Glossary

The Glossary Page is designed to provide you with more in-depth knowledge of TE concepts and methods that you may not be familiar with.

Advice Process - a decision making process used by flat organizations. Anyone who sees a problem or opportunity can take the initiative to propose a solution, or alert someone better placed to do so. The proponent should evaluate who is going to be affected by the proposal and who has expertise in that subject. The decision-maker should seek their advice, gather perspectives and incorporate feedback where they see fit.

Augmented Bonding Curve - a modified token bonding curve that generates continuous funding for open organizations that produce and maintain public goods. It acts as a ‘value transfer interface’ between a particular Commons and the rest of the world, biomimetically similar to a cell wall. More Info

cadCAD (complex adaptive dynamics Computer-Aided Design) - a python based modeling framework for research, validation, and Computer Aided Design of complex systems. More Info

Commons - Resources that groups of people (communities, organizations) create and manage for individual and collective benefit. These resources are held collectively, not owned privately. More Info

Commons Stack - Building commons-based microeconomies to sustain public goods through incentive alignment, continuous funding and community governance. More Info

Commons Swarm - a collaboration between the Commons Stack and 1Hive that develops the governance tools for creating conviction voting DAOs on top of existing 1hive technology.

Computer-Aided Governance - a decision-support process that leverages blockchain technology and cadCAD to simulate the potential results of governance policies, leading to better informed decision making. More Info

Conflict - an expression of diversity, something natural in social structures. A signal from the otherness that is present in everything. Can be managed to avoid violence and promote transformation from an initial situation . More info

Conviction Voting - Conviction Voting offers a novel decision making process that funds proposals based on the aggregated preference of community members, expressed continuously. It sidesteps sybil attacks, provides collusion resistance, and mitigates many of the attack vectors of time-boxed voting mechanisms. Deep Dive

‌CSTK Ratio (Commons Stack Score Ratio) - the amount of wxDAI (wrapped xDAI) that each holder is able to send to the Hatch in relation to their CSTK Score. Deep Dive

CSTK Score - a non-transferable reputation score that represents “skin in the game” in the Commons Stack mission. It can only be held on-chain by activated members of the Trusted Seed and can be increased by paying membership dues or by earning Praise. TEC Deep Dive

CSTK Token - The CSTK token represents the skin in the game that contributors have put towards accomplishing the Commons Stack mission. It can be seen as a “trust token” since it’s non-transferable and is rewarded objectively for financial donations and subjectively based on Praise for contributions. CSTK token holders are invited to participate in future Commons Hatches and certain governance decisions for the Commons Stack as members of the Trusted Seed. Deep Dive

Cultural Build - A Commons has culture in its name. Anything that is collective has cultural variables that should be taken into account, especially when building economic systems. The TEC Cultural Build is working on the foundations of the Commons to ensure a healthy relational fabric and to give support to soft governance practices. The Cultural Build process is guided by Elinor Ostrom’s 8 principles from her Nobel Prize winning Governing the Commons (1990). More Info

Dandelion Voting - a voting app forked from the Original Aragon Voting app. It is the Aragon version of Moloch DAOs. Its features include “Rage Quitting”, proposing smart contract changes and controlling the actions members can take according to their participation. Deep Dive

Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) - an internet-native entity with no central management which is regulated by a set of automatically enforceable rules on a public blockchain, and whose goal is to take on a life of its own and incentivize people to achieve a shared common mission. As the name implies, a DAO is decentralized and autonomous. It’s decentralized because no one entity has the authority to make and enforce decisions, and it’s autonomous because it can function on its own. More Info

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) - digital assets and financial smart contracts, protocols, and decentralized applications (DApps) built on a blockchain that can be pieced together to customize a financial strategy. Due to their composability, DeFi protocols are sometimes explained using the metaphor of money legos More Info

Delegated Voting Period - the period of time when delegates can cast votes that have been vested to them. More Info

