Exploring Realtime Governance with WillWe

Transcript

GMGM. Welcome to what's going to be another fantastic episode of Devantel. So, if you didn't know, Devantel is a 30-minute podcast uh hosted every week, allowing founders, hackers, and anyone in between an opportunity to come on the show and showcase their product. And today, I'm ecstatic to welcome Bogdan, who's the founder of Willw Wei. So, if you didn't know, Will WeWe allows for real-time uncompromising governance without proposals or delegates. So, if you stick around for today's episode, you'll see Bogdan give us an over overview of Will Wee, why it was built, and how you can start using it today.

All right, let's get into it. First, a word from our sponsor. Today's episode of Devantel is brought to you by our friends at Arbitum. Arbitum is a technology suite designed to scale Ethereum. You can use Arbitum chains to do all the things you do on Ethereum, but your transactions will be cheaper and faster. With over 3.8 million ETH saved, 1.69 69 million active wallets and over 1.7 billion total transactions. Why would you want to settle for any less? Get started today by exploring Arbitum's comprehensive docs and tutorials linked in the description below to help you get started launching your next DAP today. Now, on to today's show.

[Music] Jim, welcome to the show, man. Hello, everyone. Pleasure to have you on. Of course. Of course. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to come on the show. Uh yeah, today's topic, uh we're going to be talking all about governance and how you have uh seemingly optimized, uh the the governance game. Uh and I'm really looking forward to to hearing that. Um but first, uh if if you don't mind, uh would you like to give a brief introduction about yourself in case folks who are watching? Sure. I'm Bogdan. Uh I'm from Romania. I like uh I went to school for philosophy for

philosophy and politics. And out of philosophy school I kind of realized that there's a tension between governance and the internet broadly. Uh there's all kind of protests that are organized for example online and people have this uh this preference this this need this intuition of uh always being able to put pressure on government more and more and be more interactive and have higher and higher expectations and there were all kinds of movement from yeah Arab Spring that was organized on Facebook and all that kind of kind of like tensions they manifested in the real world speeding up to today when you probably get more information that is relevant to the future of geopolitics

from Donald Trump's feed than you know the the the normal regular like boring channels right so in all that like kind of environment I started to learning coding because one I wanted to like do my uh my own ideal political theory but being at this intersection with the internet like technology is a better medium for that so what I did I learned to code and I learned to code the one of the first applications I did was a liquid democracy app to like govern things and it had a social media feed anyway. But that's that's my primary interest in coded is empowering people and kind of in a way saving a little bit democracy to to be empowered more and more by the

technology which is tricky and didn't turn out perfectly over the years but we're we're still working on it and that's what I hope to be doing today here as well. Amazing. And uh I guess are you a self-taught um self-taught programmer or I have yes I have been writing code for about 10 years. Uh in terms of like web three I did for example like consensus academy school. So I have a diploma that says certified deterion developer and I did like for example the the sequium boot camp in the first edition like epoch zero like smart contracts auditing and stuff like that. Uh so it's a mix of both but mainly mainly selft talk. Yeah.

Awesome man. And uh yeah like I mentioned at the start um today's topic is going to be governance but um just in case some people um listening today aren't familiar with the topic. Do you want to just give an highle overview of what governance is in the first place? Uh yes, governance is when a group of people come together, put some resources together or have something at stake and they try to give some direction of where that organization that abstract like common body like is going. My uh my definition that I like to say about organizations is that organizations are membranes that move forward and like the forward is what the governance is for.

how you determine that forward, what's the processes and everything that's that's entitled there. Um, yeah, it's it's a little bit interesting. For example, we we kind of know each other, but we don't know each other very much, right? So, like if you think about like developer D it beginning, right? We one of the things we had was an NFD and that NFT like guaranteed membership in the discord and participation in governance. So like that NFT for example was the memory was the access badge you know that you got into organization same same thing happens with like companies you have the turn styles you know you put the thing right that's kind of the membrane of the organization and the governance yeah the governance typically is top down but like with Dows and with this substrate for for ownership primarily and

coordination we can try to like make structures that are bottoms up and like kind of true to their to their ideals. So that's what we're going to go into today. Um because we were kind of put in a position to like uh cool we have this blockchain right Satoshi tried to make a coin and he unveiled like coordination technology for all of us and we were put in a situation yeah you have to come up with governance right now and kind of the only thing that we could think of were parliaments right let's put parliament on chair let's like everybody write a little bit of text you know and like put it forward and everybody has to read it understand it and vote on it didn't it's not ideal and like the second step to like it led to apathy.

