Gardens are secure digital economies run by the community members that make them valuable 🌻

**Our new home for Gardens:  <https://gardens.1hive.org>**

Go ahead, put your farming experience to work, take a shovel and plant the seeds of the public economy.

Today we are introducing the Gardens platform, the economic engine for common goods to flourish. Each Garden gives its community powerful tools to experiment at the edges, create currency policies, allocate shared resources, and make decisions bottom-up. Everything while keeping the system [credibly neutral](https://nakamoto.com/credible-neutrality/), accountable, and [self-improving](https://forum.1hive.org/t/together-we-thrive/1278).

Important actions in the Garden are bound to the community’s mission, values, and rules. And they’re protected by a [dispute resolution protocol](https://forum.1hive.org/t/celeste-a-brief-primer/1483) in case bad actors want to abuse the system.

We are long into the [network effects](https://aragon.org/blog/thoughts-on-governance-and-network-effects-f40fda3e3f98) that the Gardens platform will provide for its communities. Even at this early stage, we started [seeing examples](https://forum.1hive.org/t/1m-in-shared-liquidity-for-bright-hny-on-honeyswap-split-between-1hive-and-bright-dao/4763) of [DAO2DAO collaboration](https://medium.com/primedao/exploring-dao2dao-collaboration-mechanisms-c37218a17a21) between Gardens, creating more resilient communities.

We released with support on xDai, Polygon, and Rinkeby (for testing). With plans to include Arbitrum or Optimism soon. You can access the platform at [gardens.1hive.org](https://gardens.1hive.org).


---

## Why Use Gardens

![ 🟢](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/ldLRHEFnVU5vJ227yiZym.png?height=345&width=2160)

DAOs are a leap forward in human coordination progress. They resemble communities more than companies, and when digital communities have capital, it turns out they’re quite powerful.

The governance structures of early DAOs however don’t always take advantage of this. Influence in most DAOs unintentionally (or intentionally) gravitates to a select group of people that control its direction. For the Average Joe, their influence is limited to their number of votes.

Gardens however allow Average Joe in a community to *actually do stuff*, while still protecting the community from abuse. This “bottom-up” governance comes with efficiency costs, but for many DAOs the benefits are huge.

## Who Should Use Gardens

![ 🔸 💚 🔸](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/Ys-dPM0Hyt3-_NQo5J5LK.png?height=345&width=2160)

Centralized power is completely fine for many organizations. Even in the cryptocurrency space. If leadership is capable and benchmarks for success are clear (like users and revenue), centralized organizations are probably better than decentralized ones.

Many other organizations are better off with bottom-up governance, like:

1. **Those concerned about security and longevity.** Communities at risk of governments deciding they don’t like them, or communities that want to outlive their team of leaders.
2. **Organizations with passionate members.** Those intrinsically motivated to make that community better. This can be done by a centralized organization or company too, by dedicating a portion of their treasury to a Garden.
3. **Communities that build public goods**, where the value a community creates is subjective to those who share its wealth. In a pre-DAO world, these communities are charities, clubs, government agencies, activists, religions, or a neighbor who takes time out of her day to clean broken glass off the sidewalk.

## How To Create A Garden

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e2YKwzDPwE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e2YKwzDPwE)

### Common Pool

Each Garden has a Common Pool with tokens held collectively by the community and which are available for distribution via proposals.

During creation, the Common Pool can be configured to be a **[Gnosis Safe](https://gnosis-safe.io/)**, allowing communities to use Gardens while still tapping into [Zodiac DAO modules](https://gnosisguild.mirror.xyz/OuhG5s2X5uSVBx1EK4tKPhnUc91Wh9YM0fwSnC8UNcg).

![🌻🤝🪐](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/mVaRRTw6k1bKK4mwt9U3D.png?height=513&width=2160)

### Types of Gardens

We currently support two types: Veneto Gardens and Boboli Gardens.

**Veneto Gardens**

![ ✳️](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/NMVCeLFFhSO_VRthi-v98.png?height=345&width=2160)

The type of Garden that [1Hive](https://1hive.org/) uses. It comes with a powerful [dynamic issuance policy](https://medium.com/1hive/understanding-1hives-dynamic-supply-policy-for-hny-c33a51bf8684) that can be fine-tuned during creation. Gardens that collectively allocate resources productively should expect to see increases in demand for their token outpace issuance, either because their token is being removed from the circulating supply (fee capture or supply sinks), or because demand for their token increases from its utility (output or perceived value).

When a community launches this type of Garden, they also create a community token. This token grants voting power to vote on proposals that allocate shared resources from the Common Pool.

The key features are:

1. A configurable amount of community tokens is minted and sent to the Common Pool.
2. A pre-distribution of initial tokens can be made by the Garden summoner to accounts within the related community.
3. A configurable [Dynamic Issuance Policy](https://forum.1hive.org/t/dynamic-honey-supply-policy-proposal/2224), that mints and burns the Common Pool tokens relative to a specified threshold.

**Boboli Gardens**

![❇️ ](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/urUgxjuZwSmBAdjgyjYKg.png?height=345&width=2160)

Under this type of Garden, you have more flexibility in the sense that you are importing an existing token that may already have its own supply policy and rules associated with it. Once imported, this token is used to attribute voting power over the Garden's shared resources.

One key difference between this type of garden and a Veneto Garden is the [governance incentives](https://1hive.gitbook.io/gardens/garden-creators/byot-garden-wrapping-incentive). The incentive can be used to reward users who choose to import their existing `ERC20` token into the Garden in order to gain governance rights within that Garden.

The community creating the Garden is encouraged to:

1. Allocate a portion of their treasury to the Garden Common Pool.
2. Send tokens to the incentive contract to reward users who choose to import the original token in exchange for governance rights in the Garden.

   …

As a final note, in both types of Gardens,

> Common Pool funds may consist of the governance token, or any `ERC-20` token.


---

## Gardens Deep Dive

The main components of a Garden are [Conviction Voting](https://medium.com/giveth/conviction-voting-a-novel-continuous-decision-making-alternative-to-governance-aa746cfb9475), [Community Covenant](https://1hive.gitbook.io/gardens/on-chain-governance/garden-framework/covenant), [Celeste](https://1hive.gitbook.io/celeste/), and [Decision Voting](https://forum.tecommons.org/t/tao-voting-formerly-disputable-voting-parameters-general-discussion/267).

![Pillars 🏛](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/0qrZrH8WA9ofyaLUgdFhh.png?height=1065&width=2160)

### The Role of the Covenant

![Role of the Covenant 📜](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/pJth-w2IP32HP2OQXLFbm.png?height=345&width=2160)

You can think of the Covenant as a constitution or decentralized social contract.

On a practical level, a Covenant is a document, stored on [IPFS](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmfWppqC55Xc7PU48vei2XvVAuH76z2rNFF7JMUhjVM5xV), which explains what a Garden is about in plain English. It establishes values, rules, and customs, and is used to protect the Garden from malicious actors without sacrificing the agency of its members. It should be designed as an essential resource in moments of conflict and a contextual reference for Keepers to rule on a proposal that has been challenged and escalated to [Celeste, the dispute resolution protocol](https://celeste.1hive.org/#/dashboard) of the system.

The key idea here is that a covenant allows an organization’s actions to be governed by a subjective set of rules; rules which are either impossible to encode into smart contracts, or which would otherwise result in a complicated and slow-moving organization.

For example, here's an extract from [1Hive's Covenant](https://gardens.1hive.org/#/garden/0x8ccbeab14b5ac4a431fffc39f4bec4089020a155/covenant):

> **1Hive is a community of activists seeking to build a future that is more free, fair, open, and humane.**
>
> 1Hive is also an economic protocol, similar to Bitcoin or Ethereum, where a digital currency, Honey, is issued and distributed programmatically. Unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, the 1Hive protocol does not narrowly define the set of activities that are valuable but instead relies on community members to guide the distribution process by creating and staking on Honey distribution proposals.
>
> The goal of the 1Hive protocol is to foster a healthy community economy by allocating a steady stream of Honey towards development, maintenance, and **improvement of the common goods that bring the most value to the 1Hive community**…

Anyone interacting with the 1Hive community has to abide by this Covenant.

![Sign modal ✍️](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/Pnqkdj_53UAGhzZVgHM3m.png?height=1698&width=2162)

You can use the Covenant to create behavioral expectations within community spaces such as Discourse, and Discord.

