The MetaLeX quest
The MetaLeX Whitepaper: a insight
TL:DR
The MetaLeX whitepaper aims to give birth to a new kind of law (the Autonomous Law) in order to complete the project of disconnecting the blockchain world from the world of flesh and blood. To free humans from the vertical hierarchy of institutional powers and return them to a space of freedom among equals, a heterotopia of horizontal hierarchy. A project that to date has a currency and finance separate - in theory - from the state (Bitcoin and Ethereum as respective paradigms of cryptocurrencies and smart contracts that enable decentralised transactions and finance); but a project that lacks an equally separate law to govern that proto-world of a longed-for separate world, a free world.
What you will (and won't) find here
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➡️ We are all looking for something
We are all looking for something. Diogenes a righteous man in the streets of Athens, candle in hand; Ichabod Crane a kind truth behind the terrifying Headless Horseman; Indiana Jones the Lost Ark in an unbridled race against esoteric Nazis; Sebastian, between the black keys of a piano, the love lost through an infinite renunciation of love for his beloved Mia; and, finally, Gabriel Shapiro searches with his MetaLeX for an Autonomus Law that will make a free world possible —almost nothing.
➡️ The Autonomous Law: a spoiler
The Autonomous Law to which the MetaLeX whitepaper devotes the bulk of its text —a third at least— is something like a new normative paradigm, a new kind of legal order that will allow humans to escape the clutches of nation states and their supra- and infra-national entanglements.
And given the state of decadence and woke perversion of Western governments, of everything that sounds or resonates with Public Administration —and this is not an opinion: it is an easily verifiable empirical observation, a notorious fact in the technical-legal-proven sense—, it seems to me that the search for MetaLeX is an enterprise worth supporting —we, who still don't know how 😅, we're in!
This Autonomous Law that dazzles us:
is law because it aims to regulate (in part) human interaction;
is decentralised because it will reside on a blockchain;
it is code (code is law) because the blockchain, and everything that resides in it, is code;
it is autonomous because, as the execution of code (with or without AI, but AI is also code, and only code - at least for the moment, until consciousness emerges...), it does not require human intervention, i.e. the self-execution of the code is the application of the law itself.
And it is autonómica because the government and the legal decision by way of the law-code, at the time of the code, the rule of code, will be independent of the rule of law as well as of the rule of men. Neither traditional law, nor the humans who create it, will have anything to say about the rule of code once it is born into the world of the blockchain1.
➡️ The whitepaper: one interpretation (ours)
If you page through the whitepaper, its first ten pages are an interesting introduction that operates as an extensive captatio benevolentiae until, around page ten, we are presented with a sort of table of contents that corresponds to the three phases of logical and chronological development of the MetaLeX project to reach the Autonomous Law.
At this point, in these lines, we are not so much interested in how the Autonomous Law is arrived at, nor therefore in the phases, as in the concept of Autonomous Law itself. Moreover - it must be said - because the description of phases 1 and 2 is clear enough to get a good idea of what we are talking about, but not sufficiently detailed to know what the hell we are talking about beyond that idea.
We can all get a good idea of what unicorns are from what we talk about them; but none of us can know exactly what the hell a unicorn is until we e.g. see it, tame it, ride it, feed it…
From this point of view, we will summarise the phases, in our own style.
➡️➡️ Phase 1: BORGs
Phase 1 essentially concerns the creation of fully autonomous blockchain programmes that apply rules in a community of users.
In this sense, a law is ultimately a very special kind of rule that is distinguished from other rules by its origin: if the rule is dictated by the state, it is a law; if it is dictated by your father or mother, it is a precept of family behaviour; if it is dictated by a criminal gang, it is the code of a mafia. But for all these groups —state, family, mafia— the rule operates as law, whether it is called law, precept or code; in other words, the law, the precept and the code are functionally equivalent within the respective target community.
So a programme on the blockchain that applies rules is, for the purposes of the community resident in the protocol where it is applied, its own law. Whether it is recognised as such outside that community —and this is, strictly speaking, the crux of the matter— is another matter.
These programmes are called BORGs (cyBernetic ORGanisationS) and are like sub-DaOs stripped down, fully autonomous from a parent DAO. Suppose a DAO requires six Fi functions to function. Some of these functions with the current state of the art are fully autonomous; others are not —and that is precisely why we have this mess of BORGs, to gradually implement, as technology makes it possible, the next phases. For each fully autonomous Fi function, a programme is created to implement it, a BORG. This is then like the DAO for the sole purpose of that particular fully autonomous function. Then, there will come a point where for every Fi function of the DAO there is a BORG that implements it. However, not even at that point will the DAO be, let us say, the conjunctive sum of all these BORGs:
{BORGi} ≢ DAO
The DAO is an emergence from this set of BORGs, a something more.
Just as a daisy is not reduced to the petals that have been shed along with the stem; nor is a company qua legal entity (with or without legal personality, it is not relevant here) the sum of its partners, or the sum of its departments, or the sum of its strategies, or the sum of its articles of association...; so it is not the case that the DAO we have been talking about is the sum of its BORGs.
