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# Game Plan
Working Title:
_Polycentricity_
By mzargham and… tbd
## [](#Why-This-Game "Why-This-Game")Why This Game?
This game is a didactic roleplaying experience designed to explore the dynamics of collaborative governance, strategic negotiation, and creative problem solving. In an increasingly complex world, leaders are frequently required to align diverse interests, balance values and obligations, and form novel structures for cooperation. This game provides a safe but realistic simulation where players can engage with these tensions, practice forming agreements, and reflect on the consequences of different governance choices.
The intention is not to "win" in a traditional sense, but to learn through interaction—by modeling how agreements form, evolve, or break down in multi-stakeholder environments. The structure encourages participants to think across disciplines, synthesize perspectives, and use their unique capacities and resources to build shared value.
## [](#What-Is-It "What-Is-It")What Is It?
At its core, the game is a structured improvisational roleplay built around a simple graph-based data model. Each player is an **actor**, equipped with a unique role, goals, and assets. Players interact to form **agreements**—these could take many forms: contracts, joint ventures, federations, or novel social or technical constructs. Agreements may be **symmetric** (equal terms for all actors) or **asymmetric** (distinct terms per actor), and can involve any number of actors.
Each agreement involves the exchange of **obligations** (what an actor commits to do or provide) and **benefits** (what they receive in return). These are physically represented on a cork board using tacks, strings, and post-it notes, or digitally via a simple tabular structure that mirrors a bipartite graph.
The design allows complex interdependencies and political-economic dynamics to emerge naturally, while keeping the mechanics simple and intuitive. Players are encouraged to explore unconventional or boundary-pushing governance structures, while staying grounded in the constraints and values of their role.
## [](#Workshop-Paper-Prototype "Workshop-Paper-Prototype")Workshop "Paper" Prototype
This section outlines the practical, time-bounded, analog version of the game tailored for the Stanford workshop. It includes the physical setup, game design, and materials needed to support engaging, emergent gameplay.
### [](#Constraints "Constraints")Constraints
- **Player Count**: 8 to 12 players
- **Duration**: 110 minutes total (buffered for 120 min session)
- 20 minutes: Overview of goals and rules
- 60 minutes: Free play / negotiation
- 30 minutes: Debrief and discussion (did we win?)
- **Materials**:
- Role cards (printed and distributed randomly)
- Cork board or large whiteboard
- Tacks or magnets (1 per actor + 1 per agreement)
- String or yarn (to represent edges in the graph)
- Sticky notes (for agreement terms and actor-specific notes under strings)
- Pens and markers
### [](#Design "Design")Design
The analog design of the game facilitates creativity while anchoring play in clear visual metaphors for governance and networks. The board visually represents a **bipartite graph**: players (actors) are connected via agreements (nodes), with strings denoting the **directionality** of obligations and benefits.
#### [](#Role-Card-Template "Role-Card-Template")Role Card Template
Each player receives a **Role Card** that defines the constraints and resources they operate under. These include:
- **Backstory**: 2-3 sentences about who they are or who they represent.
- **Values**: Guiding principles or ethical constraints.
- **Goals**: What they seek to achieve during the game.
- **Obligations**: External constraints (e.g., fiduciary duties to non-player actors).
- **Capabilities**: What they can do or offer (transformative capacities; these are "verbs" wheras resouces are "nouns").
- **Intellectual Property**: Privately held specialized knowledge, data, or craft.
- **Rivalrous Resources**: Limited assets such as capital, tools, or physical materials.
#### [](#Bilateral-Asymmetric-Agreement-Template "Bilateral-Asymmetric-Agreement-Template")Bilateral Asymmetric Agreement Template
Used when two players form an agreement with different roles and terms.
**Sticky Note Format:**
- Title of Agreement
- Summary: What it is about (1 sentence)
- Parties: Player A & Player B
- Obligations:
- From A to B: [list]
- From B to A: [list]
- Benefits:
- To A from B: [list]
- To B from A: [list]
Each string between players and the agreement has a **mini sticky note** underneath showing their personal terms (obligations and benefits).
#### [](#Multilateral-Symmetric-Agreement-Template "Multilateral-Symmetric-Agreement-Template")Multilateral Symmetric Agreement Template
Used when 3+ players join an agreement under the same terms.
**Sticky Note Format:**
- Title of Agreement
- Summary
- Parties: A, B, C…
- Shared Obligations: [list]
- Shared Benefits: [list]
Each player has a string from their actor node to the agreement node; mini sticky notes can denote any slight variations if needed, but generally, the agreement is symmetric.
## [](#Examples "Examples")Examples
This section demonstrates sample role cards and agreement structures in a snapshot of a possible game state, showcasing how obligations, benefits, and collaboration emerge in play.
### [](#Example-Role-Cards "Example-Role-Cards")Example Role Cards
A guide to authoring role cards is [provided here](https://hackmd.io/RtSo6EZ9QHiI8b6uXni1DA?view), but for the purpose of this document here is an overview. Additional work on role sets corresponding to specific scenarios are here ([Grazing Lands Use Case](https://hackmd.io/4VTGq51CQ5CSvvNph7yjxg?view)) and here ([Grassroots Innovations Assembly for Agroecology Use Case](https://hackmd.io/aRdSyIktSi6QywmmJcyQfA#)).
#### [](#Actor-1-Farmer-–-Rosa-Salinas "Actor-1-Farmer-–-Rosa-Salinas")**Actor 1: Farmer – Rosa Salinas**
- **Backstory**: A second-generation farmer managing a 60-acre mixed crop farm. Passionate about regenerative agriculture.
- **Values**: Ecological balance, food sovereignty, peer collaboration.
- **Goals**: Increase yield diversity while reducing input costs.
- **Obligations**: Must remain financially solvent; bound by coop decisions.
- **Capabilities**: Field expertise, crop rotation planning, soil health practices.
- **Intellectual Property**: Longitudinal soil and yield data, traditional knowledge.
- **Rivalrous Resources**: Farm machinery, storage space, limited seasonal labor.
#### [](#Actor-2-Regional-Farming-Cooperative-–-Rio-Mesa-Cooperative "Actor-2-Regional-Farming-Cooperative-–-Rio-Mesa-Cooperative")**Actor 2: Regional Farming Cooperative – Rio Mesa Cooperative**
- **Backstory**: A member-led organization formed by local farmers to pool resources and make collective decisions.
- **Values**: Solidarity, democratic decision-making, sustainability.
- **Goals**: Negotiate better terms for members, coordinate data sharing.
- **Obligations**: Must act in good faith on behalf of members.
- **Capabilities**: Aggregating data, organizing logistics, interfacing with vendors.
- **Intellectual Property**: Anonymized pooled datasets, coop governance know-how.
- **Rivalrous Resources**: Negotiation leverage, limited IT infrastructure.
#### [](#Actor-3-AI-Firm-–-ThreeSisters "Actor-3-AI-Firm-–-ThreeSisters")**Actor 3: AI Firm – ThreeSisters**
- **Backstory**: A small AI startup developing crop compatibility algorithms to support sustainable farming in regional contexts.
- **Values**: Technological empowerment, agroecological alignment, openness.
- **Goals**: Improve model performance, gain real-world feedback, grow market.
- **Obligations**: Investor requirements limit what can be offered pro bono.
- **Capabilities**: Machine learning for ecological optimization, technical support.
- **Intellectual Property**: Proprietary models, climate-adjusted datasets.
- **Rivalrous Resources**: Engineering time, server credits, investor goodwill.
### [](#Example-Agreements "Example-Agreements")Example Agreements
#### [](#Agreement-1-Rio-Mesa-Cooperative-Membership-Pact "Agreement-1-Rio-Mesa-Cooperative-Membership-Pact")**Agreement 1: Rio Mesa Cooperative Membership Pact**
- **Type**: Multilateral Symmetric Agreement
- **Summary**: Agreement establishing Rio Mesa Cooperative and the terms of farmer membership.
- **Parties**: Rosa Salinas, 5 other individual farmers
- **Shared Obligations**:
- All members agree to honor collective decisions made by the coop.
- Members will contribute monthly updates on farm metrics to the coop’s shared database.
- **Shared Benefits**:
- Representation in negotiations with vendors and external organizations.
- Access to shared resources, group purchasing, and strategic planning tools.
**Cork Board Representation**:
- One tack labeled "Rio Mesa Membership Pact"
- Strings connect each farmer's tack to the agreement
- Sticky note under each string:
_“Obligations: Share monthly data; abide by coop decisions. Benefits: Group support, shared services.”_
#### [](#Agreement-2-Data-for-Discount-Exchange-with-ThreeSisters "Agreement-2-Data-for-Discount-Exchange-with-ThreeSisters")**Agreement 2: Data-for-Discount Exchange with ThreeSisters**
- **Type**: Bilateral Asymmetric Agreement
- **Summary**: Coop negotiates a deal with ThreeSisters for discounted access to their crop-planning AI tool in exchange for pooled member data.
- **Parties**: Rio Mesa Cooperative, ThreeSisters
- **Obligations**:
- From Coop to ThreeSisters:
- Provide anonymized, structured crop and soil data from member farms.
- Allow periodic Q&A sessions with farmers for model tuning.
- From ThreeSisters to Coop:
- Offer 40% discount on subscription for all member farmers.
- Provide semiannual reports on ecological optimization insights.
- **Benefits**:
- To Coop:
- Affordable tech access, improved planning across members.
- To ThreeSisters:
- Real-world data to refine models, credibility in agricultural community.
**Cork Board Representation**:
- One tack labeled "AI Tool Discount Exchange"
- String from Coop tack to agreement with mini note:
_“Obligation: Share pooled data. Benefit: Discounted access, optimization reports.”_
- String from agreement to ThreeSisters tack with mini note:
_“Obligation: Discount, insights. Benefit: Valuable data, user feedback.”_
### [](#Example-Walkthrough "Example-Walkthrough")Example Walkthrough
This walkthrough simulates a simplified flow of gameplay for the Stanford workshop version, helping facilitators and players understand how interactions might unfold and how agreements come together.
### [](#Setup-Phase-0–20-minutes "Setup-Phase-0–20-minutes")Setup Phase (0–20 minutes)
1. **Introduction by Facilitator**
- Introduce the purpose: exploring creative, collaborative governance.
- Explain the core structure: actors form agreements which define obligations and benefits.
- Describe how the **cork board** (or digital sheet) will represent the game graph.
2. **Distribute Role Cards**
- Each player receives a randomly assigned **role card** detailing their backstory, values, goals, resources, and constraints.
- Give players a few minutes to read and absorb their role.
3. **Explain Materials**
- Show how to use **tacks** for actor and agreement nodes.
- Explain **strings** for relationships (directed edges: obligations & benefits).
- Post-it notes for agreement terms and actor-specific annotations.
### [](#Free-Play-Phase-20–80-minutes "Free-Play-Phase-20–80-minutes")Free Play Phase (20–80 minutes)
This is the heart of the game — open-ended but guided by player goals.
1. **Initial Conversations**
- Players begin by networking and discussing their needs and capabilities.
- Example: A farmer asks others if they’re interested in data-sharing or pooled logistics.
2. **First Agreement Forms**
- A few farmers decide to form a **cooperative** to coordinate strategy.
- They agree on shared obligations (data sharing, collective decision-making) and form a **multilateral symmetric agreement**.
- A new **agreement node** is added to the cork board with a tack.
- Strings connect each farmer to the agreement, with post-its for shared obligations/benefits.
3. **Cooperative Acts on Behalf of Members**
- The coop now represents its members in external negotiations.
- It engages the AI firm (ThreeSisters) to seek technological support.
- The AI firm is interested, but constrained by its investor obligations.
4. **Negotiation: Bilateral Asymmetric Agreement**
- The coop offers to share anonymized farm data in exchange for discounted access to the AI tool.
- An agreement is drafted and posted to the board with distinct obligations/benefits for each side.
- Strings and annotations are added.
5. **Ongoing Activity**
- Players continue forming additional side-agreements (e.g., knowledge exchanges, bartering equipment time, etc.).
- Facilitators can observe which players lead, compromise, hold out, or disrupt.
### [](#Debrief-Phase-80–110-minutes "Debrief-Phase-80–110-minutes")Debrief Phase (80–110 minutes)
1. **Freeze Gameplay**
- No new agreements after this point.
2. **Review the Board**
- Walk through each agreement:
- Who is involved?
- What are the key terms?
- Are obligations and benefits well balanced?
- Are there any tensions?
3. **Reflective Discussion**
- Which agreements came easily? Which were hard?
- What patterns emerged?
- How did individual values and obligations influence choices?
- Were there missed opportunities or unresolved conflicts?
- What governance models emerged?
- How might things shift in a second round (with possibility of reneging, penalties, etc.)?
## [](#Moderator-Facilitation-Tips "Moderator-Facilitation-Tips")Moderator Facilitation Tips
Facilitators play a key role in making the experience dynamic, focused, and rich with insight. While the game is player-driven, a light-touch but attentive moderation approach can ensure depth without interrupting flow.
---
### [](#During-Setup-0–20-min "During-Setup-0–20-min")**During Setup (0–20 min)**
- **Set the tone**: Emphasize that the game is not about "winning" but about exploring governance structures through negotiation and creativity.
- **Clarify directionality**: Reinforce the meaning of the arrows — obligations go from actor → agreement, benefits from agreement → actor.
- **Encourage immersion**: Invite players to inhabit their roles fully. Values and obligations on their card should guide their decisions.
- **Mention "quiet powers"**: Some roles may be more subtle or less overtly powerful. Point out that influence isn’t only transactional — credibility, trust, and timing all matter.
### [](#During-Free-Play-20–80-min "During-Free-Play-20–80-min")**During Free Play (20–80 min)**
- **Roam and listen**: Walk between groups to observe discussions. Note emerging themes, stuck points, and interesting agreements.
- **Prompt stalled players**: If a player seems unsure, prompt them with gentle questions:
- “What does your character really need?”
- “Who here might have a resource or alignment with your goals?”
- “What’s one small agreement you could start with?”
- **Encourage creative agreements**: Remind players they’re not limited to standard contracts — they can design federations, barters, rotating leadership, etc.
- **Make space for quieter voices**: Gently redirect attention if conversations become dominated.
- **Support documentation**: Ensure agreements get fully documented on the board or digital sheet. Help players write sticky notes if needed.
### [](#During-Agreement-Formation "During-Agreement-Formation")**During Agreement Formation**
- **Check for clarity**: Ask: “Does everyone in this agreement understand their obligations and benefits?”
- **Highlight asymmetry**: Encourage explicit discussion when terms are different for each actor — this is where learning often emerges.
- **Ask about enforcement** (lightly): “If someone doesn’t deliver, what happens?” (This plants seeds for future versions with reneging.)
### [](#During-Debrief-80–110-min "During-Debrief-80–110-min")**During Debrief (80–110 min)**
- **Use the board as anchor**: Physically walk through each agreement or screen-share the diagram.
- **Ask reflective questions**:
- “What made this agreement possible?”
- “What tensions did it resolve or create?”
- “How did values show up in negotiation?”
- “Which actors had the most leverage — and why?”
- “What governance model do you think emerged?”
- **Open "what if" scenarios**: “What if you had a second round?” “What if someone broke their agreement?”
- **Invite broader reflection**: “Did anything in this game resemble real-world dynamics in your work?”
Excellent — let’s dive into the **Data Collection** section, which frames the game as a research-friendly experiment in collaborative governance.
## [](#Data-Collection "Data-Collection")Data Collection
This game offers a powerful opportunity to observe how people construct agreements under real-world-like constraints. By logging actor traits, agreements, and connections, we can analyze patterns in negotiation behavior, governance structures, and network dynamics.
While the game is paper-based, we can track data using a structured **digital mirror** — a spreadsheet or lightweight database with three core entities: **Actors**, **Agreements**, and **Connections**.
### [](#Actors-Table "Actors-Table")Actors Table
Each player corresponds to a row in this table, capturing static attributes from their role card and metadata like player name or alias.
| Field | Description |
| ----------------------- | ------------------------------------------------ |
| `actor_id` | Unique identifier for the actor |
| `player_name` | (Optional) Name or pseudonym of the player |
| `role_title` | Title of the role (e.g., "Farmer: Rosa Salinas") |
| `backstory` | Short narrative from role card |
| `values` | List of stated values |
| `goals` | Player's in-game objectives |
| `obligations` | External duties or constraints |
| `capabilities` | Transformative abilities or means |
| `intellectual_property` | Unique data, knowledge, or techniques |
| `rivalrous_resources` | Tangible assets or limited capital |
> **Where to log this**: `Actors` tab in a Google Sheet or a table in a relational database.
### [](#Agreements-Table "Agreements-Table")Agreements Table
Each agreement gets a row, capturing who formed it, when, what kind it is, and the general terms.
| Field | Description |
| -------------- | --------------------------------------------------------- |
| `agreement_id` | Unique identifier |
| `title` | Name of the agreement |
| `summary` | 1–2 sentence overview |
| `type` | Symmetric / Asymmetric |
| `parties` | List of actor_ids involved |
| `created_at` | Timestamp of agreement creation |
| `terms` | Freeform text or structured terms list |
| `notes` | Additional context, such as reasons or conflicts resolved |
> **Where to log this**: `Agreements` tab or table.
### [](#Connections-Table "Connections-Table")Connections Table
This table captures **edges in the bipartite graph**: how each actor is connected to each agreement, including their specific obligations and benefits.
| Field | Description |
| --------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `connection_id` | Unique identifier |
| `actor_id` | Actor participating |
| `agreement_id` | Agreement involved |
| `direction` | `obligation` or `benefit` |
| `description` | Text summary of what the actor provides or receives |
| `joined_at` | Timestamp of when the actor signed on (can be after creation) |
For asymmetric agreements, there will be **two entries per actor** (one for obligation, one for benefit). For symmetric ones, a single shared obligation-benefit pair may suffice per actor.
> **Where to log this**: `Connections` tab or a join table in a database.
### [](#Additional-Tips-for-Logging-Data "Additional-Tips-for-Logging-Data")Additional Tips for Logging Data
- **Assign a moderator assistant** to capture this in real time (even just snapping photos of the board helps).
- **Use shorthand IDs** for actors and agreements to make linking easier.
- **Optionally timestamp conversations**: When major events occur (first agreement, surprising turn, conflict), note time for later review.
- **Qualitative observations**: Keep a facilitator notepad for emergent themes — e.g., power dynamics, trust breakdowns, or role-play depth.
---
With this structure in place, the data can later be used to:
- Visualize the agreement network over time
- Identify which values or resources correlate with influence
- Explore negotiation styles and group behaviors
- Develop agent-based simulations of future rounds
### [](#Example-Data "Example-Data")Example Data
#### [](#Actors-Table-csv "Actors-Table-csv")Actors Table (csv)
```
actor_id,player_name,role_title,backstory,values,goals,obligations,capabilities,intellectual_property,rivalrous_resources
A1,Rosa Salinas,Farmer: Rosa Salinas,"Second-generation farmer on a 60-acre mixed crop farm.","Ecological balance, food sovereignty, peer collaboration","Increase yield diversity, reduce input costs","Must remain financially solvent; bound by coop decisions","Crop planning, soil health expertise","Soil and yield data, traditional knowledge","Farm machinery, seasonal labor"
A2,Rio Mesa Coop,Regional Farming Coop: Rio Mesa,"Member-led organization coordinating local farmers","Solidarity, democratic decision-making, sustainability","Negotiate terms, coordinate data sharing","Act in good faith on behalf of members","Aggregating data, organizing logistics","Anonymized datasets, governance structure","Negotiation leverage, IT infrastructure"
A3,ThreeSisters,AI Firm: ThreeSisters,"AI startup focused on crop compatibility algorithms","Agroecological alignment, tech empowerment","Improve models, gain field validation","Investor constraints on free access","ML for ecological optimization","Proprietary models, climate datasets","Engineering time, investor goodwill"
```
#### [](#Agreements-Table-csv "Agreements-Table-csv")Agreements Table (csv)
```
agreement_id,title,summary,type,parties,created_at,terms,notes
AG1,Coop Membership Pact,"Agreement establishing the Rio Mesa Coop among farmers",Symmetric,"A1, A2",2025-03-22T10:30:00,"Farmers agree to share data and follow coop decisions","Forms the basis for coop-led negotiation"
AG2,AI Tool Discount Exchange,"Data-for-discount deal between Coop and ThreeSisters",Asymmetric,"A2, A3",2025-03-22T10:50:00,"Coop shares data; ThreeSisters provides discount + insights","Enables tech access to all member farmers"
```
#### [](#Connections-Table-csv "Connections-Table-csv")Connections Table (csv)
```
connection_id,actor_id,agreement_id,direction,description,joined_at
C1,A1,AG1,obligation,"Share farm data, follow coop decisions",2025-03-22T10:30:00
C2,A1,AG1,benefit,"Access to group support, services",2025-03-22T10:30:00
C3,A2,AG1,benefit,"Authority to negotiate for members",2025-03-22T10:30:00
C4,A2,AG2,obligation,"Provide pooled data and farmer feedback",2025-03-22T10:50:00
C5,A2,AG2,benefit,"Discounted AI tool access for members",2025-03-22T10:50:00
C6,A3,AG2,obligation,"Provide discount and ecological insight reports",2025-03-22T10:50:00
C7,A3,AG2,benefit,"Access to anonymized farm data, real-world feedback",2025-03-22T10:50:00
```
#### [](#Simple-HTML-mockup "Simple-HTML-mockup")Simple HTML mockup
Proof of concept for graph visualization.
- [Code](https://github.com/mzargham/gov-game-demo-viz/blob/main/index.html)
- [Page](https://gov-game-demo-viz.netlify.app/)
## [](#Software-Version "Software-Version")Software Version
The above game is intentionally designed as a low-tech, high-fidelity paper prototype to encourage embodied thinking and physical engagement. However, it also lends itself naturally to a **digitally mediated implementation** that can scale, extend gameplay, and provide rich analytical feedback loops.
This section outlines the **software architecture** and **interface mockups** for a potential digital version.
### [](#Software-Architecture-Overview "Software-Architecture-Overview")Software Architecture Overview
The core digital platform would model the same **bipartite graph** structure (Actors ⇄ Agreements), and include interfaces for players to:
- Enter the game and receive a generated role
- Propose and join agreements
- See real-time visualizations of the agreement network
- alternatively (see their neighborhood of the graph only for Massively Multiplayer Version)
- Optional: Generate random events and push notifications to players regarding how it affects them (alters actor state)
- Optional: enable and track reneging, and introduce a scoring system (including both individual and group level metrics)
#### [](#Key-Components "Key-Components")Key Components
| Component | Purpose |
| --------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Role Generator** | Instantiates actors with structured values, capabilities, constraints |
| **Agreement Editor** | GUI for proposing bilateral or multilateral agreements |
| **Binding Mechanism** | Allow players to "sign on" to agreements, with timestamps and negotiation history |
| **Graph Visualization** | Dynamic, interactive display of current agreement-actor network |
| **Game Engine / Backend** | Stores and manages all actor, agreement, and connection records |
| **Optional Event Engine** | Introduces external pressures, changes, or uncertainties between rounds |
| **Optional Scoring Engine** | Provides numerical feedback on how well an actor is living up to its their personalized mission, a neighborhood score, and global score |
Here’s the revised **Stack Recommendation** section for the documentation, reflecting your goals of simplicity, compatibility, and a fast development cycle — with clear justifications.
### [](#Stack-Recommendation-For-Prototype "Stack-Recommendation-For-Prototype")Stack Recommendation (For Prototype)
This prototype version of the digital game prioritizes **simplicity, low maintenance, and rapid development**. The following stack choices are designed to minimize complexity while providing enough flexibility to support dynamic gameplay and network visualization.
#### [](#Frontend-Svelte "Frontend-Svelte")Frontend: **Svelte**
- **Why Svelte?**
Svelte is a modern JavaScript framework that compiles your code into minimal, fast-loading JavaScript with almost no boilerplate. It’s excellent for building simple, reactive interfaces without the overhead of more complex frameworks like React.
- **What it does:**
- Displays player roles and dashboards
- Hosts forms for agreement creation
- Integrates the graph visualization
- Communicates directly with the backend or database (Firebase)
> **Svelte is chosen for its speed, simplicity, and developer-friendly learning curve.**
#### [](#Graph-Engine-D3js "Graph-Engine-D3js")Graph Engine: **D3.js**
- **Why D3.js?**
D3 provides fine-grained control over SVG graphics and is ideal for custom interactive visualizations like the actor-agreement graph.
- **What it does:**
- Draws and updates the bipartite graph (actors ⇄ agreements)
- Allows tooltips, highlighting, or filtering nodes
- Responsive to player actions in real-time
> **D3.js is already used in the current prototype and is ideal for bespoke visuals.**
#### [](#Database-No-Backend-Firebase-Realtime-Database "Database-No-Backend-Firebase-Realtime-Database")Database (No Backend): **Firebase Realtime Database**
- **Why Firebase?**
Firebase allows you to store structured data in the cloud and sync it directly to your frontend — no custom backend required.
- **What it does:**
- Stores actor, agreement, and connection records
- Handles real-time updates (multiple players can see changes live)
- Simple rules-based security can be configured for early-stage use
> **Firebase eliminates the need to build a backend at all, accelerating development.**
#### [](#Hosting-Netlify-Frontend-Only "Hosting-Netlify-Frontend-Only")Hosting: **Netlify (Frontend Only)**
- **Why Netlify?**
Netlify makes it trivial to deploy Svelte apps from a GitHub repo. With one click, you can have a live URL and automatic updates on every commit.
- **What it does:**
- Hosts your Svelte frontend
- Automatically rebuilds and deploys from GitHub
- No server management needed
> **Netlify keeps deployment easy and free for hobby/experimental use.**
### [](#Architecture-Overview "Architecture-Overview")Architecture Overview
```
[ Svelte Frontend ]
|
| <—> Firebase Realtime Database
|
[ D3.js Graph ]
```
- **No custom backend required** — Firebase handles storage and sync.
- **Fully browser-based** — accessible to anyone with a link.
- **Scalable in future** — can add authentication, rounds, reneging logic, etc.
### [](#Gameplay-Extensions-in-Digital-Space "Gameplay-Extensions-in-Digital-Space")Gameplay Extensions in Digital Space
- **Multi-Round Play**: Add successive rounds of negotiation, possibly with accumulated resources or trust dynamics.
- **Reneging Mechanism**: Allow players to exit agreements at a cost (e.g. reputation, resource penalty).
- **Events Engine**: Inject random or scenario-based events (climate shifts, policy changes, market disruptions).
- **Score Engine**: Evaluate actors performance against their goals at the individual, graph-neighborhood and global graph levels.
- **Metrics and Analytics**: Track number of agreements, symmetry vs asymmetry, actor centrality, agreement centralityy, renege rates and common failure points.
- **Replay & Debrief Tools**: Replay session history, zoom into negotiation chains, and reflect on decision paths.
### [](#Interface-Mockups "Interface-Mockups")Interface Mockups
These mockups define the core interactions players will experience in the digital version of the game. Each interface is minimal by design, but expandable as complexity grows.
### [](#Player-Dashboard "Player-Dashboard")**Player Dashboard**
**Purpose**: The home screen for each player, showing their role, current state, and score metrics.
```
+--------------------------------------------------------+
| Actor Dashboard |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
| 🧑 Name: Rosa Salinas (A1) |
| 🧾 Backstory: 2nd-gen farmer; 60 acres mixed crops |
|--------------------------------------------------------|
| ✅ Values: [Ecological Balance] [Collaboration] |
| 🎯 Goals: Increase diversity, reduce inputs |
| ⚖️ Obligations: Bound to Coop decisions |
| 🛠 Capabilities: Soil health expertise, crop planning |
| 📊 IP: Yield data, traditional knowledge |
| 💰 Resources: Seasonal labor, machinery |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
| 📈 Score: |
| Personal Score: 82% |
| Neighborhood Score: 76% |
| Global Score: 69% |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
| 📂 Agreements You Belong To: |
| - Coop Membership Pact [View] |
| - AI Tool Discount Exchange [View] |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
| ➕ [ Propose New Agreement ] 🌐 [ View Network ] |
| 📬 Notifications (2) |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
```
### [](#Agreement-Authoring-Modal "Agreement-Authoring-Modal")**Agreement Authoring Modal**
**Purpose**: Where players create and propose agreements.
```
+------------------------------------------------+
| Draft New Agreement |
+------------------------------------------------+
| 📝 Title: [__________________________] |
| 🔀 Type: (•) Bilateral ( ) Multilateral |
| 👥 Parties: [ Add Actor ] A1 ✓ A2 ✓ |
|------------------------------------------------|
| ✍️ Obligations & Benefits: |
| - A1 → AG: "Provide soil data monthly" |
| - AG → A1: "Access AI optimization insights" |
| - A2 → AG: "Provide aggregated coop data" |
|------------------------------------------------|
| 🧾 Optional Clauses: [Add enforcement or exit] |
| [ Save Draft ] [ Propose Agreement ] |
+------------------------------------------------+
```
### [](#Network-Explorer "Network-Explorer")**Network Explorer**
**Purpose**: Visualize the live, evolving graph of actors and agreements.
```
+------------------------------------------------------+
| Agreement Network Visualization |
+------------------------------------------------------+
| 🟢 Actor Nodes 🔵 Agreement Nodes |
| 🪢 Directed Edges: Obligation → Benefit |
| |
| (A1)──▶[AG1]◀──(A2)──▶[AG2]◀──(A3) |
| |
| 🕹️ Mode: (•) Global Graph ( ) My Neighborhood Only |
| 🛈 Hover for node/edge details |
| 🕒 Time slider: [ Mar 22, 10:00 AM ◀▶ 11:00 AM ] |
+------------------------------------------------------+
```
### [](#Active-Agreement-Detail-View "Active-Agreement-Detail-View")**Active Agreement Detail View**
**Purpose**: Inspect a single agreement in depth, including its evolution.
```
+----------------------------------------------------+
| Agreement: AI Tool Discount Exchange |
+----------------------------------------------------+
| Type: Bilateral | Created: Mar 22, 10:50 AM |
| Parties: Rio Mesa Coop (A2), ThreeSisters (A3) |
|----------------------------------------------------|
| 🔄 Terms |
| - A2 → AG: Share pooled data + feedback |
| - AG → A2: Discounted access to AI tools |
| - AG → A3: Obligation to deliver insights |
| - A3 → AG: Access to ground-truth training data |
|----------------------------------------------------|
| 📈 Scores Impacted: |
| - A2 Personal Score: +7% (Fulfilled value: Equity) |
| - A3 Personal Score: +4% (Limited IP release) |
|----------------------------------------------------|
| ⏱ Joined: [A2: 10:50 AM] [A3: 10:50 AM] |
+----------------------------------------------------+
| 🔁 [ Propose Amendment ] ❌ [ Leave Agreement ] |
+----------------------------------------------------+
```
### [](#Candidate-Agreement-View "Candidate-Agreement-View")**Candidate Agreement View**
**Purpose**: Display the details of a proposed agreement that the actor can choose to enter.
```
+--------------------------------------------------------+
| Candidate Agreement: Crop Data Swap |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
| Type: Bilateral Proposal | Proposed by: A3 (ThreeSisters) |
| Status: Awaiting Response from You (A1) |
|--------------------------------------------------------|
| 📝 Summary: |
| A3 offers AI model access in exchange for monthly data |
| from your farm's sensors and rotation logs. |
|--------------------------------------------------------|
| 📑 Terms: |
| Your Obligations: |
| - Share anonymized monthly yield + soil data |
| - Participate in one quarterly feedback session |
| |
| Your Benefits: |
| - 50% discount on ecological optimization software |
| - Access to experimental multi-crop simulation tool |
| |
| A3's Obligations: |
| - Provide AI insights + support reports biannually |
| |
| A3's Benefits: |
| - Ground truth data for training new model versions |
|--------------------------------------------------------|
| 📈 Score Projection (If You Join): |
| - Personal Score: +6% (data-sharing aligned w/ goals)|
| - Neighborhood Score: +3% |
| - Global Score: +1% |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
| [✅ Join Agreement] [🔁 Propose Amendment] [❌ Decline] |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
```
### [](#Notifications-Panel "Notifications-Panel")Notifications Panel
**Purpose**: Show event updates, agreement proposals, reneging alerts.
```
+------------------- Notifications -------------------+
| 🟨 Proposal: A3 invites you to join AG3 (Review) |
| 🔁 Amendment: A2 wants to change AG1 terms |
| 🌩 Event: Climate anomaly affecting irrigation zones |
| ❗ Breach: A5 has exited AG2 (penalty pending) |
+------------------------------------------------------+
```
## [](#Chatbot-Support "Chatbot-Support")Chatbot Support
The interactions in this game are semi-structured, and players often need to access complex game state or historical context. The **chatbot interface** serves as a bridge between structured data and natural language, offering accessible, in-context explanations, summaries, and prompts. It helps ensure that the game remains intuitive, transparent, and engaging without requiring players to dig through raw data.
### [](#Potential-Functions "Potential-Functions")Potential Functions
| Feature | Description |
| ---------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Context-Aware Queries** | Players can ask: "What agreements am I part of?" or "Who benefits most from Agreement AG2?" |
| **Narrative Summaries** | Translates structured game data (e.g., connections table) into readable summaries: "Rosa Salinas is contributing data in exchange for AI insights." |
| **Agreement Breakdown** | On command, explains the terms of any agreement, including obligations and benefits per actor. |
| **Proposal Assistance** | Guides players through authoring agreements: “Which actors share your goals?” or “Would you like to propose a symmetric or asymmetric agreement?” |
| **Notifications Digest** | Summarizes new events, proposals, or breaches since last check-in: “You have 1 new invitation and 2 amendments pending.” |
| **Score Impact Explanation** | Explains how recent decisions impacted scores: “Joining AG3 improved your neighborhood score by 4%, due to increased alignment with local goals.” |
### [](#Interaction-Modes "Interaction-Modes")Interaction Modes
- **Inline Assistant**: Available as a sidebar or chat bubble on every screen (dashboard, agreement view, network).
- **Data Proxy**: Converts structured records into sentence-form explanations.
- **Copilot for Proposals**: Helps compose agreement terms in semi-natural language and converts them to structured form.
- **Facilitator Companion**: Optional mode for workshop facilitators to generate reflective questions or pull group-level summaries in real time.
#### [](#Example-Queries "Example-Queries")Example Queries
```
👤 Player: “What obligations does A3 have under AG2?”
🤖 Bot: “ThreeSisters (A3) is obligated to provide discounted access to its AI tools and biannual ecological reports under the terms of Agreement AG2.”
👤 Player: “Which actor has the most agreements?”
🤖 Bot: “Rio Mesa Coop (A2) is currently part of 3 active agreements, more than any other actor.”
👤 Player: “How did my personal score change after joining AG4?”
🤖 Bot: “Your personal score increased by 5%, due to fulfillment of your stated value: ‘collaboration with tech partners.’”
👤 Player: “Can you help me draft a proposal to share irrigation tech?”
🤖 Bot: “Sure! Would you like it to be bilateral or multilateral? Who should be included, and what would each party offer?”
```
Here’s a mockup of the **Chatbot Interface** designed to blend seamlessly with your other UI views. It’s simple, text-driven, and context-aware, with features for both querying and proactive assistance.
### [](#Chatbot-Interface-Mockup "Chatbot-Interface-Mockup")Chatbot Interface Mockup
**Purpose**: Allow players to access game state, receive guidance, and draft proposals in natural language — with responses grounded in the game’s structured data.
```
+----------------------------------------------------+
| 🧠 Governance Copilot |
+----------------------------------------------------+
| 👤 You: What agreements is A2 part of? |
| 🤖 Bot: Rio Mesa Coop is currently in 2 agreements:|
| - AG1: Coop Membership Pact (Multilateral) |
| - AG2: AI Tool Discount Exchange (Bilateral) |
|----------------------------------------------------|
| 👤 You: Can you help me propose a new deal? |
| 🤖 Bot: Sure! Let’s start: |
| 1. Bilateral or Multilateral? |
| 2. Who should be involved? |
| 3. What are your obligations and benefits? |
|----------------------------------------------------|
| 👤 You: How did AG2 affect my score? |
| 🤖 Bot: You gained +4% personal score and +2% |
| neighborhood score by aligning with AI value |
+----------------------------------------------------+
| ✍️ Type your question or request... |
| [_________________________________________] [Send] |
+----------------------------------------------------+
```
### [](#Chatbot-Integration "Chatbot-Integration")Chatbot Integration
The goal of the chatbot is to facilitate rather than to disrupt or influence human decision-making. Chatbot features prioritize sense-making over decision-making, but can also reduce complexity by providing explanations of complex data, or recommendations for complex inputs.
- **Docked Panel**: Chat sits in a collapsible panel (right or bottom) across all views. Is peripheral to the game rather than replacing the main interface.
- **Contextual Awareness**: Shows agreement/actor names based on screen context. Knows the rules of the game, and the state of the game.
- **Sense-making**: Can offer interpretations of data: “Would you like help interpreting your score changes?”, "Does this candidate agreement conflict with the obligations under my other agreements?"
- **Decision-support**: Can recommend which other actors I might want to talk to, or accept a natural language description of a proposed agreement and create a proposed agreement card to send to another actor.
# [](#Roadmap-and-Sustainability-Plan "Roadmap-and-Sustainability-Plan")Roadmap and Sustainability Plan
## [](#Paper-Prototype "Paper-Prototype")Paper-Prototype
- 1-off Scenario Design
- Facilitated Game Play at Stanford Workshop with Data Capture
- Debrief and Case Study (using Photos, Notes and Spreadsheets)
- Desk Research and User Research
## [](#Proof-of-Concept-PoC "Proof-of-Concept-PoC")Proof-of-Concept (PoC)
- Mimick the Paper Prototype in software
- Run some facilitated Sessions
- Gather Feedback and Refine Design
## [](#Minumum-Viable-ProductMVP "Minumum-Viable-ProductMVP")Minumum-Viable-Product(MVP)
- Stable Release of Open Source Game Software
- Ability to Instatiate Game with User Defined Roles
- Public Documentation so communities can "self-facilitate"
- Gather Feedback Refine Design
## [](#Extended-Feature-Release-Poc "Extended-Feature-Release-Poc")Extended Feature Release (Poc)
- Stable Release with Reneging, Events, and Scores
- Ability to programatically generate Roles
- Run some facilitated Sessions
- Gather Feedback and Refine Design
## [](#Product-launch-MVP "Product-launch-MVP")Product launch (MVP)
- Stable Hosted Game Service on Cloud Infrastructure
- Supports Public and Private Game Instances
- Public games are free, private hosted games have cost to cover infra
- Paid Scenario Design, Facilitation or Outcomes Analysis Services available from Partners (contributors)
- Aims to be a self-sufficient open source project whose revenues cover labor costs maintainance, operations and services.
## [](#Sustainability-Plan "Sustainability-Plan")Sustainability Plan
Software to be developed under non-commerical licenses aimed to support community development and researchers at no cost but reserves the right to monetize the game for the team developing and maintaining it. Leveraging the framework described in this game, a multi-lateral contributors agreement will contain obligations for contributors in return for the the benefit commercialization rights. External constraints include, financial sustainability of the project inclusive of covering operating costs, and the on-going maintenance of the software. Commercialization rights may come with revenue sharing requirements, but the specific details of the multilateral contributors agreement will be developed during the Extended Feature Release (PoC) milestone period, and will go into effect during the Product Launch (MVP) milestone period.
# [](#Glossary "Glossary")Glossary
Perfect — here is a comprehensive and well-organized **Glossary** that covers all core concepts introduced in the document. Each definition is concise but clear, with references to how the term is used in gameplay or the data model. This version is suited for inclusion at the end of your document as a definitive reference section.
### [](#Actor "Actor")**Actor**
> A defined entity within the game’s data model that can make or be subject to agreements.
Actors have structured attributes such as values, goals, obligations, capabilities, intellectual property, and resources. They can represent individuals, organizations, or systems. In the bipartite graph, actors are one type of node.
---
### [](#Agent "Agent")**Agent**
> An actor who makes decisions or takes actions on behalf of another actor.
Agents appear when one actor delegates authority or responsibility to another. This creates the possibility for **principal-agent dynamics**, where the agent may act contrary to the interests of the principal.
---
### [](#Agreement "Agreement")**Agreement**
> A formalized set of terms linking multiple actors through obligations and benefits.
Agreements may be:
- **Bilateral**: between two actors
- **Multilateral**: involving three or more
- **Symmetric**: same terms for all actors
- **Asymmetric**: actor-specific terms
In the graph model, agreements are the second type of node.
---
### [](#Benefit "Benefit")**Benefit**
> A positive outcome or value an actor receives under an agreement.
In the graph model, benefits are represented by a **directed edge** from the agreement node to the actor node.
---
### [](#Bipartite-Graph "Bipartite-Graph")**Bipartite Graph**
> The data structure underlying the game.
The graph has two types of nodes: **actors** and **agreements**. Directed edges indicate:
- **Actor → Agreement**: obligations
- **Agreement → Actor**: benefits
This structure supports both gameplay visualization and data analysis.
---
### [](#Capability "Capability")**Capability**
> A skill, method, or transformational ability that an actor can apply to create or modify resources.
Unlike resources (which are "nouns"), capabilities are "verbs." They describe what the actor can _do_, not what they _have_.
---
### [](#Event "Event")**Event**
> An external or systemic development that alters the state of one or more actors.
Events can be used in extended gameplay to introduce shocks, uncertainty, or scenario-driven changes. They may modify goals, values, resources, or capabilities.
---
### [](#Intellectual-Property-IP "Intellectual-Property-IP")**Intellectual Property (IP)**
> Privately held knowledge, data, models, or craft an actor controls.
IP is non-rivalrous and often valuable in negotiation. Examples: algorithms, trade secrets, datasets, scientific methods.
---
### [](#Obligation "Obligation")**Obligation**
> A commitment or duty an actor assumes as part of an agreement.
Obligations can involve providing resources, performing services, or adhering to collective decisions. Represented in the graph as a **directed edge** from actor to agreement.
---
### [](#Player "Player")**Player**
> A human participant in the real world, engaging in the game.
Players may control one or more actors and are responsible for making decisions on their behalf. Players bring strategic intent, creativity, and interpretation into the simulation.
---
### [](#Principal "Principal")**Principal**
> An actor who delegates authority to another actor (the agent).
In gameplay, principals are often collectives (e.g., a group of farmers in a coop) who empower a representative or organization to act on their behalf. The potential misalignment between principal and agent creates governance tension.
---
### [](#Principal-Agent-Problem "Principal-Agent-Problem")**Principal-Agent Problem**
> A governance issue where an agent’s actions may not fully align with the interests or obligations of the principal they represent.
This dynamic is modeled in the game when one player represents multiple actors (e.g., both a farmer and the coop), or when collective actors delegate decision-making authority.
---
### [](#Proposal "Proposal")**Proposal**
> A candidate agreement drafted by one or more actors and shared with others for consideration.
Proposals include draft terms and become agreements once the required actors join or ratify them. Players can accept, reject, or propose amendments to incoming proposals.
---
### [](#Resource "Resource")**Resource**
> A tangible or intangible asset controlled by an actor.
Resources are divided into:
- **Rivalrous Resources**: Limited-use assets (e.g., machinery, labor, capital)
- **Non-Rivalrous Resources**: Shareable or replicable assets (e.g., data, models)
Resources are used to fulfill obligations or traded for benefits.
---
### [](#Rivalrous-Resource "Rivalrous-Resource")**Rivalrous Resource**
> A resource that cannot be used by multiple actors simultaneously without loss or depletion.
Examples include money, physical tools, and time-limited labor. Rivalrous resources are critical in negotiation and constraint modeling.
---
### [](#Role-Card "Role-Card")**Role Card**
> A structured description of an actor’s profile, distributed to players at game start.
Includes backstory, values, goals, obligations, capabilities, intellectual property, and resources. It guides the player’s decision-making and strategic posture.
---
### [](#Score "Score")**Score**
> A quantitative assessment of how well an actor is fulfilling its mission.
Scores can be calculated at different levels:
- **Personal Score**: Based on alignment with an actor’s own goals and values
- **Neighborhood Score**: Derived from local network interactions using a PageRank-like model
- **Global Score**: A measure of systemic performance, emergent from the entire network
Used in extended gameplay for feedback, ranking, or incentives.
# [](#License "License")License
Zargham et al
[Creative Commons BY-NC-SA](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode.txt)
- Attribution (BY)
- Non-Commercial (NC)
- Share-Alike (SA)

