Proposal for the Proof of Humanity DAO
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by Paula Berman and Sofía Cossar
The foundations for Proof of Humanity and $UBI have been set up! Something that the two of us have worked for and dreamt about for over 4 years. This enables unprecedented possibilities: a post-scarcity, networked economy, rooted on basic liquidity as a human right; a platform for decentralized, censorship-resistant democracies; and the tools to build a humans-only internet that provides the assurances and accountability of the offline world, while at the same time allowing for privacy, anonymity and pseudonymity, the cornerstones of freedom and democracy.
These are phenomenal possibilities, but by no means inevitable outcomes. Whether they will be materialized or not, is up to us, the Proof of Humanity community. Here are our thoughts about how we can contribute to these goals.
“Even a billion dollars of capital cannot compete with a project having a soul.” ~@VitalikButerin
We strongly believe in this statement. While competence, responsibility and great execution are prerequisites, it is unlikely that a crypto project will thrive without having a vibrant community behind it. Such a community, and such a culture, ultimately boil down to the individuals who are involved. So our work will be directed towards empowering, connecting and enabling anyone willing to engage with this project to unlock their full creativity and potential.
What do we want to do?
Incentives
There are many elements that go into creating such an empowered and productive ecosystem. Some are pure game theory: sustaining the price of $UBI is critical to the project achieving its ambitious goals, and we need to have strong and well-thought-out incentive systems for network growth. We will work to list the $UBI token widely, and bring in investors, philanthropists and institutional partners. Economic policies concerning the token, such as issuance rate, are governed by the community through the DAO, but we will also support efforts to promote careful and in-depth deliberations about such strategies, engaging community members as well as prominent researchers in the space of Universal Basic Income, economists, token economic experts and game theorists.
Governance
Relatedly, we will give special attention to the development of the governance of the PoH DAO. This is the first one-person-one-vote DAO on Ethereum, therefore we have the unique ability and mandate to foster unprecedented distributed governance experiments using liquid democracy, quadratic voting, quadratic funding, innovative polling methodologies such as pol.is, etc. We firmly believe that a governance system that is as welcoming, participatory, and deliberative as possible is key to unlocking enormous value and creativity for the project at large.
Integrations
Another key aspect concerns the technological stack. We need to integrate Proof of Humanity’s credentials with self sovereign identity providers, privacy solutions (using zero knowledge proof or traceable ring signatures) and governance tools, so as to enable the community to self-organize at many different levels, from local to global.
Such integrations would enable social innovators to create democratic DAOs for a variety of purposes; where members prove some specific attribute about themselves (e.g. that they are a student), while also demonstrating they control an account at the Proof of Humanity registry (for Sybil-resistance) without revealing which account that is, so they won’t have their every action connected to their identity, and stored in an immutable ledger. With this small set of tools in place, different types of communities will be able to easily self-organize; bringing others in, and creating their own governance and economy using PoH and the $UBI token. Additionally, this movement will be aided by an Ambassadors program (more on it below).
Still on the topic of integrations, we will actively work to create partnerships to facilitate partial or full acceptance of $UBI as a payment method, and advance Proof of Humanity’s integration with other Dapps in the Ethereum ecosystem, such as quadratic funding platforms (e.g., gitcoin, clr.fund), airdrop providers (e.g., astrodrop), DAO frameworks (e.g., Colony, Aragon, DAOstack), identity providers (e.g., 3box, serto.id), peer-to-peer markets etc.
The continuous improvement of the UX of Proof of Humanity is another key component in this strategy and we will work closely with the developer to be hired alongside us, helping prioritize and maintain the roadmap. To that end, one of us is working on an integration with tokenlog.xyz to facilitate quadratic voting signalling by the community on current Github issues (to be announced soon!). Furthermore, we will create appropriate channels and procedures to ensure changes to the protocol can be communicated clearly and in advance. And of course, all of this work will be taken to the next level once we can build our own Proof of Human chain, and we will actively pursue and support this goal.
Ambassadors
Complementing these practical requirements, an additional area of focus for us will be movement building. We are already witnessing enormous amounts of energy and creativity emerging from the Proof of Humanity community members, and we want to supercharge these individuals with all the information and connections they need to fully engage with and create upon our stack.
For that reason, we will create an Ambassadors program where we provide guidelines for anyone interested in becoming more actively engaged. This includes extending the existing FAQs repository and producing accessible multimedia content about the Proof of Humanity registry, $UBI and the Proof of Humanity DAO. We will also produce clear, up-to-date, easily-digestible collaborative materials on blockchain technology, self-sovereign identities, quadratic voting, e-democracy, and digital currencies. This will help Ambassadors counter disinformation and explain their real benefits to society at large, facilitating adoption and implementation.
How do we want to do it?
Transparency and Accountability
As the first PMs working with a democratic DAO, an important concern of ours will be to set good precedents of transparency and accountability for those coming after us, ultimately creating norms that can help increase the legitimacy of off-chain governance practices. Here are a few of the measures that we will strive to implement:
- Post frequent progress reports, either in writing or video format.
