Original Author: Tang Han

Original source:The SeeDAO

Many organizations have begun to operate in the manner of DAO, but more people are skeptical: Is this organizational structure possible for a long time? Is it economically sustainable? Is it possible for an inefficient and highly liquid DAO to replace the corporate system?

In the face of these doubts, I try to explain from another perspective—emergence—why DAO is bound to rise and become the most important organizational system in the next era.

Efficiency of what?

Efficiency always has a premise, and that is purpose.An efficient world should allow everyone to reach their goals and realize their true desires, rather than living in all sorts of inversions. Many people praise the efficiency of the corporate system, often in terms of its collaboration to realize a large project. For example: Apples production line. However, if we ask a more profound question: Does this system allow individuals within the system to realize their true wishes? Does it really help people live happily? The answer is often no. People living in modern corporate systems are often miserable. Needless to say, it is normal to engage in things that have nothing to do with your real interests in order to support your family; the bad thing is that the modern company system has split the production process to an extremely detailed level, making each participant a certain Operator on an industrial assembly line. This is true whether it is a worker in a factory, a front-end programmer, or a new media typewriter. Peoples positions are fixed in positions that can be abandoned as a whole at any time. In such a system, it is difficult for employees who are screws to have any choice or to gain a strong sense of accomplishment. Their task is to keep this assembly line running without errors, not to bloom themselves.

Image by Ern Gan on Unsplash

Even for such an assembly line system, strong self-blooming often means trouble. Even if an individuals self-blooming may bring benefits to the company in the short term, it also indicates the irreplaceability of the individual and the fragility of the system. An individuals departure may cause the system to collapse overnight, so precautions must be taken. The various games played by capital are painful, and the examples here (such as Li Ziqi) are unforgettable. ——In short, this is not a system that inherently amplifies individual potential and encourages everyone to emerge, and often suppresses individuals, requiring people to sacrifice for a collective goal (basically the goal of money).

The company has created an antagonism between bosses and employees, which is usually associated with another word, which is exploitation. In this system, employees are responsible for their work at all levels. Even the most enlightened person, if his position is placed in the position of the boss, he has to be profit-oriented and rely on layers of management to arrange the operation of the company.

Take me as an example: SeeDAO was formerly a company called CryptoC, and I am the boss of this company. First of all, the employees of this company are basically collected from outstanding members found in the community; second, I try to use a democratic way like DAO to allow employees to express their opinions on the companys development, and everyone can even face me directly in the company. Group bashing. However, when SeeDAO was born, I still found intense conflicts between DAO members and company employees.

No matter how democratic the company is, the first thought of the employees who run the DAO is to be responsible to the boss and implement upward management - because their work is provided by the boss and they get money from the boss; instead of thinking from the standpoint of the community like community members question. A cruel thing is in front of everyone: the company is a company after all, not a DAO; the boss is the boss after all, no matter how enlightened the boss is, he is the one who controls the life and death of employees (including salary increase and decrease, whether they are still in the company) people. It’s really hard for employees to be friends with their boss.

The company cannot use money to vote for everyone to make decisions, and it cannot let employees vote on whether to leave or stay employees. In this framework, so-called democracy is limited and even hypocritical. Another interesting thing happened during the operation of SeeDAO by CryptoC: In February 2023, some members of the SeeDAO community were more capable than the companys employees. appeal, slamming the CryptoC company itself and demanding reforms to the community. In this matter, when Baiyu and I choose to side with community members, company employees will feel aggrieved and confused in turn. Who do you think youre relying on? Employees in the company or members of the community? In their view, employees who take money directly from me to do things are obviously more reliable than high-fluctuation and lack of loyalty community members-no company Employees, my ideas and orders cannot be implemented; and if there is no certain community member, I can always attract the next group through activities. Im surprised at what they think. This incident made me reflect on relationships controlled by money, the evils of centralization and true efficiency.

In February 2023, I have witnessed firsthand the efficiency of the emergence of SeeDAO community members. I feel the passion for doing things among community members who truly recognize the value of their lives in the community. This is very different from the employees who work in the company and manage upwards at the same time, thinking about how to get more money and benefits from their bosses every day. difference. In the company, it was painful for me to be the boss, and it was painful for the employees to be employees. The final solution to this matter ended with me disbanding the CryptoC company, transferring all financing funds to the SeeDAO treasury, and starting comprehensive DAO governance. I can finally stop being the boss, and the flow of money can be discussed publicly and gain legitimacy in the community. People need to be responsible to the community instead of me. This is the most fortunate thing for me at the moment. If not, with the funds SeeDAO will raise in 2022, it will be impossible to survive this long bear market. But thats another story.

Go ahead and talk about corporations. The biggest evil of the corporate system in terms of efficiency is the waste of people. Peoples impression of the company is that it exchanges labor for money, a simple money exchange relationship and a control-slavery relationship of I give you my life and you give me money. Its impossible to work part-time, Lie flat theory, 996 anti-oppression theory, Going to work to catch fish and whoring capitalists all should prove the fact that work in modern companies is generally painful and has a forced nature. , is reluctant. If possible, people actually dont want to live like this at all.

In my opinion, then, the corporate system is inefficient in achieving the ultimate social goal of creating a happy and meaningful society.The company system was originally a means to solve peoples basic living problems. After ensuring the basic material supply of the society, we should return to the real purpose - happiness (which obviously includes caring for others), but now the company system The purpose is to increase the value of capital, but it has exceeded the ultimate goal. The pursuit of endless money, in turn, has become a spell that hypnotizes the human mind, and even if it requires us to trample, cheat, and kill others (these are all directions that are farther and farther away from happiness), people will do it. But this curse is not real after all, and the ubiquitous pain in society—anxiety, hopelessness, sense of meaninglessness, distortion, depression, etc., remind us of this.

also,The corporate system is also inefficient for most people when it comes to achieving the ultimate personal goal of discovering and becoming themselves.The corporate system often obscures us, distorts us, disciplines us, and inhibits us. Each of us has our own Tao in our hearts, our own true face and life mission, but these things have become worthless in front of the company. A poet is turned into a clerk or a salesperson, a person who likes to stay with his family has to endure endless business trips, and a programmer who likes to make games is squeezed by 996 jobs that destroy the body. ——People have no choice and cannot develop their own inner path, causing their souls to die in depression in the depths, or to mourn every day.

The army of unemployment and the army of depression

Just because people don’t want to work in an assembly-line company doesn’t mean they don’t want to work. Different from other animals, simple eating, drinking and lazing cannot satisfy human beings. People who have mastered language and tools live in one incident after another. In the process of knowing and understanding the world, human beings naturally have the impulse and willingness to create and act . Some people call it labor, practice and creation. Let me just call it work for the time being.

Appreciating a song, writing a poem, making a chair, treating a patient, loving someone... these are all compositions. People complete their socialization by participating in one event after another, establish connections with others, and find their own position and meaning in society. If zuo is completely removed, it may be difficult for us to imagine what human life is, or even what human beings are.

However, under the capitalist system, the direction of making is money, and its cell unit is the company. The development of capitalism has brought about an increasing gap between rich and poor, and capital is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people. The more capital is in the hands of a few, the less sufficient the majority will be for consumption. If consumption power is insufficient, economic growth will slow down, market competition will become more intense, and the involution between companies will become more brutal. This involution is transmitted within the company, resulting in layoffs and involution among employees.

The ranks of the unemployed are growing day by day. This is increasingly evident in the wake of Covid-19. Regarding this topic, there was a video on site B that went viral overnight. It told the story of a masters degree student from Communication University of China and a college student from Central China Normal University who saved 3,000 yuan in five years after graduation and are now working as cleaners in a hot pot restaurant. There is a Light Manual Workers Group on Douban. A group of college graduates gathered in this group, claiming that they no longer wanted to engage in any involutional mental work, but were willing to engage in light physical labor such as cleaning to relieve their mental and physical pain. (Because you can see the results of your work immediately with light physical labor, you don’t need to think about complicated things, and you can also exercise your cervical spine.)

According to data released by the Chinese government on July 17, the unemployment rate among young people aged 16 to 24 in China was 21.3% in June this year. One in every five young people has nothing to do, but the actual number may be higher. China is not an exception. Nowadays, capitalism has swept the world, and the economies of all countries are integrated. As I travel around the world, I see that high unemployment has become a global crisis - unemployed youth around the world see no way out.

Along with the army of unemployment comes a terrifying army of depression. Today, when technology is so developed and higher education is so popular, what is difficult for young people to accept is that after studying hard for more than ten years in a cold window, the final outcome is to go home and grow old. During the epidemic in Shanghai, I found that when people still had savings, the biggest anxiety that unemployment brought to people was not that they had no money to survive, but that they were disconnected from society. Losing the opportunity to work, professional skills and social relationships are slowly wasted in unemployment, making people who originally lived on a normal track lose confidence in themselves. This low self-esteem in turn triggers peoples anxiety about the future, which turns into insomnia and depression. I realized that while monetary rewards are important, work is about much more than money. Work is about human dignity and how people view themselves and society.

In fact, the time when SeeDAO expanded the fastest was when Shanghai was closed due to the epidemic. At that time, many practitioners in the Internet industry fell into a state of unemployment, and the offers of college students were also rejected. At that time, it was still a bull market in the Web3 industry. Everyone regarded entering the Web3 industry as an attractive job option, but they couldnt find a good learning community. It just so happened that SeeDAO acted as the first stop for a large number of people Onboarding into Web3 at this time, where everyone taught each other, made friends, and discussed. I was very touched that everyone also discussed the difficulties in their own lives, and even talked about their own depression. Its hard for me to imagine these scenarios happening in a company. One thing that puzzles me is that these people are so good, they have hands and feet, they have the enthusiasm and ability to work, and they also have the heart to help others, but why are they thrown out of social collaboration?

This is an era of crisis for capitalism, and we are living in a wave of systemic unemployment. Previously, the unemployment rate might have been 3%, and we could turn a blind eye to those 3% and consider them to be social losers. However, when this ratio expands to 10% or even 20%, and even we ourselves become one of these people, how should we treat these people and the corporate system?

We might as well put this crisis in the context of an era of technological leaps. Some people, such as OpenAI founder Sam, believe that when more and more intelligent AI is put into the market, human jobs will be eliminated in large numbers. He advocates issuing UBI to people to solve the living problems of the unemployed army.

But I think just issuing UBI is not enough. As demonstrated above, the meaning of work is not only about money, we also face the danger of losing social cooperation, disconnection from society, and self-realization. There are not no creatures that receive UBI. Human pets are eating the rations we buy for them every day; one day, humans may be able to take drugs while receiving UBI every day, or stay alone in a small room for the rest of their lives. But it was a miserable life.

