Decentralized Conglomerate: The New Paradigm Of Digital Leadership Emerges

chris-bates (59)in #decentralized • 8 years ago

The Decentralized Conglomerate: Digital Leadership, Institutional Memory, and Semi-Autonomous Organizations

"A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves."
~Lao Tzu~

Decentralization as an approach to organizing human teams and capital is nearly as old as written history itself. By the very nature of “decentralization”, it can only take place after “centralization” has occurred. Going back 4,000 years to the earliest days in China when divine right was still part of determining leadership, one can find deliberate implementations of decentralization in the application of managing how people operate. The common marriage of religion and bureaucratic hierarchies established environments in which distributed authority or fully decentralized authority became common. In times when information could not be relayed with the speed of modern day communications, having a unified goal inherently became more difficult as an empire expanded.

Even beyond the nuances added by having mercenaries and slaves as part of an empire’s army, the speed of communication made large scale coordination extremely difficult over long distances. In historical examples, the larger an empire became, the rulers were forced to become either more despotic or more democratic. There was no stagnation in responsibility. As territories expanded, decisions inherently affected more populations. As populations became more diverse, it was inherently more difficult to find common ground in political agendas.

To understand the ebb and flow between centralization and decentralization, it is important to get a brief context of the emergence of dynasties in China. The current generally accepted date for the emergence of the first actual villages is placed around 5000 BCE. As the exact date cannot be determined, the approximate time frame gives a relative starting point to show the transition from scattered tribal communities to an actual empire that begins a line of dynasties to perpetually delineate power for a continuous historical record that continued into modern times.

The Xia Dynasty is accepted to be the first true empire that arose in China. As a marking point for the transition between the Stone Age and the Bronze Age, the major advances in development created the foundation for the long line of technological discoveries that were yet to come. One of the major accomplishments of the Xia Dynasty was the attempts to control the flooding of the Yellow River by Yu the Great. After Yu managed to get the Yellow River under control, he turned his attention to uniting the Sanmiao tribes. His feats and charisma allowed him to inspire people to follow him as a ruler, and his rule is not known to have been despotic in nature. He is credited with establishing the system of succession and in turn the very concept of a dynasty. In establishing a feudal system that articulated a ruling class and a working class, the innate power struggles of having an oppressed class would forever become a part of the changing political landscape.

In many ways, the early feudal states were examples of the beginnings of decentralization. As the first Dynasty united the tribes, one of the initial acts of necessity was dividing authority and defining roles. While the works on “Division of Labor” did not come until much later in the West, the beginnings of dividing labor for the sake of efficient production and management of capital were flourishing in the first Dynasties. As the power gradually became more unified over the first thousand years of dynasties in China, what is known as the “Mandate of Heaven” came to be the officially recognized union of Divine Right of Leadership and the role of making law. The inclusion of “Divine Right” meant that the government no longer held authority over choosing the leader in the presence of “Divinity”. This provision in the approach to passing down the rule allowed for many nefarious actors to manipulate their way into positions of leadership, but it did not hinder the overall development of the nation.

As the civilization grew and culture expanded, technology quickly accelerated, and many of the most famous philosophers and poets emerged from this period in Chinese history. It was at the end of the Zhou Dynasty that government became decentralized as the capitol city moved and a period of warring states began. The states were moving towards wanting sovereign rule for their individual states, but the rulers within the individual states wanted to claim the Mandate of Heaven. It was when Ying Zheng successfully defeated the other states and united them under his rule to proclaim himself the ‘First Emperor’ of China. One of his first acts as Emperor was to tear down the walls that separated the individual states, and start to build a wall surrounding all of the territories. While the wall does not remain intact today, the Great Wall of China is what remains of what was once a 3,000 mile long wall. As Ying - now known as Shi Huangti- conquered more lands, he became increasingly despotic with his rule. As the empire moved away from decentralization, the unified front allowed for major advancements to be made in building projects and military operations; but on the other hand the increased need to restrict information and free speech was a side effect of the increased authoritarian rule. It was not long after Shi Huangti’s death that the empire collapsed due to mismanagement by unfit rulers appointed solely because of nepotism. Once again, the dissolution of a centralized authority caused the territorial control to decentralize and inherently cause more power struggles.

