Today, there is no easy way for developers who create software to get rewarded for their work without going through an antiquated process. They are having to form a company, foundation or DAO to handle sales, computation, storage, overhead, and collect payments from users.
This proposal for a Techno Capital Machine is meant to create a platform for developers to create and deploy their software. It does so in a way so that the TCM first handles all the infrastructure and payments before rewarding the developer based on the popularity of the program.
The Morpheus community is leveraging this framework of the Techno Capital Machine (TCM) and using it to accelerate the development of Decentralized AI. Though the concept is pertinent to all Smart Contracts, Decentralized Applications, and Web3 programs. See a link to the detailed tokenomics here: Whitepaper.
The term Techno Capital Machine is inspired by renowned philosopher Beff Jazos and has been first implemented by the Morpheus community.
- Developer launches an open source project using the Techno Capital Machine.
- Using TCM, the developer deploys a native token to power their project.
- Users staking stETH can choose to allocate their yield to projects.
- In exchange for allocating their yield to help fund a project, users are rewarded with a proportional stream of the project’s native token.
- 50% of the yield allocated to a project is used to purchase that project’s native token.
- The native tokens are then paired with the other 50% of the yield and deposited to a liquidity pool on an AMM.
How to launch your decentralized, open source project in 2024:
Let’s create a frictionless way for developers to launch projects using the Techno Capital Machine, shall we? The process for a new project is simple: Deploy Smart Contracts to direct Capital toward the new open source project. Leverage the available decentralized Compute, Code, and Community which already are involved in open source and freedom tech. Connect the project to the Morpheus Virtual Machine to access its users already using Smart Agents today.
- Users direct yield toward the open source project of their choice by depositing assets such as stETH into a Smart Contract.
- 50% of the daily yield purchases tokens in the open source project, which are contributed to an AMM trading pair as Protocol Owned Liquidity.
- 50% of the daily yield remains as stETH and is added to an AMM as the other half of the trading pair as Protocol Owned Liquidity.
- The open source project emits its native token to the contributor of the yield on a daily basis.
- Holders of the native tokens have access to the open source project’s utility.
Examples of open source projects could include Smart Agents, Decentralized Applications, Smart Contracts, Fine-Tuned Models, and tools for software to leverage in specific tasks.
All the Morpheus Smart Contracts are open source and thus available for anyone looking to launch an open source project. Benefits of the TCM include:
- Easy to create a fair launch native token to power an open source project.
- Permissionless as its jurisdiction agnostic, no company needed.
- The user maintains custody of their principle in the yield producing asset.
- The yield contributed daily creates a sustainable demand for the native token.
- The yield contributed daily grows the liquidity of the AMM over time.
- Holders of the native token can add additional functionality to their Smart Agent.
- Creators of the native token can get liquidity for the token they earn.
In addition to being faster and cheaper than forming a company or foundation, the TCM uses what we call “Atomic Governance” to streamline all the decisions related to the software, infrastructure, capital and frontends. In the Atomic Governance model every person involved is able to freely associate and individually decide their contributions without any votes or friction being introduced.
For example the Coder can elect or not to merge any open source contribution the community of coders suggests for their project. Based on how they value the code contribution and the hours the contributor wants as credit for the work. The Compute providers choose the type of AI models and tokens they want to support and the price at which they are willing to offer them. The Capital Providers select which projects to direct their stETH yield toward based on their desire to use the software being created. And lastly Community builders can choose the projects they want to build front ends for, integrate or otherwise support the development of based on the rewards they receive from project creators.
This TCM framework is much better aligned with a purely free market approach to building, rather than trying to build consensus and achieve coordination among a large number of people which is very time consuming and difficult especially at an early stage where the software needs to quickly change and iterate until it gets to a good product market fit and even afterward to adapt to new market conditions.
Smart Contracts for Capital Providers offering stETH and earning native project tokens. https://github.com/MorpheusAIs/SmartContracts
Yellowstone Compute Model for bidding on Compute. https://github.com/MorpheusAIs/Morpheus/blob/main/!KEYDOCS%20README%20FIRST!/7.Yellowstone%20Compute%20Model.md
Example Proof of Code Contribution.
https://github.com/MorpheusAIs/Morpheus/blob/main/Contributions/Code%20-%20Proof_Of_Contribution.md
There is a fundamental mismatch between the desire to build open source and freedom tech for the world and the traditional corporate compute structure. Many projects which begin open source resort to forming a company in order to scale their efforts and reward their contributors. The structure of these companies then force their founders over time to gradually release less open source solutions that benefit the communities that created them..
See the recent example “Open AI” which started as an open source project, but later formed a for profit company, immediately making their software closed source. The tension of this mismatch split their founders and nearly destroyed the company. It can be likened to a high-stakes power grab between investors, employees, founders, and board members for control.
While less known, a similar struggle nearly ended Ethereum at its inception, when the founders were split between a vision for a for-profit or a foundation. In Ethereum’s case, the foundation model won out. They then pioneered the use of a foundation in Switzerland and many other Web3 protocols followed in their footsteps over the past decade.
And while it's tempting to point to the Ethereum Foundation as the proven model, the barriers to forming a Swiss foundation or association remain fairly steep. Figure at least $250,000- $500,000 USD to set up the entity properly (with a pre-funded budget). One also has to open offices in Zug / Zurich and then have executives and board members working and holding meetings in Switzerland on a regular basis for the rest of the life of the project. Singapore, the other major hub for Web3 companies, is similarly expensive.
For all but the best funded entrepreneurs, this model is financially out of reach. And even for those that can afford it, the barrier of moving to a different country to found an early stage project is insurmountable for those with families, and/or for people arriving from countries with travel restrictions.
Lastly, we have DAOs, which have sprung up to offer an alternative governance structure. There are however, clear limits to the type of coordination they can enable. Many DAOs try to run all aspects of a project by vote. This requires lobbying to induce their users to pay attention to governance aspects, and thus insert a great deal of friction to building an early stage project. Projects usually die on the vine in committee.
In our view DAOs are best introduced after a project has a mature product market fit (like Uniswap did) as a way to introduce community voice and veto against negative changes. Not to function as a design committee for software projects at early stages.
And so here we are at the beginning of 2024 and the vast majority of projects are still forming quick companies due to the ease and affordability ($1,000 USD, 1 week to form). Open source founders start telling themselves that they will be somehow different. They will only pick open source aligned investors. They will only hire employees that build open source, and they will only take on shareholders who will never want to close source the tech in order to increase the profit of a well-adopted product. That would never happen to them, they tell themselves.
This self-cooked fantasy normally doesn’t work. Instead, founders find themselves having stepped into a trap in forming an entity fundamentally opposed to their initial values. Reality usually arrives years too late to do anything about it.
So what to do? Its time for a new model that addresses these issues. All the pieces are in place now to launch the Techno Capital Machine.