---
title: "Target documented failure modes"
description: "Every structural mechanism should target a specific, empirically observed failure pattern"
url: "/target-documented-failure-modes/"
tags: [principle]
readingPathPosition: 12
---

# Target documented failure modes

Every structural mechanism – rotation, caps, redistribution triggers, stewardship pairs, participation budgets – should target a specific, empirically observed failure pattern, not a theoretical risk. Design against what has actually gone wrong in comparable networks.

The architecture is designed around four empirically documented failure patterns from comparable networks and movements:

- **Invisible labour concentration** burning out the most committed while the network believes it distributes power.
- **Intermediate coordinating structures** accumulating power and becoming obstacles to participation.
- **Two-tier membership** creating insiders and outsiders.
- **Protocol-level decentralisation** failing to prevent power re-concentration.

Each structural mechanism targets one of these observed failure modes. Critique and contemplation in every protocol exist precisely to make emerging problems visible – whose conflicts are processed and whose aren't, where resources are concentrating, whether stewardship is actually distributed or just formally shared.

The architecture is itself a learning system: the first cycle is data, not verdict. The [stewardship function](/protocol-stewardship-is-distributed.md) exists to notice when these patterns emerge, and the [generative cycle](/protocols-enable-a-cycle-of-deepening-relationships.md) stalls when they go unaddressed.

## Sources

- Informal power dynamics in structureless groups as documented failure pattern from Freeman (1972), "The Tyranny of Structurelessness"

## In this vault

- Previous: [Start with simple rules](/start-with-simple-rules.md)
- Next: [Protocol stewardship is distributed](/protocol-stewardship-is-distributed.md)
- Referenced by: [Protocol design is guided by a set of principles](/protocol-design-is-guided-by-a-set-of-principles.md), [Protocol stewardship is distributed](/protocol-stewardship-is-distributed.md)