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A content coin, and making governance a game.

Eight minutes of a working call about how a small media project should govern itself, most of it one man laying out a model box by box while the We Them Media side pushes back. Nobody says on tape where either of them is sitting.

Swarthyhatter starts with the standard version so the alternative has something to sit against. “In the legacy nouns model”, he says, “you have your DAO and then you have a member and they send a transaction to the DAO that creates a proposal”. Then a vote. “Proposal plus vote equals outcome. And then consensus stops there”. That is the whole thing, and then: “That’s not our process.”

His version keeps the DAO at the top and pushes the actual decision out to everybody else. The builder DAO is “your multisig, it’s your community treasury, it’s where you do all your consensus”, restricted to top level questions only. Underneath it sits a second phase: pass a content proposal and “a content coin is deployed”, the content itself on IPFS with the hash stored on chain. Holders swap their community token into that coin, and the swap is the vote. “by swapping it into this content coin, I’ve decided, I’ve signaled that I want this decision to be made.”

At about three minutes the other side interrupts with what he actually wants, which is not a voting system yet. “right now it’s not that I want to make a decision, it’s that I want to post a lot of content”, he says, and “I don’t want to start with governance.”

The reply is the argument of the tape. “you need rules to leverage each other. Otherwise you’re playing a centralized game that no one’s going to buy into.” Then, plainer: “So build the rules and tell people what they are.” And the question he keeps coming back to: “Why would anybody in Web3 play your game?”

What he proposes is small and mechanical. Get the token out of the small group first, “You can get WTM token going into people’s hands, give it away”, because “Because they own your asset. You gave it to them free.” Then put up three or four possible bounty questions and let swap volume or market cap pick which one gets asked. He also asks how the crew formally honours the people already contributing, and lays out a week: interview on Monday, propose the question that evening, four or five days of consensus, and “your bounty’s live by Friday”.

The stakes, he says, should be low at the start. “asking them silly questions that they don’t need to get right is a good place to start in governance.” The frame he leaves behind is the line the whole call turns on: “it’s not just governance, it’s a governance game. And the game is the whole product.” It took him about three months to see it, he says, and expects the same of anybody else.

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Transcript

Transcribed and speaker-separated with AssemblyAI from the original audio, so nothing is masked. The letters are the model's speaker labels, not names; fillers are dropped by the model. Names corrected. Published in full so it can be read, searched and quoted. Search every transcript →

0:03AIn the legacy nouns model, in the nouns model, because we’re doing fractal nouns model. So, in the nouns model, you have your DAO and then you have a member and they send a transaction to the DAO that creates a proposal. That’s a little bit too big, I want to make use of this space. Then you vote. Proposal plus vote equals outcome. And then consensus stops there, right? That’s the whole process. That’s not our process. What we say is like, this is how things get past the top level of governance. This is replacing multisig signers or delegates who are typically in legacy DAOs like elected through informal processes and there’s no enforceable method, way for the DAO to like retract or receive control, right?

0:03ABut now the Nouns Builder DAO is your multisig, it’s your community treasury, it’s where you do all your consensus and We only want to, because this is an exclusive body, we only want to restrict this to top-level governance decisions. Right. Once you, if you use a specific proposal type called a content proposal on Nouns Builder, where we extend the consensus process another phase. Once this proposal is passed, a content coin is deployed. The content is put on IPFS, and then the hash is stored on-chain, and a content coin is deployed. And we’ve already talked a bit about how I have this DAO coin separate from the NFTs, my IYKYK coin, and I can swap it into this content coin, right?

0:03AAnd by swapping it into this content coin, I’ve decided, I’ve signaled that I want this decision to be made. So, the IYKYK token ends up swapped for decision-making token. Now, this could be that you and a group of people create 3 possible POI bounties for this week, or a list of 10, right? And that you want to know which one you’re going to ask next, next week. And you could use the swap volume or the market cap of your content coin, because the more people that do this swap from either WeThemMedia, actually --

3:10BSo I have a question.

