Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) for Doom Emacs?

[Anak]

I just want to give feed back related to technical support via @helpme in doom emacs discord.

I love the responsiveness of the members. Usually, if they know the answer, within < few mins they point me to the right directly. This is not true with Reddit or other form of focus.

I realised that the responsiveness that I enjoy is a result of small tight knit community which will no longer be realistic to expect as the community grow.

You might want to pursuite Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) in general which I do believe is the future of open source project such as doom emacs. In case you are not familiar with DAO, you can think of it as a organization with automated incentive alignment mechanism. The goal is to make a community evolve organically.

You can contact me if this is an idea you want to explore. I am doing my own personal survey on tokenization economy for DAO and would love to share things that I know if you ask.

Regarding Reddit, I am a big believer in multiple channel of entries with centralized ground truth of knowledge. With that being said, I agree with paradoja suggestion. On top of that you may want to create new Doom emacs forum for reddit users to keep the post active. Furthermore, the new forum, you add doom emacs discourse url as an option for those you interested.

To summarize, I suggest having two Reddit forums where one freeze the old content and have a single post redirect to discourse (Existing member of the forum are directly informed about the existence and important of discourse) and another is a new doom forum for members both new and old who happen to be active users on Reddit to keep the community vibrant and colorful.

I am not gonna be active on discourse, so you can get in touch with me by sending email to awannaphasch2016@fau.edu

[gagbo]

Just pasting the DAO propaganda and then requiring to continue discussion privately in emails feels weird since apparently DAOs are supposed to promote transparency…

With that aside, I really don’t see how creating/using a DAO is relevant to the current situation. The only incentive is to make people buy tokens on a blockchain really, all others things are already handled by real world organizations: it’s a FOSS project, which license is owned by individuals who made contributions. We, as people, can discuss and choose to build another organization with any governance we like, and give the licensing rights from the collection of individuals to that organization. There’s no “automated incentive alignment mechanism” to get because anyway the license holders get to decide anyway.

Et voilà, you get an organization that steers the project without needing any blockchain/token interaction.

DAO doesn’t bring any value here, besides driving ETH (or w/e) demand and keeping the cryptoassets value higher for already-invested people.

[Anak]

gagbo. I am aware that criticism is important in any discussion. But as a fellow human, I can’t deny that I feel violated because you reply to me as someone who is a treat. Still, your action is justified, so my feeling doesn’t really matter here.

Here is my reply about DAO. From what you have said. You just don’t know what DAO can do. You sure know one implementation of it, but philosophy of DAO, you got it completely wrong.

To simply debunk all your confusion. DAO can be created for free. Period. Similarly, no one have to pay for stackoverflow’s reputation and Reddit’s reputation. Example of the benefit of keeps tracks of reputation (among other form of token mechanism) is to create health friction within internet-based community. For example, it filters out non-believer and spam, weight contributor opinion more, and control level of commitment. A mechanism that I would love to push forward is “work-driven” mechanism which i think is the best for open source project such as Doom emacs.

Currently, there is no “automated incentive alignment mechanism” please make sure you understand it before criticize it. If there is is DAO by definition.

The last point you raise “DAO doesn’t bring any value here, besides driving ETH (or w/e) demand and keeping the cryptoassets value higher for already-invested people.” is a common problem of token distribution for “Founders” and early contributor to encourage “effort allocation.” If they believe in it enough, they would allocate their effort towards the project. Follow DAO philosophy, effort allocation + risk should reflect amount of rewards (which doesn’t have to only be money. I project one example of reputation. ) hence early investor and contributor gains more because they risk more. However, if they stop putting in effort, their reward will be decay proportionally until it reaches 0.

You also mention “then requiring to continue discussion privately in emails feels weird since apparently DAOs are supposed to promote transparency…”

I said “You can contact me if this is an idea you want to explore. I am doing my own personal survey on tokenization economy for DAO and would love to share things that I know if you ask.” My interpretation of the quote is that I offer contribution of my knowledge if anyone ask. That’s not a requirement, that’s an option which no one is forced to take. Also the forum is not about DAO, so I mentioned DAO but give feedback on Reddit and Discourse.

say if you are me how would you mention DAO in a forum that’s not about DAO, but you think it worth exploring? How can you say it without making it “weird”? If this is not possible, according to “retropective thinking,” the weirdness that you see is not even there. You just see things.