Tollgate Fee - a token fee a member must deposit before executing an action. This fee is useful for when an organization wants to make actions public, but impose a customizable cost to prevent spam. Deep Dive

Fractal Ownership - a tokenized implementation of that legal and economic concept within a digital ecosystem which consists of many organizations and individuals. More Info

Half Life - the time it takes to accumulate or reduce voting power by 50% in conviction voting. Deep Dive

Hatch - the initiation phase for the Augmented Bonding Curve. During the hatch, a group of trusted community initiators come together, start a DAO and make the initial decisions on how the Commons will be set up. Deep Dive

Hatch Maximum Goal - the maximum amount of funds that can be sent to the Hatch. Deep Dive

Hatch Minimum Goal - the amount of funds that needs to be raised during the Hatch to initialize the bonding curve. If the Minimum Goal isn’t reached, funds will be sent back to funders. Deep Dive

Hatch Time Limit - the duration the Hatch is open to collect funds. Deep Dive

Hatch Tribute - the percentage of funds a contributor cannot redeem if they wish to leave the DAO. These funds go to the funding pool. Deep Dive

Impact Hours - rewards for community contributions to Cultural Build of the Hatch based on the Commons Stack’s Praise system. Deep Dive

Max Ratio (β) - is a value between 0 and 1 which represents the max % of total funds that can be discharged at any given moment. Max Ratio affects the threshold of a proposal. It can be thought of as an “upper ceiling” in asking funds proportional to the total holdings of the Commons. Deep Dive

Metamask - a browser plugin that serves as an Ethereum wallet and is installed like any regular plugin. Once it’s installed, it allows users to store Ether and other ERC-20 tokens, enabling them to make transactions to any Ethereum address. More Info

Minimum Quorum - the percent of the total supply of the token that needs to participate in a vote in order for it to be able to be passed. Deep Dive

Minimum Threshold - sets the minimum percent of tokens that are used for calculating the threshold to pass any proposal. Similar to Minimum Quorum. Deep Dive

Moloch DAO - The DAO conceived in 2019 featuring share-weighted voting and rage quitting, base template for many of the Dandelion Voting features. More Info

Open-source Software - a type of computer software in which source code is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. More Info

Ostrom’s Principles - Ostrom’s achievement effectively answers popular theories about the “Tragedy of the Commons,” which has been interpreted to mean that private property is the only means of protecting finite resources from ruin or depletion. She has documented in many places around the world how communities devise ways to govern the commons to assure its survival for their needs and future generations. She found 8 principles for how commons can be governed sustainably and equitably in a community. More Info

Praise - The voices and contributions from the CSTK & TEC communities fuel our project. As such we seek to reflect that contribution to our system. One way of doing this is awarding Praise and ultimately CSTK and/or TEC tokens. More Info

Pure Public Good - a good that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous. For such utilities, users cannot be barred from accessing and/or using them for failing to pay for them. Also, use by one person neither prevents access of other people nor does it reduce availability to others. More Info

Quadratic Funding - a collective decision making method in which voters can allocate multiple votes to an issue to express their level of support. Voting power is often based on token holding or voting credits. The “cost” of a vote is calculated by squaring the number of votes. Deep Dive

Quiet Ending Period - a sectioned off period of the vote at the very end of the vote duration. If a vote outcome has been flipped from yes to no or vice versa during this time it will trigger Quiet Ending Extension. More Info

Quiet Ending Extension - will extend the vote duration for the specified amount of time if a vote outcome has changed during Quiet Ending Period. It will continue to trigger if the vote is flipped again during the extension time.

Rage Quit - the option to exit a DAO with a percentage of a participant’s contributed funds if the participant does not agree with a decision to change parameters.

Rage Quit Period - Specific to Dandelion Voting Instances. It gives people time to exit the TE Commons if they disagree with a decision to change parameters, before the Parameters are changed.

