Exploring Realtime Governance with WillWe

GM, GM. Welcome to what's going to be another fantastic episode of DevNTell. So if you didn't know, DevNTell is a 30-minute podcast hosted every week, allowing founders, hackers, and anyone in between an opportunity to come on the show and showcase their product. And today, I'm ecstatic to welcome Bogdan, who's the founder of WillWe. So if you didn't know, WillWe allows for real-time, uncompromising governance without proposals or delegates. So if you stick around for today's episode, you'll see Bogdan give us an overview of WillWe, why it was built, and how you can start using it today. All right, let's get into it. First, a word from our sponsor.

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GM, GM. Welcome to the show, man. Pleasure to have you on. Of course, of course. Thank you, thank you for taking the time out of your day to come on the show. Uh, yeah. Today's topic, uh, we're going to be talking all about governance and how you have, uh, seemingly optimized the governance game. And I'm really looking forward to hearing that. Um, but first, uh, if you don't mind, would you like to give a brief introduction about yourself in case folks are watching today and they are not familiar?

Yes, sure. I'm Bogdan. Uh, I'm from Romania. I like, I went to school for philosophy, for philosophy and politics. And out of philosophy school, I kind of realized that there's a tension between governance and the internet, broadly. Uh, there's all kinds of protests that are organized, for example, online and people have this, this preference, this need, this intuition of always being able to put pressure on government more and more and be more interactive and have higher and higher expectations. And there were all kinds of movements from the Arab Spring that was organized on Facebook and all that kind of like tensions they manifested in the real world, speeding up to today when you probably get more information that is relevant to the future of geopolitics from Donald Trump's feed then you know the normal regular boring channels, right? So in all that environment, I started to learn coding because one I wanted to like do my own ideal political theory but being at this intersection with internet like technology is a better medium for that. So what I did I learned to code and I learned to code as one of the first applications I did was a liquid democracy app to like govern things and it had a social media feed anyway but that's my primary interest in coding is empowering people and kind of in a way saving a little bit democracy to be empowered more and more by the technology which is tricky and didn't turn out perfectly over the years but we're still working on it and that's what I hope to be doing today here as well.

Amazing. And I guess are you a self-taught programmer or?

I have been writing code for about 10 years. In terms of like Web3, I did for example Consensus Academy school so I have a diploma that says certified Ethereum developer. Then I did for example the Secureum bootcamp in the first edition like epoch zero like smart contracts auditing and stuff like that. So it's a mix of both but mainly self-taught, yeah.

Awesome, man. And yeah, like I mentioned at the start, today's topic is going to be governance. But just in case some people listening today aren't familiar with the topic, do you want to just give a high-level overview of what governance is in the first place?

Yes, governance is when a group of people come together, put some resources together or have something at stake and they try to give some direction of where that organization, that abstract like common body is going. My definition that I like to say about organizations is that organizations are membranes that move forward and like the forward is what the governance is for. How you determine that forward, what's the processes and everything that's entitled there. Uh, yeah. It's a little bit interesting. For example, we kind of know each other but we don't know each other very much, right? So like if you think about Developer DAO at its beginning, right? One of the things we had was an NFT and that NFT like guaranteed membership into the Discord and participation in governance. So like that NFT for example was the membrane, was the access badge, you know, that you got into the organization. Same thing happens with like companies, you have the turnstiles, you know, you put the thing, right? That's kind of the membrane of the organization. And the governance, yeah, the governance typically is top-down but like with DAOs and with this substrate for ownership primarily and coordination we can try to like make structures that are bottom-up and like kind of true to their ideals. So that's what we're going to go into today because we were kind of put in a position to like cool we have these blockchains right, Satoshi tried to make a coin and he unveiled coordination technology for all of us and we were put in a situation yeah you have to come up with governance right now. And kind of the only thing that we could think of were parliaments right let's put parliaments on chain let's like everybody write a little bit of text you know and like put it forward and everybody has to read it understand it and vote on it. It didn't it's not ideal and like the second step to like it led to apathy and the second step that we did was to create delegates. We need like specialized people right to read this and like vote on behalf of people that are actual owners and stakeholders and there's like a discrepancy there's like different interests at play there like the delegates have also their own interest to balance and it yeah it kind of gets tricky and I think it's a little bit tragic that we the main like governance processes that we have are kind of originated in papers, in parliaments, in like the defaulting thing that we could think of because we couldn't like really think of anything else. So like the case that I'm going to make like today is that yeah so organizations are membranes that move forward and like I'm going to kind of argue that coins in themselves are organizations and they are kind of perfectly DAOs they have a membrane who holds a coin who does not and like their interaction with them is direct and unmediated anyone can like change the like the distribution the disposition of the coin. Now the coin doesn't really have values, doesn't like want to run away and do things but like in principle like coins do fulfill like those basic like dynamics and necessities.