That “something else” which is the daisy or the society qua legal entity with respect to the component parts is a mereological emergence just as the DAO is a mereological emergence of those BORGs. Which brings us headlong into the second phase.
➡️➡️ Phase 2: Deal Technology
For this set of BORGs -{BORGs} - to identify with the DAO, it is necessary for its elements to work in a coordinated manner. This will be achieved through a series of agreements between the BORGs that will then validate the identity:
{BORGi} + TFA ≡ autDAO
Where TFA = Technological Framework Agreement, a set of covenants that make the set of BORGs cease to be just that, a set of BORGs, and become an entity functionally equivalent to the DAO from which they were detached. Now, the final result will be so qualitatively different from the DAO that it will also be substantially different from it: it will be a true DAO (= autDAO)2. That is:
the set of BORGs plus their TFA operates as a perfectly autonomous and autonomous version (autDAO) of the imperfect autonomous and autonomous DAO that gave birth to them.
From this perspective, and as far as these two phases are concerned, it can be said that, at the end of the day, MetaLeX only aims to recover the pure sense of the DAO, a DAO that technological limitations and human praxis have turned decentralisation and autonomy into an absurdity, because
I don't care whether the one at the top governs or the one next to him governs, if it is the case that the one at the top and the one next to him have exactly the same power.
➡️➡️ Phase 3: Autonomous Law
Our autDAOs —well, those of MetaLeX, that is— as social entities that are also social entities, however much they reside in the blockchain, will interact with each other and with the world of flesh and blood; that interaction will generate conflict; and that conflict will have to be resolved. And this is —in our opinion— where the whitepaper puts its finger on the problem —we recommend reading it, in particular the headings Phase 3-Autonomus Law and Conclusion. We, here, present it as follows:
➡️➡️➡️ Conflicts with a decentralised and autonomous dimension that are resolved by laws and legal operators that do not (or do not want to) contemplate decentralisation and autonomy
If these conflicts are resolved under the rule of law, state legal systems, also from above and from below), they will de facto nullify the essence of the underlying structures that have been so hard to create.
Warburton explained, trying to explain the Kantian categories of time and space, that the world is seen through the lenses of the glasses you wear: if pink, then rose-coloured. This, which our grandparents used to tell us in other less refined but certainly more understandable ways, is as true as the sun.
And so, if it is the case —and it is— that the creators of the laws of the world of flesh and blood do not look at the world through the lens of decentralisation and autonomy, then it is also the case that their laws do not have these concepts embedded in their letter and that, therefore, their application on a decentralised and autonomous factual substratum will overlook in whole or in part the decentralised and autonomous nature of that factual substratum. In other words: the laws and their application will disregard the decentralised and autonomous dimension of the conflict, so that the conflict will be resolved as if there were no decentralisation and autonomy.
And it makes no difference to me whether "X is not in Y" or "X being in Y, X is disregarded as being in Y".
➡️➡️➡️ Conflicts with a decentralised and autonomous dimension that are solved by very cool alternative legal operators, at the time, by humans governed by their own will, and nothing else
And if these conflicts are solved under alternative conflict resolution procedures (panels of experts, forums of wills or opinion polls outside the blockchain, ad hoc arbitration tribunals...) which, for the sake of this alternativity, are already considered very cool, the setback is even worse. For under the (apparent) success that the conflict where at least one party is an autonomous and decentralised entity is no longer resolved by inconsiderate state laws, but by highly regarded experts or those considered as such, what we are falling into is personalism. And this only departs in degree, but not in quality, from caveman conflict resolution by the tribal sorcerer.
Humans have not been trampling the earth for two hundred thousand years —to put a figure on it— to escape the reptilian law of men by way of the rule of law in order to, in more refined but no less unjust ways, end up by overthrowing the rule of law by submitting to the will of a forum of (supposedly) very cool experts: humans.
Even the worst of laws with judges is better than the best of judges without laws, if only because the former, at least, will always resolve in the same way, while the latter, who knows how they will end up resolving the day they let themselves be carried away by their rages…
➡️➡️➡️ Conflicts with a decentralised and autonomous dimension that are resolved by autonomous and decentralised laws which, as such, provide for decentralisation and autonomy
This, and no other, is the end of the road if the product of phases 1 and 2 is to survive in the long term. A law, the Autonomous Law (i) which, as a code inserted in the blockchain, contains rules that are intrinsically decentralised in their conception, whose application generates equally decentralised outputs; and (ii) which, as a self-executing code, is applied whether or not its addressees inside and outside the chain want it to be applied, thus endowing the system with autonomycity, making the system autonomous with respect to the world of flesh and blood, freeing it from both the rule of law and the law of men.
➡️ (In)conclusion
The MetaLeX project is ambitious and exciting. But we shall see whether it remains a wet dream, because even its successful implementation is not enough to make it a successful project. If it is based on the creation of an Autonomous Law, then to the creation must be added the adoption, if not generalised, then relevant, at least at the sectoral level, of the Autonomous Law created.
Let us explain.
