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1 | Project name: | Please describe the methods that will be used to conduct your research or develop your project: | Please provide a timeline for the completion of your project: | Please explain the expected impact of your project: | Please provide a detailed breakdown of the budget for your project, including how the funding will be used: | Please explain how your proposed research project aligns with the conference theme of "Advancing the Horizons of Collaborative Diversity and Democracy": | Please provide a hyperlinks to any relevant documents, such as a CV or a project plan: | |||||||||||||||
2 | A Framework/Tooling to evaluate Decentralization and Autonomy Status of DAO Governance | Goal: We aim to develop a framework and associated tooling to gain a deep understanding of the value and power of in decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) with the consideration of DAO holders’ diversity (cultural, social, economic standards, etc) and how those inlfuence the governance. Underpinning: We will apply the Community of Inquiry (COI) model to examine the social presence of members in a DAO community, and how their personal traits influence decision-making within the governance of the DAO. This includes assessing their sense of identity within the community, participation and engagement, performance, and sense of ownership. Additionally, the project aims to gain insight into the challenges that decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) face by using a postcolonial computing framework. By taking this approach, the project aims to understand how global dynamics of power, wealth, economic strength, and political polarization influence the shape of governance decisions in DAOs. The project will also analyze the governance design of different DAOs, including the perspectives and engagement of different members, and the implications of those perspectives. This analysis will be then delivered using a visualization tool that leverages current on-chain and off-chain data. The goal is to understand the diversity in design practices and the reasons for it, and ultimately, to acknowledge and embrace heterogeneity in governance design rather than trying to control or eliminate it. To conduct this project, we will use a combination of methods. (1) Formative studies with DAO experts to gain a deep understanding of the value and power of human cognitive diversity in decentralized autonomous organizations. (2) Auto-ethnography to identify evolving DAO spaces (in different categories), and to identify pluralism in the community and challenges that are currently unaddressed by current DAO governance. (3) Empirical data analysis to support the theoretical framework by leveraging DAO off-chain, on-chain data, and smart contract governance rules. This approach is intended to achieve a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the DAO community and its evolving governance. (4) Development and user evaluation of data visualization tooling that enables individual/community profiling for risk assessment in the context of society and the economy. | Week 1: Kick-off The project team comes together to review the project plan, discuss the objectives, and assign tasks Week 2-3: Target list of indicators Workshop held with Plurality team, academic collaborators (RDI, UC Berkeley), and our team (SALT LAB, UIUC) Identify and agree on a target list of indicators that will be used to measure progress and success throughout the project. Week 4-6: Development of Study Protocol for Formative Study The design study protocol, run pilots Run the main study Week 7-9: Data Analysis Develop data collection tools and data analysis scripts to support the research Test the tools for usability and reliability Analysis of the data collected Write up the findings in a research paper Submit the report to stakeholders Week 10-12: Delivery of Tool Development of the data visualization tool User testing to evaluate the tool for usability and effectiveness Test the data visualization tool in different use cases to identify any potential issues Deliver the tool to stakeholders | The goal of this project is to collaborate with various decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and other decentralized technology and community groups to research and develop a tool for visualizing the diversity and heterogeneity of DAO governance at scale and identifying challenges. The main outcomes of this project include: 1. A scientific and evidence-based framework for understanding the community landscape and evaluating it using decentralization and autonomy metrics 2. A set of design principles to enhance the future of DAOs and assessing their effectiveness 3. A data aggregation tool to gather various community signals such as voting, proposals, and off-chain conversations 4. Metrics for DAO tooling to visualize the DAO community and governance landscape by considering factors that affect performance 5. A tool that can be used with different DAO communities to gain insights and identify future research directions to scale the analysis and development process. | 5,000 initial hackathon/data aggregation challenges: These funds will be used to cover the costs associated with organizing and running a hackathon event or a data aggregation challenge. This could include venue rental, marketing, food and drink, prizes, and other expenses. 10000 Recruit DAO experts for formative studies/interviews and user testing compensation: These funds will be used to cover the costs of recruiting and compensating DAO experts for formative studies, interviews, and user testing. This could include compensation for their time and expertise, travel expenses, and other related costs for the expert's participation. 5,000 data collection tools and data analysis scripts & Automated tooling: These funds will be used to cover the costs associated with developing data collection and data analysis tools. This could include software development, testing, and maintenance costs, as well as any other expenses related to creating and implementing automated tooling for the project. | To advance the understanding of collaborative diversity and democracy in the context of technology, one key approach is to examine how communities form and evolve, and how they relate to the interactions between designers and users in traditional corporate settings. Our visualization tool will display these interactions among various stakeholders, such as DAO members, proposal authors, grassroots users, investors, and protocol designers. This will also provide an opportunity to examine the governance commitments of DAOs, and to imagine what alternative practices with different commitments might look like, thus will open up new possibilities for designing collaborative and diverse workspaces. | https://github.com/TanusreeSharma/tanusreesharma.github.io/blob/main/Tanusree_Sharma_CV.pdf https://tanusreesharma.github.io/ | |||||||||||||||
3 | Ballot Party | Software development: software engineering, user-interface design, user testing, etc Then testing in elections | The actual work should only take a few months, but there are no elections in SF/CA this year so we may proceed more slowly. | We want to: - help voters to vote faster and with more information - help recommenders (political parties, news papers, NGOs, ordinary people, etc) get their recommendations to more people, more cheaply and stickily - help voters to hold recommenders accountable if the recommend something that turns out badly - surface higher-quality polling data in advance of the election | We don't have a detailed budget yet but plan to develop an MVP with contractor help (things like UpWork by default) and also CS interns from MIT and UC Berkeley, which I'm told might be free. $10k should get us to an MVP. Less would still be useful. | We want to inject more information into elections, which are still one of the highest participation and highest impact plurality/bridge-building activities around. | Malcolm wrote a lot of GMail for Android and was the first employee at Asana, where he wrote and rewrote a lot of the infrastructure. Others on the team have similar experience and/or lots of machine-learning experience. | |||||||||||||||
4 | Communation | Literature review: Reviewing and synthesizing existing literature on the topic of “Network States” and related post-Westphalian proposals to better understand what has already been proposed on this topic, This include reviewing academic papers, reports, and other published materials to map the history, characteristics, and current development of alternatives to existing nation states, as well as to identify the gaps or limitations in the current conceptualisation of these alternatives. Interviews: Collecting data through in-depth conversations with individuals working towards the conceptualisation or implementation of post-Westphalian alternatives, or with individuals who are members of intentional self-sovereign communities (commonations) and who have expertise in this area. Interviews will be conducted in person or online, and will be either structured (using a predetermined set of questions) and unstructured (allowing for more flexibility and spontaneous discussion). Comparative case studies: Studying and comparing multiple intentional self-sovereign communities (or commonations) to understand commonalities and differences among these communities, and how they differ from the nation of Network States introduced by Balaji. This will involve interviews, observations, and other data collection methods to gather information about the characteristics, practices, and challenges of these different commonations. | Month 1-2: - Develop a clear research question and statement of goals and objectives for the project. - Conduct a literature review to identify existing research on Network States and other post-westphalian initiatives, and identify gaps in current knowledge. - Outline the specific tasks and activities that will be needed to complete the project and develop a detailed research plan outlining the specific methods that will be used to collect and analyze data (e.g., interviews, observations, surveys). Month 3-4-5: - Collecting and analyzing data using the methods outlined above. - Drafting of the research report based on the literature review and the data collection. - Organise in-person and online workshop with relevant actors, to discuss the underlying conceptualisation of Network States and elaborate a common framework for the Communations, and receive feedback on the drafted report. - Elaborate on the notion of “Commonations” and how they differ from the notion of “Network States” Month 5-6 - Write the