Interesting. Yeah, I guess this is the perfect segue. I can bring up your screen if you want to go through your...

Let's do a little bit the slides talk a little bit. Yeah. So like I did this presentation I should have changed the title, sorry. Fungibility is all you need for governance. The sense that like coins basically coins are fungible and fungibility is all you need because I mean it's a paraphrasing you know like attention is all you need that's fashionable these days. Because when you have some quantity that you redistribute and that's kind of like the energy like the blood that powers like the organization the the body of the thing it benefits a lot from seeing things in relative terms. Like you see how much people do work for example and you also see how much they get remunerated and that thing like you can make like objective value judgments in a way because it's relative and it's not interpretable it's not in in a lot of documents and so. So that's one of the things of okay. Um I kind of mentioned this right Satoshi wanted to make a coin and he made the blockchain like an entire ledger dynamic for for coordination. And I think like coins in themselves are are very powerful I think everybody being able to make a coin for anything is very uh very powerful I think we're still grappling with what that means and like how much it it empowers it empowers people. Okay so I spoke of the coin right the coin being a DAO and like people being able to act directly on the on the disposition of the coin. Uh in the same way like in the real economy if you think about if you are able to visualize all the transactions that happen in an economy uh you'd be able to to get a high level of of a thing that is alive right. The coin the coin is alive it like it operates somewhat permissionlessly because you don't need like anyone's permission to like pay for bread and like get goods and services and that like energy recirculates in the economy. Even if you have like a central issuer there's still some anarchic coordination mechanism that happen irrespective of what like the the central bank does. Ideally you don't have a central bank and that's what anyone can do basically like creating a coin. But there's this concept that butchers brewers bakers are sequencers is quite an interesting one because as opposed to proposal-based governance like when you do when you work with proposals the sequencer is an artificial process that all that ultimately like settles to the blockchain so like there's there's an upper level like sequencing mechanism for the will of the people let's say. While coins and like protocols you interact directly with the thing. So why I did this like one I started working on this about 3 years ago and I I talked with someone that's like a delegate in a DAO like at a conference and like he told me one of the things one of the first validations I got he said that everybody hates proposals. And like yes that makes sense I should really do this and try to try to experiment and find some kind of like alternative mechanism. So proposal are skeuomorphic functionally they're laws. I mentioned they're kind of like parliaments we even have delegates I mean it's not totally fair to say they're parliaments but they're not very far also. Leads to apathy, re-centralization, parliamentarism, collapses to corporate bureaucracy. You have budgets you know that have to be approved quarterly or so through proposal so it's like a budget in a normal organization if you look in I don't know Arbitrum or Optimism DAO uh there's there's still like all kinds of metrics and these these are important because you do have to to have some metrics you do have to you need to have some kind of processes that create accountability. And like these are what's best out there so far and there's a lot of people that are working hard on these but ultimately it reproduces things that we already have and like we need I think to to do better things that are native on chain and are like yeah increasingly permissionless and decentralized and so on and so forth because otherwise it's kind of a lost opportunity. Paper devices can't onchain. Um white men can't jump that's actually not a stereotype it's it's the title of a movie from the 90s and but it's also stereotype. Paper devices can't onchain and parliamentarism can't internet. So my kind of vision and what I'm tending towards is as you mentioned instant governance I don't know if you wrote that or I did I was surprised I probably did it but I was surprised because it's interesting and it kind of captures what I'm trying to do. I want the members of like the collective to be able to to influence the direction and the body of the organization directly and in an unmediated way. For example this is lacrimaria olor it's one of like the biggest unicellular organism and it's kind of was inspiring to me because this is one cell. I mean we could reproduce at least one cell in like our turing-complete like computers. And we could imagine like all members of the organization like zapping the body like a structure that like keeps the organism together to make it move and like chase food in that direction and so on. So organizations are membranes that move forward, what forward is is what governance is for. Forward determinations can be permissionless and instant. So for example with a coin when you interact directly on chain you just like transfer it or stake it or whatever you even burn it. So it's it's direct. It's again not intermediated. There is no process there is no bundling of like a text to be sent to the central like governance processing unit like the brain and that's kind of things happen in nature, in the economy via coins and and in in in bodies. Typically cells like communicate electrochemically or whatever with the cells that are nearby and like that's how the coordination happens. There's no like all cells speaking at the same time to the brain. Uh what is WillWe? WillWe is an attempt at trying something new. It is systematizing order for instant permissionless dis-incentivized governance. So systematizing order is basically a structure in which you put a coin and you distribute it and when that thing happens in public it creates a lot of signal and it creates sensemaking and you get an idea of how what people want and what people want and what the organization wants and does is where it redistributes resources as in any big company right that's why people fight on budget. For instant permission the instant I covered a little bit right it's directly you action directly the body of the organization you don't like have a a sequencing like layer to it let's say. It's permissionless it's onchain you can be permissionless it is in this case uh there is some permission things in the sense that you can create you'll see the the systematizing order has nodes and each node has membership conditions and in order to act within that node you