We are pleased to announce the official launch of White Marble Syndicate, a library DAO for classical studies. WMS will serve as a curated resource for members to access and utilize the wealth of knowledge stored in material from and about the classical world of Greece and Rome.

The wisdom of the ancient world is contained in a relatively few books handed down along tenuous paths. A few million words, maybe 5% at the outside of the likely volume, survive to inform us of the ancient worldview. While the Herculaneum scrolls promise to augment this, the thread of classical Western heritage is still very slight.

The White Marble Syndicate takes as its mandate to collect the knowledge of the ancient world and prepare it as finely as possible for utilization by AI tools. We will begin with classical Greek and Latin texts in translation and intend to move to other aspects of the classical Western tradition. There are two prongs to this effort:

  1. Curate a pristine library of original texts, translations, and scholarly commentary and analysis.
  2. Facilitate the use of this curated library for members of the White Marble Syndicate for primary research, AI-enhanced inquiry, or simply as a secure repository.

Rather than operate as a clearweb service or open-source project, the White Marble Syndicate will function as a library for members. White Marble will collect and curate resources from primary and secondary sources, and develop "tertiary" sources (fine-tuned and trained LLMs, for instance). Members will be able to nominate and submit acquisitions of all three kinds in the library.

White Marble's mandate lies with classical Western thought. The initial bounds of this span the Greek and Latin corpus (roughly the span of the Loeb Classical Library), as well as the appropriate secondary literature (dictionaries, commentaries, translations). Eventually we can imagine expanding this to (say) Sumerian, Hittite, and Gaelic, but not—for example—to Sanskrit or Old Chinese. We imagine other possible PDO libraries and intelligence collectives likewise cultivating and curating their own gardens of insight.

Syndicate

A syndicate is a self-organizing group of individuals, companies, corporations or entities formed to transact some specific business, to pursue or promote a shared interest.

Greek σύνδικος (syndikos), which means "caretaker of an issue"

(Wikipedia)

The White Marble DAO is organized as a syndicate. Purchasing a membership benefits the entire collective library. Funds (minus some modest protocol and infrastructure maintenance fees) will be directed towards improving the WMS experience per the roadmap, and in particular expanding the library.

Members will come to an agreement on compute provision for AI tooling. This will likely be commodity rates on dedicated hardware as either a monthly subscription or a per-token block buy. Details will be worked out.

What to Expect at Launch

This is a first pass on a project that we intend to live for a very long time, possibly as something you will pass down to your grandchildren as a resource. At our launch, we have a modest selection of classical texts in English translation available, but this is the floor not the ceiling of the library.

Members own the library and govern it as a free association.

Make sure to watch @WhiteMarbleDAO for announcements as the forum and platform come online.

Roadmap

Library Expansion

White Marble Syndicate launches with classical texts in English translation, but the mandate is much larger. WMS will collect materials which have been previously scanned as well as acquiring new texts from physical libraries which are not yet available online. We are also accepting suggestions from members.

User Experience

What is a wonderful library without a wonderful reading experience? While source documents are simply stored in plaintext to start off, we plan a better reading experience for WMS including bookmarking, cross-referencing, and AI-assisted commentary.

AI Tooling

White Marble Syndicate is something of a realized paradox: a world with artificial intelligence requires both pristine source documents and effective augmented research. We will continue to adopt new open-source models and approaches in fine-tuning and retrieval-augmented generation, while firmly maintaining our commitment to private sessions with private data.

Summary

For project maturity, WMS needs to carry out the following tasks:

  1. Expand library.
    1. Incorporate the corpus of Western classicism: source texts in various translations, medieval commentaries, etc.
    2. Scan previously unrecovered scholarship.
    3. Support original languages (Latin and Greek, primarily).
  2. Improve the user experience.
    1. Produce a good reading environment, search engine, and AI-assisted commentary tool.
  3. Maintain and upgrade AI interlocution tools.
    1. Llama White Marble is the first offering
  4. Normalize community management and governance.
    1. Launch a community forum for support and discussion.
    2. Iterate on syndicate roles and governance.