DAO glossary, concepts and curated readings & resources

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Glossary of words and concepts

Crucial definitions for basic navigation and comprehension

• Anon – (1) abbreviation of the word anonymous, used for any digital dweller, (2 – archaic) soon, presently, (3 – archaic) later, after a while, (4 – archaic) immediately.
• Commons – assets, resources, tools and knowledge belonging to and/or affecting the whole community.
• DAO – distributed or decentralized autonomous organization that enables people to coordinate and govern themselves mediated by a set of self-executing rules deployed on a public blockchain, and whose governance is decentralized.
• dApp – digital application or program that exists and runs on a blockchain or P2P network of instead of a single computer or server, outside the purview and control of a single authority.
• Decentralized system – interconnected system where no single entity is the sole authority; in the context of computing and information technology, decentralized systems usually take the form of networked computers; e.g. the Internet is a decentralized system, although it has become increasingly centralized over time.
• Distributed system – system of multiple components located on independent machines, co-managed and upheld by different members, that communicate and coordinate actions but are independent, appearing to evolve as a single coherent system. Sub-set of decentralized systems.
• Governance – all processes of interaction brought by active decision-making members – through the rules, laws, norms, power or language – for overseeing the control and direction of an organization.
• Grassroots – deep and wide community reaching and sourcing – the basic level of an organization especially as viewed in relation to higher or more centralized positions of power.
• Multi-sig – short for multi-signature wallet, refers to an account that needs more than one signature from a number of parties to control the assets; this can improve security by reducing the risk of a lost signature, and also by requiring an attacker to gain control over more than one signature.
• Off-chain – away from the blockchain’s underlying code base, meaning key stakeholders vie for its maintenance & control by coordinating through a number different avenues including community forums, social media sites, and the project’s official communication channels.
• On-chain – occurs on a blockchain with events that are reflected on a distributed, public ledger; on-chain transactions are those that have been validated or authenticated and lead to an update to the overall blockchain network.
• Permission-less – system characteristic allowing anybody to become a member and interact with the network by submitting contributions and hence adding entries to the overall ledger and system.
• Pseudonymous – privacy characteristic where real identity does not have to be revealed in order to participate, but building one’s own digital identity is encouraged for perennial activity.
• Smart contract – A self-executing contract with the terms of the agreement between buyer and seller being directly written into lines of code.
• Swarm intelligence – collective behavior of decentralized & self-organized systems, natural or artificial – typically a bunch of agents interacting locally with one another & their environment; the agents follow simple rules, and although there is no centralized control structure dictating how individual agents should behave, local, and to a certain degree random, interactions between such agents, led by common interests and mutual incentives, lead to the emergence of intelligent global behavior, inaccessible before to individual agents.
• Tamper-proof – system characteristic brought by transparency, indicating that all participants can at any time see and verify if anything has been changed, opened, removed or damaged.
• Transpolitical – meta, inclusive and antifragile post- & proto-political lineage; Jean Baudrillard’s definition: the mode of the disappearance of the political; everything has become political, at the same time nothing is political anymore – this anomaly has no critical consequences for the system, it is a mutation figure.
• Trust-less – system characteristic where the participants involved do not need to know or trust each other or a third party for the system to function.
• Web 3.0 – third generation of internet services for websites and applications that will focus on using a machine-based understanding of data to provide a data-driven and semantic web, with the ultimate goal to create more intelligent, connected and open websites.
• Zalamigo/a – contraction of zalameh & amigo/a, attribute to describe a humble person who is proactive in leading change for their community through a benevolent, open and kind hearted approach – LebAnons are typically zalamigas & zalamigos.