<aside> ➡️ I’m not really sure why this is in our notion. Seems to be something Jordan Hall was writing. — @Joe Edelman

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We have reached a long awaited point in the unfolding evolution of the Bitcoin/blockchain/crypto/Web3 (“Web3”) ecosystem: the DAO moment.

In its simplest form, the DAO moment is the point at which the Web3 ecosystem turns its full attention on the problem space sometimes known as “governance” or “coordination.” More esoterically, it is the moment when the evolution of Web3 shifts from an unconscious, game theoretic, causal, “biological” process to a conscious evolutionary process.

The timing of this moment is fortunate as we (humanity as a whole) are currently beset by a pantheon of “wicked problems.” Problems like ecosystem collapse, the accelerating breakdown of social and political coherence, and the event horizon of exponential technology. These are “wicked” both because they represent world-historical risk (i.e., they are very important) and because they are strictly insoluble using our current “problem solving” toolkit (i.e., are very bad news).

Go here for more information on the legacy toolkit and its limitations.

Our social tools have been combined and refined over the centuries to help humans address our problems (and, of course, to create entirely new ones). But we are now reaching the limit of their possibility. Try as we might, we cannot take responsibility for ourselves, come into right relationship with our technology and occupy our proper position as “custodial species” of the whole of the natural world using our current toolkit. If we are to navigate the 21st Century in any orderly fashion, we need to find a new tool. It is possible that DAOs are the solution.

Possible, but by no means certain. Despite the enormous success of primordial DAOs like Bitcoin and Ethereum (yes, these are DAOs) and the explosion of DAO related activity in the past year, we are still in the stone knives and bearskin phase. There is much work to be done and little time. This is why we have chosen to convene the DAO One Gathering.

There are two principal challenges facing the emerging DAO space:

1. That we simply fail to land the potential. This is a rather hard thing we are trying to do, it will involve innovation along a number of previously unrelated fronts: technology, economics, ecology, design, psychology, spirituality and others. We are going to need to synthesize, integrate and collaborate at a whole new level.

2. That we succeed in creating a new tool, but do so in a fashion that is (still) unconscious. Those who fear that the Web3 might become a runaway form of “digital hypercapitalism” are not wrong in their concerns. We are going to need to carefully steward the emergence of a conscious DAOism that holds the meaning and proper purpose of the “Web3 ecosystem” as in service to humanity and the natural world.

Now is the time to become Promethean. To refine the essence of all that we have learned and hoped for and combine this in a crucible of conscious intent. In a word, to become DAO Alchemists. As the chill of “crypto winter” begins to descend upon us, the season for “going inward” comes again. As winter kills off the parasites and quiets the frenzy, we begin what might be the final and most important phase of this evolutionary journey. The moment when Web3 becomes consciously self-governing in service of the whole.

The theme of this initial gathering is Pubic goods DAOs and Information commons.

There are currently an abundance of DAO projects targeting the problem of public goods. These roughly fit into two broad categories:

1. DAOs seeking to understand how to provision public goods in the context of the Web3 ecosystem. Akin to the open source software and wiki movements, they perceive the power and need for shared “information commons” (including know-how, tools, communities, etc.) to further the common interests of the larger ecosystem.

2. DAOs seeking to apply the emerging capacities of Web3 to real world public goods. These target challenges like rebalancing atmospheric carbon, removing plastics and microplastics from water, soil regeneration, ameliorating refugee crises, innovating adaptive educational models and much more.

To these, we would add a third.

3. A “third loop” meta-commons that takes the technique, technology and virtue of the first two as its object. This effort seeks to recursively refine and upgrade the “information commons” that supports our collective capacity to design and steward DAOs in service to the whole. Properly designed, this meta-commons should bring both synergy and wholeness to the ecosystem of DAOs focused on particular problem domains, creating an “expanding sphere” of capacity that meets the needs of our time.

We have observed that there are already a very large number of general challenges being considered by the DAO ecosystem. These include: