San Francisco lawmakers this week proposed reallocating $50 million in taxpayers’ money to set up a reparations office to ensure the city’s black residents receive payments that can total $5 million per person.

San Francisco supervisor Shamann Walton proposed Tuesday the establishment of the office to ensure the vision of the city’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee is implemented, after making his final recommendation in June. Walton, who created the committee in 2020, was supported by his progressive bosses, Hillary Ronen and Dean Preston. It is unclear when the board of directors will vote on Walton’s proposal.

The pitch will likely dispel any remaining skepticism that San Francisco officials are not serious about the city’s radical and highly unpopular reparations plan. Last week, the full Board of Governors voted in favor of a draft plan to pay each of the city’s black residents $5 million. The proposed office would increase the financial strain on the city, which faces a $728 million budget hole that the mayor warns is likely to get worse as businesses and taxpaying residents flee.

In addition to $5 million in reparations, the committee has proposed subsidizing real estate that would allow black San Francisco residents to buy homes for as little as $1. The committee has also proposed setting up $97,000 in annual payments to today’s low-income Black families for 250 years and paying off all debts owned by Black residents.

San Francisco lawmakers last week condemned taxpayer objections to the task force’s plan as racist, as reparations advocates urged policymakers and the public not to “get bogged down” with the costs. According to analysis by the Hoover Institution, the proposal in its current form would cost each San Francisco household nearly $600,000.

Supervisor Rafael Mandelman has slammed his constituents’ fears as an “overheated and irrational response” to the reparations task force’s proposals.

“For those of my constituents who have lost their minds over this proposal, it’s not something we do or would do for anyone else,” Mandelman said. “It’s something we would do for our future, the collective future of all and generations to come.”

The state of California is moving forward with its own reparations plan, which could yield payments of $360,000 per eligible resident. The state’s reparations task force has yet to agree on a number or determine which of California’s 2.5 million black residents would be eligible.

The San Francisco board of directors is scheduled to vote on the final recommendations of the Redress Committee in September. Lawmakers’ vote on the draft plan was delayed a month after Walton got stuck in Colombia, where he was partying at a local Hooters.

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As executive director of the Mission Housing Development Corp., Sam Moss exclusively builds 100% affordable housing for the most vulnerable San Franciscans. Given the drumbeat of calls from all corners of the city for more subsidized low-income housing, one might expect the city to welcome his work with open arms.

That’s not the case at all.

“The entire housing process is a complete nightmare,” Moss said. “San Francisco has a unique ability to find the most inventive ways to step on its own toes and prevent itself from providing its most needed services.”

Each housing project Moss has developed in San Francisco has faced the same agonizing hurdles: months of preliminary coordination meetings followed by years of negotiations, paperwork and meetings to receive project approval — only to then be faced with an onslaught of permits before finally breaking ground.

Mayor London Breed blames the Board of Supervisors for obstructing housing. The supervisors in turn blame City Hall for not supporting enough affordable housing. The reality, however, is that all bodies have a role to play in fixing the status quo.

That’s because the core of San Francisco’s housing problem isn’t politics, it’s bureaucracy.

Decades of compounding bad policies that have resulted in impenetrable red tape that can — and often does — kill housing projects in San Francisco. Including affordable housing.

“What people don’t realize is that nonprofit housing projects have to be completed within 18 months of building permit approval, or we risk losing affordable housing bonds,” Moss said.

And yet the median time for securing approval to build in San Francisco is 627 days — which puts 50% of projects at risk of losing funding due to delays.

The outcomes speak for themselves.

In 2021, San Francisco issued permits for just 2,000 homes, and in 2022 there was similarly anemic building activity. By contrast, Seattle — a city of comparable size — issued more than 10,000 permits.

SFNext is Chronicle coverage devoted to the city’s most vexing problems.

Where should we go from here? Send your ideas to sfnext@SFChronicle.com. We’ll publish the best ideas we receive.

Have questions for Bilal Mahmood? He’s ready to answer them. Join him on Tuesday at 6 p.m. on SFNext’s new conversation forum, Discord (sign-up required).

San Francisco recently submitted and passed an impressive version of the state-mandated plan known as a housing element: The city says it will build more than 80,000 homes in eight years, or 10,000 homes per year. But state planners are not convinced San Francisco will live up to this promise. And a deep study of the city’s housing bureaucracy provides an answer as to why.

To understand the sweep of the problem, it is necessary to dive into the leviathan that is San Francisco’s city government. It took me several months of interviews with developers, commissioners, housing advocates and academics to fully understand the bottleneck of bureaucracy surrounding housing: a compounding set of confounding procedures that necessitates securing at least 87 permits, enduring 1,000 days for meetings and paying more than  $500,000 in fees on average for any residential project. In combination, these procedures make nearly all housing projects financially infeasible to build in San Francisco.

1,000 days for meetings

Any attempt to build housing in San Francisco starts with meetings. Lots of meetings. Of course the San Francisco Planning Department will want to have its say. So will the Mayor’s Office of Disability and the Fire Department — among others.

There are two phases of housing development. The first is the project approval — or entitlement — phase. This requires meeting with the San Francisco Planning Department to prepare application forms simply requesting permission to build. In San Francisco, housing projects face a median wait time of more than 450 days for this entitlement.

The second phase is called the building permit — or post-entitlement — phase. This is when developers apply for permits to build. Combined with the project approval stage, the time to complete permitting often stretches to over three years, according to data published in San Francisco’s housing element. That’s more than 1,000 days before a housing project can even begin construction.

To understand the bottlenecks, let’s break down the process.

It can take 600 days to finish approvals for housing in San Francisco.

Amy Lee

There are six phases to housing development in San Francisco:

Steps 1 and 2 involve preliminary project assessments (which take 60 days) and project application filings (about 30 days) to the Planning Department that detail the overall housing project.

Steps 3 and 4 entail the preliminary application review (which takes about 90 days) where the Planning Department conducts checks of residential, streets and urban design planning, followed by any project refinements (typically another 30 days).

Step 5 is the final project analysis where comprehensive plan and design checks, and environmental reviews are conducted (which can take at least 180 days).

Finally, Step 6 is where after receiving an official project approval, the developer can apply for building permits to begin construction (but it can take over 600 days).

Why does navigating these steps take so long?

In part because San Francisco is the only major city in California with a city charter that mandates that all permits are “discretionary” and, by consequence, appealable. This simple rule has far-reaching consequences.

“In most cities, building permits follow what is called ‘ministerial’ approval — where if a project is code compliant, the permits will be approved, often in months,” said Rachael Tanner, president of the San Francisco Planning Commission. “The issue in San Francisco is that because all permits are discretionary, a governing body like the Board of Supervisors can weigh in — or a single resident can ask for the Planning Commission or for the Board of Appeals to take a closer look. This can literally add years to even the simplest projects.”

San Francisco’s discretionary process allows for two obstructionist tactics.

The first is that it enables a neighborhood organization or a single person to file a notice to the Planning Department requesting a delay of the project during the project approval stage or to file a notice to the Board of Appeals at the building permit stage.

CEQA appeals can add more time to building housing in San Francisco

Amy Lee

The recent housing project at 870 Union St. is a case study that is part of San Francisco’s housing element. A preliminary project assessment was filed in October 2015. Less than a year later, the project filed and received approval for most of its paperwork. But in September 2016, an appeal was filed by a neighborhood resident, triggering hearings and further meetings with the Planning Commission. The project wasn’t approved until May 2017 — more than 200 days later.

San Francisco abounds with such examples of projects delayed by neighborhood input. The cumulative impact was a 123-day median delay in the housing approval process in 2021, according to San Francisco’s Housing Element.

San Francisco is also the only city in California that allows such building permit appeals even after a project has received all its approvals. Assembly Member Matt Haney of San Francisco recently introduced AB1114, which would ban this practice. But even if that ban is implemented, a second obstructionist tactic still emerges from San Francisco’s discretionary system — a delay induced by the California Environmental Quality Act.

A well-intentioned 1970 law, known as CEQA, initiates a process requiring technical studies, environmental notices and additional hearings to evaluate and disclose to the public the environmental impact of any discretionary action by local government. Thanks to San Francisco’s charter, that includes housing projects. Housing experts note that the sheer volume of studies and meetings required to even consider a CEQA filing results in a median 122-day delay to projects. And if deemed necessary, an actual environmental impact report can take a median of 700 days to complete, according to San Francisco’s housing element.

In essence, because all permits in San Francisco are discretionary, every housing project becomes a political battle.

This is what happened at 469 Stevenson St., where developers sought to build 495 units of housing on a Nordstrom valet parking lot, only to be delayed more than a year when the Board of Supervisors rejected the project’s environmental analysis for what many critics argued were spurious reasons.

San Francisco’s extensively broad application of CEQA necessitates conducting more than 5,000 reviews per year. This intensive level of environmental review is not cheap. According to the 2022 update to San Francisco’s housing element, around 40 full-time planners are employed just to work on these reviews.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

San Francisco can simply follow the example of cities like San Jose, Mountain View and Santa Clara, which employ a split permitting process. 

In this split process, the planning approval is discretionary while building permit approval is ministerial. This streamlines the approval process and avoids unnecessary discretionary stopgaps.

“Bifurcating the planning and building permit process will create a clear and discernible path for applicants to see what is required of their project,” says Raquel Bito, president of San Francisco’s Building Inspection Commission.

Indeed, the Department of Building Inspection formally first reviewed such a proposal in August —  and is now investigating mechanisms to streamline.

We actually can see the potential impact of ministerial approval in place today. In 2017, a bill authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco, SB35, was signed into law and it enabled ministerial approval at both the project approval and building permit stages for projects that feature 50% or more affordable housing.

The 555 Bryant St. housing development in San Francisco benefited from SB35 — a preliminary project application was filed in January 2021 and the project was fully approved within 175 business days — roughly half the time of the 870 Union St. project.

“Ministerial approval isn’t just important, it’s an absolutely essential tool if San Francisco is to meet its goal of building 82,000 homes in the next eight years,” said Wiener, who is introducing SB423, which would renew SB35 and make it even more effective.

The solution here is clear — build by ministerial approval. It works, even sometimes in San Francisco.

87 permits and $500,000 in fees

Just because a housing project is approved doesn’t workers can start building. It merely means the project has permission to apply for permits to start building.

In San Francisco, that process takes a median of 627 days. Worse yet, 270 projects during the past 10 years have taken more than four years to get all their permits. This is the slowest approval time for permits in any major city in California. It’s 400 days longer than Oakland and 300 days longer than Berkeley.

Where’s the breakdown?

The issue is bureaucracy. Namely, the 87 permits San Francisco’s housing element identified that a project needs to apply for in order to begin development: 15 permits from the Planning Commission, 26 permits from the Public Utilities Commission and Fire Department, 19 permits from the Department of Building Inspection, 17 permits from the Public Works and 10 other permits related to public spaces.

With 87 permits across multiple departments, it’s easy to see how San Francisco’s bureaucracy is slowing housing development to a crawl.

Why does San Francisco require so many permits? Part of the problem is redundancy. Of the 87 permits listed, at least 12 pertain to issues of water regulations, issued separately by the Public Utilities Commission, Department of Building Inspection and Public Works.

And it isn’t just the sheer number of permits. San Francisco forces developers to receive each set of permits sequentially — you can apply for a set of permits only after you have completed the previous set. With 87 permits, the time compounds.

Compare that to San Jose, which has only 57 permits and allows for parallel review of both the planning and permitting phases. According to Bito, this allows builders to receive feedback more readily from all requisite departments (like Public Works and the Fire Department), potentially shaving months of waiting.

Permitting in San Francisco isn’t just time-consuming, though, it’s expensive.

Permitting fees — specifically, what the Department of Building Inspection charges for a housing project — are proportional to the cost of construction. The challenge here is the unpredictability of those costs.

Labor and material prices are constantly changing. The longer a project is delayed in the approval or building permit phases, the higher likelihood that market conditions change and materials costs have risen, and the higher the city’s fees.

Furthermore, during the time developers are applying for permits, they incur significant costs to hold the land they plan to use.

San Francisco’s development process is also loaded with what are called “impact fees” — or fixed fees to get project approval. These impact fees cover the cost of providing public services like schools, water, transportation and public art investments in a neighborhood. But when added to the litany of other direct and indirect costs San Francisco imposes on development, they can make projects infeasible.

All told, housing development projects over $25 million can in turn incur at least $500,000 in combined impact and permitting fees, according to San Francisco’s Housing Element. This can add up to $74,000 in costs to an individual apartment or condo in San Francisco, compared to $39,000 per unit in Oakland, $54,000 per unit in Emeryville and $62,000 per unit in San Jose.

The result of these astronomical costs in San Francisco makes housing projects risky or infeasible to build. Only the most monied developers, therefore, have access to the market — and they focus on expensive high-rises to improve the odds of recouping their investments.

A path forward

If a housing project has to sequentially wade through 87 permits, pay $500,000 in impact and permitting fees and endure 1,000 days of meetings simply to break ground, it will be a tall order for San Francisco to build 10,000 houses per year as stated in our state-mandated housing element. We can’t even build 2,000 a year today.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can be a city with abundant, affordable housing, where unhoused populations can find stable homes, where San Francisco’s workers can live near their jobs, and where people and families of all stripes can make this city their home.

To move forward, however, we need to radically reform our housing approval processes. We need to transition housing approvals away from discretionary reviews — like every other major city in California.

State legislation like Assembly Member Haney’s AB1114 and state Sen. Wiener’s SB423 are necessary steps to get us there. But they are insufficient on their own.

San Francisco also needs to streamline permitting to allow for parallel processing and a reduction in impact fees. This is largely in the domain of Mayor Breed’s office, and executive action here is necessary. Her Housing For All executive order, which requests that all departments streamline permitting by 50% within a year, is a great step in the right direction.

But setting broad goals is just a start. San Francisco needs decisive action.

Bilal Mahmood is a civil servant and entrepreneur, and a board member at SF YIMBY.

The post How crimson tape and forms gas San Francisco’s housing disaster appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

A few years ago, an elderly Vietnamese woman invited me to her Tenderloin apartment. I was a teenager at the time and it wasn’t customary for Vietnamese children to refer to elders by their first names. So to me, she was “Cô,” the Vietnamese word for paternal aunt — which, when used with nonrelatives, was more of an equivalent to “miss.”

Co could barely speak English. I wasn’t sure if she understood what “miss” meant.

That morning, I shivered in a thin hoodie as I waited for Cô outside her apartment building. After a few minutes, a plump-looking woman appeared wearing many layers of sweaters and jackets. It was Cô, opened the gate and let me in.

I followed her through the lobby, past minimalist modern art backlit with light boxes. The hallway walls, covered in deep mulberry colour, looked freshly painted. A janitor was cleaning the in-house laundromat, making sure that the washers and dryers would remain pristine white. With rent control, Cô spent less than $1,000 a month on these amenities and her home.

I was getting warm as we walked through the hallway. Underneath all her layers, she must have been scorching.

As Cô opened her apartment door, it clanged against a bag of aluminum cans and glass bottles. She told me that every morning, she’d exchange the recyclables for 5 cents to 10 cents each, but hadn’t enough time to visit the recycling center that morning. She let out a nervous laugh before quickly stuffing them in a cabinet.

As I stepped into her home, the pricey aesthetic of the building’s lobby and hallways gave way to the faded and peeling gray wallpaper of her unit. Adhesive mouse traps on the floor were oxidizing from white to ferric orange — the unmistakable sign of a long-time rodent infestation. Many of the light sockets in the apartment were dead. It’d be pitch black at night.

Cô moved to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. Feeling a draft, I traced the cool air back to an open window behind her. I tried closing it, but the rusty window wouldn’t budget.

The unit couldn’t have been insulated — I was cold in every room. Cô told me she loved the nighttime because that was when she could retreat to her bedroom, where a small space heater kept her warm.

After making her tea, Cô went to her living room and sat on a fold-out chair. She was using the steam of the scalding tea to warm her palms when her wrist slipped out of her sweater layers. It was only then that I realized how gaunt she was. Inspecting her appearance more closely, I could see her cheeks were abnormally hollow. With little fat, she must have felt especially cold in her home.

