In Part 1, we explored the objectives and intentions of the FreeDAO Foundation as it moves towards a fully-fledged DAO.
As Part 1 mentioned:
The governance of this DAO is to be built on a system we call “Qualified Sortition”. This uses randomisation to select from a pool of qualified candidates for governance roles and then uses direct democracy to deselect (remove) a governing delegate mid term, if desired. We believe this can create diverse, strong, efficient governance structures that can be globally scalable, and built with a foundational level of accountability and trust.
Sortition is a type of governance structure that formed a part of ancient Athenian democracy to balance out the fact that a pure democracy had the risk of becoming corrupted by demagogues, cabals, grooming of candidates, special interest groups etc.
In our modern times, it can be seen that representative democracies are, indeed, subject to such corrupting influences—especially as they mature and ways are found to compromise the original fair intentions of such democracies.
Sortition has survived in the modern world in the form of jury duty, as well as in blockchain. Modern blockchains such as Algorand, Cardano, Sora, IOST and others have incorporated sortition to ensure that their protocols are fair and decentralied. After all, sometimes randomisation is actually the fairest option.
The majority of DAOs and other forms of blockchain governance tend to use token voting runs the risk of becoming a plutocracy, which compared to pure democracy or sortition, introduces an inequitable, unfair form of rule by the elite, or those that come first.
This is why FreeDAO is choosing to use a type of sortition for FreeDAO’s governance. This sortition will be employed within the Foundation in a light way, and will be fully featured in the actual DAO deployed—that the Foundation will migrate once ready and tested.
One of the benefits of the Proton blockchain is the built-in KYC layer, and this Proof-of-Uniqueness, will be used to ensure that only a single, verified, prospective candidate may apply for selection in the governance of FreeDAO. Proof-of-Uniqueness is a critical aspect of having a form of sortition-based governance that is incorruptible and fair. This is one of the many benefits that the Proton blockchain brings to new types of governance, economies, dApps and products.
Some of the commonly attributed advantages of sortition are:
- Statistically representative of the population
- Diverse ideas
- Fair and Egalitarian
- Anti-Corruption Characteristics
- Empowerment of Ordinary Citizens
- Loyalty to Conscience and Objectives
- Efficient Selection of Delegates
Conversely some of the commonly attributed disadvantages of sortition are:
- Incompetence of Delegates
- Misrepresentation of Population
- Perception of Illegitimacy by those governed
- Potential lack of Enthusiasm in Delegates
- Unaccountability
To address—or mitigate—against the potential disadvantages of a pure sortition method, FreeDAO is choosing to use a system we call a “Qualified Sortition” that provides layers of efficiency, competence and accountability to a vanilla-standard sortition method of governance.
Qualified Sortition
Qualified Sortition refers to the practice of short-listing qualified candidates that have the skills, and experience to do the job—similar to hiring for particular roles within a company.
This way, the Treasuer would have financial and/or accounting experience. The President might have experience being a director of a company, or a non-profit. Experience in the role would filter candidates into a short-listed pool of qualified candidates, and the final selection would be random.
Each role would have individual, offset term limits, so the replacement of candidates would have a limited impact on the organisation’s operations—again similar to how a company has various people coming and going.
Another element of Qualified Sortition would utilise democracy to remove delegates—providing a layer of accountability. If a delegate was selected into a position of influence and power, this new delegate could be fired by the constituents that this delegate is meant to serve.
With Qualified Sortition—sortition selects and democracy deselects.
Often, the public knows when a leader is not serving the people. In Qualified Sortition, the people can remove any delegate who is not serving the people, at any time, to be replaced by another qualified candidate capable of doing the job.
Qualified Sortition — combined with the accountably mechanism to recall delegates — has many advantages over democratic voting such as:
- Qualified Sortition eliminates the need for expensive campaigns with charismatic, crowd-charming, career politicians.
- The relative ease of selecting candidates through sortition can allow for non-disruptive, staggered and efficient transitions of a single delegate to the next.
- A strong likelihood of an accurate representation of actual demographics, including age and gender.
- Lobbying, grooming, bribing, vote-buying and influencing becomes more difficult due to the randomness of the final selection process.
- Qualified Sortition reduces the conditions and avenues of power that allow political parties, special interests, and oligarchies to form.
- Qualified Sortition has accountability baked into its protocol, allowing incompetent, or corrupt delegates to be removed at any time through direct democracy.
- Qualified Sortition randomly selects from experienced candidates, to help ensure the job can be done efficiently, with competence.
- Experienced candidates, apply to be in the selection pool, therefore bringing enthusiastic delegates who want to do the job.
- Selected delegates need to be aware of what matters to their constituents, or the delegate may run the risk of losing their position.
The way FreeDAO envisions sortition to work has a bit more nuance than has been described in this overview. Additions to this sortition protocol would include:
- allow for a transition period between the new delegate and the former delegate as tasks, responsibilities and connections are passed over;
- methods to ensure a sensible process initiates any vote to remove a delegate;
- methods to ensure the short-listing of candidates is fair, transparent, and has levels of public accountability built into the protocol to help ensure this process is smooth, efficient and as fair and incorruptible as possible.
Further details on how FreeDAO envisions the MVP version of a sortition-based DAO incorporating the Freeos participants will be addressed in Part 3 of this series.
For more on Freeos, please check our webpage for more info, or join us in our Telegram Community where you may ask more questions about how Freeos is intended to work.