Another extract from 1Hive’s Covenant:

> Examples of behavior that contributes to a positive environment for our community include:
>
> * Demonstrating empathy and kindness toward other people
> * Being respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences
> * Giving and gracefully accepting constructive feedback
> * Accepting responsibility and apologizing to those affected by our mistakes, and learning from the experience
> * Focusing on what is best not just for us as individuals, but for the overall community

This allows community moderators to refer to the Covenant as a guideline. It also ensures that these guidelines cannot be changed in the community without the community's approval.


---

## Participation

Gardens are community-driven organisms. Community members are encouraged to participate in the sense-making of the DAO by submitting, discussing, and staking on proposals. In Gardens there are three kinds of proposals: Suggestion, Funding, and Decision.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfHLXeCMDw8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfHLXeCMDw8)

### Suggestions and Funding proposals

Suggestions and Funding proposals use the *Conviction Voting* component.

Conviction Voting allows proposals to be created and considered continuously and simultaneously. Participants can signal their preferences for the proposals they support, but they are not able to “double count” their influence across multiple proposals.

When members start supporting a proposal, the support (or conviction) does not immediately apply but instead must charge up over time according to an exponential decay function or half-life.

![Conviction Voting 💧](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/Ss2261dGDyb2XpQ9hGwjf.png?height=690&width=2160)

**Suggestions**, including the *abstain proposal,* are proposals that do not request funds from the common pool. They can be used to draw collective attention to specific issues, without committing or requesting funds be allocated to the issue.

Suggestions can accumulate support, but they will never pass. Instead, supporting a suggestion will increase the amount of support required for all other funding proposals to pass. So if you think the community is spending money unproductively, support the *abstain proposal,* or create a new signaling proposal that makes the case for how you think the community should actually be allocating resources. This can have a meaningful influence on the behavior of the system.

**Funding** will have an activation threshold and can be executed by anyone once enough relative support has accumulated to that proposal. When executed, the requested amount of the community token will be transferred from the Common Pool to the beneficiary address, so long as it isn’t disputed with Celeste.

![Funding proposal 💰](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/VAHqaUbHYo0vBT_phuTJA.png?height=2616&width=3162)

For a deeper dive on Conviction Voting, check out this [cadCAD model](https://github.com/BlockScience/Aragon_Conviction_Voting) exploring the mechanism.

### Decision proposals

Decision proposals use the *Decision Voting* component.

Funding and Suggestion proposals are the primary means of governance within a Garden, however, occasionally there is an unavoidable need to make a discrete decision. For example, upgrading smart contracts or adjusting the parameterization of a policy.

In these instances a more traditional voting process is used, where a discrete action is proposed and voted on in a binary fashion. Votes are open for a fixed period of time, and if quorum and support thresholds are reached the vote passes, and the action is executed.

![Decision vote 🧬](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/uyp8CygKbZb1Rar_4rVG_.png?height=2106&width=3168)

Decision proposals include one-level delegation, allowing token holders to give their voting powers to a delegate who will cast votes on their behalf. A voter however does not give up full control. The delegates are forced to vote early in the voting period and if the token holder sees that their delegate has voted contrary to the token holder’s will, they can veto their vested portion of the delegate’s vote and cast their vote themselves. Both a delegate and a token holder can only vote *ONCE*.

![Your delegate 🙋](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/4Opq1LV6RXWckcfix1vao.png?height=2614&width=3102)


---

## What’s Next

We are just starting to explore the powerful network effects that are emerging from the public economy.  Our focus will be on continuously improving the Gardens platform and services, optimizing for the resilience of its communities.

A few of the ongoing discussions:

* [Conviction Voting v2](https://forum.1hive.org/t/are-token-manager-hooks-useful-anymore/4288) with support for multiple Gardens tokens that allow even more DAO2DAO coordination.
* [BrightID Gatekeeper](https://forum.brightid.org/t/brightid-gatekeeper-for-aragon-permissions/131) to add a Sybil resistance layer to certain Gardens actions.
* Plug-and-play [Bonding Curve](https://forum.1hive.org/t/commons-swarm-outcomes-1-3-a-plug-and-play-bonding-curve/4298) for Gardens tokens.
* Profile migration to Ceramic and IDX.