Cô had to know that this was no way to live, but she told me she was hesitant to report the safety violations to the building manager. She could barely verbalize her complaints in English and more importantly, she feared doing so would get her evicted — an outcome she couldn’t afford to risk.

The city didn’t want her to live like that. San Francisco’s Rent Board recently amended the San Francisco Housing Code to force landlords to provide adequate heating systems for tenants. Landlords must also keep their apartments vermin-free and the light fixtures functional. Of course, reporting these violations aren’t grounds for eviction, but Cô didn’t know that.

If self-advocacy was out of the question, surely the city’s Department of Building Inspection’s Housing Inspection Services Program would catch the apartment’s egregious safety violations and enforce the housing code. Decades ago, the department even created the Code Enforcement Outreach Program to find non-English speakers living in squalor and advocate for them.

However, Cô couldn’t recall any comprehensive unit inspections during her multi-decade stay. It was up to her to file a tenant petition at San Francisco’s Rent Board to protest her living conditions. But government forms and technology were too complex for her to navigate.

What she didn’t know was that her plight was likely unwinnable. The inactive Department of Building Inspection had a history of corruption; Recently, an inspector accepted generous loans to allegedly pass building inspections and ignored blatant fire hazards.

Money spoke volumes in the city and Cô didn’t have much of it.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw Cô sitting in a hair salon only a block away from her apartment. A quick glance at her was all I needed to understand how her life was going. Her face was more hollow than when we last met years ago. Even in the 70-degree weather, she was bundled up in a thick beige jacket.

After a short conversation, we wished each other well and said our goodbyes. I watched her walk back into that same modern apartment building, knowing her own unit within couldn’t be any more different from its gleaming lobby and hallways.

Cô doesn’t have many years ahead of her. With legal help, she could enter a battle with the stubborn building owner either through the Rent Board or small claims court. But she no longer has the stamina for that. The city’s inactive, unnavigable bureaucracy has already claimed her life.

Danny Nguyen is a writer and recent graduate from Vanderbilt University where he studied molecular and cellular biology, and medicine, health and society.

The post How San Francisco’s unnavigable forms sucked the life out of my neighborhood auntie appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Eine Gruppe von Technologen aus San Francisco stellt sich eine Arbeitswelt vor, in der es keine Bürokratien, keine Hauptquartiere gibt und – was am wichtigsten ist – niemand der Chef von jemand anderem ist.

Das Geschäftsmodell, durch das sie glauben, diese Welt erschaffen zu können, heißt DAO, was für Decentralized Autonomous Organization steht. DAOs basieren auf Blockchains oder transparentem, unveränderlichem Code, der für Online-Audits frei verfügbar ist. Es ist eine Organisationsstruktur, die es den Teilnehmern ermöglicht, mitzubestimmen, wie eine Organisation wächst und geführt wird.

Während es viele verschiedene Philosophien gibt, wie man DAO-Code am besten aufbaut und verwendet, sind DAOs weniger hierarchisch als traditionelle Unternehmen und benötigen keine Zentrale, Campus oder andere zentralisierte Arbeitsbereiche.

DAOs stellen vieles in Frage, wofür die Technologiekultur der Bay Area in den letzten 30 Jahren bekannt war. Und doch leben hier einige der visionärsten Baumeister in San Francisco.

„Es ist Evolution“, sagt Li Jiang, Chief Operating Officer beim Blockchain-Startup Harmony. „Die Generation unserer Eltern, die haben vielleicht 10, 20, 30 Jahre in einem Unternehmen gearbeitet. Unsere Generation, wir arbeiten drei, vier Jahre für ein Unternehmen. Aber dann wird die nächste Generation für drei DAOs gleichzeitig arbeiten.“

Die am besten zu verstehende Analogie ist, dass es sich um eine digitale Genossenschaft handelt, eine Art Online-Version von REI oder eine lokale Bauernkooperative. Eine Gruppe von Menschen mit gemeinsamen Interessen bildet gemeinsam eine Organisation und stimmt gemeinsam über wichtige Entscheidungen ab.

