[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

The Problem:

There is always a danger, in any governance structure, that large players could come in and try to game the system for their own advantage—while not considering the health of the ecosystem as a result of their actions. Options like quadratic voting could ensure that that the controlling vote is more broadly distributed beyond the control of a rich minority, but prevent these individuals from gaming the system isn’t possible if they can mimic the roles of multiple smaller participants. Not everyone with the capacity to gain a large role in a plutocratic government will have the system’s best interests at heart!

My Approach:

Research and a detailed technical report exploring ways to establish unique identities for individuals in the Cardano ecosystem without relying on any centralized issuing authorities or a full KYC process. This will be primarily focused on DReps, both in Catalyst and Voltaire, but use cases for this research extend far beyond these specific roles. My report for this project will also touch on how this idea relates to alternative governance mechanisms with better scaling properties in a distributed system than our current approaches.

This is for anyone in the Cardano community who cares about decentralized governance:

As a member of the Catalyst community since F2, I’ve had the privilege of participate in many discussions related to Cardano governance, and have extensive notes on various related topics. Over this time, I’ve been refining my perspective on how to optimize decentralized governance and collaboration, testing presented evidence from various sources against the framework I’m building in my head. I want to share my perspective with our community, but it will require a significant amount of effort to convert into an easily digestible format for the community. I just need a little compensation for my time.

Proving Impact:

This proposal is primarily focused on research and analysis. The main impact will only be provable by how this project shapes people’s thinking and approaches to governance. If people implement and iterate on these ideas, I would classify that as a success. I’m happy to collaborate with others on related future work.

[IMPACT] How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?

The easiest way to describe this is to look at how this project addresses each of the Key Metrics to Measure listed in the challenge overview:

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(Diversity of DReps) Did it lead to the onboarding of diverse DReps with different languages, national origins, occupations, genders, ages, religions, etc.?

This proposal addresses this in a few ways:

1. Without sufficient ways of establishing unique identities, you cannot do things like one-person-one-vote, or quadratic voting… In this case, only perspectives that represent a large enough amount of Ada will have the power to influence voting, and there would not be an easy way to see what percentage of the actual people in our ecosystem support any given voting outcome.
2. I’m assuming that full KYC would be detrimental to some perspectives in the community, so alternatives like this work are important to prevent the need for that.
3. Another outcome of this work would be that, in order for DReps to validate themselves as individuals, they would be required to interact with an (at least partially) randomized subset of the Cardano community, and thus be exposed to a broader set of perspectives than they might otherwise be exposed to. This could positively shape their voting preferences for the greater good.

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(Number of DReps) How many DReps were onboarded?

(Number of delegates) How much did it contribute to increasing the number of delegates to DReps?

These two metrics aren’t directly applicable. Analyzing problems and possible solutions is as important as having a large enough sampling for an experiment in governance.

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(Accuracy of delegate decisions) How well did we create content and tools to make it easier to consider DReps?

Jointly created content incentivized as a means of establishing unique identity, would naturally produce a greater and more varied collection of resources to assess possible DReps than to not have this mechanism.

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(Accuracy of DReps decisions) How well did we create content and tools to make it easier to consider proposals?

Because the process of ID verification proposed here would require DReps to interact more with the community, it will help them gain broader insight when shaping their perspectives on the issues being voted for.

[IMPACT] How do you intend to measure the success of your project?

Measuring Success:

Beyond completing and documenting my research in an accessible way, the main indicators of success will be what people do with this information afterwards. Hopefully both valuable content production and the stability of voting on Cardano will improve as people apply this research.

[IMPACT] Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?

What are your plans to spread the project’s outputs over a reasonable timescale?

• I plan on organizing my research and working on a first draft after proposals are submitted and finalized. (If you’re voting on this proposal, check my progress here!)
• I’ll probably lead some breakout rooms after town-hall meetings to discuss the paper and hopefully gain insight into what it might be missing.
• Since I’ve already put a lot of effort into related research, 6 months after voting and approval should be plenty of time to polish my results.