Humans need to do; we can’t just let corporations be the primary way in which doing happens. We need an organization designed for humans that can restore peoples social connections, encourage everyone to work together socially, and find self-worth in collaboration. Now the time has come.

organization for people

I have a rant:The assembly line is not a production process designed for people at all, and the pyramid-style company system modeled after the assembly line is not an organizational system designed for people.

Obviously, if our working environment is an assembly line, and the role of each assembly line is defined, and errors are required to be controlled as much as possible, then the efficiency of human workers is destined to be inferior to machines. Free will allows man to live by chance; even the most reliable man is inferior to a machine operating according to a predetermined program in the matter of accepting control and obeying orders. This is even more obvious in the era of rampant AI.

AI-driven robots are replacing workers in factories, and in my opinion this may not be a bad thing - because this is not what humans do and how they work. Maybe a few years later, when future generations look back at our history in the 20th and 21st centuries, they will turn around and lament how people were placed in an organizational system specifically designed for machines, leaving countless human souls Spend time here and operate for such a long time.

Let’s think about organizations designed for people. The difference from machines is that: first of all, people have a soul, and if they do something that goes against their conscience or ignore the demands of the soul for a long time, they will feel pain; secondly, humans are born with their own nature, and if they want to forcefully distort their nature, they will feel pain. To do something, such as asking a poet to become an assembly line worker, the resistance will be great and it will bring great loss of efficiency; thirdly, human beings are social animals and need to find their place in society through action. And demonstrate their own significance; finally, we should not forget that organizations designed for people should originally use people as a purpose, rather than blindly treating people as a tool to achieve other purposes.

From this point of view,Organizations designed for people need to take care of peoples social needs and self-exploration, and pay attention to the individuals experience in the organization, not just the final output.

Take the SeeDAO Translation Association as an example:

SeeDAO Translation Association is an organization composed of more than 200 translators with Web3 translation capabilities. It is also the largest Web3 translation organization in the Chinese-speaking world. After GPT-4 became popular, there was a discussion within the guild about whether human translation was still needed. Members who insist on results orientation believe that it is no longer necessary to provide point incentives for human translation, because the quality of machine translation has surpassed the level of many translators themselves, and emphasis should be placed on topic selection and proofreading; while some translators who like translation think that, The reason why everyone joins the translation guild is that they like translation and can learn Web3 related knowledge from translation. The latter said: A machine can translate an article for me, but the process of learning a certain concept through translating an article cannot be replaced!

If it is under a corporate system, I am afraid that the boss’s choice is to lay off translators and quickly search for good topic selection and proofreading editors to improve output efficiency. However, after the Translators Guild conducted results-oriented experiments for a period of time, they found that there were fewer and fewer active members and the efficiency was actually reduced. Gradually, everyone realized that everyone came to DAO not only to produce translated manuscripts like employees in the company, but also for their own growth and communication among peers. The value of the experience itself cannot be denied. Therefore, after voting, the Translation Association returned to manual translation and paid attention to the communication route between translators.

Organizations designed for humans should focus on human connection and belonging, and concern matters of the human heart. We are in an era of great material abundance, but our spiritual situation is worse than that of the ancients who had underdeveloped material conditions. We were crushed into atoms, without the care of the clan, the relationship between parents was thin, and the relationship between master and apprentice was almost broken. We wander in one company after another for money, there is no stable place for our minds, and our inner Tao cannot be displayed. We live in other peoples hell, abhor getting too close to others, and have a deep sense of who we are. The only thing that makes us feel safe is the money in our hands; what makes us feel happiness or confidence is often consumption and sensual satisfaction. We live in systems that have been rigorously transformed by technology one after another: the companys DingTalk, the citys health code, the electronic high-speed rail system that Lao Lai cant ride... Human behavior is stipulated as some kind of quantifiable data Format, normal finally has a data standard...

When our children and grandchildren look back a few years later, they must also feel very strange: Why do we have to transform people into machines (brain-computer interface, cyborg) after we have designed a system specially prepared for machines. But we are born as humans!

In this context, freedom becomes highly questionable and nihilistic. Because we are emasculating the mind all the time and trying to exclude the mind as a bug and virus that threatens the stability of the system. We have finally accomplished an inversion of man and his meaning. ——Humans are no longer the meaning of the system; allowing such a system designed for machines to survive has become the meaning of the system.

I recently saw a piece of news that said that a hospital in Shanghai launched a brain-computer interface therapy for depression patients. The method is to place a device in the patients brain that applies current to the nerves. This device can be controlled by a mobile phone . When the patient chooses to turn on the mobile phone, the nerves are stimulated by the electric current, and the patient walks out of depression and does not want to die-of course, they also know that this is not real happiness. This thing is like a microcosm of the real world. Today, when there are so many unemployed and depressed armies, we cannot solve the problem of the capitalist system-even though this system is the root cause of mass depression, but can only solve the problem of suicide by stimulating individual nerves. This is the horror of reality.

