Deliberative Democracy

The governance structure of a DAO built on Semada will encourage a deliberative democracy. A ​deliberative democracy​ by definition values authentic deliberation for legitimating consensus on the law, over the mere act of achieving a majority vote. The eternally reviewable history of any debate in the forum may provide an ideal mechanism for achieving this.

Authentic deliberation requires an organization’s discussion and decision-making process to be:

• Informed​: Members of a DAO must have access to accurate, relevant, and timely information. The entire history of all actions the DAO performs, including all votes and all fees collected, is eternally accessible on the blockchain.

• Balanced​: Arguments should be considered from contrary perspectives. Every member has the opportunity to post any contentious opinion without fear of reprisals, especially if they are given the opportunity for anonymity.

• Conscientious​: Participants should sincerely consider the merits of arguments and act in the interest of improving the DAO. This cannot be ensured without proper security and incentivization.

• Binding​: Arguments have the goal of ending in policy which will be instituted for some length of time.

• Dynamic​: Participants must accept that policies and protocols will eventually change, and so should have a perspective that is open to influence.

The value of deliberation is at odds with time-efficiency and finality. The values and needs of any particular DAO will change between these two extremes throughout its lifetime. The parameters which determine which extreme is preferred include 1) validation pool timeout, 2) % of sem tokens risked during validation pools, and 3) reference weight standards.