How We Are Building Society Protocol

### Table of Contents 1. [Introduction](#Introduction) 2. [What Are We Building?](#What%20Are%20We%20Building?) 1. [A Single Codebase, Many Communities](#A%20Single%20Codebase,%20Many%20Communities) 2. [Web3 Outpost (Schelling Point)](#Web3%20Outpost%20(Schelling%20Point)) 3. [Macro Roadmap](#Macro%20Roadmap) 3. [Our Movement](#Our%20Movement) 1. [The Core Team](#The%20Core%20Team) 2. [Affiliates](#Affiliates) 3. [The Community](#The%20Community) 4. [Value Flows Chart](#Value%20Flows%20Chart) 4. [Financial Strategy & Fundraising](#Financial%20Strategy%20&%20Fundraising) 1. [SPEC Token](#SPEC%20Token) 5. [The Journey](#The%20Journey) 1. [The Dragons Clutches](#The%20Dragons%20Clutches) 6. [Conclusion](#Conclusion) ## Introduction > “If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” > > —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry At Society Protocol (SP), we are building the next societal matrix (I guess that counts as a ship)––to usher in a new epoch of human civilization––the _Age of Synchronicity_[^1]. We can’t possibly aspire to explain to you how amazing the _Age of Synchronicity_ will be…_because it stretches outside the realms of our imaginations_. **_It hasn’t been built yet, and so we can’t fully visualize it_**_. We can only yearn for a vast and endless new civilization—where all of society moves as one._ We have written about our rough expectations for the _Age of Synchronicity_ in other articles…and it does sound fantastical...but those are only the dreams of some blindfolded people in a cave—the shades of light we are able to visualize at this moment, as first-order effects. _We cannot fully visualize, understand, or explain how fantastical the Age of Synchronicity is going to be—_**_without actually experiencing it_**_…and to experience it…we need to build it._ _So…How are we building Society Protocol?_ **_In short…step by step._** **_Piece by piece._** Society Protocol does not need to be entirely completed to become valuable and transition humanity into a new epoch. Sure…we have a lifetime of work ahead of us (and it likely it stretches past our lifetimes)…but the project becomes valuable to the world in around 3-5 years, once the MVP is released, and its value increases every year thereafter, like a snowball. _It’s like building an exquisite cathedral or a pyramid—fully, it will take centuries, but the foundation serves its purpose._ **_I’m going to explain to you how we’re going to build this vessel. It will be an epic journey._** _We’re here to slay a dragon…a very powerful dragon. One, which is ethereal, sitting on a massive pile of gold, and has sucked up the life-force of all the humans in the world. Only by slaying this dragon can we return the souls & life-force back to the people of the earth and revive prosperity for the realm._ ![[kerafyrm.jpg]]*Caption: Kerafyrm, the Sleeper is the most powerful known being in the world of Norrath (Everquest). The creators of the Everquest game designed Kerafyrm, the Sleeper to be entirely un-defeatable[^22].* In [Synchronized States](https://societyprotocol.io/Published/Articles/Synchronized+States+(The+Golden+Record)), we elaborated on why the transition from Nation States to Synchronized States is absolutely inevitable. To summarize, Nation States will enter into a prisoners dilemma with each other, in which, absolutely all of them will be forced to transition into Synchronized States. The only open question remaining—_is_ **_how this transition unfolds_**: Does humanity transition directly into The Age of Synchronicity (Aquarius), or does it spend a few centuries in a dark techno-feudal age first? _We will find out._ **It depends on the story humanity tells itself. The stories we collectively tell ourselves are ultimately self-fulfilling prophecies. Which story will you choose? Which story will humanity choose? The outcome is up to all of us dear readers.** _I know which story I want to see._ #### We are currently entering a transitionary period. **_We’re going on a voyage._** > **Voyage:** We are moving to Synchronized States with the intention to never need to come back to the old structures of Nation States. > > –An excerpt from our [Ideology](https://societyprotocol.io/Published/Movement/Ideology). _The old matrix is collapsing, and the new one is yet to be born._ ![[Now-is-the-age-of-monsters.png|600]] <center>Society Protocol is a horizontally wide project, to transition the world. We accept many types of monsters in our ranks.</center> This article covers how we’re handing th transition. The sections covered include: what we’re building, our movement, the financial & fundraising strategy, and the journey we expect ahead. Ultimately, blockchain and the decentralization movement cannot fulfill it’s vision without Society Protocol[^2]. ## What Are We Building? In the big picture, we’re building a new world. A better world. A new iteration of the societal matrix. _Synchronized States. And ultimately, the Age of Synchronicity._ In the micro details, we’re building a codebase for Society Protocol and a Web3 Outpost to serve as the Schelling Point for our distributed & decentralized[^3] movement to gather around. The best comparison for what we’re actually doing as an organization, is the [Linux Foundation](https://www.linuxfoundation.org/). There isn’t one version of Linux. It’s an open source codebase shared by the whole world due to its reliability, neutrality, and security—in order to start Linux instances. We are creating something very similar at the Society Protocol. We’re building the codebase for Society Protocol—which is an source-available[^4] protocol enabling anyone to spin up their own Synchronized State by instantiating and maintaining customizable Society Protocol instances. The only real difference between our organizational structure and the Linux Foundation—is the Web3 aspect of it. It’s the Web3 Outpost, which we use as a [Schelling point](https://nav.al/schelling-point) to allow our community a censorship-resistant coordination method—in order to: - Keep track of individual contributions - Provide unique sybil-resistant identities via accounts & badges - Remain censorship-resistant and resilient as a movement as we encounter obstacles in this transition to the Age of Synchronicity - Use the economic rails incentive capabilities available in Web3 to facilitate coordination ### A Single Codebase, Many Communities Building Society Protocol IS GOING TO BE A DIFFICULT TECHNICAL CHALLENGE[^5]. We’re going to need brilliant engineers to accomplish it. **Civilization only needs ONE—most secure, most robust, _modular,_ source-available codebase for Society Protocol to spawn an infinite amount of customizable instances**. Once one version works, and its security becomes battle tested, and it’s source-available, it’s modular enough to allow various configurations—there’s no reason to create more variants. _A single secure, neutral, and modular codebase will spawn many Society Protocol instances._ #### **The three important characteristics:** **Secure** – If people are to entrust their lives and identities to this matrix, is a lot of risk. It’s obviously of tremendous importance that the codebase is extremely secure. Security is perhaps the most important quality of the codebase. It can only be achieved with an approach which places security above all else, builds the project in a modular concentric ring fashion (with the innermost rings being the most secure), and undergoes lengthy time periods of battle-testing. **The codebase must have impeccable security.