Call started at 10:04, moderated by Brandon Lovejoy.
Please note, the notes below aren’t exact and are an approximation of what Dan and other said, in fact it was hard to keep up this time so there a chunks missing from the notes below.
Dan: Big week with the first Eden playoffs. Looking to do another test demonstration of the process. He’ll give more information about that in the week or two ahead. Lots of exciting stuff there.
Lots of developments with the recent BPs and the nature of intent of code is law.
It looks like Jordan Peterson took interest in Eden and More Equal Animals, which is very exciting.
Q: What aspects of EdenOS process surprised you and which was most unexpected? A: The way compromises were reached in light of the various incentives. We had financial incentives to back one candidate but the community backed another. Those with the biggest personal agenda were least successful. Those that were most cooperative and built consensus were most successful. Compromise in censuses building was occurring. An unexpected outcome occurred, no one would’ve predicted from the start who the final 4 were nor who the final winner was. It was good to see the final objective of the funds was for the community. It was very exciting and encouraging for the future of Eden.
The community portal for the genesis Eden group has gone live. That group is ratifying that process and then the official invite process will begin and pick up full steam ahead in the next week.
Q: What is your feeling about how first invites should kick off the community. What advice for genesis members to pick new members? A: Picking people that you would trust with your own funds, to spend community funds wisely. Avoid people who are trying to get numbers and try to steer the community to get their friends in and on their side. Focus on what we’re here for, EOS as a currency, Eden as a censuses building tool, people are aligned with the principals in the book. For the first year as the founder, creator of Eden, Dan will retain the control of the bylaws of Eden. This will ensure the Eden Gov structure will evolve in according to Dan’s vision. In a year from now the community Satoshi can bring in their own bylaws. This will give it a good start and follow Dan’s lead on that. Looking for people that are aligned with what Dan is trying to do. Learning how the election process works, how to select good leaders. We’ve all got to figure out how t his process works. What people do a good job and are best fit for this. Which is why Dan wants do many elections over the next year to get lots of practice and new leaders in. Expect a lot of elections in the next year. After that year we’ll back off and have roughly 2 elections per year.
Q: Question on EOSX hack and the BPs action. Should BPs switch keys for future hacks? What role does Eden play in this? A: There is a code is law mindset…the code permitted this. Under a code is law mindset we don’t hardfork, and you exercise what is written in the code. Every single blockchain has a subjective consensus process where they agree on what code to use. That code could include upgrades and fixes to the network. ETH and BTC have both experienced those in the past, printed extra BTC, and a large number of ETH holders lost funds in the DAO. This falls into the idea of succession where token holders can secede. The question is how does the community reach that consensus. DPOS delegates that responsibility to BPs via token holder votes. If anyone doesn’t like this, then they can form their own chain themselves. Creating an environment with 10s of Millions of $ on the line, its reassuring that the community can resolve this. There will always be bugs, the most secure chain isn’t the one that says all bugs are final but that the intent of the code is captured. If there is any dispute you can freeze the funds and transfer funds back, and there could be a public trial. The hackers and thieves won’t reveal their identity. If two parties do come forward and reveal themselves publicly and articulate their case, then it would be fair to default to the code. With Ricardian contracts, they should describe the intent in plain English of each action so if the code doesn’t meet intent it can be checked. On the other hand some say we can’t do this for everyone, you need to be connected or rich to benefit from this type of security. With that in real life there is different security measures for different things. Locks for bike locks, or someone kicks in your door to steal your property. Insurance can be used to defend against this. It doesn’t make sense to hire a private investigator to pursue every crime but when things get up to a high enough value then it makes sense to hire an investigator and pay a few hundred K to find the thief to recover the loss. It’s an economic decision at that point.
Here there is real cost to the community and thousands of cases like this. Small cases could have multisigs, medium could have insurance and large amounts involve the community.
If the community is going to investigate then a bond could be placed.
In the end we all lose if there was a bug in the code.
We don’t want the government judging our agreements, we want the community through voluntary participation on what is legitimate and not. Dan is strongly against bringing governments in via lawsuits.
Since no hard forks took place we are following the code is law to some extent.
Dan hasn’t personally reviewed the details of this hack and is speaking in generalities and principals.
How do you prevent socialist justice where everyone pays for the prosecution for criminals. How do you balance the money spent on imprisonment and making people whole? There is a misalignment of incentives, incentives to keep people in prison but not to make people whole.
Trade-offs to minimise the cost of recovering damages and maximize the protection of individuals.
What we’re seeing with EOS is a small example where BPs have an incentive to protect the EOS ecosystem and defend the intent of what is going on. Instead of a company worrying about one bug to ruin them. In the future having more due process with leaders elected by Eden would be a better way to delegate this power of freezing accounts and updating things. In a way that prevents incumbents from abusing this power. With Eden we could prevent that from being corrupted in the future.
The real goal should be good governance.
Q: You mentioned Jordan Peterson in your Book, what about him do you admire and anything you disagree with? A: JP provides a lot of wisdom for taking responsibility for your life. His book 12 Rules For Life transformed Dan’s life in a positive way. There are certain things that Dan has learned that JP repeats as true but has been proven false, so is curious about JP’s view now on those. JP really inspires people to find truth and avoid nihilism. There are different meanings to things and has been very helpful to Dan in his life. Really encouraged by JPs push for people to take personal responsibility and value interests beyond the physical aspects of life. His biblical series if fascinating to Dan and finding insight in the nature of God and life. He can’t say enough good things about JP.
Q: Are you aware that JP is aware of Eden now? A: Yes he is working on a blog post directedly targeted to JP to prove Eden is a better way to organize lobsters. JP is keenly aware of the pareto principal. There is always going to be hierarchies in society. Dan would be very curious to hear JPs perspective on Eden and the phycological impact of this.
Q: Missed from John…
Q: What are your thoughts on Yves influence on the final round of the test Eden. A: He offered matching funds. The group decided if he was going to do it then he would anyway. The group decided that another rep would be better. Its interesting that Yves didn’t come through. Dan is sad that Yves resigned from EOS Nation. He thinks Yves is a strong leader and had the best intentions for EOS in mind from what he could tell.
Yves: The great thing is that the round 2 is recorded. People should go listen to that before making statements about the offer that was made. Go and listen and see how it occured. It wasn’t a bribe. People should go and watch this to get a full view of how the offer came about.
Dan: was only responding to impressions.
Q to Yves, what was your intent with that offer? A: During round 1 Yves wasn’t put forth, Yves became the 4th player in what would’ve been a group of 3. He was only there to support not participate but needed to enter to balance the count. Another player was going to go through that first round with Yves. After discussion on the how it will get done, the person didn’t have any tangible ideas on this. Yves suggested the 1000 EOS could go through the crowdfunding platform. A few mins before the end of the call this person didn’t feel comfortable explaining the crowd funding purpose of the funds. It was decided that Yves should go forward to champion this idea. Round two was with Luke, Hahn, and John. During that round it shifted from at first being Yves bc his idea was good, to then to move John forward. In part of that discussion Yves suggested the additional 1000 EOS amount during that round that would bolster this amount and allow for greater funding. This additional 1000 EOS was to be a tool to help John move forward for the benefit of the community with funding to Greymass and EOSpowerup.io. Through random chance John and Chris Barnes ended up in the same group, working on the same thing. There was a risk in putting John forward since he was representing himself.
Generally it was pretty amazing and gave Yves confidence in the process that people will root for those that they put through and build communities. Its an incredible process! Go watch the videos!
Dan: reiterate that he’s always had good experiences with Yves and he has good intentions.
Yves: If you think it was a bribe, you must accept that John took a bribe, Luke was ok with a bribe etc…
Dan: At the end of the day perception, accurate or not, even the perception of a bribe will be caught. People will now be on alert for that and is a positive sign that no one will tolerate.
Brandon: This is a lot like a game of broken telephone, is there a way to verify the intent from a previous round to be carried forward? A: Dan: its actually possible for the people in round 2 could watch the previous round. It could be done so that there is more of a gap between rounds so you could review previous rounds in advance of the next. IE the next day. That might not scale well if we have groups of 10 people as you’d need to spend 10 hours to review the previous rounds vids.
Yves: This reemphasizes the importance of putting the right people forth to communicate the objectives from the previous rounds. Very important to put people forward who can effectively communicate, think fast, and present/sell the idea to others. Like Dan had suggested those to move forward are the ones best at finding consensus and not likely the devs. If they don’t meet their commitments they will likely ruin their reputation.
Mike: by the time he got to round 3 he had a personal connection from the earlier rounds. He was thinking from their perspectives. He had their idea’s and motives in mind. You make an agreement in round 1 or 2. Chris made a strong argument that didn’t come up in Mike’s previous rounds. He got the logic, but felt this personal connection to the folks in the previous rounds. Having the time to review the other data from the earlier elections would be useful as we were guessing about Yves offer, but we only had 50 mins to iron it out even though he didn’t have the full story. This process is going to bring out good intention. We did seem to bubble up solid people to the higher levels of the process.
Yves: I though it was interesting that John made it very clear that the rules of engagement that he knew he needed to win. The potential conflict of interest changed the direction of the votes. He hopes this is the standard for this.
Chris: if you listen to the final round you will notice John admitted that the extra 1000 EOS might still be applied to what John stood for and not John himself. This was an important factor in the final choice.
Dan: One thing is for sure, Eden did get a lot of engagement. Just doing the process is very beneficial to the community. Dan was jealous that he didn’t get to participate since he was funding it. He is looking forward to participating in future elections.
Q: Do you think a code of conduct is required? A: One of the aspects of Eden is you are electing a group of people to receive funding, but also this group will be able to propose bylaws. Human nature is relatively consistent over time so the rules will stabilize over time. The rules should be converging with smaller and smaller changes needed over time. It could take years, decades or centuries to unfold. So we need to be very careful about how governance processes change the rules. One of the points in the book is the current reps can propose laws, while it takes the subsequent elected members to ratify the previously presented rules. This way its not red team’s in, change rules this way, blue team’s in change rules this way… The purpose is to prevent any community to be captured by incumbents. This leads to a process to select leaders of a community that uses filters and randomness. When you get to the final, Dan believes the final Satoshi should be randomly picked from the top group. Not even Dan is guaranteed to win for example if he was in the final round if that selection is random. Since bylaw changes require two consecutive wins this would prevent capture. That’s the direction Dan is going. There needs to be a direct benefit to the members of the community. The purpose is 1+1=3. In current systems the politicians leverage the power of the whole at the expense of the parts. Everyone in Eden should be personally better-off being a member of the community. Dan’s belief is increasing individual independence provides benefits to the whole.
Q: Do you think there is value in informal small Eden type process where people all agree to reach consensus on anything and they follow it through as a way to provide practice and social bond? A: Anytime you have people working together having a process to reach consensus is needed. Anytime you have more than 10 people you could divide into groups and debate. Its about long-term iteration and collaboration.
Q: Eden Alpha participants noted party formation would be inevitable, what are your thoughts? A: This prevents political party formation and randomization prevent effective coordination. Assuming this divulges into a 2 party system in a large group with the random distribution into groups would lead to more than 50% of the groups not reaching consensus. There will be groups that will form around an idea/project but Dan doesn’t see this evolving into a 2 party situation. If you had a political party that had 2/3 of the community they could just secede to form their own community anyway and have 2 communities instead of 1.
Telegram bugged for me here and I couldn’t hear the comments to Dan…It’s the process that matters more than the outcome. If people are invited and are trusted to follow the bylaws and abide by the moral code that the community deems ideal, then great. The means need to justify themselves, the process needs to justify itself. Eden is a process that is designed to prevent capture that subverts the will of the people. You either want to be a part of a community or you don’t. If you don’t abide by the rules you will be asked to leave or voted out. This is all about how do you protect the uniqueness of the individuals of the community. The issue with crypto communities is they are dominated by those that can buy their way in with printing press money. The best analogy is the difference between POW and POS. POW allows for outside forces to interfere IE on chains that use SHA256. For POS you can fork and have new token holders. Of course POS could be captured with tokens being bought up again. Eden is unique where you can’t buy your way into power and permits communities to maintain their power.
Announcement: Dan is going to change the structure to only do once a month AMA’s and then will do fireside chats for the other weeks. These informal AMA’s will be the first Monday of every month. The idea is to improve the quality and focus on particular content for the wider audience.
Brandon: moving to a video format, to capture that content and repurpose it.
Dan: In the law of the jungle force and power is what determines who lives and who dies. Eden is just ideas, with the purpose of allowing people to work together to increase their power in the law of the jungle. To increase their power, and their ability to protect themselves in the jungle. Its about working together in the law of the jungle to protect their autonomy and individual rights. We don’t force people to stay in the union, and can secede. Your rights are what you can defend not what you declare. A wild animal attacks you, you’re not going to defend yourself with the comment “but my rights.” Communities that use this process are less likely to go to war. The non-aggression principal is great in a peace treaty, but its not a universal law. Its not something that you can demand of other people.
Q on BTC…but I didn’t get it…not related to Eden.
Q: Do you think we have enough people espousing Eden to form the larger group relatively soon? A: Dan believes fundamentally that Eden is a social process that everyone can benefit from. Eden can be done in real life with nothing but a deck of playing cards. It doesn’t require technology. With ongoing development it will be no different than Facebook and won’t require any specialized knowledge in order to participate.
Q: 1000 EOS everyone was nice and friendly. Is there a plan to increment the pool gradually? A: Yes the plan is to do many smaller rounds before the stakes get increased each time.
Call ended at 11:45.
With Ricardian contracts, they should describe the intent in plain English of each action so if the code doesn’t meet intent it can be checked. On the other hand some say we can’t do this for everyone, you need to be connected or rich to benefit from this type of security.
Reason why ricardian contracts are not mandatory to be attached to a esio smart contract. But highly recommended when large audience and mission-critical.