Consensus

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Sep 26, 2022 6:09 PM

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Aug 15, 2023 3:10 PM

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Intro

Eden needs consensus processes to measure group opinion, facilitate cooperation and maximize benefit for all. Below are our proposals, recommendations, and notes to help Eden ƒractal to make community decisions.

You can view and make comments on an editable version of this proposal on Google Docs and you can vote on these proposals in Consortium.

Proposals

We propose that Eden ƒractal uses both Consortium and the Eden+Fractal process to help the community reach consensus and make decisions.

Consortium and the Eden+Fractal process both provide innovative and helpful ways to measure consensus. They each measure consensus in a unique and valuable way. We should use both of these tools to help Eden ƒractal community members make the best decisions possible.

Below are brief descriptions of each of these tools to help measure and reach consensus. Further below is an analysis of the roles of consensus measuring tools in Eden ƒractal and various notes that are helpful to understand as we learn to cooperate.

What is Consortium?

Consortium is a decentralized, on-chain, incentive based governance layer for any social organization. As Consortium states in the Consortium Commons, “By providing a token-weighted signaling protocol, the aim is to help communities define and prioritize problems, make and select proposals, keep the stakeholders accountable, and in general aggregate their sentiment.”

In other words, Consortium is a voting application on EOS that empowers communities to make helpful decisions together. You can explore the app here and view the Eden Consortium page here. View the proposal to use Consortium as a signaling tool to help reach consensus and make decisions here.

Consortium is built by Vlad Hramtsov and Lennar Lehestik.

What is Eden+Fractal?

Eden+Fractal is an innovative consensus game that combines the benefits of Eden Elections and ƒractally to help communities cooperate for mutual benefit.

With this elegant process, community members both respect contributions to the community and elect delegates during the same breakout room. Delegates form councils that update each week, then recent councils cooperate to represent the will of the community, express shared opinions, and make community decisions.

This process was proposed by Tadas on October 2nd, 2022 and informally approved with supermajority consensus by the Eden ƒractal community in Meeting 18. The Eden ƒractal community cooperated with the Eden+Fractal process and elected delegates for the first time during Meeting 19. The community reached consensus to approve the first proposal with this process during Meeting 22.

You can learn about Eden+Fractal in this article, which curates resources and historic documents about Eden+Fractal. You can also watch many videos and interviews with exciting discussions about Eden+Fractal there, including the debut episode of Creator Talk.

Recommendations

Any proposals involving actions on the eden.fractal EOS account should pend for at least a week before making an on-chain action. This recommendation can be flexible to accommodate for minor code maintenance or situations with overwhelming consensus, but we should respect the power of on-chain actions and be very careful with this responsibility. The community should carefully deliberate for at least a week for any major changes to the eden.fractal EOS account.

Votes on Consortium should be officially counted at 16 UTC every Wednesday.

What is Consensus, Anyway?

Consensus can be defined in the following way:

Consensus Signals and Formal Power

With both of these systems, it is important to remember that votes are purely signals to help the community reach consensus and make decisions. All thresholds that may be described in these proposals are rather arbitrary because Eden Fractal is only able to express shared opinions and it is up to each individual to respond to opinions as they see fit.

Eden Fractal currently has no formal governance power. The power to take actions is held by individuals within the community who may voluntarily choose to act in accordance with consensus. For example, tools that the community uses such as the Eden.fractal EOS account services (smart contracts), associated social media accounts, zoom accounts, and websites are all operated independently of any consensus process used by participants in the weekly meetings. The same is also true for all other community decisions - the individual is always empowered to make their own decisions independently of the community consensus and act in accordance with consensus as they see fit. The community as a whole has no formal governance power other than the ability to express shared opinions and signals that may persuade individuals to voluntarily act for the benefit of the community.

This can change with technical innovations in the future and create immense benefits for the community. The Eden Fractal community as a whole can gain formal governance power when the permissions for the Eden.fractal EOS account MSIG and other associated tools can be dynamically updated to integrate directly with the community’s consensus process. However, this is not possible without further technical development. At this time, we should remember that all votes are only signals to help the community reach consensus and make decisions.

Thermometers and Barometers

Consensus measuring processes provide valuable information to measure the opinion of the group, not so dissimilar from how a thermometer and a barometer provide two different ways to measure how a room feels.

We can think of consensus processes as measuring tools, similar to a thermometer and barometer. Each tool provides a different view into the underlying nature of reality of physics. Similarly, consensus processes provide different views into the underlying nature of opinions in a social setting.

The Eden ƒractal community has considered many processes for measuring consensus. Each comes with tradeoffs, advantages, and flaws. We can use multiple processes in various contexts as signals and triangulate the data to help make the best decisions possible as we see fit. In the future, we can also use more consensus measuring tools or combine measurement data if it seems helpful.

Notes

Proposals should be phrased with a binary ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answer.

If Consortium is not working for any reason, then we can replicate the process with Eden Talk, BBS, or EOS Authority Polls and manually reference a spreadsheet of votes until a different solution is approved.

All essential details for proposals should be posted on the EOS blockchain. Consortium posts proposals on the EOS blockchain by default, but limits the amount of characters that can be included in the proposal. If a proposal includes essential details that can’t be included on Consortium, then the details should be posted on Eden Talk or another tool for posting text on the EOS blockchain. Then the on-chain post with more details should be linked in the proposal on Consortium. Proposals and voting should also be shown on screen and recorded on video during meetings for additional verification.

Vote signals are made on Consortium with the non-transferrable EDEN token. You cannot buy or sell votes. EDEN tokens have no monetary value and are simply representations of the community’s opinion that may change at any time with this process. As demonstrated in the ƒractally whitepaper, opinions are not property. EDEN tokens do not constitute a general partnership and do not provide any ownership, claims, or rights to any assets. EDEN tokens do not represent shares in a profit making endeavor, collective investment scheme, or anything similar. EDEN tokens are not securities and are solely used to foster the non-profit development of public goods for the benefit of all. Currently the only way to earn votes is by participating and reaching consensus in weekly meetings with the fractally process. Each EDEN token may provide one vote on Consortium and votes may be reused across different proposals. You can see the current amount and distribution of EDEN tokens here. This process should become nullified immediately if or when the EDEN token becomes transferrable. A new VOTES token may be created to serve the role as a non-transferable ote signaling token in the future. Votes will never be buyable or sellable and are always subject to change according to the opinions of community members.

These consensus processes provide a formal ways for the community to express a collective opinion. Opinions may change over time. Proposals approved with this process do not in any way represent, constitute, or create legally binding contracts, promises, or obligations. All opinions are subject to change and each community member may voluntarily choose whether or not to interact with the community, consensus process, and proposals. The community may also voluntarily choose whether or not to interact with individuals. Opinions and proposals are not compulsory. Willing community members may choose to cooperate with this consensus process to express a shared opinion and all choices are made with their own volition and mutual consent. People who are interacting with this consensus process should understand the basic principles shared about smart contracts in More Equal Animals natural giving in Nonviolent Communication, and The Legal Standing of DAOs. For more details about this consensus process, see the draft articles about the limitations of the interim consensus process, potential uses of the interim consensus process, and the potentially upcoming Contributor Agreement. Please note that these documents are in early stages of development and will be updated soon.

You can view and interact with this spreadsheet about the Eden votes proposal for reference about proposals. Read the instructions below the data or in the title cell notes to learn how to use the spreadsheet. You can duplicate the template for new proposals. We can screenshare the spreadsheet while voting. You can try modeling some scenarios now to get a feel for the various signal thresholds that may be needed to pass a proposal.