** _It will take time._ Our organization will prioritize security at the foundational level—especially for the core parts of the Society Protocol codebase[^6], which are comparable to the Linux kernel. **Modular** – Different communities will each use SP in their own unique ways: with their own Value Functions, UIs, Protocol Parameters, and Constitutions; with distinct ideologies and cultures; with varied computing hardware and geographic clusters. While the core remains the stable, each community will want its own modular configuration. **Our role is to ensure that the codebase is designed and built to be modular enough to support these customizable configurations of interoperable features effortlessly.** This part of the codebase is designed like the parts of Linux outside of the kernel. **Neutral** – _The source-available codebase should remain neutral, in a way all communities are able to entrust._ For all communities to be able to use SP confidently, it must be designed in a generic way—for the general use-case, and remain fair to all types of communities—avoiding a specific specialization or skew towards a favored use case or particular type of organization[^7]. _We’re building the most generic (neutral, yet modular) and secure platform that everyone can use (as close to equally as possible) to create their variant of Synchronized States._ _From this one codebase, thousands of Synchronized States will bloom._ It will be the most secure, central, source-available codebase for Society Protocol. Will will have succeeded, if we can accomplish this as an organization: build the most secure, modular, and neutral codebase for Society Protocol. ### Web3 Outpost (Schelling Point) _The Web3 Outpost will serve as the_ [_Schelling Point_](https://nav.al/schelling-point) _around which the Society Protocol movement will gather._ It’s purpose is to keep our keep our community aligned and together through this journey, by using the censorship-resistant, “immutable”, and economic qualities of Web3; as we build the transition to Web4. (Don’t worry…this won’t be a quick transition, and we expect our Web3 Outpost to still be around and valuable in 20 years time). Ultimately, the Web3 Outpost is designed to: bind us together, keep track of individual contributions, provide an economic substrate to finance and manage our organization, and provide a censorship-resistant space for hosting our community and content. #### **The Web3 Outpost consists of several pieces:** **Society Protocol DAO**[^8] – The DAO serves as the decision-making body and treasury for our movement. It's governed exclusively by Governors—badge-holding members from the core team, affiliates, and our community with specialized expertise and skin in the game[^9]. Unlike typical token-based DAOs, ours deliberately excludes pseudonymous accounts and SPEC token holders from direct governance[^10]. This design prevents sybil attacks and upholds our meritocratic principles by ensuring only identified, accountable parties make decisions. Governors may add or remove peers, but governance always remains with proven contributors rather than anonymous participants[^11]. **Web3 Application** – The Web3 Application serves to provide unique identity accounts for all participants in our movement. It tracks the contributions and characteristics of each individual account over time by using the badge system. Badges are ERC-1155 NFTs on Ethereum. They can represent any type of contribution or characteristic: - Governor badges represent the ability to make decisions in the DAO - A VIP access badge represents access to the VIP communication channels - Profile badges represent the characteristics of the account holder, with an avatar and bio information - zkTLS badges can link to accounts real-world identities, social media accounts, identity, and financial records - Partner community badges represent communities officially affiliated with Society Protocol movement **Badges are a way to accumulate identity, they serve to distinguish accounts.** The Web3 Application allows anyone to create accounts and badges. The Society Protocol DAO has a set of official badges to represent contributions, access roles, and characteristics. How these badges are interpreted is in the “eye of the beholder.” Each community in the SP movement will decide for itself which badges it values. Upon the initial release of the SP MVP and thereafter…communities will use their unique accounts (with accumulated identity histories, badges, and SPEC) from the Web3 Outpost to create and portal identities into their unique Web4 Society Protocol instances. Millions of unique Web4 instances are expected to be launched in this process, because each community will want their own instance. The evolution of SP instances, and the communities launching them will stretch over decades, if not centuries. As a constant stream of new communities launch instances, they will create a feedback loop, which will refine the protocol with each new instance launched over time. The Web3 Application additionally allows accounts to form and cluster inside of communities. These communities consist of: our partner communities and unaligned communities[^12]. They represent different groups that are gathering at the Web3 Outpost, with the intention of transferring their communities into Society Protocol instances. _The Web3 Application allows these communities to gather in one spot, keep track of members and contributions via badges, interact using their censorship resistant identities, and make decisions as a group._ All sorts of communities—both established organizations and new upstarts—will want to create SP instances to coordinate themselves. These instances provide complete societal infrastructure out of the box: shared reality, identity systems, monetary systems, governance frameworks, synchronized history, and organizational capacity—all designed to scale seamlessly from 2 people to 10 billion. The purpose of the Web3 Application/Outpost is to enable these groups a clearly defined, accurate set of Genesis Actors based on contributions and characteristics to enable them to start the most potent and powerful SP instances immediately[^13]. **Web3 Forums** – The Web3 forum is the first of their kind, and used for stable lasting discussions, when a chat communications tool like Discord isn’t optimal. They offer our community a censorship-resistant flow of lasting communication. Our Web3 Forum is built on top of [Lens Protocol](https://lens.xyz/) on the [zkSync](https://www.zksync.io/) network. We are looking at ways to combine the Web3 Forum accounts into a unified structure with the Web3 Application accounts on Ethereum. **Website –** The Society Protocol website hosts all the content and information about the project. It’s a static website with built in censorship-resistance, which is hosted on distributed platforms, such as IPFS / [Filecoin](https://filecoin.io/), in addition to a traditional DNS. **SPEC Token** – The SPEC token serves as a representation of contribution to Society Protocol. It represents value stored, to be transferred by willing communities into Energy as they start Society Protocol instances. The SPEC token is crucial for us to keep track of contributions, finance the project, and align economic incentives while we build Society Protocol. _SPEC serves as your tickets into the new world._ When communities go to start SP instances, they will use a combination of SPEC tokens & account system badges to determine who to include (based on accounts) and how much Energy to give them (based on SPEC) in their instances. Millions of Society Protocol instances are expected to be created—with SPEC token holders having a chance to receive an airdrop of Energy in each one of these instances. Communities aren’t forced to grant SPEC token holders Energy, it’s rather that the incentives naturally align. As communities look to fill the ranks of their SP instances with valuable members— they will look to grant initial Energy distributions to accounts which have shown a legitimate history