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# Polycentricity
A governance roleplaying game
## What is it?
**_Polycentric_** is a structured roleplaying game that simulates the complexity of collaborative governance. Players take on unique roles (e.g. farmer, co-op, policy advocate) and must negotiate agreements with others by exchanging obligations and benefits.
Instead of “winning,” the aim is to practice creative problem-solving and reflect on real-world governance challenges:
- How do coalitions form?
- What’s fair?
- What breaks trust?
- What creates shared value?
## Core Concepts
### Actors:
You play as a stakeholder with values, goals, constraints, and assets.
**Agreements:** Formalized exchanges between actors. These can be bilateral (asymmetric) or multilateral (symmetric).
**Obligations**: What you commit to do.
**Benefits:** What you get in return.
**Board of Agreements:** Visually maps actors ⇄ agreements with string and post-it connections.
## Game Flow (110 minutes total)
### Setup (20 min)
- Intro + rules overview (Z)
- Scenario overview (D)
- Role cards distributed (V)
- Explanation of board and materials (V)
### Free Play (60 min)
- Players discuss their roles in relation to the scenario
- Negotiate creatively within your character's values and constraints
- Form agreements with other players and connect them on the board
### Debrief (30 min)
- Walk through the agreement network
- Reflect: What worked? What was hard? What patterns emerged?
---
### What We 'll Learn
- How values and constraints shape negotiations
- How governance models emerge from interaction
- How complexity can be visualized and navigated
- How collaboration requires trust, creativity, and compromise
---
### Materials We'll Use
- Role Cards (your character)
- Cork board or whiteboard
- Tacks (nodes), string (edges), post-its (terms)
- Markers for annotations
---
### Facilitator's Role
- Set tone: This is about learning, not winning.
- Keep players engaged and reflective.
- Help document agreements on the board.
- Prompt discussion, not decisions.
Let’s play agreements :)

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---
title: An Introduction to Extitutional Theory
draft: false
tags:
- article
date: 2021-01-18
---
### An Introduction to Extitutional Theory
_By Jessy Kate Schingler and Primavera de Filippi_
**First published on [Medium](https://medium.com/berkman-klein-center/an-introduction-to-extitutional-theory-e74b5a49ea53)**
Extitutional theory is an emerging field of scholarship that provides a set of conceptual tools to describe and analyse the underlying social dynamics of a variety of social arrangements, such as communities, companies, organisations, or any other types of institutions.
Extitutional theory posits that the institutional framework is just one specific lens through which we can make sense of social behaviour. Social dynamics that are not part of an institution are not _unstructured_, just _differently structured_. Specifically, institutions focus on the static and inert elements of social structures — the aspects that persist over time — whereas extitutions focus on the dynamic and mutating elements of social structures — the aspects that continuously evolve over time. Both serve as filters to observe different aspects of the underlying social arrangements. This means that if we look at structured social dynamics only and exclusively through an institutional lens, we are only seeing one part of the larger picture. Extitutional theory provides an alternative lens — and the choice to use it is a normative decision to look at another part of the picture.
![](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*BKU0AajVnWzhlmHHOJfsYQ.jpeg)
Unknown author; [Public Domain](https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80222262).
It is important to note that the extitutional lens is not claiming that there are social dynamics “outside” of an institution, in the _Here be Dragons_ sense of extrapolated but as-yet-unexplored territory; it simply observes the same social dynamics of an institution from another conceptual angle. By relying on the idea that _institutions_ and _extitutions_ are two different interpretations of the same set of social dynamics, we can formalize the characterization of each lens, and begin to examine the underlying structuring logics that distinguish them. Since they represent two different points of view into the same social arrangement, we can also explore the structural relationships that link these two lenses. Extitutional theory attempts to formalize these different ordering logics and the interplay between them.
![](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*hJCDkcWBUXXLigP4jLyzmw.jpeg)
For instance, a company is generally composed of a structured set of roles: a board of directors, a series of shareholders, a CEO, a treasurer, etc. — each with their corresponding rights and duties. Instead of these formal roles, the extitutional lens focuses on the social dynamics that animate this structure, which necessarily evolve over time as individuals join or leave the social structure, and as their reciprocal relationships change. The hiring of a new CEO doesn’t mutate the structure from an institutional perspective, yet it could have a significant impact on the social dynamics of the company as whole, because of the different capacities and relationships that the CEO will establish with the other company members. These extitutional dynamics are crucial to the life of institutions, and may impact operational behaviour through culture and more informal principles and values.
Given that both lenses are looking at the exact same social arrangement — although focusing on different aspects of it — a proper understanding of the underlying social dynamics requires a holistic view, combining both the institutional and extitutional perspective. Indeed, one does not exist without the other: while the operations of a company or organisation are ultimately constrained by the specific _rules_ and _roles_ that constitute the institution, they are fundamentally fueled by the _individuals_ assuming these roles and the corresponding _relationships_ that make up the extitution. Accordingly, the interplay between institutions and extitutions is all the more crucial to explore in the context of complex social arrangements because the two are constantly shaping and influencing each other.
![](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*-c0uXkSF4gF7jTb1aRDM8A.jpeg)
Extitutional theory is interested not only in the ways that individuals interact and engage with one another through relationships and rhythms, but also in how different practices of institutionalization can create conditions that stabilize and amplify, or erode and suppress, certain extitutional dynamics — and vice versa. Central to the process of institutionalisation is the concept of _enclosure_: the mechanism through which an institution implements increased control (or coding) relative to a particular domain. Conversely, extitutional theory contrasts _enclosure_ with the concept of _exclosure_, which recognizes that certain types of enclosures appear to play a different role — that of _protecting_ the activity within it from control and coding. Providing tools to better understand the interplay between these two mechanisms is one of the key contributions of Extitutional theory.
Extitutional theory does not assign any moral value to institutions or extitutions: neither are good or bad; yet, because of the performativity of these lenses, choosing to look at a particular social arrangement as an institution or an extitution will impact the way we interact with it, as well as the manner in which it will evolve over time. Networked technologies in particular have created dramatic new exclosures giving rise to extitutional dynamics which can’t be understood through the institutional lens alone. Hence, extitutional theory is important not because it is better than institutional theory, but because extitutions are an under-studied phenomena. Understanding extitutional dynamics, and their interplay with the more familiar tools and logics of institutions, can help us respond to the specific, unprecedented demands of human coordination in our era.