---

As a closing note, we would like to thank everyone that made this platform possible. If we made it this far it was only because we are *“standing on the shoulders of giants”:*

* Aragon project
* Aragon One team
* Commons Swarm team
* 1Hive
* BlockScience
* BrightID
* Cold Truth Culture
* Agave
* Giveth
* Token Engineering Commons

Welcome to Gardens: let’s plant the seeds for the public economy

[https://twitter.com/cburniske/status/1391401785584234499](https://twitter.com/cburniske/status/1391401785584234499)

*Thanks to Luke, Gabi, Barnabé, Jessica, and Aude for reading drafts of this. Special thanks goes to Burrratta, many of the best thoughts are adapted from his forum posts.*


---

When governance power is determined purely by capital, decision making is centralised, and the rich get richer. Those who aren’t whales are poorly represented in governance decisions, and there is no way to hold important stakeholders accountable to the desires of the broader community, or the past expectations they have bought into.

On the flip side, attracting capital is critical to the success and sustainability of tokenised communities. Decisions backed by skin-in-the-game are key to ensuring that those who don’t have any interest in the long-term success of a community can’t unduly influence how resources are allocated, and/or which policies are enacted.

So how do we balance these opposing forces, and create a more effective and aligned community?

Enter *Gardens.*

Gardens is an initiative by [1Hive](https://about.1hive.org/docs/dao) to create a template for public communities to coordinate shared resources in a bottom-up fashion (essentially taking the best lessons learnt from the 1Hive community and allowing any DAO to implement them in a plug-and-play fashion).

A Garden has three main pillars:

1. A novel voting system (Conviction voting)
2. A decentralised social contract (Community Covenant)
3. A dispute resolution protocol (Celeste)

Taken together, they fulfil the promise of effective community-driven on-chain governance, not tomorrow, but today.

## Conviction voting (to allocate funds)

[https://twitter.com/Square1_pod/status/1386714507460837378](https://twitter.com/Square1_pod/status/1386714507460837378)

*Conviction voting is the heart of a Garden.* It allows folks to signal their preferences continuously rather than forcing them to “make a decision.” From the perspective of a community member, the UX is simplified to just showing up and supporting things you care about.

To quote a passage from [Jeff Emmett’s wonderful introductory post](https://medium.com/giveth/conviction-voting-a-novel-continuous-decision-making-alternative-to-governance-aa746cfb9475):

> **Conviction Voting offers a novel decision making process that funds proposals based on the aggregated preference of community members, expressed continuously.**
>
> In other words, voters are always asserting their preference for which proposals they would like to see approved, rather than casting votes in a single time-boxed session.
>
> A member can change their preference at any time, but the longer they keep their preference for the same proposal, the “stronger” their conviction gets.
>
> This added conviction gives long standing community members with consistent preferences more influence than short term participants merely trying to influence a vote.
>
> **Conviction Voting sidesteps sybil attacks, provides collusion resistance, and mitigates many of the attack vectors of time-boxed voting mechanisms**.

Under conviction voting, **the majority doesn’t need to achieve consensus on everything.** As such, we get real [proportional representation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation#Advantages_and_disadvantages). Community members can propose and support things they care about without fear that a whale will vote them down. In fact, there is no down voting. **People with large stakes and strong opinions can’t suppress the community.[1](#footnote-1)**

**Proposals simply need enough support to pass – the fewer funds they ask for, the less support required.** This means there’s a real sense in which everyone has a voice. The only thing token holders have to think about is whether or not they support something. *That’s it.*

Under this framework, **many divergent initiatives can be proposed and run in parallel**. This allows the DAO to explore, experiment, and innovate quickly and seamlessly. If an experiment works, a larger proposal can then be submitted.

One underrated benefit of this is that it allows the DAO to grow as a [headless brand](https://otherinter.net/web3/headless-brands/), iterating through cycles of [divergence and convergence](https://otherinter.net/web3/market-protocol-fit/), and continuously reflecting the preferences and interests of token holders (a true living organisation!).

In sum, by giving small token holders the agency to contribute, **conviction voting helps lay the foundation for a fiercely loyal community**, solving the problems associated with governance attacks, low participation, and the overall inability to effectively prioritise and decide when there are many potential options all competing for consideration at once.

## Community Covenant (to encode values)

[https://twitter.com/starkness/status/463873319809212416](https://twitter.com/starkness/status/463873319809212416)

The second pillar of a Garden is the community covenant.[2](#footnote-2) You can think of it as a constitution or **decentralised social contract** of sorts.