of participating and contributing to the SP movement—SPEC token holders. SPEC serves as a way to coordinate the creation of potentially grandiose SP instances based on legitimate contribution right away. It provides a legitimate process for the distribution of initial Energy, which is (generally) going to be the most optimal, fair, and efficient way for most SP instances (not all) to establish themselves. These instances will retain a direct line of legitimacy, and be able to scale participation from day one by using the account system (to decide who to invite) and SPEC token holdings (to decide how much Energy to give each account)[^14]. More info about the SPEC token [here](https://staging-society-protocol-client.vercel.app/spec-token). **Communication Channels** – Last but not least, are the communication channels where our community gathers. This is the only part of our infrastructure where the Web3 variant of these tools isn’t entirely ready for serious consideration. The communication channel infrastructure considers three parts: - **Communication Substrate** – These are the standard chat channel infrastructure where regular communication will happen. Currently, no Web3 communication platforms are ready to serve as professional infrastructure for this part—as a result, we are researching the best current platform, which is ideally: open source and supports token-gating. - **VIP Channels** – These are token gated channels available to SPEC token holders who have committed to locking up their tokens for a certain period of time and our community partners. VIP channels come in three tiers: gold, silver, and platinum, with increasing requirements to access each tier—allowing each incremental tier to contain a more exclusive and aligned community to bring value to its members on the long journey from Nation States to Synchronized Network States. - **Encrypted Web3 Communication** – We are considering the possibility of enhancing our Web3 Application with a communications platform (chat and social media). This would extend the application’s already established account system…to enable censorship resistant E2EE messaging, chat channel (Discord, Matrix) alternative, and social media. **All of these tools (except for the communication substrate) come distributed from day one.** > _We are building the transition from Web3 ––> Web4, and starting essentially all of our infrastructure on Web3 rails to accomplish this. We naturally try to avoid any linkages or infrastructure tied to the centralized appendages of Web2—increasing our platforms distribution, independence, and resilience._ The purpose of our Web3 Outpost is to keep our movement and its various communities aligned—to serve as Schelling point infrastructure—preserving a valid and accurate history and keeping track of the shared reality for Society Protocol. It’s critical that we keep track of contributions, because after we build the initial SP MVP…communities will want to create and organize inside of the Web4 instances—the account system of the Web3 app, and the SPEC token allow communities to instantly portal into SP instances with their acquired history and accurate contributions in all sorts of legitimate forms—(whoever is creating the SP instance decides who to invite and how much Energy to give each account, based on the Web3 Outpost accounts + SPEC token holdings). The Web3 Outpost will remain useful and necessary for the entire transition period, until people are using Web4 as their primary life platform from the start, and maybe even afterwards. We expect our Web3 Outpost to remain standing for 25+ years and retain its value as vital infrastructure to accommodate this transition. The success of Bitcoin, Ethereum and Web3 movement is crucial for our success. We stand on the shoulders of giants and fully support the Web3 movement. ### Macro Roadmap ![[Macro Roadmap.png]] #### Roadmap Steps Overview 1. **Create core content & infrastructure (2025–2026):** This stage includes creating all the core content to explain the Society Protocol system, and the core infrastructure required to support the weight of its movement (all the creative content and Web3 Outpost). 2. **Public release (2026):** Society Protocol is released to the public. Everyone becomes able to participate, and the movement starts raising public awareness and gaining momentum. 3. **Fundraise (2026–2027):** Funding is raised to develop the project from a variety of sources: through an ICO, community partners, and research grants. 4. **Research begins on core layers (2027–2030):** The core team starts research on how to build the optimal underlying layer-1 state machine for Society Protocol––this includes: the state transition function (STF), state storage, accounts, execution, data availability, and consensus layers. 5. **Core codebase development for MVP (2027–2032):** The Society Protocol MVP is produced. The MVP codebase includes: the Energy state machine, account abstraction, STF, Protocol Parameters, and the first three VFs: Parenting, Hunting, and Property. 6. **Development of additional Value Functions (VFs) (2030–Future):** The additional cast of modular VFs is developed and incorporated into the system: Curation, Governance, Organizations, Communication, Farming, and Portal––alongside other, unique VFs created by our community. 7. **Development of peripheral additions and extensions (2030–Future):** This stage deals with the peripheral acessories, such as: block explorers, user interfaces, RPC clients, physical accessories (such as helmets which connect to SP accounts), and Extensions of the state machine––extending the trust to services outside of Society Protocol. 8. **Testing & refinement sandbox testing and small scale IRL (2031–Future):** SP instances are tested in the wild by participating communities. This process produces a wealth of data and iterative feedback loops to refine the protocol––*it's like going from the first Wright brothers airplane to Boeing 747s*. 9. **Scale (2034–Future):** Battle-tested versions of SP start to grow in scale, and the infrastructure to grow to worldwide scale is developed. * * * **Society Protocol is for everyone.** Both bottom-up and top-down. From the smallest organic communities, to the largest Nation State structures—everyone can dive into it and participate. We will cooperate with all these communities, which follow our ideology, to make it happen. From their side, they will offer us support and reap the benefits. The way that different communities will approach Society Protocol will vary. For some small, especially oppressed communities…_it will be everything—they cannot coordinate without it, and will eagerly dive in head first. For other larger structures, such as Nation States…it will be nothing more than something to keep an eye on and test in small experimental zones_, they won’t be able to take giant risks and adopt it all at once. The MVP of this codebase should be ready in ~3–5 years, at which point: our community, community partners, advisors, team, etc…will have everything prepared already (through the Web3 outpost infrastructure) to portal into their SP instances and begin experimenting with living inside of Synchronized States. At Society Protocol, we remain independent. Our role is to remain neutral and serve these communities. We are a decentralized and global organization, providing this codebase for everyone. We are distributed around the globe for neutrality, and do everything in the open. The beautiful thing about Society Protocol, is that while the entire transition to the *Age of Synchronicity* will take an estimated 75 years...it only takes an approximate 3–5 years to produce the system's core––the minimal-viable-product (MVP)––which starts adding value to communities, and grows from there. After the MVP is produced, an assortment