Thanks, and my name is Mel. I go by Mel dot ETH in the metaverse. My real name is Mel Oxenreiter, and what you're witnessing today is probably the the biggest intersection of dGen and IRL experience coming together. So in in about the shortest span of time, one could imagine. So thank you. Basically, what I'd like to discuss today is a a really quick survey of kinda how we got to where we're at today and maybe a little bit of where we're going in terms of democratic design. And excuse me for if if this feels, you know, unkind in how fast it goes, feel free to slow me down. And if somebody wants to give me maybe a warning at two minutes, it would be greatly appreciated. I had a little bit of a control box here for how to control these slides and lost it. There we go. Okay. Democracy versus republic. So, basically, this just gets into, really, what are the systems that we use and and how to make them more efficient. But first, it's really it's hard to discuss, you know, democracy and republic if we don't really establish some baseline of what governance is. A really simplistic con idea, basically, that I came up with to have this conversation is governance is a conversation, a communication function between the many, the few, the one, and the none. And in this way, we can kind of matrix make use matrices to get to those relationships.

Sorry. I tried to do this before, and I thought I achieved it. But, yeah, let's go back to the

Okay. You can see this?

Okay. I'm gonna blow through the slides pretty quick. I will, would it be helpful if I shared the presentation, now or after?

K. Let me see here if I can get chat. Alright. So the idea here is that just establish a baseline of governance. And really, it's just a communication function between the different varying groups. Right? The idea being where where shouldn't we go? What is kind of the the the fundamental unit? And then the few and the many, which is really what kind of where we dwell in a governance sense. But the one and the none really get us to principles and those types of things. And good governance, a peaceful conversation through time. I think, yeah, anything is democracy if you're brave enough. I think that the idea here is that we'd like to agree on what the the path forward is. Democracy and republic. Now, really, what you get to is that republic is a flavor of democracy and that there's almost nothing else. The the best way to kinda define this is that democracy is a a form of governance that's legitimized by the people, whereas other other mechanisms are legitimized by other means. And I'll I'll kinda leave that there for now. But constituency selection and ongoing consent consent become the the main feature of of a democratic system. An interesting fact, republic and and direct participation democracy evolved emerged roughly around the same time. It could be argued that republic came before democracy in in this but before direct part participation democracy in this sense. But there's a lot of evidence to support that they they rose simultaneously with communication between the two between the two cities. Now what's the distinction? Direct participation, direct democracy, decisions made by the citizens. Representatives don't necessarily have executive power. However, they do have proposal power. And then selection, at least in the Athenian sense, in the first kind of go of this was more akin to, like, jury selection. You know, you were eligible by being a citizen to be selected, and then selection was like service. You know, you served for, like, a month or and on and on. Whereas in a representative democracy, in the Roman sense, representatives were chosen. I'm going to sort of disambiguate this in the next couple of slides. So I'll just skip through. Really, what we kinda get to is there's a lot of challenges with the two systems. So democratic failure happens in a direct sense, typically due to majority tyranny. And what this comes down to is that the many can't really represent the interests of the few very well. On the flip side, the few can't really represent the interests of the many. And so in a direct participation sense, what we tend to see is a transition to a more representative democracy. There's a a desire and a willingness to kinda push those the executive functions to to the other. In representative failure, what tends to happen is corruption. So we see this kinda chunk out to more author authoritarian type types of governance, typically. So in a there's a big generalization, but we can kinda get into it later. Direct participant direct participation democracy tends to evolve into representative democracy, which then tends to evolve into something that's not democracy if rather than going back to a more direct participation sense. And then mixed model failure tends to happen at the what I call the knuckles. Kinda how do we decide which we want? Right? Which is the better system? And so in a, you