Governance Day - Transparence of Anonymity in DAOs And Govs by Joao

Transcript

[Music] thank you all I've told us UMass [Music] see see English

well thank you thanks everyone for being here uh we're gonna dive a little bit deeper on privacy today and talk about how privacy can impact the future of Taos first of all let me see if I can do it yeah first of all who am I my name is Jerome I'm from Brazil I am one of the co-founders and founding members of main class Brazil Dao where I was for basically two years building governance multimedia creating content and also helping on Governors it was actually the first doubt that we had in Brazil so it very it is very special to me even though I'm not on the project anymore right now I'm the co-founder every and I'm doing research on modular crypto

he's a media company that basically aims to provide the best uh content possible for Brazilian speakers and I'm also as I put there I'm eager to learn so I'm always trying to learn new things trying to educate people because not only in Brazil but especially there as I as where I am I know that with education we can show people that governance and webtry in general is not just a financial thing it's not just uh like a financial Market 2.0 like we are providing value and providing tools to people to build the Next Generation the next infrastructure so that's where my I'm just trying to present a little bit myself here oh sorry I think I got the wrong one yeah so what's a Dao I know that

probably you are you all know you all know what's a Dao but I always try to bring this up because it's funny and it's interesting to me so those are centralized autonomous organization but at the same time they're centralize it but not that much they are autonomous but without that much autonomy and also they are organized but not that well what I'm saying here is not that dolls do not work but I'm saying that doubts are still in an experimental phase so we are still developing and trying to understand what those are and what those can do everything man like those came try to build a CD those can develop a protocol down skin basically organize governance so those can do everything right now and that's something very good and at the same time very bad I mean we

will dive deeper later into that well governance is also a huge part when we talk about doubts because without governance we do not actually have doubts and governance for those that you don't know it's basically the process of decision makes that happens inside Dallas but that's that's very interesting because we are finally achieving the path to do things collectively not only individuals deciding not only a council or some small group we are actually giving powers to individuals to develop in like build the the dab or the organization together and like we have some some specs here that are different between governance from web3 and web 2 basically we have public things we have centralized we

have transparency we have a lot of things that we do not have when we talk about web 2. sorry yeah and we have a lot of problems when you talk about Governors today not only web3 we are talking on web 2 here and the first one is the failed democracy as an instrument for decision making uh the time has already proven that the the system that we have today isn't the most efficient uh as you can see on this chart here basically they people don't want to engage more on politics and that's a huge huge problem because the stakeholder app stakeholder apathy is a reality in democratic system in Dallas in web 2 and web tree and people don't

want to vote anymore people don't want to engage on on Governors anymore as we can see here mostly like we we now have basically 60 of the word voting on things and voter turnout is decreasing all over the world uh and I'm not talking on web3 here yet because on web3 the thing is even worse uh and I love memes guys I'm sorry about that but problems on about on webtry governance today basically everything can be a dollar as I mentioned earlier and that's good because everything can be a doubt we can construct things we can experiment things but at the same time everything can be a doubt so you just have to say that's a doubt you can put in the name like XYZ Dao and that's a Dao but when you dive into a lot of the

projects that we have today they are actually not a doubt they just put in on the name they just create some token but when you dive deep you see that the tokens just controlled by some founding members of some smaller group that basically decide everything that the organization do we have other flaws such as governance models right now are not well developed uh we have basically one token one vote we have delegate models but they are not actually providing power to the people because when you delegate things we have some plows we have people that will know more than other ones so I do not think yet we are on the the bright path for the future of Taos but as I mentioned earlier we are still experimenting

things and as in Congress Dallas actually former form smaller groups that end up deciding and trying to impose things the way that they uh they think they want so basically what I'm saying here every now that you guys will look uh into you will see that we have smaller groups that basically will advocate in in their own interests and this only interest maybe will not be the the best interest for the Dow so we are seeing that for as as you speak and it's very it's very interesting to see this this move because even though are amazing I am a huge fan of those we have a lot of problems that we we need to acknowledge and we need to dive deep into that because otherwise we will stay

on this uh on this thing that we we are seeing right now and we are not evolved to better governance models to better doubts to better products and I I like that phrase very much that vitalik said I will read for you guys I will be quick decentralized governance is necessary but coin voting governance in its current form has many acknowledge and unacknowledged dangers I will maintain our movie Beyond coin voting is a key part of the solution so even vitalik said that coin voting isn't the best model that we have and unfortunately more than 50 percent of dollars right now use this this model and as I mentioned is not very efficient it's not basically it's not efficient at all

moving on I mentioned this earlier but I want to dive a little bit deeper because of older turnout in Dallas are extremely extremely low what I'm saying here people don't want participating governance people don't want to engage in governance we have now have avidao we have uni swap so I'm not bringing up like some small dolls that are arising arriving right now we are talking about some solid projects projects that have got has its own governance models but people don't engage in it if you guys take a deeper look at nouns or a VR unit swap you guys will see like it's it's it gets to a point that you even has to question yourself do like the people

really decides what the dolls doing do not do because if four or five percent of the token holders vote it's probably that the guys that uh has like the most tokens the whales and if the projects decentralized just the way your skin control it I don't think so so I I want to point out this I got actually surprised because I do not think it was this low I knew that now for example had some difficults engaging members in its own governance but I actually do not thought it thought it was this low like for example four percent five percent to seven percent come on imagine like for example I think here as we have like 200 300 people imagine if four or five

percent of this uh engage in only engage in adult like that's not decentralizer that's just a small group deciding things and deciding what to do and what to not to do uh talked about here so we have a problem that govern us right now it's hard and how can we manage that well one way is basic balancing transparency and anonymity because governance monetary is amazing it's beautiful we have transparency and we have centralization but open voting but public votings are not the best way to provide that governance and why is that because we have some problems have some flaws public voting can compromise its own members and are bias the result of the

decision imagine for example we have a public voting and the the option A is winning and Lasting like five minutes to the decision end our way of decides to vote vote against it or one minute or 30 seconds and I may say crazy may sound crazy here but that happened that happened in the past governance attack is it's like is a real thing and if governance is not aligned and very well executed the protocol may even say you as we saw in the past with some of them so when you talk about public and open votes we talk about the possibility of members being suppressed by the majority for example uh we're we're going to see some examples later but people don't want to

go against the majority of people because they can feel ostracized they can they even their own down can basically uh oppress its own members and that's happened with some doubt that we will dive into uh later on and as we think that we it's not that hard like think for a bit about web 2 if our model today were completely open and everyone knows like new from which people we are voting and from like how was our power or is our power we would probably not like that's that's one of the reasons why why voting today is closed at least we have some example in Brazil I really wanted to read this for you guys because it resembles where I'm from because

sometimes sometimes I'm in Brazil uh voting was basically uh was direct he's directing confidential today but was uh directed and open so basically everyone could know could knew from like where you vote and what where you would not vote and we end up uh creating some acronyms that was calling uh to voting basically the people had more money uh end up deciding the the deciding the election or deciding the the results because they pay it for people to vote and to not vote on them we have something similar today on web3 with bribes but I at least I think it's different because it's all transparent

it's on blockchain you can obtain you can opt out but this model as we saw in Brazil you know Old Republic ended up like creating some kind of question because people don't want to go against the majority or the ones that were paying them to vote uh yeah so I got some real examples for you guys for this problem that I that I'm mentioning for example as I as I talked here nobody should feel pressured about the way that can or they cannot vote now for example is is being on a hard situation right now uh I don't know if you guys could read this this one into things here uh but basically what they're saying is in

this one or this one I would vote publicly yes but privately no and in the second one here they are talking about Rage Quit is a mechanism that announced down is discussing right now and they are saying that if you go again if you go far like if you go if you think Rage Quit should be implemented uh I don't think you should vote it public because 41 4156 that's one of the founders of nounsdao basically is against the idea so what is what this guy is saying that is that you can participate in governance you can do everything but if you go against the majority of people if you go against the founders of the Dow you will be oppressed at you be ostracized from its

own down so we have a problem we have a problem that people do not feel freely uh open on Governors and feel free to do what they want because they have fear because they have like uh they are afraid of what the consequence can be or cannot be for them and what what is this what is this two that I'm showing to you guys uh it's hey Anon it's uh to the announce Dao created to give feedback anonymously on proposals so they use zero knowledge proofs to make nouns holders to be to let knowledge holders uh give feedback on proposals and if you guys look on their Twitter you'll see the most amazing and insane things because people are saying

that they do not feel totally comfortable talking about how they should vote and how they should not vote people are being basically oppressed in a way that they cannot control their votesmen they they literally cannot control their votes because they if they go against a proposal they they are afraid that they the Dao itself are going to go against them and that's that's on a lot of uh this this this this tools because uh each single one of these is one different person one different uh basically people saying that they are not comfortable uh talking about talking free inside Mouse uh governess and yeah this is a tool that basically

helps them to give some feedback but this video feedback is just some kind of anonymous uh Anonymous confession not related to governance at all and not enforcement just to to speak freely inside nouns without being ostracized by its own Dao and we have some solutions but we have to to balance basically transparency and anonymity to get this solution because otherwise we will have a completely Anonymous voting mechanism that already proved to herself that this isn't the best because we have some clouds with anonymity too and we have completely transparency we also are seeing here that people are not completely free to vote they are every single time every

road that they participate they are afraid of what could happen and what could not happen even to them and their own doubt well some of the works that we are seeing today keep in mind that we're still in the experimental phase so we do not have concrete changes we're just having some experimenting of what could happen and could not happen in the future of those one of the the ones that I like the most is private voting for example snapshot already implemented shooter voting what happened is basically this the simple thing that changes when you when you talk about voting uh this this first one is that's an open public voting where you can see uh how how's the voting happen if they they decide to go against or for it and we've shooted voting they can do

everything a little shielded so you will see like the quantum of the people that already voted how many tokens they voted but we will not see if they voted at 4-0 against it and that actually can that's that can be pretty pretty dumb for some for some people but that can actually help a lot of those to basically give this uh not to not let them give this less minute warning so it basically provides some kind of trans privacy to to the Dow because after the voting ends this end up like being released let's put it away and that changes a lot because if it's not in during the voting but after the voting uh the community feel more free

to vote and that's just one of the ways that they are trying to implement some privacy on vote one other way that I like that I like a lot I use is using zero knowledge proofs in the house zero knowledge as a whole actually not that experimental phase so we not have a lot of projects doing that but we have some already working on solutions for daos for example this up here is sismo up here sismo is a project that basically aims to provide ZK badges to of people using using zero knowledge so they are basically a modular protocol that wants to give these ZK badges to people to wallets and to basically they can

provide value information if they have a token if they already voted on something they can create some kind of reputation system using zero knowledge proofs and that's very very interesting vitalik already talk a little bit more about this but as I mentioned earlier we actually want an experimental phase and we do not have anything yet concrete related to zero knowledge and and governance but but we have this partnership this huge partnership that's being developed right now between nouns Aragon and Aztec that what happened basically announced as we as we saw here has a lot of problems and one of the problems is voting and they submitted a proper a proposal on their own

governance system to create some kind of privacy Decay mechanism for voting and they discussed a lot some people submit a proposal and one of the teams that end up winning is Aztec and Aragon if you die if you guys don't know us like on Aragon is uh is one of the oldest and biggest uh Dallas infrastructure provider right now and also Aztec is very well known for research and privacy uh things so they partnered and they are developing a mechanism to implement zero knowledge proofs inside Mouse they're still developing this this is it's still in the works but if they achieve this I truly believe they can be a game changer especially for announce as I as I bring

here uh some relates some some people saying that they are not truly feel truly feel comfortable for anyone else but and I think that can expand to other doubts and another way to improve this is funding research and funding mechanism on privacy endos douse as I mentioned here I still experimenting things and one of the things that we should experiment the most are privacy because that can impact a lot but that's just not that easy right because the thing is do those really want what's best for for the organization and most of the times I will arguably say no because we have these smaller groups inside the dials that they just defend

themselves and they are basically there trying to get what's best for them not not what's best for the Dow and if we have the right governance model we can combat that we can uh do something about that but if we still using the same governance model that we have right now when talking on voting for example it's going to be very very hard to do something about that and at the same time we have some some things that we should be worried about because for example even shoot at voting is still not experimenting to be the best thing right now for example are we just experimented two months of working with student voting for so they

basically did the did this uh they basically did this change nothing changed they do not vote on a different platform they do not vote on a different way they just shielded the vote while you're still open but unfortunately the Dow end up uh the the people end up decreasing their their interest their voting participation so we do not have a lot of uh good cases right now we actually have eight point out uh decided uh two or three months ago that they do not want to implement I should at voting and you guys can ask me why and I I probably could not answer you guys because when you see on the governance forum and even on the snapshot nobody told why they vote no

but the biggest whales vote voted no without any hesitation they don't engage in the governance for us they don't say they don't give feedback on proposals but when the proposals come goes to their snapshots or to tell you to other governance mechanism they vote against it and I wonder why is it because they are the biggest whales is it because they are on the power power right now and don't want to lose that I don't know but that's something that we should question a lot that should question ourselves because if we want really those to strive we could not be be controlled by Governors models that just focus on Wales on and on people that have like huge amounts of tokens and like to wrap wrap it up I just want to say thank you or gracias for everyone

that's here uh the future of the house being made as we talk right now so get involved discuss uh be like get involved man like dolls are still experimenting we do not have anything right or anything wrong uh everything can be done and nothing can be done at the same time if you do not work for it so that's it guys thank you so much muchas gracias [Applause]