Swarm

Concept

Joe Brewer:

'Another important structure used by Occupy was the swarm where a leaderless movement emerged spontaneously in multiple locations all at once. The key organizational frame behind this behavior is the Activation Network Frame — where multiple nodes of a network are constantly monitoring for threats and each is able to engage in rapid response to changes in the local environment. Examples of the activation network include the hive behavior of social insects and the immune response of a complex multi-cellular organism.

Social insects (bees, wasps, termites, etc.) constantly monitor the chemical trails left by individual members of their hive and respond quickly to the release of stress markers in the proximity of a new predator or some other disruption to their normal routines. Multi-cellular organisms have special cells within their bodies—one example being the lymphocytes in the blood of mammals that attack viruses and tumors before they are able to spread—that float throughout the body and respond locally when a harmful contagion is discovered.

The key features of an activation network are decentralization and localized rapid engagement. The Occupy Movement spread quickly as local community members organized themselves into encampments and protest actions. There were no visible leaders who could be targeted across the movement and specific actions reflected the local character of each group and the concerns they rallied around." (http://empathysurplus.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/governance-structures-for-social-movements1.pdf)

More Information

• Learn more at

http://www.chaoticripple.com/2011/occupy-wallstreet-swarm-behavior-and-self-organized-criticality/

Project

= Swarm, a platform for cryptoequity that can eventually replace today’s stock markets with a much more powerful alternative.

Joel Dietz:

"To do so, we are fundraising on our own platform. Our coin, SWARM, entitles all coin owners to a part of one percent of all future coins launched on our platform. It also allows coin holders to vote on a community representative. This representative will have control over one of the signatures on the multisig wallet and will be responsible for making sure that we spend incoming funds in a responsible way." (http://www.followthecoin.com/swarm-dawn-cryptoequity/)

Discussion

Joel Dietz:

"SWARM was designed only after extensive legal research, with the plan to be fully compliant with existing legal frameworks concerning securities offerings. Although our research has not been exhaustive across all legal jurisdictions, we decided our own model only after seeing what was clear from a regulatory perspective.

Another important decision was to add an explicit accountability mechanism in the form of a community representative. This reflects my belief, first documented in Distributed Governance Whitepaper, that current accountability mechanisms are not entirely working. It also sets us up to be one of the first organizations that lives up to the potential of a Decentralized Autonomous Organization, or DAO. For us, this means not only that you can see the outgoing spending, but you can also have direct input into where it goes.

This idea of accountability also extends to coin creation. A core part of our vision is not only making “create your own coin” fundraisers much easier, but also offering decentralized due diligence. This means that we will be engaging with teams of people (potentially including yourself) who can review coin offerings to filter out scam coins and promote legitimate offerings tied to products of real value.

* Decentralized networks create increased engagement

One tremendous benefit of using our platform to launch your coin is that you get a large number of users to start off. Because you are distributing a part of your coin among our network, each member of SWARM will be incentivized to promote your project and help it grow rapidly. This leads to more engaged and happier users who directly share in the upside of these projects.

SWARM represents the emergent intelligence that arises from decentralized networks. Part of the goal of the founders of the American Republic was to keep things as decentralized and dynamic as possible. At some point this turned into a strange melting pot of politicians, treasury secretaries, i-bankers and a central bank that are virtually indistinguishable from each other, all bearing a striking similarity to snake oil salesmen pawning off fool’s gold to the highest bidder.

SWARM is a re-iteration of the vision of independent autonomous individuals who form structures because they can. We are committed not only to launching coins and cryptoequity, we are committed to reforging the aspects of society that have failed to evolve in the latter half of the twentieth century.

* Evolving the nature of the corporation

One such organization is the corporation. A strange entity, the corporation emerged in the 1920s as a legal entity equivalent to a human. Whereas previously people went bankruptcy and even jail when a company failed, this separation allowed companies to fail without ruining all of the people who ran them. This allowed people to take greater risks and thus produced greater innovation.

The birth of venture capital and the semiconductor industry followed a similar dynamic pattern. A dynamic Frenchman known as the “general” wandered off to Silicon Valley because he was bored of the stodgy and risk-adverse behavior of Wall St., inventing a new corporate form and using it to invest in Digital Equipment Corporation. This first blend of well-made suits and flannel shirts was responsible for the birth of much of the computer industry.

One feature that lead to special dynamism is that the partners who made the deals were directly incentivized by shares in the companies they lead deals for. Big government eventually regulated away that feature, and venture capital was forced to work upscale, often merely by creating an opportunity for the rich to become richer by sitting on their money.

Like the birth of computers or the internet, blockchain technology allows a mindblowing evolution in the nature of the corporation. As we’ve documented here via the EtherCasts channel, there are amazing new possibilities associated with Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. Although the technology that makes this possible is not fully developed, we are committed to pushing this aspect of technological development forward and implementing it once it is available.

* Upgrading Government 1.0

Crowdfunding has been attempting to recover lost territory and create a similar dynamism. But it has been handicapped by several aspects. One, is that, in the United States, crowd equity funding to non-accredited investors remains illegal. This of course privileges the establishment. We expect this to change with the implementation of the JOBS act, a phenomenal initiative that, like many governmental initiatives, is slow and muddied in execution.

We are starting with the things that are actionable now, as outlined in our cryptoequity whitepaper, including Kickstarter-like campaigns. We are bringing this to a wider audience, because we believe that the appeal of a platform like this is far broader than simply Bitcoin, it is all of the advanced functionality that is simply better and more dynamic in a decentralized context.

What we are offering is a rebirth of capital for the people by the people based on the emergent intelligence found in decentralized networks. Swarm is something more than a new, better method of crowdfunding (although it is that), Swarm is laying the seeds for a whole new form of governance that returns power to the people and allows for dynamic evolution from the bottom up." (http://www.followthecoin.com/swarm-dawn-cryptoequity/)

Nathan Schneider

On the context:

" Swarm, the world’s first experiment in what he was calling “cryptoequity.”

Swarm would be a crowdfunding platform, using its own virtual currency rather than dollars; rather than just a thank-you or a kickback, it would reward backers with a genuine stake in the projects they support. Entrepreneurs could sidestep the VCs by turning to a “swarm” of small investors — and maybe supplant the entire VC system. By the end of the summer, he’d raised more than a million dollars in cryptocurrency. The legality of the model is uncertain, but the feds haven’t come knocking yet.

Dietz is part of a subtle insurgency taking place, one of bylaws, financing schemes, and ownership structures. The details can seem abstruse, but the craving is everywhere. High hopes for a liberating Internet have devolved into the dominance of a few mega-companies and the NSA’s watchful algorithms. Platforms entice users to draw their communities into an apparently free and open commons, only to gradually enclose it by tweaking terms of service, diluting privacy, or charging fees for essential features. Thanks to users' unpaid labor of friending and posting, tech companies can employ far fewer people, and extract five to 10 times more profit per employee, than businesses in other industries. Fiduciary responsibility to their investors requires that they turn on the people who made them successful.

Those people are turning on them back. Oculus Rift raised $2.4 million from fans on Kickstarter, then enraged backers by selling to Facebook for $2 billion. Users frustrated with an increasingly ad-friendly Facebook started flocking to Ello (whose “manifesto” eschews advertising and selling user data) and Tsu (which pays its users for their contributions) — but when Ello took venture capital, its boosters started to flee. Reddit’s finicky users have succeeded in preventing the company from turning profitable with intrusive ads or selling data; it’s now in the process of setting up a Swarm-like digital currency scheme to share 10 percent of new equity with users.

The line between workers and customers has never been so blurry. Online platforms depend on their users, and pressure is mounting all over the Internet. People are tired of seeing their communities treated like commodities, and they're looking for ways to build platforms of their own." (http://www.shareable.net/blog/owning-is-the-new-sharing)

More Information

• Crypto-Crowdfunding