know, in a complex democracy, we tend to end up with hierarchy. Right? A system of democracy that controls a system of democracy that controls a system of democracy. And there are imbalances there, and that's where it tends to to break, which then tends to lead to consolidation, centralization. And democratic advancement. So this is how how do we kinda move past this? What's what's happening through time that allows us to overcome these challenges? And I'm gonna skip through this just to get to kind of the punch line here, which is we're at the frontier right now of of testing out democratic systems. One thing that DAOs do more than anything else is experiment and export democracy around the globe. Yeah. And so what what is that? It's managing shared resources through blockchain technology using processes. Somebody mentioned prior to recording, I believe, that the MolicDAO was perhaps one of the greatest advancements in in governance tech. And I I would tend to agree mainly around constituency. So your token contract is your constitution on a blockchain. That's kind of the the end of it, but I'll we can expand on that later. Mechanism design. This is just the process of designing incentives that encourage the types of behavior that you'd like. So one of the features of that Moloch contract is that you can leave at any time and and take your resources and and go do something else. Mechanism design is is incentivizing, perhaps not that. Right? Or, again, incentivizing somebody to go perform an action for the group. So when you have these these two things kind of paired together, what you tend to see is accretive cycles, and we'll get into that. An important concept then really kinda becomes governance and governor because what we're seeing is the emergence of mechanical governors. So in this case, what is governance? It's proposal and decision power. And then what's a governor? Somebody who facilitates those things. So execution of governance is the function of a governor, whether it be a person or a piece of tech. Now what does this allow? So I would bringing it back to the the representative and direct participation sense, one of the biggest choices we typically have to make in, you know, in a a mixed model system is is which. And we can now put dynamic systems in place to effectuate those balance transfers, those transfers of of constitutive power. So in the representative sense, the few, and in the the choice sense, the many and the one, can now have an ongoing conversation in a way that's significantly faster than than it was before. And so what's what's novel about this, about these three aspects are, you know, universal proposition and and veto power, executive transparency, which I I know that there's some some debate around how much transparency there is, but it is significantly more, and then accurate counting and record record keeping. This creates three dimensions that upon which you can kinda measure how democratic is a thing. So if you if if you can change your representative, that's that's a democratic action. If you can propose or, you know, participate in the decision making process, that's an action. And then what enables this is really the the record keeping function of the whole thing, which this is what Blockchain is really kind of lit on fire is the ability to have accurate fast record keeping. The cyclical benefit here, and I'll just kinda, again, get to the punch line, is that meaningful engagement leads to leading to expected outcomes. So, you know, I made a decision, and then the the thing happened as expected, fosters more participation in that system. Again, if incentives are such that, you know, you'd that's what you'd like to continue doing. And so greater participation, greater trust, there's a cyclical benefit here. I dropped this slide in. If you've got the slide deck, go ahead and read it. But the again, Democratic education, in my opinion, is gonna help save lives as we move into the into the future. If if you take a view that more more direct participation is allowable in a governance sense, it becomes important that the individuals effectuating that participation understand democratic systems given that there there's gonna be democratic access more more broadly. So accountability, demodynamic access. This refers to fungibility. How much how much configurability do I, the individual, have in my governance system? Systems of constituted rights. Again, like I said, token contracts can be a a constitution or is a constitution in this sense. And then educate education in the use of political infrastructure. And I think this is, again, where it gets really, really kinda interesting in getting into where it's going. Those that are more educated in how to use what I'm calling political infrastructure, which is really, you know, the code is law blockchain kind of corollary there, are going to be served better in these sort of new dynamic systems.