How and with whom will you share the outputs/impact and opportunities that will arise as a result of your completed project?

• Everything will be made available on the linked GitHub page.
• Everything related to this project will be open source under either the Apache-2.0 or CC-BY-SA-4.0 license depending on whether it’s code or documentation.
• I plan to make myself available for further discussion and collaboration after completion.

How do you expect to use the results generated from the project in further research and development activities?

• Some of the broader applications of this work will be of direct benefit to my Dims (Distributed Idea Management System) project.

• It should also be compatible with my other research project on Optimizing Governance for Parallel Experimentation in the DAOs ❤ Cardano challenge.

• Both this and my DAO research will eventually be considered in the context of my Distributed Idea Management System, Dims!

  [CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?

I’ve been a member of the Cardano community since the end of 2017, and I’ve been participating in Project Catalyst since the first public round (Fund2). I’m pretty much a generalist when it comes to anything dealing with science, logic, culture, behavior, communication, and the comparative analysis of complex systems. Universities aren’t a very adequate option for people interested in pursuing deep and practical cross-disciplinary studies, so I simply spent 8 years taking every class I found interesting at a community college (where professors tend to care more about teaching), and I’ve been pursuing knowledge independently ever since… As someone who was home-schooled for most of my childhood, I tend to learn better on my own anyway.

I’ve been programming since I was 12. The properties of scalable distributed systems have been a focus of my studies for more than a decade now. I’ve also had opportunities over the years to witness and take note of how perverse incentive mechanisms almost universally degrade the efficiency of governing bodies, and also note when various approaches create a more optimized situation. I’ve been living in Malawi (southeast Africa) for over 2 years now, partly because of Cardano’s focus on Africa. I’m also in the Cardano community partly because of Cardano’s focus on Africa.

My projects are independent, and funds are mostly required only for personal expenses so that I can devote my full time to Cardano related research and development. All my progress will be freely available online. All I can say about steps and process is that if I have enough money to hire a motorcycle taxi and order something at a coffee shop at least two or three times a week to get work done, my productivity will increase. Being able to pay my bills is also a good motivator.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?

This project is about formalizing and expressing ideas that I’ve already been thinking about in detailed document for anyone to use as they see fit.

The main objectives are to put these ideas into a format where people can understand my thought processes and to fill in any gaps in my thinking.

Anyone should be able to assess these things, based on reading the document:

1. Does it give a complete picture of how DRep identification could be sufficiently validated through collaborative content creation?
2. Are there any holes in the logic that aren’t sufficiently addressed?
3. Is there any benefit in the greater ramifications of implementing these ideas?
4. Would these ideas improve Catalyst and Cardano?

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed breakdown of your project’s milestones and each of the main tasks or activities to reach the milestone plus the expected timeline for the delivery.

Milestones:

1. (Within the first two months) Finish a first draft and give a presentation of the ideas in this proposal to the Catalyst community at an after-townhall meeting. Get feedback and iterate.
2. (Less than six months after project approval) Repeat the process in step one at least one more time with integrated feedback before submitting it as a completed project.

Note:

This project is just a report, with some possible presentation materials that may help to show how this integrates with my other work. The hard part was coming up with the ideas through participating in the community for years without any compensation.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.

1. A sequence of at least two drafts.
2. The final polished report and an open source repository of all the work and related material.

( All of this information was provided in sections above. )

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

There are no costs for this project other than making sure my wife and I have enough money to pay our monthly bills and buy food.

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

All the work for this project will be completed solely by the proposer. Look here to assess my progress.

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

This proposal is for ₳20,000 (just 133% of the minimum allowed for Fund10) for six month of work (roughly $1000USD per month at the time of writing). This is would be adequate to cover rent and the basic necessities here in Malawi (and maybe have a little extra).

1. If there’s any value in finding ways to increase the safety of voting systems by establishing unique identities without KYC mechanisms, then this research is useful.
2. There is also value in the creation of more diverse content through incentivizing interactions between groups that might not otherwise take place.