final research report summarizing the findings of the study and implications for future research. - Get feedback from relevant stakeholders. - Submit the final research report to relevant outlets (e.g., academic journals, conferences). | A communation is a type of intentional community or voluntary association that is characterized by shared values, collective governance, and a focus on the common good. These types of communities have a long history and can take many different forms, from religious communities and communes to cooperatives and activist groups. Balaji’s new book “The Network State” argues that nation-states are becoming increasingly obsolete and that a new form of state, which they call the "Network State", is emerging. This new type of state is based on networks of individuals crowdfunding territories all around the world, and obtaining diplomatic recognition for this geographically decentralized, yet logically centralized state. Yet, the institutional apparatus (the institution of the ‘state’) remains the same. The notion of a “Communation” is based on a similar post-westphalian approach. However, there are some important differences between the two concepts. The biggest difference is that Balaji's Network States would be created as an alternative to existing nation states, whereas Communations exists alongside within existing nation-states. The focus is not on the “state” as an institution, but rather on the “nation” as cultural identity. One important aspect of communations is their emphasis on self-governance and self-determination. This can involve the use of participatory decision-making processes and the development of alternative forms of ownership and resource management. This means that communations may be seen as a form of decentralization or devolution of power, allowing individuals and groups to take a more active role in shaping the policies and practices that affect their lives. Overall, Network States are merely a way for people to exit the current institutional framework of the state, and create a new (yet similar) institutional structure of the Network States”, that is in direct competition with existing nation states. In contrast, Communations enable new ways of organizing human activity; in ways that does not require any radical changes to our existing social and political institutions. Indeed, communations represent an alternative approach to organizing society and addressing social and economic challenges, one that is grounded in principles of cooperation, sustainability, and the common good. The goal of this research project is to provide an alternative instantiation of the same underlying principles that underpins the Network states, based on the idea that, thanks to digital and blockchain technologies, online communities have a newfound opportunity to collectively govern themselves and collectively manage and govern shared resources, offering important services to their members. Yet, it is important to counteract the narrative of the Network state, which is grounded on a libertarian approach to exit-based governance, with an alternative narrative, that of the Communations, which is grounded on a cooperative and commons-based approach to governance. | Communication manager (6k) 2 research assistants (6k each = 12k) Organization of 2 workshops (3k each = 6k) Content production (website, etc) = 1k | The research will enable to advance plurality at the governance level by enabling new layers of overlapping sovereignties that interface with one another, enabling greater degree of cooperation and collaboration among Communations, and between Communations and existing Nation states. It will enable experimentation with a greater diversity of community and new model of democracy, with new governance structures that are not restricted to territorial approaches, but rather operate at both the local and global level. The research project will identify ways in which individuals already do connect with one another and how they collectively manage and govern shared resources, and will advance research on how we can leverage the potential of blockchain and digital technology in order to facilitate the emergence of a large variety of organizations, representative of a plurality of interest and stakeholder, which are focused on political issues and collective governance. | https://cyber.harvard.edu/people/pdefilippi https://cyber.harvard.edu/people/jessy-kate-schingler | |||||||||||||||
5 | DAOs as a governance layer for the internet | Technical standards development, web systems, legal research | May 2024 | In this project, I will build and launch a governance layer for the internet—by which I mean a suite of technical protocols, operating directly above the application layer of the Internet Protocol, that facilitates the governance of internet applications such as websites, platforms, API services and the online communities that participate in them. More specifically, I will turn decentralization autonomous organizations (DAOs), and the emerging ecosystem around them, into such a governance layer. | Funding will be used to support my time and salary to bring on additional RAs and fellows to support the project. 80k -> 1 year, standards lead (me, 2/3 time) 80k -> 1 year, research fellow (2/3 time) 25k - year, part-time RA 15k - travel, tech subscriptions / hosting costs, and incidentals 200k total | The problem is power. The widespread failures of accountability among large tech companies have spurred the rise of projects that seek to distribute power and control more widely, from user-controlled social media networks such as Mastodon to cooperatively-owned gig platforms such as Up & Go to radically-decentralized blockchain projects such as Uniswap or Decentraland. Many of these projects are united by their use of technologies intended to secure decentralization, whether data stores like Solid, standards like ActivityPub, or blockchain platforms like Ethereum or Cosmos. Such projects seek to build their politics into technology. I don’t believe that’s the right strategy for changing the power structure of the internet, which is largely a reflection of power structures that exist outside the internet. We need to build technology into our politics. If we can migrate existing power structures onto the internet—especially the architecture of corporate ownership, but also other structures like co-ops, nonprofits, and even political institutions—then we will have a chance to change them. It is our best chance. | Full proposal here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11MuuhMrE72ManyYaJqVe6GLVDQpcBMgAQKKOPTG7IoU/edit# | |||||||||||||||
6 | DeCartography | Open Source/Community Based Approach | 1 year | DeCartography could be a powerful tool similar to quadratic funding to be able to better distribute funds for public good projects | Timeline: 1st Month after getting grant: Begin development on a ncurses based C written tool that will integrate with the question/training site for decartography. Since our web application is trying to be open source and federated, we're trying to find an alternate way for users to verify themselves. We'll be using private/public key pairs to get users to sign a message with an included time stamp that we'll verify them for a DeCartography session. Aside from ncurses based message signer, we'll also have a metamask implementation for users who don't have a cold wallet (Estimated cost 2,000 dollars) 2nd Month after getting grant: Development begins on the backend for the website (we've decided to use golang to improve performance), the backend will interact with our tool to verify signatures, taking in it's outputted signed message. The backend will take into account how to accurately verify each user and attest for the trustworthiness of the session. (Estimated Cost 3,000 dollars). 3rd, 4th, and 5th Months: Development on the signer tool and backend continues 6 Month: The backend is sufficiently developed at this stage, work on the frontend and user UI starts. To increase user safety, we'll try to keep the use of JS to an absolute minimum and only use open source libraries and ensure the code is legible and open source. We'll also be developing two different local clients, one based on ncurses and the other based on electron (Estimated Cost 2,000 dollars) 7th and 8th Months: Development on Frontend continues 9th Month: Release of training algorithm site and offline signer tool (While also running an instance of decartography ourselves, this all happens on the Ethereum Network) 10th, 11th and 12th Months: With the help of our new found community, modify the frontend to accommodate regular answer sessions using the questions and predicted outcomes we've now collected. Have professional applied mathematicians peer review and analyze the code and security of DeCartography. | We'll provide a meaningful alternative to fund public goods, one that's based on community, trust, and wisdom of the crowd | https://decartography.github.io/docs/ | |||||||||||||||
7 | Decentralized Intelligence Curriculum | We are creating a curriculum for decentralized intelligence, that we encourage your contributions to. We’ll hopefully vote on topics/lecturers via quadratic voting/polis. | To create curriculum, 1 month, then voting on skeleton curriculum, to be iterated on by plurality institute enthusiasts. | Create cannon, establish a shared context, systematic overview of the field of decentralized intelligence. | 1st google doc to collect curriculum 2nd polis voting (how much budget does polis need?) 3rd short list wiki & confirm desired speakers 4th potential approval process? | Help spread view of plurality & good principles in relation to AI | Please add your curriculum suggestions here: https://foresight.pub/decentralizedintelligence | |||||||||||||||
