DAOs: artificial intelligence and virtual states, or new forms of organizations (part 2)

DAOs: artificial intelligence and virtual states, or new forms of organizations (part 2)

In the first part of the article, we introduced the concept of DAO and how autonomous intelligent companies could become part of our lives in the future. In this section, we will take a look at the self-organizing world and we will also cover the concept of virtual states. As a starting point, let’s look at how an organization like this can be born.

Facebook as a DAO

In my previous article about ICO, I’ve shown on Facebook’s example how it would have been if the company tried to collect capital by a blockchain solution. Now I would like to go forward in this example. More specifically, I would like to show the fictional history of this: how could a Facebook-like company operate as a DAO.

Imagine that someone (let’s call him Matthew, just because the name of Mark is already taken) dreams about a new kind of social networking site. Something like Facebook, but the owners are not big capitalist companies but the end-users. Matthew is a good designer and sketches plans and concepts, but he doesn’t want to take such a big project. More people need. He creates a project in the “open, self-organizing organizations” section of the ENVIENTA Platform, which gets advertised through traditional channels with its potential. More and more people like Matthew’s project and they join him. There are people whom just want to observe, some them are UX experts, and there are a bunch of programmers too. So they have a team and a concept. To develop everything is a lot of work and they need to find some financial resources for the team and for the project.

They raise a crowdfunding campaign as an option, but it ends unsuccessfully, so they decide on the ICO. Preparing an ICO is also a big amount of work. The members are decided to create tokens before the ICO, and everybody will be paid at the end at a selling rate. Tokens can be used for advertising in the future (as described in the ICO article). They creating a token on ENVIENTA platform with a few clicks and after successful preparation the ICO will be successful too. The future users of the community portal will get the necessary amount. Project owners are fulfilling their promise which was described during the ICO and they are creating a DAO, where a kind of liquid democracy works, and each token has 1 vote.

A new entity, Facebook DAO, is created, which at the time of its birth is already a kind of community-based incorporation where users are shareholders. Their decisions shape the development and operation of the portal and they also benefit from any revenue generated by it. Some of them are selling their tokens while others buying more of them. The mass of people behind the company may be replaced several times, but the company as an entity, and as a sort of collective intelligence will remain constant. Of course, we can say that such a structure is actually only a joint stock company, but the entity itself is more than that. Such a grouping is not bound by rules and does not hinder laws in development. It has a size of a startup, it can start its life with thousands of owners and they can enforce rules in the smart contracts, like preventing anyone from gaining majority ownership. We may call this structure a community enterprise, or what I personally like best: collective super intelligence.

There could be rules which allow the company to divide under certain conditions (such as The DAO) or forming/supporting child companies. The possibilities are limited only by our imagination. This type of bottom-up (the users are the owners) entities with decentralized and democratic structures differ from the hierarchical structure of traditional companies, and their operation can be much more efficient. Although the idea of ​​DAO companies may seem to many to be weird, there may be much more extreme DAO forms. For example, virtual states…

State as DAO

If we have to imagine a country, we are thinking of a well-defined land, though this kind of geographic definition is getting more and more obsolete. Thanks to modern technology and globalization, distances are less and less important. Imagine 3 cities in 3 different countries, which are connected through a Hyperloop train. From one city to an another, takes only 20 minutes of travel. These cities are sharing the same laws, using the same money, speaking the same language, they belong to a central management and maintain a common infrastructure. Under these conditions, these three cities would really be able to operate as a single country.

The only oddity is the designation of borders and the area is not continuous. I just want to point out that a state is now much more economical than a geographical definition. His laws and economics bring the state together. In some ways, the state is like a company. Each member of the company has 1 vote, and at some intervals, they elect a board that decides on the budget. The state also has wealth and they spend on what their citizens are producing. It has revenues, expenses, etc. So why would not a DAO could represent a complete state? The virtual state may have its own currency, which is accepted by the citizens/members, may have its own laws and management. It could have its own automated tax system, which automatically deducts the tax from all financial transactions, and can be the source of unconditional basic income to its citizens. It is like an autonomous, self-sustaining community which separated from all regular environment, and the members living far away from each other.

Thanks to the development of VR, telecoms, and communication technologies, these virtual states could have virtual environments where people living in the distance can meet and communicate with each another. Although the virtual space does not necessarily have to be part of a virtual state, though, it is perhaps easier to accept the concept of the virtual state. This thing is not so unrealistic: there is a BitNation initiative, which was designed to build such virtual states on the Ethereum blockchain. As they say, they want to change forced citizenship with the concept of elected citizenship.

And what about ENVIENTA?

An important component of ENVIENTA’s holistic approach and strategy is the exploration and dissemination of these new economic models. As there are open source software and hardware, there can be open social and economic models also, thanks to modern technology (especially blockchains and smart contracts), which can spread quickly to replace traditional systems.

We do not have to wait for, for example, while the country where we live is introducing the basic income. It is enough to be a part of a virtual state where it has already been implemented. And we can get there while we do not have to leave our home. But just like the open source hardware development, such a structure may be beneficial, where hardware developers, manufacturers, and users are grouped into a DAO, managing it together excluding any intermediate actor from the process.

As today’s largest taxi company (Uber) does not have taxis, the largest accommodation network (Airbnb) does not have any real estate, perhaps the largest hardware manufacturers in the future will not have any manufacturing capacity. These types of companies, communities, or virtual states will spread all over the world as a virus in the future and can take drastic changes in a short time.

We, therefore, believe that these new, democratic, decentralized economic models could play a key role in achieving our goals, so we can help spread them through all possible means, education, counseling and platform technology. We believe in these models so that in the long run ENVIENTA itself can become a public limited company. To achieve that, we would like to ask your support during our ICO.