Creator Collector Reciprocity Networks: Part Three

Co-authored by TW & plor

In our previous article, we proposed that the collector provides feedback and possesses mechanisms to inform creation, yet they are not directly involved in the creative process. Conversely, the creator receives this feedback and can use it to influence their work, although they are not obliged to engage in the direct perpetuation of the feedback received. This setup allows for a separation of responsibilities, where both parties are accountable for the quality of the cultural product, yet their roles remain distinct. This arrangement mirrors an Adam Smith-like system of specialization, where each party focuses on their specific function within the broader framework of cultural production.

Alienated consumption, particularly when it's driven by individual merit or identity creation, perpetuates an extractive agenda. Our focus on reciprocity highlights the essence of exchange—cultural, economic, and intellectual—that should ideally be based on mutual benefit rather than one entity gaining at the expense of another. While the modern epoch was founded upon disequilibrium, the concept of reciprocity seeks to move us towards balance, fostering an environment where all participants mutually benefit from their exchanges. 

Reciprocity may imply the need to extend beyond traditional - purely material and financial - market dynamics. By orienting the interests of collectors and creators into a relatively closed autopoietic system these individuals might hope to operate outside – or towards the periphery – of the traditional market framework. The closed system dynamics are not governed by market forces; instead, the reciprocally formed amalgam interacts with the market.

To be clear, we’re not suggesting that the market is fundamentally extractive. Rather, the market creates a disequilibrium by emphasizing economic exchange at the expense of cultural exchange motivated by any other agenda. The potential for decentralized entities to form and engage in reciprocal, decentralized cultural production could prompt creators to take on a more proactive role in shaping new markets with novel idiosyncratic intentions. Likewise, collectors could be tasked with greater responsibilities to actively participate in feedback loops that inform cultural priorities and directions beyond the unapologetically degenerate. This would be a subtle but significant departure from a model where fetishistic consumer purchases signal a demand for more of the same, leading to destructive and unsustainable practices. From this high-level abstract reverie, we might begin to explore the idea of shared responsibility and accountability in the culture that is produced. 

In this third and final session, we will explore how reciprocity informs and applies context to our discussions about DUCEs (Decentralized Universal Comment Emissions), DINs (Decentralized Intelligence Networks), and CCR (Creator Collective Reciprocity) relations. Although we have attempted to consider mechanism design and social relations as separate entities, these concepts are interrelated and inherently influence one another. As we approach the end of our dialogue, we hope to identify some low-hanging fruit of this problem space that might allow us to unlock deeper conceptual or mechanistic understanding. 

We have been focusing on two key personas: the creators and the collectors. 

Creators have historically carried forward the myth of genius, particularly pronounced over the last 100 years of modern history but extending much further back. This notion involves an individual who, through almost divine providence, can alchemically manifest something from nothing. 

Our conception of Collectors begins from the premise of individuals who form their identities based on the acquisition and adornment of these rarified cultural artifacts. Collector identity, in this context, resembles an empty scaffolding—structured yet devoid of content. Modern creators form their identity through stylistic dispositions towards their craft, while collectors express their uniqueness through their purchases, symbolizing allegiance to specific cultural production and their ideologies.

These low fidelity persona sketches are decidedly imperfect and should be taken with a mountain of salt. For the sake of our exploration, we hypothesize the deconstruction and decentralization of the myth of genius for both personas. This experiment questions how individual creators can collectively manifest an artifact that embodies emergent inspiration and collective praxis rather than single-pointed insights.

For collectors, this transition implies moving from individual consumption and ownership to collective understanding and shared stewardship. A decentralized organization of collectors could pool resources, recognizing that their participation in cultural exchange transcends mere taste-making or consumption, embodying a broader cultural production responsibility based on mutual benefit.

Web3 tools and conversations around decentralized identity and finance provide us the opportunity to contemplate a procession towards decentralized culture, for better and for worse. This signals a shift from a traditional model of cultural production, where a genius creator sells to a market, to a many-to-many cultural exchange. Here, communities of creators take on the responsibility to create cultural objects that allow for the emergence of a collective voice, aiming to provide a visionary orientation for our actions and future, acting like a lens and helping us see into the future more clearly than an individual could. The community of decentralized collectors, organized and coordinated, would recognize their role in patronizing a narrative that is critical of nepotism and self-interest, moving beyond mere material production towards novel social formations.

Throughout these proceedings, there have been hints about distinguishing between the collector and the general public. Although both groups might be variously motivated to engage in collecting, they do not share the same responsibilities. Clarifying the specific actions and responsibilities of the collector is essential. What mechanisms are needed to transition from the one-to-one model of a genius artist and a single patron to a collective of creators interacting with a collective of collectors? 