8 | Development of a standards body for Calm Technology | Q1: Establish a non-profit to govern the principles of Calm Technology and its standard management and development. Q2: Develop a framework for the new international standard, "Calm Technology" based on the existing principles of Calm Technology. Establish partnerships with key industry players such as technology manufacturers, software developers, and consultants to support the implementation of the new standard. Q3: Launch the certification program and begin certifying technology products and services. Q4: Develop a training program for the certification of technology products and services under the "Calm Technology" standard. Ongoing: Continually improve the standard and the certification program to ensure that it stays current with the latest advancements in technology. | The non-profit and first draft of standards will be completed, revised, and ready for testing by Q4 2023. | The concept of Calm Technology and Case's principles for Calm product design have been widely adopted by companies all over the world, including Microsoft, Samsung, Google, Virgin Global and AirBNB. Calm Technology also inspired Kyoto-based Calm Technology startup Mui Lab. However, larger companies need more useful and rigorous steps to ensure they are actually adhering to these principles. This effort is intended to have worldwide impact on how technology is created, maintained and supported with respect to attention, reliability and connectivity. Much of our technology today interrupts us and takes us out of our lives. | This is not an extremely expensive project to establish. Most of the effort will involve my time. I was given the following breakdown from my lawyer when asked about how much this would cost on the legal side: $2500 Establishing the non-profit $1500 Certification program and standard filing fees Total: $4000 USD | It's important to establish the principles of Calm Technology as a public good. These methods, first proposed by Marc Weiser at Xerox Parc, allow for a more harmonious interaction between humans and technology. When technology breaks down, it causes harm, especially in the lower spectrum of the social class. By having large companies adopt resilient standards, we can reduce harm. | https://calmtech.com/ https://caseorganic.medium.com/is-your-product-designed-to-be-calm-cdde5039cca5 https://caseorganic.medium.com/designing-automation-systems-to-be-calm-five-principles-dbb2698d93c4 | |||||||||||||||
9 | Digital Gaia | Digital Gaia is developing an open protocol for mass coordination of a scaled response to climate change and environmental degradation Our core platform is focused on a decentralized impact assessment infrastructure lifecycle evaluation of impact (ex-ant & Ex Post) at the first mile of action. The platform is designed to be a canvas for building applications in expert assistance services and decision support to actors and investors in climate and environmental solutions Areas of research and development we are pursuing 1) Core technology architecture for a network of data+compute nodes that produces impact assessments integrates arbitrarily many data points and user-contributed models from domain experts and laypeople alike, using modern statistics and decision theory techniques: probabilistic ML, causal inference, stochastic variational inference and active inference. The resulting assessments are principled, transparent, dynamic and adaptive, and inherit their integrity from the scientific method itself: they are based neither on expert authority nor on majority vote, but on an evolving and transparent paper trail of inferences cross-validated against real-world data. 2) An AI-enabled platform for federated development of dTwins (decentralized digital twins) as a principled solution to provide a standardized, rigorous yet flexible pathway for scientific and technological communities to decentralize and reinvent the primitives of systematic sensemaking including of scientific model creation, data collection, inference, prediction, and generalization. 3) Proof of Impact: Translating the intelligence codified in the network of interconnected twins into asset-grade parameterization of Impact (proof of Impact) as fully transparent and auditable evidence to back the claims encoded in Hypercerts and other instruments for the trade of impact | Digital Gaia will be doing rapid development and prototyping of solutions for the above topics over the course of 2023. | · A functioning plurality of participants and perspectives providing reliable and highly valuable contributions to consensus-based impact assessment · Actual solutions deployed on over 100 farms in 10 countries in the 1st half of 2023 · Growing impact on the vitality of 10,000 hectares of land through regenerative agriculture, forestry, and land use | Estimated budget of 750k for the 2023 year. 60% development staff 30% network engagement 10% admin & overhead | Digital Gaia is designing a system for context specific impact assessment to optimize for local interests and assures that benefits are distributed equitably to network contributors and local actors as part of an open, permissionless protocol. Our protocol provides interpretable, open source models of environmental dynamics for free to farmers as part of their regenerative yield planning practices. Data and models are democratically sourced, democratically evaluated, and democratically awarded. | https://docsend.com/view/s/gexztbntbf5vxsn9 Federated Learning Implementation Details (not ready for public circulation): https://www.notion.so/digitalgaia/Federated-variational-inference-and-learning-382540f95f324257a14dec958728ba9d | |||||||||||||||
10 | Digital Polycentric Governance Support System | Computational social science using large dataset analytics and predictive machine learning. Our methodology uses multiple datasets of on- and off-chain governance fora, transcripts of Town Halls and community calls, and voting behaviours associated with DAOs. Unlike previous empirical studies of digital, decentralized governance, which tend to adopt a neoclassical approach centered on token price, our approach recognizes how market price may be a poor predictor of governance and seeks more complex, multivariate features. Uniquely, we will experiment with large language models for semantic clustering, in addition to more conventional descriptive statistical approaches (regression models, etc.) As well, unsupervised machine learning will be used to train a model to cluster governance discourse and behaviours (K-means, PCA, etc.). Finally, we will train a neural net for a proof of concept “governance support system,” which will make predictions about future voting behaviour and governance performance. The recommender system will provide the user with metrics and model indices to help craft more successful (i.e., “good”) governance proposals. | 4 months from funding (April 30) | This project will 1) offer empirical insight into governance processes in DAOs and 2) will help governance members use metrics and ML predictions to make better governance decisions. There are at least 10,000 DAOs in existence today, ranging from very small community groups to large and systemically important DeFi platforms, which offer a rich trove of discourse, economic, and voting data. 1) This project seeks to better understand how governance decisions are made in the wild using messy, unstructured governance fora (on- and off-chain). These sites of order, dispute, resolution, and collective identity are critically understudied, especially in terms of large social movements generating rich governance data. We seek preliminary answers to empirical research questions. For instance, does quadratic voting work? Or, what are the ideal conditions and parameters for DAO longevity? Further research questions motivated by theories of good governance and participatory democratic praxis will be further developed and supported by future grants. Results will be communicated through open access journals and code will be uploaded to Github. 2) The second stage of this project will use predictive ML to support good governance by training a neural net for a “governance support system,” which will be released as open source software. We imagine a dashboard displaying vital governance metrics particular to the DAO and an interactive “preflight” tool that returns predictions to help members craft more effective governance proposals. | Funds will be used to hire a 1) junior data scientist and 2) junior machine learning software developer, each paid $6,250 ($1,562.50/month PTE for four months). The PI does not receive compensation from this grant. | Characteristically, DAOs are pluralistic, participatory structures that must make strategic management and revenue decisions while maintaining a legitimate, consensus-based form of governance. Since DAOs use blockchain (and web3) infrastructure, they offer exciting new solutions to thorny, non-state, collective action problems, such as verified and pseudonymous identities, algorithmically-modulated voting strategies (e.g., Quadratic Voting), and complex token engineering. However, such technical advances have brought these emerging organizational structures into conflict with government regulators and civil society, on account of privacy protections, the social dynamics of mass movements, digital assetization and tokenization, and smart-contract based private ordering. Despite these challenges, some DAOs have weathered years of challenges and offer a glimpse into digital polycentric governance in action. Elinor Ostrom’s ground-breaking work on polycentric governance showed how tough collective action problems with resource constraints can be solved without state or market solutions. In *Governing the Commons*, Ostrom discussed how a potential tragedy of the commons can often be avoided “by voluntary organizations rather than by a coercive state.” Ostrom was keen to find alternatives to rational egoism that, it was presumed, necessarily devolved into overutilization of scarce resources (the so-called prisoner’s dilemma). She challenged those who, failing to see past the examples outlined by Hobbes and Rousseau, thought that only a government “using whatever force may be required” could save the commons. Others felt that, if state violence was to be avoided, it would require privatizing the commons by erecting surveillance and security features to partition resources. Ostrom pointed out that both approaches assumed institutional change must come from the outside and be imposed on the individuals affected. Ostrom’s approach to polycentric governance rejects this assumption and trades state and market solutions for “difficult, time-consuming, conflict-invoking” processes. *Digital* polycentric governance extends Ostrom’s model to a new environment, one where property and scarcity is artificial, value is generated *ex nihilo*, and social dynamics are networked and at scale. By empirically observing the “difficult, time-consuming, conflict-invoking” processes of digital polycentric governance, this research seeks to identify and validate new governance strategies to face this millennium’s big collective action problems, like climate change and economic inequality. | PI (Quinn DuPont) is a faculty member at UBC’s School of Information and the Schulich School of Business at York University. He has over a decade of research and publication on cryptocurrencies and blockchains, and since 2016 has been focused on the social dynamics of decentralized autonomous organizations. The PI is well known within the community and has a track record of successful grants (for example, a recent Gitcoin grant supported the development of a novel Web3 publication venue: https://cryptocarnival.wtf/). Personal website: https://iqdupont.com/ Author of *Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains* (Polity 2019): https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Cryptocurrencies+and+Blockchains-p-9781509520237 Recent essay on progressive possibilities of web3: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4320959 | |||||||||||||||