Last thing I want to say is “what do you think is the problem that Doom Emacs have as a community?” and “what problem can DAO solve?.” I think there is a room for exploration. If that’s not the direction you want the project to move forward, that’s completely understandable.

If this is what I believe in, would you deny someone action to do what I believe? Isn’t this a philosophy of FOSS?

[jacmoe]

I don’t really understand how DAO is different from what is already going on with the community. I mean, the members of the community are free to make use of anything, be it Reddit, Discord, Twitter, IRC, mailing lists, etc. The only caveat is that Discourse is the official channel.

[Anak]

its a web 3 concepts.

evolution of web2 to web3 is mainly a shift from “database” to “blockchain.” “Database” is owned by public entity with shared trust while “blockchain” is owned by user itself. If you want to know more. I wrote a blog on “Evolution of assets transaction” (Evolution of Asset Transaction | Anak Wannaphaschaiyong) to understand better of what I am trying to explain.

so what are new type of “process” and “object” can one gain from “database” with “blockchain,” example of new objects are reputation and new process is whatever you use reputation to do such as voting on direction of the project.

This can be done without adopting blockchain, however, I am aware that hlissner mentioned couple times that he couldn’t work on Doom emacs full time because it can only pay for 50 percent of his expenses. He can work on Doom emacs full time if the pay cover at least his full expenses. (Emacs, Doom, Vim, Lisp & Games - with Henrik Lissner, Emacs Doom Creator - YouTube)

This emphasize a problem of money and pay --internal funding. DAO is just a tool to solve internal funding. Imagine people can get paid from working in Doom emacs full time. not just hlissner, but anyone who wants to.

I want people to think about

is the current practice of open source in general practical?

will the project survive if hlissner happens to disappear?

Is the open source project like emacs taking advantage of those who care about the projects without compensating for their effort? (less than 1 percent contribute at all)

isn’t what FLOSS (Free and open-source software) emphasize on “free as in freedom not beer”?

Is it time to think about automated internal funding mechanism? Without it, can the project scale without taking advantage of effort allocation of contributors and believer?

[jacmoe]

That’s interesting! I guess that’s a viable model for some open source projects

[comuserFrud]

My first impression reading this post was that someone was trying to advertise their new cryptocurrency or NFT.

After reading the replies and poking around at the OP’s online presence I think they are putting their opinion out in good faith.

Although my understanding of a DAO is limited it’s an interesting concept. Unfortunately, I think that’s all it’s ever going to be. There will be some quick-thinking people who will bastardize the idea for a quick buck and some interesting research papers will be written about it but that’s where it will end.

I also think that trying to form a DAO around doom emacs will complicate its development and the growth of its community.

[schemar]

Personally, I couldn’t justify participating in any blockchain project, as I deem them ethically unjustifiable (among other issues).

Disclaimer: I worked as a blockchain engineer for 18 months. I started, because I wanted to learn about the technology (and I learned a lot). I left, because

1. It doesn’t solve any problem worth solving when you look at the cost it incurs (technically, ethically, etc.). It’s people building stuff in their ivory tower, paid by uninformed crypto investments.
2. It’s mostly used for fraud, crime, etc. in reality. The “problems” it solves are traceability, regulation, etc.

However, this (somewhat old) whitepaper from DAOstack is still a good read: https://daostack.io/wp/DAOstack-White-Paper-en.pdf

It explains the idea of DAOs and has some thought experiments. While I don’t think blockchains do any good and while I don’t think DAOs are realistic, the whitepaper is a great way to provoke new thoughts and ideas.

A true DAO needs a trustless foundation, which would need to be a blockchain, in my opinion. As soon as you require a trusted entity, you can build a normal service where members can vote to distribute funds among themselves. Maybe that would actually be a cool service for open source projects. No DAO or blockchain needed.

Any service on the blockchain can be built in a cheaper, more usable fashion as a “web2” service. There is nothing wrong with having trusted middle-people. They have benefits, too. For example recovering lost funds, blocking malicious users, etc.

[Anak]

I agree with both you can comuserFrud. DAO is in its early days. It only worth it if members want to be a pioneer in the space. Otherwise, its best to use web2 concept.

[Anak]

In case, anyone comes across the post. I have just found Gitcoin which can help with internal funding to recuite developers for the project.

The video only takes less than 10 mins. Please consider watching. I really do hope Doom emacs can recuit more people to work full time. I would love to be one. This may be the right step toward the goal.