There is a compelling argument that creators are, in their own right, specialized collectors and that collectors view their curatorial actions as creative. The act of consuming, hoarding, or exchanging cultural artifacts as currency—whether for personal representation or other forms of utility—brings us to the heart of reciprocity. [1]

Web3 emphasizes ownership as a remedy, creating protocols that return content control to its creators and participants in its exchange. This purportedly shifts power back to the individuals involved. However, what we’re inviting you to consider with us is whether this supposed shift is perpetuating another dimension of traditional market principles, a coordination failure in cultural narrative. By reflecting on the decentralization of cultural producers like creators and collectors, we might pivot from a focus on ownership to one of stewardship. This could foster an emergent value from reciprocal relations, with participants feeling a responsibility to maintain what is created. These flickering identities–of creators and collectors–are increasingly defined through market signifiers, rendering both artists and patrons into brands that have allowed market pressures and economic factors to disproportionately influence the cultural landscape, diminishing the sense of responsibility for the artifacts produced and their intended purposes.

The physical manifestation of art is not a public good due to its inherent exclusivity.[2] However, the conceptual aspect of art—the ideas and experiences it represents—tends to be more accessible and harder to restrict. Art, like data, naturally seeks to propagate itself, allowing many people to see and experience it without diminishing the experience for others, making it non-rivalrous. However, this does not address qualitative merits of the content held within culturally distributed containers. Just because something is a public good in the economic sense doesn't inherently make it beneficial or necessary to fund through communal stewardship.

Ownership and stewardship are not mutually exclusive. Stewardship alone, without ownership, may lead to the principal-agent problem, where the motivation for being a good steward isn't clear. Ownership provides the necessary "skin in the game," motivating owners to be good stewards since they directly benefit from their care and management. Thus, ownership can be a powerful incentive for responsible stewardship.

When we shift towards a many-to-many model, we encounter the free rider problem, which allows us to question who the actual steward is. In collective coordination, stewardship can become diluted because the incentive to manage resources responsibly is less direct—everyone might assume someone else will handle it. This is where the purported genius of an individual can be beneficial—they can be a committed steward of their art and the context that is prepared around it. Addressing these issues is where web3 technologies could potentially make a difference by solving problems related to collective management.

Through these conversations we have imagined reciprocity as the creation and formalization of an internal feedback loop before the market gets involved. It's crucial to determine how the membership of the Collector DAO can be limited to ensure that they are trusted as good stewards and ownership plays a critical role here, as it may provide the reason for collectors to steward works they align with. The fates of the creator and the collector should be intertwined through relatively closed – autopoietic – entanglements, with the market becoming the testing ground for their theories on what the public will value.

We might consider a Collector DAO that supports a Creator DAO in producing work that might not hold substantial monetary value but is nonetheless important. This raises the question of balancing monetizable versus non-monetizable, or profitable versus non-profitable activities. This balance could allow the entangled communities as a whole to benefit from items that aren’t necessarily consumable in the traditional sense. By insisting that everything be a marketable product, we risk reducing art to mere commodities, securities, or utilities.

Let’s quickly recap. Our journey began with layer one, focusing on the formation of ideas and the first four layers of the stack dedicated to evolving atomic concepts into organismic composites. This was aimed at clarifying, mechanizing, and facilitating a collective publishing flow for a would-be Creator DAO. Layers five through seven allowed us to explore the murky, effervescent pools of various social and economic forms this could take. The implication was that many other potential forms exist, along with iterations and tinkering with the forms we were exploring. The connection between the creator and the collector should include mechanisms for ongoing feedback, while the Creator-Collector-Reciprocity formation maintains its own coherence in forming feedback loops with the greater public and wider markets.

Our colleagues have been hands-on with building an iteration of DUCEs and DINs. Their approach differs somewhat from ours; they're emphasizing creating in public, pushing a public-first methodology. Each individual creator develops their own DUCEs within a holding zone designated for them. These DUCEs can then gradually move through the DIN, serving as a network of exchange. The value of the DUCEs is determined by the community that forms around each topic, more a representation of memes emerging from a public than a specialized community of collectors. People can collect DUCEs to signal appreciation, but unlike the CCR model, there isn't a formal reciprocity involving the creation of a collector DAO. It's less about the artifacts themselves and more about community-based decisions on what should be included in their publishing output. 