Okay. And so, yeah, I that's that's actually great. I'm I'm surprised I'm I'm kind of on time there. And so that's this this kind of is the punchline. So I'll I'll kinda let that simmer, but just a little bit from kinda where I come from. Let me see how many more slides before I That's it. Basically, I come from a deep computer background, self educated through high school. I went on to get degrees in civil engineering and architecture, and then spent a ton of time, doing it really doing, financial controls and integrity monitoring. So humans and and capital, and kind of that intersection. And then I worked deep inside, Indexed Coup DAO, or worked my way deep inside Index ScoopDAO facilitating governance there. And this this endeavor really kind of is is born of that. I saw the what I'm gonna call the dangers of, implementing very democratic systems in really mixed mixed, I'm gonna say, cultural situations where some people were highly educated on the use of of democratic systems, and others maybe had very little or almost no experience in the use of democratic systems, political infrastructure, cyclical outcomes based on game theory and mechanism design choices. And so, really, I think the the idea here is that what I'd like to see happen kind of as a result of maybe this presentation and kind of my work into this sort of what democratic systems are evolving through time is a more inspired and, again, kind of trying to increase the parity between research, those that are testing, those that are building, and and really those that are kind of envisioning what the future of these things are, given that the technology is becoming so so easily configurable that almost anyone can go out and just design a very democratic system on a blockchain right now without much knowledge as to what the impacts of that are gonna be. And as we move into a place where we can automate these systems, it becomes very important that the constituency, right, you know, stay human. Right? This is sort of the the very force that lines up squarely against that of the AI takeover, right, of, really, control theory. So I've been working kinda at that point. Right? And also just really trying to find systems that are more dynamic, are more balanced. And through time, I've really been trying to craft code that can stand in the place of a human to help balance out a conversation between two humans around to create a more democratic process. And I know a lot of people are working on this, and so that's that's really kind of what I hope I hope people can take away from this today is that there's really this big conversation happening through time among among governors about automated governors and kind of their place in in our systems. And and I think history has a lot to offer in terms of kinda how we can move forward with that. So thanks for listening, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

send Yeah?

I I can I can speak to at least kind of what what I think because I I think there's sort of a, like, a subject there's some deeply subjective, you know, things in there to teach individual? Personally, I think if you're using a system to engage with individuals, you know, locally, then that that's kinda one thing. Now if you're using the system to engage globally, so it's, like, like, blockchain. When I when I submit a transaction on the blockchain, I don't necessarily know, kinda necessarily who the the receiver's gonna be. I guess the the question I would kinda ask, at least in that global sense, is if I am a person who needs a resource, right, then I don't necessarily care kind of if it comes from an individual or an automated collective of individuals, that that type of thing. If I'm inter interacting in sort of a per a p to p sense, that that does matter. So I guess I how do I put this? I think I think as we kinda go forward, you're gonna we're gonna have to decide how do I want to interact at large, right, with with a system where I know that there's a p on the other side of that too in a p two p sense. And I think that that's kind of where it's gonna have to get us in terms of an individual principled approach to how to interact kinda globally, you know, in terms of what things we're willing to say or not say or the conversations we'd like to have. And I I do think proof of personhood is gonna be very important, but I think it's gonna also be almost ever elusive as you as you alluded to there. And so, again, kind of one of the most basic things we can do as humans is say, I know that that's another human. Like, I I recognize, you know, another human. And that kinda in in some ways allows us to perpetuate our humanity. Meaning if I if I falsely make that that, you know, one to one, you know, connection, I can be influenced in ways that are are, you know, again, not not socially what we would want. And I think as we move into a space where perhaps we're not the most intelligent, you know, species, you know, it becomes a bit, existential right so yeah it's it is it is a good call out and I hope I kind of answered a little bit at least again it's a personal sort of thing I think to everyone a little bit but

Yeah. I think it gets into platform a little bit in in that sense. Like, if I if how can I put this? I probably wouldn't want to engage long term on a platform where somebody can create agents that aren't gonna act in my best enter or, you know, where there's just extensive amounts of auto automations that are acting against me. And so at some point, you know, the the the minor incentive problem becomes an MEV problem, and then you you kinda tank the platform. I think you do hit a point where if you're if those those atomic interactions are structured in such a way as to provide like a creative benefit through time, then you get to a much better place.

I think it becomes is it important that you that you do know? I I would argue no in a global sense. Meaning, if I'm in a system where I can interact as I like and exit upon, you know, at will, and, again, this gets the constituency the constituency challenge. I'm not going to interact if it's not to my benefit. This is all of blockchain. So, yeah, I think you have that abstraction layer that kind of allows that. But then again, yeah, it kinda comes back to if I'm if we're making a decision about, say, how do I put it, bad outcomes for humans as opposed to the the other side of that coin, which is, you know, how do we build together? Then, yeah, one person, one vote, blah blah. Those things become really important because you're you're constituent in that way. You're affected in totality, if that makes any sense.

Yeah. I I'm I'm a big fan of Moloch DAO for just the theory of the rage quit aspect of a Moloch DAO is I find it especially interesting because at any time, you can make a a qual you know, quantitative quantitative and qualitative decision as to I want to continue doing this thing, which may be more valuable to me, or I wanna take some amount of that value or all of that value and and exit the system because I think that's the more valuable action. And I think what's really interesting about a Mollic DAO is it allows that consideration always. Typically, you have to decide at some point in an endeavor whether or not you wanna carry on or or quit. And this this can create really bad incentives down the line, you know, staking, locking. It might be important to the protocol that you can't leave, but it might in a human sovereignty sense, I think a MolochDAO represents this idea of what I call, like, you know, a human first design mechanism in terms of, you know, really allowing individual agency in a in a distributed system. And even to the point of, let's say, you know, a hacker gets access and and maybe one by one, block by block, starts, you know, taking all the the tokens in your treasury. You know, a bit the ability to send out some sort of, hey, you know, get out, right, type of thing to your to the crew. All of it kinda ties into this just this sense at least of of more increased agency among the individuals. And to see that there's Moloch DAOs in operation, the amount of actual trust that has to be there among the the agents is incredible because because anybody can do this at any time and because they're not. Right? That that becomes the communicative function of constituency is I'm here. I choose to be here, and I I think that's just a really powerful mechanism.

Paulo? Yeah. Thank you. I wanted to ask about something you said about the governor facilitating governance. And I'm asking this from a from a a point of view of I've done facilitation work and either because of design thinking or workshop facilitation and so on. And I have this feeling that good facilitation is needs to be neutral and cannot have a stake in the game. And so if we apply this to here, then we could probably say that governors that are facilitating the governance process should not have a stake maybe on that thing that they're governing. And I don't think that happens in any doubt nowadays. I think all people that are facilitating governance now nowadays have a stake in the game, and it's very easy when you're facilitator to manipulate the outcome, you know, toward everyone. Saying this from, you know, experience. And so, yeah, I just wanted to get your take on the importance if you think there is some importance to neutrality to the governor and the one that is facilitating.

Yeah. I think it needs to be absolute. You know, neutrality kind of is the name of the game in that that facilitation sense. I think where it gets tricky and interesting and kinda why I'm here is that I can move from facilitator to designer in a, you know, distributed system. Now as a designer, I I found, you know, kind of as one side of that conversation, I can design almost anything. Right? This is the design space in crypto is in insanely wide open. If I take the view that there's three dimensions of of governance and that we're, you know, at a especially bad and dark corner in terms of, you know, say, world governance where, you know, in The US, we choose every four years, you know, for a leader, then we and we can't pull back very easily in that four years. On all the node level decisions, I have to push to a decider for maybe six years, right, in terms of my state. And then in my locality, I maybe have the most influence, but, again, I abdicate for periods of time. So if I take this view that the liquidity among the the choices of node level choices and representation are sort of two dimensions, and then accountability is the third, the absolute opposite corner of that is you can install very lightweight mechanisms to really amplify, I guess, so MolicDAO, you know, which is constituents constituent to the endeavor in its totality. Right? Now that's that's a game changer. If I can change my representative at any time, which there you can certainly code that up. Well, that's a liquidity of choice that went from, you know, I had one day to go vote out of every four years to every twelve seconds. I can change my mind on a block, you know, on an on the Ethereum blockchain. And then perfect transparent accountability, again, the the lightest corner of that three-dimensional box of of, you know, democratic choice. So in terms of the the, you know, the individual and the the mechanized agent that can do these things in a neutral way, we have had a I would argue across multiple dimensions and 99%, efficacy increase, in the span of five years now. And so we're starting to see, you know, kind of that speed of of mechanized governors taking over, and the outcomes have been, you know, terrifying and hilarious. You know, the fact that spreadsheet errors have caused million dollar, you know, errors in in actual fund distribution, things like that. You know, we're we're kinda getting to the point of, yes, we can have a a neutral governor, but is it gonna behave and serve us well? Well, as a designer, you know, I hope so. As as a user, I'm trying to inspire people to recognize good design. Right? I I make this statement sometimes that you don't have to be a good designer to recognize good design. So you don't have to be a democratic designer to recognize good democracy. At least that's kinda double tap on your statement that that having neutrality is the name of the game. And, also, I I would just kinda this is a concept that I would add in there. Really, I would challenge the concept of of governance in a democratic sense and and to think about it in a mechanical sense. A governor in a mechanical system provides balance. That's that's about it. Right? You know, a throttle or something like that. It it governs the amount of something going in, and that can go out of control. And this is a, you know, token engineering concept in terms of does it spiral out of control or does it find balance? There's really those are really the only the two options in a governing sense. So, yeah, it's neutrality kind of is the name of the game towards, I think, a more free and fair systems across the board.

