Funding Request: Aragon Zero Knowledge Research guild 2023

OnChainCoop thanks @alex-kampa and the AZKR Guild for the elaborate proposal. OnChainCoop will vote “yes” in support of the proposal.

The functionality that CeresVote Protocol can bring is undeniably essential for the Aragon Protocol. While sourcing similar functionality elsewhere might be possible, developing it within AZKR inside Aragon DAO has two distinct advantages:

  • Building organizational capacity in one of the most promising sub-verticals of the blockchain space. One which is also highly relevant to the Aragon Protocol
  • Accruing a reputation to the Aragon brand as a leader in the field of zk-tech

We support the positioning of the guild at the interface of practical innovation and fundamental research. We would like to see the continuation of its efforts to collaborate with internal and external teams:

  • Working tightly with the Product Guild on crystalizing research findings into prototypes that can have a meaningful impact on the Aragon stack
  • Collaborating with external teams (i.e. Aztec) on fundamental research, validating the team’s hypothesis about the applicability and relevance of the challenges being tackled.

These initiatives ensure the relevance of the guild’s efforts to the advancement of Aragon (both brand and product) and the blockchain space as a whole and protect the guild from some of the pitfalls of purely academic research, detached from practical applicability.

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Thanks for the support and the feedback. We look forward to continue working together.

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Dear members of OnChainCoop,

I would like to express my sincere gratitude for your support. Your comments align very well with our current efforts to prioritize applied research and the development of software prototypes. Moving forward, I have no doubt that the AZKR guild will continue to create significant value for the Aragon ecosystem.

Thank you again for your support.

Best regards,

Alex Kampa

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The vote is live: Aragon DAO Vote #3

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Q1 activity report

Summary
The performance of the AZKR guild in Q1 was very high (OKRs achievement of 90%) as well as the team’s motivation. This makes us face Q2 very optimistically.

Participation in Private Voting Research Sprint by Nouns DAO
The activity of in Q1 was strongly and positively influenced by the decision of submitting, jointly with Aztec, a proposal to the Private Voting Research Sprint organized by the Nouns DAO. The decision was made together with the Lead of Product Development Guild (Carlos) and validated by the Interim Executive Director of Aragon Association (Evan). The key reasons for this decision were;

  1. the fact that call’s goal (which is to develop a PoC of an anonymous voting system for the Nouns DAO) is a specific use case of the main objective of AZKR’s funding proposal (which is to develop a prototype of a censorship-resistant, privacy-first voting system for DAOs) and

  2. the opportunity to work together with Aztec.

The proposal ended in second place at the end of the voting process with enough enough votes to be selected. Since the beginning the team has worked intensely and in a very effective manner to face this challenge, first during the process of drafting the proposal, and now to implement it. The delivery date is by the end of June.

Changes in Q1 OKRs
The decision to put the proposal was confirmed some weeks after this funding proposal was accepted. Thus Q1 OKRs of the proposal had to be adapted to allocate resources to draft the proposal. The most significant changes were the following:

  • “ARZR-23Q1-KR11 Technical and functional requirements have been defined and approved by the Executive Director, Research Lead, and Head of Product Development.” → Requirements: the Nouns requirements
  • “ARZR-23Q1-KR14 Draft designs of essential components, including Census and Eligibility and voting process types, have been produced and approved by Research Engineers.” → Nouns proposal design; Approval: acceptance of the proposal

Changes in the year work plan
To ensure the correct execution of the Nouns proposal the overall approach must be modified, from a close to a waterfall approach with a clear evolution over quarters, to a more agile approach, because a PoC must be delivered in Q2. This change enables further iterations in the coming quarters and to address the integration integration sooner than initially planned. In Q2 the efforts will be fully focused on delivering Nouns PoC.

Q1 OKRs accomplishment
The only KR that has suffered a significant delay is AZKR-23Q1-KR35 “A methodology to assess our knowledge transfer tasks has been defined and the first set of results obtained and shared”. The methodology has been defined -essentially a questionnaire per quarter, but the first round will happen in Q2.

Other decisions

  • Embed the 12% of bonus as part of the salary. This is better aligned with the Swiss labour regulations and, in our opinion, also with the nature of the work done in the team.
  • 1 new hire. A senior researcher in applied cryptography is joining AZKR by mid-April.
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Here are our OKRs for the 2nd quarter of 2023:

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Prisma would like to thanks AZKR for all of the excellent work carried out during Q1. It’s fantastic to see that the team’s motivation remains a priority.

We are happy to see the guild’s participation in the Private Voting Research Sprint by Nouns DAO. This opportunity to collaborate with a well-established DAO that emphasizes delivery and has a strong community presence will not only bring visibility to Aragon’s initiatives but also help advance the yearly objectives set for this year with a more agile way of working, which we fully endorse. Moreover, the collaboration with Aztec, one of the strongest teams in the industry, is another significant achievement.