And the second step that we did was to create delegates. We need like specialized people, right, to read these and like vote on behalf of people that like are actual owners and stakeholders. And there's like a discrepancy. There's like different interests that play there. Like the delegates have also their own interest to balance. uh and it's it's it yeah it kind of gets tricky and I think it's a little bit tragic that uh we the main like governance processes that we have are kind of originated in papers in parliaments in like the defaulting thing that we could think of because we couldn't like really think of anything else. So like the case that I'm going to make like today is that uh I yeah so organizations are members demo for and like I'm gonna kind of argue that coins in themselves are

organizations and they are kind of perfectly dowsed. They have a membrane who owns a coin who does not and like their interaction with them is direct and unintermediated. Anyone can like change the like the distribution the disposition of the coin. Now the coin doesn't really have values, doesn't like want to run away and do things, but like in principle like coins do fulfill like those those those basic like dynamics and necessities. Um interesting. Yeah, I I guess this this is the perfect segue. I can bring up your screen if you want to go through your uh let's do a little bit the slides talk a little bit about Yeah. So like I I did this presentation. I should have changed the title. Sorry. uh good is all

you need for governance the sense that like coins uh basically coins are funible and funibility is all you need because I mean it's a paraphrasing you know like attention all you need that's fashionable these days um because when you have some quantity that you distribute and that's kind of like the energy like the blood that powers like the organization the the the body of the thing uh it benefits a lot from seeing things in relative terms like you see how much people do work for example and you also see how much they get remunerated and that thing like you can make like objective value judgments in a way because it's relative and it's not interpretable it's not in in a lot

of documents and so so that's one of the things of okay um I kind of mentioned this right Satoshi wanted to make a coin and he made the blockchain like an entire leather dynamic for for coordination And I think like coins in the cells are are very powerful. I think everybody being able to to make a coin for anything is is very uh very powerful. I think we're still grappling with what that means and like how much it it empowers it empowers people. Okay. So I spoke the coin, right? The coin being a DAO and like people being able to act directly on the on the disposition of the coin.

uh in the same way like in the real economy if you think about if you are able to visualize all the transactions that happen in an economy uh you'll be able to to get a high level of of thing that is alive right the coin the coin is alive it like it operates somewhat permissionlessly because you don't need like anyone's permission to like pay for bread and like get goods and services and that like energy res recirculates in the economy even if you have like a central issues There's still some anarchic coordination mechanism that happen irrespective of what like the the central bank does. Ideally, you don't have a central bank and that's what anyone can do basically like creating a coin. But there's this

concept that butchers, brewers, bakers are sequencers is quite an interesting one because as opposed to proposal based governance like when you do when you work with proposals the sequencer is an artificial process that all that ultimately like settles to the blockchain. So like there's there's an upper level like uh sequencing mechanism for the will of the people let's say while coins and like protocols you you interact directly with the thing. So uh why I did this like uh one of I started working on this about three years ago and I I I talked with someone that's like a delegate in a DAO like at a conference and like he he told me one of the things one of the first

validations I got he said that everybody hates proposals and like yes that makes sense I should really do this and try to try try to try to experiment and find some kind of like alternative mechanism. So proposal law more functionally their laws I mentioned they're kind of like parliaments we even have delegates I mean it's not totally fair to say they're parliament but they're not very far also leads to apathy recentralization parliamentaries collapses to corporate bureaucracy you have budgets you know that have to be approved quarterly or so on through proposal so it's like a budget in a normal organization uh if you look in I don't know arbitum or optimist Um there's there's still like all kinds

