Write About Coordination, Governance, or System in the Opt Out Contest, Win up to $6000 in Prizes

Theme 3: Break ties with the Status Quo

Prompts per Tag

#coordination:

1. A brief history of Coordination. An historical rendezvous - how coordination evolved from the early nomadic tribes, till technology arrived to change and redefine the way we work and collaborate together. Has coordination really evolved and improved respect to the profit-sharing, non-hierarchical power structure of the empire of Temujin **(**Genghis Khan)? If so, how? What have we gained, and lost along the way? Go beyond the “better” and the “worse” of general opinions - and give us a straight, personal analysis of what matters, and inexorably shook coordination to the bone.

2. If “coordination” were not coordination. If coordination was another word, what word would that be? Just be creative, and ELI5 coordination to us. Or write a poem, a song, or copy-paste the notes you took during your semiotics days.

3. Real-world coordination. There is this “being” called Man O’War (no, not the metal band this time) - which is a conglomerate of organisms, living, feeding and co-existing together. If one goes, they all die. If one stops to function, they all stop to function. Use this or other real-world, semi-symbiotic examples to draw an analogy with human coordination on a large, distributed scale. If you can draw, just send us a sketch - if we like it, you win, and if it’s really good, we may* even make an NFT from it.*: really, we actually might. 4.

4. Āut’s Coordination Dilemma. The Staircase of Coordination. How can coordination be functional, without “executive”, hierarchical supervision? And how can it be decentralized, if it’s subject to a pyramid of power? Can coordination truly be decentralized, and automated, and fulfilling for all parties, at a fundamental level? Āut Labs invested more than three years in the quest for decentralized coordination. Feel free to use this track to tell extensively to us and the entire world why we’ve failed, or we’ve succeeded.

5. Decentralization is the only way. It does sound sectarian, doesn’t it? Well. Coordination has never been “a thing” - sure, we’ve come a long way since the Paleolithic era, but was it ever possible to coordinate on a large, 100% trustless, 100% non-hierarchical scale, ever in the past? Tell us how decentralized technologies are a paradigm-shift in the humankind-long struggle for power, discrimination and abuse. Feel free to take controversial stands, for example why DeFi is actually a problem, a bummer, the lame kid in the decentralized revolution, rather than the fuse that triggers the bomb.

#governance:

1. Role-based governance & decision-making. How can decentralized projects set fair and inclusive parameters for decision-making processes? How do you communicate with someone with a radically different set of interests, beliefs and/or of expertise? How do you fill a knowledge gap? Is collaborative autonomy even possible, or “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” is just a chimera we’ve been titanically trying to hunt before inexorably fail? Take the tech, philosophy or social angle with this one - and inherit a micro-nation of extra-points for abundantly referring to Āut’s Role-based Governance.

2. Governance in the decentralized world: How does governance work in a decentralized environment? What is governance in the first place? Is it a bunch of 0x… addresses going to vote “Yes”/”No” on Snapshot, or is it an augmented, collective version of our individual selves? What should be the main discriminant in someone’s voting power? Is it money? Reputation? Talent, work, intelligence, …, the funniest meme ever made? This is an open prompt - feel free to take a provocative standpoint - we aim for non-trivial answers only, and we encourage you to use Āut’s tech stack as a reference.

3. The History of Governance: Any historian in da house? Please, wear your Geek Superstar glasses - and guide us through the history of Governance - from the cavemen times, through the Roman Empire, and the Renaissance. How has Governance evolved over the centuries? Did it “mature” at all? Are humans different in their [self-awareness; proprioception; way to perceive others] or we did nothing but taking a long stroll from the Stone Age to our-day Technocracy?

4. The On-chain Governance Fiasco: We believe that decentralized Governance is the main point, and “the real use-case” of blockchain and decentralized technologies as a whole. If you disagree, that’s fine - but this prompt is not for you 🙂  Still here? Great. So…why can “everything be decentralized” - except for Governance? Is there an inherent problem with it? Is it on-chain fees? Is it an UX problem? Is it just a lack of commitment from the builders in the space? If Governance is the ultimate proof of humanity, the only reason why blockchain is even supposed to exist in the first place and blablabla - why have we failed, repeatedly, for 14 years, to build any viable, reasonable, world-wide-spread Governance protocol?

#system:

1. What defines a “system”: What is a system in the first place? What are the criteria that we use to define it, and who are the parties, the stakeholders that need be represented, and by whom? In this final topic, you can unify all the previous ones, or choose at will, to create a unified system. References to Āut Labs and the Āutonomy Matrix are encouraged, but not required.

2. System Design: Provide real-world examples, or personal experience on how a system is effectively designed for tech-powered public goods. Can’t find any? Then come up with one and let’s realize it together.

3. Balancing technology and the human factor in collective systems: What is the ratio between human “fallibility” (the “human factor”) and technical automation? Can everything be automated? Can people self-organize without any auxiliary technological device? We believe in the combination of mathematically-quantifiable human actions and technological automation cutting the overhead - but we certainly don’t expect it to be the ultimate solution to world-system design, so we welcome alternative, or radically different opinions to foster a constructive discussion.

4. Human capital as RWA: Think of Participation Score, Global Reputation and other core concept in Āut’s unified system. What would a measurable (credit-)worthiness of human capital entail, and what are the implications of calculating human value as an RWA (real-world asset)? Here we want you to muse about potential scenarios - from the nightmarish dystopian side, to the bucolic returns to the root of what community meant in the first place, thousands of years ago. A ship loaded with extra-points if you get Āut’s “Human Capital as RWA” right.

5. To money or not to money: This is a provocative one. Can we consider finance as a separate, independent component in a unified system, or it’s just a small part entirely dependent from the design of the whole? What is the role of money in a unified-system design? Will Global Reputation equip individuals with immeasurable power of action, or would money still have the same role that it used to have? Will we always need the concept of money? And where does value, and measurability of assets lie?

Open Prompts:

1. [#system; #governance; #coordination] in [insert field]: The old, best writing advise: write about what you know. From literature, to robotics, to the legal system - write about one of the contest topics in relation to a specific field you are deeply knowledgeable or passionate about.

2. This is a quote that we like, from Mango Wodzak.
   

The very idea that any group of people should get to decide the fate of a country, and all its subjects, who for the most part they have personally never met nor had any interaction with, is intrinsically unethical. - Mango Wodzak, Topsy-Turvy World: Vegan Anarchy

Explore it in the key that you like, adherent to one of the three main themes. Or just use it as an inspiration, and write about whatever you want :)

**Good luck!