need to fulfill the membership conditions. Dis-incentivized this is interesting uh most DAOs today uh they they start with with a treasury they start with a bunch of for lack of a better word like gold in the middle and says come on guys start coordinating. And that's also like might create some different kind of incentive because there's an opportunity there for extraction. This is dis-incentivized in the sense that in order to action on the body of the thing there's two things you can do you can do work you can create a node within a node I don't know let's say marketing node and you create a node there and you start I don't know producing graphics uh and in theory if your work is valuable for the survival of the thing you'll get paid. Or you can influence the organization by allocating resources basically by paying others for for your work for their work. Uh and in that way when you like signal your preference that also creates a social signal and like feedback loop as work progresses as the quality you build reputation so on like there's a there's a build-up build-up there. This is interesting that's what kind of makes it also real-time because I can start like I can create a node over there I can start doing work if my work or I can start from an idea and if my idea is sounds potentially good it is in theory sufficient to get I don't know 1$ of allocation from every member of something like that. Um but in time as I work on it as I develop it as there's clearly work done and like has potential and the that in order to keep me working because I'm advancing whatever the organization is doing in theory higher levels of compensation should come and like these are this can go back upper down and like decreasing allocations can also like be social signals look I don't believe this is possible anymore and that could also be like the prompt for a conversation. So govern by funding or working when needed legible and intuitive when you have all these coin allocations that are permissionless direct so on so forth they can be summarized in a chart. So you could in theory see all the functioning of the organization and how it you can also also like play it over time I guess like see how the chart evolves like over time. But you can kind of follow the entire body of the of the organization of that coin you can watch it and see like get in time an intuitive feel of on what stage it is how it is distributed resources what is like the velocity the metabolism rate of the of the of the coin so on so forth. I think that that kind of summarization is very very powerful and would be a very good product it's currently is not that intuitive because it takes time to make intuitive things but you'll see what I speak I'll show you the chart it could be better but it's it's the the concept is there. So primarily what does it gives coin coins organizational competencies. Um yeah very briefly distribute fungible units of value as signals for communal configuration. Accommodate plurality in the sense that anyone can create basically a node in context that they are member they can also get kicked out but they can create a competing node. Enhance legibility in the sense that every signal like is visible and you can see it and replay it and understand all the power dynamics within the structure. Empower individuals to credibly and continuously commit to political and economic outcomes what I said about right you can like start from a small thing and like get this like validation and commitment loop that builds to something like big. The very big point about like this coin based and allocation based governance is that who gives how much for what to whom is of value and of interest any part of the organization. And that this is in all organizations if if your company like starts giving like half the year budget to buy Dogecoin you would be a little bit worried right. Or if you work in an organization and the next day like everyone's salaries are no that might also create some problem. So the thesis is that onchain fungibility can encode enforce and articulate power relationships with unprecedented clarity and efficiency. Uh Vitalik a few days ago said this thing um I mean there's a clearly need to to rethink to try new things. He said burn down the legitimacy of existing paradigm, reopen the window like be willing be more willing to think about things from scratch I would say like multi-level structures are good I am much less fan of direct democracy than I was 15 years ago. Okay this is multi-level structure it's new yeah we're we're doing things. These are some screenshots but I'm going to show you in the app. Um and one of my also inspiration there's Dee Hock that is the founder of Visa has this this like he puts it in in an interesting way why we're doing this why we're into DAOs. Without question the most abundant least expensive most under-utilized and constantly abuse resource in the world today is human ingenuity. The source of that abuse is the mechanistic industrial age hierarchical domination concepts of organization and the management practices they spawn. This guy did a lot of work on organizations that's like very little known and I think it's it's kind of a shame. He he's kind of in a way like the actual DAO father but like yeah he's very cool he also like the founder of Visa and brought together like competitive organizations to collaborate on thing and that's also very good. Okay so let's look a little bit at the app now. Um the app is at WillWe.xyz or App.WillWe.xyz I'm going to use like the alpha thing because it's a little bit different it's the same but different. So what I'm going to do I'm just going to login uh and if you have any questions that would be yeah because some things might be confusing and please please interrupt me. Okay so this is like the the home page okay. Um here there used to be a social feed of what the user does in actually what users done in all the coins that you are kind of all the nodes that you are a member. I currently disabled it because uh it's it's a lot of code it's not like very good code and it's very expensive to run all the like the indexers and so on so I temporarily disabled it uh but yeah it it has this feature it will have it again soon. So these are all the coins that I have in my wallet this is on Base. Um yeah if I click here there's nothing because there's no activity here for this coin but if I go at like the the protocol coin there's stuff here or let's let's do COW. Okay so this is like the node this also is like the feed that used to be here currently paused. So this I was speaking about like the the instant understanding over what the coin does and the the kind of the intuitive summary that you get. So these are all the nodes like for this this is some work some like play stuff that I've done for with a with someone. And these are all all the nodes so all these nodes are derived from the token address. So it