of metrics and the these are important because you do have to to have some metrics. You do have to you need to have some kind of processes that create accountability and like these are what's best out there so far and there's a lot of people that are working hard on these but ultimately it reproduces things that are already have and like we need I think to to do better things that are native on chain and are like yeah increasingly permissionless and decentralized and so on so forth because otherwise it's kind of a lost opportunity. paper devices can't launch you. Um, while men can jump, that's actually not a stereotype. It's it's the title of a movie from the 90s and but it's also

stereotype. Paper devices can't unchain and parliamentaries can't interming, as you mentioned, instant governance. I don't know if you wrote that or I did. I was surprised. I probably did it, but I was surprised because it's interesting and it kind of captures what I'm trying to do. I want uh the members of like the collective to be able to to influence the direction and the body of the organization directly and in a unintermediative way. For example, this is lacrimaria. It's one of like the biggest unisellular organism and it's kind of a was inspiring to me because this is one cell. I mean we could

reproduce at least one cell in like our touring complete like computers and we could imagine like all members of the organization like zapping the body like a structure that like keeps the organist together to make it move and like chase food in that direction and so on. So organizations are membranes that move forward. What forward is is what governance is for. Forward determinations can be permissionless and instance. So for example with a coin when you interact directly on chain you just like transfer it or stake it or whatever or you even burn it. So it's it's direct. It's again not intermediated. There is no process.

There is no bundling of like a text to be sent to the central like governance processing unit like the brain. And that kind of things happen in nature in the economy via coins and and in in in bodies. Typically cells like communicate electrochemically or whatever with the cells that are nearby and like that's how the coordination happens. There's no I call cells speaking at the same time to the brain. Uh what is willby is an attempt at trying something new.

It is systematizing order for instant permissionless disincentivized governance. So uh systematizing world is basically a structure in which you put a coin and you distribute it and when that thing happens in public. It creates a lot of signal and it creates sense making and you get an idea of how what people want and what people want and what the organization wants and does is where it redistributes resources as in any big company right that's why people fight on budget for instant permission distant I covered a little bit right it's directly you action directly the body of the organization you you don't like have a a sequencing like layer tool let's permission

It's on chain. It can be permissionless. It is in this case. There is some permission things in the sense that you can create you'll see the the the systematizing order has nodes and each node has membership conditions and in order to act within that node you need to fulfill the membership conditions. Disincentivize. This is interesting. Uh most Dows today uh they they start with with a treasury. They start with a bunch of uh for lack of a better word like gold in the middle and says come on guys start coordinating and that's also like might create some different kind of incentive because there's an opportunity there for extraction.

This is dis disincentivized in the sense that in order to action on the body of the thing there's two things you can do. you can do work you can create a node within a node I don't know let's say marketing node and you create a node there and you start I don't know producing graphics uh and in theory if your work is valuable for the survival of the thing you'll get paid or you can uh influence the organization by allocating resources basically by paying others for for your work for their work uh and in that way when you like signal your preference there that also creates a social signal and like uh feedback loop as work progress progresses as the quality you build reputation so on like there's a there's a buildup build up there this is interesting that's what kind of like

makes it also real time because I can start like I can create a node over there I can start doing work if my work or I can start from an idea and if my idea is sounds potentially good uh it is in theory sufficient to get I don't know $1 of allocation from every member or something like that um but in time as I work on it as I develop it as there's clearly work done and like has potential and that in order to keep me working because I'm advancing whatever the organization is doing in theory should uh higher levels of compensation should come and like uh these are this can go up or down and like decreasing allocations can also like be social

signal look I don't believe this is possible anymore and that could also be like the prompt for a conversation so govern by funding or working when needed legible and intuitive. When you have all these quer allocations that are permissionless, direct, so on so forth, they can be summarized in a chart. So you could in theory see all the functioning of the organization and how it you can also also like play it over time I guess like see how the chart evolves like over time but you can kind of follow the entire body of the of the organization of that coin. You can watch it and see like get in time an intuitive feel of in what stage it is, how it is distributing resources, what is like the

velocity, the metabolism rate of the of the of the of the coin so on so forth. I think that that kind of summarization is very very powerful and would be a very good product. It's currently is not that intuitive because it takes time to make intuitive things but uh you'll see what I speak. I'll show you the chart. It could be better but it's it's the the concept is there. So primarily what does it gives coin or coins organizational competencies. Um yeah very briefly distributes funible units of arbitrage value signals for communal configurations.