As the Chinese territories expanded, and the dynasties changed names, the ebb and flow between decentralization and centralization was a continuous evolution that formed a middle ground between extremes. Any time leadership drifted too far in one direction, whether towards complete decentralization or complete centralization, the natural equilibrium became a mix of leadership styles, rather than a complete implementation of one ideology. Even into modern government application, what is often misunderstood as completely “Statist” or “Communist” actually has a complex mix of centralization and decentralization in the actual organization of government entities.

To get a better picture of why the centralized government must operate with some autonomy allowed within the economy, it is necessary to understand the organization of territories. There are three basic classifications of government oversight over a territory: province, county, and township. A further delineation of responsibilities separate prefectures under the jurisdiction of provinces, and villages are relegated to the authority of townships. There are twenty-two provinces, five autonomic regions, four municipalities, and two special administrative groups. China also has five autonomic regions that have equal status as provinces. The reasoning is that these autonomic regions are the homes of the majority of the country’s minority groups In the West, these regions may be seen as annexed states that are “under the control” of the Chinese government, when in reality they operate with relative autonomy.

The two special administrative regions are Hong Kong and Macao, which grant them special protections. These regions have their own currencies, passports, and judicial systems. While these separations, classifications, and nuances may be hard for a Westerner to initially grasp, the cultural approach to management and division of labor has been fairly consistent in China in its capacity to distribute power and authority seeking efficiency and a unified goal. In that regard, the problem of an individual looking to overthrow the leader and usurp the head of state role has also been a consistent problem for the duration of Chinese history. The “Byzantine General’s Problem” effectively originated 2500 years before the fall of the Byzantine empire.

In understanding the true nature of decentralization as a natural counterbalance to centralization, one must create a new paradigm that recognizes meritocracy as part of the process of establishing a leader or a system without a leader. In a true meritocracy, the presence of a leader is irrelevant to results. In this situation, we can establish the “Mandate of Heaven Dilemma”. This new problem becomes an issue of recognizing that if meritocracy is to be recognized, that arbitrary timing of leader or policy changes do not truly serve meritocracy. In the MoHD, a leader can be replaced at any time with a “better” leader if either the new leader proves herself worthy, or the crowd and populace choose to recognize the new authority. In either scenario, the intentions of the new leader are irrelevant. In this MoHD, the meritocracy will establish a paradigm in which the leadership position goes to the most effective and efficient leader with no regards to morality or ethics.

In many ways, the embodiment of what is desired to be the ideal “free market” would be the MoHD playing out on the macro and micro scale. If local leaders emerged based on merit, and were constantly at risk of being replaced by a “better” official, the evolution of the macro and micro systems would be accelerated. It is in understanding the benefits of centralization and decentralization in addition to the downfalls of both that a new paradigm can emerge to make more effective and efficient use of capital than has been previously known in human history. While Keynesian theory sprang forth in a post-industrialized world in an attempt to expound on new methods of scaling economies, it has become clear in modern times that those theories were formed heavily in favor of the oligarchies that existed in the 1800’s and turn of the 20th century. Many post-Keynesian theories have been articulated, but mainstream academia continues to cling to Keynesian theory as the dominant approach to forming economies.

The Death of Keynesian theory: Proto-Dynamism is born
As we see the global markets in turmoil and the European Union on the verge of collapse while Britain postures to exit, it is clear that a new paradigm of capital distribution, production, and management must emerge. Keynesian theory has produced a global market bubble that has seemingly popped, as the news of Britain Leaving the EU wiped $127 billion off the global markets in a single day. In light of the MoHD that has been presented, a new paradigm that emerges and proves better use of capital can either be adopted because it has proven it is better, the populace chooses to recognize it, or in a direct confrontation with the old paradigm it emerges with more resources and capital. In many ways, the concerted media attack on digital currencies and Bitcoin have represented the old paradigm’s first line of defense in attempting to preserve the legacy systems that currently control global capital distribution.

In presenting the MoHD, what is occurring in modern times is the merit of the old paradigm is being directly challenged. Whether one points at Bitcoin, Occupy Wall Street, the Green Movement in Iran, or the Gezi protests in Istanbul, the old paradigms that control the global markets are being challenged individually. In many ways, the Keynesian special interest groups have actively worked to compartmentalize the uprisings to ensure that the timing of individual revolts does not snowball into a global uprising against Keynesian theory. In an example, the media blacked out the Green movement in Iran, blacked out the Wisconsin protests that were the pre-cursor to Occupy Wall Street, and is currently blacking out the protests in France that are happening in June of 2016. The global mainstream media appears to actively compartmentalize these revolutions in individual contexts, rather than attempt to link them as a revolution against authoritarianism and the remnants of colonialism in modern times.

While this article is not meant to speculate on conspiracy theories, what is meant to be presented is a post-Keynesian approach to capital distribution and management. Taking the thermo-economic approach to capital production and management, an organization must attempt to become a dynamo, which in physics is a machine that takes one source of energy and converts it to output energy to a receptor. The more efficient dynamos can surpass 100% efficiency and start to produce more energy than they take in, but these are theoretical dynamos based in quantum theory that are not yet attainable.

In the context of thermo-economics, creating a dynamo is an attempt to combine physical infrastructure, political management, and capital management into the most efficient economic machine possible. The machine only pays attention to efficiency, and pays no regard to the cogs; meaning that special interest groups have no meaning in the context of an economic dynamo. In this context, maintaining ethical standards and moral common ground becomes a function of the system; digital direct democracy.

If one looks at the Crypto Rush objectively, there have been more technological developments within the past six months than there were for the previous three years. This is perfectly in line with the technology associated with the gold rush, as the first miners were able to easily make money with pick-axes and panhandling, but as the gold became scarce, hydraulic drills and tech more advanced tech became necessary to mine the ore.

Just the same with the influx of pyrite or “fool’s gold” following the gold rush, the “fool’s alts” have made an entire community jaded to the point of throwing out the word “scam” as if it were a common salutation. In the wild west of Cryptoland, the harsh realities of economic Darwinism coupled with the fantastic possibilities of thermo-economics have created a machine which I will call a “proto-dynamo”.

It is important to establish the “Proto-dynamo” as concept that represents an entirely new paradigm of economic infrastructure. The concept alludes to the “dynamo” which is a machine that uses opposing magnetic forces to efficiently produce/convert energy. The principle behind the dynamo is to use opposing forces within the same machine to get a consolidated output of energy. If the new paradigm of “protodynamism” can be represented by an electrical generator, the old paradigm of Keynesian theory can be represented by a meat grinder in which ten pounds of product goes in one side, and six ounces of tasteless sausage comes out the funnel possibly tainted with formaldehyde or some random pesticide that is unpronounceable.

As Marshall McLuhan predicted with his “global village” theory, the growth of mass media has quickly made information extremely accessible to the average individual. In tandem with an infrastructure that allows crowd-funding to bring ideas to fruition as fast as possible, progress of technology that is useful to society will be able to hit the most efficient point that has ever been recorded.

The Arab Spring has been an actual revolution fueled by technology and information sharing that would not have been possible without the ability to quickly share strings of 140 characters. With the ability to share information comes the ability to have shared experiences. What have been forecasted as digital tribes by Mcluhan are the logical extensions of a globe trying to break free of the archaic and imperialist paradigm of nation-states.

The Power of Crowdfunding
One of the major benefits to having a Decentralized Conglomerate structure is the ability for capital to be accrued and used towards a given project. This means that organizations that are partnered into a DC have less friction between their organizations to slow down the movement of capital or take too much of the capital in the form of fees and overhead. In the context of multiple businesses working in complimentary industries, the capacity for organizations to pool money towards development has the potential to accelerate the speed at which all participants reach their desired outcomes.

A traditional conglomerate is made up of a parent corporation with subsidiary companies. As well, there are shareholders that have a stake in the company. In some cases, there will be a board of directors in addition to the executive management. When it comes to leadership, the conglomerates are usually top-down hierarchies with the vision and direction coming from the leaders at the top. While the system is not democratic, a singular leader or group of leaders with the capacity to make executive decisions makes executing projects much simpler than having a completely decentralized operation. While there are varying degrees of oversight, generally the top-down structure is the standard for traditional conglomerates.