of Value Functions and peripherals can be added to the system in a modular fashion. ## Our Movement If we dream of going on a Voyage to create Synchronized States—_we’re going to need a movement_. Our organization alone won’t handle the pressure of buildling a new world—it must be as a part of a movement. **We are creating a movement to bring Society Protocol to life**_—_it consists of three main segments: the core team, affiliates, and the community. > “Another form of wealth, hidden from the archaeologist, were titles to offices. Such social positions were more valuable than the tangible forms of wealth in many hunter-gatherer cultures. Examples of such positions included clan leaders, war party leaders, hunting party leaders, membership in a particular long-term trading partnership (with a particular person in a neighboring clan or tribe), midwives, and religious healers. Often collectibles not only embodied wealth, but also served as a mnemonic, representing the title to a clan position of responsibility and privilege.” \[@szaboShellingOutOrigins2002\] The movement is a coordinated mass of distributed humans, participating from all around the world, united by a singular intention to create Synchronized States. We coordinate around this objective by using the Web3 Outpost as our Schelling point—tracking roles and contributions through account badges, while leveraging the free market economics of Web3 to manage the financial side. _This infrastructure is built to be censorship-resistant, distributed, and decentralized from day one, providing the resilient foundation our movement needs to bring Society Protocol to life._ > #### A Word From The Founder > > As a founder, I’m not in this to make money…I couldn’t see a way or meaning to accomplish that. I’ve decided to take this journey and risk because the world needs a path forward. > > I discovered a system which could bring an entirely new age for civilization, and didn’t want to die holding it in. I’m not sure what this journey entails. > > I now feel obligated to go on a quest to bring this project to the world. Watching the the world as we know it coming to a close, and radically change for the worse…exasperates both the need and risk of this journey. > > We really need to attempt to transition the world into the next phase (TEAA), as cleanly and crisply as possible, if we want to have great lives and leave something worth living in for our children. > > One of the biggest things that I can offer, is that I’m not leaving. I’ll be here to offer myself as a resource and provide a guiding hand, for as long as it takes and as long as I am able to. > > I consider this the most important mission of our time, and therefore, the most valuable thing I could dedicate my life to. > > We are here to build a stable and lasting movement which isn’t leaving until the mission is complete. **_Decentralization matters._** Our movement is a network of replaceable nodes and hubs of various sizes aggregated around censorship-resistant infrastructure. It’s not a headless movement per se, nor is it non-hierarchical. It’s decentralized in the sense that, if one person or hub goes down, another one easily replaces it. Our movement is distributed, decentralized, and censorship resistant. **_These qualities make it resilient._** **_Our Ideology._** Our movement’s [ideology](https://societyprotocol.io/Published/Movement/Ideology) guides us through this transition. We use it as a methodology for making decisions and figuring out how to allocate our resources. It details the guiding principles to follow, about how we believe the triple-entry accounting age (TEAA) should look, and _we’re going on a voyage to get there._ > **Voyage:** We are moving to Synchronized States with the intention to never need to come back to the old structures of Nation States. > > –excerpt from the [Ideology](https://societyprotocol.io/Published/Movement/Ideology) We intend for the global movement to form hubs all over the world. Gatherings, meet-up groups, conferences, intentional communities, and pop-up cities. These activities strengthen and intertwine the movement. They are highly desired and our organization will offer support where we can. Supporting the Society Protocol movement doesn’t necessarily need to be the primary purpose of hubs, it can be a peripheral partnership of aligned communities. One of the first hubs being formed is [School of Change](http://schoolofchange.co/)—an intentional community designed to help individuals improve their longevity, find and elevate their purpose, and refine their identity. > Together, the movement must combine to form a social, political, and economic safety net. The next sections cover the three main segments of our movement, which are: the core team, affiliates, and the community. ![[SP Movement Concentric Circles.excalidraw.png|600]] <center>Concentric circles illustration of the roles in the Society Protocol movement</center> ### The Core Team The core team is the inner core, composed of members of the community who get compensated from the treasury to work on Society Protocol. The core team must remain productive, specialized, culturally aligned, and organized—to produce and steward a world-changing protocol. There are lots of roles required: researchers, designers, developers, management, business developers, lawyers, and advocates. **The core team is directly responsible for the research, design, and development of Society Protocol.** The core team is coordinated by the DAO and the Web3 Outpost system[^15]. Core team members can be identified in the DAO by their “core team member” badges. The planning and direction of what the core team builds, is controlled by the governance of the Society Protocol DAO—in which the core team will ultimately control around 38% of the decision-making power[^16]. _The core team is the execution arm of the SP DAO governors will._ All the relevant things pertaining to distributed organizations to coordinate and manage people apply, in the same way as any other organization: organizational hierarchies, culture, management, pay structures, and infrastructure must all be optimized for the core team to be able to function efficiently and fulfill its duties. The Mythical Man Month is a classic book pertaining to this exactly subject. It basically states that “an organization can’t just throw a bunch of engineers together in a room and make it work,” the core team must be carefully considered, gradually built, and ultimately elite at their roles. **The core team will build everything out in the open.** Absolutely everything will be transparent and source-available: our codebase, the roadmap, our internal organizational structures, etc…_this is an entirely open organization_. We will remain consistently open about our plans and progress, and will be live-streaming progress updates at minimum one time a week. Our thinking about this is simple: this is not a conspiracy; it’s a project open to everyone. _We don’t expect any conspirational variants of similar organizations to be able to race us to the most secure, widely used, source-available codebase and community—if we simply remain fully open._ The entire organization being open and transparent has an additional effect of making the positions of value inside of it more difficult to politically capture—by removing information asymmetries. _We are competing on the truest battlefield for the strongest codebase and Schelling point for Society Protocol._ **Our organization will not be starting any Synchronized States.** We aren’t politically motivated. **The Society Protocol Foundation, DAO, and core team all have absolutely no interest in being the kings of a new world.