Goals

DAObi is a token ecosystem in which the token creation rate is set by whichever player manages to acquire the largest group of supporters. Whoever wishes to set the rate must convince - whether by charisma, bribery or intimidation - other players to back their bid for power. The player with the most supporters wins the right to set monetary policy for as long as that support lasts.

The primary aim of the DAObi project is not to make money – though any tokens eventually issued must accumulate sufficient value to incentivise serious participation – rather it is to function as a game and a social experiment. The project was inspired by descriptions of factional struggles over the right to set monetary policy during the early part of the Han dynasty (“daobi” being the name of the currency in use at the time). We intend to recreate these conditions as closely as possible in an online environment. In other words, the DAObi ecosystem will become a palace intrigue game in the style of Royal Chaos or Call Me Emperor, but with genuine money and power at stake.

In the past, experiments such as this were impossible for all but state governments. The development of blockchain-based currencies means that anyone can now create and run a semi-autonomous political-economic system from their PC. While the primary use of this facility has thus far been in financial speculation, the same technology also provides a means to test socio-economic models in vivo. The data can then be used to verify existing models and create new ones. This is the major goal of the DAObi project.

Method

In the DAObi ecosystem, the token generation rate will stand in for the levers of conventional monetary policy. Whichever participant has the most declared partisans will automatically be granted the right to set the token generation rate. To acquire partisans, a participant must use analogue techniques to convince them to declare themselves in his favour: persuasion, corruption, deception etc.

There is, obviously, one major security flaw in this proposal. Namely, the likelihood that participants will create fake followers in order to gain permanent control over the network. To minimise this risk, it is proposed that only individuals who: a) possess a wallet containing a quantity of DAObi and b) have linked this wallet to a functional Twitter account will be permitted to become or acquire partisans. Someone aiming to launch a 51% attack by means of an army of throwaway Twitter accounts is thus likely to be spotted by other users, who then have the option to report his Twitter accounts. Thus, policing will be outsourced to Twitter. (A good faith participant who gets blocked by Twitter for other reasons can simply start a new Twitter account, relink his wallet and continue leading/following as before.)  

We thus propose a system comprising two components:

1.      The DAObi cryptocurrency itself: a generic online token system designed to be as simple as possible to mine and exchange in order to encourage participation. 

2.      The faction table: this will begin as an Airtable-based record of participants and their mutual affiliations (with the possibility of moving it to the chain later on, if participation levels justify this). Owners of DAObi will not be under any obligation to participate in this component, but registration will be necessary for all those who wish to either set the token generation rate themselves or decide who will. In order to register, they must have a wallet containing a non-zero quantity of DAObi linked to a valid Twitter account. Once these conditions have been fulfilled, they can then choose to become a partisan of another user or accumulate partisans of their own (or both). When a participant follows or abandons another participant, this information is noted on the Airtable/public ledger. A simple partisan-counting script plays the role of the emperor, making whichever participant has most partisans his “chancellor” and granting him the right to set monetary policy. (If the vote is tied, no Chancellor is appointed and no tokens created.)

Design

In the initial stages of the project, the voting and token-generation systems will be simulated via a Discord server linked to an Airtable record of votes, Chancellors and tokens generated. (Note that for ease of use in a Discord context, votes are held on a daily rather than a rolling basis.) Once we have had a chance to observe system behaviour in this context, we will shift to a testnet, which will enable us to create working models of the automations and the blockchain components of the project without going straight to production. The testnet version will work in exactly the same way as the production version, but the tokens created will have no financial value.

Finally, once the concept has been thoroughly tested, a production version will be rolled out using an existing chain to generate an initial batch of tokens. These should be as cheap and easy to create and exchange as possible. It must also be possible to allow us to set the rate at which new tokens are created via an API. As long as these constraints are met, any pre-existing chain/ICO platform/toolkit can be used. The first tokens will be airdropped to followers of the project, with more tokens going to those who participated during the testing stages. Later rounds can be sold via existing platforms, airdropped at random, or a mixture of both.

The voting process will be more complicated. We propose to use a slightly modified version of this format to record votes: https://www.interdependence.online/declaration

Users will sign in using Metamask, with the second requirement for signing in being that their wallet must contain at least some DAObi. They then verify the sign-in using Twitter. This being done, they can write in the Twitter ID of the person they wish to follow, or just leave the box empty if they do not wish to follow anyone.

It will be possible to login and edit your choice at any time. Whenever a vote is cast, the total is recounted, and if the overall winner has changed a new Chancellor is appointed.

A message will automatically be sent to the Chancellor to notify them of their appointment. They will then be able to access the monetary policy page and set the token generation rate:

The flow can be represented visually thus:

Possible Issues/Bugs

The initial aim should be to get enough participants involved early to create an active ecosystem and give a certain level of real-world value to the tokens created, while avoiding the attention of pure speculators. We propose priming the pump by airdropping an initial batch of tokens to followers of the @XianyangCB and @DaobiTreasury Twitter accounts who express an early interest, as well as members of the Discord server. We also propose to give additional tokens to those who have participated in the development and testing process.

We also recognise that the outsourcing of security to Twitter is not a feasible solution to the throwaway account problem in the context of a large-scale, high-value currency. However, it should be remembered that the primary goal of DAObi is as a social experiment. In the event that it becomes sufficiently valuable that it is worthwhile for speculators to circumvent this security mechanism, we suggest that this fact in itself also provides useful experimental data, and so we will simply leave it to its own devices and observe events as they play out.