11 | From Slaves to Servants? Web3 and the Transformation of the International Financial Markets into a Global Community | The project analyses relevant literature and also employs semi-structured interviews | June, July and September 2023 | It is expected to theorize the utopian principles of Web3 activists for an audience of contemporary international lawyers | 3 months of research work: 15.000 US$ 2 week of field work, including trips, hotels: 3000 US$ Research Assistant, 1 month: 3000 US$ Language checking of two articles: 800 US$ Total: 21.800 US$ | This projects studies the possibility of global spaces of interaction without the authority of law and does so by investigating the possibility of implementing classic natural principles in the Web3 | https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1x-GYhTmWDxOO6QVaf9J5759l8pCwQzA6?usp=sharing | |||||||||||||||
12 | Governance Garden | Coopetitive R&D – diverse goal-aligned R&D teams comprehensively explore broad hypothesis space regarding a significant human challenge (in this case the development of better governance tools) and converge more rapidly on best solutions | This phase is just the specification of the Garden incentive structure for potential use by the Gitcoin round re: Governance tools | We expect that a Governance Garden will accelerate humanity's development of better working governance technology by 20 years. And given the urgent need for better governance to face existential human challenges (re: global warming, epistemic degradation, energy, flailing democracies, etc.) this project may well save and improve billions of lives. | $2500 – travel and convening budget for R&D teams and funders to get this going | It fully aligns in a self evident way | TBD | |||||||||||||||
13 | Human AI Reflective Equilibrium | working group on this topic to discuss relevant AI research and projects in line with the reflective equilibrium, including open questions such as - how can ais aid human reflection - how can ais assist humans aligning ais - can we expect convergence and if not, how do pluralist ecologies containing multiple ais look like Write up: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MIpotlJTI4fLPs6ORPCvt6QXrrElt7okeyAJysz_zdk/edit | Ongoing group discussion | Advocate for the reflective equilibrium as a useful methodology for ai safety | 500-1k for potential travel to ai conferences to apply the reflective equilibrium to existing ai systems | Applies pluralism to AI | ||||||||||||||||
14 | Journal of Extitutional Theory | Extitutional theory is a new domain of scholarship at the intersection of sociology and institutional theory focused on persistent relational dynamics that are not well described by institutional formalisms. Extitutional theory seeks to develop a general theory of these relational dynamics including their interplay with institutions. Extitutional dynamics are not “outside of” institutions, but rather represent a different lens through which to see the same underlying social dynamics. We propose to start a peer reviewed, open access journal focused on rigorous development of extitutional theory, including new institutional scholarship emphasizing the design and study of institutional dynamics in the (post) Internet age. | The first issue of the journal will be released in May 2022. Subsequent frequency will be decided based on feedback and interest. | Community of scholarship. Capacity building. New generation of institutional scholars in the pluralistic tradition, and the cultivation of an emerging plurality-adjacent discipline around extitutional theory. A place to encourage, cultivate, and create a community of people working on extitutional theory | Support the time of the initial team of editors and curators. Pro version of pub pub | Extitutional theory seeks to understand new modalities of collaboration that are emerging around technologies such as web3 and distributed systems, and fluid global nomadic cultures. In doing so it seeks to legitimize these approaches and contribute to collaborative diversity. Extitutional theory also offers new ways to explore and recognize agency, accountability and other ingredients of “democracy,” “governance” or “collective action” that do not necessarily involve formal decision making, but have been previously difficult to reason about. | https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1FQT2TLgsT8pL72dB07jjz7ytsZkbmpqN/edit#slide=id.g1cbf4e8db16_0_107 Intro paper on Extitutional Theory: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vDCZsEeW6C0raR-Tckc6JcQcGgvpKqfi4bZMB0N-h4g/edit?usp=sharing An Introduction to Extitutional Theory (blog post): https://medium.com/berkman-klein-center/an-introduction-to-extitutional-theory-e74b5a49ea53 The Lazega Encounter: Provoking Extitutional Theory: https://jessykate.medium.com/the-lazega-encounter-provoking-extitutional-theory-f8464ab82fbf Extitutional Theory: on the Interplay between Institutions and Extitutions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnVUjm_qo1k | |||||||||||||||
15 | Momentum Building for Bridging | This project is in two stages, of which either both or only the first might be funded. The first stage is to improve the diagrams/figures used to convey the intuitions for what bridging-based ranking might look like. For this we intend to hire a graphics person that Aviv has worked with previously. The second stage is to organise a substantive residential research seminar to help make progress and consolidate bridging as a research area. For this we intend to apply to existing foundations that provide venues and catering for research retreats (e.g. Fondation des Treilles, Dagstuhl or similar). Funding would be used to subsidise travel and, if necessary, accommodation costs for key high profile attendees, and attendees in need of financial support. | If funded, work on the improved diagrams would commence shortly and should be completed by March. If funded, work organising the seminar would commence immediately and the seminar itself would be held ASAP, likely late 2023 or 2024 given the advance venue booking required. | The first stage, improving the diagrams for bridging-based ranking, would significantly help communicate the idea of bridging to new audiences and increase the likelihood of broader implementations. The second stage, the residential seminar, would assemble a critical mass of researchers working on bridging, and should serve to consolidate bridging as a research area, generate new insights and collaborations. | Anything up to around $2,500 will be spent on improved graphics. Anything between $2,500 and $10,000 would be put towards a the residential research seminar. | This project will contribute to the science and practice of bridging, the goal of which is to "increase mutual understanding and trust across divides, and create space for productive conflict, deliberation or cooperation". | This project will be organised by Aviv Ovadya and Luke Thorburn. Aviv: https://aviv.me/ Luke: https://lukethorburn.com/cv/ | |||||||||||||||
16 | Multi-level Participatory Budgeting | The Stanford Participatory Budgeting Platform, pbstanford.org, is an open-source platform for cities, municipalities, and other non-profit or for-profit entities to seek input on a budget from their constituents. This platform has been used in over 100 Participatory Budgeting (PB) processes in the United States, and was kick-started by a convening at the White House in 2014. The platform includes an administrative backend for self-configuration, rich analytics, many voting schemes, cutting edge social choice research, and multi-language support. The PI's research group at Stanford maintains the only installation of this software, and we provide this as a free service. However, this platform treats each project (or budget item) as independent, with no interactions or constraints across different projects (except of course the total spending constraint), Over the last year, we have seen an increased demand for richer voting interfaces, such as per-category budgets or item-item interactions. Just recently, SF's tenderloin district asked for this feature. We will use these funds to hire a Stanford student to add multi-level participatory budgeting to the platform (e.g. where there is an overall budget that is divided into categories, and there are also per-category maximum amounts). In general, we would like to capture the scenario where the items on the budget interact with each other, by being complementary or substitutes. We will also develop the theory of the ideal voting methods | We will start in April 2023, and finish the development part in June. The theory part is ongoing, and we have made good progress in that we have a good sense for what voting methods to implement; the formal proofs will take time but we are not asking for funding for the theory part. | Our platform has become the de-facto platform for participatory budgeting votes in the United States. We are currently undergoing GDPR compliance. The platform is open source and free. Funding allocation is one of the thorniest problems in plurality-based decision making, and we expect 100s of cities to use this new feature. In addition, there has been interest from a major city in exploring using this platform in conjunction with bond issues, which is an even larger market. | We will use these fund to hire a graduate research assistant for one quarter. The one quarter funding numbers are: $12,300 salary $725.70 fringe (5.9% of salary) $7824 tuition ---------- $20,849.70 total Given that the University charges a small infrastructure expense, and given computational costs and professional translation costs, we anticipate the total expense to be very close to 25K. | Our platform is one of the largest examples of collaborative problem solving, e.g. budgeting, which goes beyond simple surveys or candidate elections. We also have developed sophisticated tools for representational robustness that we are implementing in the context of participatory budgeting. | https://pbstanford.org | |||||||||||||||