Calling for a system for people and setting out to create such a system will be the mission of our generation. And such a system has a name - DAO (decentralized self-organization); interestingly, its English abbreviation is the pinyin of Dao advocated by Lao Tzu. Id love to connect the two, even mix them up. I am happy to say that a DAO that cannot help members of the organization better express their inner path and freedom is not a real DAO. ——At most, it’s just a corporate freak embedded in the blockchain technology related to DAO.

emerging power

Consider the commonalities between several things (which I enjoy observing):

• waves of the sea

• swirl

• big tree in the clouds

• man after meditation

What they have in common is emergence.

Image by James Wainscoat on Unsplash

To understand a system built for humans is to understand how we are different from machines, and to talk about emerging forces.

Man comes from nature. Nature has life, energy, and the ability to heal itself. One thing has always surprised me: why a tree can grow by itself after its branches and leaves are broken; while a man-made overpass, when a certain bridge breaks, the bridge cannot grow back?

Some people would say that because the bridge is not yet smart. We can invent robots that can repair themselves. That way, when they get damaged, the robots can repair themselves and their hands can grow back.

But I dont think this has anything to do with intelligence. Because a fools hair falls out, these hairs can grow by themselves, this power is inherent in the fool; and the machines hand is broken, if it does not repair itself with externally produced parts, the new mechanical arm will not It will grow in vain. I can feel that life or the power of life comes from nature and has nothing to do with intelligence.

Our bodies come from nature. No matter how much we want to be a robot—or a cyborg, this will never change the fact that our original body comes from nature, and it inherits the life force in nature. Nature does possess a great power. Anything that comes from nature, such as a tree, a cat, an ant...even the sea, has some ability to grow and repair itself. This is something man-made things don’t have.

As natural creations, we do not exist in isolation. We live in some kind of wholeness or relationship. We have the earth beneath our feet and the stars above our heads. We smell the scent in the air and touch the reality where our bodies touch. Flowers and trees, birds, animals, insects and fish, parents and relatives, friends and lovers... We exist in the network of nature and society, and use our bodies to experience the matter of being alive. Meanings and feelings emerge in the process of living. If we could no longer emerge with meaning and feeling, we would become zombies.

The creation of nature is like a system that is connected to each other and constantly emerges. This is a description of life. When you cut off a corner of the emergence, it starts to emerge again from this corner and continues to grow. But if you destroy the whole system, the emergence stops—so, it dies. The death of the whole also foretells the death of the parts, just like after a person dies, our limbs and cells also die one after another.

In such a world, the relationship between man and other parts of the whole to which he belongs, as well as the whole that everyone constitutes, is not a relationship of ordering and being ordered, but a relationship of coexistence. This world is indeed uncertain, but it is not terrifying, because this uncertainty is precisely the result of the interaction of the rich elements in the system, just like the sea with countless water droplets is always surging. And it is precisely in the turbulence of the sea that a drop of water determines whether it is above or below the waves, in the center or the edge of the sea, on the east or south... Without the sea, these meanings rooted in the whole cannot be identified. Its all gone too.

In such a system, the efficiency of the organization and the value of the individual are one, because the value of the individual also emerges in the movement of co-existence - if there is a clear organization and individual distinguish words. But in fact, in such a world, individuals do not often feel that painful sense of separation from the system. He expresses himself in co-existence without seeking separation and separation from co-existence. Therefore, he will not pursue the kind of value that only considers himself. (Without co-presence, we actually cannot identify value.)

The difference is that in a company, this sense of separation will be very severe. Im just working for the boss. Im a human battery. Idiots are devoted to the company, and no one remembers me when the layoffs are finally laid off. Dont talk about feelings, just give money. Everyone Happiness is often built outside the company, such as a world of consumption: Its finally the weekend, where shall we go? Lets go buy the latest LV bags. So happy! I bought the latest idols Periphery! But consumption is also not a direct way to connect with people, it ends up leaving us empty. So separation is everywhere, and the pursuit of individuality is everywhere in separation, but this pursuit of individuality often makes us discover our own weakness, hypocrisy and nothingness. Because a personality that is out of presence, does not need to be connected, does not want to take responsibility for its life, and talks to itself is actually an intoxicating illusion.

We need to respect the power of emergence and value the feeling of being connected to the present in the process of emergence. Most of the time, this is a source of love and happiness. For example: a flash of inspiration in your mind; a person who suddenly appeared in your life but made you feel bright; mode of operation.

whirlpool

A vortex is an ongoing emergence that continuously involves participants and has a distinct center of energy.

DAO is a network, but a good DAO should be like a vital vortex. A company is often like a pyramid that rises layer by layer. A vital vortex means that the water droplets in the vortex have undergone a good chemical reaction and can continue to flow.

Image from NASA on Unsplash

The formation of an idea and the sincere will are very important, it is the center of the whirlpool. It is often related to the founder, but it does not necessarily need to tie the founder down. Once a vortex is formed, it can roll from one place to another, from one core character to another or even to a group of core characters. But the central force that forms the vortex must be very powerful. That energy continuously absorbs, involves, and internalizes external forces and maintains its own development.

People who are drawn into this vortex, of course, come because of that powerful force (such as the powerful charisma of the founder); more importantly, they can also discover and awaken their inner energy in the vortex. It is their constant awakening power that constitutes the vortex that continuously involves energy; those points where the inner energy explodes will gradually become the new vortex center. In SeeDAO, I have seen such a movement trajectory of the center of the vortex: first it was the initiator Tang Han, then another initiator Baiyu, then kc, Rebecca, coffee, then Shawn, and then Then Ricky...and maybe Frozen...