3:11AYeah.

3:11BWhat you communicated to me, right, was that like people could post stuff But when people swap into your token is when it would be worth something. And so you’re asking me like what decision I want to make with We Them Media. But right now it’s not that I want to make a decision, it’s that I want to post a lot of content. I want people to be posting a lot of content, and then I want people to be able to then swap into people’s things. But I just want to have there be more content first. Like, I don’t want to start with governance. I want to start with like, get your ideas out here, throw things at the wall, and like, and then let’s start thinking about what we want to govern collectively. Because right now, like, I’m -- the decision I’m making is what are we governing? And I’m like You know, I just want to have fun and experiment myself and prove a concept that like we can do interesting things and leverage each other in ways that are positive.

3:49ASo yeah, but you need rules to leverage each other. Otherwise you’re playing a centralized game that no one’s going to buy into. Like you want people to come play your game, right?

3:58BYeah.

3:58ASo build the rules and tell people what they are. Otherwise they’re not going to play, right? Like why would they play? Why would anybody in Web3 play your game?

4:07BWell, I think like the rules like are just these bounties right now. Like that’s kind of --

4:10ARight, so how do you determine within your small working group, how do you honor JX’s contrib -- or SuperBio’s contribution to Weevent Media and the other people that you make decisions with? How do you formalize whether or not the question that you get from your interview goes on-chain and becomes a bounty? Regardless of whether or not that’s the decision you’re making, the process of making decisions can work this way. You don’t need to keep full final authoritative decision-making within your small group. You can get WTM token going into people’s hands, give it away. Now they’re gonna play, right? Why are they playing your game? Because they own your asset. You gave it to them free. Free money. That’s a good reason to play, right? Now they swap into your decision token and you can just use that swap volume or the market cap as the decision indicator, right? Market cap reached $50K. Cool. We’re gonna ask that question.

5:07BOr --

5:09Athis market cap is the highest out of this, out of the range of options, so we’re gonna go with the highest market cap and then we’ll ask the next one next week, right? Or you can take it and say, the only way you’re allowed to vote in the snapshot is if you have this decision token, right? So, this could be a fine-grained type of decision where the content is really, you have approved the proposal, which is really just approving the consensus process. And then the content coin is a new voting asset just for that decision.

5:36BRight.

5:37AAnd then you can elucidate what the decision you’re trying to get your community to vote on, right? So you, just over the next week, think about this process, about what type of decision would I want to approve with my top-level body and say, yes, the community needs to make this choice. And then you understand how they’re gonna make the choice, right? Because we’re just gonna give them some WTM coin.

5:59BYeah.

5:59AAnd ask them to participate. This doesn’t add the -- say if you did this for like, what question are we gonna ask next week, right? It’s a low-stakes environment, you wanna start governance there. You don’t want your community to figure out how to govern your community on a big deal, right? So asking them silly questions that they don’t need to get right is a good place to start in governance. And if you interview your person on Monday, Mm-hmm. and you propose their question on Monday evening, and you have a 4 or 5 day consensus process, your bounty’s live by Friday. So, it may not achieve engagement and that’s already something for us to learn from.

5:59ARather than putting this off and waiting for it, I do advise that you start with governance because it’s not just governance, it’s a governance game. And the game is the whole product. If you want people to buy into your brand, you need to build a game that they want to play. And so start -- I advise with We Them Media to start thinking about that stuff very early. Like, what decisions do I want my community to make? What is the social contract I’m making with my supporters? How do they connect to the brand? That kind of thing. But I think this is worth just sitting with for a bit, ’cause it’s not the most complicated to me, but I sit with it a lot.

5:59AAnd it took probably 3 months for this to click for me, how this could be used in an effective way. But understanding that you don’t need to use this proposal system for authoritative decision-making anymore. You just use it to authorize a decision being made by the broader community.

7:39BOkay.

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