DAOs Unmasked: The Hard Truths Behind the Hype

In this talk we will see what a DAO is, what its not and face some hard truths about DAOs and how they are used today. Does a DAO stand for Discord Administered Organization? Is a DAO just a discord chat and a multisig? Is a DAO a way for your company to have 2 cap tables, one for your and your investors and one for your community? Are DAOs a face for a Cayman Islands foundation which uses decentralization theater to shift liability? Are DAOs a way to sidestep regulations? Let's find out!

Cultivating the Understory : Building Resilient DAOs

Let's explore the overlooked "understory" of DAOs and teams: the human layer that forms the foundation of successful decentralized governance. While much attention is given to the technical and structural aspects of DAOs (the "overstory"), we'll dive into the cultural, social, and distributed leadership elements that are crucial for the longevity and effectiveness of anything we build. Themes: DAO Ecology, Decentralized leadership, Coding culture DNA, Biomimicry for Governance

Common Knowledge Machines

Common knowledge is a precondition for collective action. Yet, increasing polarization in information ecosystems risks undermining common knowledge formation. This talk introduces Community Posts, a mechanism that leverages diversification and zero-knowledge proofs to help people identify divides, bridge them and find common ground, fostering greater common knowledge in social networks.

Agreement Making in Solidity: A Legal Perspective

Bill Marino of Cornell Tech presents on Agreement Making in Solidity: A Legal Perspective.

Onchain Capital Allocation: From current mechanisms to future possbilities

Capital allocation, from paying bills to complex organizational funding, often suffers from inefficiencies and lack of transparency. Web3 has the potential to revolutionize this by enabling more efficient, effective, and transparent capital distribution. By addressing coordination failures and introducing new onchain strategies, crypto could transform how society allocates resources. Gitcoin founder Kevin Owocki will articulate this design space in this 20 minute talk.

Trust Zones: Why DAOs will be the best organizations ever created

This talk introduces the theory of Trust Zones. Every Trust Zone is a unique blend of constraints, reputation requirements, and accountability measures, within which an agent can operate on behalf of an organization to further its goals. I will contend that the operational management of all organizations can be described as creating new Trust Zones and adjusting their parameters. And further, that DAOs and other onchain organizations can do this better than any other organizational form.

You know what’s going to get us from web2 to web3? Therapy

2024 has been about thinking how we avoid recreating the same systems just "over here". And it has to start with our intentions and our ability to make decisions from a better place vs continuing to be influenced by scarcity mindsets, disregulated nervous systems and a burntout collective. I delve deeper into this here https://pop.mirror.xyz/JoTHH4cSRw967mphJqur6hWS6vQx0q89ee0WnO1o63g

Road to Effective Public Goods Funding through Quantitative Cross-Comparative Analysis of Grants Programs

I aim to achieve effective public goods funding by comparing grants models. Grants programs are key in the crypto ecosystem, but comparative studies are rare. Our study compares Uniswap, dYdX, Optimism, Gitcoin, and more, categorizing them into "top-down," "bottom-up," and "QF (algorithmic)" types. Findings suggest bottom-up and QF types distribute funds more evenly with smaller variability and grant amounts, while top-down types show greater variability with larger grants for fewer grantees.

DAOs and BORGs: blending the best trust-minimization techniques of the onchain and offchain worlds

In his talk, Gabriel will give an overview of the legal challenges faced by DAOs and how ‘making DAOs modular’ with specialized legal wrappers and smart contracts known as ‘cybernetic orgs” (BORGs) can solve these problems. The talk will tie the evolution of DAOs to the modular revolution in blockchain infrastructure and a detailed walk-through of how modified Gnosis SAFEs can be combined with legal entity bylaws to blend the best trust-minimization techniques of the onchain and offchain worlds.

Dark DAOs and Private Coordination

Dark DAOs allow for undetectable private coordination and are feasible to launch in Ethereum today. In this talk, I will introduce Dark DAOs, highlight applications that should be aware of their possibility, and point to the ways they can be harnessed as mechanisms for both prosocial and antisocial coordination. I will also discuss how the encumbrance of keys utilized by Dark DAOs can generalize. I will introduce Proofs of Complete Knowledge as an available countermeasure.