DAO governance is a pain, because we've been doing it the way we've always done governance—
taking time from our day to represent our opinion with votes that barely count.
but on-chain voting opens seven new types of governance:
1. Fork the Winners
who actually wins a vote?
depends on the metrics.
on-chain governance lets us retroactively reappoint winners based on new metrics: quadratic voting, vote decay, penalties for voting on multiple options, etc.
different winners emerge for the same contest.
2. On-Chain Identity
wanna see how often a DAO contributor votes? with others who share their goals? for a winning option?
this is what permissionless data enables.
on-chain governance records our work and preferences—so governance itself can penalize or reward contributions.
3. Contribution-Based Voting Power
should longtime holders have greater voting power? or those who have contributed meaningfully to a DAO?
this is possible on-chain by sharing verifiable credentials or wallet history.
which can disincentivize sybil attacks too.
4. Vote Decay
should voting reward individuals who take strong personal stances? or groups that work together to negotiate shared consensus?
vote decay can reward both: earlier voters win more, but later voters are rewarded for agreeing with others.
only possible on-chain.
5. Voting Rewards
voting is work, social consensus is work, and building relationships to make decisions is the most important work: because it improves how the decision is executed later.
on-chain voting lets voters win rewards automatically for voting—or voting on the winner.
6. Executable Contracts
say a DAO passes a vote to diversify the treasury, sent money to a grant, or mint an NFT.
on-chain voting lets it be executed automatically when the vote finishes.
you can even have *composable governance* with multiple options combined (ie NFT traits).
7. Governance as a Social Network
never forget twitter is a web2 governance platform: each like is a vote to surface top content.
on-chain governance lets anon voters find and—longterm—message each other on-chain.
friends can form decisions, and decisions can form friendships.
you've made it this far, so this is where i get to be shameless.
we're working on building all of the above on @jokedao_ as a bottom-up, on-chain governance platform.
reach out if you'd like to set up a contest.
finally, this is the third part in a three part series on non-financial use of tokens to revolutionize web3.
in part one, i detailed 7 types of non-financial tokens
and in part two, i looked at 7 ways that tokens can interact with each other to enable new types of on-chain identity
this concludes part three.
over and out.
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