I suppose I could. Well, dynamic representation, I think, as I as I've discussed with you in our private conversation, I think solves some of the problems, whether it's liquid democracy or another form of dynamic representation. But I just don't like DAOs. The whole idea of of cooperating based on ownership where people have shares based on on their loan ownership level, I think is a terrible way to do things, I'm pretty much coming to discover. So I'm much more interested in DAOs or in distributed autonomous organizations that, there is much more, parity all around and you can't buy in or buy out at any time, but you're admitted by a group. And then once you're part of the group, there's, you know, democratic processes as to if you, for some reason, need to be removed from the group. But, yeah, I I just don't think buy ins and democracy work very well together. Whether it's shareholders, you know, for or, you know, the new version of of DAO owners. So the other thing yeah. I I guess that's all I gotta say, really.

I I I'll speak to it a little bit because I I I feel the frustration or or how do I put this? The DAO model fails more than it succeeds. I think the business model fails more than it succeeds. And I think that this tends to happen for a lot of reasons, but the the accumulation of resource control is problematic if that accumulation ends up in a place where it's it's not ideal for the constituency of the, you know, the resource applied. So as you as you said, Dows, right, with the distributed model, this this and and brought up the stock model is is basically the same. Like, DeFi one point o is the stock model on a blockchain.

I mean, capitalism sucks. That's what I'm saying. Capital we need to decapitalize the entire economy and not be reliant on capital to move forward with anything we wanna do. We need to be able to, in the moment, use our social networks to acquire the resources to move forward on projects dynamically rather than, you know, having them financed upfront and then having, you know, big long elaborate, you know, automated processes that may not be even be doing what we want to have happen in the first place because they're nonresponsive.

I I think, I I would I would take it maybe as a conceptual exercise. I like I agree with you. Like maybe I'm in violent agreement on some things, but like I think that I challenge the idea of what is capital because in a capital sense as we think of it, it's a facilitation mechanism to create a a balancing market between absolutely anything that and everything that can be produced or serviced in the, you know, in a geographic region. I think in a in a, you know, crypto sense, we can mash those things up with more nuance and and more effectively. So it's you effectively kinda get to a place where cooperation is the point of capital. And at that point, what is capital besides just an idea of cooperation, which is what crypto kinda gets you to. And I think you have to prove out the mechanism, though. And and that's really kinda money is better than than coming up with node level agreements right now for most things. You know, having a base layer of we all agree that this is kind of the thing. The platform is the thing, you know, on Ethereum. The platform is the thing on Bitcoin. I would argue that the the thing in a governance sense is land, you know, resources, like land and resource management.

then really kinda violence is one way to say it, but the ability to control those things. So what are we controlling? How are we controlling it? And I think if your your backstop is, you know, that sort of bad things happen, You know, that's sort of one system of governance, but I think that is always gonna be kind of the the fallback is sort of the the natural order of things, which gets me to a place of and anything is democracy if you're brave enough. Right? Two people can overpower one, typically, which is why 50% plus one is the way of of governance in a social sense. Right? We we draw from the natural world to come to these Well, that's right. I don't

I don't like the definition of democracy. My definition of democracy is only is a positive definition only, which is to say that democracy is a system that treats each individual human as a necessary intelligence.

Yeah. I would agree.

No. I like that. I think there's a there's a model for humanity inside of every human, and I think that's the point of democracy is to respect that.

About this question, it is it is already answered because it's kind of obvious that the trades the trade routes, people exchanging ideas. We are exchanging ideas in this in this beautiful Zoom room. I actually have another question which is I would say it's a little bit controversial because I am aware that in certain places in Europe, there is a rise of these parties and other parties' nationalism. And I see the from the history that we may converge into the authoritarian regimes, dictatorships, and next Hitler's. And I'm actually thinking maybe we actually need some dictatorship with a safeguarding measures. We need a strong leadership. We need a new unifying narrative, and I mean strong leadership with a certain safeguards. So I'm just thinking, is there any system beyond democracy, something which is fit for purpose for the current time of climate change, exponential AI, all these, you know, challenges of the modern world. Like, a next phase of democracy.

I I think what what you described sounds attractive in the sense that having having a strong vision, like, having a, you know, strong leadership in that sense of, you know, this is a, this is b, and this is how we're gonna go there is appealing. I think what what is also really appealing though and becomes necessary is that ability to pull back and say, no. This this isn't the way for me. Right? And I think, ultimately, that's kinda where democracy needs to get us to is a point where I can vote my interests without thinking about everything out here. I just need to be able to say at every step, is it good for me? And I think Steve typed this in the chat, but strong leadership paired with veto at every level. So really liquidity of representation, that's the other side of, you know, the veto ability of representation. So to say, yeah. I want an autocratic leader that's gonna take us to the promised land. What is the promised land? You know? How are you gonna get us there? And am I gonna be happy every step of the way? And that's why at the beginning, I typed just that definition of, like, for me personally, good governance, a peaceful conversation through time. Because, again, it's it's very easy to say, you know, we're here. We'd like to be here. You know, let's white knuckle it. But I think that through time is is really the tricky part. And to your point of, like, is there a form of like, is there something better than democracy? Sure. But I think the devil's in the details. Like, we can adjust parameters to get from a to b. But a parameter would be, let's delegate all of our, you know, all of our our power to one person for a period of time. But if if the constituency isn't deciding to do that, it's just gonna you know, they're they're not gonna wanna do it. So maybe factions fractures down. It it's tough. You end up in this. I think you can't live outside of democracy. I just that's my kind of personal view of the system. I think everything is democracy with constraint. That's kinda my that's my view of it.

I'm aware of it, but, like, fractionalized ownership of of land.

Yeah. I don't I don't think I have too much more to too much more to add there. I think it's a it's a it sounds like a an interesting case, but I think it could if you would could you frame that I I know there was a question in it towards the end. Ingrid, if you wouldn't mind just reframing it, I'd love to hit it.

No. Sorry. I I couldn't keep my eyes on the chat. It was moving a little quick. But the the the question you asked in the end about kind of the post post capitalistic, I think, was the the wording?

I I think it gets to almost anything, and this is, I I think, yes, real estate becomes an important aspect. I think time, like the what we can what we can kinda contribute in a set amount of time becomes important. It's like I think credit systems in the future might be a bit more direct based on what we can produce and less involve less time in the future. Like, we can borrow against, like, future value in a way right now that's awesome within our sort of geographic places. But I think that in terms of, like, what that means is tricky because let let's say, for example, I take out how do I put this? Like, I can take out there are people I know that can take out a thirty year mortgage, which statistically have no chance of making it to the end of thirty years. Some countries allow this, some countries don't. You know, things like that. So I I think if you can take the value of real estate and, you know, make it something else, like MakerDAO is doing this. Places are actually taking the the value and then saying, okay. It's you know, this is ours now, and what does that mean? What can I abstract away from ownership of this asset that isn't, quote, unquote, money? Right? No. That's maybe a bad example because with MakerDAO, it is money. But they're trying to win

Okay. Yeah. I I guess I I struggle to get to a different place kinda from one to it's it's not my domain of expertise. I'll I'll leave it at that. I think expressing the value of of things kinda as as other things gets interesting, gets into composability, things like that. Right. In terms of, like, I I I do I think the point is more it it always comes back to, for me, like, the humans managing the thing, and then what can what's the utility of the thing. Whereas I think my my domain has kinda shifted to, like, what's the utility of the human and how to, you know and the sovereignty of the human and how to take keep that balance and progress that through time.

Thank you, everyone. This has been incredible. Thanks for coming. This is really great and they're really great questions.