It’s also great to note that the decision to pivot and focus on the Nouns proposal was made in close coordination with other Aragon guilds. Communication between guilds has been a challenge in the past so we’d like to see continued improvements like this going forward, such as working more closely with the Growth Guild to ensure brand visibility is maximized for the Aragon project and token holders. Similarly, when it comes to knowledge transfer, there have been significant improvements within and outside of Aragon through talks, workshops, AMAs, and writings. We think the next way to improve this would be to target the knowledge transfer directly toward Aragon’s engineering teams so they are better prepared to bring the value of your PoCs and research to DAOs launched on Aragon.

Lastly, you have chosen to incorporate the 12% bonuses into your contributors’ base compensation as a raise, altering the budget allocation from the original proposal and what token holders and delegates initially supported. The original indication of paying a “max” of 12% implies there could be cost savings due to variations in performance, which could be returned to the DAO or rolled into a subsequent funding cycle. We acknowledge that using bonuses may not always be the most effective incentive for high-quality work, but nevertheless, to maintain trust with Prisma and token holders, we expect more up-front transparency into changes to budget allocations and their underlying rationale.

Once again, thanks for your dedication and hard work. We look forward to witnessing all that AZKR aims to achieve in upcoming quarters.

Thanks Prisma for the feedback. Knowing that our work is overseen and feedback is provided is always stimulating. Some comments to your points:

  • Integrate the bonuses in to the salary We fully understand your objection about being a max. The decision was taken after a discussion in the forum of guild leaders. We did no make any consensual solution, but no one objected about the option of this integration. We are open to amendments if needed/wanted.

  • Better communication between guilds The contribution by the Growth guild was crucial during the proposal and voting periods and still is now. Under their guidance and help we have taken the progress reports of the Nouns project (Aragon-Aztec Private Voting - Documentation - Main page - HackMD) to start harmonizing our communication assets, styles, etc. We are also in close contact with the Lead of Product Development Guild for technical discussions such as the validation of the design. Special reference also needs to be made to to the Eagle ops guild for their support to face all the administrative burden of setting and managing a legally independent organization.

  • ** knowledge transfer directly toward Aragon’s engineering teams** We agree and it is our will, but we must leave this objective for Q3/4 because in the quarter we must fully focus on the implementation of Nouns.

Kind regards.

Q2 mid-term progress update

According to the Q2 OKRs proposal, our activity has focused on the development and implementation the nouns proposal.

This project:

  • Is fully aligned with the objectives of the AA grant we received. Our estimation is that over 90% of the work can be directly reused.
  • It allowed us to strengthen our collaboration with Aztec
  • It allowed us to start collaborations with other web3 technical players
  • We expect that some of the outcomes to be valuable beyond the on-chain private voting problem (e.g. the Time lock cryptographic service and the zkRegistry)

This three-months long research project (from April to June) aims to answer the following research questions:

  1. Up to which point it is possible to build a user-friendly, trustless (decentralised), fair (no one can count votes before a given time), weighed (voting power depends on the amount of tokens hold/delegated) and ballot-secret (it is impossible to link a voter with a choice) voting system in Ethereum?
    2) If all these properties cannot be met at once, which are incompatible and why?
    3) If all these properties cannot be met at once, which is the recommended combination and why?
    4) What is needed to make the recommended combination available to the Nouns community? (Resources needed, roadmap, etc.)

The expected outcomes are:

  • Clear answers to research questions 1 to 4
  • Proofs of concepts (PoC) of the key components of the proposed system to back our answers
  • Integration PoC

PoCs are essentially software developments. Although our repos are currently private, we plan to make them public by early June. Although the design phase took longer than expected (5 to 6 weeks) right now we are fully engaged in the implementation phase.

We published 2 progress reports and we expect to publish at least 2 more. The are available at the following link: https://hackmd.io/130yRfVARSC5AU5aT2w8Lw

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In the report below you will find the budget overview of the first Quarter:

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Please find below our OKRs’ proposal for Q3. For context, we also provide a forecast for Q4. Feel free to make comments until the end of the month. Thanks in advance.

General workplan for the second half of 2023

Q3
Evolution from Nouns project to Proof-based Onchain Private Voting (zk-POPVOTE )
at least without fairness, as this is the most requested version currently and fairness heavily dependent on Aztec Noir evolution

Q4
Integration of zk-POPVOTE voting solution in Aragon OSX. Together with the Product guild.
Continue working on fairness if not achieved in Q3.
Start working on Relay service.
Explore new lines of work (e.g. anti vote-buying solution)

Proposed 23Q3 OKRs

O1 Generalization of Nouns voting solution to zk-POPVOTE
KR1.1 Ship Server solution: as binaries or docker container
KR1.2 Deploy In-browser solution
KR1.3 Ship Tally: command-line interface (CLI)