** Our organization is much like the Linux Foundation—_we are the stewards of infrastructure. We are not looking to conquer the world, we serve the world from a position of neutrality._ _We serve the kings and queens of a new world, and help them achieve their aims of better coordinating their societies by providing the secure, modular, and neutral infrastructure, which all Synchronized States will use._ ![[galaxy-spiral-annotated.excalidraw.png|800]] > The game is always rigged, the game always has one fatal weak spot. –Esoteric Knowledge > > Every point except for the middle is imbalanced in a certain way. Every State has it’s on unique socioeconomic principles, culture, political system, etc...none of them are perfectly balanced. The middle though, must remain as balanced as possible. Our core team is the middle, from which millions of Synchronized States will bloom. Our organization exists to make the most _neutral_ and _balanced_ SP codebase and Web3 Outpost possible. **_We’re not here to rig any games._** _Our organizational “raison d'être” is to build the most balanced, modular, and secure system we can manage, while remaining credibly neutral to all the communities using it._ It’s going to be the various entities and communities which create their own Society Protocol instances…each will slightly imbalance their instance’s parameters, each in their own unique way—to achieve their goals. Some of these will become the future rulers of a new age (incredibly powerful)…they will compete against each other under these conditions (the imbalances they chose for their societies, as a differentiator). None of them will be perfectly balanced, communities will compete for the most potent and lasting variants. _This is not the job of our core team and organization._ **_We’re here to make the most balanced infrastructure for everyone._** **It’s important that the core team remains distributed & decentralized_._** All team members should remain replaceable—simply cogs in a large distributed machine. Any irreplaceable team members may become targets of operations by powerful entities, threatening their well-being and physical safety[^17]._ Many roles on the core team may choose to remain pseudonymous. _Core team members don’t want to become irreplaceable cogs._ This is mitigated by building everything out in the open, operating with a culture of resilience, and assigning an overlap of multiple team members to tasks whenever possible[^18]. > We are currently looking for an executive CEO co-founder—to steer the ship and make executive decisions on the way to a new world. More about this role can be found [here](https://societyprotocol.io/Published/Organization/Roles). ### Affiliates Our network of affiliates is vital to the success of Society Protocol. Affiliates are walking their own paths, but would like to see Society Protocol succeed and support us on this journey—channeling their energy into our community, while remaining distinct and separate entities. The time commitment of affiliates is low, but their impact is significant and felt—at the right place, at the right time. While not part of the core team, they remain on the periphery and bring valuable technical expertise, social proof, and financial support. Affiliates consist of two types: advisors and partner communities. **Advisors** are individuals and firms who bring valuable advice, social proof, and financial support to our movement. They are ideologically aligned: renowned individuals, specialist technical experts, philanthropic and venture capital firms. **Partner communities** are communities which are ideologically aligned with Society Protocol, and either would like to transition their own communities into Society Protocol instances in the future, and/or contribute their technological expertise to our organization in exchange for: Governor rights, SPEC token compensation, and recognition (on their Web3 Outpost accounts). Partner communities affiliated with us: are prominently featured on our website and in the Web3 Outpost as separate communities with their own members. They are able to create and award their own unique badges to keep track of contributions, use separate community Governor badges to make decisions as a group, and receive SPEC tokens to pass around to their community members. We offer three premium tiers for affiliated partner communities: gold, silver, and bronze. All other communities are considered unaffiliated. Communities wishing to use the Society Protocol infrastructure without being affiliated, may absolutely do so for free by accessing the smart contracts directly and using an alternative front-ends, but will not be featured in the main SP web application front-end. Unaffiliated communities do not need to remain ideologically aligned, and may use our infrastructure of the Web3 Outpost and codebase in a permissionless manner. _Each partnership with affiliates is a bespoke contract…_which generally involves some exchange of Governor seats, SPEC tokens, account badges, and exclusive VIP room access from our organization’s side—in exchange for social proof, technical support, political support, and financial dues from the side of our affiliates. **Our affiliate network will play a crucial role in governance of the Society Protocol DAO.** Advisors and partner communities will ultimately hold around ~62% of the total voting power. While our core team is expected to make great daily execution decisions by holding around 38% of the total voting power, affiliates are ultimately there to guide the movement and its strategic direction. And we want to give them enough governance power to do so, seeing as, advisors are knowledgeable experts (able to make great decisions) and our community partners are our primary customers. Additionally, community partners will enter into a virtuous feedback loop of information with our organization—alerting our core team about what they need for their instances, and the core team will execute to build it. ### The Community > _Our community is what makes this all possible._ Our community is distributed and spans the globe. It’s a unique tapestry of individuals from all walks of life, each bringing their own valuable skills and knowledge—united with one shared purpose—_to construct powerful Synchronized States and usher in the Age of Synchronicity (Aquarius)_. Our community will be vast and diverse. It will trend younger, and skews evenly in gender. This is for individuals who would like to architect a better world—instead of living in the one the past generations have left for us. **_A world of possibilities._** **_This is for the innovators._** **_This is for those who do not consent to living unfree in a broken world._** **_This is for the fearless._** **_This is for the ambitious._** **_This is for those who want to pass on a a better world to future generations._** * * * Our community consists of three main archetypes, which overlap, members can belong to multiple, and progress our movement in various ways. **The Normies (Retail)** – There are approximately 9 billion people on Earth who can each benefit from Synchronized States. We need their support if they want to see it happen. Normies people can offer us political, social, and financial support. **The Investors** – Investors offer us mainly financial support—with the expectation of economic returns or valuable partnerships. They consist of participants in the ICO, community partnerships, and grant programs. **The Builders** – The builders provide research & development acumen—moving our codebase forward. The Society Protocol project is an open movement—we seek the support of builders not directly affiliated with our organization to progress our knowledge and codebase, and reward such contributions with recognition and retroactive rewards. Our community is expected to support us in various ways, _we cannot do it without you._ If this support isn’t spirited or adequate enough—humanity will live in