Traditional Conglomerate
Some levels of decentralization have taken place in larger corporations, as they have had to diversify to meet market demands. In these cases, the decentralization usually is implemented to give the subsidiary companies more autonomy, but in the context of the conglomerate, the parent company’s vision is still the guiding principle. Many companies have seen success in increasing their output or market share when moving towards a more decentralized management system. In this regard, “decentralization” will always imply that there was a higher level of centralization than previously.

As with the Chinese Dynasties, and in effect every other major empire or nation-state that has existed, the interplay between centralization and decentralization is a matter of the economic situation needing direct intervention or not; and further if economic intervention is ever needed, how many people must be involved in the decision making process. The more people are involved in a decision making process, by default the more time a decision takes. As well, when many people are affected by a decision, the smaller the number of people making the decision, the more likely a revolt against the outcome or the governing body will take place. It is in these extremes that the traditional conglomerate has major benefits from leadership, and major impediments if the leadership is either too slow or too draconian against the people’s will.

Crowdfunding is anticipated to surpass venture capital in total global investments into the Fintech industry in 2016. As crowdfunding levels reached over $34 billion in total funds raised in 2015, crowdfunding as an industry is emerging in its own right. As laws are changing to keep up with digital currencies and assets, the landscape for raising funds has been forever changed as raising funds with or without equity shares has become accessible to anyone with Internet access and capital. The reality of the quickly changing market demands necessitate an agile organization that can react to market forces rather than attempting to resist the market in pursuit of following the course of what had been planned with no room for adjustment.

With the advent of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), the entire process of turning an idea into a tangible item gets taken out of the hands of corporations, and the development becomes an intimate exchange between the crowd and the actual developers. When an idea is presented to the crowd, the ideas that the crowd deems fit get funded.

Kickstarter is one of the most well-known crowd funding sources for start-up projects; but as cryptocurrency takes off teams like Mastercoin, Swarm, and Counterparty have created systems that allow crowd-funding to take on the direct route cutting out the middle man. As these systems are improved upon to create “trustless” infrastructures where there are safeguards to prevent exploitation within a trade, viable options to centralized banking are closer to reality.

OpenLedger is attempting to harness the forces of crowdfunding and follow the trend of increased crowdfunding over VC, rather than try to fight the trend. OpenLedger has begun hosting crowd sales on its platform to enable businesses to raise funds for their organization, contribute to the growth of the OpenLedger DC, and add to the pool of capital for the DC. To give the platform a unified crowdfunding token, OpenLedger created ICOO, which stands for “Initial Coin Offering OpenLedger”.

ICOO was designed to be a token that represents the crowdfunding platform on OpenLedger. As the OpenLedger platform is robust and has many different elements, the crowdfunding aspect is another addition to establish a functional economic ecosystem. Instead of creating an ecosystem that only works for existing businesses and consumers, the OpenLedger platform will be useful to startups and existing businesses alike concerning raising capital through crowdfunding.

Decentralized Conglomerate
ICOO represents more than a crowdfunding portal. As there are many elements to executing a successful crowdfunding campaign, the OpenLedger/CCEDK team have laid out plans to organize advertising, generate literature and content, distribute content over social networks, and assist organizations with the transition to having a digital currency system. As well, OpenLedger will be providing tiered options to give organizations different levels of assistance with executing a crowd fund.

The BitTeaser advertising network is a major part of the OpenLedger ecosystem that will help crowdfunding projects get traction. Advertising is the biggest part of getting attention focused on a new project. The BitTeaser community executes paid placed advertisements on websites and affiliate websites, and in the context of crowdfunding, this service will be used for all projects using OpenLedger to fund their projects.

In tandem with the banner ads, the Obits community will contribute paid literature about a crowdfunded project through the 500 Blogger’s Club. The club has been focused on paying writers to generate content, and a partnership with the OpenLedger platform through the DC has added the element of producing content into the ecosystem. The synergy between BitTeaser and Obits will create an environment in which an organization looking to use OpenLedger can get all of their needs met in one place. Establishing a central point for an all-encompassing solution will make it easier for businesses to transition to digital currency systems, and in the process OpenLedger will benefit from the DC growth.