The center is always moving because energy in the center may burn out while energy elsewhere may rise. However, for those who have been involved in this whirlpool, their life status has indeed changed compared to before entering the whirlpool. This change is not the result of a top-down order from the company, but the interaction of different factors in the network. This change is more real than the corporate system because it directly points to the individual life status and meaning of the participants.

The corporate system is motivated by money and fueled by personal time. Its energy source lies in the continuous appreciation of capital. If capital cannot increase in value, this energy source will be cut off, and people will slowly disperse. But the energy source of the DAO is printed out of thin air to some extent. Its principle is that everyone has powerful energy, but it is not ignited in the right field. The role of DAO is to provide a field for its own energy to be ignited, just like putting a firewood into a fire, and under the right temperature and relationship, the firewood will also emit light.

A vortex can be small or very large. When more and more people join and these energies work well together, the vortex may become very large, and there may be many small vortices inside the large vortex. - Just like the Milky Way and the solar system, the solar system and the Earths satellite system. In fact, the status of SeeDAO is already like this (SeeDAO-Guild-Project in the Guild). I think this is the big difference between DAO and corporate system.

Once a vortex is formed, it is no longer under the control of the founder. -Anyone who attempts to control the vortex will fail. Wise founders can only try to predict the movement of the center of the vortex and influence it when the time is right. Compared to blindly advocating decentralization and shouting this slogan, I am more satisfied with the fact that the vortex cannot be controlled. This means that decentralization is no longer a utopian ideology, but a governance law that must be followed.

I thought of what Lao Tzu said in the Tao Te Ching: The best is like water. In the vortex of DAO, compliance is much more important than control.

I would like to use Bai Bookstore as an example to illustrate my understanding of whirlpools, which happens to be what I have experienced in the past month.

Around July this year, when the main members of SeeDAO were discussing the white paper in Chongqing, Baiyu suddenly proposed that if he did not do SeeDAO, he would open a bookstore. At the event site, Sun Zhe encouraged him to achieve his goal directly, to open the bookstore directly, and not to wait until SeeDAO succeeds. So, he began to encourage A-Dun to be the manager of his bookstore.

Before that, Atun had seen many independent bookstores in Chengdu, so Baiyu was very interested in Chengdu. Since I want to go to Mount Qingcheng to practice, I also want to go to Chengdu. In the end, Jialins friend changed the date temporarily, so he will have time to spare, and he can also go to Chengdu with us. So after the four of us left Chongqing, we traveled all the way west and made an appointment to Chengdu.

At this time, the bookstore was still nonsense, because Baiyu had no experience in opening a bookstore, and Ah Dou had not agreed to be the bookstore manager. But I was very curious about why Baiyu had always been obsessed with the bookstore, so I did a fortune telling for Baiyu in Qingyang Palace, and found that this bookstore occupied an important position in his life. So I changed my previous negative attitude and decided to push this matter forward. That evening, we met Yang Xi at Baiye Bookstore. She was also in the midst of a painful career change and wanted to open a bookstore. Yang Xi is an architect from Sichuan. If we find a store, she can be the architectural designer of the bookstore, or she can resign in December this year and become the manager of the bookstore. Her presence made the bookstore look more reliable.

That night, Jialin claimed the title of the bookstore cat, while Baiyu strengthened his confidence and wrote a white paper for the bookstore. We decided to name this bookstore Bai Du, and the English name is white paper. We were full of confidence in the bookstore this evening.

However, everyone was still confused about the location of the bookstore and the location of our accommodation. Bookstores came to a standstill. At this time, we remembered Yanzhen, whom we met in the mountains of Chongqing. She was a graduate student at Sichuan University and wanted to open a bookstore. We made an appointment with Yanzhen, and her participation directly helped us determine the location of the bookstore near Sichuan University. At the same time, we also confirmed that we would live together near Sichuan University. Yanzhen is studying Comparative Literature at Sichuan University and has two years left to graduate. He can be the manager of a bookstore.

Soon, Yang Xi roped in her musician friend in Chengdu, who also had a bookstore dream; Yan Zhen roped in her friend Chili Pepper; Yogurt, another member of SeeDAO, also joined in. The whole bookstore has become a bigger and bigger whirlpool: Baiyu, me, Adolf, Jialin, Yogurt, Yang Xi, Yanzhen, Chili Pepper...the bookstore’s location selection, architectural designer, construction supervisor, shit shovel officer, The manager, cultural and creative designers, and baristas gradually all found their way. The entire bookstore was launched in Chengdu faster than I imagined.

The whole process of launching a bookstore started with Baiyu making a wish, and with this wish attracting more and more people to join, I saw how a vortex was formed. This wish was originally Baiyus wish, but in fact it is also a common wish of everyone, and finally it was jointly built and implemented by everyone. The occurrence and development of DAO is roughly the same.

Generative theme, is because of making

The subjectivity of the participants is generated by participating in the movement of the vortex. There is no such identity: the company stipulates that you are a P 7-level employee of the company, you must report to the leader, you must please and align, and you must 996... In DAO, your subjectivity may be thin at first, Because you are on the edge of the vortex. However, when you are involved more and more deeply; or, you suddenly awaken your own power in the vortex and play a significant role in the direction of the vortex, then your subjectivity is suddenly strengthened, or suddenly Grow fast.

