Preface:

The following thought piece is an excerpt from my substack, Polyphony. I've always believed that there's an overlap between models in nature and those of successful technologies. As an example, I've drawn comparisons between Daoism (as described by one of my favourite philosophers Alan Watts) and DAOs. This NFT is the first of an ongoing series on the analogies and metaphors between nature, philosophy, and the various systems of Web3.

With the recent cluster of tech-related happenings like Elon’s (prospective) acquisition of Twitter, and the Terra Luna crash, I can’t help but reflect on the wisdom of Alan Watts when he said:

“Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe. ”

And I mention it because, given all the hoopla about the best ways to scale or govern digital worlds, it’s easy to forget that there are consistencies between age-old models of nature and successful technologies. In fact, it could be argued that certain technologies (as per the revelations of Watts) are exponentially scalable because they include aspects of these natural (or metaphysical) phenomena and therefore flow with the rhythms of life rather than against it.

(See also:  Forbes - Networks In Nature As Models For Business Networks, Voronoi patterns, decentralized insect colonies).

To further explore this concept, I've outlined several similarities between the structure of DAOs and the Chinese philosophy of "Daoism" or Taoism 道.

The origin of the DAO term (a brief overview)

According to an open abstract on internet policy review, the first “Decentralized Autonomous Organization” (DAO) emerged in the 1990s. It was used to describe multi-agent systems in an IoT environment (Dilger, 1997) or nonviolent decentralised action in the counter-globalisation social movement (Schneider, 2014).

However, the current discourse around DAOs in their various “discord-ant” constructs relates to the early notions of a Decentralized Autonomous Corporation (DAC). Surfacing several years after the creation of Bitcoin, the term frequently appeared in online forums where ideas of “decentralized” and “distributed” autonomous organisations were used interchangeably. But as these systems modelled traditional corporate governance (tokens as shares) they were unsuitable for the more general and lucid dynamics of blockchain-based applications. In 2013 an alternative name - “Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO)” - appeared in an article by Vitalik to describe an ‘entity that lives on the internet and exists autonomously, but also heavily relies on hiring individuals to perform certain tasks that the automaton itself cannot do.’

Ultimately, while some argue that Bitcoin is the first DAO, (decentralized and autonomous), the term is widely recognised as referring to organisations deployed as smart contracts on an existing blockchain network.

The relationship between DAOs and Daoism

To illustrate how the structure of DAOs aligns with Daoism, I’ve curated several excerpts from a lecture by Alan Watts - Taoist Way.

“…and as we shall see when we get on to Zhuang Zhou—who is the sort of elaborator on Lao Tzu—he sees everything operating together so that nowhere can you find the controlling center. There isn’t any.”

Similarly, within the ever-increasing number of DAOs, there are various layers, each with a respective task like treasury managers, controllers, aggregators, contributors and workers. While there are always core contributors to help regulate the parameters etc - you could argue that in the best of examples there isn’t a central controlling centre. Everyone helps provide a self-nurturing or self-governing role.

“The world is a system of interrelated components, none of which can survive without each other. Just as in the case of bees and flowers: you will never find bees around in a place where there aren’t flowers and you will never find flowers around in a place where there aren’t bees or insects that do the equivalent job. And what that tells us secretly is that, although bees and flowers look different from each other, they’re inseparable. They arise mutually.”

Although there are proponents for completely algocratic systems that are enforced and run autonomously through smart contracts, for now, decentralized networks still rely on people to update, and monitor the code so that no issues occur. In essence, although we may just be the sex organs of the machine world , as it stands, we are mutually dependent and perhaps increasingly inseparable from technology.

Furthermore, just as bees and flowers are different yet inseparable (arise mutually) so too are the ecosystem of DAOs created and maintained through a unique synergy of smart contracts and people that help regulate on-chain and social parameters. While the algorithms and contracts define the rules, members of a DAO or DO are still required to regularly vote on proposals and upgrades to ensure that their organization delivers on its purpose and vision. 

“So the Chinese idea of nature is that all the various species arise mutually because they interdepend. And this total system of interdependence is the Tao (Dao). It involves certain other things that go along with Tao, but this mutual arising is the key idea to the whole thing.”

Similarly, as we can see how TheDAO inspired a range of variations i.e. PleasrDAO, MakerDAO, Mirror DAO, ENS DAO, etc. along with DAOs as-a-service for infrastructure such as  Aragon or DAOhaus, this mutual arising of DAOs are, while independent, interdepend on each other and the wider ecosystem to survive. The same could also be said of the various nodes and validators on Ethereum. Web3 could not exist or seek any scalability through one centralised faction. Such is the nature of distributed, decentralized networks.

“So then, the whole conception of nature is as a self-regulating, self-governing—indeed, democratic—organism. But it has a totality. It all goes together. And this totality is the Tao."

And at the risk of appearing repetitive, while most of these platforms are self-governing, only when viewed under the broader umbrella of Ethereum do we see that they move synonymously as an organic and perhaps truly trustless totality that is Web3.

With that said, given our proclivity as human beings to control the uncontrollable, to avoid future over-engineering these systems or corrupting them with unnecessary political discourse we should not become so arrogant as to ignore the timeless models and laws of nature.

Or in other words, disregard the way (the DAO), as a light framework. Which, in its essence, (known as Wu Wei) is to do things in accordance with the grain. It means you cut wood along the lines where it’s most easy to cut. For in that very simplicity that comes with remembering our place in and part of nature (reinforced by the insights of Ray Dalio and zen painters), we can scale to never-ending heights.