Uh it is plurality in the sense that anyone can create basically a node in context that they are member. They can also get kicked out but they can create a competing node. Um yeah he has his legibility in the sense that every signal like is visible and can see it and replay it and understand all the power dynamics within the structure. Uh empowers individuals create and continuously commit to political and economic outcomes. What I what I said about right you can like start from a small thing and like get this like validation and commitment loop that builds to something like big. Uh the very big point about like this coin based and allocation based uh governance is that who gives how much for what to

whom is of value and of interest any part of the organization and that this is in all organizations uh if you if your company like starts giving like half the year budget to buy dogcoin you would be a little bit worried right or if you work in an organization and the next day like everyone's salaries are known that might also create some problems. So the thesis is that on chain fungibility can encode enforce and articulate power relationships with unprecedented clarity and efficiency. Vitalik a few days ago said this thing um uh yeah I mean there's a clearly a need to to rethink to try new things. He said burn down the legitimacy of existing paradigm reopened over the window like

be willing be more willing to think about things from scratch. I would say like multi-level structures are good. I am much less fan of a direct democracy than I was 15 years old. Okay. Uh this is multi-level structure. It's new. Um yeah, we're we're doing things. Uh these are some screenshots, but I'm going to show you in the app. Um and one of my also inspiration there's Dehawk that is the founder of Viza has this this like he puts it in a in an interesting way. Why we're doing this war into without question the most abundant least expensive most underutilized and constantly abused resource in the world today is human ingenuity. The source of that abuse is the mechanistic industrial

age hierarchical domination concepts of organization and the management practices they spawn. This guy did a lot of work on organizations that's like very little known and I think it's it's it's kind of a shame. He he's kind of in a way like the the actual DA father but like yeah very cool. He also like the founder of Visa and brought together like competitive organizations to collaborate on thing and that's also available. Okay. So let's look a little bit at the app now. Um the app is that will.xyz or appw.xyz.

I'm going to use like thing because it's a little bit different. Um it's the same but different. So, what I'm going to do, I'm just going to log in. Uh, and if you have any questions, that would be uh yeah, because some things might be confusing and uh please uh please interrupt me. Okay. So, this is like the the homepage. Okay. Uh here there used to be a social feed of what the user does in actually what users done in all the coins that you are all the nodes that you are a member. I currently disabled it because uh it's it's a lot of code. It's not like very good code and it's very

expensive to run all the like the indexers and so on. So I temporarily disabled it. Uh but yeah, it it has this feature. It will have it again soon. So these are all the coins that I have in my wallet. This is on base. Um yeah, if I click here, there's nothing because there's no activity here for this coin. But if I go out like the the protocol coin, there's stuff here or let's let's do cow. Okay. Uh so this is like the note. This also is like the feed that used to be here. It's going to pause. So this I was speaking about like the the instant understanding over what the coin does

and the the kind of the intuitive summary that you get. So these are all the nodes like for this this uh is some work some like play stuff that I've done for with uh uh with someone and these are all all the nodes. So all these nodes are derived from the token address. So it works with any RC20 token on base currently and uh if you go at any random at any random like uh coin you can create here and create a node. So when you create a node you enter like the name of the node that you want it to appear in the chart characteristics these are for example I don't know link a GitHub repo or um actually let's do a node

let's do a node here uh let's do it in let's do it at at let's do it here add node uh let's do it uh the characteristic U let's say this could these are characters that are specific to that specific node in the sense that it could be like a Twitter account like how to contribute to that node like what are the rules uh whatever like data that is useful to being like a good member in that node um um I don't know like what's membership conditions these are

conditions s that you need to fulfill the address with which your sign on need to fulfill in order to be able to mint membership in the node. So this could be uh any RC20 token or any NFT or actually any um any you need to be a member in another node in the structure. I'm going to have it let it open for now. um inflation rate. This is like one of part of the core mechanism how like the the entire economic structure becomes coherent because there's some uh ways in which in theory like you could like extract value and so on but like each node has an inflation rate. This inflation rate is governed by

