NounsDAO emerged as the first grass-roots way to bootstrap an aligned community with money to get shit done. Nouns has been incredibly successful at both accumulating capital ($100mil to date) and curating rockstar members. However, there are large barriers to get ownership stake in the community.
The revolution protocol adopts and improves on some key lessons from the Internet society created with the Nouns protocol.
The goal of revolution is fair ownership distribution over a movement where anyone can earn decision making power over the energy of the movement.
The protocol operates under these three tenets:
- Broadly accessible for people
- Balances scale between capital and reputation/outcomes
- Inflationary governance
How do we enable permissionless collective curation of aligned people and energy that is accessible to all?
The revolution protocol consists of three continuously operating paradigms.
- A submission period
- A voting period
- An auction period
Basically, people submit proposals paired with a cultural artifact, the community votes on top proposals, top proposals go to auction, and the winning bidder receives the cultural artifact and governance shares. Auction proceeds go to the proposal creator (either cash or governance) and to the community treasury.
Let's assume that on January 1st, 2023, the first revolution will begin. A submission box will open for anyone to submit proposals to be part of the movement. Think of these proposals as membership applications to the revolution, at least in the beginning. People who want to give their time and energy to the movement will be incentivized to submit. Proposals will come paired with a piece of culture (think painting, software, song, video, infrastructure, products, art etc.) signifying the unique energy that desires a hand in the movement.
After the submission period ends, a voting period begins. The existing collective (possibly starting as a founding group) will decide on the top submissions. At the conclusion of the voting period, the top submissions will move to an auction period.
During the auction period, one submission from the top submissions and it's associated cultural artifact will be publicly auctioned off to the highest bidder. The winning bidder will receive share in collective governance, as well as the cultural piece from the winning submission.
In order to ensure money is not the only thing that gates ownership in the movement, a ratio of auction proceeds will go to the winning proposer. We call this parameter the "creator rate". Let's assume the creator rate for this auction is 40%.
In this scenario, 60% of the auction proceeds will automatically go to the revolution treasury. The winning bidder also receives 0.6 shares of governance.
The proposer whose submission was purchased can then choose a payout from the auction in either hard cash or governance share. They decide how they want to split the remaining 40% of auction proceeds and governance share. The winning proposer chooses whether they want 40% of the cash raised from the auction proceeds or 0.4 shares of governance, or any continuum inbetween. Every auction issues the same amount of governance share no matter the price.
After the initial cold-start, the voting, submission, and auction periods will perpetually operate in tandem, feeding into each other.
The first problem solved is how to incentivize people to join a collective who don't have money to give. Assuming someone makes a proposal submission that moves to auction, they will be paid a split of either the auction proceeds or governance shares.
Another problem is how to encourage people to bid on auctions. People contribute money to movements they care about all the time. In this system, their money buys them a culturally significant artifact and direct governance directly tied to a movement they care about.
The next problem is how to make sure ownership stake in the revolution is broadly accessible but still reflects the will of the community in some capacity. The community can vote on who has the right to join by choosing the top submissions to send to the auction period, but can take submissions from anyone. Also, anyone can bid on auctions. Furthermore, people can pool their efforts and co-create both proposals and auction bids.
The final issue is how to ensure that collective membership isn't decided by whoever has the most money to win the auction. The community can decide on a "creator rate" of auction proceeds to give to proposers. The winning bidder receives governance shares, but the proposal author(s) can choose to receive governance shares as well based on their portion of the "creator rate". This dynamic balances the ownership-curation scale between capital and reputation/outcomes.
Yes Theory is a movement that believes "that life's greatest moments and deepest connections exist outside of your comfort zone". They have a YouTube channel with over a 7 million subscribers and a broad base of community support. For the most part, all community initiatives and culture created is funneled through and empowered by the Yes Theory founders and linked corporate organization. Under the revolution protocol, the Yes Theory movement and its supporters are fully empowered to take grass-roots action on building out the ideals behind Yes Theory. Here's how.
The founders and some prominent community members come together in a founding council. For a month, they open up a submission box to the broader community with the prompt "Submit a video exemplifying our movement in the real world". Community members from all around the world come together and submit proposals. The council decides on the top submissions.
These submissions move to an auction, where they are auctioned off to the public. Other community members who maybe didn't have time or skills to come up with a good proposal are able to bid on these auctions. The highest bidder (or group of bidders) wins the original copy of the submitted video and governance stake in the Yes Theory movement. The proposer likewise receives part of the auction proceeds or governance stake. The cycle repeats. What you end up with is a curated group of Yes Theory supporters with direct say over how a large base of capital is used to build out the Yes Theory revolution. Anyone with governance stake can decide on how the movement deploys this accumulated energy.
Thanks to Danny, John, Danny, Alan, Wesley, Jamal, Chris, Steven, Tom, Burke, Al, Wojciech, Hamza, Adam, Christian, Justin, Seth, CT, Arman, Gami, Ben, Elad, Goldy, SQ, Wiz, Seneca, Sasquatch and the many others who helped start this revolution.
Let's free culture from the grips of corporations and enable movements to live long and prosper, empowered to affect positive change in the realm of real materials.