17 | On Data Trusts and their Fiduciary Duties | I will use mixed methods from the study of law and economics to formalize and generalize the lessons learned from my work constituting one of the world's first data trusts. Data trust duties, when voluntarily assumed, resemble some traditional fiduciary duties familiar to scholars of collective bargaining and financial advising. However, there are also fiduciary duties that are unique to the context of data trusts. Improving the scholarly and practitioner understanding of voluntarily-assumed data fiduciary duties should hopefully result in lower costs to forming data trusts, as well as better designed data trusts, both forces likely to improve the likelihood of this becoming a viable stewardship model for data. | End of spring semester 2023: initial draft completed for workshopping (at places like MetaGov) End of November 2022: draft presented at fall conferences in light of feedback received therein December 2023 - January 2024: submission at peer reviewed academic journals or law reviews | An improved understanding of how data trusts are both similar to existing fiduciaries, as well as unique in terms of the institutional design components required for their effective functioning. Given my embeddedness in practitioner communities and companies alongside my academic appointment, I would give talks on this topic, and provide syntheses of the core lessons for any interested practitioners. | $4000: Less than half a month's (in nominal terms) summer support to allocate my time over the summer to pursue the question $1000: Travel to two US-domestic conferences to present the research and receive feedback from expert | Our current model of powerful platforms harvesting user data and reaping (nearly) all the rewards is unsustainable and inequitable. Understandably skeptical individuals either don't use these platform's services, or hedge their means of use to reduce the extent of data provided. But our data is literally "better together", as powerful machine learning tools cannot be trained usefully on a single individual's data. Ensuring that end uses and users of data is a critical input to our digital democratic future, and is one for which viable data trust models are currently underdetermined and largely untested. This project would provide a step in that direction, and of course, any findings/publications would be made publicly available free of charge. | https://drive.google.com/file/d/17zrGE7TsxanmAnJP4d_qhksljBSlDlag/view?usp=share_link | |||||||||||||||
18 | Peer to Peer Discourse and Video Platform | We'll be hiring a developer to merge the bittorrent protocol with mastodon to create a proof of concept of a social network that could theoretically provide a meaningful alternative to not only federated platforms like mastodon (that are not entirely trustless), but also a tangible competition for platforms like twitter, since unlike mastadon, a user wouldn't have to create an account in federated instance, instead they could just download the software, create a private/public key pair and start finding users. We believe the ease of use of having a unitary app that is not dependant of adminstrators could spread open source and the plural ideal | Since we are only aiming to create a proof of concept (due to the funding limitation), we expect to be able to finish in a about a month (after the developer is hired) | We expect that in the future, peer to peer social media networks could be entirely censorship resistant, they could be more decentralized since unlike federated services, they can get data from other peers without the need to go through an admin who manages a server to extract the necessary data. We expect that this will also create more data anarchy, and better data preservation | 1.5K for the prototype | We believe plurality stands for fully decentralized alternatives, and we see peer to peer as the most decentralized technology we have right now, even more so than blockchains | https://fr.linkedin.com/in/theo-belen-halimi | |||||||||||||||
19 | Plurality Mobile App Toolkit | Building a mobile Plurality app toolkit for privacy preserving crowdsourced data gathering | March 2023 | We'd like to build a library for mobile apps to incorporate plurality tooling on effective data collection for deliberation, discourse mapping. This open source library can be used for a wide range of plurality applications ranging from collective deliberation to independent journalism, passive participation, feedback loops and more. The library can be extended with further additions. The initial feature set will focus on deliberative technology, with privacy-preserving unstructured input collection and incentive structures on voting, and can be extended with engagement verification. This will be useful to a variety of projects discussed at the event so far. | $25k will be used for mobile app development contractors and designers, the app will be develop by the AI Objectives Institute | This project came from observing a need between Talk to the City, Pol.is, bridging talk and many other projects at the conference. We need an easy methodology to have follow up data collection that is privacy preserving and can also collect metadata. We'd like to provide a basic toolkit for anyone working on large-scale data gathering that incorporates non-text data which is where Twitter/Pol.is and similar platforms fall short, while mobile technology can bridge this gap. | ai.objectives.institute | |||||||||||||||
20 | Plurality Network infrastructure for social matching and community curation | We’ll start with simple MVPs and iterate on them. Social matching 1. Initial data collection in the form of a community on-boarding survey to record interests. 2. Data will be used to populate a members page which can be continually updated 3. Simple NLP tools to allow natural language queries over profiles (eg ”researchers interested in applications of plurality to peer review in decentralized science”) 4. Simple match-making tool for suggesting connections based on profile data, could be used for ice-breakers in conferences/workshops (in the future this could include interest graph data) Curation 1. Ability to share links in community chat platform (Slack/Discord) where they can be voted on and tagged - (possibly using Metagov API?) 2. Use data to populate a searchable/filterable DB (can be ranked by popularity, grouped by tagged topics, etc) 3. Use data to support social matching based on shared interests | Social Matching - 1,2 - 1-2 months 3 - 1 month 4 - 1 month Curation - 1-2 - Slack: Depends on degree of support for this use case in Metagov API - Discord: 1 month - 3 - 2 months | Social matching tools - will help address the challenges of maintaining a sense of intimacy and facilitating serendipitous social, research, and funding connections. These challenges will become more prominent as the Plurality community (hopefully) scales. Curation tools - - A shared community curated library can provide a kind of common ground and helps provide a sense of the “shape” of the Plurality research community, delineating topics of interest and highlighting important works. - Curation also provides simple and low cost ways for members to contribute, by sharing links or rating them. - The shared library can also further help establish new connections based on shared interests | Social matching: $2000 Community curation: $1000 If Slack integration needed: + $2000 for hiring a developer Total - between $3000-$5000 | The project aims to provide a part of the Plurality community infrastructure as outlined in the unconference session, with a particular focus on helping to build a collectively managed knowledge commons and tools helping members to form new collaborations and bridge across disciplinary and social divides. | ||||||||||||||||
21 | Plurality Policython | Convening a policy hackathon | By the end of the year | 500 participants, 5000 volunteer hours, and 100 papers | $6,000 - 6 $1,000 stipends for five core organizers to work on this full-time The Policy for the People team will consist of six teams: operations, mentor, content, marketing, partnerships/sponsorships, and design/website. Each team lead will receive a $1000 stipend for their work. | The Plurality Policython will be an online policy writing conference organized by the Policy for the People team. The event will be open-sourced, meaning that submissions, feedback, content, and recordings will be published and anyone will be welcome to apply. The goal of the policython will be to allow students around the world to develop policy proposals for their local, state, and federal governments to improve governance via pluralistic technologies and structures. The policython will include mentorship from leading academics and involvement from community partners, federal agencies, and international organizations. It will aim to conclude with actionable next steps in the form of solution-based, data-driven proposals. The policython will be held over a 48-hour period and is expected to engage over 1000 students and result in over 100 submitted proposals. We're confident we can do this, because we've done this before. Our team has organized a dozen hackathons, including the Pandemic Policython, which received over 150 policy brief submissions, averaging 10 pages each. The team was entirely volunteer-organized and until the event, we had paid $0 (not even for the website). Nonetheless, we partnered with over 100 organizations, from incorporating the American Academy of Arts & Sciences Our Common Purpose report to WHO liaisons to Nuclear Warfare specialists. This upcoming Plurality Policython will ask its attendees to research collaborative diversity and democracy within their own local settings, and thus be able to scale and magnify the learnings and discussions from the Plurality Research Network Conference. | see policython.org (and https://scholar.harvard.edu/policython/blog/pandemic-policython-review) | |||||||||||||||