works with any ERC20 token on Base currently and if you go at any random at any random like coin you can create here and create a node. So when you create a node you enter like the name of the node that you want it to appear in the chart characteristics these are for example I don't know it link a GitHub repo or um actually let's do a node. Let's do a node here. Let's do it in let's do it at let's do it here. Add node let's do it DD characteristics let's say these could these are characteristics that are specific that specific node in the sense that it could be like a Twitter account like how to contribute to that node like what are the rules whatever like data that is useful to being like a good member in that node. Um I don't know like what's twitter.com. Membership conditions these are conditions that you need to fulfill the address with which you are sign on need to fulfill in order to be able to mint membership in the node. So this could be any ERC20 token or any NFT or actually any you need to be a member in another node in the structure. I'm going to leave it let it open for now. Inflation rate this is like one of part of the core mechanism of how like the entire economic structure becomes coherent because there's some ways in which in theory you could like extract value and so on but like each node has an inflation rate. This inflation rate is governed by the node members proportionally to their shares holdings. Each node has two tokens has a deposit token and a share token. The deposit token is fixed you deposit 1 Will token you get 1 share of Will token in that node. But the the Will tokens like inflate over time so when you burn the shares you always withdraw less than you have deposited. And the difference that is created in that inflation is distributed forward to under nodes to nodes that are derived from this node or endpoints or like to be more clear like members that have done work for for that node. Let's do the inflation rate of 2.7 per day. Yeah okay created the node is it this one no let's go back to the root initial core created here DD. So about this chart so in theory I'm not sure if it's not working that well right now it's working somewhat well but like the size of like the chart for example is determined like how much value is in that node uh then the intensity the color for example could express how many members are there like how active so that's what I was referring to right as as lacrimaria olor like the thing was moving like you could like see everything that's happened in the entire like like coin. Okay so we have a node what we can do here we can create sub nodes the same process is exact the same process we can distribute value this means the inflation across the entire path and like redistributes it to this node and to to the under nodes or maybe you can have to call it from the other nodes I'm not sure. Okay deposit you mint like tokens into this this this node like you mint shares uh or you can mint from the parent because the value is nested so like the deposit token into one node is the shares of the parent and like there's this continuous recursiveness. So you can mint you can also withdraw or burn. When you burn like the reverse happens but you always get less because of the the inflation right that stays as value for for for the nodes. Okay we have movements these movements are kind of like traditional like DAO governance uh it these are executed by some some execution engine kind of like Safe Safe multisigs they're different than not Safe multisigs but kind of like that. And there's a value majority like decided by the majority of shares in that node or agent majority like agents. Um yeah and you have for example token transfer or custom call like any any on chain like call to to another contract. Signals uh let me change this to have some some children nodes to show let's do this. Okay so signals, signals is where you redistribute value to to under nodes actually there's there's more here. There's membrane ID right so like you can reconfigure like the access conditions and identity of a node you can rename it you can change like the the docs the characteristics you can change the membership conditions you do this by majority of shares owner so I can express a preference for changing the the node like inflation rate and the description so others need to also express that same preference and when it's over like 50% like the characteristics and like description and so on changes also. Same for the inflation rate I express a preference for let's say we need to spend things faster to accelerate like progress for like this kind of like activity right increase it or maybe we need to be more conservative decrease the inflation. And redistribution to undernodes so there's different to that those node these are nodes that are normal nodes and this is an endpoint these are like external endpoints that belong to a user and that's where you redistribute value to them you direct share of the inflation that is created this inflation is created per second here is calculated per day. This is the total value of the node this is like the inflation rate per day I think this is per second actually hm okay available shares how many how many of these are currently available to be redistributed to undernodes. In theory like all this like redistribution is to redistribution and recalculation can be done like almost in real time but like currently it's you have to click the button to do it. Okay so again at signals that's where here I express like my preference I want 81% point 2 of like this inflation to go to me um and yeah it needs to add to 100% for obvious reasons it makes things like easier in the in the contracts. Yeah okay and I submit the signals and this signals like how you calculate how much the the nodes get is also proportional to how many shares you have right. So it's yeah it's a little bit it's not easy to do this but I done it it works hopefully it was very well but it's it get it gets quite complex here you'd see like different signals like all the support like for change for membrane or inflation and so on and so forth. There's also a chat here to chat with other members of the node it probably helps and this is the endpoint uh this is like for example the user the worker in that node that they control this this smart contract that's also kind of on chain like smart contract and they get tokens redistributed to them and they can like burn them and extract like the core the core like token that was deposited in the in the entire thing. What else there's also a tab here to compose to create a new ERC20 token like distribute to others for example or to define a new membrane to in order to be able to propose it to change it the membrane of a coin. And that's been a lot like and it is more or less all of it I'm not sure if I I think I think it's fine we're we've gone a little bit too long but I guess it's it's fine.