the node members proportionally to their shares holdings. Each node has two tokens. Has a deposit token and a share token. The deposit token is fixed. You deposit one will token you get one share of will token in that node. But the the the will tokens like inflate over time. So when you burn the shares, you always withdraw less than you have deposited it. And the difference that is created in that inflation is distributed forward to other nodes to nodes that are derived from this node or uh end points or like to be more like clear like members that have done work for that node. Uh let's do the inflation rate of 2.7 per day.

Um yeah. Okay. M okay created the node is it this one no let's go back to the root initial core we created here DD so uh about this chart so in theory I'm not sure if it it's not working that well right now it's working somewhere well but like uh the size of like the chart for example is uh determine like how much value is in that node uh the intensity the color for example could express how many members are there like how active so that's what I was referring to right as as lucky Maria all

like the thing was moving like you could like see everything that's happen in in the entire like coin uh okay so we have a node what we can do here we can create sub nodes the same process is exactly the same process we can distribute value this means the inflation across the entire path and like redistributes it to this node and to to the other nodes or maybe you can call have to call it from the other nodes I'm not sure okay deposit you mean like tokens into this uh this uh this node like you mean shares or you can mean from the parent because uh the value is necessary like the deposit token into one node is the shares of the parent and like there's this continuous

recursiveness so it came in you can also withdraw or burn when you burn like the reverse happens but you always get less because of the the inflation, right? That stays as value for for for for the nodes. Okay, we have movements. These movements are kind of like traditional like uh Dow governance. Uh the are executed by some uh some execution engine kind of like safe uh safe multisigs. They're different. They're not safe multi but kind of like that. And there's a value majority like decided by the majority of shares in the node or agent majority like agents.

Um yeah and you have a for example token transfer or custom call like any any onchain like call to to another contract signals. Um let me change this to have some some children notes to show. Let's do this. Okay. So, signal signals is where you redistribute value to to other nodes. Actually, there's there's more here. There's memory ID, right? So, like you can conf reconfigure like the access conditions and the identity of a node.

You can rename it. You can change like the the docks, the characteristics. You can change the membership conditions. You do this by majority of shares owners. So I can express a preference for changing the the node like inflation rate and the description. So others need to also express that same preference and it's over like 50% like the the characteristics and like description and so on changes also. Same for the inflation rate. I express a preference for let's say we need to spend things faster to accelerate like progress for like this kind of like activity right increase it or maybe we need to be more conservative decrease the inflation and uh redistribution to nodes. So there's different node. These are nodes

that are normal nodes and this is an endpoint. These are like external endpoints that belong to a user and that's where you redistribute value to them. You direct share of the inflation that is created. This inflation is created per second. Here is calculated per day. This is the total value of the node. This is like the inflation rate per day. I think this is per second actually. Okay. available shares. How many how many of these are currently available to be this redistributed to other nodes? Do you really like all this like redistribution estrial can be done like in almost in real time but like currently it's you have to click the button to do it. Okay. So

again at signals that's where like here I express like my preference I want 81%.2 of like this inflation to go to me. Uh, and yeah, it needs to add to 100% for obvious reasons. It makes things like easier in the in the contracts. Um, yeah. Okay. And I submit the signals. And these signals like how you calculate how much the the the nodes get is also proportional to how many shares you have, right? So it's it's yeah it's a little bit uh it's it's not easy to do this but uh I've done it. It works.

Hopefully it works very well. Uh but it's it's it gets quite complex. Here you' see like different signals like all the support like for change for membrane or flash and so on so forth. There's also a chat here to chat with other members of the node. Uh it probably helps. And this is the end point. Uh this is like for example uh the user the worker in that node that they control these uh this smart contract that's also kind of like onchain like smart contract and they get tokens redistributed to them and they can like burn them and extract like the core the core like token that was deposited in the in the entire thing. What else? There's also a

tab here to like compose create a new ERC20 token like redistribute to others for example or to define a new membrane to uh in order to to be able to propose it to change it the membrane of a co uh and that's been a lot like uh and it it is more or less all of it. I'm not sure if I uh I think I think it's fine. We are almost like done a little bit too long but I guess it's it's fine. No. Yeah, that's uh totally uh uh yeah, I guess um just to review uh basically um when a person is creating um one of these nodes, it's essentially just some sort of initiative um or or proposal.