22 | Plurigrid Protocol for Decentralized Energy w/ Agency ⚡️🔌👽 | Methods of Simulation Intelligence overall, and concretely: https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.03235 - open games engine for turning politics into effective software https://github.com/CyberCat-Institute/open-game-engine - NREL SIIP grid simulation https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/siip.html - cadCAD.jl and gridSPICE (TokenSPICE-inspired Web Assembly and sovereign blockspace agent-based simulation for social choice and decentralized smart grid coordination that is tolerant to faults, from Byzantine - and other - generals to ) - repl.it, Lean, TLA+ and whatever else it takes 🦚 (to ultimately enable effective simulation w/ generalizable strategy profiles as a way to automate equilibrium-seeking networks that can redirect imperfect / adversarial information games, into perfect enough / cooperative when it matters games | As Trotsky would put it, our revolution needs to be permanent. But, more practically for the immediate, these are the key points as far as completion of the next big step in our timeline (the launch of gridnet and the first Atom World lifelong incentivized coordination compute for grid microworlds): - data availability mainnet Edith Clark 2023-02-01 - execution layer for smart incentives mainnet Marie Curie 2022 - we expect to complete this launch fully (preceded by several component launches) at the conclusion of a16z CSS in May. From then on, the protocol will be iteratively improved and upgrades to the exact "Code is Law" grid delegation quadratically or otherwise legitimated | A decentralized, pluralistic, and interoperable energy protocol would likely have a positive impact on the planet by enabling a transition to a more sustainable and efficient energy system. Such a protocol would allow for greater flexibility in the generation and distribution of energy, as well as improved resilience in the face of disruptions. Additionally, it could also enable greater participation and ownership in the energy system by individuals and communities. But what do the Dutch auctions and transactive energy have in common? To understand the specific impact of a decentralized energy protocol, it would be important to gain clarification on the following: - the types of energy sources that the protocol would support and prioritize. - the specific mechanisms and technologies used to enable decentralized energy generation and distribution. - the governance structure of the protocol, including how decisions are made and by whom. - the potential barriers to adoption and scalability of the protocol. - the potential economic and social benefits and costs of the protocol. Overall, a decentralized energy protocol has the potential to greatly enhance the sustainability and efficiency of the energy system, as well as increase the participation and ownership of individuals and communities. However, it is important to understand the specific details of the protocol in order to fully understand its impact. My unconference talk will seek to provide the attendees with enough starting points to advance in their Plurigrid journey, and mayhaps even complete it and join the e-gen movement by starting a Plurigrid instance of their own. | Plurigrid Inc at pre-seed stage (*$M+) to enable secure operation in the NATO and NATO-aligned context, Plurigrid Foundation not-for-profit grants for the pluralistic non-US-person development of ~774 million of e-gens for whom access to even the basic level of electricity is missing today - we seek to sustainably electrify the world and find new polycentric guarantees for freedom in the post-Westphalian reality, as well as agency-preserving alternatives to the run-away algorithmic amplification loops & precariousness that stems from great power competition and decline in the ability of existing international / post-national etc. institutions to meaningfully affect change on the timelines our world needs to _make it_ in general. ☀️🌡️🌊 | Advancing pluralistic social choice technologies to smart grid interoperability allows a previously impossible / unattainable coordination trajectories that at the greatest extent allows for the fullest realization of the Interdependence of Cyberspace Manifesto, and the paying down of the Price of Anarchy in post-capitalist ways that unite us, rather than divide us, and bridge into the new ontologies we will require not only for the renewable energy transition, but also for the establishment of the resilient alternatives to Modern Monetary Theory and its dethroning as a satisfying sense-making mechanism for monopolies on violence and fraying bureaucratic state as such. The polycentric plurality of Plurigrid communities interoperating through our decentralized energy protocol can pave the foundation for newer and more intricate configurations of our rough consensus in hopes of finding a species-level narrative that can take us to the stars (as a Kardashev Type I -> II -> III civilization) | [1] W. Tushar et al., “A coalition formation game framework for peer-to-peer energy trading,” Applied Energy, vol. 261, p. 114436, 2020, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2019.114436. [2] C.-S. Karavas, K. Arvanitis, and G. Papadakis, “A Game Theory Approach to Multi-Agent Decentralized Energy Management of Autonomous Polygeneration Microgrids,” Energies, vol. 10, no. 11, p. 1756, Nov. 2017, doi: 10.3390/en10111756. [3] T. Yang et al., “Applying blockchain technology to decentralized operation in future energy internet,” in 2017 IEEE Conference on Energy Internet and Energy System Integration (EI2), Beijing, Nov. 2017, pp. 1–5. doi: 10.1109/EI2.2017.8244418. 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Chamorro, V. K. Sood, S. Badsha, and C. Konstantinou, “Blockchain for Distributed Energy Resources Management and Integration,” IEEE Access, 2022. [9] F. S. Ali, M. Aloqaily, O. Ozkasap, and O. Bouachir, “Blockchain-assisted Decentralized Virtual Prosumer Grouping for P2P Energy Trading,” in 2020 IEEE 21st International Symposium on “A World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks” (WoWMoM), Cork, Ireland, Aug. 2020, pp. 385–390. doi: 10.1109/WoWMoM49955.2020.00071. [10] Q. Yang, H. Wang, T. Wang, S. Zhang, X. Wu, and H. Wang, “Blockchain-based decentralized energy management platform for residential distributed energy resources in a virtual power plant,” Applied Energy, vol. 294, p. 117026, Jul. 2021, doi: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2021.117026. [11] E. Munsing, J. Mather, and S. Moura, “Blockchains for decentralized optimization of energy resources in microgrid networks,” in 2017 IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications (CCTA), Mauna Lani Resort, HI, USA, Aug. 2017, pp. 2164–2171. doi: 10.1109/CCTA.2017.8062773. [12] M. Murialdo and J. L. Belof, “Can a Stablecoin Be Collateralized by a Fully Decentralized, Physical Asset?,” Cryptoeconomic Systems, vol. 2, no. 1, Jun. 2022. [13] J. Lin, M. Pipattanasomporn, and S. Rahman, “Comparative analysis of auction mechanisms and bidding strategies for P2P solar transactive energy markets,” Applied Energy, vol. 255, p. 113687, 2019, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2019.113687. [14] O. Jogunola et al., “Consensus Algorithms and Deep Reinforcement Learning in Energy Market: A Review,” IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 8, pp. 4211–4227, 2020. [15] F. Charbonnier, T. Morstyn, and M. McCulloch, “Coordination of resources at the edge of the electricity grid: systematic review and taxonomy.” arXiv, 2022. doi: 10.48550/ARXIV.2202.03786. [16] S. Sgouridis, “Defusing the Energy Trap: The Potential of Energy-Denominated Currencies to Facilitate a Sustainable Energy Transition,” Front. Energy Res., vol. 2, 2014, doi: 10.3389/fenrg.2014.00008. [17] N. J. Hagens, “Economics for the future – Beyond the superorganism,” Ecological Economics, vol. 169, p. 106520, 2020, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.106520. [18] J. Fouladvand, A. Ghorbani, Y. Sarı, T. Hoppe, R. Kunneke, and P. Herder, “Energy security in community energy systems: An agent-based modelling approach,” Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 366, p. 132765, 2022, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.132765. [19] D. P. Kaundinya, P. Balachandra, and N. H. Ravindranath, “Grid-connected versus stand-alone energy systems for decentralized power—A review of literature,” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, vol. 13, no. 8, pp. 2041–2050, 2009, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2009.02.002. [20] “IEEE Standard Conformance Test Procedures for Equipment Interconnecting Distributed Energy Resources with Electric Power Systems and Associated Interfaces,” IEEE Std 1547.1-2020, pp. 1–282, 2020, doi: 10.1109/IEEESTD.2020.9097534. [21] J. Kim, M. Essaid, and H. Ju, “Inter-Blockchain Communication Message Relay Time Measurement and Analysis in Cosmos,” in 2022 23rd Asia-Pacific Network Operations and Management Symposium (APNOMS), 2022, pp. 1–6. doi: 10.23919/APNOMS56106.2022.9919970. [22] T. B. Malla, A. Bhattarai, A. Parajuli, A. Shrestha, B. B. Chhetri, and K. Chapagain, “Status, Challenges and Future Directions of Blockchain Technology in Power System: A State of Art Review,” Energies, vol. 15, no. 22, p. 8571, 2022. [23] P. Dini and A. Kioupkiolis, “The alter-politics of complementary currencies: The case of Sardex,” Cogent Social Sciences, vol. 5, no. 1, p. 1646625, 2019, doi: 10.1080/23311886.2019.1646625. [24] N. Ø. Chemnitz, P. Bonnet, I. Shklovski, S. Büttrich, and L. Watts, “Unionized Data Governance in Virtual Power Plants,” 2020, doi: 10.48550/ARXIV.2006.02709. [25] T. Morstyn, N. Farrell, S. J. Darby, and M. D. McCulloch, “Using peer-to-peer energy-trading platforms to incentivize prosumers to form federated power plants,” Nat Energy, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 94–101, Feb. 2018, doi: 10.1038/s41560-017-0075-y. | |||||||||||||||
23 | Portable Communities Protocol | Our goal is to specify a simple but flexible and expressive protocol for representing communities as graphs: collections of people (nodes) and their relationships (links). This will allow them to be used across applications and to federate and otherwise interoperate. We are forming an informal consortium of with a variety of stakeholders (Emerge Network, Prosocial.world, kernel.community, ...) and technologies ( https://www.arangodb.com/ graph database, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GraphML, Schema.org, and Murmurations.network. ) We are starting simple, assuming public data, and using a large existing corpus of Twitter data and other social sources. We have working infrastructure for creating, editing, and exploring sample community graphs and will produce reference implementations. | This is currently in development. We have some working prototype code. We expect a useable first version and reference implementations that read and write the protocol by March 1, 2023. | Most online communities are informal, diffuse, silo-ed, and isolated. A protocol for representing them consistently will allow them to be formed, re-used, composed, and federated in ways that are currently impossible. Imagine if the Climate movement could go from its current state of lots of listservs to a large, federated network capable of self-governing using liquid democracy. | $2000 CommonSensemakers (csensemakers.org) to work on protocol schema Noo.Network commits necessary resources to publish in the protocol: half full-time-equivalent for three months use of graph database and API for CRUD operations thereon $3000 React / Node developer to write reference implementation that exchanges data with Noo.network | Trust networks are critical to liquid democracy at scale. Portable communities allows them to be flexibly formed, curated, composed, and federated, thereby facilitating global coordination and governance. | https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1VLzEGnHiwAt9iHQqCx0l-pd3Gv_wOVZaLMtOgFez3cM/edit?usp=sharing | |||||||||||||||