The DIN system is built with the DAOhaus SDK and Moloch v3 DAO contracts. It facilitates the creation of new DAOs for each topic, which can range from specific areas of interest to collections of related themes. Users have the ability to tag topics, enhancing discoverability. When a user submits content to a topic DAO and it is accepted, they are granted creator status for that topic and receive shares. There is also a feedback mechanism in place, allowing collectors to support specific entries by tipping, a process regulated by the DAO. The financial distribution from tips is structured so that 80% of the proceeds go to the DAO and 20% to the creator. 

Collectors receive loot shares in the DAO for their activities, effectively giving them a stake in the assets they contribute towards. This model introduces an interesting dynamic in the creator-collector relationship, where collectors indirectly invest in themselves by contributing to the DAO. The funds generated through this mechanism can then be utilized for other activities as decided by the DAO.

The DIN creator flow begins by creating content prompted by a specific topic. This is facilitated through a local draft stored in the browser's storage, allowing multiple drafts to be saved locally. Upon submission, the content undergoes an on-chain transaction, becoming a post within the topic DAO.

Creators can then submit their content for curation. This involves signal sessions, which are run at specific intervals, allowing members to submit their content for review. During these sessions, content can be upvoted or downvoted, essentially applying weighted sentiment to various types of content. Comments on posts create additional DUCEs. These comments are treated similarly to articles in that they appear in the feed but lack the tags necessary for submission for curation. When a user creates content, they earn shares in the DAO. 

The curation flow revolves around the signaling session facilitated by the DAO. Using the DAOhaus Signal app, a TCR (Token-Curated Registry) is created. During this process, parameters such as what is being signaled and the end date are set, initiating the session. At the conclusion of the signaling session, the most supported content is awarded a curated tag. The curation primarily serves to highlight content that the topic community values most, although this mechanism does not explicitly emphasize collective collaboration. The participants in the signal session are our DAO shareholders. This raises the question: are the curators also the creators, or does the DAO include both creators and collectors? Essentially, there are individuals participating in the signal session who have created the content and others who have not created it but are engaged in curating it. 

The DAO treasury receives the proceeds from collectors, which can be allocated through a standard DAO proposal to fund various activities as determined by the DAO. Collectors can rage quit if they lose interest in the topic, enabling them to withdraw their contributions. The DIN team envisions a singular DAO for each topic. In this model, every DIN is correlated to one DAO, representing the community interests of both creators and collectors who also serve as curators. Subsequently, another DAO could be formed around a different community with different publication interests centered on another topic, forming an ecosystem of DINs.

Collectors can explore and sort through all the content of various DINs, tipping and collecting to signal support. Collectors not only earn NFTs from collecting but also from commenting on content. Individual collectors purchase NFT artifacts directly, with the goal to attract as many collectors as possible without a cap on the number of editions. The price of the NFT is determined at the DAO level, suggesting a collective decision-making process regarding pricing. The NFT price can be adjusted through a proposal process within the DAO to update the shaman (a contract that the DAO approves and grants administrative permissions). This introduces a unique aspect to the DAO's operation, where the price of the NFT is established even before the content of that NFT has been finalized. This strategy sets a standard price for all items related to a specific topic, aiming to maintain uniformity across content collections.

The pricing mechanism does not function as a traditional one-on-one transaction where each piece's unique attributes might command individual pricing. Instead, DIN seems to operate under the assumption that the quality of content will attract more collectors, thereby rewarding higher quality work within the predetermined price framework. This system supports the notion of pledge-based patronage, with collection funneling funds entering a treasury that both creators and collectors are responsible for managing. This dynamic is markedly different from having two separate DAOs where creators and collectors each manage their own treasury, as we explored with the CCR model.

As we anticipated, there seems to be social and technical friction caused by requiring all activities to be recorded on-chain, which, although partially mitigated by local storage solutions, still present UX challenges.

Another point of difference is the level of content granularity. We have been considering the DUCE to be an atomic unit of content, like a single idea, whereas with this DIN framework, the DUCE is presented more as a final product deemed worthy of collecting. DIN suggests a lower granularity in content, akin to a Reddit post, which lacks a hierarchical structure typically associated with more polished, collectible artifacts.

Additionally, there is a structural difference in the DAO setup. With DIN, there is only one DAO for each topic, as opposed to a system with two interacting DAOs, as we explored with CCR. This single DAO format simplifies the governance process but changes the nature of reciprocity and interaction within the system.

Lastly, the approach to involve the general public differs significantly. With DIN, the general public is almost automatically brought in as collectors by default. This lowers the barrier to entry into the collector community, unlike our previous designs where distinct thresholds or actions might be required to join.