Mandate of Heaven Dilemna
The MoHD is an issue of having a law, mandate, code, or agreed upon terms from which a “worthy” leader can usurp the current power structure. The fallout then becomes whether the population wants to recognize the mandate, and acknowledge that by taking over a power structure, the new leader proves herself worthy by default. If the population recognizes the MoH, the edicts and rules of the new leader become law. If the population does not recognize the MoH and decides to revolt against the new leader, the power struggle for leadership ignores the MoH and by proxy the new leader that emerges will ultimately have to give an explanation for ignoring the MoH, or in an attempt to reunify the territories, claim that the MoH was proven by the tertiary leader emerging.

In the context of blockchain technology, the recent failure of the DAO and the resulting identification of a problem with the code of Solidity has established a real world example of the MoHD. What was initially misdiagnosed as a “hack” that drained the DAO fund of around $60 million USD, was later shown to be a poorly written contract on top of code that had a fundamentally flawed approach to its voting and capital distribution mechanisms. In attempting to solve the “Byzantine General’s Problem”, the coders and system architects were either unaware of the MoHD, or did not give it the proper diligence in researching how it could affect the digital structure.

Effectively, the Ethereum coders created a Mandate of Heaven for their blockchain, meaning if a coder or arbiter could effectively make use of the code or terms, whatever actions they took would be legally binding and technically in line with the protocol. In the DAO “attack”, there was no “attack”; effectively an arbiter realized that there was a Mandate of Heaven written into the code and in tandem the DAO “smart contract”. In moving $60 million into a “child DAO” following terms and conditions, the “Emperor” effectively took whatever she could and following the MoH to the letter, forcibly removed $60 million from the collective funds.

The resulting fallout has been a mixed combination of applications of theory. While the community has not had a unified voice, inevitably it has fallen on the shoulders of the Ethereum founders and architects to make the decisions necessary to attempt a resolution that will appease the community without compromising the integrity of the protocol. Effectively, the MoH is an agnostic principle that forces the leadership to be efficient with capital, beware of despotism causing revolutions, and painfully aware for the potential of his own removal. The last two aspects of the way the MoH affect leadership are seemingly contradictory, and may explain the common implosion of empires at the hands of draconian and brutal regimes that lose track of effective application of capital.

As well, the leaders that have emerged throughout history as having walked the balance between making effective use of capital and pleasing the needs of the population have seemingly understood the collective consciousness to the point of being able to unify the populations without having them lose their individual identities. In some cases, establishing a new collective identity was the answer to this dilemma, for example in the case of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk establishing the Turkish Republic after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

While the emergence of the Turkish Republic did not happen immediately at the end of the empire, it was the unification of the Turkish population against the British in the Nationalist War of Independence, and the simultaneous internal power struggle of the secular republic against the religious regime that had dominated the region off and on since the 14th century that enabled a nuanced government to be established. In articulating “Kemalism”, Mustafa Kemal effectively created a “Mandate of Heaven” that ironically gave the military the concept to defend the population from any semblance of a religious monarchy at all costs. While the application of military intervention in a coup d’état may seem completely contradictory to democracy, over the last 100 years the Turkish military has shown that after a coup has occurred, the re-establishment of democratic voting is only a matter of ending the violence associated with the coup. In effect, the less violent a coup, the less collateral damage and fallout necessary to clean up before founding a new democracy.

While the current Turkish government has drifted back near a religious monarchy, the traditional military intervention was pre-emptively deconstructed as Recep Erdogan had jailed many commanders, generals, and officials that would have been the voices of revolt. As the military had become the arm of the MoH in Turkey, the newly emerging Sultanate is establishing a more nepotistic neo-Ottoman empire. While Erdogan seemingly has mastered the Byzantine General’s problem by simply “jailing all the generals”, in dismantling the MoH he has effectively created a “Wild West” scenario. While there is a semblance of a unified government during the times of the Wild West, the furthest and most rural reaches of what is supposed to have government oversight has no oversight because the government doesn’t have the capacity to effectively monitor or secure the land.

