Alien Worlds & The Syndicates

A Metaverse Run by Its Community

6 min readOct 20, 2022

Explorers,

Today we mark an important day for Alien Worlds and all of its inhabitants. After over a year and a half of research, development, and hard work the planetary DAOs are open for explorers to run as candidates and vote. In a future that embraces digital assets and goods, it’s only natural that we will also embrace DAOs, for they are the only type of organization that can natively manage them.

We call the DAOs within Alien Worlds Syndicates.

The six planets that occupy our corner of the galaxy will now be able to form Syndicates who can elect Custodian leaders. These Custodians will be responsible for ensuring the Syndicate treasuries are properly governed and will be accountable to their Syndicate members.

And this can all be done on-chain.

On-Chain, This is The Way

For base layer protocols, removing the human element as much as possible is probably for the best, but for some things built on top of those protocols, humans remain the beating heart in many cases. DAO technology can be a human-centric governance framework that forces transparency at every step. Every vote cast, every decision made, they are all recorded on-chain for the world to see.

“Walking the walk” was the only way to truly begin to test this thesis and to learn quickly enough to stay ahead of the curve. While some of the largest DAOs on earth still leverage off-chain tools for critical functions, we make no such compromises. Where we can, we fully embrace the decentralized future that is coming.

The Syndicates

The Syndicates are part of the base-layer of Alien Worlds and so this is why putting them on-chain as much as possible was an important priority for us. Their threshold for making decisions is high, but the ability to become a member is easy, allowing for both security and growth.

While very programmable, there are a few decisions we made out of the box to encourage longevity and steady growth. We want to take a moment to go over some of them with you, Explorers. Some of these decisions can be reconfigured over time by the Syndicates themselves.

Custodians

As a community, we have the benefit of watching years of decentralized governance experiments. We won’t exhaust you with the research, but our experience has led us to the conclusion that direct or liquid voting on proposals one-by-one by the electorate does not yield positive results. At the end of the day, people have to be delegated to do the work. There are always questions about who is responsible for managing and executing those proposals after they are approved. So instead, we have made it possible that individuals from within the community can be elevated by Syndicate members as Custodians. We expect these Custodians to become responsible for proposal execution and management, and to be revered for their successes and held accountable for their failures.

Elections

In terrestrial democratic systems, the election cycle is usually measured in years. Organizing an in-person election is expensive and time consuming, but we have no such issues on the blockchain. Elections within Syndicates are set to take place every 7 days. The benefit is that any issues that arise with Custodians can be nearly immediately addressed by voters. The risk of elected official complacency that comes with years long election cycles is also mitigated. And there is nothing to prevent the electorate voting in the same Custodians week on week, for stability, if they choose.

On 20 October, the first election period on each Planet will open and will last for 2 weeks; after that time, so long as there are at least 5 candidates per Syndicate and at least 1 vote cast for each, the Syndicates will be placed under Custodian control.

Treasury Availability

The Alien Worlds can be treacherous. While some Syndicates may strive for peace others may declare war. It would be tragic for a Syndicate to be conquered by another and have their entire treasury, built up for many months now, pilfered. To prevent this, each treasury unlocks at a rate of 2% of the total amount per week. The amount available for the Custodian board to transfer out is called the ‘spendings account’. As soon as possible, we plan to make this mechanism linear and more larger, as the ecosystem matures.

Each week the Custodian board will need to ‘claim’ this spendings amount. Claiming is an on-chain action in the user interface and is the first action the Custodian board must coordinate to do.

Recognising Commitment — Your Vote Power Depends on your Token Amount and Token Duration

Token stake-weighted voting means that explorers who support their Syndicate by maintaining tokens have greater voting power. But tokens staked (locked) are not the only factor that should be considered when calculating influence. The length of time for which the tokens are committed is also a factor. Therefore the benefit your vote gives to a candidate (i.e., your total vote power) is a combination of the number of tokens and the lock up period. This is a way to empower committed but smaller token-holders to give them more of a voice, because good ideas can come from anyone anywhere.

You can cast your “vote power” in favor of up to two candidates, and doing so doesn’t split up your vote, so we recommend you use both your votes.

Staying Active — Refreshing Your Votes Increases your Vote Power

Vote power goes down over time if left idle. This way, explorers who are less active cannot maintain vote power indefinitely. Vote power is more beneficial to the candidates you vote for if your votes were cast (refreshed) recently. So, refresh your votes!

Investing in the Future

We have a multi-year vision of what Alien Worlds can become and we look forward to sharing more of that vision throughout 2023. To that end, you will notice that 40% of the Daily Trilium Allocation to Planets (DTAP, excluding mining rewards) is now going to sat.worlds. The Daily Trilium Allocation to mining is unchanged, as is the Daily Trilium Allocation to Landowners (DTAL).

The TLM in sat.worlds account will be allocated to ‘Satellites’ — DAOs you will create and control. This will increase TLM utility, expand Alien Worlds across chains, and attract the next generation of users. Once functionality is live, the TLM within this account will be given to the Satellites of the Alien Worlds community. Once live, the amount of DTAP (excluding mining rewards) that will flow to Satellites will be in band from 40% — 80%, depending on relative TLM staked at the level of the Planet compared to the Satellites. Planets will benefit from having successful Satellites in their orbit.

For more details on this, and the configurations of the planet DAOs discussed above, please see the Technical Blueprint.

The Future of Alien Worlds

Alien Worlds will be bigger than mining and missions, but wherever it goes it will always be rooted in the community which is now empowered through the Syndicates. As co-owners of the future of Alien Worlds we hope Syndicates will embrace their power and invest in recruitment, gameplay development, and storytelling that will make Alien Worlds a more immersive experience for all its explorers. We can’t wait to see how they grow, what they produce, and how we can learn from them along the way. We look forward to working together.

This is an important step in ceding control of Alien Worlds to its inhabitants, and ensuring that the future of Alien Worlds is owned and decided by its community. To all explorers, go forth to Pledge, Lead, and Conquer the Syndicates of the Alien Worlds, and let’s have fun.

- Dacoco

Alien Worlds Offers the Social Metaverse to Play, Create, Share and Thrive!

With more than 8.3 million lifetime players and more than 9 million plays per day, Alien Worlds is consistently one of the top blockchain games on DappRadar ranking charts. Alien Worlds has inspired players to create, share and thrive in the social metaverse. The Federation would like to thank all Explorers for making this possible.

About the Alien Worlds Social Metaverse

What would you do, if you could create anything in the world? Join the Alien Worlds simulation of Earth’s economy using the Trilium (TLM) game token. Seek your fortune and thrive in the Trilium and NFT Social Metaverse. Get started by traveling through the Wormhole at alienworlds.io and start Mining at https://play.alienworlds.io/ Welcome to Alien Worlds!

#play #create #share #thrive #Metaverse #NFTs #TLM #onamission