- Allocate a few spots a week in our calendars to allow anyone in the Proof of Humanity registry to schedule a 45 min call with us.
- To ensure that these conversations will always be for the good of the project at large, instead of selfish motives, all of these meetings will be audio recorded and we will post the files online.
Participation
We want to ensure our community also has a voice in the process of project management itself. We will test different polling, deliberation and vote signaling mechanisms where community members can help us build our strategy, express what they care about, how they feel about different issues and how they think those should be prioritized by us.
Collaboration
We will work to create a bi-weekly research seminar and common channel between all the existing open source projects using Proof of Personhood protocols for Sybil-resilience, where we can share the latest research and news from the ecosystem, as well as collaborate on areas of mutual interest. From Proof of Humanity’s point of view, this is particularly important as the challenge of maintaining the network robust against Sybil Attacks will continuously increase, so keeping up and engaging with the latest research is crucial.
Another key area of collaboration will be producing the educational materials to be used not only by our Ambassadors, but any person or organization interested in promoting an informed understanding of decentralized digital organizations, cryptocurrency-based Universal Basic Income and Sybil-resilient identities.
Time commitment: 100% for one year.
Compensation & attributions
We are requesting $120,000 usd — 100,000 from the ETH funds + 20,000 from the UBI treasury — to be divided equally among a team of three people (thus leaving sufficient funds for the DAO to hire a competent founder developer alongside our team).
The reasoning behind proposing three hires, as opposed to one, is Proof of Humanity has needs that extend beyond the attributions of a single Product Manager. We need marketing, community management, and extremely sharp multimedia content and design capabilities that can help us simplify the enormous complexity involved in this system, making it accessible (and fun!) to a broad audience. We are also committing 100% of our working time and want the same for our third team member, the multimedia artist, because in order to execute these functions with high standards of excellence, we consider it necessary to have fully committed individuals in the founding team, who will give Proof of Humanity their undivided attention. As a small group of people, we expect to collaborate on all fronts, but have separated attributions here for clarity:
Paula Berman: I will be primarily responsible for the strategy of the following components: Growth / Integrations + Technical development (security — privacy — incentives — UX — processes) + Community + Governance. This includes driving key developments in these four areas (described in more detail on our medium post 6), helping the team set its priorities and interfacing with partners, philanthropists, investors and researchers.
Sofía Cossar: Sofía will be primarily responsible for operations within the following components: Growth / Integrations + Technical development (security — privacy — incentives — UX — processes) + Community Management + Governance. This includes managing communications for Proof of Humanity and overseeing the implementation of strategies in these four areas.
Multimedia artist: We will hire a full-time multimedia artist. The artist’s attributions will include improving the visual identity and UI of Proof of Humanity, as well as creating extensive visual materials used for communications and community steering purposes. While we are looking for the right person, this will function as an operational budget to be at our disposal to hire freelance designers, video-editors and audiovisual experts based on the necessities that may emerge. All expenses will be made transparent to the community, and at the end of 12 months any remaining funds will be returned to the DAO.
Additionally, we will leverage @Justin, who has committed a minimum of 5 hours a month (without compensation) to consult on product and software development.
Who are we?
We are applying as a duo! Here’s a bit about us:
Paula Berman: I’m a co-Founder of Democracy Earth Foundation and one of the leading researchers in the space of Sybil-resistant identity protocols, having co-authored the seminal paper in the field (and a companion introductory op-ed for Coindesk). I have actively contributed to Proof of Humanity since its inception in 2017 and am a part of the team currently behind its operations. Over the past 6 years I have led several online governance experiments with mechanisms such as liquid democracy and quadratic voting, including the first qv implementation in the United States government for the state of Colorado (read more here); and led community efforts at Democracy Earth such as our Ambassadors and Student Ambassador programs, with highly talented and well-connected innovators from around the globe.
Sofía Cossar: I am an international development consultant and human rights law expert. I have worked with legislators from all over the world, governmental agencies, human rights NGOs as well as international organizations like the United Nations and the International Criminal Court, to promote more inclusive and egalitarian societies. As a part of that journey, I became a researcher at Democracy Earth Foundation in late 2017. I authored the article on liquid democracy and the Tyranny of the majority and co-authored the paper on UBI in the Blockchain Age, which I presented at the Interdisciplinary Conference on Basic Income at the University of Freiburg, Germany, in October 2018. Paula and I also produced the report on DEF’s Decision-Making Pilots, where we shared lessons learned hoping to inspire other e-democracy and e-governance initiatives. More recently, I participated as a panelist in the first Digital Direct Democracy World Conference (3DCON), where I spoke about all the philosophical, political, legal, ethical and technical aspects of implementing decentralized and digital decision-making.
Our ongoing engagement over the years reflect our shared belief that together, Proof of Humanity, $UBI and the Proof of Humanity DAO can become one of the most meaningful political and economic experiments of our times.
If you have any questions or would like to chat, feel free to reply to our application post / schedule a call with us on Calendly.
