Access & interact with a DAO through NymConnect
In today’s application, you’ll learn how to access and interact with DAO’s infrastructure projects while safeguarding your privacy, thanks to NymConnect.
Decentralized autonomous organizations
A DAO, or Decentralized Autonomous Organization, is an organizational structure that is built on blockchain technology to operate autonomously, without the need for a central authority. Decisions within a DAO are made by members through a process of on-chain governance, and the results of these decisions are executed automatically through smart contracts. These smart contracts define the DAO’s governance protocols, outlining the methods for decision-making and action execution.
The DAO: The Starting Point
The starting point for the modern DAO movement can be traced back to 2016, with the creation of “The DAO.” The DAO was an ambitious project that aimed to create a decentralized investment fund. It raised over $150 million worth of Ether in its token sale, making it the largest crowdfunding campaign in history. However, despite the initial excitement, The DAO quickly encountered major security issues. A hacker exploited a vulnerability in its smart contract and managed to siphon off a significant amount of Ether, causing a major crisis in the Ethereum community.
This incident led to a fork of the Ethereum blockchain to recover the stolen funds. This fork was controversial, but it ultimately served as a valuable learning experience for the DAO community. It showed the importance of security and the need for careful testing of smart contracts before they are deployed.
To find out more about this subject, we invite you to read this article: https://medium.com/swlh/the-story-of-the-dao-its-history-and-consequences-71e6a8a551ee
After The DAO: Ongoing Evolution
Despite the challenges faced, the DAO hack failed to derail the momentum of the DAO movement and the vision of establishing decentralized autonomous organizations continued to thrive. In fact, it arguably served to fortify and enhance the resilience of the community. Subsequently, there has been an explosion of new DAOs, encompassing a diverse array of applications, ranging from investments to philantropy and from social networking to open source software development.
In the aftermath of this incident, a multitude of initiatives emerged, addressing everything from the governance of blockchain projects to the stewardship of digital commons. Innovative platforms like Aragon, DAOstack, XDAO and many others have been developed to streamline the creation and administration of DAOs, with a specific focus on enhancing security, governance, and overall usability.
To date, even in an unfavorable market environment, the total treasury in the DAO ecosystem stands at over $17 billion (september 2023), demonstrating that DAOs offer an important new mechanism for managing and allocating capital and other valuable digital assets.
What are the privacy issues facing DAOs?
DAOs are still a relatively new technology, and a number of privacy issues need to be resolved. Some of the key privacy issues facing DAOs include:
- Transparency: DAOs are generally very transparent, with all transactions and decisions recorded on the blockchain. This can be a good thing, as it promotes accountability and transparency. However, it can also raise confidentiality issues, as it means that anyone can see the financial activity and voting behavior of DAO members. Depending on the type of DAO, this can represent risks.
- Data minimization: DAO should only collect information that is strictly necessary for performing its operations and not more. Additionnaly, the collected data should not allow to trace individuals to real-world identities.
- Third-Party Services: DAOs often use third-party services for various functions, and these services may collect and process member data differently, which may also pose privacy risks.
Sometimes, DAOs, by their very nature or mission, may require greater privacy. Whether used as a counter-power tool in an autocracy, to support and raise funds in a war-torn country like UkraineDAO, or to support activists like AssangeDAO. These DAOs, as being related to sensitive topics by nature or mission, may require greater privacy.
There are a number of things that DAOs can do to address these privacy issues, such as:
- Using privacy-enhancing technologies: DAOs can use privacy-enhancing technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs to allow members to participate in DAO governance and transactions without revealing their identities.
- Implement best data management practices: DAOs must implement best data management practices to protect the confidentiality of their members’ data. This includes collecting & storing only the data necessary for DAO operations. It is also important for DAOs to be selective about the use of third-party services, selecting those with privacy-friendly practices.
- Educating members about privacy: DAOs should educate their members about the privacy risks associated with participation in a DAO and how to protect their privacy.
In the future, the Nym project has the potential to provide a suite of tools that can be effectively used or natively integrated into DAO ecosystems, such as NymConnect and zk-nym.
NymConnect
NymConnect provides a seamless, one-click interface for connecting to the Nym mixnet, with the primary objective of enhancing the confidentiality of your interactions with applications and websites. It offers robust protection by safeguarding your traffic from potential observers, including the very application or site you are using.
When you connect through NymConnect, your communications undergo a multi-layered encryption process before being transmitted through a gateway and the Nym mixnet. The mixnet employs a clever technique of blending your traffic with cover traffic and introducing micro delays. This ingenious approach effectively thwarts any attempts by observers to trace or analyze your communications, ensuring the privacy and security of your data. Furthermore, it shields your IP address from being exposed.
Using NymConnect encrypts your traffic, making it harder to track your activity and find out if you are accessing DAOs, thus protecting your digital presence. In addition to this, in order to guarantee maximum confidentiality, we recommend that you use a new wallet each time you participate in a DAO or make a transaction.
For a comparative understanding between the Nym network and other privacy tools, you can refer to this link.
The tutorial
In today’s application, you’ll discover how to access and interact with DAO infrastructure projects while preserving your privacy. Do require a desktop application and is thus not yet supported on mobile.
At present, it is possible to interact with the following projects: Aragon, DAOstack, XDAO, Juicebox, Snapshot.
In future, we will provide access to the main DAO’s tools. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact the No Trust Verify team.
1st step :
You need to download NymConnect via the following link :
2nd step :
Open NymConnect, and click on the drop-down menu at the top left of the screen. Select Settings, then turn ON.
Copy & Paste the following Service Provider:
This service provider is provided by No Trust Verify, on which the connection to these services has been authorized.
AQRRAs9oc8QWXAFBs44YhCKUny7AyLsfLy91pwmGgxuf.CWUKoKA1afSKyw5BnFJJg19UDgnaVATupsFhQpyTEBHJ@EBT8jTD8o4tKng2NXrrcrzVhJiBnKpT1bJy5CMeArt2w
3rd step :
You must now configure your browser to use the proxy:
Configuration Brave/ Chrome
In order to be able to “divert” your connection to the mixnet you need to install an extension called Proxy SwitchOmega to configure a proxy (socks5).
First of all, install the SwitchOmega Proxy extension and go to the bar and open the installed extensions.
Click in the SwitchyOmega extension icon, then select Options.
Then click on “proxy” and add this one:
Protocol : SOCKS5 / Server : 127.0.0.1/ Port : 1080
Then click on Apply changes.
After applying changes, on Brave toolbar select the proxy your created :
Configuration Firefox
The configuration of this browser is quite simple since the proxies are native.
Go to Settings :
Then, in the general settings, scroll down to Network Settings and click on Settings.
Then you just have to fill in the fields as follows:
This will allow traffic to be redirected to the mixnet. All other traffic will still go through your own connection.
4th step :
All you have to do is launch NymConnect and connect to Aragon, DAOstack, XDAO, Juicebox, Snapshot.
About No Trust Verify
We are deeply engaged in experimentation, with a dedicated emphasis on the values of privacy, self-sovereignty, and trustless organizational structures. Our proactive dedication extends across various projects. Notably, we are contributors of Nym, where we shoulder responsibilities in infrastructure management, application development, and the dissemination of essential knowledge regarding privacy concerns. Moreover, we actively contribute to the Alephium community, taking charge of pivotal elements like full nodes, backend systems, and various exploratory functions, as well as participating in the development of dApps.
Developer of pastenym.ch & isnymup.com and walph.
Do not hesitate to contact us:
