A Doctorate degree can mean many things to many different people. To me, it indicates that an individual has taken a considerable amount of time and effort to research, study, and apply their knowledge in a specific academic field. While pursuing a doctoral degree is not the only way to contribute to a certain field of research, it does provide an individual with a structured environment with which to grow, as an academic, within their own areas of interest, as well as support other academics as they pursue their own research interests. This ability to efficiently support a wider community while also supporting my own goals as a researcher is my main motivation for pursuing a Ph.D. in Decision Neuroscience at Temple University’s Fox School of Business.
Over the past four years, since completing my master’s degree, I have been focusing on my personal research interests. During this time I explored many different areas of study (economics, psychology, governance, cryptography, computer science, consensus, etc…). The main focus, throughout this time period, was always on the application of my personal research to efficiently support communities; specifically, communities composed of traditionally marginalized individuals (self-identified). My goal, at the completion of this degree and upon receipt of my Ph.D, would be to have contributed to the field of decentralized governance by attempting to answer the question:
“How to use decentralized governance (decentralized autonomous organizations / DAOs) to efficiently collaborate and come to a consensus (make a decision), transparently and securely to support the long term sustainability of a community and its members.”
Ever since the inception of “The DAO” (where individuals were able to invest funds towards an autonomous purpose using a decentralized platform to organize) in April of 2016, it has been clear that DAO’s pose an interesting solution to a long-standing issue within the field of governance; the ability to raise funds in a decentralized way to support the purpose/goals of a community. Not only did The DAO allow for the decentralized pooling of funds, but also attributed “shares” to contributors based on the weight of their contribution. These shares allowed contributors to vote on the outcome of the pooled funds, having a larger economic impact derived from the consensus of the shareholder’s votes. While there are many instances of similar models being used (general venture-backed capital funds), the idea of this happening in a “decentralized” way is definitely revolutionary.
Ever since “The DAO hack” in June of 2016, (where ~ ⅓ of the funds in the DAO’s treasury were lost due to a security vulnerability in the code which resulted in ~$50 million USD worth of assets being lost) it has been clear that while DAO’s are an interesting new primitive within the field of governance and decentralization, there is more research needed to ensure that individuals, and their funds, are safe as they attempt to come to a consensus to support a community they are attempting to govern. This is where my personal research goals and motivations have taken on an applicable form; “The marmaj DAO” is my iteration of decentralized governance.
The marmaj DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization with the purpose of attempting to efficiently manage the assets of The Marma J Foundation (a foundation that I founded in 2019). To do this, the DAO is built on the NEAR Protocol blockchain (transparency, security, auditability) using a smart contract that has built-in logic to support the governance of a community treasury. This smart contract logic is upgradable, meaning that the governing council can vote to upgrade or change the logic of the DAO at any time. This can pose a security concern though and is not an action that should be taken lightly. For example, the council could vote to upgrade the smart contracts of the DAO with malicious code that could be exploited (like what happened with “The DAO”). One of the main advantages that the marmaj DAO has over “The DAO” is that it was spun up using a factory contract. Instead of relying on brand new and untested code, there are hundreds of other DAOs within the NEAR ecosystem that use the exact same logic. This allows DAOs created using the factory to be able to support each other as they iterate through their decentralized governance methodologies. All of the code is open-source, so any bugs in the code of one DAO can be found and fixed, quickly by that DAO’s committed members. Fixes can then be deployed to support the other DAOs that may be using the same vulnerable code.
Along with base smart contract logic, that allows the DAO council to vote on proposals to enact transactions on the NEAR Protocol blockchain, the DAO also manages “the marmaj token”. This token is a fungible token; it can be exchanged like-for-like with other marmaj tokens (similar to fiat currencies). The marmaj token is NEP-141 compliant, which means that it has a standard API that can integrate with many other applications on the NEAR Protocol blockchain (specifically the marmaj DAO and Decentralized exchanges). This allows for the marmaj token to provide the marmaj DAO (and the Marma J Foundation) with a base level of economic stability. The high-level overview of how this works is by the DAO using the marmaj token to set up trading pairs to provide liquidity for the marmaj token. The marmaj token is paired with multiple other assets that the Marma J Foundation manages. There are economic incentives to arbitrage against the pairs to provide a stable market price for the marmaj token, and there are fees taken on each of the trades on the decentralized exchange. These fees go back to the DAO and are used to distribute micro-grants to the marmaj community. This base level of economic support allows the Marma J Foundation to have a perpetual funding mechanism, which allows the marmaj community to have a higher level of perceived support (regardless of if a specific community member actually receives any funding, they know funding is available for them).
In my opinion, efficient governance is about a community being able to come to a consensus and make a decision. Using DAOs as a model to research how individuals use their power within a system to attempt to influence outcomes, allows one to gain insight into how hard-coded incentives, built-in transparency, and a variety of other advantages of DAO governance models are used to support a wider community. The science of decision-making is a research area that I have been involved in for years. The ability to continue this research in a formal academic setting is an exciting prospect.
Watch Chloe’s Process
Hear Chloe explain her research goals and areas of interest on YouTube! Check out the following videos: