Sideways Ostrom5 (and 6)

We can’t. Joining the Ostrom5 gives the organization a certificate that they are a participant. You could think of this as similar to a restaurant displaying a certificate that they meet the sanitary standards of their jurisdiction. If the organization does not implement the recommendations, their certificate is withdrawn. In other words, this is opt-in at first. Over time, if this structure takes hold, it will be expected that an organization will display such a certificate, or people will not want to join or partner with them. 

Even today, one of the biggest complaints we hear in these networks is that they cannot identify bad actors. Holding an Ostrom5 certificate is proof that your organization is a good-faith actor and committed to adhering to your values, not just to putting a nice display up on a website.

We just called it Ostrom5 because that was the first thing that popped into our heads. The idea is to implement Ostrom’s principles, both the 5th and 6th principles, which go together. You can’t implement graduated sanctions unless there’s an institution that does so, and having the institution makes it easy, or at least possible, to seek resolution. 

In many of the target organizations (volunteer groups, DAOs, online communities), it can be difficult to even identify an “outside” and “inside” conflict, so the Ostrom5 is designed to handle both.

We envision several different potential uses of the Ostrom5:

• A participant in a community finds that the organizational behavior is not aligned with the values.
• An organization is partnering with another organization and one of them violates the code of conduct or violates the partnership agreement.
• An organization knows that their implementation falls short of what they wish based on their values, and wants to engage the Ostrom5 for an internal upgrade to their adherence to the code of conduct.
• An individual joins an organization and they are not adhering to the code of conduct (perhaps they are even going from organization to organization and causing problems). The organization doesn’t have a formal process to either rehabilitate the person or remove them from the group (nobody wants to be the “bad guy” to kick them out).

Any of these types of conflicts could be handled within the Ostrom5.

Sideways focuses on organization-to-organization infrastructure. After conducting a series of interviews with organizations and coalitions, we have identified mediation and arbitration as one of the major needs to address within informal, non-profit, and online communities. 

The Sideways Ostrom5 will have a council of stewards, including a steward from your organization if you wish. The stewards will hire professional mediators and facilitators to resolve conflicts. The mediators will always seek to reach resolutions that work for both sides, and we will develop graduated remediation and sanctions to repair rifts among individuals and organizations.

Initially, we expect the Ostrom5 to handle issues in two main areas: social codes of conduct and ecological codes of conduct. Within our networks, many people ask how they know that an organization actually adheres to their code of conduct and values internally. These are not the types of problems that go to court, but they are the types of problems that cause people to quit or gossip about the organization. It might be something as simple as offensive jokes or purchase of single-use plastics, or it might be something complex such as signing a contract that benefits the short-term finances while harming the long-term viability of the organization.

We’re not sure, but some of the initial ideas include: 

• Communications / sensitivity training for individuals who are involved in repeated conflict.
• Increase or decrease salary in “equal pay” requests.
• Reverting decisions based on majority opinions in an organization where someone with power has overridden a group decision.
• Changes to partnership or commercial agreements that align with the values or long-term vision of the organization.
• Reinstating individuals who have been expelled for unjust reasons.
• Removing problematic individuals from an organization.
• Recognition of work done (by payment or acknowledgement).
• Reconciliation councils to deal with longstanding prejudices or exclusion of certain demographics.
• Recommendation to change someone’s job responsibilities based on capabilities (improve job responsibilities) or based on failures or violations (reduce someone’s responsibilities).

The focus of the Ostrom5 is finding common ground, collaboration, and compromise. It is designed for organizations who are committed to adhering to their stated values, but recognize that self-constraint and self-enforcement has its limitations. The Ostrom5 strives first to remediate problems and improve the quality of the organizations that participate in the network together. Mediation is dealt by professionals in helping sides reach agreement or creating reasonable sanctions and enforcement rather than punishment.

Web3 conflict resolution generally deals with financial and technical matters within DAOs. They use jury-based rulings. Within DAOs, many of the conflicts are zero-sum games (an entity either gets the funds or not), and they are based on a kind of digital yes/no type of resolution. These entities are poorly-equipped to deal with human relations and more subtle values issues. 

This is an experiment in creating new institutions, because the existing institutions are not suited to purpose. If you join the Sideways Ostrom5, you and the representatives from your organization will take part in forming the types of remediation to be enforced. We aren’t sure any of this will work, but we believe this is a good starting point for creating new institutions. In the worst case, we will have learned and in 6 months or a year, we will have findings that allow us to try the next experiment.

The first organizations will be hand-selected based on their track record in resolving internal conflicts. We are starting with a basis of organizations that already adhere to best practices, rather than choosing organizations with many conflicts to resolve. Once there is a sound basis of initial organizational members, the Ostrom5 can slowly onboard additional members.

Please reach out to jack@sideways.earth for more information about being a member organization of the Ostrom5.

The Sideways Ostrom5 is the first experimental Ostrom5, but you can use the technology to create your own Ostrom5. Even better (for us), hire us as consultants to help you make your own Ostrom5. We (Sideways) are a non-profit committed to creating shared infrastructure for planetary governance, and we welcome people to use our ideas and infrastructure to create “competitive” institutions.

The vision for Ostrom5 is that different networks will create their own Ostrom5 institutions based on their own shared values. In that sense, “belonging” to a “network” means that your organization adheres to the code of conduct represented by that Ostrom5. You could think about the Ostrom5 similar to the clause in a contract that states the jurisdiction for adjudication of any disputes. 

Unlike legal jurisdictions, organizations have full autonomy to join whatever Ostrom5 represents their values, change Ostrom5s at any time, or establish their own network with an aligned Ostrom5. Of course, if there is an organization that hops from one to another, people might become suspect that they aren’t really adhering to the code of conduct. 

For the initial deployment of the Ostrom5, we will be using Non-Transferrable Tokens (NTTs) on the blockchain or L2 that provides the initial grant. Using NFTs means that this is a transparent certificate. We can imagine future Ostrom5s wanting to use privacy-preserving technology, and consider the KERI technology to be a lead contender for expanding to different networks. Future plans include registries of Ostrom5 organizations and interoperability as the demand emerges.

Blockchain-based credentials are non-revocable. Therefore, for the implementation of the first Ostrom5, certificates are issued for a one-month period of validity. Every member of the Ostrom5 will automatically receive a new NFT each month. If they fail to adhere to the sanctions of the Ostrom5 or refuse mediation, their certificate will stop renewing each month. The advantage of this system is that it will be possible to show a record of how long an organization was part of an Ostrom5, which can prevent bad actors from just changing networks and displaying their new certificate. The disadvantage is that the records are fully transparent and public. In future versions of the Ostrom5, there will be different ways to implement revocable and non-revocable certificates.

For the implementation of the Ostrom5, organizations will need to have a Web3 wallet supporting Arbitrum, and they will hold their certificates on the Arbitrum network. Furthermore, Arbitrum will be doing groundbreaking work in collaboration technology and have the first network-based arbitration organization, which will make it a network worth joining. Values-based organizations will be able to take advantage of this mediation and arbitration organization as a benefit of using Arbitrum.

No. The organizations participation will define how they want to hold their certification wallet. They can have a multisig or a single owner of the wallet. To check whether an organization holds a certificate, anyone can use a block explorer, so they do not have to hold a wallet themselves. 

Requests and answers for mediation will be done off-chain for privacy reasons. 

The Ostrom5 does not interfere in the internal organizational decision-making unless the organization hires it to do so. If an organization cannot convince their members to mediate with the Ostrom5, they will need to choose between expelling the non-compliant member and losing their Ostrom5 certificate. Similarly, if the Ostrom5 recommended an action, such as sensitivity training, and the individual refuses, the participating organization can either remove the membership of the person, or they can lose their Ostrom5 certificate. In other words, in order to display the Ostrom5 certificate, they need to adhere to the code of conduct as it is implemented in the Ostrom5.

Organizations can opt out at any time. Our expectation is that an Ostrom5 will establish its reputation based on its success, similar to brands, universities, and other groups.