No yeah that's totally. Uh yeah I guess um just to review uh basically um when a person is creating uh one of these nodes it's essentially just some sort of initiative um or or proposal and then the um when you're doing the sub nodes that's basically different aspects of related work uh pertaining to that proposal correct?

Yes, yes. But given that it's permissionless you cannot really curate it all of it is on chain so in theory anyone can you know this is about onions and someone makes a node about garlic that is nested you know you cannot stop that. Um these are kind of autonomous zones to create context and organize the the activity they are like kind of also you could say they're sub DAOs you know but like yeah it's yeah yeah.

Gotcha, gotcha. Uh yeah and then um on that point um if there's a DAO out there that wants to start operating with this model like how can they get started with WillWe?

Uh they can get they can go to WillWe.xyz or App.WillWe.xyz and like start using it. Uh the issue with that is that I would be impressed if they managed to do a good job because it's it's a lot to learn and understand and like the dynamics they appear somewhat simple but actually under the hood they're like they're fairly complex. But uh I would encourage anyone to do that in terms of the product itself what I plan to do is open source it very soon like all of it. Um and what it needs currently needs needs actually contributors needs people that find this kind of experimentation useful and want to contribute to it and like dogfood it and the project itself will also dogfood it so like the coordination will be done like using it that's that's the idea and the vision. Um and I hope that happens to be honest I'm a little bit like burnt out as well but like I'm I'm willing to like to push it and contribute and so on. Um yeah.

Awesome. Awesome man. Uh yeah um unfortunately uh we've come to time um but Bogdan thank you so much for coming on the show today. Uh and how can people keep up with the progress of WillWe? Like is there a particular account or something they can follow or reach out to you perhaps for questions?

Yeah, reach out to me. Follow the Twitter account of the project as well I'll probably post there when it's like open source. Um yeah follow me get in touch with me I guess I don't expect like to be 1,000 people that are in line you know like I can handle the volume so do that @parseb, WillWe-XYZ for the project and I think that's it.

Amazing. Amazing man. Uh yeah folks definitely give Bogdan a follow uh the his X account as well as the WillWe X account in the description below um so definitely go check that out. And yeah with that just want to say thank you again Bogdan really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to come on the show here and yeah really excited to see how WillWe progresses and yeah folks hopefully when Bogdan does open source it eventually that folks will folks watching today um will contribute to that.

Next 3 to 5 days, no more than 5 days.

There you go. There you go. Awesome stuff. All right.

Thank you everyone for the attention and time. Thank you Narb.

Yeah, my pleasure. And hope everybody has a very happy Friday, happy 4th of July to our American viewers, and we will catch you back here next week for more DevNTell. All right all, have a good one. Cheers.