Remember, you are always living in a dynamic, changing network. No one can decide what will happen to the network next, but everyone’s participation will indeed change the status of the network in the next second. At this point, your identity is up to you. It is generated step by step through your personal choices and the overall movement of the network.

I would like to take Shawn, a member of SeeDAO, as an example to talk about my understanding of generative agents.

Shawn was drawn into SeeDAO by me around April 2022. At that time, he was already the KOL of the top DAO in the country, but he still started working for the SeeDAO Translation Association, translating and proofreading articles one by one, and later became the coordinating committee member of the Translation Association, and later became the editor-in-chief.

Shawn has gone through the process of SeeDAO changing from a semi-corporate and semi-DAO system to a full-scale DAO, which is also the process of Baiyu and I disbanding the company CryptoC. It was a very painful experience for me; and in the process, he stepped up and became one of the nine-person group that drafted the SeeDAO meta-rules. Together, we summarized the various mistakes and experiences of SeeDAO in its past operation, and determined the first version of SeeDAO meta-rules.

Subsequently, SeeDAO decided to set up an incubator parallel to the city hall, with me, Baiyu and Shawn as the leaders. The incubator plays an important role in SeeDAOs infrastructure and needs to handle and balance the entrepreneurial ideas of many SeeDAO core members and their relationship with SeeDAO. This kind of role has never been something Im capable of, but Shawn has always handled it very well.

I only met Shawn a few times in Dali. The time we spend together offline is also very limited. But every time at the important selection point of SeeDAO, Shawn played an important role. His work indeed generated his identity, or position in SeeDAO.

There are many people like Shawn in SeeDAO. From these people, I saw different selection curves. Im also very curious: Why do these people stand up and take responsibility when problems arise in an organization? Why do other people choose to do other things? We can fully see that even if everyone joins SeeDAO at the same starting point, as individuals choose to spend different time, behave differently, and work differently, their personal identities and roles also begin to differentiate and develop in SeeDAO. I think this is far more interesting than NFT projects like Azuki and BAYC, and more interesting than capital-driven DAOs like Nouns. In these NFT projects, the identity of members is determined by “buying” rather than “being” by “making”. In comparison, SeeDAO is more like a game (it can also be said that life is like a game), it provides gamers with a variety of choices, and each persons identity is constantly generated in these choices and actions.

Suppose you are a SeeDAO game player. After getting a game account, your identity will be generated in the game, and you can become what you want to be: designer; programmer; manager; bookstore manager people; priests. You can have multiple identities at the same time, and you can work in different roles at different times. But they are not unrelated. It is very likely that when you look back, you can train a series of identity changes into a trajectory, and it is from this trajectory that you understand yourself more deeply.

I would also like to use myself as an example, which can reveal the freedom of DAO in a deeper level:

I think a lot of founders of organizations end up being burned by the organization. They will be deeply bound to this organization and devote their time and energy to it, so that they lose their families and have no time to take care of their hobbies. I have seen many founders who have been alienated by Web3. They may have many hobbies at the beginning, but gradually they are farther and farther away from their original self on the road to entrepreneurship.

My ultimate ideal is actually to become a language magician. I was born to love language, and words are my destination. But since I launched SeeDAO, it’s been a long time since I’ve done any real writing. The little writing I did became burdened by the organization. I may write some promotional articles related to this organization (such as a large DAO Conference), but this has nothing to do with my personal life experience.

At a certain period of time, I once fell into confusion and pain - I found that I could not find the intersection between the SeeDAO sponsor and my ultimate ideal. Im tired of endless discussions about governance and coordination of relationships. I found myself sacrificing and consuming for SeeDAO. And for a certain period of time, I thought this sacrifice was necessary, until it finally completely depleted my body and made everything unsustainable.

Fortunately, I embarked on the journey of becoming a digital nomad. I am originally a journalist, and I have accumulated a lot of knowledge during my travels. From these experiences, I can feel the pulse of the times. This was the source of my intuition and became the basis for subsequent SeeDAO narrative upgrades. The more places I traveled and the more stories I collected, the more I felt the desire to start writing again—not just for an organization. This desire is probably like Baiyus desire to open a bookstore. This is why when I understood that the bookstore plays an important role in his life, I would not hesitate to help him.

I am a very responsible person and someone who is always ready to burn myself and sacrifice myself. Suppressing my original desire to serve an organization, if this will help many people live better and live up to their expectations, I will make such a choice. But one day I realized that if everyone lived like me, this would be a miserable organization.

I started thinking about my initial thoughts: Why dissolve the company and set up a DAO? Isn’t that what I want to find organizations designed for people? If I cant live a good life like a human being, can this DAO really become an organization designed for humans? Or will it become an organization that requires everyone to deviate from their original aspirations and sacrifice themselves?

So, during the trip, I started writing travel notes that had nothing to do with SeeDAO. After I stepped down as the head of the SeeDAO brand team, this irrelevance was taken to the extreme. I went to Wudang Mountain to recuperate my collapsed body, convened in Yunzhuan Mountain in Chongqing to write the white paper of SeeDAO, and went to Qingcheng Mountain to study Taoist medicine. I went further and further on the road of exploring myself, but found that this matter was not as abandoning SeeDAO as I imagined. Unintentionally, my actions and choices are also changing SeeDAO and changing everyones perspective on thinking about DAO. I realized that being myself and being a founder of a DAO don’t have to be at odds with each other, which is completely different than me being a founder of a company. From now on, I have full confidence that DAO will give people more freedom. Not just in a technical sense, but in a social sense.

