McKenzie recently quit her high-paying software engineering job at a huge company with internal politics and endless meetings. McKenzie regularly contributes to Distense and enjoys working with people from all over the world.

One evening she notices a bug on Distense’s website. Some data isn’t loading properly which causes an error. She visits the code for the Distense website on Github and creates an issue called “Fix website loading error bug”.

She returns to the Distense website to add a task. Brad from Colorado sees the bug and thinks it should be fixed and will take about half an hour, so he votes 20. Lily from Belgium votes 50 because she thinks fixing the bug is more important than Brad does. The final reward is 30, based on the number of DID Brad and Lily own. DID is the token that gives the holder economic and governance rights over Distense. The final reward doesn’t come from Brad or Lily, but will increase the number of DID outstanding.

The next morning, Ayush, who lives in India, visits the Distense website before heading to classes at the Indian Institute of Technology. He can’t work full-time because of his classes, but he enjoys the ability to earn money in the time he has outside of school.

Ayush scans the list of available tasks for ones he can quickly complete. He notices the task McKenzie created the night before.

He reads about the task and realizes it is fairly simple. He thinks he has time to complete it before heading to class. He completes the work and submits a pull request on Github. Then he returns to the Distense website and submits a pull request there as well.

Three hours later, the sun rises over Elena’s apartment building in Sofia, Bulgaria. While Elena is enjoying her morning coffee, she too visits the Distense website. Elena doesn’t have much time before she heads to work, but she does have time to review others’ work. She glances at the available pull requests on the Distense website and notices the one Ayush submitted a few hours ago. She clicks through to view Ayush’s pull request on Github. The fix was simple. Ayush has solved the problem and all checks have passed.

Elena then returns to the list of pull requests on the Distense website. Once there, she approves Ayush’s pull request.

When Elena approves the pull request, the percentage of voters who have approved Ayush’s pull request increases by 5.6%, the percentage of DID she owns. Once 20% of DID holders have voted it, Ayush’s pull request will be merged and he will be issued the reward for the task.

But Ayush isn’t in the saving phase of life and desires current income instead of the equity that DID represent. Once he returns home from his classes that evening, he exchanges his DID for ether in two clicks on the Distense exchange webpage.

What is Distense?

Distense is the first decentralized code cooperative. It’s the first for-profit company governed and managed solely by its contributors run on the Ethereum blockchain. Anyone, anywhere can join and work anonymously for Distense. The only requirement to contribute is that you can complete the work.

Your nationality, location, race, sex and appearance aren’t relevant to your employment and never should have been. If you have a legacy job, you can contribute to Distense and earn extra compensation without your employer knowing. Ethereum accounts are the sole authentication system of Distense and are cryptographically anonymous.

Distense’s mission is to increase the economic flexibility of as many humans as possible.

Distense is similar to legacy corporations but doesn’t have many of the flaws of them.

Distense doesn’t have:

Boards of directors, articles of incorporation or by-laws

Bosses, biases, harassment & workplace politics

States or countries of domicile

Commutes and offices

Salaries

Distense does have:

Contributor ownership

Direct democracy contributor governance

Flexibility to work remotely

Per-task, immediate compensation

If you’d like to get involved here are some available tasks.

Another flaw of corporations is how the owners are pitted against those who work for the corporation.

Distense solves this conflict by allowing only those who have contributed to Distense, to govern Distense. Every decision is made by someone who has an economic stake in the organization. Compensation for each task and the approval of each work submission is done by someone who owns a part of Distense.

Two Components

The first component of Distense is the back office infrastructure that replaces and decentralizes the executive functions of a for-profit corporation. This infrastructure enables contributors to propose work, vote on task rewards, submit and approve work, all in a decentralized manner. The first version of this infrastructure is basically complete.

The second component is the products and services the contributors will build in the future.

The initial contributors to Distense believe that we are probably closer to 1990 than 2000 relative to the Internet’s timescale for blockchain applications. The only truly viral application that has been built is the possibility of making money, yet this particular “application” has existed for hundreds of years.

There are thousands of blockchain applications that will be built in the future. Because the Ethereum system has a native currency and all transactions require a small amount of it to be paid, charging small fees for the use of these applications will be easier than otherwise. We hope that Distense will build at least a few of these.

We look forward to seeing what Distense will build in the future!

The DID Token

As discussed, only those who contribute code and other digital work, such as design work can earn our Ethereum token, DID. DID give the holder both economic and governance rights over Distense. DID are non-transferable and are not an ERC-20 token. In the future we will have an exchange-tradable, non-voting ERC-20 token, HAV.

Exchanging DID for Ether

DID represent 100% equity compensation. But it’s clear that not everyone wishes to or can work for 100% equity.

Therefore, those who own DID may exchange their DID for ether. Doing so takes a handful of clicks and may be done on our exchange page. This exchange is irreversible and reduces the economic and governance rights of the exchanging account. When an exchange occurs, the total supply of DID is also reduced. This increases the percentage ownership of those who remain.

The conversion rate between DID and ether is determined by the current value of the DID Per Ether parameter, one of Distense’s voteable governance parameters. Look for a blog post about our parameters in the near future.

Investing Ether for DID

Some contributors may wish to increase their stake in Distense or otherwise fund its operations.

Those who own DID may invest the number of ether that they would otherwise be allowed to withdraw. The number of ether an account can invest is also determined by the DID Per Ether parameter.

The number of ether an address has invested is tracked over time. Thus, the number of ether an account may invest is limited to the amount of digital labor one has contributed.

In addition, the total number of ether that can be invested in this way is limited to 10,000. This limits the number of DID issuable by ether to 10,000,000 according to the initial value of the DID Per Ether parameter, 1000.

No ICO

Distense will not have an ICO in the near term.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this introduction to Distense and look forward to releasing a white paper in the coming weeks. Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions.