1/ on this thread i’ll try to explain our current line of research at @DemocracyEarth that led us to the model described in token.democracy.earth on how to use the blockchain for a borderless democracy.
2/ a fundamental requirement for *any* voting system is having a consensus on who gets the right to vote on an election. without that, any election can be manipulated (eg “dead people in voter registries” or “db admin delaying registrations”). so identity becomes a key aspect.
3/ if we rely on identity by piggybacking on legacy systems —government issued ids, banks with their kyc/aml practices— then it is very likely we won’t be able to address the vast majorities excluded by them. eg: the world has 65 million refugees, not a single state ids them.
4/ a simple first step is to build a web of trust through a democratic consensus verifying who gets the right to participate on our network. in other words: members get voted in. why it has to be democratic? the criteria for this consensus consists of two things.
5/ first: “are you human?” it’s a simple question but in digital networks the frontier being drawn that matters for governance is between man & machine. no artificial intelligence can really recognize a human, only humans can acknowledge humans. software sees patterns not people.
6/ second: “do you already hold the keys of an identity in the system?”. preventing participants from having the ability to control multiple identities (sybil attacks) is key to sustain legitimacy of any electoral process happening online.
7/ so voting helps provide digital citizenship through a consensus, and digital citizenship helps secure that any voting happening in our network remains legitimate. we are aware that variables need fine tuning with time, but we want a simple starting point to begin with.
8/ on the ethereum blockchain there are two interface specifications that can help us signal votes and identities: erc20 for $votes making these fungible and able to carry economic value (hence not just a “facebook like”); and erc725 $ids, a non-fungible spec made for identities.
9/ if we are able to lay out an open decentralized index of self sovereign identities (erc725s) that anyone can access without permission and maintained through voting/staking to prevent sybils or bots from subverting such index, that can be the backbone of a promising killer app
10/ yes.. *universal basic income*. the one requirement in order to unlock its feasibility on a blockchain is a trusted identity consensus (our approach simply being democratic, not inherited). but what would be the asset being distributed on a blockchain-based ubi model?
11/ best literature on universal basic income considers that ideal allowance should be around 10% of an average salary so it provides enough liquidity to allow creativity but not too much to prevent productivity. ubi is directly related with the working time of society.
12/ so we figured we should simply collaterize our erc20 with time. in other words: once you have a valid erc725, you can burn time to mint an equivalent sum in $votes. if there’s a consensus that you’re human with a single id, you have a right to liquidity in exchange for time.
13/ the immutability of a blockchain allows this possibility. once any erc725 burns a period of an individual’s time since it’s certification, you cannot cheat that fact. at any time you can decide to burn either an hour or even years, but only once.
14/ we are aware that this can be perceived as a radical economic policy, but fact is that democracies as we know them today are extremely subverted by big money. counter balancing these economics with a human rights approach using ubi can help put a more fair system in place.
15/ the supply of the tokens minted through burning time also means that there will be a greater incentive to put tokens out of circulation by staking them on decisions or elections proposed by the network. and this touches another key fact about how we use blockchains:
16/ holding (or HODL) is the main way we interact with tokens. the issue with this is that it is a silent signal, mostly speculative. but if tokens could be signaling something you stand for while you hold them, then you could start putting your money where your mouth is.
17/ blockchains can be political instruments, not just financial ones, if we can build networks where staking can start carrying meaning. and since all activity on chain has a cost, the voting will certainly be more than meaningful, able to trigger real action off chain off line
18/ to sum up: we are doing a universal basic income mechanism where members get voted in. the criteria is to simply verify with a democratic consensus that you are singular human. the token is a tradable erc20 backed with your time. the incentive for the majority is to vote.
19/ you can find more info about this on token.democracy.earth & paper.democracy.earth. we are preparing a big release of our liquid democracy app ‘sovereign’ to start working with our token (and *any* token in the ethereum chain to start with).
20/ on ico.democracy.earth you can find all the materials of this project and our organization. pre-sale benefits will remain open until november 15.. then we plan to go live. our horizon is building for the next 100 years a democracy that values everyone. specially you.