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---
title: An Introduction to Open Protocols
draft:
tags:
- article
date: 2024-04-23
---
### An Introduction to Open Protocols
*By The Open Protocol Research Group*
Last year, Portland’s crypto localist initiative [Ethereal Forest](https://etherealforest.org/) - which had already been concerned with intersections of web3 and urban resilience strategies - went a step further in its research practice to establish the **Open Protocol Research Group**. This group aimed to explore a formal isomorphism between open-source web protocols and the informal, culturally inflected, and freely propagated knowledge sets and practices that seem to animate a large dimension of urban life.
Open source social protocols aren’t necessarily compelling in themselves - handwashing as a practice, for example, is powerful but (for us at least) ultimately banal. The sort of open protocols we’re concerned with have cultural accompaniment, emergent practices and evolving norms meant to preserve a twin commitment to **divergent exploration** and **material grounding**.In short, open protocols are social and technical protocols woven together into a compound cultural protocol of improvisational, **empirical imagination**.
Open protocols gain their energy from a "prefigurative circle" - reminiscent of Chris Kelty’s “[recursive publics](https://twobits.net/pub/Kelty-TwoBits.pdf)” - wherein empirical imagination leads to technical improvisation, which further encourages empirical imagination. To the extent that these investigations depart from normative boundaries (Overton windows), they do so only to assert room for more empiricism, and never to argue for complete or replacement "values."
Thought in this way, the practical inspiration of an [Eric Raymond](http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/), who discovered open source "values" by way of an empirical imagination ("what works"), can find mutual legibility with the [psychonauts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychonautics) (Terence McKenna, Peter J.Carroll) whose open chemical and psychic experiments are refined only to permit more creativity… so as not to be stuck. The plain injunction to empiricism endorses hardware hackers, musicians, permaculturalists the same - those who have abandoned conversations about values to refine protocols of open experimentation that foreground material wisdom over ideals. **Digital, material, chemical or psychic, open protocols are flywheels of open-ended empirically grounded practice**.
If participation in these open protocols often has a tribal character and ontological significance - shared discovery and belief in the ability to mutually constitute new material realities - that tribal knowledge often has to do with the immensely fragile nature of the “open” side of the equation. Cooptation and capture is a constant threat to open protocols - and as participants seem innately aware, they must be nursed and protected. Where attitudes of enclosure are ubiquitous, this takes creativity and even audacity.
Of particular interest (and relevance to the web3 analogy) is a strategy of propagation and self-preservation that open protocols nearly universally adopt - the use of an array of traditional institutional forms to purposes other than they were intended. Open protocols are secured and supported by businesses that actively sabotage their own opportunities for profit, by nonprofits that do not seek funders, sector dominance or brand recognition, by small government offices that quietly act in practical accordance with the needs of a community in defiance of state directives. **They hijack instruments of enclosure and repurpose them to alternative ends**. We call these forms - borrowing from the [work of Primavera di Filippi and Jessy Kate Schingler](https://medium.com/berkman-klein-center/an-introduction-to-extitutional-theory-e74b5a49ea53) - _**extitutions**_ in order to emphasize their subjugation of traditional institutional objectives to the ownerless, stateless, extitutional form of the open protocol. (1)
To the extent that we include “socio-technics” in our definition of empirical exercises, extitutions are the most profound vectors of imaginative desire for open protocols.[2] They exist on the front lines, finding quiet ways to violate the prohibitions that make up the overton window of social and extrasocial organization. These prohibitions are weak or indirect in nature, enforced by way of standards of organizational legibility that make too much experimentation unviable or even illegal.
The stakes of [legibility](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-called-legibility/) are ultimately whether an organization or institution can sustain and reproduce itself over time; the possibility space is always determined by a curve of resource dependency. Because of this, **extitutions often wear institutional masks**, forever negotiating the demands of standardization with the desire for experimentation. Some succeed in this balance; some become captured, some simply fail (as we’ll see in later bulletins, failure from an institutional perspective is often an effective strategy of success for extitutions as they support).
For the Open Protocol Research Group, this is where the usefulness of the web3 analogy really comes in. The story of web3 - colored as it may be by scams and ponzis, by extractive actors and zero sum games - is nonetheless the story of **self-constituted resource environments**. It is the story of a discovery of **mutual legibility** forged outside of the compulsions of dominant bodies, outside of the enforced legibility of coercive institutions. It is the story of **formalization without standardization**.
The conviction of the Open Protocol Research Group is that the open protocols that thrive in urban spaces have much to gain from the self-constituted resource environments of web3, strategies of **mutually determined formalization**that largely bypass or ignore the standards of dominant, coerciviely grounded institutions. More importantly, though, the web3 space has a great deal to learn from the open protocols themselves, hybrid forms that have found strategies for survival and propagation of commons-oriented actions within standardized forms (or at least forms that have appeared standardized at face). The collision of these two strategies in a broadly viable extitutional mirror of our current society is, for us, inevitable. (3)
In our next posts, we hope to delve further into the two creative modes, using examples from our initial field research to distinguish social production (IRL) from peer production (web), as well as reflecting on our own impulses in building the network enterprises (or extitutions) in which we ourselves work. In the meantime, check out a glimpse of our living glossary, which defines the key concepts that currently frame our research.
| Extitutions | Organized, local deployments of open protocols which take the superficial form of traditional institutions, but are oriented primarily toward the production, propagation or protection of free, permissionless, nonstandardized knowledge and skill sets. If all institutions contain "an interplay between institutional and extitutional dynamics" (Schingler, de Filippi, et al), extitutions are those where the former is actively subjugated to the latter. The actions of extitutions may appear irrational or even incoherent from the perspective of traditional economic game theory because of the radically nonrivalrous nature of the open protocols they support. |
| --------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Open Protocols** | Informally codified sets of practices, knowledge systems, and cultural norms that propagate horizontally across a community in a decentralized, permissionless manner. **Open protocols** represent emergent, intersubjectively determined "paths of least resistance" through the logistical constraints of a given field to an open space of experimentation. For the purposes of our project, **open protocols** are distinguished from general social protocols by the cultural attitudes of divergent, practical and empirical imagination that animate them. Those who participate in them tend to operate with self-awareness about their oppositional status to cultural or institutional forms that employ closure, coercion or discipline to limit the material imaginary. Open protocols are both products of and engines of social production. |
| **Social Production & Peer Production** | Distinctly voluntary and horizontally determined (emergent) processes of collaborative creation, typically of immaterial goods (social relationships, knowledge sets, etc). Social production eschews centralization and rigid hierarchy and is often pieced together by a fluid and shifting community of producers - hence the emphasis on **protocolization**. Though they are traditionally used interchangeably (see p2p foundation), for the purposes of our research social production refers to urban practices and peer production to web-native production processes. A theme of our research is how social production in urban environments mimics the abundance mindset of p2p, web-native environments by way of **protocolization**. |
| **Resource Environment** | The context of revenue inputs (as well as other meaningful sources of value, eg. multicapital inputs) that an entity is embedded within and dependent upon. A **resource environment** can be thought of as an economic landscape colored by political-economic determinants. For the purposes of our project, **resource environments** are the primary instrument with which permissible forms of social organization and production are delimited. |
| **Formalization** | The process of becoming broadly legible to or composable with a variety of standards beyond one's enclosed context community. For the purposes of this research, **formalization** is distinguished from **standardization**, legibility to or composability with dominant institutional standards. A theme of our work is the possibilities of _**formalization** without **standardization**_, i.e., mutual coherence between other bodies and embedded resource environments without capitulation to dominant institutional standards |
---
Notes
(1) While this usage of the term departs somewhat from the [foundational](https://medium.com/berkman-klein-center/an-introduction-to-extitutional-theory-e74b5a49ea53) [texts](https://medium.com/@jessykate/the-lazega-encounter-provoking-extitutional-theory-f8464ab82fbf) of extitutional theory, we think (after much debate) that it maintains the spirit of the project: extitutions are organizations where the institutional dynamics and determinants are actively subjugated (within practical constraints) to extitutional concerns.
(2) Benjamin Life proposed this as an important dimension of the term, and we heartily agree. In fact, the inclusion of technologies of self-governance and social coordination in the dominant sense of “technology” - a battle fought by Ursula LeGuin, Arturo Escobar, the Black Panthers, and many of the [counterculture movements of the 1970’s](https://www.harvard.com/book/the_subversive_seventies/) - has been near and dear to our crew from the [start](https://medium.com/@pdxregencommons/portland-regen-commons-26d5c6bee46b).
(3) At the time of writing, Rithikha Rajamohan’s wonderful [Dispatches From Cascadia](https://summerofprotocols.com/research/dispatches-from-cascadia) had just been published, a work of speculative fiction about protocolized governance in Cascadia.

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title: Capitalism, Communism, and the Extitutional Stakes of our Politics
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tags:
- article
date: 2025-03-09
---
![](https://github.com/oovg/quartz/blob/v4/capitalismcommunism.png?raw=true)
### Capitalism, Communism, and the Extitutional Stakes of our Politics
Ethereum, so I've argued [elsewhere](https://www.extitutional.space/Articles/Speculative-P2P-and-the-Urban-Protocol-Underground), is one (major) part of a broader cultural awakening in the 21st century to the behaviors and economic flows of extitutional space (that ontologically flat and pluralistic "outside" to the institutional enclosures that have claimed dominion over Western culture since forever ago). [1] Extitutional space is defined by its exclusion from the stability, manufactured neutrality and access to dominant channels of reproduction afforded to institutions.
In one sense, in fact, "extitutional" is just a name for the emergent practices or tendencies that occur in this condition of exclusion.
Three such practices (among several others) are:
- **Horizontal scaling**: Necessarily spreading on a decentralized basis, patterns of behavior in extitutional space ride contingency rather than asserting universality, so that each scaled reproduction of an extitutional protocol of behavior is a monstrous mutation of its previous form, adequate to the issue at hand.
- **Field Ontology** [2]: Whereas administrative institutions bring categorical hierarchies to their systems - hierarchies which they tend to inherent from the state and which the two, through mutual reinforcement, conceal and naturalize - extitutional space is made up of *field ontologies*, shifting assumptions about what dimensions of the real deserve attention or operative preeminence adequate (again) to the contingency of the encounter. (The fact that practical knowledge often points in the direction of interrelation, intersubjectivity, codeterminacy, etc. is a convenient nod to the technical sense of the term *field*.)
- **Open Protocolization**: Institutional protocols share (to varying degrees) the two features of being antimimetic (containing some dimension which discourages its reproduction, think military classification, NDAs, industrial secrets) and anti-empirical (resistant to inconvenient truths, interpretations or revisions that may have empirical veracity but be contrary to the interests of the organization or its authorities - see David Graeber's [*Bullshit Jobs*](https://www.are.na/block/3782579) for a wide-spanning index of this tendency.) [*Open protocols*](https://www.extitutional.space/Articles/An-Introduction-to-Open-Protocols), conversely, are maximally memetic and empirically defined - when they reach a status as a stable entity, they have done so by being battle-tested and extremely versatile, structured with minimal uniformity needed to maximally expand the possibility space of its users. (Ex. under the pressure of legal prohibition, the development of the phrase for LSD: *Turn on, Tune in, Drop out*. [3])
Over the past few months in the Ethereum community, the "specter of communism" has reared its head, as visions of [gitcoin communists](https://x.com/ameensol/status/1889758396166926527) or [soyboy-figureheads-with-marxist-affiliations-who-hate-to-win](https://x.com/singularityhack/status/18867812704551897110) have been said to be tarnishing the reputation and cypherpunk ethos of Ethereum. Most recently, I had a discussion with a member of the community who was troubled by what they perceived to be "techno-communist ideas" circulated at the [GFEL conference](https://www.ethereumlocalism.xyz/Ethereum-Localism-Goes-Cosmolocal---GFEL-Announcement-Boulder-2025) in Boulder. They were even troubled that the Ethereum Foundation associated itself with the conference, given the perception of those themes being validated.
I'm writing this short treatment because a) as a contributor who's concerned with preserving and expanding the extitutional field, I abhor communism and wish to distinguish the discourse at GFEL from that label; b) it is my longheld belief that the Ethereum community need not involve itself in the vagaries of traditional politics *so long as it maintains a healthy sense of the extitutional stakes of its enterprise*.
----
Ethereum provides a permissionless computational substrate upon which [many different kinds of economic behaviors](https://x.com/owocki/status/1889892742714761270) - some of them as yet unimaginable - can be expressed without threat of censorship or, importantly, without need of affiliation or ideological inclusion within a dominant milieu in order to access the means of expressing them. You may use features of the network for [centralized purposes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTX) in a way that is broadly [disaligned](https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/09/28/alignment.html) with the ethos of Ethereum, but you won't find yourself subject to sanction or restricted access in doing so. One such body, in the case of FTX, was so broadly associated with the Ethereum network and cryptocurrency in general that it threatened to discredit the whole enterprise; even then, restricted access or censorship *wasn't even on the table*, such is the degree to which that behavior is anathema to Ethereum as an open and permissionless substrate.
The many commentators who are quick to remind us of the harsh death toll of communist ideology are right to affirm this historical truth. Communism, despite many who disagree, *is* the term for a state planned economy that enforces (through explicit or implicit violence) hegemonic enclosure of economic activity within a window of acceptable behavior - one that is often arbitrarily swayed by the whims of an authoritarian elite, and that frequently has decreasing adherence to reality as it degrades under the pressures of centralization. [4] These contradictions have often led to the mass persecution of dissent and mass violence of fitting the square peg of reality through the circle of ideology.
Mutual aid, on the other hand, being encounter-based practices of free sharing of goods between peers that have no basis in centralized institutions, is a characteristic of the extitutional field, and really any free social space - it is a universal enough behavior among humans that to suppress or eradicate it totally is an ideological fallacy. It is veridical, realist, whereas communism is defined by mechanisms of enclosure and ideological fantasy.
Broadly speaking, capitalist ideology has been implemented under more free and open social conditions. But structurally, it is always in danger of following the same patterns, and in the past has undeniably done so (though most often in the global South). Consider the [actions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_squads_in_El_Salvador#cite_note-alc-26) of ORDEN and the White Warriors Union in [El Salvador](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-12-09-mn-1714-story.html) or the [Contras in Nicaragua](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contras#Atrocities), under the documented support of the American government, in violently suppressing, through torture and spectacular executions, agricultural cooperatives and small businesses that might have threatened the hegemony of the United Fruit Company and other large corporations.
Like communism, capitalist ideology at its worst has been known to preach free markets and libertarian values while depending on astounding acts of coercive [state intervention](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27état) to fulfill [missions of](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halliburton#Iraq_War) centralization, monopolization and capture.
From an extitutional lens, none of this ideological mystification speaks against the role of markets in facilitating channels of dissent, pluralism, and empirical inspiration.[5] Markets have been for centuries and remain a place for open values to express themselves under coercive regimes. [6]
| institutional form | extitutional form |
| ------------------ | ----------------- |
| communism 💀 | mutual aid 🌱 |
| capitalism 💀 | markets 🌱 |
This is the key point: both general positions, and many more between and among them, have their coercive, reductive, administrative embodiments in an institutional form that depends on enclosure, capture and unreality, just as both have their *extitutional* embodiments as vectors of open experimentation, practical adequacy, and dissent.
----
On the third day of the ETH Denver [regen](https://regencommons.com) stage (secured by Gregory Landua, Kevin Owocki, Michael Zargham and others in a ferocious display of extitutional coordination), I had my friend Josh Spector read a brief statement on mutualism for my part in a panel I was too sick to attend. The reading went as follows:
> **Argument: Mutualism is a rich political orientation for Ethereum to explore because it is an *operational* rather than ideological politics.**
>
> **Mutualism is:**
**An encounter-based politics:**
> - **rather than endorsing universalizing (legalistic or rights based) models of political change, mutualism finds spontaneous opportunities for association and alliance: free encounter in extitutional space.**
>
>**A parallelist politics:**
> - **mutualism is pacifistic and mutually coherent with both social liberalism and libertarianism. Associations, cooperatives and unions can be established within diverse contexts and are robustly compatible with markets.**
>
>**An ontologically open politics:**
> - **finally, sidestepping the ontological content of rights based or legalistic regimes, the consent based free association mutualism endorses is an imaginative project that could include ~diverse minds ~from the greater than human world.**
>
> **If we want to take full advantage of what Ethereum has to offer, we need a politics that endorses practical imagination about social and economic configurations, an empirically curious, open ontology of what constitutes a participatory actor, all built on the grounds of peaceful, parallel autonomy from the state.**
Mutualism is a - not *the* - adequate politics for the pacifistic, pluralistic and libertarian foundations of the Ethereum universe. I am partial to collective, cooperative, positive sum behavior - but I have no ideological allegiance to it, and I would never appeal, under any circumstances, to a coercive centralized body to enforce and maintain this behavior over and above competitive or rivalrous coordination markets. This is Ethereum alignment: The overton window is open, the ontology is flat - my allegiance is extitutional.
To those who are engaged in an anticommunist witch hunt, I pose two challenges:
- Locate where any actions by the Gitcoin community or the Ethereum Foundation have endorsed coercive restrictions on economic behavior, and I will disaffiliate, and champion your anti-communist cause until such discourse has been stamped out of the space.
- Present your politics of "operational capitalism," truly libertarian (pacifist and grounded in free association and pluralism) so that me and my crew can have assurances that by capitalism you don't mean "selective use of state intervention to the ends of freedom and captured access for me and my tribe."
Conversely, to those who would seek to suppress or culturally marginalize free, open source, opt-in mechanisms for mutual aid or resource sharing built to operate as a complement to a pluralistic and free economic space on the grounds that they "sound marxist," I have one message: *we are extitutionalists, we understand the key value proposition of Ethereum, and you don't speak for us*.
This binary, these accusations, are counterproductive, and Ethereum as an extitutionally oriented community is well equipped to move beyond traditional politics and focus on the issues that matter: coercion, free association, open protocolization as a safeguard against the former and distributed ledger technologies as a tool to expand and optimize the latter.
**This post is my first contribution to [extitutional.space](https://www.extitutional.space), a new knowledge garden and affiliate of the [Open Civics](https://www.opencivics.co) "Open Protocol Library". In coming months, [The Open Machine](https://theopenmachine.net) and friends will be working to push the discursive gravity away from old political binaries - and even away from the blockchain - to the broader extitutional space, asking how distributed ledger technologies and other strategies can serve the project of creating an empirically imaginative, ontologically open post-coercion society.**
### Notes
[1] Alongside Ethereum I would place the psychedelic movement -especially LSD, which has to now defied cooptation by the "functionalist" medical industrial complex; "[freak](https://freakscene.us)" or experimental art scenes that tend to dissolve patterns of passive consumption or spectatorship; BDSM and the kink space; and those experimenting with interspecies ethics and communication in grassroots, encounter based, non-legalistic contexts.
[2] This phrase was adopted from the phrase "[field causality](https://archiv.hkw.de/en/programm/projekte/2014/anthropozaenprojekt_ein_bericht/enzyklopaedie/feldkausalitaet.php)" as it appears in the work of [Forensic Architecture](https://forensic-architecture.org) and [affiliated projects](https://www.hkw.de/en).
[3] Was this a psy-op? Was Timothy Leary a member of the intelligence community? Does it matter? The '67 March attempt to levitate the Pentagon was as much of a psy-op as the Macy Conferences were an infiltration by Buddhist pacifists into the utmost ranks of the military intellgentsia: the plane of nature has it's own momentum, and it is *open.*
[4] Simulation drift, brain drain, yes men, etc.
[5] Most instructive to an extitutional politics that ignores legacy political narratives are those cases where state violence suppressed small businesses to preserve corporate monopolies under the banner of free market ideology (ditto to Soviet and Maoist suppression of alternative collectivist projects).
[6] Consider the role of the early 20th century carnival and the B-movie market of the 1950's and 60's in the states as a generative haven for queer and disabled expression that was dependent on pockets of market demand and renegade, sometimes ham-fisted entrepreneurship - in developing the global cultural imaginary of horror and sci-fi.