And then the um when you're doing the sub nodes, that's basically different aspects of related work um pertaining to that proposal. Correct. Yes. Yes. But given that it's permissionless, you cannot really curate it. All of it is on chain. So in theory, anyone can, you know, this is about onions and someone makes a note about garlic that is nested, you know, you cannot stop that, right? These are kind of like autonomous zones to create context and organize the the activity. They're like kind of also you could say there subdows, you know, but like it's Yeah. It's Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah.

And then uh on that point um if there's a DAO out there that wants to start operating with this model like how can they get started um with Will we? Uh they can get uh they can go to will.xyz or app.will.xyz and like start using it. Um the the issue with that is that I would be impressed if they manage to do a good job because it's it's a lot to learn and understand and like the dynamics they appear somewhat simple but actually under the hood they're like they're fairly complex but uh I would encourage anyone to do that. Uh in terms of the product itself what I plan to do is open

source it very soon like all of it. Um and what it needs currently needs it needs actually contributors. It needs people that find this kind of experimentation useful and want to contribute it and like dog food it and the project itself will also dog food it so like the coordination will will be done like using it. That's that's the idea and the vision. Um and I hope that happens to be honest I'm a little bit like burnt out as well but like I'm I'm willing to like uh to push it and contribute it and so on.

Um yeah, awesome. And um I guess is there anything um that you'd be willing to share around the the road map for will we? Is there anything else that um you want to be implemented or or are planning to implement uh later this year? Uh the first thing is to redo like the social feed thing. Um what urgently needs to be done is some documentation and like a clear specification because um that's also very much needed and every improvements related to the to the UI to the user experience. For example, making this look better and actually

like convey a lot more information because there's a lot of information that can be conveyed here and it's it's it's uh it's it's not that clear. It doesn't do a good enough job. Um, another other work that could be done, but we need the specification for that would be smart contract auditing the contracts. There's some people that looked over the contracts, but they there even if there's only like in theory one contract and like maybe half and like the code is not that much, but like I iterated so much over it and like removed and added stuff that it's it's hard for me even for me to keep track.

Sometimes it surprises myself, right? I I need to look deeper to understand what happened, you know. Yeah. So that those would be things that would be cool like for people to contribute and I I hope that happens. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome, man. Uh yeah. Um unfortunately, uh we've come to time. Um but Bogdan, thank you so much for for coming on the show today. uh and uh h how can uh people keep up with uh with the progress of we like is there a particular account or something they can follow or reach out to you perhaps for questions? Yeah, primarily reach out to me uh follow the Twitter account of the project um as well. I'll probably post there when it's like open source. Um

yeah, follow me, get in touch with me, I guess. I don't expect like to be 1,000 people that are in line, you know, like I can handle the volume, so do that. Uh at par uh will we dash XY Z for the project and uh I think that's it. Amazing. Uh yeah, folks uh definitely give uh Ban a follow. Uh the his um X account as well as the Will We X account is in the description below. Uh so definitely go uh check that out. And yeah, with that, I just want to say thank you again, Bogdan. Really appreciate you taking the time out of your day uh to come on the show here.

And uh yeah, really excited to see how will we progresses. And uh yeah, um folks uh hopefully uh when uh Bogdan does open source it eventually uh that folks will be folks watching today uh will contribute to that next three to five days, no more than five days. There you go. There you go. Awesome stuff. Uh, thank you everyone for the attention and time. Thank you. Now, yeah. Yeah, my pleasure. Uh, and, uh, hope everybody has a very happy Friday. Uh, happy 4th of July to our American viewers. And, uh, we will catch you back here next week uh, for more Dev Into. All right.

All have a good one. Cheers.