One of the nuances of the Wild West is that the most powerful force dominates, and in that regard fairness and humanitarianism go out the window. There are no penalties for nepotism within government, and there are no real penalties for breaking laws in areas that the government can’t reach. This is where the world of digital currency has its common traits with actual human history. As digital currency is essentially a digital wild west, having regulators enforce laws in areas that they are not familiar is not only difficult, it becomes questionable if the old laws even apply in the newly charted territories.

As governments struggle to understand digital currencies and their implications, the world of digital currency is “taxed” but seemingly unprotected. The individuals who choose to participate in effect have to arm and protect themselves from attackers knowing that they will get no real assistance from the government that is taking taxes. In effect this wild west scenario breeds vigilantism and necessity for collective response to malicious actors. With the recent attack to the DAO, one of the counter-measures was to attack the original attacker; effectively this stayed inline with the MoH that was created within the Ethereum/Solidity/DAO protocol.

A counter-attack against the DAO attacker #1 successfully secured $7 million in funds from the original $60 million. As the community scrambled to understand the implications of what had occurred, different approaches to solving the overarching problem were being attempted and theorized. One of the challenges facing the community was to decide whether to recognize the original MoH (soft fork and attack attacker #1), or destroy MoH and establish new rules (hard fork and have new genesis block). The Byzantine General’s problem has already been failed by the coders of Ethereum and the founders of the DAO in this scenario. The real issue was whether to recognize the MoH or to let the empire crumble completely and free up the locked capital to re-enter into the free market.

The DAO crisis has not yet come to an end as of the writing of this paper, and updates will be made to reflect the long term outcomes of that scenario. It is impossible to predict the outcome of any set of variables, however it is a responsibility of those who control capital to make effective and efficient use of the capital. This requires being informed about the history of capital, and how politics, war, science, art, literature, education, humanitarianism and countless other variables affect capital. It is an imperfect science that by proxy the practitioners must continue to strive towards an unachievable perfection. If decentralization is to properly be applied in a global economy, the application must be not only informed, but agile and able to evolve. Reaching a state of stasis is contradictory to the natural imperative of evolution. In effect, survival is a matter of constantly evolving whether in the context of nature or in the context of commercial industries.

Institutional memory becomes an imperative when it comes to keeping a unified organizational evolution moving. An example of institutional memory would be “Congress” or the “Supreme Court” in the United States government. The idea was that instead of having agnostic principles that were to have authority over a specific set of rules or actions, democracy would be applied to congress to decide a group of elected officials that would attempt to balance the desires of the people against the knowledge of the institutional memory of congress.

In the case of the Supreme Court, the idea is that a group of officials that are appointed by an elected official to represent balanced views of the country will also retain the institutional memory necessary to make informed decisions about establishing new rules and laws. In this context, having institutional memory reduces the necessity of retreading debates and theoretically is an attempt to move debate forward with the knowledge of everything that has occurred previously.

When DAO theory was emerging, the concept of Digital Leadership had not quite been articulated, and the theoretical foundation of the DAO was ultimately rooted in a MoH that created a leaderless system where organizations were to function based around goals and objectives that were agreed upon, rather than the decision of a specific individual or group. Many attempts at creating DAOs have been attempted, with the recent Slockit DAO being the largest on record. While the Slockit DAO was the largest, the success of the project is debatable depending on what metric of “success” is being discussed.

Bitshares token could be considered one of the more successful DAO projects that utilizes a combination of Proof of Stake security with colored coin protocol to allow organizations to receive the benefits of decentralized security, and the benefits of having a centralized currency and platform. The ability for colored coins to be easily converted within the UI for bitshares makes access to any asset listed on the market equal. The result is that organizations have incentive to create their own representative asset knowing that there is a centralized platform that makes exchange for other assets easy and cost effective.

Beyond remittance payments, organizational control of capital becomes a new opportunity for capital to become more efficiently used in the context of the global economy. Removing the resistance for capital to flow means that it can go from the least needed to the most needed areas, and in the process generate new capital rather than stagnate against inflation. In the context of thermos-economics, resting capital can be seen as “potential energy”, and capital that is being used is “kinetic energy”. If the global economic machine is to accelerate, it needs to convert the potential energy into kinetic energy as efficiently as possible.