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---
title: Friends of the Outside
draft:
tags:
- book
date: 2023-07-28
author: Exeunt, Vengist
---
**Control,**
**Substrates, &**
**the Afterlife**
**of DAOs**
**A NETWORK INCANTATION**
Written and Conceived by
Exeunt & Ven Gist
**Nomad thought does not immure itself in**
**the edifice of an ordered interiority; it moves**
**freely in an element of exteriority. It does not**
**repose on identity; it rides difference.**
Deleuze & Guattari, *A Thousand Plateaus*
**...a place, a place to meet, a place where you**
**meet someone other than God.**
Jenny Hval, *Girls Against God
# FRIENDS
## o f t h e
# OUTSIDE
Control,
Substrates, &
the Afterlife
of DAOs
## **PROLOGUE**
Network Cosmologies & Emanationist Traps
The history books tell us that, sometime between the English
Civil War and the French Revolution, the tradition of the
Royal court jester fell out of favor. Exactly when is unclear, but
the Facebook post from whoever runs the account of Berkeley
Castle (the site of many intrigues and conspiracies of British
Royal History) tells the story of an unlucky character that they
claim won the mantle, there at the dawn of Modernity, as the
last jester. “The last court jester in England was Dicky Pearce
(sic) he was the Earl of Suffolk’s fool, born in 1665 he eventu-
ally entered the service of the Berkeley family here at Berkeley
castle... In 1728 during a performance he overbalanced from
the minstrels gallery in the Great Hall and fell to his death.”
The entry ends with a hint of mystery: “The question has been
raised - did he fall or was he pushed he had apparently made
fun of one of Lord Berkeley’s guests who had taken offence,
the truth will never be known.”
On January 3rd, 2009, the genesis block of bitcoin was mined.
In the context of a banking crisis that laid bare the self-serving
collusion and callous extraction behind the Western financial
systems’ facade of credible neutrality, bitcoin asked the ques-
tion: could we construct belief network effects without hier-
archies? Could we erase the parlors of collusion, the adminis-
trative bloating, the white supremacy and the war games and
use programming code and mathematical laws to construct a
noncoercive, networked legitimacy - a scalable thermodynamic
argument of credibility?
There remains the question of what forces and actions caused
this crisis (who killed the jester?). Its unwinding will probably
take decades, if there are still such things [1]. We’re network
philosophers, not economists or anthropologists - or economic
apologists, for that matter - so please allow us the liberty of
an abstract provocation over a direct answer: The bankers, the
regulators, the politicians all fucked up, got too greedy and
showed their (weird, cosmologically perverse) cards. Their
arguments of legitimacy by process, performance, credible
neutrality, etc, were crowded over by the archaic, magical belief
system that cradles them, a millennia-old doctrine of mystical
supremacy that uses symbol and psyche to give incidental
power the claim of Divine Right. It’s even possible that this
temporary unveiling was deliberate, a taunting message to
the crowds meant to say: What are you gonna do? There is no
other way.
Of course, if that’s the case then they really fucked up. **There is
another way.**
It was also in 2009 that the not particularly notable UK
academic journal _Biology Direct_ published “Trees and networks
before and after Darwin,” a work of disciplinary historiography
that journeyed down the rabbit hole of 400 years of West-
ern scientific cosmology. In it, Mark Ragan shows how the
dominant discourse around nature before the 19th century was
framed within an Emanationist system:
“ *Emanationist describes unitary philosophical or cos-*
*mological systems according to which all that exists (the*
*universe and everything within it) has arisen through*
*a process of flowing-out from, and willed by, a deity or*
*First Principle. This flowing-out necessarily gives rise*
*to a hierarchy or continuum of entities of which those*
*closest to the First Principle are the most-perfect, while*
*those farther away are increasingly material, embodied*
*and imperfect*.”
Suffice to say that the metaphysical assumptions about who
has “greater or lesser being” have justified all number of
humanitarian and environmental cruelties. While this frame
of nature was favored by the majority until the 19th century
largely because of this political and colonial instrumental-
ization - there were those heretics who held the belief that the
genetic powers of nature arise from the interaction of parts in a
network, a phenomenon we know today as _emergence_.
As an example of early disruptions to this “Great Chain of
Being” among the natural scientists, Ragan cites Carl Linnae-
us, Swedish botanist and author of the _Philosophia Botanica_.
“Although at first Linnaeus accepted that nature is ordered in
a linear scale, by 1750 or 1751 he realized that even the plants
could not be arranged in a simple unitary continuum.” Quote
the Philosophia Botanica: “This is the first and last desider-
atum in botanical study. Nature does not make leaps. All plants
show affinities on either side, like territories in a geographical
map.” (We love this.) Going further, the Italian botanist Vi-
taliano Donati writes in his 1750 _Della storia naturale marina
dell ’Adriatico_ :
“*When I observe the productions of Nature, I do not*
*see one single and simple progression, or chain of*
*beings, but rather I find a great number of uniform,*
*perpetual and constant progressions. In each one of*
*those orders, or Classes, nature forms its series and*
*presents its almost imperceptible passages from link to*
*link in its chains. In addition, the links of the chain are*
*joined (uniti) in such a way within the links of another*
*chain, that the natural progressions should have to be*
*compared more to a net (rete) than to a chain, that net*
*being, so to speak, woven with various threads which*
*show, between them, changing communications, con-*
*nections, and unions*.”
Affinities, nets, and a denigrated chain of being. The powers
of creation democratized, relationalized. Natural observation
well before Darwin was realizing an alternative, an Other
way, to the great dismay of their fascist - ahem, Emanationist
counterparts. And yes, reader, this metaphysical drama plays
out today: in our cultural reception of science, our discourses
around economy and warfare, more subtly in cults both reli-
gious and commercial, and, we argue, in the range of possible
organizational forms that cryptoeconomic DAOs have recently
infiltrated.
Sure, there are resources we could cite that trace New York
and Boston banking families to Emanationist cults and secret
societies, traditions that go back to English Royal bids against
the hegemony of the universal Catholic state, to Queen Eliza-
beth’s magician-advisor John Dee and the colonial projects his
occult beliefs incited. Genuine-article practices of Christian
ritual magic invoked by racist colonizers on both sides of the
Atlantic, the kind of magic realm of kitsch cosmic patriarchy
and stock Greco-Roman statues fit for a Disney movie [2]. We
could cite these traditions, but that would be to miss the point.
The Emanationist mode is more anonymous than any single
conspiracy - it need not directly touch the tradition to carry its
imperious mantle.
The nation-state, the commercial brand - any cult of power
or charismatic leadership manifests it, this top-down fallacy
of genetic power. We call this mode, this last hold off of the
mystical Emanationist philosophy, **_Control_**.
We call the Emanationist strategy of categorizing individuals
within the lower hierarchies, under an artificially constitut-
ed lack of direct access to genetic power, **_Interiorization_** or
_Enclosure_.
We call the field of network relations - the playground of
affinity and experiment where the composable surface area of
bodies have direct access to the dynamic powers of emergence,
without an interlocutor - the **_Exterior_**.
## The Friends of Control
The friends of Control are everywhere. Like the electric buzz
in the air before a lightning strike, there they are, barely
sensible but saturating everything with their presence. The
claustrophobic air of enclosure, interiority: aggravated po-
larities, axioms of tension and delusion, sweaty ideologies of
failure and self-loathing. _This whole field is stuffed, this festival is
all the way fucking inside_. That’s the spirit of the interior, power
vacuum artificially kept from the pirate outside. Infantilization,
complacency, total atrophy of self-governance capacities, the
muscle tendons of network power diminished, the occult spell
that holds relationality hostage.
Here’s a counterspell, a mantra of the infinite (and the infinite
relation): **There is no such thing as an interior, whatever they
say - it’s all dripping with Outside, every molecule, every
atom.**
**Axiom #1:** _Power is relational, immanent within the network of
relations; All power is network power. Control Organizations are
constructed from a magical (Emanationist) suspension of this law._
A Control Organization is composed of two parts: a **protocol**,
the set of repeated behaviors and cultural codes that make up
the coordinated action of the org, and a **ban** - the mystified
withholding or hoarding of access to the relational elements
that animate the protocol.
Rigid structural hierarchies are naturally vulnerable to mutiny,
exit and reform. They break down when there isn’t a logic of
force, an assumed threat of violence or capture. This is where
metaphysics comes in, the ultimate soft power, the presti-
digitation that offsets the relationship of force to a magical
a priori [3]. While Control does sometimes indulge in explicit
violence, it must ultimately depend on a premise of interiority
that is magical or anti-material, a mysticism of power that cir-
cumvents the use of force entirely. The administrative elite like
a priest class, shuffling papers and metaphysical presumptions,
imaginary origin stories, reflections of your own local godhead.
The ban.
The members are less complicit than complacent, seduced by
the ever growing object-at-hand. This is Control’s narcotic
blanket - an unvarnished task in the imagined vacuum state,
the pure logic of hierarchical necessity. Withdrawn from the
broader field of relations, that netherworld is comfortable
for all its disempowerment, but also for all of its perceived
safety [4]. Exteriority penetrates the interior all the way through,
of course - the withdrawal is always a facade - but this is a
scandal of genesis, a state secret. There are whole departments
dedicated to suppressing it. (Imagine the company man’s
terror at the realization that it was always his power – and his
responsibility.)
This is the riddle of capacity in Control. There are varying
types of orgs - negatively or positively determined, more rigid
or more open, offensive or defensive, usurper or fortress, but
they only describe the style of the protocol. Control organiza-
tion, Control as such, is a dead term in a category of its own,
a film of propaganda that overlays but never touches the real
generative power of networks. It is constantly having to call to
bear outside resources (even resources with which to conceal
the calling). **Control can only be this matter of managing
external resources, none are its own.**
Exteriority in these settings is presented as a gift from god, a
scarcity. _Strait is the gate,_ they say, _and narrow is the way, that
leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it_. Infinity strapped
down into a petty moral video game, a grand mythos of dearth.
All of your outsides are our inside. _Only by way of us_. Central-
ized organizations can be more or less dictated by this mantra,
with greater or lesser windows of exteriority - the Rapunzel’s
tower of the astrophysics professor regards a huge panorama.
But Control is nonetheless their mode, this sleight of hand
around capturing exteriority, bringing it in, concealing the
source, the alleged ‘strait gate.’
A centralized organization becomes a Control Organization
when it institutes this mystical ban, the magical notion of
power instituted from within: today the brand, the soul, blood
or soil, the (supposed) innate righteousness of a transcendent
term - in another time the divine right of kings [5]. It’s this
attitude of antirealism and mystification on the inside that
correlates to so much psychotic behavior on the outside. Of
course, the cumulative power of the substrates, the avenues of
dissent they embody is a huge threat to the friends of Control.
The “mystical ban” can be thought of as a ban on the Substrate,
the knowledge of its generative power and its right to exit. But
more on this later.
It’s important to note that, while not all centralized organi-
zations are Control Organizations, all Control Organizations
are centralized organizations. If the goal of an organization is
to resist Control, from an outside agent but also from within,
it will decentralize, suspending the ban and opening up access
to the protocol. It crosses a threshold where the previously
mystified gate to exteriority is laid bare, banished, and the
Exterior comes rushing in. Decentralized ranks, permissionless
inclusion, guerrilla protocols of action in place of direction, an
open breeze: think of the French Resistance.
The Decentralized Autonomous Organizations now ascen-
dant in the web3 space are a special case in this landscape,
distinct from simple decentralized organizations by virtue
of their embeddedness in the substrates - in this case, the
informal communities of gamers, financial system-dissidents
and especially the open source & free software engineers from
which the crypto space initially emerged [6] , as well as the degens
and radicals that animated its expansion. DAOs can be more
or less centralized, but because of this greater fealty, they are
anathema to Control [7].
In this case, the organization cedes territorial claim; jettisoning
the ban, it becomes an enemy of Control, it has **_deterritorial-
ized_**.
**The DAO form represents, sooner or**
**later,** **_the death of the ban_****.
Ragequit, forks, audits, sleuths: their innate relationship to the
substrates forfeits the ban in toto; they can restrict the outside,
strategically (protocol), but they cannot conceal it [8].
**The DAO form represents, sooner or later,** **_the death of the
ban_****.** It demystifies and makes available the _selective_ value of
interiorization (as an interim strategy rather than a mythos
of supremacy) by defanging it of its greatest weapon: formal
or ideological enclosure. Fused with the Substrate, the DAO
is a kind of social recapitulation of the “protocol-app” format.
The superorganisms of a given substrate - and the Substrate
beneath it - maintain in their informal life a “true north” for
it to follow, a sublime layer that makes death and fracture a
life again. What we have left is a design horizon that says
“networks first” - external relations first always - not as a moral
directive but as an act of realism. Bruno Latour’s actor-net-
work theory.
```
“O the insideness of it all! It’s as if we’ve lost
all access to the Exterior, the unbounded, the
infinite - for all its Vital Mysteries.”
```
```
“But wasn’t that our intent?” trolled the
Substrate. “Enclosure of our selves and our
milieus, so that we may halt our own advance
upon the full potential of our becoming; out of
fear that, if empowered, unleashed, it would
invoke an unimaginably infinite cosmic death
of all things that are, or could be?”
“Is that what lays behind these sprite walls?_
Not life, but a kind of death? I knew it.”
“Your cosmos drips with meager life, mine
with flux and death spatter. In the starling
circuitboard, call me *katabasis*!”
```
## What is a Substrate?
**Axiom #2:** _Substrates are inherently resistant to Control: central-
ized or decentralized, the closer a relationship an organization has
with a substrate - and the more it becomes aware of and optimizes
around this relationship - the more resistant it is to the Con-
trol-function, the mythos of the ban._
Technologies exist within, and are determined by, fields of
relations - a hammer is a weapon, a tool, a piece of art, etc. In
the case of DAOs, we can see that their design features are
contingent upon the field of relations that surround them.
When we transform the operative function of the individual -
using for example S BTs, Gitcoin-style passports, or in a more
exotic case the terra0 thought experiment - we give the DAO
form a rich spectrum of new capacities. Similarly, there are
informal communities, sometimes known as memetic commu-
nities or ecosystems - though here we will call them **substrates**
to emphasize their potency - that may present new network
features to the DAO, new possibilities for activation, power
principles with which we can engage and determine the birth,
life and afterlife of a DAO.
Substrates are permissionless, spontaneous, loosely bound
networks constructed around a recursive [9] identity, a vague and
shifting center continuously emergent from the reciprocal
behavior of a network itself. In other words, **they have no walls
and they continuously build the ground they stand on**. ( _“A fu-
gitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.”_ ) Why so much
_vagueness_? Because this type of (pseudo)organization- to use
a cliche, lives on the edge, identifying any limit as a synthesis,
a point of contact, an opportunity of anticapture and a way to
shed dead skin [10].
Vivified at the borderland, this form has a kind of mania for
contact, letting itself be overtaken. An organization or an
individual (Control or otherwise) may have selective external
operations and engagements, but for a substrate, like a hyper-
sphere, every bit of its inside is paved over with exteriority. A
superabundance of relations, of the principle of relation. _Small
is the gate, wide is the way._
To formalize slightly further, a **substrate** is:
* **a permissionless, often spontaneous and**
**shifting assemblage of identity affiliation that**
**functions as a locus of reciprocity; or,**
* **a memetic community that holds informal**
**protocols of mutual aid; or,**
* **a Control Organization’s pure “deterritori-**
**alized” counterpart; or,**
* **a social network composed entirely of soft**
**bonds (memes, lore, storytelling) and arrows**
**of indeterminacy that subsume those bonds,**
The scientific definition works as well, here:
***the surface or material on or from which an organism lives,***
***grows, or obtains its nourishment.***
We address this network-form in order to call attention to two
things: first, the way that it animates the fugitive life of DAOs,
maintains an open surface area of relation that is anathema
to the cult of power that dictates Control Organizations[11].
Second, the extent to which substrates may represent design
horizons, potential paths of hybridization or clear subsump-
tion that might keep capture at the gate. Let no one doubt the
necessity of organizations that hold the Substrate up as a guide
as they stand against those led by the occult metaphysics of
corporate or state-centric bodies. If we’re going to survive, we
have to reclaim the toolbox. This means situating the tools in a
network that’s too robust for narrative capture.
Organizations and the substrate are two forms, but in their
embodied lives they will always be subject to the spectrum
the adulterations, compromises, alliances, solutions and
dissolutions that animate realist networks. These are the exotic,
monstrous network entities that the forms truly exist for
(there is no pure organization, no true substrate, no zero point
of network pollution, nor would we want one). The concepts
themselves should be subjugated to the renewed capacities that
can be unlocked by the exploration they incite. In some cases a
substrate may resist capture by taking on the form of a DAO.
In others, a DAO flees by way of dissolution into a new meme,
a substrate’s moving target, accretion along a deterritorializing
slope. There may be unforeseeable mutations of either form,
the secret abstract machines, attractors that lock you in – the
truth to come is always the present’s hybrid. The purity of the
concept says nothing of its life as a tool.
For the purposes of this piece, you can think of “substrate” as
a formalization of the phenomenon of ecosystems or memetic
communities. (To formalize, to be clear, is not to institu-
tionalize; on the contrary, the purpose of this document is
to clarify a non-institutional form and name it as a tool and
ally of anticapture). The decentralization hypothesis is not a
binary. Rather than recommending a particular design-form, it
attacks the metaphysical premise that seeks to keep one form
static and sanctioned by god. Centralized or decentralized,
what matters is the substrate. **Once you’ve disarmed all of the
authoritarian chimeras, illuminated the way to the exit, you’ve
won by the gesture alone.**
## Design Horizons
The DAO’s denial of the ban is a defiant first act, breaking
out of the chain of being ( God - heaven - nation - sovereign
soul ) and replacing it with the field of infinite relations, the
Exterior. (If Control Organizations always pledge allegiance
to some member of the magical chain, the substrates are
similarly stubborn in their allegiance to the Exterior.) In the
case of Ethereum, the social layer trumps any technological
game theory on the level of apps and even protocols. The
substrate that is sometimes called Layer 0 (or “Super Layer 0”)
is guided by this intuition, more importantly this _faith_ which
gives permission to the wild experimentation that animates the
protocol in the first place: **The exits that one can take in this
world are infinite.**
But this pact between DAO and Substrate, it seems to us, has
largely been subliminal. We feel its effects and its energies,
we’re irreverent with its charge, but we’ve yet to fully consider
it, in its multiplicity, as a programmable feature of the web3
stack. **What is needed is a strategic cognizance of the Exterior
at large, the substrates that animate it, and the design paths
an organization may take in its context.** We’ve defied the ban,
but now we must denigrate its image. What are the rhythms
and milieus of the Exterior? How can we use them as a design
compass - to make sure we never again build in the image of
the inside?
As we move forward, we approach the specter of a “sweet
spot” between the zone of substrates and the organization. The
rumor of a so-called ‘body without organs’ that has located the
appropriate, electrified mixture between deterritorialization
and grounding. If we try to look it directly in the eye we’ll cer-
tainly lose it. Just hush, and take note: we are coming around
to something.
**Axiom #3:** _Products drain the substrate. Branded and enclosed,
they harbor little interiors withdrawn from relation. Those organi-
zations or institutions that want to flee capture while maintaining
their structure can enter into symbiotic relationships with substrates
by swearing off products and instead generating resources._
Like the last anti-real object - some who have done away
completely with the mystical traps of the “Chain of Being”
nevertheless bow to the product and see it as a wellspring of
freedom. Naturally, the DAO space has a host of strategies for
fending off this particular form of capture, not least of which
are those developed in the wake of the extensive dual-licensing
battles of the free software movement. At our current moment,
token launches are suffering by the weight of regulatory am-
biguity and predatory rugs. But all of this forgets one of their
first proposed purposes: bootstrapping open source projects.
The output of an open source protocol, even its most conserva-
tive form, is better described as a resource than a product. It is
built around an indeterminacy, an openness to public iteration
(the word would be optimization, but this is what makes it
distinct: the riff or improvisation of process is its primary goal).
It should be obvious that this anti-teleological, resource-first
bias is another result of those protocols of affiliation that
define the Substrate (and likewise, those anti-corporate norms
which regard the Exterior as the site of production against the
genius-worship and brand fetishism of Silicon Valley). Indeed,
open source production is a prime example of contemporary
best practices around substrate-first organization. But they
aren’t the only one.
As an example of a substrate, consider the genre community -
take, for example, Lovecraftian horror. There is no onboarding
process, no membership fee, you simply pick up a pen and be-
gin to write. The output’s conformity to various tropes - secret
societies, alien gods, spacetime dislocations, etc - determines
its proximity to the substrate’s illusive center (that writer who
conforms perfectly will find she’s very much off center). As
you level up, you’ll find yourself navigating implicit roles of
mutual support - someone in your network wrote a review of
your book, you’re going to shill their new anthology, one of
the authors in the anthology later writes an introduction to
your short story collection. Maybe you’ve found an intellectual
crush, a _friend_ , such is the intrigue of the network.
Genres of course contain formal organizations like publishing
houses, magazines, but their position in the substrate is in no
way primary, even to the extent that undue attempts to insti-
tutionalize or brand an element of the genre will be met with
wide resistance. In this way tropes are sheltered from capture
and interiorization by substrates, mobilized like armies march-
ing under the banner of infinite relations and indeterminacy.
(Next time you see a reddit upheaval over a Marvel movie, ask
yourself: what spontaneous democracy is at work here – how
can I learn from its example?)
**What hybrid beast can we conjure out of the**
**ocean of exteriority, so that our organization**
**can be mythless - no ban, no cult of power**
**- even while we improvise on the immanent**
**mystery of networks, on the Substrate?**
Small, independent publishing houses negotiate this land-
scape wonderfully. Their institutional or organizational life is a
negligible second to their participation in the substrates. They
are always folding, forking, reshifting, all the better to maintain
charge, to remain activated, to serve a particular substrate and
the creative process in general. The goal is to contribute to the
genre, to lay a new ground on which new tropes can be built,
iterated upon, indeterminacy and experimentation on wheels.
They are often misunderstood as failures, or bad business
plans, as if something so petty as brand recognition or market
dominance were ever a respectable goal to the process-maxis,
cultural guerrillas who know that the delicate balance of free
association should never be sacrificed to perpetuate a trivial
title. Profit is how we survive, creativity is how we live.
Genre scenes are powerful examples of substrates, but their
organizational allies in the indie publishing world have a dis-
advantage to DAOs in their relationship to the extraction/con-
sumption model. People speak ill of financialization, but the
financial experiments undertaken in the DAO space give us an
opportunity to have our cake and eat it too. That’s our experi-
ment isn’t it? The design horizon: **Can we build a hybrid form,
a company with no products- finance without extraction,
hierarchy without Control, process without end? A soil with
no god?** What hybrid beast can we conjure out of the ocean of
exteriority, so that our organization can be mythless - no ban,
no cult of power - even while we improvise on the immanent
mystery of networks, on the Substrate?
It’s often been noted that, upon close enough examination, one
finds in any significant historical event (9/11, JFK, whatever) a
beguiling tangle of collusion, conspiracy and coincidence, the
kind of synchrony that would obviously signal a conspiracy if
it didn’t point to a host of mutually exclusive plots. Why is this
the case? Maybe it’s because, when it comes to aristocracy and
the mercantile elite, there’s only so many of them, and they all
go to the same country clubs. Maybe it’s because very powerful
figures tend to be themselves entangled in a crowded sediment
of competing collusions. When the impactful event occurs,
it would seem, it’s almost always an uncalculated accident of
these schemes, a moment of emergence. Trace the million
strands all you want, but the intentionality is disperse, the trig-
ger spontaneous, an accident of Control - a meta-conspiracy.
Thinking about substrates, we should remember Thomas Pyn-
chon’s recommendation from the dictionary of collusion and
metaconspiracy that is _Gravity’s Rainbow_ , that we establish a
counterpoint to the ever-present figure of Them:
```
“Of course a They-system is necessary - but it’s only half the
story. For every They there ought to be a We. In our case
there is. Creative paranoia means developing at least as
thorough a We-system as a They-system.”
```
**This is the Substrate: a We-system**. We stack and integrate
our free associations, our network conspiracies, our open
creation of resources, our mutual aid and our paved and inter-
secting avenues of exit until we’ve generated a cloud of dissent,
potent with emergent omens, potential accidents of freedom.
We make ourselves available through sheer density of commu-
nicating nodes, to the eruption, spontaneous and anonymous,
of **metapower**.
## Conclusion: The Ongoing Finale
The goals of this piece were simultaneously conceptual and
practical: to identify an important mechanism of capture resis-
tance latent but not often spoken about in the DAO space, and
to draw up some provocations of what it might be to lean into
that mechanism, to let it transform our image of organization
more radically than it already has. But also, to elaborate upon
a metaphysical disposition common in (maybe responsible
for) the larger world of commercial capitalism that the DAO
space - for reasons libertarian and commonist, hacker ethical
and mathe-puritanical - has been engaged with in a subliminal
battle from its outset. It’s a battle about realism and delusion,
the actual mystery of empiricism and emergence against the
mystification of enclosed divinity.
In the end, the three points amount to a provocation upon the
potential of an ethos of **metastability** in the DAO space. The
premise that, in this atmosphere of innovation and denigra-
tion of the mythologies of power, we can design a system
that is neither 0 nor 1, neither substrate or organization, but
superposed and potent with both capacities. To quote the
renegade thinker Gilbert Simondon, how can we construct an
org whose ontological premise is as **“a being** **_of_** **relation not a
being** **_in_** **relation”**?
Have you vanquished yourself of the ideal, and prepared for the
rabid experimentalism of the adventure - prepared to go outside,
to the Exterior?
It would seem, in the revolution of non-coercive thermody-
namic legitimacy that is blockchain, that the abstract stories
we tell ourselves, the final remaining mythologies of purity and
completion, are the single barrier to our seeing the whole game
board as negotiations, mixtures, network forms - _communica-
tions, connections, and unions_ (Donati). How far can we take
it, this epochal demystification? Huge gains can be made by
shifting our primary focus from the limited frames of reference
available to us as agents imprisoned by bounded territories,
control orgs, the Friends of Control, to the substrates, death
retentive and enlivened with network power, the godless un-
steadiness, the premonition of a peak relationality.
You have your pure forms - Substrate, Organization, the
everlasting specter of Control, but as you’re riding the scales
between them, which direction you’re going is defined by
the relation to identity. Is your identity changing with the
movements of the current - or is it stubbornly remaining
static? Beasts of idle complacency, the organizational hollow
states are free grabs for psychopaths and the agents of Control.
Have you vanquished yourself of the ideal, and prepared for
the rabid experimentalism of the adventure - prepared to go
outside, to the Exterior?
It’s not a matter of one organizational form or another being
correct or pure. The situational adequacy is a moving target, a
zone of practical sufficiency, the tool that is right for the job.
In most cases, this is what should be strived for, this is what
will do. Much more difficult is locating the machinic point, a
_peak adequacy_ (sometimes called “the zone” or “flow state”), the
illusive, antidivine moment that can only be prepared for, never
created. The crowned product of a mania of different exper-
iments; transformations, dissolutions, alliances, ego-deaths.
Here, in the _jouissance dans l ’infini_ , scale breaks down and all
the atoms of your assemblage become activated, everything is
being made use of. Autogenesis, the infinite fork, _Brahman_.
### Notes
[1] For a good start, you might try Colin Drumm’s dissertation The
Difference that Money Makes: Sovereignty, Indecision and the Politics of
Liquidity.
[2] Kenny Glosch’s Parapower Mapping pod is the place to look if you
want to engage this particular rabbit hole.
[3] By “magical” here we are talking about a rhetoric that employs allusions
to supernatural, unreal forces (e.g. “white supremacy”) to ends of mystifi-
cation or propaganda. There are of course natural scientists outside of the
purview of the academy that are practicing important work they themselves
refer to as “magick”, but these are naturalist rather than supernatural pro-
grammes in our book (e.g. Peter J Carroll).
[4] It should be said that this mythology of an internal life of an organi-
zation or organism is a feature of Control that is propagated across scales,
from the nation-state to the individual, and perhaps beneath. We can’t
help but wonder what state religions and chemical popes restrict the basal
dreams of metazoa...
[5] Today, just maybe, what we need is a mysticism of networks.
[6] ‘Especially’ because it’s unclear whether protocols for permission-
lessness and against IP would have been embedded if not for influence
(again, won by the work of a metastable many) of Richard Stallman, Eric
Raymond, etc. For reflections on how radical this movement was, check
out Chris Kelty’s book Two Bits: On the Cultural Significance of Free
Software.
[7] DAOs that do not foreground a healthy culture of forking and ragequit
are not DAOs.
[8] To the extent that a DAO may be led by a ‘benevolent dictator’, their
power can only be interim, under constant threat from its decentralized
membership, if not from the wider cultural expanse that can check its
power through sheer force of alternatives. If a DAO develops the kind
of ideological closure that tries to generate sentimental or impractically
ego-bound relationships with such figures – the beginnings of cult - it has
the threat of a fork. Under these new conditions, contingent hierarchies are
liberated from their metaphysics, demystified to become just another tool.
[9] Ibid on Kelty, especially passages on “recursive publics” in FOSS.
[10] “OK, how can we extract ourselves, at the same time, from a struc-
turalist vision that seeks correspondences, analogies, and homologies, and
from a Marxist vision that seeks determinants. I indeed see one possible
hypothesis, but it’s so confused...It’s perfect—it would consist in saying: at
a given moment, for reasons that, of course, must still be determined, it is
as if a social space were covered by what we would have to call an abstract
machine. ... We could call it—at the same time, this abstract machine, at
a given moment, will break with the abstract machine of the preceding
epochs—in other words, it will always be at the cutting edge ( _à la pointe_ ),
thus it would receive the name ‘machinic point’ ( _pointe machinique_ ).” Gilles
Deleuze, Seminar of 26 March 1973.
[11] Namely a logistical dimension of free association and exit and a hard-
wired check on the literal organizational mysticism found in megabrands
and suicide cults.