Signaling Proposal - a proposal that allows community members to signal their sentiment, allowing for more effective project governance. More info

Smart Contract - a computer program or a transaction protocol which is intended to automatically execute, control or document legally relevant events and actions according to the terms of a contract or an agreement. More Info

Staking - the act of locking digital assets to support the security and operations of a blockchain network and to receive staking rewards. More Info

Support Required - the percentage of tokens needed to vote yes (of the tokens that were used to vote) for a proposal to pass in the Dandelion and Disputable Voting Apps. Deep Dive

Token Bonding Curve - a mathematical formula used to set a relationship between a token’s price and its supply. More Info

Token Engineering - an emerging engineering discipline focused on holistic systems design and the theory, practice and tools used to design and verify tokenized ecosystems.

Token Engineering Commons (TEC)- an open source and collectively governed project that aims to create a token economy that will accelerate the responsible & ethical creation of public goods within the TE community. The TEC is the first product of the Common Stack. Deep Dive

Tragedy of the Commons - a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users, acting independently according to their own self-interest, behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling the shared resource through their collective action. More Info

Trusted Seed - a whitelist of people who have contributed to the development of the Commons Stack mission and who have reputation and expertise in areas related to the operation of a Commons. Trusted Seed members can also be invited to participate in a Commons Hatch, alongside the Commons’s project launching community. Deep Dive

Transformative Actions -a set of social tools to process conflict and catalyze its management in a short term responsive and long term strategic way. Deep Dive.

Vesting Cliff Period - The period of time in which the tokens minted during the hatch are 100% locked and can’t be converted into xDAI using the Bonding Curve. Deep Dive

Vesting Complete Period - The period of time from the end of the Hatch in which the tokens minted during the Hatch become completely unlocked. Deep Dive

Vote Duration - the maximum period of time it takes for a vote to pass or fail. Deep Dive

Vote Proposal Buffer - the amount of time that must pass between each subsequent vote. This parameter will determine the number of votes that can take place within a period of time and whether or not we can have votes run concurrently. Deep Dive

Vote Execution Delay - the period of time after a vote passes before the vote can be executed. Deep Dive

WalletConnect - an open source protocol for connecting decentralised applications to mobile wallets with QR code scanning or deep linking. A user can interact securely with any Dapp from their mobile phone. More Info

Web3 - a decentralized internet where users control their own data, identity and destiny. More Info

Wiki - a hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience directly using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project and may be either open to the public or limited to use within an organization for maintaining its internal knowledge base. More Info

OTHER RESEARCH & RELATED TOPICS

BlockScience - an engineering, R&D, and analytics firm specializing in complex systems. Their focus is to design and build data-driven decision systems for new and legacy businesses leveraging engineering methodologies and academic-grade tools. More Info

Ethereum - a global, open-source platform for decentralized applications and finance. More Info

Rinkeby Test Network - a proof-of-authority Ethereum test network. More Info

xDai Chain - a stable payments blockchain designed for fast and inexpensive stable transactions. xDai is used for transactions, payments and fees, and STAKE is used to support Proof-of-Stake consensus. More Info

SourceCred - a technology that makes the labor of individuals more visible and rewardable as they work together in a project or community. The goal of SourceCred is to use this technology to make rewarding labor as nuanced as human contribution often is. More Info

Sybill Attack - an attack that subverts the reputation system of a network service by creating a large number of pseudonymous identities and uses them to gain a disproportionately large influence. More Info

Token Curated Registry - an incentivized voting game that helps create trusted lists that are maintained by the very people that use them. Users collectively vote (using tokens) to decide which submissions are valid and should be included in the list. More Info

TokenLog - a governance tool to create token-weighted backlogs. It allows projects to continuously gather feedback from their token holders in order to help plan and prioritize their work.​ More Info

Your economy, your choice - thanks to the Params working group, the TEC is ending the technocracy, by providing a powerful tool to create the parameters of your economy by just moving slides and interpreting graphics on the dashboard. The TEC also held an event to build the Mission, Vision and Values where the community build and vote on them using tokenlog.