Hi all, I have an idea for a tool to enable DAOs and even legacy orgs to make better decisions. My overall idea is to do something like Snapshot but add Liquid Democracy/Proxy Voting tooling. I’ve been stewing on Proxy Voting for over a decade, since before I was a developer, and I’d like to start putting it into practice. This could be used for Developer DAO or as one of its products, or both.
The Problem
Coin voting isn’t an ideal form of governance but seems to be the defacto in absence of better alternatives. The goals of coin holders and users are often misaligned, or aligned only by coincidence. We need a systemic, primitive solution for orgs to unlock the unique possibilities of decentralized/autonomous governance while also bridging the cultural expectations and UX of legacy orgs and their members.
This is top of mind for influencers like Vitalik and so there’s a need/market opportunity:
The Solution
This tool would aim to be the open source tool for orgs of all types and sizes to most accurately manifest the will of its members. The framework I like best for this is Liquid Democracy/Proxy Voting.
With Proxy Voting, members distribute their votes to other trusted members in case the original member can’t vote directly or doesn’t want to. These proxy attributions can also have a logic to them, like “If the decision to be made is about Tokenomics, then Jane has my vote.” The result is something like a very fast-moving, fluid version of representative democracy. People gain and lose power as members either agree with or disagree with their decisions. As a user, I don’t need to track every decision or proposal, I just need to look and see how my proxies acted on my behalf and then change my proxies if they have stopped representing my viewpoint.
I’m also open to having the tool provide other formats for the orgs to choose from. Like RCV or STAR. Personally I’m most interested in implementing the Proxy Voting mechanics.
I’m a pragmatist, so if along the way Proxy Voting reveals itself to not be the most efficient way of accurately manifesting the will of the group, we should ditch it. The idea is to empower those that embody expertise and responsibility to the group, and to course correct if those people stop enacting the will of their supporters.
Strategy
It would be great to use Developer DAO as the guinea pig for what we’re building. If we can dogfood as we go, I think we could make something great. Or if a collaborator has their own DAO or org they’d like to try it on, that works too.
What do we think? I’m ready to break ground on this immediately if there’s anyone who wants to collaborate.