DBrains Whitepaper

Objectives / Benefits

• Establishing a platform for the collective benefit of all (Dbrains aims to be a common good, developed and sustained by the community for the community).


• Federating and amplifying collective intelligence by enhancing the efficiency of collaborative work.


• Creating a platform that promotes fair collaboration and learning.


• Addressing current labor market inefficiencies by mitigating issues related to candidate selection and job seeking.


• Ensuring a fair evaluation of contributions and remuneration, mitigating conflicts of interest present in traditional companies.


• Reducing barriers to entry into the job market, enabling anyone interested to make contributions.


• Empowering communities to self-organize, aligning with the core principles of blockchain technology.


• Facilitating the sharing of experiences and leveraging the knowledge of others to prevent redundant efforts.


• Safeguarding projects from speculation or undervaluation.

Functioning:

Individuals who join Dbrains will have the opportunity to participate in and initiate projects facilitated by DAOs composed of collaborators, following a holacratic approach. Decision-making regarding project development and management rests with the DAO of collaborators, encompassing tasks such as adding new members and determining development strategies or features.

The process involves a Proposals Board that facilitates the creation of proposals (on Aragon), discussions (on Ceramic), and voting (on Aragon). Various types of proposals cover aspects of project development, such as new features, task allocation, task assignment, task rewards, and task validation. Additionally, proposals related to project management include actions like adding new members and overseeing the project's treasury, including investment decisions and currency usage.

A Dao's Board serves as an informational hub, providing the current project status. It showcases accepted proposals actively being worked on, lists members and their assigned tasks, archives completed proposals, and offers access to project-related documents and repositories. The roadmap outlines planned future developments.

Initially, the evaluation of members' contributions will be primarily human-driven. However, the incorporation of AI bots as “virtual members” is a possibility for participating in DAO decisions and proposal evaluations. This inclusion aims to mitigate potential biases arising from human collusion or personal biases in the decision-making process.

Different Projects Types and System Flexibility:

Members can propose new projects which are then featured in the projects board. There are two primary project types:

• - “Funded Projects”: In these projects, the launcher(s) secure payments (currencies) in an escrow, which can be disbursed to contributors as they contribute to the project.

• - “Free Projects”: Members gather collaboratively around the development of specific ideas.

In both instances, democratic decision-making prevails: project members collaboratively decide how to break down the development into tasks, assign responsibilities, and collectively design the entire project. However, in the case of “Funded Projects” the project is overseen by the project launcher(s), who establishes milestones to unlock payments from escrow. The launcher(s) also have the option to utilize a superVote weight to influence decision outcomes.

The platform serves as an experimental ground for collaborative work, and projects DAOs have the flexibility to incorporate specific tools into their organization. This is achieved through DAO actions triggered by the approval of successful proposals within the Aragon proposal system. It enables the utilization of other protocols, such as Uniswap pools, for example.

Projects may vary in their openness, with some welcoming everyone and others preferring a selective onboarding process. Dbrains Dao, in particular, will be developed as a “Free Project”.

A Simple Yet Powerful Tokenomics:

The tokenomics framework is structured around non-transferable tokens (NTTs), serving as a metric to quantify the contributions of collaborators and ensuring equitable remuneration when projects begin generating revenue.

Upon project initiation, a DAO and an associated non-transferable token (NTT) are created for the project. Token non-transferability is pivotal in this tokenomics model, as tokens are tied to a specific contributor and project, and cannot be traded. Initially, there is no token supply, and new tokens are generated when contributions are approved by the projects DAO. Consequently, these tokens primarily function to gauge collaborators'contributions within a project.

As the project starts generating revenue, profits are distributed fairly among contributors based on their earned tokens. Each contributor receives a portion of the profit determined by their earned tokens divided by the total token supply. If permitted by the project's DAO, investors can contribute financially to the project, leading to the creation of new NTTs for investors in exchange for deposited currencies into the project's DAO treasury. Investors, as NTT owners, become members of the DAO like other contributors. Similar to other token holders, they receive their share of the project's profit when revenue is generated and can participate in proposals, voting, and various contributions to the project.

Funds are managed by the project's DAO, which decides whether to allocate them for hiring external expertise, compensating contributors before project maturity, or other purposes. Occasionally,indeed, the DAO may authorize its members to convert their NTTs into currencies from the treasury at a price set by the DAO. This allows developers and investors to convert their NTTs into currency, providing an opportunity for early remuneration for builders and a chance for investors to withdraw some of their investments.

The decision to convert tokens into currencies depends on the project's perceived value. If the project is promising, members may choose to retain their tokens, anticipating future income from the project's generated profit. Conversely, if a project is successful, investors may be interested in investing more, but developers may be hesitant to create new tokens to maintain the potential value of their earned tokens.

NTTs also serve as voting tokens within Aragon's voting system, assigning greater weight to significant contributors in the vote. Only the DAO has the authority to create NTT tokens.

While this tokenomics system is straightforward, it endows the system with several beneficial properties. It aligns individual interests with collective goals, ensuring fairness in the remuneration of decentralized contributors.

Technical Stack:

Dbrains is based on AragonSDK and AragonOSX (https://aragon.org/) for the DAO part and uses a decentralized database harnessing ComposeDB of Ceramic network on IPFS (https://ceramic.network/) together with lit-protocol (https://www.litprotocol.com/) for data encryption and privacy control.