techno-feudalist slavery for the next few centuries. _That simple._ - **Political support:** The community can provide political cover and support for our entire movement—showing what their values are, and forcing the laws, regulations, and treatment of our movement to improve worldwide. - **Financial support:** Financial resources are necessary to make this project come to life—we offer, what we consider is a very interesting and valuable investment proposition (financial aspects are covered in an upcoming section). - **Social support:** Getting the word out into the shared consciousness, creating local hubs to expand the movement, and educating people about what we’re doing—all provide our community the social support that we need for growth to keep going. - **Building support:** We encourage technical folks to help contribute to the research, design, and development of Society Protocol. A lot of this discussion happens at the [forums](https://forum.societyprotocol.io/). _The community open to everyone_. _Unlimited space._ We believe that this is an important mission for all humanity to progress. In this journey, contributions will be tracked through the Web3 Outpost and SPEC token. > Community members which have SPEC tokens are able receive access to exclusive VIP communication channels by locking up their SPEC tokens [here](https://staging-society-protocol-client.vercel.app/). _All the infrastructure is distributed from the start—there is no central point of failure. The entire codebase will be source-available, anyone is welcome to contribute. The community hierarchy is decentralized. It’s a global distributed network, losing parts of it doesn’t interrupt the whole movement._ We encourage people to join our community using pseudonyms. You’re welcome to bring your Nation State identity, but they aren’t necessary in our movement, and won’t be necessary in the triple-entry accounting age (TEAA) either. _It’s more true to form._ Synchronized States will not require Nation State identities. ### Value Flows Chart ![[Movement Value Flows.excalidraw.png]] ## Financial Strategy & Fundraising To fuel this movement we will need financial resources. We have created a well thought out plan of how to finance everything—in a way that adequately records and returns value to our community of contributors. **Our financial resources come from these methods:** - **SPEC token ICO**: The primary source of fundraising, for which ~33% of all SPEC tokens are allocated—will be the public ICO event. The ICO will start after we’ve raised sufficient awareness about the project, around Q3-Q4 2026. It is scheduled to last up to six months, and will be in the format of a [dutch auction](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dutchauction.asp)—providing a uniform clearing price for everyone. Its duration will give a wide audience a chance to participate. More information about the ICO can be found [here](https://staging-society-protocol-client.vercel.app/auction). - **Partner communities:** Partner communities contribute a sustainable source of funding our movement via association dues. In exchange, receiving gold, silver, and bronze partner community tiers. Partner communities will receive: official recognition, the ability to use the main UI in the Web3 Outpost to manage their community, and direct access for priority feedback about what features they would like to see built. - **Future SPEC token sales by the DAO/Foundation:** The DAO, controlled by the governors, reserves the right to sell additional SPEC tokens, as deemed necessary, to raise additional funds. Although, it’s imperative that the DAO retains a good amount of SPEC tokens in its treasury, because they will be our source of funding post-ICO towards project completion and should grow in value upon successful milestones. - **Research Grants & Donations:** We will seek grants from the appropriate institutions. These broadly include Web3 organizations, network state communities, nation states, and a vast swathe of philanthropic organizations around the world. ### SPEC Token The SPEC token represents contribution to Society Protocol. It’s a token that stores value, and combines with the accounts in the Web3 Outpost to distinguish who has contributed what value to Society Protocol during the process of building it. ![[SPEC Token Distribution.png|800]] The way that value invested in the SPEC token will be recouped is simple: we expect millions of SP instances to be launched in a bid to transition the world from Nation States to Synchronized States. Some of them will be spectacular successes worth gazillions of dollars, many of them will fail…SPEC token holders have a chance to be airdropped in accordance to their contribution in EACH one of these of instances. SPEC token holders gain the potential for millions of airdrops, stretching over decades, as SP instances are launched and experimented with, in accordance with their contribution. It’s important to understand, that each upstart SP instance will decide for itself how its Energy is distributed and which accounts to include. **We hold no control over that.** Instead, what happens naturally is…anyone looking to launch an SP instance, for absolutely any community, family, group, or nation—will need a valid set of starting parameters and to know who to include into their instance and how much Energy to allocate to whom. **That’s where the Web3 Outpost and SPEC token come in!** They combine together to give Web4 communities a starting set of parameters—enabling them to launch effective, legitimate, lively, decentralized, and distributed instances of Society Protocol from the very outset! Populated by all the same people that have shown an interest and contributed to the development of the protocol. _This will happen on repeat for 20-70 years (until people figure out how to live in Synchronized States)._ _The beautiful part is, upstart Society Protocol instances themselves are generally incentivized to grant SPEC holders Energy as a way to attract a legitimate ordering of participants to their instance._ #### The Output The capital raised will go to fund our organization for: the research, design, development, organizational management, legal fees, business development, and community building of Society Protocol. The output produced will consists of: - Research & Development to further Society Protocol and Synchronized States. - A codebase everyone can use and portal into and start living in SP. The minimum-viable-product is expected in 3–5 years, consisting of the core protocol and the first 2-4 Value Functions. - Web3 Outpost infrastructure - Community building: conferences, talks, podcasts, hubs, community outreach. * * * **The financial and fundraise strategy is designed to get us the resources to pursue what is possibly _the important project in the world_**. It really doesn’t require that much capital to accomplish this, in relation to to the potential of this project and payoff for participants involved. The more capital we raise, obviously the better. We need these resources to progress humanity, and the return for participants should be superb. **What is enough to start?