Today, I have changed my Twitter signature to SeeDAO founder, language magician, troubadour. Ultimately, in my journey as a digital nomad, I found a balance between being a wizard of words and a founder of SeeDAO.

It makes me feel freer to be free from the constraints of a single role. This kind of freedom is like a seed taking root and sprouting in the soil.

The generative subject points to a high-level freedom—the freedom to let the inner order of the individual unfold and achieve achievements in the overall movement. You no longer need to be passively sacrificed and defined as a thin character. You dont have just one type of game character. You live and achieve yourself according to your inner feelings. You are like this because your nature is like this, it is green, it is mature, it blooms and bears fruit on a piece of land, but that is the result of the natural unfolding of a seed.

Nothing is promised - where you must be because of who you are. The son of a high-ranking official can become a carpenter, and a code farmer can also become a bookstore manager. People can act according to their sincere wishes, and then gain a recognizable identity from their actions (this is the value of SBT, the soul-bound token).

In my opinion, identity is the most important public good because identity connects the individual and the whole and determines the meaning of a person. For example, Americans will think they are for a free America, while Chinese Communists will think they are for the Chinese people, and cypherpunks are for a free cyberspace. As a human being, you always have something to do, and it is almost impossible to identify your value coordinates without a certain context. Even the most selfish egoist has to figure out the direction of his next action, and action cannot be without context.

I like identities that can change, but I don’t like the Western rhetoric of “you can be yourself.” Their approach is to first define many identities, and then choose which identity they belong to. In the end, it turns into identity politics where people are pitted against each other. This kind of identity politics is said, not done. Without understanding identity in practice, it is difficult for everyone to understand the meaning of so many nouns. The identity divided by language solidifies the identity. Only the fluid identity presented by actions can truly reflect the reality of life.

If I were to give an example, I would say: self-proclaimed kings are not real kings, only those who take on the responsibilities of kings in action are. A true feminist is not someone who is immersed in consumerism and boxing, but a woman who dares to stand up and take responsibility.

It is because of doing, not because of saying, and not because of buying. This is what I like most about the generative subject. The credit of the blockchain is to allow actions to leave traces on the public ledger, so that the generation status and process of the subject can be presented at any time in a coded manner. To some extent, this solves the problem of inconsistency between name and reality. We can act to trigger the acquisition of SBT, and then use these SBT to connect the trajectory of our life.

In SeeDAO, we already work like this. But this is not enough, we should also pay attention to the works of man in addition to individual actions. The work intuitively and holistically reflects the state of life of a person, such as a song, a movie, or a project. Souls are not supposed to be bound in data.

How to calculate KPI: Get straight to the goal

I have mentioned above the reversal of means and ends. Now, I want to spend more words discussing this issue.

We already live in all sorts of inversions. Language is originally a medium for spiritual communication. In order to help people better touch the situation and feelings, when you reach that situation and understand that feeling through language, the language ladder should be removed. But alas, we take language as truth. We take the language that GPT outputs to us as truth, but turn a blind eye to the painful eyes of the animals around us.

Money is originally a medium for value circulation, helping people live a better life. But now we have no life, only money; even, we use a so-called poetry and distance as an excuse to make money. It seems that the goal is clear, but the process of making money is never-ending. When I earn enough money, I will write poetry, but money can never satisfy, we are always on the way to make money. Well never reach shore.

Technology was originally intended to explore the mysteries of the universe and give humans a better life experience. But suddenly, the level of technological development has become the yardstick for measuring the development of civilization. Technology has become the biggest religion of this century. Whoever opposes the development of science and technology is blocking the progress of human civilization and is a sinner of human civilization - even if technology is almost killing mankind.

Not to mention that GDP is for national development, test scores are for student education, and health data is for the state of the human body... Our purpose is constantly being overridden by media and means.

Human beings always try to find a long path to their goals, and then go farther and farther on this path until they lose their way.

“I don’t have enough money yet.” “I don’t have enough time yet.” “I’m not rational enough.”…

The highest efficiency is to reach the goal directly; if you don’t know your destination yet, the most efficient thing to do is to find your own direction and purpose,Otherwise, you will fall into blind efforts.

In the corporate system, we often cannot reach our goals directly. But in DAO we can. If we cant do what we want to do in a DAO, where can we do it?

If you want to write poetry, you go write poetry; if you want to share movies with everyone, you go share movies with everyone; if you want to ask someone to eat ice cream with you, ask them to eat ice cream with them. . Facing the heart directly, taking action, and bearing the joy and pain brought by the action, this is the fastest direct goal.

The farther you walk on the upside-down road, the more efficient you walk, and the more lost you are in the end.

I suggest that participants evaluate the efficiency of an organization in this way: you can first spend a month inspecting a DAO, and then combined with your own situation, write down a wish list of what you want to accomplish in this organization. (For example: find a good friend; learn to use GPT; earn 1,000 yuan, etc.). Look back three months later to see if the wishes you wrote down have come true or if they have changed. If none of your wishes come true, it seems like you are ineffective in the organization and may want to consider leaving.

If you feel that this organization is beneficial to you personally, you can review your life goals after three months. If you don’t have your own life goals yet, you can ask yourself whether joining this organization will make you clearer about your life; if you already have one, you can ask yourself whether joining this organization will bring you closer to your life goals. These are all ways of evaluating whether an organization is causing you to waste time and a lot of your life.