24 | Quadratic Funding Social Network | I will be building a quadratic funding social network ( https://community.supermodular.xyz/t/sip-cohort-2-opportunity-2-quadratic-funding-social-network/94 ) by integrating Lense protocol and Gitcoin Grants Stack protocol. | MVP by Late February 2023 | Social Networks are broken. By replacing the "like"functionality of a social network with a QF augmented micro-tip, I hope to truly measure what users actually value (not just what triggers a dopamine rush). If we can scale this out on Lense Protocol, Discord, or other social networks, we can build more plurality to the world. | Itll all be spent on software developers. | It takes Quadratic Funding and puts it in a new form factor ( https://community.supermodular.xyz/t/new-form-factors-for-quadratic-funding/165/3 ). QF = the ultimate plural technology | https://hackmd.io/9nfEglI7SPSObiXUBVxV2A?view | |||||||||||||||
25 | Quadratic Voting with Reputation Scores | Aggregating individual preferences to achieve societal outcomes has a long tradition of research. One of the key challenges is that individuals need to assess the long term consequences of the outcomes and vote accordingly. Due to rational irrationality, if the marginal cost of the outcome to the individual is low, then the individuals choose not to think deeply about the outcomes and vote in their self interest (or ignore the voting mechanism completely). Nonetheless, individuals with long term thinking will invariably vote for outcomes that are in the best societal interests (based on their information about the world). The goal of the project is two-folds: we will first use past data (votes, outcomes, and impact of the outcome) to generate a reputation score for the voter. We will couple the reputation score with the quadratic voting mechanism (using sortition or some weight function) to come up with a way to aggregate societal preferences that favors long term success with the outcome. This will create a novel data-driven approach to preference aggregation. We will study various game theoretic properties of the resulting mechanism. We will use probability theory, concentration of measures, and mechanism design to establish the theoretical results. | We expect to start the project on 1st May 2023 and finish the project by 31st Dec 2023. | Consider societal issues such as climate change, changes to the zoning laws, etc., where the voters are members of a small community or a country. The people most affected by the outcomes of the vote are subsequent generations or members of other communities and countries, who have little to no say in the outcomes. Arguably, members with long term view on the subject can guide the community towards the right outcome that measures the cost to the current community with benefits to the future communities. Quadratic voting is somewhat limited in scope for weighing the votes towards this long term thinking. The reputation score, driven by past successes of the voters in driving successful outcomes, can correct for such behavior and make the preference aggregation problem more robust and forward looking. This will further advance "Collaborative Diversity and Democracy". | Funding is requested for a PhD student at The Ohio State University for a semester (Fall 2023) and the summer (Summer 2023). The total funding amount requested is USD 31985 (USD 18816 salary, USD 11061 tuition, and USD 2107 benefits). No funding is requested for the PI. | Consider societal issues such as climate change, changes to the zoning laws, etc., where the voters are members of a small community or a country. The people most affected by the outcomes of the vote are subsequent generations or members of other communities and countries, who have little to no say in the outcomes. Arguably, members with long term view on the subject can guide the community towards the right outcome that measures the cost to the current community with benefits to the future communities. Quadratic voting is somewhat limited in scope for weighing the votes towards this long term thinking. The reputation score, driven by past successes of the voters in driving successful outcomes, can correct for such behavior and make the preference aggregation problem more robust and forward looking. This will further advance "Collaborative Diversity and Democracy". | https://gupta706.github.io/ | |||||||||||||||
26 | Recommender system that incentivizes bubble-bursting fact-checks | Existing fact-checking and other moderation strategies have been designed to nudge users to explore more diverse perspectives, break social media bubbles, and eventually reduce political and cultural polarization. However, our empirical findings suggest that fact-checking could unexpectedly strengthen ideological and topical bubbles, rather than reducing them, if not carefully implemented. Fact-checking messages are often delivered in a manner that may be perceived as a personal attack, which could discourage users from exploring diverse perspectives proposed by fact-checkers, trapping them inside ideological and topical bubbles. These unintended consequences of fact-checking—which we have validated on a substantial sample of Twitter fact checks—are likely shaped by multiple factors, such as the political stances of misinformation posters and fact-checkers, the strategy of providing fact-checks, the emotional tone of fact-checks, etc. We propose to develop a recommender model that prioritizes fact-checking messages that (a) are less likely to reinforce echo chambers; and (b) encourage users to break out. Typically, recommender models are optimized to prioritize contents that lead to more user engagement. As a result, more aggressive, toxic, and provocative fact-checking messages, which easily capture collective attention and reinforce echo chambers, could become inadvertently prioritized over more deliberative and nuanced fact-checking messages. We will experiment with an alternative model that forecasts the impact of specific fact-checking cases and incentivizes cases that encourage exposed users to explore more diverse information in semantic space. Building upon deep learning techniques, our model aims to capture both more expected factors (e.g., less toxic messages may increase the diversity of information consumption) and more surprising, unexpected factors (e.g., easily refutable messages from political opponents could reduce the perceived threat of foreign information). The ultimate goal is to design AI that detects and prioritizes fact-checking activities which effectively bridge diverse groups, enhance information integrity and warranted information trust, while preserving individual agency on social media platforms. Using principles of plurality, the system will identify methods that enable the cross-connection between diverse populations to enhance collective discovery and certainty. To sum up, our research will (1) devise a measure to estimate whether each fact-checking message motivates users to pursue a more diverse information diet, (2) develop a machine learning model that identifies fact-checking messages with high bubble-bursting potential and (3) identify whether this new model can outperform previous recommender model in nudging users to consume more diverse content, based on field experiments and quasi-experiment approaches. | We will approach the proposed tasks according to the timeline shown below and expect to publish our findings in top-tier conferences and wide-circulation multi-disciplinary journals in the coming one year. - Additional ground-truth data collection: February 2023-March 2023 - Model training and evaluation: March 2023-April 2023 - Causal inference (quasi-experimental approach) and field experiments to deploy the model and test its effectiveness: May 2023-August 2023 - Writing and publishing paper: September 2023-October 2023 | Mis- and dis-information result in mistrust of democracy, science, public policy, and the public good. The spread of misinformation is a growing social, cultural and scientific dilemma, which poses a range of threats against public health, equity and democratic processes around the globe. Systematically countering or compensating for (mis)information is requisite to maintain a healthy information ecosystem and prevent an arms race or information warfare. Fact-checking and other moderation strategies have been explored to satisfy this demand. Nevertheless, centralized and crowd-sourced anti-misinformation campaigns often result in unintended consequences on personal and social uncertainties. We aim to develop a machine learning model that could be deployed to centralized and decentralized online communities. We expect that our new approach promotes human-AI collaboration to enhance human agency, accountability and information integrity by tapping into diverse perspectives and sharing them with civility. Our approach will also provide insight regarding the feasibility of intervention protocols and platform governance for enhanced information credibility. | We currently have five people involved in this project: James Evans, Zhao Wang, Junsol Kim, Hsin-keng Ling, and Haohan Shi. If this project is funded, we would like to allocate the funding in the following way. The breakdown is subject to change depending on the actual amount of funding. - Experimental cost: We plan to conduct a small-scale field experiment based on Amazon Mechanical Turk to evaluate the impact of our redesigned fact-checking mechanism. (50%) - Graduate students’ employment (20%) - Computing resources (e.g., server, cloud service, online service such as Google Colab) (20%) - Conference registration and travel associated with the research (conferences, workshops, summits, etc.). (10%) | One potentially effective mechanism of advancing the horizons of collaborative diversity is to build a system leveraging diverse perspectives on truth claims, drawing upon artificial intelligence, to assist collaborative diversity among humans. This includes developing an effective recommender system or other content discovery algorithm that bridges otherwise disconnected ideas and people from different ideologies and perspectives. Artificial intelligence could be leveraged to identify the personalized pathway to consume more diverse information. In the fact-checking domain, centralized and decentralized strategies to combat misinformation often yield unanticipated and undesirable consequences. As we can empirically demonstrate, it could strengthen pre-existing ideological and topical bubbles, rather than breaking them. In this proposal, we aimed to develop a collaborative human crowd-AI system that could bridge, rather than segregate, groups of people by encouraging bubble-bursting fact-checking activities. | https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fhKzCpseFXI-G8YuhOj6ZJIKeU_8qCcL5sc7aefTv08/edit?usp=sharing | |||||||||||||||