** 5 years of runway for a team of ~30 people. If upon the end of the ICO fundraise, we do not raise adequate resources to build the project and bring it to an MVP (from all sources combined), we will consider the potential paths forward and look to either raise the rest, or refund the capital raised to investors. ## The Journey > “If it was easy, everyone would do it.” This is a long journey, we don’t expect it to be easy. We will run into many kinds of obstacles. There will be code errors, teamwork issues, political challenges, financial constraints, and overall uncertainty. Society Protocol instances will collapse. We will have strong allies and strong enemies. Some people will give up; others will betray the cause[^19]. _In the end, transitioning the world into an entirely new age of civilization—will be worth it._ Our movement will stay together and grow like a ball of energy by using the Web3 Outpost as a Schelling point. At the beginning—it will be more start-ups and nerds—innovators. Over time, the movement will grow to embody essentially all major organizations and Nation States. Early on, start-up communities will use the codebase…eventually, all Nation States will be forced to transition, and they will be thankful that the codebase they’re inheriting and trusting has been verified by all these smaller communities—who all contributed toward making the project possible and bloom. Some of these start-up communities will themselves grow into large Synchronized State empires. _It’s a journey of the transition from Web3 to Web4[^20]._ _It’s the journey of the transition from Nation States to Synchronized States._ _It’s a journey towards an entirely different epoch of human civilization—from the (DEAA) Age of Pisces_ to the _(TEAA) Age of Synchronicity._ > _Not many people get the chance to go on such a journey. I suggest that if you are reading this and you understand what it means, you take it._ **This process is inevitable for humanity.** The only question is, if **_we_** will be the ones to make it through the gauntlet and succeed. If it’s not us, someone else surely will—mostly likely, with a Synchronized State architecture far inferior, as explained in the [Synchronized States](https://societyprotocol.io/Published/Articles/Synchronized+States+(The+Golden+Record)) article. #### The Geeks, MOPs, and Sociopaths In his classic essay \[@davidchapmanGeeksMOPsSociopaths2015\], David Chapman brings to light a very fundamental concept of human organizations, which can be summarized as, “Nerds build new things, which attract the normies (MOPs), and then sociopaths show up and figure out how to capture and maximize the most value from the MOPs.” **This dynamic is all there is**_. It’s an absolutely inevitable natural pattern of ALL movements and organizations, and absolutely what will happen with Society Protocol._ _So, what does this mean…?_ It means that we are going to build the most balanced codebase that we can—_our organization is the nerds…we aren’t here to exploit anyone_. Then the sociopaths will come and imbalance their instances to maximize value from the MOPs. This cycle is inevitable, we cannot stop the ruthless political battles that will occur and ensue over Society Protocol instances between rival sociopaths afterwards. They are absolutely necessary, and will absolutely happen, in the same way that Nation States battle today, and none of them are “balanced” … it’s all for the best, it’s the only pattern available to humanity to evolve. Please value our organization for what it is: we are nerds, building the most balanced potential codebase…Sociopaths will come and do battle with it, it wont remain perfectly balanced in the end for these reasons, they will compete to attract different segments of MOPs. _Absolutely normal, absolutely going to happen._ Since the codebase is always source-available, any sociopathic entities who capture our organization (not to be confused with the SP instances) using politics, but don’t correspond with actions that our movement & community approves of, can always be forked off… upon capture. The source-available codebase stewarded by our neutral organization is not a game sociopaths can capture and win—that will theoretically always result in a fork towards a more balanced stronger codebase, aligned with the community and movement. The sociopaths play the game of SP instances, the nerds play the game of building the strongest codebase. Everything is aligned, everything runs smooth 🤝. > **A Note From The Founder** > > This system is based on an ancient secret. Don’t try to build it without me, without first understanding The Secret (which you can purchase for a hefty price at [Virtuous Cycle](http://virtuouscycle.co/)). Bad outcomes will happen to anyone who tries to edit this system without first understanding the root of it. ### The Dragons Clutches You may be wondering, “Have you thought about the issue of the big scary dragon, the one which captures everyone in its clutches and drains their life-force? The magical ethereal dragon sitting on a pile of gold, with an army of goblins around it, and all those bones in its lair…the one which scares and eats everyone?”[^21] ![[dragons-clutches.gif]] _Well…yes. Yes we have…_ I value my bones. I value our life force. It’s obvious I would think of this. The community will make it, (well…maybe not all of us)…but _the community will make it_! Nation States, and the powerful (often cannibalistic) sociopaths running them, are in a prisoners dilemma and they will need to use Synchronized States—_so why should they kill or torture us?_ No…they will work with us. …It’s not in the dragons interests to eliminate us, they want to capture the project in their clutches…to create the best Synchronized States for themselves…as other Nation States will obviously be working on theirs. Society Protocol is the most balanced variant, and it’s impossible to create the most balanced variant without our neutral expertise. Ultimately…dragons want to capture and use Society Protocol as a powerful magical jewel (orb) for their dragon lair. _I’m going to teach you a little trick:_ #### Escaping The Dragons Clutches No dragon…whether ethereal, or fire-breathing, or deeply occult, or with a massive army of goblins…_can clutch and hold this thing_. _Society Protocol is just as ethereal…it ultimately escapes any clutches that try to grasp and hold it._ Society Protocol is merely an idea and source-available codebase—it’s not something that can be clutched and retains by any set of hands—neither ordinary human hands nor magical dragon claws. _It flows out through their hands like sand, or waves of energy flow through reality—can you grasp and hold the waves flowing through your hands?_ They’re there right now! Go ahead, grasp them! While no dragon can hold Society Protocol, reptiles are not all known to be smart. And it might take them a few steps for the dragon to truly understand this itself. **Here are the steps:** If the dragon: doesn’t know that they can’t grasp and capture SP: ↪️ Step 1: Proceed to try and capture the project and founders! ⤵️ **figures out holding team members wont help and it’s losing the race to a distributed movement, does know:** ↪️ Step 2: Dragon wants to build their own version! ⤵️ **figures out that their own isolated version is too slow and frail and can’t win in an open field. That it needs to be an open codebase, which can’t be clutched:** ↪️ Step 3: Negotiates with us about implementing Synchronized States for their Nation State organization using a variant of our secure, neutral, modular codebase. **That’s it. The journey is complete and we enter the Age of Synchronicity.** ![[sleeper-corpse.webp]]_Caption: The creators of Everquest never intended Kerafyrm, the Sleeper to die, it was designed to be impossible. Nevertheless, a group of adventurers, from a coalition of guilds on the Rallos Zek PvP server woke him by killing his four warders and fought for ~3 hours, bringing him down to ~26% HP. Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) then despawned him (suspected GM intervention or bug to keep him "unkillable"). SOE later apologized, offered compensation, and respawned him sleeping. On November 17, 2003, the same groups returned, battled for ~3–4 hours, and finally killed him. Kerafyrm, the Sleeper was slain, and never respawned again._ _Thank you dragon, thanks for playing._ **Let’s reconstruct all the steps to Society Protocol taking over the world…** ![[Reverse Timeline from Age of Synchronicity.png]] ## Conclusion We stand at one of humanity's rare inflection points—a moment where the trajectory of civilization can be fundamentally redirected. The transition from Nation States to Synchronized States is not a matter of _if_, but _when_ and _how_. The polycrisis we face—from governance capture, to surveillance states, to environmental degradation—stems from a single root cause: the coordination limits of our current systems have been reached. Nation States, built on the duplicated contracts of the double-entry accounting age, simply cannot handle the complexity and scale of modern civilization. Society Protocol represents more than technological innovation—it's the infrastructure for humanity's next epoch. The Age of Synchronicity isn't a distant dream—it's an inevitable destination that we're actively building, step by step, with every community member, every line of code, and every affiliate who joins this movement. The alternative is centuries of techno-feudalism where technocratic elites control every aspect of our existence. _You choose._ _This journey will not be easy._ We will face obstacles, setbacks, and resistance from those benefiting from the current imbalanced system, even as it fails. Some Society Protocol instances will fail—there will be code errors, political challenges, and moments of uncertainty. But the prize is a world where individual agency is restored, where coordination happens at the speed of light, where every person has direct access to shape their shared reality—is worth it, and we'll overcome every challenge. To those reading this who feel the pull of something greater: you're needed. Whether you're a developer who can write code, an investor who can provide capital, a community builder who can gather people, or simply someone who believes in the movement—there's a place for you here. We're not just building a protocol; we're building the next epoch of human civilization and the infrastructure for human flourishing. The voyage has begun. The only question that remains is: will you join us on this journey, or will you watch from the shore as history sails past? If you are interested in contributing to Society Protocol, you can [join our community](https://societyprotocol.io/), [invest in the movement](https://societyprotocol.io/), and [contribute to the architecture](https://societyprotocol.io/). ### Bibliography David Chapman. (n.d.). _Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution Meaningness_. https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths. Szabo, N. (2002). _Shelling Out: The Origins of Money Satoshi Nakamoto Institute_. https://nakamotoinstitute.org/library/shelling-out/. ### Footnotes [^1]: Often referred to as the _Age of Aquarius_. [^2]: This is explained in [Fake Everything](https://societyprotocol.io/Published/Articles/Fake+Everything+(Prelude)). [^3]: The distinction to make between in defining _distributed_ and _decentralized_ is that: distributed physically distributes the resources of the network, so that no one central point failing can cause the a failure in the network infrastructure…while decentralized decentralizes (spreads out) the power structure of the community, so that no one party can be captured to control the network decision-making. [^4]: Source-available and open source are slightly different licenses. The Society Protocol codebase may become open source...it's too early for us to guarantee such a thing. It's a guarantee the codebase will be source-available. About the open source part––we need to consult with lawyers. [^5]: As an engineer, I can attest that it’s a very difficult, but also possible technical challenge. [^6]: As we step / stretch away from the core of the codebase—towards Value Functions, extensions, and UIs…security becomes slightly less of a concern (although its still crucial), but the central core must be _impeccably_ secure. [^7]: Although, ultimately, to some degree…we are partnered with our community partners, and in a sense, they are our customers (where our money comes from). Since our community partners should be a diverse group of organizations with different competing needs and requirements…this business dynamic should work out to create a neutral, secure, and modular codebase in the end. [^8]: The on-chain Society Protocol DAO will be supported by the traditionally structured Society Protocol Foundation—which is a non-profit legal entity serving as the connector to the nation state legal and financial system. [^9]: The DAO aims to be governed by a meritocracy, it is not a democracy. This is a tenet of the TEAA, which is embedded into our [ideology](https://societyprotocol.io/Published/Movement/Ideology). [^10]: SPEC token holders can use their tokens to vote and provide feedback on governance decisions, while governors closer, more focused and committed to the project retain execution authority. [^11]: This method prevents the exploitable non-sybil resistant nature of pseudonymous token voting, which can be exploited to take over the DAO via controlling the token and drain the treasury. [^12]: We will work closely with our partner communities and display their communities in our UI interface, partner communities are obligated to follow our ideology. Unaffiliated communities, who are not obligated to follow our movements ideology are also welcome, but will need to create their own UI interfaces to display their community information. [^13]: Nobody will want to manually do this process of gathering a list of identities, coordinating these invites, and figuring out how much Energy to give to contributors and who to include in a randomized way—it won’t be able to compete with SP instances launched using the accumulated data from the Web3 Outpost. [^14]: Otherwise, this process has to be done manually and deciding “How much Energy each account gets?” manually, for large groups, is a coordination nightmare. SPEC provides a legitimate lineage for this transition. [^15]: Although there is technically no requirement for a traditional corporate architecture, the Society Protocol Foundation will be maintained as a traditional entity for interaction with the traditional legal and corporate world. [^16]: Many Governors will be outside of the core team, they are _advisors_ and _partner communities_. [^17]: We are considering requiring all core team members to upload a [warrant canary](https://www.okta.com/identity-101/warrant-canary/)—n order to enhance operational integrity. [^18]: This quality increases the diversity of thought and thus, quality of outcomes. A creative early stage project like Society Protocol benefits from heterogeneous perspectives to homogenous ones. [^19]: Only to end up in misery and slavery as their usefulness runs out. [^20]: The success of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Web3 is crucial for our success. We expect the Web3 Outpost to last for at least 20+ years, and are reliant on the foundation of Web3’s infrastructure. We stand on the shoulders of giants. We are not enemies, and fully support the Web3 movement. It simply cannot accomplish what the Web4 movement can. [^21]: Of course we’re talking about Nation States and the secret societies often controlling them. [^22]: The great prismatic dragon was born out of the forbidden coupling of two different elemental dragons - making him into a great abomination in the eyes of many. At first many dragons flocked to Kerafyrm feeling the god-like being would bring a new age to their kind, the children of Veeshan. However, his unfathomable power and the taboo of his creation by the laws of Veeshan led to a great madness overwhelming Kerafyrm. The laws of Veeshan forbid dragons to kill and eat other dragons under any circumstance, and Kerafyrm violated these laws too by killing those who spoke out against him.