N3GOV-49: Decentralize the Nation3 Governance Structure and Launch New Experiment

Introduction

A recent proposal was made to withdraw all funds from the Nation3 DAO and incorporate a traditional centralized company in Switzerland—The Network State Company AG. 22 of 27 Nation3 citizens voted no to this.

Since the majority of the Nation3 citizens have indicated that they want Nation3 to be a decentralized organization (DAO), the founders have announced that they will be leaving the Nation3 DAO, and return their tokens. And they will hand over access to all systems/infrastructure to the DAO so that it can continue operating.

The founders have generously offered their time to help make this transition as smooth as possible.

Nation3's Vision ☁️

Let's start by reminding ourselves why Nation3 exists in the first place: We value freedom.

In our lifetime, we have observed many cases of governments abusing their power. In recent years we have seen the Hong Kong government killing 15 protesters and arresting more than 10,000. And following the Myanmar military coup, the government killed 3,770 young protesters and 19,413 are currently detained. And the list goes on...

This young generation sacrificed their lives to stand up against their violent government. These are the real heroes.

They are our fellow humans. Our brothers and sisters. And they need our help right now.

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"In the months before the Myanmar military’s coup, the country’s telecom and internet service providers were ordered to install intercept spyware that would allow the army to eavesdrop on the communications of citizens."

"The technology gives the military the power to listen in on calls, view text messages and web traffic including e-mails and track the locations of users without the assistance of the telecom and internet firms, the sources said."

How can Nation3 help?

The ethos of the Nation3 Manifesto is that we need to re-imagine nation states so that people can enjoy increased freedom, wealth and fairness.

Proposal

This proposal aims to launch two new experiments into the world instead of only one. Instead of the founders leaving to work on a merged entity with Baseflow (an OS for sovereign individuals) and the Nation3 DAO being abandoned, we can launch two new technological experiments simultaneously:

With two experiments running at the same time, we will increase our chances of finding the technology that puts a real dent in the universe.

While the founders will get going on a new innovation targeting sovereign individuals, Nation3 will target people who are not yet sovereign individuals and therefore still not free from their government.

Bottoms-Up Idea Competition 💡

The best ideas can come from anyone. So the Nation3 DAO will run an idea competition, accepting innovative technology idea submissions from both citizens and outside collaborators. The competition will come with some restraints:

1. Ideas must adhere to the vision in the Nation3 Manifesto.
2. Ideas will likely be restricted to a geographical target market.
3. Ideas incorporating freedom-enabling technologies (Internet, cryptography, blockchain, open source) will be favored.

All idea submissions will then be put up for democratic voting by Nation3's citizens, and the work on the chosen technology will be organized as a sub-DAO—the Nation3 Engineering DAO. As the name implies, this sub-DAO will only consist of engineers, fully focused on building the technology, and will not be spending their time on other projects related to Nation3.

Technological Review 🔍

As Nation3 citizen #71 suggested, a manual review and approval of the chosen innovation idea will need to be done. First upon selection of the top voted idea, and secondly upon reviewing proposals for its implementation. Once reviewed and passed as technologically solid and potentially impactful (aligned with the Nation3 Manifesto's vision), funding will be transferred to the Nation3 Engineering DAO for the work to begin.

DAO vs Traditional Organization ⚖️

While DAOs are expected to be the future of work and to enable global and highly efficient collaboration, they are still going through a chaotic and evolving phase. We can expect them to mature and flourish a few years from now, but they are still inefficient compared to traditional companies.

This is why it makes sense for Nation3's founding team to leave the DAO and start another technological innovation in the form of a fast and efficient traditional organization.

If we want to see a paradigm shift towards a more free, open, and fair society, we need to experiment fast. Coercive governments also have access to technology, so we need to move faster than they do. Technological innovation requires rapid experimentation. We don't have time to waste.

Execution Plan

1. Decentralize the Nation3 Governance Structure 🗳️

Nation3 will transition towards a more decentralized and autonomous organization structure, following the ethos of DAOs:

1. Transition to a flat and fully democratized governance structure (1-citizen 1-vote) for the top-level Nation3 DAO
2. Introduce autonomous Nation3 sub-DAOs where builders govern themselves (while keeping activity public)
3. Transition from off-chain to on-chain governance
4. Transition from private activity to fully public activity

2. Handover of Admin Access to the DAO ⚙️

This work is already in progress (thanks to @0xGallego), and you can follow the progress in Discord or in the forum.

1. A Transition Committee will be responsible for receiving and maintaining admin access to the Nation3 systems: @TonyStark, @JohnMark13, @aahna, @rencai201, @AbuUsama.
2. Establish solution for billing services.
3. Enable a solution for the DAO to edit the list of people with admin access to the systems.

Change ownership of DAO smart contracts

DAO Critical Agent Address

• Change from 0x7B81e8D4e82796c9B76284Fa4d21E57b8B86A06c (Aragon Client) to 0x7fFf737ae9FdDD6E28Fe8B8F0F4dE69Bb8e7a885 (Safe multisig).

DAO Agent Address

• Change from 0x336252602b3a8A0bE336ED942228305173E8082B (Aragon Client) to 0xD1EDE41DeB03A23CCB325312DE8e5BF240881f53 (Aragon Govern).

The above amendment of the Constitution can be seen here: https://github.com/nation3/law/pull/7

Corresponding gov-proposals pull request: https://github.com/nation3/gov-proposals/pull/70

Transfer of $NATION Tokens

• All the 27,275 $NATION tokens in the previous agent contract will be transferred to the new critical agent contract.
  • This represents ~65% of the total token supply.
• The 8,414 $NATION founding member tokens will be transferred to the new agent contract.
  • This represents 20% of the total token supply.

All five members of the Transition Committee will then be added as owners of the Safe multisig (new critical agent). This will be a temporary measure until we deploy new Aragon OSx DAO contracts governed by all Nation3 citizens.

3. Launch of a New Technological Innovation 🚀

To engage its citizens, the Nation3 DAO will publish a competition, vote on the ideas, and implement the chosen technology.

1. Arrange public idea competition (promotion through Twitter, Discord, etc).
2. Pick ideas meeting the guidelines, and have Nation3 citizens vote on their favorite.
3. Recruit 2 or 3 full-time engineers with cryptography knowledge and willingness to work in an open DAO structure.
4. Run a 1-year project to build the technology.