Im Falle einer DAO ist die Governance jedoch noch weiter dezentralisiert, dh es gibt keine Führungskräfte oder sogar einen Administrator mit der alleinigen Befugnis, die Stimmen bei Entscheidungen zu tabellieren. Entwickler programmieren stattdessen „intelligente Verträge“, die bestimmte Verhaltensweisen automatisch ausführen, sobald die Bedingungen erfüllt sind. Es gibt keine zentrale Macht, die vorgibt, was passiert, sondern ein theoretisch unvoreingenommenes und kompromissloses Stück Code.

Die häufigste Verwendung sind jetzt Gruppen von Personen, die DAOs erstellen, um in nicht fungible Token zu investieren. Dies sind einzigartige digitale Gegenstände – die wie Baseballkarten gehandelt werden – etwas, das nicht kopiert werden kann und im Laufe der Zeit innerhalb einer leidenschaftlichen Gemeinschaft an Wert gewinnt. Eine DAO ermöglicht es einer Gruppe von Personen, ihr Geld zusammenzulegen und gemeinsame Entscheidungen über ihre Investitionen zu treffen.

Aber die Hardcore-Leute, die Maximalisten genannt werden, argumentieren, dass das DAO-Modell schließlich für große und kleine Organisationen verwendet werden könnte. Nach ein paar Drinks bei lokalen Krypto-Konferenzen können Technikfreaks bei der Theorie erwischt werden, was passieren würde, wenn Uber ein DAO wäre und die Fahrer ein Mitspracherecht bei der Lohnstruktur oder Airbnb hätten, wobei Gastgeber und Reisende über die Kundensicherheit abstimmen. Twitter-CEO Jack Dorsey prüft mit dem Projekt BlueSky sogar die Schaffung dezentraler sozialer Medien, obwohl sich die Organisation nicht als DAO bezeichnet.

Enthusiasten glauben, dass DAOs die Art und Weise verändern werden, wie zukünftige Generationen arbeiten und leben können, wo immer sie wollen. (Kevin N. Hume/Der Prüfer)

Kritiker weisen darauf hin, dass sich die Blockchain-Technologie im Allgemeinen schneller entwickelt, als die Aufsichtsbehörden damit Schritt halten können. In einigen Fällen, wie bei Bitcoin, kann es in Bezug auf den massiven Energieverbrauch eine unvorhergesehene Belastung für die Umwelt verursachen. In anderen Fällen missbrauchen internationale Hacker Kryptowährung, um Zahlungen ohne Rückverfolgung zu extrahieren.

Auch DAOs sind Neuland, da sie schnell neue Methoden der Arbeitsorganisation mit unklaren Auswirkungen auf das Arbeitsrecht und die internationale Regulierungskooperation entwickeln.

Es ist schwer zu erklären, warum es so viele DAO-Innovationen in der Bay Area gibt, da DAO-Mitglieder nicht am selben Ort oder in derselben Zeitzone sein müssen, um online teilzunehmen. Einige sagen, das Phänomen sei nur ein Nebenprodukt der Entwicklung der DAOs – bis zum Beginn der Pandemie waren die meisten Leute, die an DAOs arbeiteten, Technikfreaks, die dies als Nebenbeschäftigung taten, nachdem sie ihren Campus in Valley und Financial District verlassen hatten. Eine weitere verbreitete Hypothese ist, dass DAOs nur die nächste Phase der Technologieentwicklung nach der Startup-Kultur sind und diejenigen ansprechen, die immer noch von der Idee der „Disruption“ begeistert sind.

Vielleicht ist es die Vielfalt der Gründe, die erklären, warum die führenden DAO-Visionäre der Region so stark unterschiedliche Herangehensweisen an die Technologie haben. Dies sind nur einige der San Franziskaner an der Spitze dieser Innovation.

