DECENTRALIZED GOVERNANCE AND BEAM VOTING

Samuel Andrew Ufuoma
Beam Africa
Published in
5 min readApr 24, 2022

Understand the essentiality of Voting and governance in the Beam ecosystem.

INTRODUCTION

The implementation of decentralization is the fundamental presupposition that stimulates the creation of blockchain technology and, eventually, the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. In supposition, blockchain technology visualizes a transactional world without the influence of third parties.

In practice, however, there have been multiple setbacks, a few failures, and partial success in the advancement of the Decentralized economy.

What is Decentralized Governance

Blockchain technology relies heavily on innovation to move forward. Its main attraction, as envisioned by Satoshi Takamoto, was the decentralization aspect.

It is mostly argued that one of the most innovative concepts to have been successfully implemented through blockchain technology is the introduction of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations ( DAOs ).

DAO is viewed in a different light by various authors, according to “Vitalik Buterin” one of the co-founders of Ethereum (ETH), as a “virtual entity that has a certain set of members or shareholders who have the right to spend the entity’s funds and modify its code”, the aim of which is to replicate “the legal trappings of a traditional company or nonprofit but using only cryptographic blockchain technology for enforcement.”

A DAO is an open-source blockchain protocol that is governed by a set of rules, created by its members, completely and autonomously, functioning democratically while removing the need for a centralized governing authority.

Decentralization seems to be the most trustworthy and sustainable option for cryptocurrency projects and offers a sense of transparency and control that everyday enthusiasts just aren’t used to. It is important to keep in mind how integral decentralization is to the project and what that means for its future development and opportunities. With this open-world type decentralized governance model, anything is possible and anything can be built upon it as the community sees fit.

Decentralized Governance is characterized by the following distinctive core principles:

  • It enables people to self-govern themselves without facing any bureaucracy or hierarchical hurdles.
  • The DAO source code is embedded in a smart contract on a blockchain which specifies the rules for interaction among members, governance, voting powers, etc.
  • These rules are self-executed without the need for any human intervention.
  • There is no need for a central governing authority dictating control over the organization.
  • Properties of the blockchain including transparency, cryptographic security, and decentralization are also inherited by the DAO.

BeamX DAO Voting and Governance

With the transcending growth around the DeFi space, an estimation of over $231 billion is the total value locked (TVL) in DeFi, at the time of writing this article.

In its modern-day state, the maximum not unusual place is that DeFi protocols seriously lack privacy. Multiple tasks are addressing the want and are seeing an enlargement of their volumes and consumer bases. With opt-in auditability Beam ambitions to provide complete privacy, without dropping the cap potential to stay regulatorily compliant. Beam governance is transitioning from Beam Foundation to BeamX DAO. With the aim of making the Beam ecosystem as decentralized as possible, giving the stakeholders full control over the protocol governance. Beam fosters a global community of researchers, developers, and activists to maintain, develop and promote Beam and financial privacy in general. Stakeholders can vote on all aspects of the ecosystem through ownership of the BeamX governance token. Voters are incentivized to vote; their choices, identity, and holdings are completely private.

HOW BEAM VOTING WORKS

Beam DAO members participate in the governance process of the Beam protocol through a voting process which is characterized as follows:

  1. BeamX: To have voting power, Beamers need to lock $BeamX in the voting smart contract.

1 BeamX equals 1 vote. However, a Voting Power Factor can be used to increase voting power by locking additional BeamX tokens and for a lengthier duration. For example, if the tokens are locked for 1 month, users get an additional Voting Power Factor of 1.1, etc.

  1. Voting Epoch: The voting process is divided into epochs. Each epoch lasts 2 weeks (or 20160 blocks). The voting power of each account is determined by the amount of BeamX locked in the Voting contract at the beginning of the epoch, multiplied by the Voting Power Factor if applicable (by default Voting Power is equal to the amount of BEAMX staked)
  2. Proposals: Each Voting Epoch is assigned a predetermined list of Proposals which is first discussed in the forum and is officially elected to be raised in an on-chain vote. The list is determined and closed before the start of the voting period and can not be changed during its duration. The first type of proposal that will be supported is the ‘Special Non-Binding’ proposal.
  3. Special Non-Binding Proposals (SNB): Special Non-Binding proposals will be the first type of proposals implemented in the Voting Contract. These proposals will include opinion polls and suggestions that are non-binding and will be implemented at the discretion of the Facilitator.
  4. Other proposal types: Additional proposal types to be implemented later include: Special Binding Proposals — raised and discussed through the forum but binding for the Facilitator. These proposals will usually require a greater quorum.

Regular On-chain Proposals — will be used to vote for on-chain contract parameters and DAO liquidity distribution. Learn more

Conclusion

DAOs are primarily based totally on Trustless technologies, this means that they don’t require the belief that is in any other case wanted in a conventional corporation. The policies and sports of the DAO are withinside the open and any modifications require the bulk vote, hence, the vintage approaches of trusting the pinnacle of a corporation are not necessary.

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Samuel Andrew Ufuoma
Beam Africa

Crypto enthusiast, community developer, content creator and brand promoter...