On a practical level, a covenant is a document, stored on [IPFS](https://hackmd.io/KCS70fPRR9O0iXOLYCzK1w?view), which explains what a DAO is about in plain english. It establishes values, rules and customs. And is used to protect the DAO from malicious actors *without* sacrificing the agency of its members.

The key idea here is that a covenant allows an organisation’s actions to be governed by a subjective set of rules; rules which are either impossible to encode into smart contracts, or which would otherwise result in a complicated and slow-moving organisation.

Take [1Hive’s Covenant](https://ipfs.eth.aragon.network/ipfs/QmfWppqC55Xc7PU48vei2XvVAuH76z2rNFF7JMUhjVM5xV), for example:

> **1Hive is a community of activists seeking to build a future that is more free, fair, open, and humane.**
>
> 1Hive is also an economic protocol, similar to Bitcoin or Ethereum, where a digital currency, Honey, is issued and distributed programmatically. Unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, the 1Hive protocol does not narrowly define the set of activities that are valuable but instead relies on community members to guide the distribution process by creating and staking on Honey distribution proposals.
>
> The goal of the 1Hive protocol is to foster a healthy community economy by allocating a steady stream of Honey towards development, maintenance, and **improvement of the common goods that bring the most value to the 1Hive community**…

Anyone interacting with the 1Hive protocol has to abide by this covenant. In particular, any proposal which violates the spirit of the covenant can be challenged and taken to Celeste (a decentralised court).

In a sentence, a covenant allows a DAO to adhere to an agreement specifying its values, as well as outline subjective rules for what types of proposals are allowed. This unlocks the ability for much more nuanced and complex governance.

## Celeste (to protect values)

[https://twitter.com/ssaintleger/status/1386347440463400966](https://twitter.com/ssaintleger/status/1386347440463400966)

The third pillar of Gardens, Celeste, serves as **the interface for a DAO’s shared values, beliefs and hopes**. It provides a way to resolve subjective disputes, and to peacefully enforce the covenant.

More technically, **Celeste is a [BrightID](https://www.brightid.org/) integrated fork of [Aragon Court](https://github.com/aragon/aragon-court/tree/master/docs)** – the integration with BrightID allows for placing limits on how much stake an individual can add to the system.

While we’ll save the details for a dedicated follow-up post, I think it’s worth mentioning here that Celeste is invoked only if and when an action is challenged (i.e. only in exceptional circumstances).

Once Celeste is invoked, a decentralised (and randomly selected) group of BrightID verified humans – called keepers – is drafted to rule on the dispute (they are tasked with deciding whether or not the disputed action is compatible with that community’s covenant).[3](#footnote-3)

If the keepers decide the proposal is compatible, on-chain execution continues. If they decide it is not, the proposal is blocked.[4](#footnote-4)

By allowing even small token holders to challenge proposals that aren’t in line with the values of the community, Celeste provides a trustless way to uphold a DAO’s core values.[5](#footnote-5)

## In closing

[https://twitter.com/ssaintleger/status/1382641538551980033](https://twitter.com/ssaintleger/status/1382641538551980033)

Gardens provides a beautiful foundation for public communities to coordinate around shared resources in a bottom-up fashion.

By combining three of the most important pieces of decentralised software ever written – Conviction voting, Community Covenants (Aragon Agreements), and Celeste (a BrightID integrated Aragon Court), we are able to fulfil the promise of effective community-driven on-chain governance, not tomorrow, but today.

With these building blocks we now have essentially limitless abilities for completely decentralised, and completely autonomous organisations.

**P.S.** If you feel this piece has resonated with you, or you’d like to be one of the first to grow a Garden, please either [get in touch with me directly](https://twitter.com/0xMiel) (sacha@ethereum.org), or reach out to the 1Hive community on [discord](https://discord.gg/M2EVG4MfR4) (drop a message in the `#gardens` channel). I also encourage you to take a look at the [Gardens Rinkeby landing page](https://gardens-rinkeby.1hive.org/#/home) (a test deployment page for aspiring Gardens) .

## Endnotes

### **Who should use Gardens**

Traditional online communities / open-source projects that have yet to tokenise can use Gardens to tokenise and reward contributions with tokens. **An example of a community that has chosen to tokenise using Gardens is [Giveth](https://giveth.io/).**

Projects with an existing token can use Gardens to grow/cultivate a more participatory community and improve engagement with their community. They can do this by either directing a portion of their treasury or on-chain cash flows into a community-directed pool, or by simply allowing token holders to act as patrons, curating and prioritizing important features and milestones. **An example of this type of Garden is [Agave](https://agave.finance/).**

In sum, the Gardens model applies equally well to communities thinking of launching their own DAO + token, as it does to existing DAOs looking to improve the interface between their core contributors and wider community.

### **Notes on the multisig problem**

Governance by plutocracy is simply not a sustainable way of running a DAO.

In particular, without additional checks in place, there’s the ever-present risk that a whale, or a special interest group, will at some point cause the DAO to take actions that are not in its best interest (or in line with the values of its community).

So far, most DAOs have skirted around this problem by relying on a multisig to officially sign off on proposals (as a sort of insurance layer against a malicious proposal being passed).

In other words, while the community can vote on proposals, these votes are not binding; a small set of trusted community members have to sign off on them. If the multisig doesn’t sign, the system cannot move.

However, while a multisig does act as a check on the power of whales, it doesn’t solve the concentration of power problem: it merely shifts it away from large tokenholders towards a small group of trusted community members.

There is nothing, apart from perhaps reputation, actually stopping the multisig from either executing an action that the community does not agree on, or vetoing an action that the community has advanced.

And even if we assume that this group is honest and will continue to remain so, as the value they secure with their keys increases they become more and more vulnerable as individuals to attacks from others (the law included).

In sum, multisig governance increases the risk born by both multisig holders and token holders, and leads to a somewhat fragile, and rather centralised DAO.

### **Notes on the funding allocation problem**

The process of allocating funds in DAOs today feels very slow and cumbersome, typically requiring a series of yes/no votes evaluated independently.

As a result, most DAOs suffer from a number of important challenges like 51% attacks, low participation, and an overall inability to effectively prioritise and decide when there are many potential options all competing for consideration at once.

## Resources

* [Gardens Wiki](https://wiki.1hive.org/projects/gardens)
* [Gardens Docs](https://1hive.gitbook.io/gardens/)
* [Gardens overview - original idea](https://forum.1hive.org/t/gardens-overview/32)
* [Gardens based media publications](https://forum.1hive.org/t/buzz-gardens-based-media-publications/36)
* [Gardens + NFTs](https://forum.1hive.org/t/gallery-gardens-nfts/35)
* [Rethinking incentives for open-source](https://forum.1hive.org/t/harberger-commons-rethinking-incentives-for-open-source/37)
* [Celeste Wiki](https://wiki.1hive.org/projects/celeste)
* [Celeste Docs](https://celeste.1hive.org/docs#/)
* [Celeste launch + next steps](https://forum.1hive.org/t/celeste-launch-and-next-steps/3446)
* [1Hive conviction voting app](https://github.com/1Hive/conviction-voting-app)
* [Gardens repo](https://github.com/1Hive/gardens)
* [A brief history of Conviction voting](https://michaelzargham.medium.com/a-brief-history-of-conviction-voting-ad4ca4eb4aee)
* [What is 1Hive?](https://forum.1hive.org/t/together-we-thrive/1278)
* [Aragon Court](https://github.com/aragon/aragon-court/tree/master/docs)
* [BrightID](https://www.brightid.org/whitepaper)

  
---
  1. Rather than relying entirely on majority rule decision making, resource allocation decisions are regulated by staking on proposals to accumulate conviction over time. This allows resources to be allocated fairly, while minimizing the political and divisive process of coming to consensus on a single course of action.
  2. Covenants are the bridge between a Garden organisation and Celeste (the dispute resolution mechanism).
  3. Well-reasoned [cryptoeconomic incentives](https://1hive.gitbook.io/celeste/keepers/dispute-lifecycle) ensure that the keepers converge to the most reasonable outcome for the dispute.
  4. It’s important to note that Celeste can be used to rule on disputes arising over any human readable english document that allows for the possibility for subjective outcomes, not just a Covenant. For example, you could use it to decide on whether work, as outlined in a funding proposal, was actually completed or not.
  5. Celeste acts as a check on the power of all individuals – even highly-trusted community members. In doing so, it protects the long-term integrity of the DAO.