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title: Sketches Toward a Theory of the Protocol Underground
draft:
tags:
- article
author: Exeunt, Open Protocol Research Group
date: 2024-07-10
---
### Sketches Toward a Theory of the Protocol Underground
*
By Exeunt & the Open Protocol Research Group*
*The movement Philip groans—­ the undercommons, the underlanguage, underground, underwater, which is the ­ people’s macrophone—­ wants to know/make the relationship between form and instability, when the informal becomes a form of life precisely insofar as it is where forms of life come from.­ There is an ecol­ogy of unaccountable self-­positing, unaccountable­ because what’s more and less than self, disposed and without position or deposition, makes this positing in refusing being bought and sold. The logistics—­ the analogistics, the ecologistics—of the unaccountable population is barely audible, given only in distortion, which is our plain of code.*
**Fred Moten (on M. NourbeSe Philip), _Black and Blur_**
### Aesthetics
**A**esthetics, vibes, intersubjective atmosphere may seem like externalities, inconsequential surplus to the “real world” of finance and institutions. But this is only sleight of hand, a distortion of the diffuse, field-like character of power and empowerment. Power (politics), in its relationality, is nothing less than this matter of feeling. The philosopher of technology Bernard Stiegler opens his _Symbolic Misery: vol 1 The Hyperindustrial Epoch_ (2014) with the following: “The question of politics _is a question of aesthetics_… I use the word aesthetics here in its widest sense, where _aisthēsis_ means sensory perception, and where the question of aesthetics is, therefore, that of feeling and sensibility in general.”
The object of this piece is the way that aesthetics relate to regimes of structural violence, and the way crypto might fundamentally intervene in and subvert the hegemony of those regimes. In the distributed ledger, we may have the germ of a culture of aesthetic autonomy and free association without limit, coordinating infrastructure unburdened by the pall of coercive relations. Beyond the feeling of administrative bureaucracy, the atmospheric, oh so-subtle implication of violence that permeates the legally sanctioned institutions, we are on the verge of discovering [legitimacy](https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html) by other means. And when we get to the party, having climbed the plateaus, to reach the plain of an unaccountable and unadministered population, the protocol underground will be there waiting for us.
### Undergrounds
Undergrounds are political. The first use of the term in the sense of “clandestine cultural behaviors” [1] is attached to the American underground railroad, escape routes from the South. The origins of that phrase are disputed: a 1839 newspaper article quoting a young slave who imagined a magical “railroad that goes underground all the way to Boston,” or words elsewhere, around the same time, referencing slave catchers who, having lost the trail, said that "there must be an underground railroad somewhere.”
It was first used to refer to subcultures in the early 50’s, fresh off of the memories of the underground media and military campaigns of the French Resistance. At the time, of course, obscenity laws and rigid conformity in the United States meant that alternative aesthetic movements faced repression that rivaled that of Vichy France. If the atmospheres of secret queer gathering places, multi-racial jazz shows and beatnik drug dens didn’t quite have a militant air to them, the codes and protocols established to protect them were as elaborate as those used to evade the Sicherheitsdienst.
(Riddle: what kind of knowledge is both freely available and deeply secret?)
Undergrounds are political, and politics is a question of aesthetics - sensible communities, intersubjective atmospheres, _vibes_.
Stiegler will go on to argue that the dominant “sensible community” of today is “entirely fabricated” by technologies of control: “it has become a matter of controlling the technologies of _aisthēsis_ (the audiovisual or the digital, for example) and, in this way, controlling the conscious and unconscious rhythms of bodies and souls; modulating through the control of flows these rhythms of consciousness and life. … **aesthetic conditioning**, the essential feature of enclosure in these zones, has replaced **aesthetic experience**, making it impossible.”
In the typical tenor of old guard cultural critics, Stiegler wants to pose this aesthetic disempowerment as total, offering little evidence to argue the point. While a general attitude of aesthetic disempowerment and consumption is certainly present in the West - their most severe forms within the guts of administrative institutions, what David Graeber has called [“dead zones”](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.14318/hau2.2.007) -  it is equally true that there are zones of aesthetic self-determination, willfully defiant against administrative or commercial capture, _fucking_ _everywhere_.
Here at the Open Protocol Research Group, we are most interested in how these zones of defiance, these _undergrounds_, have emergently protocolized, both as a response to legal or extreme cultural prohibition and as a strategy of avoiding institutionalization, with its tendency to dampen or outright restrict the aesthetic autonomy of its participants. When aesthetic practices are outlawed, they respond by protocolizing - one can’t effectively make storefronts or centralized academies for illegal practices. When they protocolize, they become more pluralistic. That pluralism solidifies their resistance or illegibility to institutional capture. [2]
Examples of this **protocol underground** can give us hints as to their plural and creative character. Take for instance, sadomasochism. Originally a diagnostic portmanteau referencing sexual practices from the work of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and Marquis de Sade, sadism and masochism formalized into an underground scene in the 70’s. [3]  In constant legal flight from sodomy and obscenity laws (due especially to association with the gay community), the scene spread by means of clubs and especially handbooks - notably, Larry Townsend’s [The Leatherman’s Handbook](https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Leatherman_s_Handbook.html?id=Fem3PQAACAAJ) (1972) and later, Jay Wiseman’s [SM 101: A Realistic Introduction](https://books.google.com/books/about/SM_101.html?id=qRCrzBqMSX0C) (1992).
In these books, one finds a prioritization and careful negotiation of mood or intersubjective atmosphere with rigorous and elaborately defined considerations of consent. Consider Jay Wiseman’s “two squeezes” technique. A proactive measure meant to supplement safe words and provide active and continual consent, the dominant interrupts a session by squeezing the sub’s body twice.
_The two squeezes ask “are you OK?”_
_The submissive replies that they are OK by giving two squeezes in return. The dominant can learn a lot about the submissive’s state by noting how the submissive returns the squeezes. Two quick, brisk squeezes show that the submissive is alert and “in the room with you.” Two long, slow squeezes show that the submissive is OK but “deep under.”_
No response after a certain time, and the dominant breaks the performance to check in and perhaps end the session. The technique “provides a simple, workable way for both parties to communicate that they are all right without either having to break the mood verbally.”
Another example of an aesthetic scene that protocolized as it fled culturally prejudice legal action is the UK Free Party Movement. Key dates for this scene: 1990, the passing of the ​​Entertainments (Increased Penalties) Bill, “which raised fines for unlicensed parties from £2,000 to £20,000 with the possibility of six months inside for organisers.” Later that year, the formalization of the sound system collective in North London called Spiral Tribe. May 1992, the biggest illegal rave in UK history in Gloucestershire (infamously known among both Thatcherites and pirate teknivalists as “[Castlemorton](https://djmag.com/features/castlemorton-1992-photographing-illegal-rave-changed-uk-dance-music-forever)”). 1994, the [Criminal Justice and Public Order Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Justice_and_Public_Order_Act_1994)  - which “outlawed people gathering listening to music “predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats.”
![Members of Spiral Tribe with their infamous sound system.](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/1rHp0f_Wr1Z59ASYxiVbz.webp)
Members of Spiral Tribe with their infamous sound system.
Free parties dated back to the New Age scene in the eighties (see the 1985 [Battle of the Beanfield](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1doyDQDZtc)) and before, but Spiral Tribe escalated the underground attitude, mainly by insisting that every party they threw fell beyond legal sanction. As member Sebastian Vaughan later wrote,  "The rave scene seemed to be oscillating towards paid parties and clubs again, and we just said: ‘No way! It’s got to be in a warehouse, it’s got to be dirty, it’s got to be illegal and it’s got to be faceless’.” The ecstasy fueled and elaborately vibed out acid house parties were always free, infected by the attitude of generosity seen in so many aesthetic undergrounds.
More importantly, they were sometimes extremely hard to find. Listening to Seana Gavin [discuss her time in Spiral Tribe](https://www.ravetothegrave.org/episodes/episode-22-seana-gavin-on-spiral-tribe-and-tekno-adventures), it seems to have been a decade long, transcontinental exercise in getting lost. This was a feature, not a bug. A party, it turns out, takes on a radically different character- an enchantment, even - when everyone present had to go through an ordeal to get there. _12 kms from that pub in poolbrook. Once you make it to Welland, follow the lights_. The obscure and illegal nature of the locations constructed an artifice that repelled complacency and consumption, instead attracting high agency, participation, festive enthusiasm. _If you’ve hit Rye Cross you’ve gone too far._
### Overgrounding
The underground scenes worthy of investigation are many - consider the libertarian generosity of the price suppression agreed upon by LSD production families in the 70’s, or the manic [protocol creation](https://www.reuters.com/graphics/HONGKONG-EXTRADITIONS-TACTICS/0100B0790FL/index.html) of direct action groups in 2019 Hong Kong or New York as hybrid strategies cross contaminated through continents and different authoritarian atmospheres. Think of the technological détournement in the Bronx that turned drum breaks into a vehicle for a whole [minor poetry](https://books.google.com/books/about/Kafka.html?id=H4XWdN4u4OgC). We intend to do that work. But in these introductory remarks, we can outline a couple key features of the protocol underground, in the hopes that by defining them, we might - in an action as magical as a visionary underground railroad - _**overground**_ them, make of them repeatable and memeable practices, formalized without being standardized.
What are the exact qualities that we are attempting to “overground” here?
a). Mutual assumption of **high agency**. Undergrounds make play of peril, finding just-sufficient safety in the decentralized ingenuity and practical sense of crowds. The unadministered, it’s been observed, take on a heightened sense of responsibility that paradoxically made pirate events “safe spaces” in multiple senses of the term. (Those who would seek to delegate basic material safety and vigilance to a third party are better off at expensive and highly insured establishments, nested within the promise of lucrative litigation should host guardians misstep.)
b.)  Robust culture of **informed** **consent**. The twentieth century patriarchal establishment was defined by its ambivalence to this term, and it’s a horror-comedy watching institutions try to work through their embedded contradictions to service its supposed cultural vogueness. As an elaboration of the sense of responsibility and presence mentioned above, undergrounds have been avant gardes of mutually affirmed consent. Vibes are network forms, and supremacy is a dead ecology.
c.) **Participatory** and **pluralistic** **aesthetic**. San Francisco, the year is 1977. Do you go see Star Wars: A New Hope opening at The Coronet, or a replay of Rocky Horror Picture Show at a dirty theater in the Tenderloin, where the crowd is raucous with participation, and every night is different? Undergrounds loath passive consumption. The divinity of the scene is always won by the blood of an aesthetic monarch, whether that be a politician or a film director. Given robust enough conditions of the two described above, an emergent [social production](https://mirror.xyz/openprotocolresearch.eth/nrEc6i8pWzo0YxC0-vwfVYlirTD6_FAmBHjoiNwLbQ4) is always on the table.  (_Buy an umbrella, you cheap bitch_.)
The latter point, to return to Stiegler’s sense of aesthetics as the question of “feeling and sensibility in general,” signals that **there is no objective vibe**, there is no monopoly of the real. Feeling, sense, atmosphere are relational, and without institutions to impose a mystified neutrality - the oppressive, monoculture din of a Walgreens, bank, or a hospital - we are challenged with the responsibility and freedom to constitute for ourselves what the sense of things are, and in so doing, redefine what possibilities exist in them. [4]
Why are standardized institutions a threat to the above qualities?
- embedded hierarchy and bureaucracy
- compartmentalization and specialization
- “[interpretive labor](https://www.rethinkingpower.info/how-interpretive-labor-straddles-the-gap-between-rules-and-reality/)” and the opacity of structural violence
- commercialization, spectacle, passive consumption
Most crucial of all to the creative possibility described in the above pages, and most singularly characteristic of the underground, is the ever-maintained and rigorously exercised and protected consensuality of relations. It’s the ground everything else rests on. It may be said that, once such an atmosphere is established, the rest of the underground qualities will inevitably follow. The fact that we see them so rarely in so much of our lives points to the most damning and prohibitive dimension of institutional regimes - the structural and implicit violence they weld, they’re ultimate foundation in an atmosphere of force and imposition - “[the dead zone](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.14318/hau2.2.007).”
Distributed Ledger Technologies may offer a chance to do the impossible, to scale the underground, embolden communities everywhere with participatory agency over the aesthetic environments they inhabit - the feeling and sensibility that shapes the structure of the possible; to make of a complacent mass of consumers and bureaucratic subjects high agency and active participants of reality; and most importantly, to coordinate at scale in an absolutely non-coercive context. The sensibility of the underground echoes in crypto culture in the [open protocolization](https://mirror.xyz/openprotocolresearch.eth/nrEc6i8pWzo0YxC0-vwfVYlirTD6_FAmBHjoiNwLbQ4) of its innovations, the plural and unpoliced divergence of its aesthetics, the persistent and uncompromising “sovereignty” of its participants.
What will it look like to send a wave back, providing the culture with the tools needed to [formalize without standardizing](https://mirror.xyz/openprotocolresearch.eth/nrEc6i8pWzo0YxC0-vwfVYlirTD6_FAmBHjoiNwLbQ4), to _overground_ the high agency, consent-based, aesthetically empowered worlds of the underground?
DLTs cannot instill in the population a desire for agency. Where complacency abounds, it will continue to; where passivity reigns, it will continue to reign. What we can do is provide substrates for consent-based social organization and social production - infrastructure that relies on mathematics and thermodynamics rather than weapons and terror to maintain its [hardness](https://stark.mirror.xyz/n2UpRqwdf7yjuiPKVICPpGoUNeDhlWxGqjulrlpyYi0). We can provide forkable code that encourages pluralistic adaptation, especially of the programmable regimes of value (tokens) and instances of alignment (DAOs) that allow high agency participants to coordinate.
This is true of the technology - but if we are to successfully continue it ourselves under these underground values, we have to look at our own culture in the mirror and consider deeply its complacency. How is the culture of personal sovereignty and the generous protocolization we take for granted in our space animated by relative access to VC wealth which is ultimately sourced from deeply coercive regimes? How can we design in the direction of revenue won from positive sum interventions in extant extractive industries rather than the zero-sum game of price speculation?
A potentially more fraught area is the onboarding problem - letting institutions like Coinbase lead the charge on scaling means we’ll be left with castes of individuals that relinquish custody or other types of agency for convenience while technocrats enjoy supposed self-determination, even though we know that when some are in bondage no one is free. But, typical of the prefigurative circle, the ends are also the means: identifying undergrounds that correspond to these values, that persist in rhythms of [open protocolization](https://mirror.xyz/openprotocolresearch.eth/nrEc6i8pWzo0YxC0-vwfVYlirTD6_FAmBHjoiNwLbQ4) rather than brands and institutions will mean finding those that are practiced in the peril and labor of high agency, that take their freedom seriously. If the mainstream conversation on crypto is finally initiated by its association with the most aesthetically autonomous and high agency elements of our culture, the true implications of its non-coercive ground will be appreciated. If it's introduced by way of extraction and consumerism, it will be eaten up.
(_and forked, and birthed again, renewed under conditions of peace & free association, and in even more ridiculous garb , - wait, which way is it to Castlemorton?_)
_________
Notes
[1] I don’t believe there were pre-modern uses of the term to refer to cultural or political dissidence; if otherwise, I’d love to hear it.
[2] What happens next is a research question. It would seem that pluralism tends to evolve into a mature fragmentation that eventually restages the question of institutional legibility, but the assumption begs the question of what exactly you are tracking - an aesthetic or an underground? Aesthetics congeal and face cooptation, undergrounds protocolize, fork, positioned as they are on a “cutting edge.” When considering the terms, the noun “aesthetics” feels passive and descriptive, the dominion of the conditioned. But “underground”? It rolls off the tongue quite nicely as a verb, doesn’t it?
[3] Though existence of a disparate “scene” likely goes back to at least the 19th century; check [these](https://courtauld.ac.uk/research/research-resources/publications/immeditations-postgraduate-journal/immediations-online/2020-2/audrey-warne-staging-sadomasochism-images-of-bondage-in-man-rays-surrealist-photography-1929-1932/) scandalous photographs from 1930’s Paris.
[4] This “sense of possibility” is a discrete and profound type of currency, a ninth form of capital to be sure - call it “**virtual capital**.”
_________
**This work was made possible with a generous grant from the [Arbitrum Minigrants](https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/plurality-labs-our-biggest-minigrants-yet-jokerace/20040) program.**

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title: Speculative P2P and the Urban Protocol Underground
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date: 2025-02-20
---
### Speculative P2P and the Urban Protocol Underground: An Update on the Open Protocol Research Group
*By Exeunt and the Open Protocol Research Group*
The city, so we’ve claimed in the past, is an *anticapture device*, the high pressure collision of many classes of being into one complete whole, an emergent unity that at once constitutes and undermines its own totalization. It’s a locked event of sustained difference, and any attempt to assert control finds a dissident underground sprouting like daffodils. To paraphrase a certain anarchist Russian poet, “The city is not equal to itself - it stirs and vulcanates.” [1]
Can the same be categorically said of Ethereum? Can we will that? To Ethereum’s novice, the city is a master. But this can’t be a simple matter of learning a prescribed tradition, given that the tradition under discussion is self-overcoming. No, in the inverted logic of the urban local, with its understories and subterranean engines, the master and the student collapse into the substrate plane of *practical potential*. A possibility space opens up: what can an ethereal body do? How can an alliance between two nodes of anticapture become more monstrous, more open, more self-overcoming?
-----
Our investigations into the urban space began with an initial claim: distinct kinds of open source social protocols found in cities - and particularly in cultural undergrounds - are robustly isomorphic with those of the web3 space, and represent an opportunity for intervention and alliance. That research quickly took us to further reaches, extitutions, protocol undergrounds and the speculative realism they harbor. The Undercapital thesis is what resulted, designating multicapital economic strategies brought to bear to forms of relation illegible to states and institutions but which Ethereum, with its open ontology, could service without flinching.
While these conceptual flights had us at times moving further than our empirical and ethnographic resources could justify - making them provisional frames rather than analytic conclusions - it's our hope that readers find in this overview a skeleton for their own investigation into the urban cultural possibilities of Ethereum localism.
### Open Protocols
From early on in the research vector, we understood that the open protocols of the cultural field had a primary difference from those within a virtual network: while open web protocols depend on a shared computational substrate - a standard - open protocols of the urban field have only practical adequacy, the hardness of certain material conditions and the shifting features of the socio-cognitive fabric of the city as their shared substrate. 
Despite this fact, the propagation of these urban protocols formally mirrors what we see in the Ethereum ecosystem in distinct ways. (Informally) codified knowledge sets for urban gardening, for community organizing or throwing a party in an unregulated setting, for squatting a warehouse or wheatpasting a message or getting a zine out, spread in a free and coherent manner ambivalent to traditional institutional infrastructure. They fork and merge to meet different landscapes of implementation. Teams of developers find temporary cultural cache and then dissolve into the milieu, while their creations persist and change. Most importantly, all of this social and intellectual reproduction happens outside of the channels of institutional control and coercion. Open protocolization, it became clear, was the fate of knowledge outside of the walls of institutional sanction. 
Unsheltered from these boundaries, with their organizational propaganda, bureaucratic compulsions and procedural ossification, open protocols face the hard realities and pressures of the outside - institutional coherence is instead replaced by productive fracture, and impractical strategies are naturally selected out by the experience of free agents. [2] This was expressed in what we called "a twin commitment to divergent exploration and material grounding," that is, characteristic features of memeticism and empiricism that seem unavoidable for protocols in extitutional settings. [3] In retrospect we might say that open protocols are about hacking the material world to find wells of possibility space: the twin question is always, *does it work* (performative or impractical gestures don't survive) and *does it allow me to improvise, generate novelty, be creative?* (If a protocolist was interested in following orders, they'd join an institution.)
This broad grammar for seeing the city, as it were, inverted, led to several insights. We'll give them an overview, then return to what the open protocol framework might imply for local interventions by Ethereum and how it might even help us better understand Ethereum itself, what it is and where it’s going as it likewise searches the economic and computational ruliad for its own possibility wells. 
### Extitutions
As the Ethereum ecosystem itself has found, because of the heavy grasp that legacy infrastructure has on the flows of economic and intellectual reproduction, an institutional "front" is sometimes needed to maintain protocols in their open and free form, taking the place of interlocutor with legacy forces while they construct autonomous zones which will inevitably intentionally obsolete them. What exactly this looks like in the Ethereum space is a complicated question - you can use your imagination - but in the urban sphere, they operate with a distinct purity and levity that makes them easy to identify. 
The archetype of the extitution - for us, deployed as a slight alteration of Jessie Kate Schingler and Primavera de Filippi’s extitutional theory [4] to mean distinct entities rather than informal undersides of institutions themselves - was a Portland friend's description of the late 90's/early 2000's indie scene. To paraphrase: *We were starting record labels like it was nothing, running them into the ground and starting over. Call it a way of protecting ourselves from success.* "Extitutions," we wrote in our first document, "wear institutional masks" - they're formal status tells one story, but any organizational planner or MBA would be stunned at the irresponsibility, or incoherence, with which they wield this entity.
If this is the case, it is because their "legibility" is a farce, their coherence accountable to an utterly different calculus: the free propagation of the protocol. 
### Protocol Undergrounds
This touches on a key dimension of open protocols, mainly that they are inextricably linked to cultural undergrounds. In a fruitful foray into a more archival approach to the protocol underground question, we looked at four historical cases: the California LSD scene of the 70s and 80s, the UK Free Party Movement, the West Coast Appropriate Technology Movement of the 70's and the Bay Area S&M scene of the same time. For each of these scenes, we identified an extitution (the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, Spiral Tribe, RAIN and the Society of Janus, respectively) and a value it distinctly embodied/ helped export to the cultural field.
| | | |
| ---------------------- | --------------------------- | ------------------- |
| **Open Protocol** | **Extitution** | **Value** |
| LSD | Brotherhood of Eternal Love | cognitive pluralism |
| Free Party | Spiral Tribe | high agency |
| Appropriate Technology | RAIN | autonomy |
| S/M | Society of Janus | consent |
Notably, all of the above protocols were culturally marginalized and, at one point or another, very illegal - this seems to have been a historical prerequisite for the development of autonomous values. For more on these particular scenes, you can check out my Local DAO Summer talk [5] and our second essay, "Sketches Toward a Theory of the Protocol Underground" [6], but the crucial point is how they helped us construct a set of characteristics to not just explain the protocol underground, but the nature of the alternative values that keep its inhabitants avoiding institutional scaling at all costs. 
Later, in "Undercapital," [7] we identified three hazards of scaling that inform the intentionality of the underground:  1) Institutional-behavioral bias, a set of regulatory and cultural "multipolar traps" that lead to reflexively policed passive consumption (elsewhere known as the problem of spectacle) 2) Limits to circulation of scene protocols, wherein mutual expectations of high agency and consent are logistically difficult to scale vertically, 3) Cults of personality, for obvious reasons including internal capture, the degrading presence of a figurehead to withdraw agency to, and a target for external capture.
To quote from “Sketches”: "there is no objective vibe, there is no monopoly of the real. Feeling, sense, atmosphere are relational, and without institutions to impose a mystified neutrality - the oppressive, monoculture din of a Walgreens, bank, or a hospital - we are challenged with the responsibility and freedom to constitute for ourselves what the sense of things are, and in so doing, redefine what possibilities exist in them." Of course members of the underground depart, conform, become institutional subjects through and through, but the underground persists because its forms are innately decentralized, capture resistant, modular, free and open.
### Speculative Realism & Undercapital
In the farthest reaches of our thinking this year, we realized the ontological significance of the alternative and aggressively pluralistic tactics of the open protocol form, one that points to a much needed cultural orientation for the Ethereum ecosystem itself. 
By ontology, we mean, of course, what is real - namely, what entities enjoy legibility in a system when you're drawing one up. If cultural undergrounds are ontologically creative (in part because of their deployment of a maximally permissive knowledge reproduction strategy), it is because their acute sense of aesthetic self-determination - against all passivity and spectacle - ceases to be disciplined into a category of art and infects all manner of organizational logistics, governance and economics. In cultural undergrounds, the pluralistic forking of open protocols locates itself at the speculative edge of the real, and its empirical imagination actively builds around exotic entities: scene egregores, crowd consciousnesses, agential vibes and colors out of space. 
To speak of these entities in institutional time is to be subject to ridicule, but immersion into the protocol underground is an empirical ordeal that alters your tolerance quotient of what is real by showing you, through inputs and outputs, what works. The economic space of undercapital is rich with empirically realized, underinstitutional inputs and outputs that point the way toward a pragmatic, formalized, interoperable action space under a condition of social creativity and imagination. 
### Ethereum as a tool for Prefigurative Infrastructure
If there is a meaningful consistency between the extitutional strategy of open protocolization and the proliferation of open web protocols in the Ethereum ecosystem, the question becomes, where has one succeeded where the other has failed?
For the undergrounds, it’s on the level of cultural imagination, for they have elevated the death of institutional values to an ontological status and discovered new seats of agency that point to new ways of living in the world. In flights of microeconomic planning and ad hoc governance, they have developed atmospheres and corridors of social life that are peopled with far weirder creatures than any institutionally sanctioned humanism could contain. 
On the other hand, these experiments in many-worlding remain scarce, offering little threat of competition to the dominant systems that enjoy robust channels of expansion and reproduction. Reproducing without the above mentioned “hazards of scaling” has remained a taboo for these undergrounds, while for the Ethereum community, the nurturing and resourcing of free protocols is a technical problem with dozens of engineered solutions, from DAOs to self curated registries to token engineering and exotic participatory funding strategies to the many hybrids between them. 
Cities represent an ancient and creative locus for the capture and censorship resistance Ethereum aspires to. If their cultural undergrounds have long since discovered open protocolization as a natural defense against an (often legally enforced) institutional hegemony, along with scenes and extitutional storefronts to expand those protocols, their sole limitation is the one of scaling. To our eye, many scene veterans are morbidly content with the fatalism of this project: to scale is to die (a sensible impulse, given the barriers mentioned above). Against this self-reinforcing impasse, Ethereum’s pragmatic sensibility offers an exit: in a machinic, thermodynamically grounded *formalization without institutions*, the social tendency to pluralism and empathic imagination could be unleashed.
**The Open Protocol Research Group is Ven Gist, MacksWolf and Exeunt. We are a research initiative of Portland’s Ethereal Forest DAO, currently conducting interviews in the Portland region to gain insight on the autonomous structures that animate our present - and the promise they hold for our future.**
notes
[1] Aleksandr Svyatogor, “Biocosmic Individualism,” [https://cosmos.art/cosmic-bulletin/2022/biocosmic-interindividualism](https://cosmos.art/cosmic-bulletin/2022/biocosmic-interindividualism)
[2] Check Ven and Exeunt's pre-OPRG publication Friends of the Outside: Control, Substrates and the Afterlife of DAOs for a little lyrical indulgence on this topic. [https://zora.co/collect/oeth:0x2d17e1c913a616e30ff267afda30a69d9ad25343](https://zora.co/collect/oeth:0x2d17e1c913a616e30ff267afda30a69d9ad25343).
[3] Note that legacy institutions are often handicapped by the panoply of forces that make their internal protocols antimemetic and anti-empirical.
[4] Jessy Kate Schingler and Primavera de Filippi, “An Introduction to Extitutional Theory,” January 2021, Berkman Klein Center Collection, [https://medium.com/berkman-klein-center/an-introduction-to-extitutional-theory-e74b5a49ea53](https://medium.com/berkman-klein-center/an-introduction-to-extitutional-theory-e74b5a49ea53).
[5] “Open Protocols and Extitutions in Urban Spaces with Exeunt (July 24, 2024)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0_DAodA0Js.
[6] Open Protocol Research Group, “Sketches Toward a Theory of the Protocol Underground,” July 2024, [https://mirror.xyz/openprotocolresearch.eth/YuZvCx5ge2nQXo8L2n0iWKN_CflivaCfsoLNMoVTqf4](https://mirror.xyz/openprotocolresearch.eth/YuZvCx5ge2nQXo8L2n0iWKN_CflivaCfsoLNMoVTqf4).
[7] Open Protocol Research Group, Undercapital: Open Protocols and the Underground Potential of the Distributed Ledger, September 2024, [https://gallery.manifold.xyz/optimism/listing?listingId=586](https://gallery.manifold.xyz/optimism/listing?listingId=586).
**

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title: Undercapital
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author: Exeunt, Open Protocol Research Group
date: 2024-09-10
---
### **Undercapital**
*By Exeunt and the Open Protocol Research Group*
*The following essay marks a significant expansion of both the open protocol strand of our research and the archival detour into what we have called “the protocol underground” that precedes it in this pamphlet. In it, we attempt to explain the behavior of the underground through the lens of the virtual, a philosophical concept for the real and materially embedded trace of potential that exists within or perhaps alongside the world of proper things. This trace is articulated in a polyphonic voice, laden with indeterminacy and subtlety. It resists mechanization. To perceive and generatively engage with it requires an atmosphere of nonviolence and open experimentation. For these reasons, it is anathema to institutions.* 
*We propose to understand the behavior and strategic uniformity of the underground as the accumulation of spontaneous tactics for avoiding violent and mechanistic systems in order to approach, in a wide range of cultural forms, the virtual. Once established, we suggest a path forward to formalize economic systems around this underground intuition, proposing virtual capital as an orienting and generative frame for real economic games. Because it is expressed in intersubjective & relational fields rather than classical objects, building economic systems that prioritize virtual capital could require an overhaul of design thinking analogous to the overhaul of classical physics for the indeterminate field-mechanics of quantum physics. To cognize these forms may require an ontological ordeal, a conversion (of which there are many rumors in recent years). Lucky for us, we have the strategic intuition of the underground to follow, a world of intensive value we call undercapital.* 
# **Undercapital: The Extitutional Life of Value**
“*Money institutionalizes a social relation—or, rather, a set of relations of social production and reproduction.*” - Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, ***Assembly***
[Our previous piece](https://mirror.xyz/openprotocolresearch.eth/YuZvCx5ge2nQXo8L2n0iWKN_CflivaCfsoLNMoVTqf4) took us underground, to spaces where direct and participatory access to the aesthetic environment reigned and the injunction was free association within robust contexts of affirmative consent. We went looking for these core underground values, but we discovered along with them living zones where alien forms of capital dwelled: in the 1980’s underground LSD market, the abandoned warehouses and open valleys of the UK free party scene, the bedrooms of deviants and sadomasochists, the two variables from which all the participatory action was shaped seemed to be consent and *atmosphere*.  In a footnote, we were compelled to propose a ninth form of capital: virtual capital, the sense of potential, the empowering penumbra or haze of objects and entities as they verge on the edge of what is to come. 
The philosopher and translator Brian Massumi may be the major contemporary scholar of the virtual, a key concept in the work of Gilles Deleuze and a key proto-concept or theme in work of the natural philosopher Henri Bergson. Consider Massumi on Bergson’s reading of Zeno’s paradox: “*When Zeno shoots his philosophical arrow, he thinks of its flight path in the commonsense way, as a linear trajectory made up of a sequence of points or positions that the arrow occupies one after the other. The problem is that between one point on a line and the next, there is an infinity of intervening points. lf the arrow occupies a first point along its path, it will never reach the next-unless it occupies each of the infinity of points between. Of course, it is the nature of infinity that you can never get to the end of it. The arrow gets swallowed up in the transitional infinity. Its flight path implodes. The arrow is immobilized.*”
Bergson takes Zeno’s paradox as a gesture to a dimension of reality that can’t be understood on the representational plane - an element of immanent continuity or in-itselfness that can’t be broken up into component measurables. For Massumi, these different modes of reality can be thought of as “intensive” and “extensive.” The arrival of the arrow at its target testifies to the intensive nature of its trajectory:
 “*Extensive space, and the arrested objects occupying the positions into which it is divisible, is a back-formation from cessation. The dynamic enabling the back-formation is "intensive" in the sense that movement, in process, cannot be determinately indexed to anything outside of itself. It has withdrawn into an all-encompassing relation with what it will be. lt is in becoming, absorbed in occupying its field of potential.*” [1]
Elsewhere, we have referred to the prefigurative circle, borrowed from anarchist politics, where means and ends are fused. In the underground web space, we sometimes call this an “infinite game,” a game with no intention of ending, played for the pleasure of itself. In philosophical terms, you could say that the *telos* of such a game is fused with the process, or the process itself is the *telos*. The intensive is like a metaphysical extension of this logic: the world of entities seen as they gesturally embody their potential, beneath any singular embodiment. Bergson thought of it as an object in *duration* rather than linear time; those well-versed in certain spiritual traditions might think of it as the “subtle body” of an object or environment. [2] Practically, this points us in the right direction: perceiving and being affected by this dimension requires a patience or subtlety, and a peace. 
It’s our claim that this “intensive” reality of things in their becoming is the object of the underground, the organizing principle for its many disparate articulations. Of course, to speak of “the underground” is already to assume a unity. In the previous piece, we called it “the protocol underground” to emphasize strategic patterns that come from lack of access to institutional sanction. Here, we look at it from the underside: protocolization as a strategy of flight, avoidance of institutional sanction in pursuit of the thing that institutional presence diminishes or destroys. This thing is anathema to violence, and to mechanization; it requires a patience and willingness to hazard the far reaches of subjectivity. It is only experienced through an *intersubjective ordeal*, attention in a state of withdrawn ego. (What’s it feel like? A transpersonal swell of electricity in your spine.) We call this intensive field or substance “the virtual.”
## The Virtual
The virtual is a peculiar term, ripe for misinterpretation, especially in the context of the web. The philosopher Levi R. Bryant does as good of a job as any of explaining its nuance, and is worth quoting at length.
“*…virtual is not to be confused with virtual reality. The latter is generally treated as a simulacrum of reality, as a sort of false or computer generated reality. By contrast, the virtual is entirely real without, for all that, being actual. The term “virtuality” comes from the Latin virtus, which has connotations of potency and efficacy. As such, the virtual, as virtus, refers to powers and capacities belonging to an entity. And in order for an entity to have powers or capacities, it must actually exist. In this connection, while the virtual refers to potentiality, it would be a mistake to conflate this potentiality with the concept of a potential object. A potential object is an object that does not exist but which could come to exist. By contrast, the virtual is strictly a part of a real and existing object. The virtual consists of the volcanic powers coiled within an object.*” 
Let’s take this foundation and continue into some orienting statements, unlocked with some attention to potential areas of resonance with or relevance to the underground: 
#### The virtual is “real but not actual.”
Deleuze once called himself a “transcendental empiricist,” interested in disruptions to the subject-object paradigm (transcendental moments) only to the extent that they were available to direct sensible experimentation, i.e., that they were real. The virtual is an insistently materialist or physicalist concept: though it may refer to experiential fields that have often been associated with the supernatural, it places them squarely on the plane of nature. Concertgoers, artists, sex lovers or even athletes are familiar with this order of substance that is difficult to talk about, but palpable, there to be encountered by all participants who would hazard to enter into an intersubjective key. [3] When the participants fail to reach the critical mass of this delicate recursion, its absence seems equally palpable, felt independently by all in the room. There are times in history where its assertive reality changes the course of events dramatically (try a quick search of The Mute Girl of Portici, 1830). 
#### The virtual expresses objects and entities in their multiplicity.
Continuing on with the common notions of this crowd-cognizance of the virtual, consider the refrain heard over and over again to describe such notable events (or scenes, or summers…): “*At that moment, it felt like anything was possible.*” If you asked someone who made this claim what exactly was possible, what would they say? In our reading, the phrase pushes against its own grammar. Its referent is not any given thing, but *anything*, the irreducible multiplicity, the potential expressed in its intensive plurality, not at all in the service of the actual. For both Bergson and Deleuze, it is the submersion in time, the intractable blurriness of duration that affords it this freedom. And duration can’t be abstracted.  *Sorry - you just had to be there.*
#### Relation to the virtual entails a marriage of means and ends.
The virtual loathes representation or commercialization, half-baked metaphors or morality tales: because it is prefigurative and intensive in nature, it stands only for itself. Any teenager can tell the difference between the cultural products of focus groups (or the tv series scripts of grad students) and the eccentric or disturbed creativity of those who bothered to turn off the faucet of means and ends; who ventured to listen to the “penumbra” silence of the material world in ordert to create an honest and self-contained impersonal expression that  “cannot be determinately indexed to anything outside of itself.” Outside of the instrumentalizing imperatives of institutions, the actual that is produced can be grounded in the savage and pluralistic vectors of the plane of nature. 
Take the nineteenth century critic John Ruskin’s description of the gothic builders, who he argues must have been “altogether set free” given their rude and obstinate creations, "creations of ungainly shape and rigid limb, but full of wolfish life." [4] He saw in their disturbed, gargoyle eccentricity "a profound sympathy with the fulness and wealth of the material universe." Their imagination appears conjured from the stone, a materialist imagination, gained not by imposition but by a transpersonal ordeal and a negotiation with the material conditions before them. We see it in the psychedelic and nonsymbolic color-codes of Edgar Allen Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death,” the barely melodic screams of Diamanda Galas, Sun Ra’s space outfits, Robert Chamber’s Yellow King: raw visceral expression that is anything but metaphor, a record of a material encounter beyond objects.
#### The virtual is available to strategy and formalization even as it remains resistant to standardization.
As we have seen in the “two squeezes method” of Jay Wiseman’s s/m manual outlined in the [previous essay](https://www.openmutualism.xyz/Open-Protocol-Research-Group/Sketches-Toward-a-Theory-of-the-Protocol-Underground), undergrounds have been known to generate detailed strategies for attaining access to the virtual. To say that mechanization or instrumentalization by standardized regimes results in harsh diminishment of the virtual is not to say that some manner of repeated protocolization isn’t needed. The protocol underground is nothing but these intergenerational and cultural strategies for engaging the intensive. (As we will see later, these *open protocols* differ from institutional ones insomuch as, rather than dealing with objects and atoms, they are oriented toward a field or phase space, a polyvocal order-of-things full of divergence and indeterminacy.) 
The virtual, in brief, is a real and powerful dimension of the material world, but it appears phantom to many because it does not correlate with naked subjects. To relate to it and be empowered by it depends on a porousness in one’s individuality, an unthought, known as much to craftsmen and athletes as to religious mystics and artists. In the realm of institutions, whether nationalist, commercial, religious, we see its power captured and chained to brands, figureheads, flags, sentimental imaginals far removed from the eccentricity and in-itselfness of the plane of nature. It is beholden to a *telos*, always something or someone else’s end: mystified, antireal, rooted in domination. The underground, in the accumulated, impersonal intentionality of its designs, asserts the autonomy, ubiquity, and democracy of the virtual.
An underground value-accounting of the virtual as a ninth form of capital would need to somehow follow this prefigurative circle. It would seek to expand rather than reduce and control. As we have learned from the underground, this means asserting a savage and uncaptured pacifism, defiance of the tendency of violence (especially hidden or implied, Graeber’s ‘structural violence’) to drain the atmosphere, divorce means from ends and fill the room with anti-aura of rigid persons and things. Take us literally when we say that the objects in a space withdrawal their power when supremacy is in the room. “Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough” [5] - the inverse is true. The underground long since moved this knowledge from poetic insight to actionable process. The decentralized web can iterate into this mode, join forces, become underground. But, in the tradition of design pragmatism - the rational inspiration that informed the eight forms framework in Gregory Landua and Ethan Roland’s ***Regenerative Enterprise*** - it must do so in unsuperstitious aspect.
The prefigurative virtual: its stakes are no less real for being “vague”. [6] Establish peace, find an impersonal attention, die a little, and watch the room awaken around you. Deep roots sprouting. This is intersubjective power. How to formalize it?
## Open Protocols & Peaceful Money
The Open Protocol Research Group and Ethereal Forest have, across our work and investigations, hinted at a generalized autonomism (independence from structures of legitimate violence) and toward legitimacy by other means. In the case of crypto, this takes the form of thermodynamically or mathematically secured cryptographic “hardness.” [7] In the analogue realm, communities of intersubjective trust (what Austin Wade Smith once called “epi-consent”) fill this same role. It is the underground thesis of web3 adoption that the two could be weaved together by the protocolized structures of decentralized and emergent legitimacy - strategies that both have discovered, as a matter of prefigurative necessity. Open protocolization is the structural bridge, peaceful autonomy is the deep value that buttresses it. 
What becomes clear from the investigation into the underground, the realm of open protocols, is that it is the very process of relating to the virtual that makes the open protocol thesis work. Recall the definition: open protocols are “social and technical protocols woven together into a compound cultural protocol of improvisational, empirical imagination.” This “atmosphere” of divergence and open empiricism, the enthusiasm for the intersubjective field, is what lends open protocols the viral memetic power to circulate in the underground. They are programmed with its real effects. If, as Massumi writes, “the surplus of reality that constitutes the virtual guarantees the gift of freedom granted to the actual,” open protocols are empowered by the freedom of actualization. 
And yet, there remains this final boss of institutionalization, virally decentralized and free floating, that aspires to enter into every relationship and divorce means and ends. “Money designates and reproduces a specific social structure,” write Hardt & Negri. “Money *institutionalizes* a social relation—or, rather, a set of relations of social production and reproduction.” The underground finds itself in a double bind inasmuch as the resources needed for social relations to reproduce themselves are tethered to a mechanism for divorcing means and ends. The capacities of money - the unit of account, the means of exchange, the store of value - are not institutional in and of themselves, but their particular configuration in the arbitrary and violently conditioned order of *fiat*. 
In no way is this group endorsing the abolition of money, even in its current form; fiat, or something that looks like it, will continue to have important use cases, especially as an “exit value” from the geographical and contextual locales invoked below. In the outside and interstitial spaces of these locales, there is room for a non-institutional form of it. But as as long as the whole index of value forms is systematically subjugated to the rule of financial capital - as long as the circulation of resources is directed toward the supernaturalist myopia of profit-in-itself - autonomist relationships will be systematically diminished and marginalized. What is needed, if we are reading the landscape correctly, is an extitutional or underground account of capital that could think both autonomy and the virtual that autonomy affords access to. 
Massumi himself, along with colleague Erin Manning, took a shot at an expression of extitutional capital in their collaborations with the Economic Space Agency. [8] We encourage any reader to explore the Three Ecologies Institute and the 3E Process Seed Bank. It’s our feeling that these efforts were partially compromised by the institutional conditions of their emergence. (Consider the title of this article on SenseLab, of which 3EI is an outgrowth: “Philosophy Can Be  a Living Process: Inside Senselab’s Radically Interdisciplinary Graduate Research Culture.”) We’ll let the graduate students enjoy their Temporary Autonomous Zones within the university walls. But the highest stake projects in the “revaluation of value” are not to be found, in our opinion, in the isolation of art projects funded by university endowment funds. 
To forge a new direction, we propose an encounter with the extant models of altereconomic creativity, circulating open protocols of the underground that orbit the virtual as both the memetic fuel for their reproduction and the end goal of their operations. They work at a different level of extitutional clarity, being “located” in ephemeral pop up efforts, occasional excitations of what is properly a field of pluralistic and technological improvisation. Insomuch as the Open Protocol Research Group and our extitutional affiliates remain without institutional affiliation - inasmuch as DAOs are mere excitations of an ecosystem substrate with always porous boundaries and prefigurative ends - we may have the right eyes to develop practical concepts from this clarity. And potentially, given enough patience and receptivity, to weave those concepts into the field. 
## undercapital
What’s ultimately at play in this research vector is the distinction between enumerating the virtual -  instrumentalizing it to the end of indexed quantity - and extracting or “expressing” from it operational passages that can expand or formalize prefiguration. We must, as we say, *formalize without standardizing*.
**Undercapital** is the combinatorial problem space - the sum of operational passages - of the eight forms of capital and the three faculties of money when deployed toward the expansion of the virtual field. This takes the form of a literal matrix of possible combinations of these forms, but it does so in a peculiar way: because the virtual field expands under prefigurative conditions, the submersion of the various forms into themselves, even individually, produces the virtual as a positive externality (just as a swordmaker, in the transpersonal process of gaining artful expertise in the craft, discovers an instance of the virtual animating his steels). When realist conditions are present - peace in the absence of institutional regimes, consent, fluency in intersubjective physics - the virtual is abundant. 
And if undercapital is oriented by the wealth of the virtual that accompanies it, we know which way the ship sails: This is the same wealth that give substance and reproductive capacity to open protocols, inasmuch as they diminish the need for institutions. Encoded in their strategies of open use and propagation is an assertion of the open field of (empirical) possibility as an end in itself. To this extent, the stakes of undercapital are entangled with a structural attitude of p2p and stigmeric coordination, and protocolization as a free formalization of any would be “standard.”
Still, the question remains of value flow: if open protocols are the path forward, what kind of economic games could push toward a tipping of the scale in the direction of protocolization? If extitutions (defined in previous work as outposts of open protocols that feign institutional legibility but whose behavior is only understood in an open protocol framework) are needed to expand the reach of open protocols, how can they be integrated into systems of multicapital provisioning that avoid financialization?
Experimental efforts to multiply the forms of capital that people organize themselves around have an accomplished history that we can learn from. Every city has their local coups. For our town of Portland, one of the most significant coups is the decades-old initiative the Rebuilding Center. They followed the following steps to scale to surprising influence and persistence in the urban bazaar:
1. **Develop a concept of multicapital wealth.** Practical necessity, circulated frameworks or a stroke of community inspiration leads to a concept on the community level of collaboratively produced or commonly-held wealth and a concept of community autonomy is formed.
2. **Accumulation of multicapital resources** by way of unlocking latent stores - of which, because of impoverished frameworks that ignore the holism of the eight forms, there are many.  In the case of Rebuilding Center, this was simple stores of imperfect or difficult to resell housing materials including cabinets, fixtures, structural components. Once recognized, those who possess them tend to be empowered and energized by the realization of their direct autonomous access to important stores of wealth, and step 1 is emboldened.
3. **Develop a protocol of sustainable and effective resource allocation.** This involves everything from community governance (esp. when the resource being allocated is based in living capital, i.e. cultural and social) to navigating the revenue evil curve. Rebuilding Center was able to reach a “flow state” of legitimacy that allowed it to receive enough consistent volunteer labor to be sustainable.
4. **Institutional legitimacy and state subsidies.** Because of the networked nature of multicapital initiatives, siloed departments of “environmental protection” and “racial equity” often flock to aid the autonomous initiative, once it is up and running. (The second order effects are intersectional because the direct access to multicapital wealth cuts across multiple systems of exploitation.) Most important to the formula is the way in which the autonomous capacity of the initiative allows for an expansion of the Overton Window of what constitutes acceptable public action. [9]
This playbook (a common roadmap for the most extitutionally oriented nonprofits) constitutes a field-tested strategy for staving off the worst elements of standardization and scaling more or less on the community’s own terms and within patterns that light the way to autonomy from the instrumental reign of financial profit. Being a large, multiple city block-sized brick and mortar outfit, the rigorous correspondence to a range of regulatory and financial standards was an unavoidable need for RC. But it may be the case that undercapital initiatives can’t follow this path.
It seems uncontroversial to those familiar with underground communities that undergrounds simply do not scale. This insight is usually delivered with a superstitious air or a veteran’s cynicism: “nothing good in this world can last.” It’s important to internalize this field knowledge, but it is for us realists to reject any tendency to quietism and supernaturalism: as Massumi and Deleuze show us, the virtual is *real* if not actual. It’s expression is akin to the probabilistic fields of post-Newtonian physics: we can design around these real elements so long as we consider them not as particles, quantities, objects, but as the distributed likelihood of a visitation. And we know - or rather we can learn - what increases the likelihood.
Consider the three major elements of undergrounds identified in the previous essay: The mutual assumption of high agency. A robust culture of informed and affirmative consent. A participatory and pluralistic aesthetic. In a word, the charge of the virtual, the *stuff* of the underground, depends upon conditions of inter-agency, whereas the modes of consumption common to institutional spaces depend upon a learned passivity or complacency and a commercially or administratively driven taste for homogeneity. For scaling undergrounds, this makes for (at least) three specific barriers:
1. **Institutional-behavioral bias.** In the United States, we have a complex and multilayered bureaucratic regime of licensed specialization, as well as a deeply cynical culture of litigious opportunism bolstered by a professional class of legal professionals. This puts consumers and owners in what Slate Star Codex famously called a “multipolar trap,” a downward spiral of paralysis before mutually interwoven elements that are, in their sum, oppressive.  Participatory patterns of high agency and active rather than consumptive aesthetic creation suffocate under standards optimized - or regulatorily disciplined into - a low agency logic.
2. **Limits to circulation of underground protocols.** Similarly, large scale operations attract low agency participants, and in particular participants who are not sophisticated enough in strategies of affirmative consent and negotiated intersubjectivity to be able to attend to the needs of the atmosphere. Underground activities require cultural or placed-based specificity, what Ven calls “the contextual/geographical local” i.e. a scene or a neighborhood - in order to meaningfully develop and sustain the characteristics of a high agency public. When it sees a scene scale beyond this local specificity, the virtual flees with both feet.
3. **Cult of personality.** Perhaps the most delicate feature of undergrounds, the one that breaks the most quickly when scaling, are their headlessness. The specter of a cult of personality is wonderfully destructive in two senses: the ability of outsiders to identify a literal or figurative locus of liability, a scapegoat, which it can “coopt, kill or imprison” (in the case of artistic movements, this is almost always cooptation or self-destruction); the tendency for elements in the community to elevate a locus of energy that they can *withdraw agency* to (in this way, the cult of personality reflects in one breath the worst tendencies of problem 1 & 2).
There’s a contradiction latent in the question of scaling communities of the virtual insomuch as the virtual is a facet of material contingency. Think of it as a moving image of potential manifestations produced by a given material to show, for the benefit of those who have bothered to encounter it, its singularity. For a shopping complex, an acre of land is an acre of land: the environments of communities of the virtual enjoy no such fungibility. In a passage of some of his earliest reflections on the virtual from Difference and Repetition (1968), Deleuze writes: 
*For the nature of the virtual is such that, for it, to be actualised is to be differenciated. Each differenciation is a local integration or a local solution which then connects with others in the overall solution or the global integration. This is how, in the case of the organic, the process of actualisation appears simultaneously as the local differenciation of parts, the global formation of an internal milieu, and the solution of a problem posed within the field of constitution of an organism. An organism is nothing if not the solution to a problem, as are each of its differenciated organs, such as the eye which solves a light 'problem'; but nothing within the organism, no organ, would be differenciated without the internal milieu endowed with a general effectivity or integrating power of regulation.* 
Note that the organism is not a metaphor here: this divergent actualization occurs across scales, and is as true of organisms as well as geographies, languages, cultures. The nuance between actualization and the virtual itself is admittedly a difficult one, but we can note that organisms, languages, geographies, enrich and intensify the field of real possibles: the stakes, then, of the need for the local to “connect with others” is the persistence and expansion of the material trace which creates more intensity, more dense potential. They become an organism so they can persist in difference. 
Already in "[Sketches](https://www.openmutualism.xyz/Open-Protocol-Research-Group/Sketches-Toward-a-Theory-of-the-Protocol-Underground)” we’ve seen the illicit underground discover, out of necessity, a strategy of open protocolization resistant to the three barriers to scaling. To preserve underground values and subvert the key mechanistic depressions of the virtual field, they scaled horizontally in a way that was culturally and technically headless. But their rebuttal to the supernaturalists comes at a cost: with each instance of horizontal scaling comes a fracturing of coherence, a *difference*: to persist, they sacrifice a body, diffusing like a mist (or hardening into cooptations, *giving up the ghost* as it were). 
The strategic problem space of undercapital, of the formalizable potential systems of an overground society of the virtual, is how to take advantage of this drift, how to alchemize it from “local” degradation to global enrichment: a “*general effectivity*” or integrating power. In the case of Deleuze’s body, “*no organ would be differenciated without the internal milieu endowed with a general effectivity*.” Are the disparate cells capable of operation totally separate from the milieu? Only insofar as they can survive without resources (not very far). They’re viable difference is contingent on their relation to the unity of the body. If undergrounds die - or if we often offer experience undergrounds in their fleetingness, in a persistent dying - it would seem to be because they lack a concept of *general effectivity*, a notion of commonness with the autonomous and horizontally scaling “differenciations”. So what would be the contours of this “general effectivity,” this body?
## A note on the category of art
So far much of our reflection on the underground has been reduced to the so-called “arts” It strikes us that the label “art” is a strategy for compartmentalizing and mollifying what should rightfully be a primary tension in our society, even greater than that of class. A common refrain, “She makes it into an *art form*,” would seem to signal both deference and mild condescension: she goes too far, aestheticizes it too much, *she's an accountant for Christ’s sake*. This signals to us that many fields are pregnant with the stilted excess of deep material engagement. Beyond logistical comprehension is material knowledge, and deep material knowledge is (again) an intersubjective and ontologically challenging ordeal. 
If the arts provide countless examples of rhizomatic free association indexed against dynamic and locally contingent material and technical conditions, they are only a prefiguration of a material inspiration that might consume all sectors. *Art is a fallacy, we all must become artists.* Or rather, the underground is ubiquitous inasmuch as many of us are all already artists, engaging with local virtuals, seeing through (or more accurately, seeing *with*) the garden or the refurbished bookshelf, whatever we have cared to deeply know in its own expression, to the multiplicity it contains.
## Actualizing Undercapital
The question of undercapital, the mobilization of the eight forms of capital and the three faculties of money to the expansion of the virtual field, is also the question of constructing a body from these pluralistic and multiscale social forms through which nutritive resources can be circulated: what Spinoza calls “a common notion.” 
One could argue that the virtual, by virtue of its immeasurability, is anathema to design, planning or global conceptualization. It seems to be the general opinion of the zeitgeist, for the moment. As materialists, we can’t help call this out as fallacy: we are merely entering the era where relational fields must be privileged over objects/particles, where a new type of planning needs to be conceptualized in reference to a probabilistic rather than quantitative index. Fields are real, they are just of a different order of causality. Undercapital asks: *How can we develop economic games that relate to intersubjective fields?*
For a first target, the low-hanging fruit is open protocolization itself. Undercapital enthusiasts can fund pop-up think tanks that work to solve, in a given context (any given context, at any scale), problems like the following:
#### How can a protocol be employed to intensive ends?
Consider the work done to adapt LSD from a DoD mind control initiative to a tool for exploring the intersubjective field (“Turn on, Tune in, Drop out”). We have discussed at length how certain technologies of reuse and repair or small scale food production have been honed in the direction of autonomy from centralized systems. What manner of creative divergence comes from those who go to their garden rather than the CVS, who depend on their knowledge in a craft over their appetite for consumerism to fix a problem of sustenance? 
Like the free parties discussed in the first post, in some cases the journey might be greater than the destination. The labor intensive nature of autonomous action generates the positive externality of deep material engagement, just as deep material engagement often generates the positive externality of autonomy. Other practices at the level of the individual and below might be encoded that could add further positive externalities, ones which the individuals themselves could benefit form. The virtual takes care of its own. 
#### How can protocols stack to maximize each other’s capacities?  
The multiscale character of the virtual is a rich design vector: open protocols for seeding ubiquitous local gardens, results themselves of a caring transpersonal ordeal, could scale the viability of autonomous pharmaceutical experiments that lead to new horizons of non-normal states. A renaissance of garage manufacturing and hardware hacking could develop into regional or even neighborhood aesthetic vernaculars, communities erupting in swells of participatory agency over their environment. As in the case of the multi-capital initiatives mentioned earlier, formalized strategies for encountering the virtual generate second order effects that diminish institutions and encourage material curiosity, open empiricism, intersubjectvie games. The virtual is the subliminal means by which a general autonomism could go viral. 
#### What are the contours of Minimal Viable Evasion?
The regulatory authority of the state acts on always shifting ground, push and pull regimes of emphasis and favor. Undergrounds, especially urban undergrounds are well aware of the many areas where non-enforcement is a de facto policy. Despite stereotypes, it would appear to us that law enforcement in underfunded urban locales are often willing to ignore a peaceful good time so long as the participants have done due diligence with neighbors and other local stakeholders. The problem comes when large scale commercial or public interests are significantly threatened, especially when it comes to legal liability. Kyle Smith at LexDAO has invoked “inverted precedent,” potential legal engineering tactics for establishing autonomous contracts that would be recognized by the state. How can these be combined with known underground tactics for staying under the radar of enforcement to generate passable strategies for the kind of participatory and experimental gatherings needed for group encounters with the virtual?
Ephemeral open protocol DAOs might pop up for six weeks or six months to accomplish deep research in the extant tactics and the new technological strategies available, contribute it to the strategic lexicon (an open protocol library like the one being established at Open Civics), and dissolve. Members of our community are already working on forking Protocol Guilds self-curated registries in order to establish vehicles for flowing resources to researchers who prioritize protocolization as a means of supporting and maintaining the extitutional clarity of the underground.
## Token Engineering
Inasmuch as communities that are oriented toward the virtual field take the shape of this fragmented milieu, the clearest path for formalizing value flows in their direction is to establish network effects by way of an economic grammar for common cause. Can reputation tokens be deployed to solve scaling problem number two, the circulation of protocols and etiquette for high agency participation? Individuals could establish peer legitimacy in one scene and use it as entry to another - no need for one standard, they could be pluralistic - but in our view the dynamics of surveillance and implications of “social credit score” would do more harm to the prospect of intersubjective ordeals than it would benefit the scaling problem. 
Community reputation tokens would invert the logic - they could be used to solicit resources, encouraging high agency participants to engage new scenes while leaving it to the scenes themselves to maintain a vertical limit to scaling (an important engine of horizontal differenciation) corresponding to the physics of underground etiquette or ‘epi-consent.’ These may, however, be contradictory inputs: generally, the key strategy for preserving epi-consent is to remain opaque to the general public. The design game amounts to a rivalrous balance between social capital and virtual capital, the hazards of public legibility to the maintenance of the vibe.
The desired path would seem to require a negotiation between the two: some level of minimum viable reputation token to allow trusted participants to signal that a locale meets a given rubric of the underground - most of all robust consent protocols and institutional disaffiliation - mixed with a zero knowledge architecture for dispersing funds to a burner address for a scene without requiring public visibility of that scene.  Guerilla funders could send fleets of high trust auditors into the global underground to jumpstart resource flows, signaling across months to generate a registry in which _something_ cool is happening, who knows what?(This would require fairly elaborate legal engineering that we think are nonetheless viable.) A side effect of this scene-anonymous resource share is a collective underconsciousness of the underground, a knowledge that a tide is rising, and access to resources are no longer contingent on institutional legibility.
Still, these designs are trapped within a logic of *financial capital allocation* between *discrete entities*. Undercapital design gets much more savage when tracing multicapital and multifunctional allocation techniques across horizontally expanding threads of the underground, defined not in terms of discrete entities - not even primarily extitutions - but protocols and fields. When material labor becomes de-institutionalized, tinged with affect and virtual life, are its products scarce in the same way? Cultural, experiential and intellectual capital, the key substances of (socio-)technical open protocols, may have the power to render the other forms abundant in a way that deemphasizes traditional economic scarcity. What then?
It’s hard to say what is science fiction and what is a direct material path forward - that is the work of an undercapital analysis that could take years to unfold. Yet open protocolization and the viral adoption of virtually grounded autonomous labor could unfold into a runaway complementarity at any time. Our engineering efforts should occupy that gap. What can dynamic issuance, bonding curves, self-curated registries and on-chain mutual credit mean for a first breath of an inverted city or cultural economy? As supermodular network effects outside of institutions grow into a common wealth, is some economic activity supplanted by a highly engaged tokenized commons governance that mirrors the polycentric and ever-forking structure of the open protocols? 
## A memetic frame for a ‘general effectivity’ of the virtual
Many cultures have a festival of the liminal - All Hallows Eve, Fet Gede, Día de los muertos, Gaelic Samhain, Walpurgis Night, the Hungry Ghost festival, days where the boundary between earth and the underworld is thin. They are at once utterly populist, but charged with gothic indulgences - spectors of “inorganic life”, atmospheric disorientation, a sense of coextensive realities - auric joys within a kind of folk mysticism of the earth. The literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin writes of the carnivalesque aura commonly associated with the folk underworld, as opposed to the solemn and guilt-ridden portrayals of institutional regimes. We'll quote him at length, from his *Problems of Dosteovsky’s Poetics*: what constitutes the carnivalesque? 
*Carnival is a pageant without footlights and without a division into performers and spectators. In carnival everyone is an active participant, everyone communes in the carnival act. Carnival is not contemplated and, strictly speaking, not even performed; its participants live in it, they live by its laws as long as those laws are in effect; that is, they live a carnivalistic life. Because carnivalistic life is life drawn out of its usual rut, it is to some extent "life turned inside out," "the reverse side of the world" ("monde al'envers").*
*The laws, prohibitions, and restrictions that determine the structure and order of ordinary, that is noncarnival, life are suspended during carnival: what is suspended first of all is hierarchical structure and all the forms of terror, reverence, piety, and etiquette connected with it ….*
*Carnival is the place for working out, in a concretely sensuous, half-real and half-play-acted form, a new mode of interrelationship between individuals, counterposed to the all-powerful socio-hierarchical relationships of noncarnival life. The behavior, gesture, and discourse of a person are freed from the authority of all hierarchical positions (social estate, rank, age, property) defining them totally in noncarnival life, and thus from the vantage point of noncarnival life become eccentric and inappropriate. Eccentricity is a special category of the carnival sense of the world, organically connected with the category of familiar contact; it permits - in concretely sensuous form - the latent sides of human nature to reveal and express themselves.*
*Linked with familiarization is a third category of the carnival sense of the world: carnivalistic mésalliances. A free and familiar attitude spreads over everything: over all values, thoughts, phenomena, and things. All things that were once self-enclosed, disunified, distanced from one another by a noncarnivalistic hierarchical worldview are drawn into carnivalistic contacts and combinations. Carnival brings together, unifies, weds, and combines the sacred with the profane, the lofty with the low, the great with the insignificant, the wise with the stupid.*
*Connected with this is yet a fourth carnivalistic category, profanation: carnivalistic blasphemies, a whole system of carnivalistic debasings and bringings down to earth, carnivalistic obscenities linked with the reproductive power of the earth and the body, carnivalistic parodies on sacred texts and sayings, etc.*
Later:
*Carnival is past millennia's way of sensing the world as one great communal performance. This sense of the world, liberating one from fear, bringing the world maximally close to a person and bringing one person maximally close to another (everything is drawn into the zone of free familiar contact), with its joy at change and its joyful relativity, is opposed to that one-sided and gloomy official seriousness which is dogmatic and hostile to evolution and change, which seeks to absolutize a given condition of existence or a given social order.*
As we have seen, our undergrounds have far advanced from the folk wisdom of the crowd, adopting a design consciousness proper not to a common tourist but a seasoned traveller - and yet the germ of a cultural knowledge of the power of the virtual and the implications of contacting it is here in these age old features of the carnivalesque. They are a deep psychic heritage. 
Crypto has always carried with it a strange inversion, even paranoia: the integrity and immutability of the blockchain calls into question the integrity of all else, making the world a cauldron of potential relativity, propaganda, statecraft. The culture at large is at an extreme saturation of distrust for institutions, making for a living global carnival of AI infections, UFOs, snake oil salesmen of all types: the unipolar integrity of the post-Cold War period has fragmented into a million pieces. To the perspectival disorientation of the carnivalesque, the populous is well-initiated. Now they need to find orientation in that new cosmology.
We have long considered solidity devs, musicians, party alchemists, woodworkers, guerilla chemists, etc. to be kindred spirits in their dedication to “the craft.” The layer of psychonautic inquiry added to all of these material enterprises when one considers the _virtual field_ that flanks them gives the term “craft” a different sense entirely. A concept of the wisdom of astrology, tarot and witchcraft has passed over into the mainstream and is on the tip of everyone’s tongue.The folk underworld revival in our culture - significant since at least the seventies, but resurgent in the post-covid era - points to a desire for agency in the virtual field. What would it mean to extitutionalize this impulse, bring it over the material threshold, to circulate the notion that the spirits have always spoken most to experi- mentalists, makers and pirate empiricists who derive their mysticism not from the stars but from grounded expertise in the stone and the loom?
If crypto has a major cultural export, it’s the conviction we find in our international community that, by peaceful means, with tools won by careful attention and the seeking out of patterns of hardness in our ephemeral world, we can collectively design reality. What are the infrared colors
and agencies of that coming real? Could the institutions even withstand a hypernaturalism, a mass awakening to an age of intensive or gothic materialism, where the only thing standing between us and a legion of alien agencies is our own autonomous labor?
***
 [1] Bergson takes this impression of the intensive as far as an imperative in Creative Evolution: “We should no longer be asking where a moving body will be, what shape a system will take, through what state a change will pass at a given moment: the moments of time, which are only arrests of our attention, would no longer exist; it is the flow of time, it is the very flux of the real that we should be trying to follow.”
[2] “An object is obviously not subjective. But if atmosphere is the elemental reality of the envelopment of potential surrounding and suffusing a locus of occurrent becoming, then objects have atmosphere. … This object, in addition to its sharpened functions, obscurely influences through the manner in which it carries a penumbra of alternatives whose edges will never be exhaustively charted. The feeling of the inexhaustibility of the object, in process and as propensity, is its aura: that by which it outdoes its utility and, more generally, exceeds intentionality…” (Massumi)
[3] The [psychedelic sex scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a1AccLPeDk&pp=ygUbYmxhZGUgcnVubmVyIDIwNDkgc2V4IHNjZW5l) between K, Mariette and the disembodied Joi in Blade Runner 2049 seems to us to be an important visual or visceral approximation of the perception of the virtual.
[4] John Ruskin, “[The Nature of the Gothic](https://homes.izmirekonomi.edu.tr/arch204/READINGS/02_RUSKIN.pdf)” in The Stones of Venice, Vol. II.
[5] George Washington Carver.
[6] “In any case, if the State always finds it necessary to repress the nomad and minor sciences, if it opposes vague essences and the operative geometry of the trait, it does so not because the content of these sciences is inexact or imperfect, or because of their magic or initiatory character, but because they imply a division of labor opposed to the norms of the State.” _A Thousand Plateaus_, 369.
[7] See Josh Stark, “[Atoms, Institutions, Blockchains](https://stark.mirror.xyz/n2UpRqwdf7yjuiPKVICPpGoUNeDhlWxGqjulrlpyYi0)”
[8] Find a profile on Massumi and Manning in Uriah Marc Todoroff, “[A Cryptoeconomy of Affect](https://thenewinquiry.com/a-cryptoeconomy-of-affect/)” in _The New Inquiry_.
[9] Other radical multi-capital initiatives have taken the provocation of Overton as one of their main ends. See our [interview with Mark Lakeman of City Repair](https://www.openmutualism.xyz/Open-Protocol-Research-Group/Sketches-Toward-a-Theory-of-the-Protocol-Underground) for a detailed recounting of one such alter-economic coup that greatly informed this work.

