Merging Eastern Cultures to Complete the Missing Puzzle of DAO Socialware

Project Abstract

Missing Puzzle for DAO

No trustless technology has ever worked without social trust. The DAO’s missing puzzle is ‘socialware’ that makes up a trusted community. This socialware is the device that creates reciprocal relationships without contractual terms and is still the human driver of an organization.
Through our DAOeast research, we will take a diachronic look at the past, present and future of Socialware through the lens of "relation-centric" East Asian philosophy. At what point do Western philosophies that cry out for individual independent freedom and Eastern philosophies that emphasize human connection meet? We believe this ‘Cultural Merge’ will bring about a prosperous period for blockchain as much as Ethereum's the Merge.

Objective

	[Past] Exploring the origins of the significance of socialware in the East	[Current] Comparative Interview Study of Eastern and Western Communities	[Future] Suggestions for the development of DAO Socialware
Hypothesis	Drawing on the relational ideas of Eastern philosophy, we can find a narrative of socialware missing from DAOs.

| Significant differences will exist in how communities work in the East and West, depending on their cultural context. Understanding these differences and applying them to DAOs in a complementary way can help solve the problems of DAOs. | In addition to Trustware, DAOs must evolve to include governance and tooling attempts for Socialware to foster community relationships. | | Key Questions | What are the main Eastern thinkers and discourses? What is the historical/cultural context of their ideas? | How do communities in the West behave compared to the East or as a comparison group? | What are the components of DAO socialware, and what are the key features of each? | | Research Area | • Historical and cultural origins of Confucian and Buddhist thought • Exploring the archetypes of DAOs, the social pods to exchange labor and caregiving in history such as Dure, Pumasi, Hyangyak, Gye etc. • How does relationalism relate to organizational commitment and engagement? | •Political/Decentralized Decision-Making Communities • Living Communities • Working Communities • Educational Communities **** | Core elements of Socialware

Onboarding and education materials ****2) Chat and messaging platforms
Social events and meetups(환대)
Collaborative decision-making tools
Reputation systems |

This project is expected to achieve the following outcomes;
- Increased cultural diversity in the blockchain industry
- Increased understanding and awareness of Eastern philosophies and relationship-oriented approaches (like moloch) in the blockchain industry.
- Increased discourse on DAO Socialware in the media, conferences, etc.
- Lead to experimentation with relationship-centered governance/tooling in DAOs
The Western narrative of Moloch is a good representation of trustware in DAOs. The trustware philosophy is so well embodied in a tool called DAOhaus that DAOists utilize it as a basic framework for DAOs.
Similarly, this DAOeast research hopes to serve as a narrative and ideological compass for community/product builders to refer to when creating DAO socialware. To this end, we will 1) study the relationalism of Eastern philosophy, 2) compare the current Western and Eastern communities, and 3) discuss the future direction of DAO socialware.

Outcomes

Untitled

	Evolutionary Paths
➊ Centrally Controlled Org.	Centralized organizations and individuals privately misappropriate power, leading to widespread distrust of those in power. Facebook selling user data is just one example.
**➋Decentralized
Autonomous Org.**	Designed a decentralized organization to prevent the corruption of power —
Capture-Resistant Governacne
**➌ Trustware
(West**)	Development of various governance/tools for private organizations to be as organized as central organizations.
➍ Socialware
(East)	But organizations are not driven by mechanisms alone. We are seeing that incentive systems hasn’t worked properly. For exampl, That's why DAOs need a network of human connections.
➎ Dual-ware
(West+East)	Introduce social ware to enable relationships within the organization without diluting individual freedom through relationships

Viewing history as a dialectical development, the emergence of DAOs was a new challenge to the joint stock company structure that had been in place for over 400 years. When DAOs first appeared in the Ethereum whitepaper in 2014 ("How to code a DAO"), they were assumed to operate as immutable code.
However, the DAO ideal of "Code is Law" hasn't worked in practice. Codes are not a one-solution-solves-all. Instead, trustware considers an on-chain system, but it has limitations because people do not actively participate.

1. Limitations to onboarding for the masses: Theoretically, everyone is assumed to be literate in smart contracts. But in reality, people learn rules through social interaction. So, without designing for the human touch, most people find DAO onboarding challenging.

2. Limitations to achieving common goals: Great goals look ahead a century or more, plan for the future, and unite individuals for a distinct purpose. In DAOs, however, individual action is overemphasized, making it challenging to complete a single goal. For example, 95% of the open source contributions are not as useful to the project itself as the contributions were simply means to and end, to make one’s resume more colorful.

3. Limitations to Sustained Engagement: Relationships in DAOs are based on the assumption that you are only one of many digital selves and can leave at any time. Along with this freedom comes a lack of continuity among members. This results in low engagement, low goal achievement, and time lag.
To address the above issues facing DAOs today, it's time for a new antithesis to emerge. As an alternative, we propose exploring the roots of DAOs' "Socialware" to develop it as well. Ultimately, we can find a way to grow to the following sum of Dualware, where Trustware(正) + new Socialware(反) = Dualware(合).

Grant Scope

This project categorizes the systems that make up a DAO into two types.

**#1. Trustware: a resource allocation system that allows people to trust each other without a central authority.

#2. Socialware: a value creation system that enables people to build relationships and facilitate collaboration.**

Much of the research has formed a theoretical discourse based on ‘#1 Trustware’, which this study will not cover. As a result, many of the challenges of DAO governance, such as 'Which voting method is most legitimate?' and 'How to run a transparent treasury?', are not the subject of this study.
Instead, this study focuses on an overlooked aspect of DAOs, '#2. Socialware,’ through the lens of Eastern culture. There is little prior research in this area that focuses on DAOs, so this proposal will begin by exploring the origins of why socialware is so crucial in the East.