27 | Research Paper on Enhancing Pluralistic Outcomes in Quadratic Voting using Eigendecompositions | We will conduct a comprehensive study on the use of eigendecompositions to preprocess inputted sociocultural identity markers of Quadratic Voting (QV) participants. Our aim is to enhance the pluralistic outcomes of the QV process by creating more meaningful clusters of participants. Our research methodology will include mathematical analysis using spectral graph theory and game theory, as well as sociological analysis and meaning-making. We will also gather feedback from key leaders in the Plurality Research Network. By applying this method to both simulated and real-world data, we will be able to compare and evaluate the effectiveness of this approach against traditional QV mechanisms and other variations of QV. | The completion of the paper is planned for September 30, 2023, and it will be published on the same date. | We expect to create a more advanced and precise plural voting algorithm using eigendecompositions. We (Joel Miller and Leon Erichsen) are two of the co-designers of "Connection Oriented Cluster Match," a current algorithm currently in use at RadicalxChange Foundation, and anticipate that our new algorithm utilizing eigenvectors will improve upon it. Like Connection Oriented Cluster Match, the new algorithm may be used by any institution who wishes to use it. Our research might have a direct impact by enhancing existing Quadratic Voting and Funding technologies and may also influence future development of these technologies, making them more pluralistic in various contexts. | Researcher compensation: $2500 x 2 researchers x 2 months = $10,000. This funding will be used to pay the two researchers working on the project for a total of two months. | Quadratic Funding and Voting are powerful tools that can help balance competing interests within computational social systems. However, they are limited in their ability to take into account social relationships and dynamics. By utilizing eigendecomposition, a method that identifies meaningful clusters in high-dimensional social networks, Quadratic Voting can better understand shared socio-cultural backgrounds of different groups of participants, and promote collaboration and compromise across divisive groups. This approach has the potential to significantly improve Quadratic Voting, other democratic tools, and practices of pluralistic mechanism design. | Miller, Joel and Weyl, Eric Glen and Erichsen, Leon, Beyond Collusion Resistance: Leveraging Social Information for Plural Funding and Voting (December 24, 2022). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4311507 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4311507 | |||||||||||||||
28 | Retroactive Funding for Bridging Systems and Collective Response Systems work (3 months work + travel) | The results were shared through talks by Aviv and Luke (https://bridging.systems and the "Generative CI through Collective Response Systems" paper). This involved interdisciplinary research, building on the work of academics and practitioners in order to flesh out new domains of work to support cooperation across differences. | June-Aug 2022. During this time period, Aviv continued the work full-time, unfunded, in order to avoid the loss of momentum. | The initial results shared at the conference. The full impacts are yet to be seen, but there has been significant interest by both interdisciplinary academics, and organizations of all sizes, from early stage startups to the largest tech companies (who would like to explore adopting components of this work). The ideal is a world where collective response systems become a critical module of high signal governance, where 'bridging systems' is a keystone subfield of plurality, and where organizations of all scales succeed at incorporating the lessons of both. | Retroactive funding for completed work | Advances cooperation across differences | https://bridging.systems | |||||||||||||||
29 | TIME Magazine mini-public to resolve slow moving constitutional crisis in the US. | Maclean's magazine did its "People's Verdict" in 1991 - over 30 years ago. Canada at the time was in the midst of a Constitutional Crisis. The convening and report really did make a difference and help resolve it. It is a wonderful inspiration but it can'd be directly replicated because it was so long ago and the slow moving constitutional crisis here is slightly different. The funds will be used to do survey research on examples that are resonant that leveraged mini-publics and deliberation here in the US for additional inspiration for a potential designs for the process. Research also needs to be done for potential strategies to incorporate new media modalities into the process (social media, videos) along with how the American public could also feed into / contribute to the process. The outcome of the project will be a complete pitch to TIME magazine owners and/or editors to work with the Co-Intelligence institute to execute the design and cover in-depth in their magazine/media platform. | The project will be complete when a pitch is done to the owner of TIME Magazine. The goal month for the pitch to happen is May. The first month will be engaging with people who were in the original Maclean's process like William Ury to get input on what they would do different now with US context. The second month will be research on different experiments that leverage mini-publics and social/digital technology have happened in the US recently to learn what has worked/didn't' work here. The third month would be defining the potential processes to be put forward in the pitch and developing the collateral for it. Month 4 is doing the pitch to Benioff and/or the editorial team at TIME. | TIME magazine does in-depth coverage of the mini-public's process and the result is the resolution of the slow motion constitutional crisis in the US resulting in the emergence of more pluralist political process. | Funding goal $5000 Tom Atlee's, founder and Executive Director of the Co-Intelligence Institute. 2 K of his time to gather up the examples of mini-publics in the US during the last 10 years along with talking to those who still are alive from the Maclean's pitch to see what they would do now. 1.5 K Kaliya Young's time to work with Tom to analyze and consider how the digital tools were used and what their incorporation into the design (Building on the Extreme Tao of Democracy work from several years ago - https://identitywoman.net/wp-content/uploads/ExtremeTaoDemocracy.pdf) and time to work with Rosa to shape shape mini-public process designs for the pitch. 1.5 K Rosa Zubizarreta is doing her PhD work on Wisdom Council's using Dynamic Facilitation she is well versed in deliberative process and would be funded to work with Tom and Kaliya to analyze the data collected, contribute her on expertise and work with Tom and Kaliya to shape mini-public process designs for the pitch. | This pitch if successful and the design was accepted by TIME which would execute the design and report on it. It would bring mini-publics, a pluralistic deliberative democratic process onto the national stage (Advancing the Horizon) in the US and play a critical role in resolving the slow moving constitutional crisis happening in the US - thus saving our democracy. | Maclean's Magazine People's Verdict Documentation at Co-Intelligence Institute Site https://co-intelligence.org/Macleans1991Experiment.html This includes a scan of each page of the complete issues on July 1, 1991 (July 1 is Canada's National holiday recognizing independence) Interviews with major players in the Maclean's 1991 "People's Verdict" experiment https://co-intelligence.org/MacleansInterviews.html Tom Atlee - wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Atlee Co-Intelligence Institute bio: https://www.co-intelligence.institute/tom-atlee Blog: http://www.tomatleeblog.com/ Books: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/155014.Tom_Atlee Kaliya Young: Bio - https://identitywoman.net/about/ Collaborative work with Tom on the intersection of deliberation processes and technology complements - https://identitywoman.net/wp-content/uploads/ExtremeTaoDemocracy.pdf Large scale Systems Leadership Design - https://identitywoman.net/systems-leadership/ Rosa Zubizarreta - LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosazubizarreta/ Book: Resilience Initiatives - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BFV439WZ?ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_6AWQ64V66MK58JCHXSZA Bio at P2PF Wiki: https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Rosa_Zubizarreta Dynamic Facilitation: http://dynamicfacilitation.com/DF/DF/DF/wisdom-council.html | |||||||||||||||
30 | Tokenized Impact Bonds | We plan to use mixed methods analysis to study the effect of social programmes and the outcomes they create, including through interviews with beneficiaries. These would then be minted as hypercerts or impact NFTs. Proceeds from their sale (if any) would go towards the organization whose program was evaluated. | Our go-to-market is for the sector of investigative reporting and citizen journalism, by reporting on the change that their story helped kickstart. We plan to present our pilot (and 1st media hypercert) at the next plurality conference. | 1. Uncovering insights that change the course or design of the social programme 2. Channeling funding towards social impact organizations based on outcomes created 3. Submitting results from our MVP as a paper in plural | $3000 - personnel for building MVP and launching pilot $2000 - travel Total: $5000 | Our go-to-market targets organization's working on giving a voice to the voiceless or speaking truth to power, both of which are invaluable for advancing democracy. We have also seen how the NFT boom haa brought a lot of diversity to web3. We're trying to create a way to bring changemakers, nonprofit leaders and founders of social enterprises to the blockchain | https://dorahacks.io/buidl/1569 | |||||||||||||||
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