Ein Vorschlag zu einem Stimmzettel, über den DAO-Benutzer im Blockchain-Startup Harmony abstimmen. Alle Benutzer tragen zur Entscheidungsfindung in einer DAO bei. (Kevin N. Hume/Der Prüfer)

Li Jiang, Chief Operating Officer bei Harmony

Jiang nennt Harmony eine Blockchain der „nächsten Generation“, die eine Erklärung wert sein könnte. Die Kurzversion ist, dass die erste Kryptowährung Bitcoin und ihr Hauptkonkurrent Ether auf zwei branchenbeherrschenden Blockchains abgewickelt werden. Eine der größten Hürden für Entwickler, die an beiden Blockchains arbeiten, besteht darin, dass jede dieser Codefolgen langsam Informationen überträgt und hohe Gebühren für die Ausführung von Transaktionen anfällt. Harmony hat eine eigene Blockchain erstellt, von der die Benutzer sagen, dass sie viel effizienter ist.

Harmony unterscheidet sich von anderen Startups in San Francisco dadurch, dass laut Jiang die Führungskräfte bereit sind, Macht abzugeben. Jiang möchte, dass Harmony ein DAO wird. Er und seine Kollegen haben den Prozess bereits begonnen, indem sie mehrere Mini-DAOs geschaffen haben, um den Ansatz des Unternehmens für mehrere heiße Themen wie Community-Building und soziale Fairness zu erarbeiten. Diese Mini-DAOs bestehen sowohl aus dem Gründungsteam von Harmony als auch aus Bürgernutzern der Blockchain.

Harmony war von dem Moment an, in dem es erstellt wurde, autonom und existierte dauerhaft im Internet wie eine Website, für die der Besitzer das Passwort vergessen hat. Das Gründerteam bildet stattdessen die Harmony Foundation, die diese Mini-DAOs auf der Harmony-Blockchain aufgebaut hat. Sobald die Mitglieder der Harmony Foundation das Vertrauen haben, dass die Mini-DAOs von der Community ohne die Hilfe des Gründers betrieben werden können, wird die Harmony Foundation selbst eine DAO, durch die die Mitglieder eine Rolle bei der Entscheidung haben, wie das Geld des Gründers in neue Startups investiert wird.

„Ich bin auf jeden Fall ein DAO-Maximalist“, sagt Jiang. „Es lohnt sich für jede Organisation, über den Übergang zu einer DAO nachzudenken.“

Ian Lee, Mitbegründer von Syndicate

Unike Jiang identifiziert sich Ian Lee nicht als Maximalist. Tatsächlich sieht er sich selbst als das Gegenteil und sucht nach klaren, identifizierbaren Problemen in der persönlichen Welt, die die Blockchain-Technologie lösen kann. Mit seinem Finanzhintergrund ist es daher sinnvoll, dass er Syndicate mitbegründet hat, um das Investieren zu demokratisieren.

Bei Syndicate bilden Menschen DAOs mit anderen, die daran interessiert sind, in dieselben, oft missions- oder identitätsgetriebenen Projekte zu investieren. Eine DAO beispielsweise investiert in schwarze und afrikanische Startup-Gründer, während eine andere in Frauen und nicht-binäre Gründerinnen investiert. Einige DAO-Mitglieder verwenden Pseudonyme, andere nicht. Am wichtigsten ist, dass DAO-Mitglieder darüber nachdenken und abstimmen, wen sie gemeinsam finanzieren möchten, und entscheiden, wie sehr ihre eigene Identität und ihr Hintergrund die Wahrnehmung anderer Mitglieder von dem, was sie zu sagen haben, beeinflussen sollen – und nicht die traditionell weiße, von Männern dominierte Welt Risikokapital, das für Hierarchien und Gatekeeping berüchtigt ist.

Kritiker weisen darauf hin, dass Syndicate immer noch ziemlich zentralisiert ist. Es gibt ein Kernteam von Leuten, darunter Jiang, die die Technologie selbst entwickeln und von institutionellen Investoren wie Andreessen Horowitz finanziert werden.

Lee sagt, das ist nicht der Punkt. Sein Ansatz beim Aufbau von DAOs sei der praktischste Weg, um das ultimative Ziel der Demokratisierung zu erreichen.

„Investieren ist eine wirklich kraftvolle Art und Weise, wie die Welt gestaltet und gebaut wird. Durch Investitionen werden Ressourcen zugewiesen, und bei diesem Prozess der Ressourcenallokation wird entschieden, wer was, für wen und wo baut“, sagt er. Das Syndikat könnte sich irgendwann dezentralisieren, sagt Lee, aber das erste Ziel ist es, Investitionen in die Gemeinschaft zu ermöglichen. „Wir sind die Infrastruktur – ein Tool-Anbieter für Gemeinden, die DAOs erstellen möchten.“

Gresshaa Mehta, Produktdesignerin bei Orca Protocol

Im Gegensatz zu Harmony und Syndicate ist Orca Protocol keine Blockchain. Vielmehr handelt es sich um eine dezentrale App (dApp genannt), die auf der Blockchain aufgebaut ist – eine Art App, die für den App Store entwickelt wurde, aber ohne dass ein zentrales Unternehmen wie Apple die Bedingungen festlegt. Die Hauptfunktion von Orca besteht darin, DAOs effektiver zu machen, indem Mitglieder in Teams aufgeteilt werden.

Das von ihnen geschaffene Produkt ist zwar technisch komplex, aber philosophisch einfach. Sie wurden von Dunbars Zahl inspiriert – einer Theorie, die besagt, dass Menschen nur die kognitive Fähigkeit haben, Beziehungen zu 150 Personen gleichzeitig aufrechtzuerhalten.

DAOs in ihrer einfachsten Form laden jedes Mitglied ein, über jedes Problem abzustimmen, obwohl es für die meisten Menschen unmöglich ist, Probleme mit großen Teams konstruktiv zu diskutieren. Orca hingegen ermutigt die Mitglieder der DAO, kleinere Pods zu bilden, in denen die Mitglieder über Themen abstimmen können, bei denen sie über entsprechendes Fachwissen verfügen. Auf diese Weise können Mitglieder entscheiden, sich nicht an Themen zu beteiligen, die ihnen egal sind oder die sie nicht kennen, ohne anderen Mitgliedern im Weg zu stehen, die es tatsächlich tun.

Als sie die Entwicklerin Gresshaa Mehta aus San Francisco fragt, warum sie von DAOs begeistert ist, verbindet sie schnell die Technologie mit ihrer persönlichen Erfahrung. Ursprünglich aus Indien kam sie als Studentin in die Bay Area, um hier Chancen zu nutzen, die sie zu Hause nicht finden konnte. DAOs ermöglichen es Menschen, in global verteilten Teams zu arbeiten, und sie sieht eine Zukunft, in der sie niemals ein US-Arbeitsvisum benötigt hätte, um an Projekten teilzunehmen, auf die sie sich freut.

„Ich könnte leicht ein US-Gehalt verdienen, ohne mir Sorgen machen zu müssen, ‚Was ist, wenn ich abgeschoben werde?’“, sagt Mehta.

Vervollständigen des Codes

Die Blockchain-Technologie und insbesondere DAOs können so gesehen werden, dass sie einige der Vorteile des Technologiebooms der Bay Area nehmen und einige der schlechten verwerfen. Trotz des drohenden Stereotyps des „Krypto-Bruders“ sind die Leute, die DAOs bauen, besessen davon, Hierarchien, individuelle Macht und Ruhm zu vermeiden.

„Ich hänge nicht an dieser Idee, ich muss Einfluss darauf haben, wohin dieses Projekt oder die Gemeinschaft geht“, sagt Jiang. “Ich persönlich möchte eine Milliarde Menschen beeinflussen, um in die Blockchain einzusteigen und diese ganze Branche gemeinsam zu evangelisieren.”

Es ist möglich, dass alles Gerede über das Wohlergehen der Gemeinschaft nur Rauch und Spiegel ist. Schließlich wäre es sicherlich nicht das erste Mal, dass ein hochgesinnter Tech-Manager Investoren und die Öffentlichkeit über ein Produkt in die Irre führt, von dem sie nicht wussten, dass es funktioniert. Aber diese Technologen stellen kein neuartiges neues Produkt vor, das Blut mit einem Nadelstich testen kann – sie versuchen, eine völlig neue Arbeitsweise zu evangelisieren. Wenn ihre offensichtliche Bereitschaft, Macht abzugeben, etwas beweist, dann ist es, dass sie wirklich glauben, dass sie es schaffen können.

virwin@sfexaminer.com

Bay Area NewsKalifornienSan FranciscoTechnische Industrie

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