs to have clear boundaries;

Rules need to be adapted to local conditions;

Participatory Decision making is critical;

The commons must be legally recognized in the jurisdictions in which it operates;

Enforce rules through effective and responsible oversight;

Sanctions for violations should be graded;

Conflict resolution should be accessible and low-cost;

Commons should be in nested ecosystems within larger commons;

2> Ostrom: Let the person closest to the problem solve the problem

Please remember that only those who are troubled by problems have the strongest motivation to find the right solution and solve the problem. Not the technocracy that's far from the problem (note: this is not what Ostrom said, she was talking about politicians).

In the picture above, we see that in the middle is a small core team of DAO, who have no idea about the 4 problems around them. Only by letting the people closest to the problem solve the problem can a bottom-up mechanism be formed and techno-bureaucracy avoided. Never rely on that small core group of people who don't really understand what's going on.

But is it really that simple? What if the people closest to the problem don't have the ability to solve the problem? If the DAO is not really mission-driven/value-driven, will everyone take the initiative to solve the problem?

We'll give a practical example in Section 4 referring to Ostrom's Code of Conduct to see how they address technocracy.

A new "model for creating DAOs" to avoid technocracy

Commons Stack started thinking in early 2019: How to avoid technocracy. First of all, the entire community must understand the operation of the entire system, not just the core team, so that any community member has the ability to initiate solutions from the bottom up, rather than relying solely on the core team. Second, it takes a long time to build a community culture before creating a DAO. Finally, don’t let DAOs be exploited by capital, which also encourages technocracy.

Commons Stack conducted innovative experiments during 2019-2020 and formed a set of DAO templates. And use this template to start incubating TEC DAO at the end of 2020, until the beginning of 2022, and the entire incubation period will last for one year.

How does this pattern create a DAO?

Take TEC DAO as an example.

Step 1:Spark, suddenly there was a spark of inspiration, an idea that changed the world.

Step 2: Exit to community, up to 1 year, through the reputation and reward system Praise, to track the contributions paid, and to issue reputation tokens (non-transferable and tradable) ;

In addition to reputation tokens, there are also tradable tokens. Capital also fuels technocracy. In order to prevent capital from speaking in DAO, even if you accept investment, you must find someone who agrees with mission-driven/value-driven. TEC DAO chooses to only accept funds from Trusted Seed (Commons Stack) members, because Trusted Seed has been screened layer by layer, filtering out traditional currency circles, such as airdrops, currency speculation, and degen.

Step 3:Cllectively decide the MVV(mission/vision/values), the community collectively decides the mission/vision/values, not the core team. Note that at this time, the community has passed one year of construction and has enough consensus.

Step 4:Dashboard. The design of economic models, etc., was only capable of being operated by the core team in the past. By developing the dashboard, community members with non-technical backgrounds can now also operate it. In this way, the community does not depend on the core team and can solve problems from the bottom up.

Step 5:Economy design, economic model design, this is a debate stage, don’t be afraid, we already have a great community culture and dashboard.

Step 6:Launch DAO with cultural resilience, at this time, DAO can be activated, the community culture at this time is anti-technocratic, and cultural resilience is specifically aimed at technocrats As soon as there is a hint of technocraticism, the community has the ability to suppress it.

Why does this model eliminate techno-bureaucracy?

Because from the beginning, there was no so-called core team, let alone a small group of people who decided the mission and values of DAO, and the community had the technical ability to solve problems by itself. This is truly decentralized social/culture. Once there is a hint of technocracy, the community has the power to suppress it.

It is undeniable that even such a DAO still has some leaders and the possibility of technocraticism. But in this decentralized society/culture, leaders can easily become teachers, and they will argue with each other instead of forming small groups.

Written at the end:

In the past year, the industry has been looking for various solutions for some drawbacks generated by Just DAO it. Griff Green believes that the TEC DAO model is one of the best practices that has proven to be successfully replicable. But the 1-year preparation period is not suitable for all DAOs, expect more innovative experiments to appear.

The main point of this article comes from Griff Green's speech at The DAOist CDMX 2022: How to prevent DAO Technocracy.

The author of this article: Shawn

The article is reprinted from: https://shawn.mirror.xyz/lRsMASEGitKb3nWiLPdDmoqBBp2d3jMLbG_6ta9i5H4

If there is any infringement, please contact the platform.

source: The Dark Side of the DAO: Technocracy

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