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title: assemblage
draft: false
tags: glossary
---
assemblage theory
A philosophical approach for studying the ontological diversity of agency, which means redistributing the capacity to act from an individual to a socio-material network of people, things, and narratives. Also known as _assemblage theory_ or _assemblage thinking_, this philosophical approach frames social complexity through fluidity, exchangeability, and their connectivity.

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title: autopoiesis
draft: false
tags:
- glossary
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autopoiesis
Self-creating system that maintains and reproduces itself through internal processes and boundaries. Originally describing living cells, now applied to organizations and social systems. Characterized by operational closure yet structural coupling with environment. Contrasts with sympoiesis by emphasizing internal rather than collaborative production.

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title: bounded intelligence
draft: false
tags:
- glossary
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bounded intelligence
Goal-oriented cognition confined within defined parameters, with specific capacities for solving problems within known domains. Functions through established maps of reality with clear objectives and metrics of success. Effective for well-defined challenges within stable contexts.

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title: deterritorialization
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tags:
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deterritorialization
The destabilizing of boundaries and fixed identities, freeing elements to form new assemblages. Movement that escapes established territories, creating lines of flight from rigid structures. Always followed by reterritorialization—the reorganization into new patterns and territories.

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title: extitutional space
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extitutional space
The dynamic zone between institutions where informal networks and relations flourish. Enables connections across institutional boundaries and between institutions and environments. Less structured than institutions but more coherent than unorganized space. Facilitates innovation through productive tension.

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title: extitution
draft: false
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extitutions
Discrete entities resembling institutions at face, extitutions are temporary organizational bodies meant serve to secure, protect and formalize the free empiricism of protocols. They do so by by a) culturally encoding protocols with open values, b) erecting temporary autonomous zones for the crystallization of those values (the discovery of extitutional flow state). Extitutions are known to hazard legibility before institutional forces, donning institutional masks in order to protect open protocols from cooptation and the hazards of scaling.
If all institutions contain "an interplay between institutional and extitutional dynamics" (Schingler, de Filippi, et al), extitutions are those entites where the former is totally subjugated to the latter. The actions of extitutions may appear irrational or even incoherent from the perspective of traditional economic game theory because of the radically nonrivalrous nature of the open protocols they support. Examples: [The Brotherhood of Eternal Love](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brotherhood_of_Eternal_Love), [The Society of Janus](https://soj.org/#cid=1227&wid=1901), [Spiral Tribe](https://djmag.com/features/history-spiral-tribe-uks-most-notorious-travelling-sound-system), San Francisco's [Bound Together Bookstore](https://boundtogether.org).

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institutions
Formalized social structures composed of codified roles, rules, and procedures designed for stability and predictability. Persistent systems that coordinate collective action through impersonal mechanisms. Creates boundaries between inside and outside, with clear membership criteria and governance structures.

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title: maker metaphysics
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maker metaphysics
An immanent feature of extitutional life, maker metaphysics aren’t stated explicitly, but expressed in the actions of makers. 
Makers may be Christians, Buddhists, Nihilists, but their actions and collaborations - during the time when they are making - operate under an open & practical ontology with the following features:
- Subject and object positions unsettle, expand and retract. Intersubjectivity (including with the inorganic) and extended cognition are taken for granted, so that intersubjective or cyborg forms are welcome before the practical judgment of “what a body can do.”
- Truth claims are recursively practical. The ground of being is considered real but fundamentally plural or super-objective - lacking the ability to cognate the whole directly, makers operate in rough, peripheral and interim truths. These truths suffice to the extent that they are able to engender more such truths. 
To the extent that scientific positivism posits a universal objectivity, maker metaphysics follows a pirate or perhaps gothic empiricism that poses the investigation of reality by way of the senses as an infinite rather than a finite game.

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**metastability**
A productive tension between stability and change. Neither rigid nor chaotic, but a system that maintains enough structure to persist while remaining adaptive enough to transform.

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title: open protocols
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open protocols
Freely propogated social and technical protocols woven together into a memetically tight compound cultural protocol of improvisational, **empirical imagination**.
If institutional protocols tend to have constraints on reproducibility or empirical veracity (military classification or organizational newspeak), open protocols are the spontaneous result of the absolute zero-point of these impulses: maximal memetic reproduction combined with dedicated empirical curiousity and integrity. Exposed to the weathers of this extitutional zero-point, compound protocols become refined into a flow-state or [machinic point] where the cultural injunction to open experimentation is entangled with a technical toolkit such that the technical protocol becomes synonymous with freedom and pluralism.
Examples: LSD, Sadomasochism, turntables.

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title: rhizomatic
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rhizomatic
Describing systems that grow through horizontal connection rather than vertical hierarchy. Characterized by multiplicity, heterogeneity, and asignifying rupture—can be broken but will start up again on old or new lines. Creates maps rather than tracings, focusing on experimentation over reproduction.

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title: rhizome
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rhizome
Non-hierarchical network structure that spreads horizontally through multiple connections and entry points. Unlike tree structures with clear roots, rhizomes grow in any direction without central organization. A model for thought and social organization that resists fixed centers and binary logic.

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title: schismogenesis
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tags:
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**schismogenesis**
Process where interactions amplify differences between individuals or groups, creating self-reinforcing divisions. The natural tendency to establish boundaries—self/other, in-group/out-group. Functions as both self-differentiation and group identification.

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sympoiesis
Making-with or collective production. Unlike autopoiesis (self-making), sympoiesis emphasizes collaborative creation across boundaries. Systems that produce themselves through interaction with other systems, never in isolation. Complex adaptive networks that thrive through ongoing relations rather than self-contained processes.

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title: territorialization
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territorialization
Process of defining boundaries and establishing order within a space, whether physical, conceptual, or social. Creates recognizable patterns and identities by organizing flows of energy or information. Always accompanied by potential deterritorialization—the undoing of these same boundaries.

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title: unbounded intelligence
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unbounded intelligence
Open-ended cognition that evolves its own goals and capacities, exploring territories beyond established maps. Operates through relation with emerging contexts rather than predetermined parameters. Prioritizes creative adaptation and discovery over problem-solving within known domains.
Further Reading
David Weinbaum, Viktoras Veitas, "[Open Ended Intelligence: The individuation of Intelligent Agents](https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.06366)."

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# Welcome to Polycentric
### A role-playing game of agreements
## How to Contribute
The knowledge commons is built on simple [markdown](https://www.markdownguide.org/cheat-sheet/) files and served as a website through [Quartz](https://quartz.jzhao.xyz/).
## Get Started
1. Download [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/download)
Obsidian provides a nice UI for authoring Markdown content.
2. Clone and setup the repo https://github.com/oovg/quartz
````
``` git clone https://github.com/oovg/quartz
``` cd quartz
``` yarn
``` yarn quartz build --serve
````
3. Open the /content folder as a vault in Obsidian
Create and Edit content with files and folders within Obsidian
4. Request access to push your updates back to [Github](https://github.com/oovg/quartz).
5. Create a pull request from `your-branch-name` to `v4`
6. When accepted, your content will be live on the website.
## Authoring Content
## Metadata
Each Markdown file should have the following metadata at the top.
```
---
title: title of content
draft: true or false (true will hide content)
tags: glossary, article, etc
---
```
Example simple glossary entry valid full Markdown file with metadata and content.
```
---
title: term
draft: false
tags: glossary
---
**term**
definition of the term
```
#### Markdown Cheatsheet
View a cheat sheet of Markdown formatting.
https://www.markdownguide.org/cheat-sheet/
### Content Architecture
For now we simply have a Glossary and a Reading Room sections for content.
**Glossary:** Create new files, or edit existing ones in the "Glossary" folder
**Reading Room:** Add markdown versions of relevant articles, papers, and essays in the "Reading Room" folder to add content here
Feel free to propose new sections of content.