In general, the DIN system appears more geared towards information-based content, primarily written, rather than visual or artistic types. This focus is likely influenced by the interface, which predominantly features a text area for submitting proposals. Consequently, the platform does not extensively support other types of content. This setup suggests a dynamic where collectors are consumers of information, and creators are the producers. The system effectively facilitates a process where a collector can request specific information, prompting creators to gather and deliver the required content. This model could be particularly efficient for smaller-scale research initiatives or tasks that require specific knowledge gathering, such as copyright-related queries. The platform's focus on narrowly defined tasks may not attract a broad base of collectors, especially if the topics are too specialized or narrowly focused. This could limit the platform's appeal to those with general interest in a topic, as the specificity might not resonate with a larger audience.

Overall, the DIN system encourages a type of interaction where creators scour for information and bring it back to the community, like gathering nuts for the tree. This model emphasizes informational content and research, utilizing the collection mechanism to fund these specific endeavors. In its current state, DIN seems to encourage more of a competitive dynamic among creators rather than fostering collective production. This setup results in the final product often reflecting the voice of an individual rather than a collaborative effort, aligning with somewhat familiar market-making mechanisms. 

Our primary concern lies in the incentive structure for collectives within DINs being largely based on altruism or patronage, where collecting is motivated by the belief that future contributions from the creators might be useful. However, the payoff is not particularly compelling since the content is openly accessible and non-scarce, making any collected item just one of many without unique value. The only tangible benefit from collecting seems to be the acquisition of loot shares, which allow some influence over future contributions, but the NFTs themselves lack functionality or aesthetic value that would make them desirable as display pieces. They serve merely as artifacts of participation in the process, raising doubts about whether people will actively collect items when the primary incentive is weak, which could impact creators' motivation to produce content, or worse, be compelled to generate content that is primarily intent on collector financial interests.

The curation process merits further exploration. While we discussed curation in CCR as an early phase in the creative process, in this context, it appears at a later phase, and understanding how this impacts the dynamics within the DAO could be insightful.

Our dialogue about creator-collector reciprocity started from the premise that current cultural production models, and the markets surrounding them, are often vampiric upon creative hosts. This model has, for better or worse, applied various pressures on cultural production, often forming these market pressures into the content itself. Our conversation sought to explore alternatives that emerge from decentralizing the persona of the creator, the community of collectors, and experimenting with putting intellectual property on the blockchain, either as DUCES or transitioning from ownership to stewardship, or through other means. This reimagining of cultural production places the responsibility back on the creators, challenging them to leverage their newfound freedoms and autonomy to innovate responsibly and creatively.

We admit that we harbor a degree of pessimism towards the term reciprocity, as it might imply a need for something other than what is inherently present in the market dynamics between creators and collectors. Instead, what might be more appropriate is focusing on the interdependency between these personas, focusing on their mutual reliance on feedback and support in rendering valuable cultural output. 

The challenge lies in determining the optimal conditions—such as the right percentage split in rewards or the appropriate levels of stewardship or ownership—that keep both creators motivated to produce and collectors engaged in supporting them, ensuring that neither party feels compelled to disengage. This discussion has underscored the importance of carefully structured economic and governance models that support sustained engagement from both parties, ensuring that creators are motivated to continue producing valuable content and collectors are incentivized to support and engage with this content. By refining these models, we can better understand how to foster a healthy, vibrant ecosystem that benefits all participants and encourages a flourishing creative economy.

Footnotes:

[1] We’re tip toeing around some pithy philosophical concepts here, trying not to fall down certain rabbit holes. For instance, that the general public should be associated with the creators as much as the collectors. In fact, we should question the relevance of formalizing any lasting distinction between these speculative roles. This shift has been evident since Warhol declared that anyone could be an artist and claim their 15 minutes of fame, regardless of historical knowledge or specialized skill. The ensuing decades have seen the democratization of cultural production, further blurred by the rise of internet-based auto-fiction “content creation,” a dramatic divergence from traditional artistic craft. These days, creators are largely identified as idiosyncratic consumer-curators. This reflects broader cultural shifts, including the debated concept of the "death of the author," which posits that no creation is entirely new but rather a reiteration of past works. But for the sake of our present interests, let’s move on from these tricks and traps.

[2] A particularly troubling notion we’ve encountered is the perception that all art is inherently good, and that artists, by extension (and through an awkward mutation of phrase), constitute a public good. This implies a responsibility to support them without sufficient consideration of the content or impact of their work, leading to a lack of coherence and accountability in cultural production. This issue is mirrored in web3 culture's fascination with meme coins, which reflect both the positive—rapid community formation and ideologically fueled incentivization—and the negative—aspects of delusional speculation and blatant deception. We propose that it's the pervasive nihilism that is most disturbing.

This research has been made possible by the vital support of DAOhaus.