Waves Association inaugurates DAO
One of the areas of activity for the Waves Association is distribution of grants for developing solutions that help grow out the Waves ecosystem and foster mass adoption of blockchain-based solutions.
Over the last few months, the association’s Funding & Grants Working Group (FGWG) has been busy developing a tool that would enable decision making in a structured and transparent form. A tool of this kind is especially vital for avoiding association members’ possible opportunism in decisions on funding distribution.
Previous work in the area of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO), analyzed in my article “DAO-2020”, was chosen as a basis for the creation of the association’s decision making tool. Analyzing the experience of earlier projects, FGWG came up with a new concept of a DAO that will facilitate association members’ input in decision making. In addition, the association’s DAO model employs the “Wisdom of the crowd” principle, under which association members’ opinions are not just collected, but the expert value of them is used.
DAO functionality
To understand the DAO decision making process, let’s consider member roles.
DAO Owner is the secretary in the Waves Association and DAO administrator.
DAO Board consists of association board members, whitelisted individuals who have an additional opportunity to validate a proposal.
DAO Member is a member of the Waves Association, a whitelisted individual who can vote. For a decision to be passed, the DAO needs at least 50% of the votes.
Working Group Member is a member of the Waves Association’s working group, a whitelisted individual who is responsible for managing tasks, votes and performers.
Performer is an outside developer who implements a task funded by the DAO.
The Waves DAO is an example of a multi-layer DAO, in which participants are involved in the decision making flow in different ways. Let’s consider the decision making flow on the example of the Disruptive Tech Grant.
Decision-making flow
The following individuals take part in making decisions on releasing Disruptive Tech Grants: DAO Owner (DO), DAO Member (DM), DAO Board (DB), Working Group Member (WG) and Performer (PE).
The decision making logic looks like this:
Setting the DAO
- DO: sets the DM list (addDAOMember)
- DO: sets the WG list (addGroupMember)
Making funding decisions
- WG: proposes a task (addTask)
- WG: adds the task description and reward amount (addTaskDetails)
- DM: votes on whether the task is needed (voteForTaskProposal)
- WG: finishes voting on the task (finishTaskProposalVoting)
- PE: applies for performing the task (applyForTask)
- DM: votes on task applicants to select the performer (voteForApplicant)
- WG: finishes performer selection (finishApplicantsVoting)
- PE: starts work on the task (startWork)
- PE & WG: are involved in off-chain communication
- WG: accepts a solution and pays a reward (acceptWorkResult)
This step-by-step process allows Waves Association experts to make a decision on funding a specific project by combining their opinions. Each expert’s vote is stored on the blockchain forever, which is a motivation for honest voting. All applicants can observe the decision making process and be sure that their application was properly considered. Overall, this transparent and reliable model enables all participants of the process to understand their role, motivating them to be active. Meanwhile, the community can observe the entire picture of funding distribution and the Waves ecosystem development strategy.
DAO development prospects
The first grant distribution round run through the DAO is scheduled for November 2020. To lower the DAO entry threshold, by that time, a user-friendly interface will be built. It will enable association members to participate in the decision making process by voting, while any member will be able to see the transparency of the funding distribution process. Currently, the DAO interface is available as an auto generated dApp UI, which can’t be used on a large scale.
The Waves DAO is expected to emerge as a platform where all grants available for application will be displayed, as well implementation processes of funded projects and the association’s role.
Also, I would like to share my strategic vision of Waves DAO. By now, a high-quality enthusiast community has been formed whose members really care about Waves. Potentially, it would be good to make the DAO a place where various individuals interested in Waves’ progress, not necessarily association members, could have an impact on decision making by voting.
Therefore, the main direction for the Waves Association DAO future development will be engaging the community and raising its involvement in making decisions on strategic development and project funding.
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The Waves Association DAO is an innovative decision making tool that can make governance processes not just transparent, but much more efficient, combining the participants’ expertise.
As a decision making tool within the Waves Association, the DAO will ensure transparent and reliable distribution of project funding, which, in turn, will speed up the development of the entire ecosystem and all of its projects.
Check the source code and leave your feedback in the Waves DAO repository: github.com/vlzhr/WavesDAO.
