Voting is an essential primitive required by many dapp protocols. Many Decentralized Autonomous Organisations (DAOs), DeFi dapps and treasuries require users to vote for the game theory of the protocol to work. Setting up a DAO is the most important stage in creating a sustainable and autonomous DAO. Any future changes in the organisation structure, governance system or operational workflow requires users to vote so that the changes can take effect.
DAOs are decentralized organizations, whose decisions are made through voting, meaning people with the native tokens are stakeholders and can make proposals concerning the future of the DAO.
DAOs built on Cardano have a challenge when it comes to smart contract powered voting, since there is no way for this to be effected. This means that one of the primary features of the DAO is dysfunctional. The plan is to create an open standard for on-chain voting through a Plutus smart contract that can be used by any DAO or dapp. This way, these platforms can have efficient voting procedures for their users.
How It Works
Currently, there is a rise in the number of DeFi protocols on Cardano. These platforms are looking at integrating voting protocols in the near future. If they cannot have this function, it will be hard for the protocol to function as needed. Therefore, the ecosystem might lose some projects seeking to have the voting feature.
Developers on the other hand are looking for other blockchains that can serve the needs of their projects, which is both costly and time consuming. Any overlooked detail in a DAO can definitively sabotage a project.
The team will spend time researching and developing design patterns for implementing on-chain voting for Plutus. Plutus is the smart contract platform for the Cardano blockchain that allows developers to write applications that interact with the protocol. On-chain voting will affect protocol parameters held in the Datum as well as altering the validator of the UTxO, thereby interacting with upgradability.
Once this is achieved, the team will release a github repo with an example contract implementing a voting protocol that can be forked by other projects and adapted to their use case in Q1 2022.
Team
This is a project by dcSpark, a product-based Blockchain company focused on building critical products and solutions on top of the most promising crypto projects in the space. dcSpark’s products are created to empower users with a great experience thanks to their domain expertise in the full blockchain stack.
The company is founded by members who have worked for the Cardano ecosystem with Emurgo and IOHK such as CTO Sebastian Guillemot, who served as lead developer for multiple products within the Cardano ecosystem. Other members are Robert Kornacki and Nico Arqueros.
Budget
The budget for this project is $15,000.
Final Thoughts
Voting is one of the most important features of a DAO. Once its funded enough to be deployed, all decisions are made through consensus voting. Without a basic voting dapp for protocols on Cardano, most DAOs will look for another blockchain where they can get this feature. The Cardano ecosystem will therefore lose these projects, which have contributed to the growth of other blockchains in a big way.
The plan is to create an open standard for on-chain voting through a Plutus smart contract that can be used by any DAO or dapp. This proposal comes from a team with previous experience on building on Cardano, and with other projects on Project Catalyst created to better the Cardano ecosystem. Users of Project Catalyst can easily follow up on the development of this dapp on github and give their feedback.