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Based on the Grassroots Innovations Assembly for Agroecology (GIA) and its recent gathering in Ahmedabad, India, the following are **persona/role descriptions** representing key stakeholders involved in grassroots agroecological innovation.
| Archetype | Risk Tolerance | Inst. Trust & Power | Political Risk | Financial Access | Business Orientation |
| -------------------------------- | -------------- | --------------------- | -------------- | ---------------- | ------------------------- |
| **Grounded Steward** | High | Low | High | Low | Commons-based |
| **Knowledge Bridge** | Moderate | Medium | Medium | Variable | Mission-/education |
| **Commons Innovator** | High | Selective | Low–Medium | Low–Medium | Open-access/low-profit |
| **Institutional Enabler** | Low–Moderate | High | High | Very High | Impact or ROI |
| **Systems Connector** | Mod–High | Bridging | Medium | Moderate | Public-good/process-based |
| **Impact Capital Strategist** | Moderate–High | High | Medium | Very High | Double/triple bottom line |
| **Disruptive Tech Entrepreneur** | Very High | Low (system bypasser) | Variable | Mod–High | High-profit, exit-driven |
The following are **five synthesized archetypes** distilled from the 17 personas/roles . Each archetype captures shared motivations, tensions, and functions across the grassroots-to-global agroecological innovation ecosystem.
---
### **1\. The Grounded Steward**
**Core Personas:**
- Community Seed Saver
- Indigenous Knowledge Keeper
- Women’s Agroecology Cooperative Leader
- Indigenous Agroforestry Practitioner
- Indian Small Farm Network Innovator
**Essence:**
Anchored in land, culture, and tradition, the Grounded Steward is committed to protecting biodiversity, sustaining community knowledge, and ensuring ecological harmony. This archetype embodies custodianship of place and practices passed through generations.
**Core Values:**
- Biodiversity and cultural preservation
- Local sovereignty and stewardship
- Ecological resilience
**Strengths:**
- Deep ecological and experiential knowledge
- Strong trust networks in community
- Custodians of rivalrous and sacred resources
**Tensions:**
- Resource constraints (time, labor, funding)
- Risk of knowledge exploitation or dilution
- Limited institutional visibility
---
### **2\. The Knowledge Bridge-Builder**
**Core Personas:**
- Agroecology Educator
- Agroecology Educator at CEPAGRO
- Farm Network Community Facilitator
- Agroecological Policy Advocate
- Systems Research Collaborator (CGIAR)
**Essence:**
A translator between worlds, the Knowledge Bridge-Builder connects traditional knowledge with academic research, practice with policy, and local stories with global platforms. They design participatory systems for learning, reflection, and adaptation.
**Core Values:**
- Knowledge equity
- Participatory research and learning
- Empowerment through education
**Strengths:**
- Pedagogical and facilitation expertise
- Access to both grassroots and institutional spaces
- Skilled in co-creation, training, and documentation
**Tensions:**
- Balancing rigor with accessibility
- Navigating divergent epistemologies (science vs. tradition)
- Dependence on donor or institutional cycles
---
### **3\. The Commons Innovator**
**Core Personas:**
- Farmer-Innovator
- Farm Hack Tool Developer
- Digital Commons Platform Developer
- Indian Small Farm Network Innovator (also fits here)
**Essence:**
A creator of open tools and systems, the Commons Innovator seeks to solve real problems through collaborative design, low-cost technology, and knowledge sharing. They often work in hybrid maker-activist-educator roles.
**Core Values:**
- Open-source principles
- DIY problem-solving
- Practical utility with community benefit
**Strengths:**
- Technical ingenuity
- Design thinking and rapid prototyping
- Committed to inclusive access
**Tensions:**
- Sustainability of open-source models
- Lack of infrastructure or capital to scale
- Tensions with IP regimes and proprietary systems
---
### **4\. The Institutional Enabler**
**Core Personas:**
- Strategic Agroecology Investment Officer (World Bank)
- UN Agroecology Policy Liaison (FAO)
- Sustainable Agriculture Investment Advisor (Sovereign Wealth Fund)
- Strategic Grantmaking Director (European Private Foundation)
**Essence:**
The Institutional Enabler channels capital, policy, and legitimacy to support agroecological transformation—often from positions within large bureaucratic or philanthropic systems. They are translators of systemic ambitions into structured interventions.
**Core Values:**
- Strategic alignment
- Accountability and transparency
- Scalable systemic change
**Strengths:**
- Access to financial and policy levers
- Influence in global and national agendas
- Ability to catalyze broad coalitions
**Tensions:**
- Bureaucratic inertia vs. grassroots dynamism
- Impact measurement vs. relational trust
- Risks of co-optation or instrumentalization of agroecology
---
### **5\. The Systems Connector**
**Core Personas:**
- Farm Network Community Facilitator
- Digital Commons Platform Developer
- Agroecological Policy Advocate
- UN Agroecology Policy Liaison (FAO)
_(note: many personas show overlap between archetypes—this one captures their connective tissue role)_
**Essence:**
The Systems Connector is a relationship weaver, infrastructure thinker, and strategic listener. They hold space across silos, scales, and sectors to cultivate the trust and interdependence needed for commons-based governance.
**Core Values:**
- Federation and mutuality
- Interoperability and openness
- Collective governance
**Strengths:**
- Skilled in diplomacy, facilitation, and trust-building
- Understands both social and technical infrastructure
- Anchors participatory decision-making processes
**Tensions:**
- Often under-resourced or invisible labor
- Mediating power asymmetries
- Difficulty maintaining coherence across diverse actors
---
### ** Optional Use Cases for these Archetypes:**
- **Role-based policy simulations** or scenario games
- **Commons governance design** (clarifying decision domains, capabilities, tensions)
- **Narrative strategy**: storytelling arcs across different types of changemakers
- **Investment or partnership frameworks** to align funders with grassroots actors
---
## **1\. Community Seed Saver**
\*A dedicated farmer from a rural village in India who has been preserving and exchanging indigenous seed varieties for over two decades, ensuring biodiversity and resilience in local agriculture.\*
### **Values:**
- **Biodiversity preservation**
- **Community empowerment**
- **Cultural heritage**
### **Goals:**
- Protect and proliferate indigenous seed varieties.
- Educate fellow farmers on the importance of seed sovereignty.
- Establish a community-managed seed bank.
- Ensure sustainability and profitability of indigenous seeds and crops.
### **Obligations:**
- Adhere to traditional practices and community agreements.
- Ensure seeds are not commercialized without community consent.
- Maintain accurate records of seed lineage and performance.
### **Capabilities:**
- Cultivates and maintains diverse seed varieties.
- Organizes seed exchanges and workshops.
- Documents traditional knowledge associated with each seed.
### **Intellectual Property:**
- Extensive knowledge of indigenous seed characteristics and cultivation methods.
- Traditional stories and uses associated with various plant species.
### **Rivalrous Resources:**
- Limited storage facilities for seed preservation.
- Time and labor required for meticulous seed cultivation and documentation.
- Lack of awareness of the importance of biodiversity and seed diversity.
- ***
## **2\. Agroecology Educator**
\*An academic and practitioner from Kenya who bridges the gap between traditional farming knowledge and modern agroecological practices, facilitating workshops and training sessions for farmers and students.\*
### **Values:**
- **Knowledge sharing**
- **Sustainability**
- **Empowerment through education**
### **Goals:**
- Develop curricula that integrate indigenous knowledge with scientific research.
- Foster a network of agroecology practitioners for continuous learning.
- Promote policies that support agroecological education.
### **Obligations:**
- Ensure educational content is accessible and culturally relevant.
- Maintain academic integrity and rigor.
- Respect and incorporate local knowledge systems.
### **Capabilities:**
- Designs and delivers educational programs.
- Conducts participatory research with farming communities.
- Advocates for agroecological approaches in academic and policy circles.
### **Intellectual Property:**
- Comprehensive curricula on agroecological practices.
- Case studies documenting successful grassroots innovations.
### **Rivalrous Resources:**
- Funding for educational initiatives.
- Access to diverse farming communities for fieldwork.
---
## **3\. Farmer-Innovator**
\*A small-scale farmer from Greece who has developed a low-cost, efficient tool for small-scale agricultural production, aiming to share this innovation with fellow farmers to enhance productivity and sustainability.\*
### **Values:**
- **Practical problem-solving**
- **Collaboration**
- **Sustainability**
### **Goals:**
- Refine and adapt the tool based on user feedback.
- Facilitate workshops to teach others how to build and use the tool.
- Establish a cooperative for manufacturing and distributing the tool.
### **Obligations:**
- Ensure the tool remains affordable and accessible.
- Share knowledge freely within the community.
- Maintain transparency in the development process.
### **Capabilities:**
- Designs and prototypes agricultural tools.
- Conducts hands-on training sessions.
- Collaborates with other innovators for continuous improvement.
### **Intellectual Property:**
- Detailed blueprints and instructional materials for the tool.
- Insights from field testing and user experiences.
### **Rivalrous Resources:**
- Materials and equipment for tool production.
- Time dedicated to training and dissemination efforts.
---
## **4\. Indigenous Knowledge Keeper**
\*A respected elder from an indigenous community in Canada who safeguards and imparts ancestral agricultural practices and ecological wisdom, ensuring the continuity of cultural heritage and sustainable land management.\*
### **Values:**
- **Cultural preservation**
- **Environmental stewardship**
- **Community well-being**
### **Goals:**
- Document and share traditional agricultural practices.
- Mentor the younger generation in sustainable land management.
- Advocate for the protection of indigenous lands and rights.
### **Obligations:**
- Uphold the integrity and sacredness of traditional knowledge.
- Seek community consent before sharing knowledge externally.
- Protect the community's intellectual property from exploitation.
### **Capabilities:**
- Conducts storytelling and oral history sessions.
- Participates in environmental conservation initiatives.
- Engages in dialogues with policymakers and researchers.
### **Intellectual Property:**
- Extensive oral histories and teachings on land and agriculture.
- Traditional ecological knowledge systems.
### **Rivalrous Resources:**
- Time and energy to engage in knowledge-sharing activities.
- Access to platforms for advocacy and education.
Based on the organizations you've mentioned, here are **six persona role descriptions** representing key stakeholders involved in grassroots agroecological innovation.
---
## **5\. Indian Small Farm Network Innovator**
\*An inventive farmer from Gujarat, India, who has developed a unique, low-cost irrigation system to address water scarcity in arid regions.\*
### **Values:**
- **Grassroots innovation**
- **Sustainability**
- **Community empowerment**
### **Goals:**
- Share the irrigation system design with other farmers to enhance water efficiency.
- Collaborate with researchers to refine and document the innovation.
- Protect intellectual property while promoting widespread adoption.
### **Obligations:**
- Ensure the innovation remains affordable and accessible to small-scale farmers.
- Acknowledge and incorporate community feedback into design improvements.
- Comply with local regulations regarding water usage and agricultural practices.
### **Capabilities:**
- Designs and prototypes agricultural tools and systems.
- Conducts workshops to demonstrate the irrigation system.
- Networks with other innovators through the Honeybee Network.
### **Intellectual Property:**
- Detailed schematics and operational guidelines for the irrigation system.
- Insights from field testing and user experiences.
### **Rivalrous Resources:**
- Materials and tools for constructing the irrigation system.
- Time dedicated to training and dissemination efforts.
---
## **6\. Farm Network Community Facilitator**
\*A development worker from Uganda who coordinates participatory innovation development (PID) processes, linking local farmer innovations with scientific research to enhance sustainable agriculture.\*
### **Values:**
- **Participatory development**
- **Local knowledge integration**
- **Sustainability**
### **Goals:**
- Identify and document local agricultural innovations.
- Facilitate collaboration between farmers and researchers.
- Promote policies that support farmer-led innovation.
### **Obligations:**
- Ensure equitable participation of all community members.
- Respect and uphold the intellectual property rights of local innovators.
- Report progress to Prolinnova's national platform.
### **Capabilities:**
- Organizes and moderates community meetings and workshops.
- Documents and disseminates information on local innovations.
- Builds networks among farmers, researchers, and policymakers.
### **Intellectual Property:**
- Comprehensive reports on local innovations and PID processes.
- Training materials for facilitating participatory development.
### **Rivalrous Resources:**
- Funding for community projects and workshops.
- Time allocated to fieldwork and coordination activities.
---
## **7\. Farm Hack Tool Developer**
\*A mechanical engineer from Vermont, USA, who designs open-source agricultural tools to support small-scale farmers in improving efficiency and sustainability.\*
### **Values:**
- **Open-source collaboration**
- **Sustainability**
- **Empowerment through technology**
### **Goals:**
- Develop and share designs for affordable, adaptable farming equipment.
- Engage with the farming community to identify needs and gather feedback.
- Promote the principles of open-source development in agriculture.\*
### **Obligations:**
- Ensure designs are accessible and modifiable by users.
- Maintain transparency in the development process.
- Respect user feedback and incorporate improvements.
### **Capabilities:**
- Designs and prototypes agricultural tools.
- Shares designs and instructions through the Farm Hack platform.
- Collaborates with farmers and other developers to refine tools.
### **Intellectual Property:**
- Open-source designs and documentation for various farming tools.
- User manuals and instructional videos.
### **Rivalrous Resources:**
- Materials and equipment for prototyping.
- Time dedicated to development and community engagement.
---
## **8\. Agroecology Educator at CEPAGRO**
\*An agronomist from Florianópolis, Brazil, working with CEPAGRO to promote urban agriculture and composting initiatives, aiming to enhance food security and environmental sustainability in urban communities.\*
### **Values:**
- **Agroecology**
- **Community engagement**
- **Environmental stewardship**
### **Goals:**
- Implement urban agriculture projects in low-income neighborhoods.
- Educate residents on composting and waste management.
- Advocate for policies supporting urban agroecology.
### **Obligations:**
- Ensure projects are inclusive and culturally appropriate.
- Maintain partnerships with local organizations and authorities.
- Monitor and report on project outcomes to CEPAGRO.
### **Capabilities:**
- Designs and implements urban agriculture and composting programs.
- Conducts workshops and training sessions for community members.
- Engages in policy advocacy related to urban agroecology.
### **Intellectual Property:**
- Curricula and educational materials on urban agriculture and composting.
- Case studies and reports on project implementations.
### **Rivalrous Resources:**
- Funding for project materials and activities.
- Time allocated to community engagement and education.
Here are **four additional persona role descriptions** representing key stakeholders in grassroots agroecological innovation. These roles further enrich the diversity of actors involved in sustainable agriculture, data governance, and community-driven food systems.
---
## **9\. Indigenous Agroforestry Practitioner (Amazon, Brazil)**
_A leader from an Indigenous community in the Amazon rainforest who integrates traditional agroforestry techniques with modern climate adaptation strategies to protect biodiversity and sustain local food systems._
### **Values:**
- **Ecological harmony**
- **Food sovereignty**
- **Intergenerational knowledge transfer**
### **Goals:**
- Restore **degraded forest lands using agroforestry techniques**
- Strengthen **Indigenous food systems and market access**
- Secure **legal land rights and prevent deforestation**
### **Obligations:**
- Must adhere to **traditional land stewardship agreements**
- Bound by **community consensus in decision-making**
- Ensures **biodiversity conservation in all farming activities**
### **Capabilities:**
- Implements **agroforestry techniques for carbon sequestration**
- Engages in **policy advocacy for Indigenous land rights**
- Participates in **knowledge-sharing networks on sustainable land use**
### **Intellectual Property:**
- Traditional **plant knowledge and agroforestry techniques**
- Community-based **land management practices**
- Documentation of **climate adaptation strategies**
### **Rivalrous Resources:**
- **Limited access to financial resources for scaling agroforestry projects**
- **Threats from land-grabbing and deforestation pressures**
- **Labor-intensive nature of agroforestry restoration**
---
## **10\. Agroecological Policy Advocate (West Africa)**
_A policy researcher and grassroots organizer focused on shaping national and international agricultural policies that promote smallholder resilience and climate justice._
### **Values:**
- **Equity in agricultural policies**
- **Farmer-led decision-making**
- **Agroecological sustainability**
### **Goals:**
- Influence **policy frameworks that support agroecological farming**
- Increase **public investment in farmer-led innovation**
- Ensure **fair market access for smallholder farmers**
### **Obligations:**
- Must align with **regional and international legal frameworks**
- Required to **provide policy briefs for government agencies and NGOs**
- Adheres to **scientific and community-led evidence in policy recommendations**
### **Capabilities:**
- Drafts **legislation proposals and research reports**
- Organizes **coalitions of farmers and researchers for advocacy**
- Conducts **policy impact assessments**
### **Intellectual Property:**
- **Policy briefs on sustainable agriculture**
- **Case studies on successful agroecological interventions**
- **Frameworks for participatory policy development**
### **Rivalrous Resources:**
- **Time constraints for policy engagement and lobbying**
- **Limited government responsiveness to grassroots advocacy**
- **Funding limitations for farmer-centered policy research**
---
## **11\. Digital Commons Platform Developer (Global)**
_A software engineer working to create decentralized, open-access data platforms that empower farmers to manage and share their agricultural knowledge securely and equitably._
### **Values:**
- **Open knowledge sharing**
- **Farmer data sovereignty**
- **Technological equity**
### **Goals:**
- Develop **secure, farmer-controlled digital commons for agroecological data**
- Ensure **data interoperability across agricultural knowledge platforms**
- Protect **farmer-generated knowledge from corporate exploitation**
### **Obligations:**
- Must adhere to **open-source and ethical tech development principles**
- Required to **maintain platform security and user privacy**
- Needs to align with **local and global data governance frameworks**
### **Capabilities:**
- Builds **decentralized data storage and sharing solutions**
- Designs **farmer-friendly interfaces for digital knowledge exchange**
- Integrates **traditional ecological knowledge into digital platforms**
### **Intellectual Property:**
- Open-source **code for data governance frameworks**
- **Encryption and privacy protocols for farmer data**
- **Metadata standards for agroecological information systems**
### **Rivalrous Resources:**
- **Funding for long-term maintenance and scaling of platforms**
- **Developer hours for refining and troubleshooting technology**
- **Access to diverse user feedback for improving usability**
---
## **12\. Women’s Agroecology Cooperative Leader (Andean Region, South America)**
_A leader of a women-run agricultural cooperative that promotes agroecology, food sovereignty, and rural economic empowerment in the Andean highlands._
### **Values:**
- **Gender equity in agriculture**
- **Community resilience**
- **Cultural preservation through food systems**
### **Goals:**
- Expand **market access for women farmers through cooperative sales**
- Strengthen **seed-saving networks to maintain traditional crop varieties**
- Secure **training programs for agroecological production and entrepreneurship**
### **Obligations:**
- Must distribute **profits equitably among cooperative members**
- Bound by **regional cooperative governance laws**
- Required to **train the next generation of women leaders in agroecology**
### **Capabilities:**
- Facilitates **collective farming and resource-sharing initiatives**
- Organizes **agroecology training programs for women**
- Develops **local branding for cooperative products**
### **Intellectual Property:**
- Traditional **Andean crop cultivation and processing methods**
- **Recipes and culinary knowledge passed through generations**
- **Cooperative business models for women-led agroecology initiatives**
### **Rivalrous Resources:**
- **Limited access to capital for cooperative expansion**
- **Time constraints due to balancing family, farm, and cooperative leadership roles**
- **Market barriers for small-scale cooperatives competing with industrial food systems**

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# Polycentric at Codex
## Overview of game
Polycentric is a role-playing game of agreements. Players engage in open exploration through agreement space, with available resources available not constrained to capital. Players assume Roles, which have a set of Values, Resources, Goals, etc. There is no set victory condition for the game, so solution space need not be limited. The fitness function for players in the state of play could be to:
- openly imagine and explore new forms of agreements typically restricted by ontological and material constraints
- improve understanding of a role through experience negotiating/feeling through its available agreement space
- improve understanding of a network and its available agreement space
## Session Zero
Though we hadn't even played the game ourselves yet, we thought it wise to run our first play test session in the wild at Stanford CODEX's annual gathering of Law, AI, Systems thinkers hosted by the respectable Tony Lai.
- notes on audience (law-adjacent)
## Setup (30 mins)
Z explained the game overview and basic rule set.
Ruleset:
Dorn described the Scenario (Grassroots Innovation Assembly)
Description of scenario:
Distributed roles to players
Description of roles:
Ven prepared the Board of Agreements
- notes on the prototype (materials and data collection/visualization)
## Play time (60 mins)
Players familarized themselves with their roles in relation to the scenario, and then made a quick introduction of their role to the group.
We then basically said 'Play', merely instructing them to start talking with each other to discover and build agreeements. Some players began negotiating with their neighbors. Most moved around, bouncing from negotiation to negotiation. Many pods of agreement-forming activity could be seen, with agents flowing in and out between them.
As agreements were made, players would write down which agents were apart of the agreement and what obligations were given, and benefits received. Tack it on the right side of the board and connect the involved agents from the left side.
The first agreement was a small MOU style agreement between a global policy advocator and indigenous practitioner to hold space together and learn from each other.
The second to last agreement was a complex multilateral agreement. A coalition formed of 5 developer-related roles, adding a new agent to the board, which then formed another bilateral agreeement with another agent for final agreement before lunch was to start.
## Debrief (30 mins)
![session0-lunch](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/rkgTmn6Akl.jpg)
Players were having a great time playing the game, so play continued through lunch, where we did a debrief. For each agreement, a player who participated would come up and share the dynamics of the agreement. Which agents were involved, and to what degree, and the purpose or benefits of the agreement.
## Observations from Session Zero
**data visualization**
![session0](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/ry6eXn6Ryg.gif)
_bipartite network graph of agents (blue) and agreements made (green)._
**types of agreements made**
bilateral symmetric
multilateral asymmetric
**modes of play observed**
Players embodied their roles extremely well. Though there was variance in how they embodied their roles. Some more emotional and others more strategic and calculated.
---
notes from block.science governance pod
ds: were players good at agreements?
lawyer-adjacent made them good at agreements, and role-adjacent made them good at embodying the roles
rj: challenge of subjective play
stuff for dms
stuff for players
stuff the dm creates for the players
ilan:
what is our goal?
directionality of humans through pre-capitalist agreement space
\*\*RJC re: Ilan: absolutely right on design comment. because its an exploratory game and doesn't have an explicit fitness function for players to track (a score) theres less of a need to restrain the solution space (admissable action) of the player
pedagogical to teach about practical governance tensions and agreement networks
socialization of ideas and possiblities
development of framework
counterfactual role-building
rml: can we get our divisive tribal leader to just come together play a game
platform to launch variants
experiential play
- capabilities play
- fitness function is
empathagenic
debrief
- maybe a coach for roles that are novel to them
dimensions of play/development
analog human
digital human
digital agentic (simulated play)
Exhaustive search of a game space
Action paths
- knowledge container
Action tracks
- things we'd like to do
- building roles and scenarios
- building software
- ethnography
- graphing with hyperedging
- financial support
web3:
projects building dao tools
which patterns are stable and resistant
- quick start
- facilitator guide
- rule set
- materials
gather town
people can break out on their own.
zoom for setup and introductions
gather town for playtime
typeform for agreements
agent, agent, set of obligations/benefits
multilateral
formation of new body, resulting actor, and who can speak for them.
regather into zoom for debrief
hyperedges on the graph?

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--- ---
title: index title: Welcome to Polycentric
draft: false
tags:
- example-tag
--- ---
# Welcome to Extitutional Space # Polycentric
### Extitutional Knowledge Commons
Goals of this space:
1. Build Knowledge Commons
2. Build Extitutions
3. Network Extitutions
## How to Contribute
The knowledge commons is built on simple [markdown](https://www.markdownguide.org/cheat-sheet/) files and served as a website through [Quartz](https://quartz.jzhao.xyz/).
## Get Started
1. Download [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/download)
Obsidian provides a nice UI for authoring Markdown content.
2. Clone and setup the repo https://github.com/oovg/quartz
```
``` git clone https://github.com/oovg/quartz
``` cd quartz
``` yarn
``` yarn quartz build --serve
```
3. Open the /content folder as a vault in Obsidian
Create and Edit content with files and folders within Obsidian
4. Request access to push your updates back to [Github](https://github.com/oovg/quartz).
5. Create a pull request from `your-branch-name` to `v4`
6. When accepted, your content will be live on the website.
## Authoring Content
## Metadata
Each Markdown file should have the following metadata at the top.
```
---
title: title of content
draft: true or false (true will hide content)
tags: glossary, article, etc
---
```
Example simple glossary entry valid full Markdown file with metadata and content.
```
---
title: term
draft: false
tags: glossary
---
**term**
definition of the term
```
#### Markdown Cheatsheet
View a cheat sheet of Markdown formatting.
https://www.markdownguide.org/cheat-sheet/
### Content Architecture
For now we simply have a Glossary and a Reading Room sections for content.
**Glossary:** Create new files, or edit existing ones in the "Glossary" folder
**Reading Room:** Add markdown versions of relevant articles, papers, and essays in the "Reading Room" folder to add content here
Feel free to propose new sections of content.
a roleplaying game of agreements

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*/ */
const config: QuartzConfig = { const config: QuartzConfig = {
configuration: { configuration: {
pageTitle: "Extitutional Space", pageTitle: "Polycentric",
pageTitleSuffix: "", pageTitleSuffix: "",
enableSPA: true, enableSPA: true,
enablePopovers: true, enablePopovers: true,
@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ const config: QuartzConfig = {
provider: "plausible", provider: "plausible",
}, },
locale: "en-US", locale: "en-US",
baseUrl: "quartz.jzhao.xyz", baseUrl: "polycentric.xyz",
ignorePatterns: ["private", "templates", ".obsidian"], ignorePatterns: ["private", "templates", ".obsidian"],
defaultDateType: "created", defaultDateType: "created",
generateSocialImages: true, generateSocialImages: true,

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@ -8,8 +8,8 @@ export const sharedPageComponents: SharedLayout = {
afterBody: [], afterBody: [],
footer: Component.Footer({ footer: Component.Footer({
links: { links: {
GitHub: "https://github.com/jackyzha0/quartz", GitHub: "https://github.com/",
"Discord Community": "https://discord.gg/cRFFHYye7t", "Discord Community": "https://discord.gg/",
}, },
}), }),
} }