Original title: The holy grail: Off-chain polling with on-chain execution
Guide:
Translator: Typto
Guide:
I remember that from a certain day, the cost of DAO governance suddenly got out of control, and it got worse. Launch a DAO has risen from a few dollars to several hundred dollars, and a proposal process has also risen from less than 3 dollars to more than 30 dollars. I miss the era when I used to operate with my eyes closed, but it seems that it is gone forever. We started looking all over the world for a solution (and as someone pushing the DAO ecosystem, I suffered from it). Snapshot gave us a surprise, but after the surprise, it was more criticism. The separation of decision-making and execution makes us question the authenticity of its requirements. Until one day, people from Aragon told me an inside news that they were working on a big event, which is the Optimistic voting that everyone sees today. Not only is this the holy grail for Aragon's DAO governance efforts, it's an important milestone for the DAO.
—— Typto
Optimistic voting has been a hot topic in the Aragon community for some time. When we started researching this topic, user votes cost pennies on-chain, but today, with Ethereum’s network clogged, user votes can cost as much as $30.
Fortunately, our friends at Balancer Labs have launched their own product: an off-chain voting solution: Snapshot.
Snapshot allows the community to perform token holder voting off-chain, with verifiable results and a tamper-proof voting process (votes and hierarchical receipts are stored in IPFS).
Since its launch, Snapshot has quickly become the voting solution of choice for prominent communities such as Yearn and Aave. But as things stand, there is still a clear centralization component to the voting process. Token holders can signal their preference, but it is only a signal. The actual on-chain execution still has to be done by other means, such as trusted multisig, which usually just checks the voting results and enforces the wishes of the token holders.
This approach is risky from a centralization and security standpoint, but it can also expose multisig members to embarrassing issues, such as possible legal liability for decisions made by the community.
On-chain voting, on the other hand, where all votes are calculated on-chain, is much more secure and completely decentralized. But this method is extremely expensive and slow.
Tradeoffs for blockchain voting: You either have scalable off-chain voting for higher participation, or secure on-chain voting. until today.
To solve this pain point, we conducted a lot of research and built core infrastructure such as Aragon Court, Aragon Agent, and aragonOS 5. Based on this, we launched an off-chain polling and on-chain execution solution. Yes, the two are a perfect fit, no more tangled trade-offs, you can have your cake and eat it too!
The basic concept of optimistic execution is that instead of performing expensive computations on-chain, one submits their results directly, with some collateral associated with their correctness. If someone sees an incorrect result, they can challenge it, and if the submitted result is indeed incorrect, they can take away the publisher's stake.
We took the same concept and used Aragon Court as a subjective oracle that can evaluate whether the submitted results are correct.
Solutions utilizing Aragon Court and Aragon Agent will be available in Snapshot soon (already working on Rinkeby!). This means Yearn, Aave, Balancer and other communities will be able to use it soon.
secondary title
how it works
Usually a multisig composed of trusted community members has the enforcement power over the agreement or treasury. When the community votes on a decision, the multisigger checks the vote and acts on behalf of the community. The social capital and reputation of these people is heavily scrutinized, but there's really nothing stopping multisigs from doing what they want, or not doing what the community decides.
Using Optimistic Snapshot, multi-signature will be replaced by DAO, and DAO's Agent has execution authority. Aragon Agent is an on-chain messenger that can perform actions anywhere on Ethereum. Whether you are an individual or a multisig, your Agent can act as a DAO rather than as an individual. Such as updating protocol parameters, managing treasury, and even splicing DeFi Lego blocks.
Once the vote has a result, anyone can submit the desired action for vote approval to the on-chain DAO. The DAO has a new application called Disputable Delay, which imposes a time lock before actions are executed. During this time, anyone can contest the action and appeal to Aragon Court.
If someone submits malicious behavior that does not match the results of the vote resolution, the Aragon Court jury will rule on this, and the proposer will suffer as a result.
Conversely, if no one disputes the action, it will continue to the next step in the process and will eventually be executed.
Since malicious actions are severely punished, they are essentially filtered out by the deterrent, leaving only legitimate actions in the queue.
This proposal process gives members greater autonomy to act on behalf of the organization when they know their actions are legal. Since any member can dispute any action, each member does not need to actively monitor or participate in the on-chain formulation of each vote.
future
future
Communities using this feature will be able to easily join the Aragon protocol when optimistic voting officially launches later this month.
The Aragon Protocol could allow DAOs to define themselves in plain English keywords, establish rules and customs, and protect themselves from malicious actors without sacrificing their members' agency. In case of wrongdoing and disputes, Aragon Court may act as an arbitration body to resolve such disputes.
We are excited about providing the community with off-chain polling while helping them achieve decentralized on-chain execution.
By the way, we just submitted a proposal to the yearn community to help them build their own DAO with Optimistic Snapshot.
Big thanks to Fabien at Balancer for helping us get the integration done in record time! If you're interested in learning more, come chat with us on Discord