The DAO Competition: Peoples Hearts

Thanks to cryptography, and thanks to the blockchain. We finally have such an organizational form in our lifetime: an organizational form that cannot be directly eliminated from the physical level; or an organizational form in which the cost of elimination by violent means is much higher than the benefit of letting the organization be eliminated.

When a company is large enough, it can easily crowd out another company or annex another company; but it is often difficult for a large DAO to defeat its competitors. Because DAO doesn’t just follow the logic of capital, it also follows the logic of the community. As long as there is one person in the world who is willing to inherit the history of this DAO and is willing to work hard for the survival of this DAO and expand its consensus, this DAO will not disappear.

The boss of a company can decide whether to close a company or sell a company, and the decision is often made out of financial interests. However, no individual can decide whether to shut down a DAO, or sell a DAO, unless the community makes such a decision through some legal mechanism. However, even if the community makes such a decision with some legal mechanism (for example, more than two-thirds of the people vote, more than one-half of the votes are in favor), and choose to let a certain DAO die, if there are still people in the community who hold objections If you want to inherit the history of the original DAO and have appeal in the original community, the new community can fork the old DAO. Even if the community votes to sell the DAO, if the buyer cannot build a social consensus (imagine Justin Sun purchased a certain DAO), the original community members can easily gather together to form a new community under the call of the community KOL, then the acquisition The meaning will be greatly reduced.

If a DAO loses all its people, core members keep leaving, and there is a lack of new members joining and inflowing, so that in the end no one is willing to synchronize the DAOs historical ledger, then the DAO will die. Therefore, the demise and continuation of DAO is often an internal problem of the community rather than a problem of external attacks. Considered from another perspective, when there is internal closeness, external blows may continue to strengthen community consensus rather than weaken it. As the old Chinese saying goes: Born in trouble, dies in happiness. DAO often dies due to internal governance rather than external attacks.

In a sense, the essence of DAO is the free gathering of people. The difference from the corporate system is that people can freely decide whether to join or exit a DAO. They can quickly retreat from those fields that cannot inspire them; there is no need to hypocritically agree with those people and ideas that they do not agree with. People can exit one vortex and join another. When the centrifugal force of a vortex is greater than the centripetal force, the vortex will slowly die out or be eaten by other vortices. This demise is a natural process, not a violent one.

In short, because DAO is an organization that spans regions, it is difficult to completely eliminate it from the physical level, and it is also difficult to squeeze it out just because the capital chain is broken (unless the purpose of this organization being together is for money); the death of DAO The only reason is that no one wants to inherit the history of this organization and maintain its public ledger. Therefore, the battle for hearts and minds will become the main battlefield for DAO.

I look forward to seeing the emergence of more DAOs based on interest, and I also look forward to healthy competition among DAOs, resulting in more organizations that encourage everyone to explore their potential, and finally forming a situation where beauty and beauty are shared.

Thoughts and Prospects on DAO Tools

Finally I want to talk about DAO tools.

At the 2023 DAO HongKong conference, I mentioned the mutual promotion of DAO and DAO tools. DAO must be organized based on certain DAO tools. Therefore, in practice, the organizational structure of DAO is restricted by DAO tools, and the practice of DAO in turn promotes the evolution of DAO tools.

The practice of DAO has been around for 8 years. At ETH Denver in 2023, I saw many DAO tools, but unfortunately, these DAO tools are often not designed for an emerging system, but add Web2 products to the blockchain. Technologically transformed. For example, Web3-based WeChat, Twitter, DingTalk, etc. Nowadays, there are not only many integrated DAO management tools (covering financial management, voting and proposal systems, etc.), but also many vertical tools. But everyone lacks users.

In order to gain users, DAO tool project parties have designed various economic systems and defined various behaviors for everyone to obtain tokens. However, this does not seem to have brought about substantial user growth, but instead contributed to the prevalence of wool parties. Those DAO tools that have received first-line capital investment will have wool parties staring at the data in order to get airdrops of project tokens when the tokens are issued, but they are not real users. There are also some project parties, in order to obtain real users, use financing funds as bonuses to encourage users to create DAOs on their platforms, but the effect is not satisfactory.

Perhaps, a viable DAO should not be a company-based blockchain at all? If the project team polishes the tools in the style of organizations that actually don’t have much vitality, is that too far away from success? It’s no wonder that the most cutting-edge DAO organizations are developing their own DAO tools, such as the previous BanklessDAO, FWB, Nouns DAO, and the current Cabin DAO.

Or perhaps, we can change the perspective and imagine a DAO tool built based on an emergent system. I am not saying that transforming Web2 products and management tools directly into DAO tools will fail, but DAO tools that respect human creativity and the emergent characteristics of life seem to be more attractive. Think about it, whirlpool-like DAOs may continue to be born on such DAO tools, and such DAOs will attract more real users to join.

Im not very interested in products that try to build corporate management tools on Web3. Im not a product manager or a developer, but a wildly creative poet. I want to call for a more imaginative DAO tool: one that encourages creation rather than control, adapts to the needs of generative agents, and knows how to leave white space.

To create such a product cannot be separated from practice. Now in SeeDAO, we already have considerable practical foundation and demand. Just like many DAO tools have been developed around BanklessDAO and FWB, I hope that such DAO tools can be born in SeeDAO.