Efficiency with capital should be agnostic in the global economy. This is where a new paradigm of “Decentralized Conglomerates” apply thermos-economic theory in attempt to create an economic “Dynamo” that makes most effective use of balancing potential and kinetic energy. If a “reserve fund” is seen as a “battery” that turns kinetic energy into potential energy for storage, then creating a dynamo that has the correct number of “batteries” stored away to power the dynamo during phases in which the machine is not transforming any potential energy into kinetic becomes an agnostic principle that pays no regard to political party, religious affiliation, or special interest group.

While this ideal state may seem unattainable, it is clear that attempting to achieve these goals will require a transitional period. During this transition, digital leadership must be employed to ensure that the capital does not go to waste. The DAO debacle shows the possibility that complete absence of Digital Leadership can result in a complete waste of potential energy with no resulting kinetic energy in the dynamo. It may be possible that a completely leaderless system is not desirable. Regardless, the DC makes an attempt at striking a balance between applying digital leadership and giving autonomy to special interest groups within the DC. The team at OpenLedger believes the Decentralized Conglomerate can be the economic engine that helps pilot the globe into the paradigm of the future.

References
Digital Leadership Definition -
http://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/digital-leadership?utm_medium=EM&asrc=EM_NLN_57771210&utm_campaign=20160524_Word%20of%20the%20Day:%20digital%20leadership_kherbert&utm_source=NLN&track=NL-1823&ad=907917&src=907917

Future of Crowdfunding in Belgium-
https://bolero-crowdfunding.be/nl/news-events/news/financial-crowdfunding

DigixDAO:
http://allcoinsnews.com/2016/02/23/new-gold-linked-digital-token-platform-reveals-crowdsale-website-for-decentralized-organization

Conglomerate Definition:
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/conglomerate.asp

Conglomerate Discount Problem:
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/conglomeratediscount.asp

Are Conglomerates Making a Comeback:
http://www.omaha.com/money/are-conglomerates-making-a-comeback-berkshire-hathaway-s-business-model/article_a98b99a2-acca-5a89-9108-470d46a3fca8.html

Blockchain startups make up 20% of largest crowdfunding projects
http://venturebeat.com/2016/05/15/blockchain-startups-make-up-20-of-largest-crowdfunding-projects/

The DAO Way: Democratic Investment Fund:
http://www.coinfox.info/news/reviews/5589-put-dao-demokraticheskij-investitsionnyj-fond-2

The DAO Block Explorer (The DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization established April 2016 that invests in other businesses. It is a digital organization with no conventional management structure or board of directors.):
https://etherscan.io/token/TheDAO

Pillars of Digital Leadership:
http://www.leadered.com/pdf/LeadingintheDigitalAge_11.14.pdf

How to be a Digital Leader:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/iese/2013/08/23/how-to-be-a-digital-leader/#133b4ecd515d

Bank of Canada Deputy Governor: Cooperation Needed to Advance Distributed Ledgers:
http://www.coindesk.com/bank-of-canada-distributed-ledger-tech/

Historical examples of Decentralization in Organizations/Empires: Decentralisation in the Ancient World:
http://blog.richardsprague.com/2012/12/decentralization-in-ancient-world.html

Decentralization: A one to many relationship. The Case of Greece:
http://www.prd.uth.gr/sites/spatial_analysis/ekdoseis-dimosieyseis/mediterranean%20multiregionality%201997.pdf

Ancient Greece:
http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/Greece.html

Centralization-Decentralization Cycle in China:
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/econ/faculty/Wooders/APET/Pet2004/Papers/centralization%20decentralization%20cycle%20in%20china.pdf

China Between Centralization and Decentralization:
http://gbtimes.com/world/china-between-centralization-and-decentralization

Napoleon Bonaparte:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon

Decentralized Revolutions that have worked:
-Berlin Wall
http://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/berlin-wall

-French Revolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution

-Egyptian revolution
http://www.thecairoreview.com/essays/egypts-leaderless-revolution/