The birth of a Legal System is the result of a pact. But not just any pact. It is a sui generis pact for at least two reasons.
It is sui generis —first reason— because it is a founding pact and, as such, a pact of pacts; a pact that subjugates —or so it intends— all the other pacts that exist or will exist, just as the One Ring contained, and therefore subjugated —and that one really subjugated…— the Rings of Power. Such a pact is called "constituent" (it is, moreover, the first constitutional pact which can later be modified by other constitutional pacts but which are no longer constituent), and what has been agreed is called "Constitution" or "Magna Carta".
And that Constitution has the vocation of having effects vis-à-vis third parties, which is an exception (and a very big one) to the principle of relativity of contracts, a principle whereby —thank God— agreements only have effects between their parties —and for this reason it is also sui generis, second reason.
Of course, the contracting parties are supposed to act on the mandate (representative at least, imperative as a desideratum) of these third parties. They could not otherwise be bound by this agreement, nor by any other. So by representation (imperative or not) the third parties assume the Constitution just as a third party can assume a contract (it is the figure of the assumption of a contract by a third party).
However, for the constituent thing to work, it is necessary, not only that the greatest number of third parties of the target community assume it, but that all third parties of that community assume it, that the community (be it group, tribe, team, club, society…) assume it as a community. And it is often much more problematic to implement this statement:
for every Si subject of the community {Si}, Si assumes the covenant,
than this other:
for a majority of Si subjects of the community {Yes}, Si assumes the pact.
Why? Because the world doesn't need to be full of free riders to fuck up the invention; it's enough that there is one for that, to fuck it up. And the fact is that the word “all” beyond rhetoric and poetics becomes a word as problematic as it is problematic —speaking à la Hempel— to prove that ”all ravens are black”.
Following the brilliant Searle —later terribly reviled— we can say that:
A proposition counts as a rule if it is accepted that this proposition is a rule.
This sounds like a truism, but it is not. If I say to you:
(Ⲁ) "To get into my house you have to take off your shoes",
that proposition will only be a rule if you, as well as I, accept it as a rule. For of a proposition that pretends to be a rule and is not followed by anyone we do not know whether it can be predicated to be a rule —Wittgenstein may have gone half-mad over something like that. And this will be the case of the autDAO after the end of phase 2: they will be entities of the world governed by rules that will be accepted ad intra. But their ad extra acceptance will require an exogenous-dependent plus. And we continue with Searle3:
"rules of the form X counts as Y in C are then constitutive of institutional structures”.
Which we can rewrite as follows:
When a proposition counts as a rule in a community, the rule is institutionalised and we can predicate it to be a law for that community.
Which, following our example of my house and your shoes, would mean that the proposition (Ⲁ) would not require your acceptance to be a rule if it is the case that in the neighbourhood in which you and I live it has already been accepted as a rule: it is a neighbourhood law —so to speak. All of which, translated to the matter at hand, means that:
For the autDAO rules to count as Autonomous Law in the blockchain community, it is necessary for the community to consider them as such.
This conclusion is quite hopeless for MetaLeX as the blockchain community is a network of networks made up of tens or hundreds of thousands of communities (layer 1, 2… n; more with the protocols within each layer; more with the organisations within each protocol…). But in the same hopelessness we can find a glimmer of hope, like Blochian red heroes:
It is a matter of implementing the Autonomous Law community by community blockchain until a relevant group of them accepts it as a supracommunity, (just as the neighbours in your neighbourhood and mine have been accepting house by house and case by case that all houses are entered barefoot).
Or so we see it in #másqueley!
This deserves clarification in order to escape sophistry. Just as the created cannot free itself from its creation, no law can free itself from the clutches of the man who creates it. Only the constituent law, which initiates a Legal Order, can (relatively) do so under the artifice of the legal fiction by which it itself, and not its creator, sets itself up as the principle of everything. And, thus, under the impossible that the constituent law itself contains in itself the will to be constituted, as a normative ouroboros, is that it can make it seem as if it is born and we can make it seem as if it is so.
At this point, we have moved away from the distinction, also terminological, that the white paper makes by subdividing phase 1 into a phase 1A where it talks about DAO-adjacent BORGs and another phase 1B where it talks about bizBORGs. The removal of this distinction has been considered to serve the purpose of this commentary without, moreover, entailing a loss of information that would generate misinformation.
“When the procedure or practice of counting X as Y becomes regularized it becomes a rule. And rules of the form X counts as Y in C are then constitutive of institutional structures. Such rules differ from regulative rules, which are typically of the form ‘Do X’, because regulative rules regulate activities which can exist independently of the rule. Constitutive rules not only regulate but rather constitute the very behavior they regulate, because acting in accordance with a sufficient number of the rules is constitutive of the behavior in question. An obvious contrast is between the regulative rules of driving, such as drive on the right-hand side of the road and the constitutive rules of chess. Driving can exist without the regulative rule requiring right or left; the rule regulates an antecedently existing activity. But chess cannot exist without the rules, because behaving in accordance with (at least a sufficient subset of) the rules is constitutive of playing chess.” (What is an institution?, Searle 2005).