O2 Implementation of Time Lock Cryptographic Service (TLCS) from Alpha to Beta
KR2.1 Web user interface in production
KR2.2 Schemes: +5 schemes supported
KR2.3 Minimal deployment: +7 validators available
KR2.4 3rd party users: +2

O3 Implementation of ZkRegistry from Alpha to Beta
KR3.1 Web user interface in production
KR3.2 Standardization: EIP started
KR3.3 Coalition: +4 participants

O4 Maintain a reasonable level of dissemination activities
KR4.1 3 teaching sessions on relevant topics conducted
KR4.2 3 blog posts on relevant topics conducted

In addition to the explicit OKRs stated above, the guild will keep working to ensure a smooth inter-guild coordination and effective contribution to the Aragon project. This includes, but is not restricted to: keep the regular meetings with Growth, reinstate the regular meetings with Product, contribute to the Product roadmap definition and execution, participate in Aragon’s discussions, etc.

Hey Alex! Thanks for sharing these and being on top of drafting the OKRs for the next quarter. Great work.

I’m particularly excited to see the integration of the AZKR tools into Aragon OSX. The AZKR Guild has produced a lot of innovative work in the last couple of quarters but I’m concerned I’m not seeing these tools integrated into the Aragon stack yet. Would love to learn more about:

  • Why you’ve chosen to integrate zk-POPVOTE vs the other voting solutions you’ve prepared (like Batratvote or OVOTE) and how you’ve reached this conclusion.
  • Would love to hear about a procedure/strategy plan on making these integrations more recurrent. It’d be amazing to see more of these prototypes into production. Are there any blockers here the other guilds can support with?
  • I’d also love to learn about the Tally CLI you’ve mentioned as the O1 KR3. What is it and how does it bring value back to Aragon, as defined in Aragon’s Hyperstructure Strategy?
  • Additionally, what is the plan after the TLCS is out in beta? Are there any plans of integrating it into Aragon OSx? What are some of the expected use cases you envision here? Would love to understand how the team is thinking of prioritizing some projects over others.

I think having better context on these questions will enhance the collaboration among Aragon guilds and ensure we’re doing aligned work. I’m also excited to attend the teaching sessions and review the blogs. Let me know if I can support at all in this regard.

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Hey Juliette, thanks for your comments, here are some answers to your questions:

Why you’ve chosen to integrate zk-POPVOTE vs the other voting solutions you’ve prepared (like Batratvote or OVOTE) and how you’ve reached this conclusion.

OVOTE has actually been ready for integration for a while now, but the product team probably has other priorities right now. zk-POPVOTE is just the next project we’re working on, with the aim of getting it to proof-of-concept stage.

Would love to hear about a procedure/strategy plan on making these integrations more recurrent. It’d be amazing to see more of these prototypes into production. Are there any blockers here the other guilds can support with?

See previous answer. Our role is go as far as proof-of-concept, then it’s up to the product team to decide next steps, i.e. whether to develop it into a product.

I’d also love to learn about the Tally CLI you’ve mentioned as the O1 KR3. What is it and how does it bring value back to Aragon, as defined in Aragon’s Hyperstructure Strategy?

The Tally CLI is simply an offchain component of zk-POPVOTE. It’s zk-POPVOTE as a whole that could bring value to Aragon, if it’s decided to develop it into a product or Aragon OSx plugin later.

Additionally, what is the plan after the TLCS is out in beta? Are there any plans of integrating it into Aragon OSx? What are some of the expected use cases you envision here? Would love to understand how the team is thinking of prioritizing some projects over others.

TLCS (or Timelock) will be a standalone public service service that will enable anyone to encrypt
data for decryption in the future. It is needed for transparent and independent verification of voting results, but there are many other applications. It is not something that can be integrated into Aragon OSx, although one could imagine an on-chain Oracle that gets its data from TLCS. There will be a blog post about all this in the coming days.

Hey Alex! Thanks for your answers. Some comments:

  • Feels to me like there is potential for the AZKR guild to collaborate more with product to make sure the proofs of concept turn into products that DAOs can use. Have you considered creating the plugins yourself for Aragon OSx? Potentially we could get many of these solutions to the hands of DAOs sooner, even if the App doesn’t yet support these features. As soon as the modularity framework for governance plugins is done (which is still several months away), DAOs could use this in the front-end, but meanwhile devs can already start experimenting with these voting solutions for their custom DAOs. This could also give the AZKR guild feedback earlier on to improve the plugin as time goes.
  • Would also love to learn about the process you use to identify which solutions to build next. Is there any discovery process you’re following internally?
  • Regarding Tally CLI - why do we need it in order for zk-POPVOTE to become an Aragon OSx plugin? Would love to read more about this if you have any documents available!
  • Interesting to hear about the TLCS public service. I’m wondering - if it cannot be integrated into Aragon OSx, what’s the main reason for spending resources in building it?

Thanks again for the response. Excited to keep learning about your work!

Dear Juliette,

I wanted to share some insights on your query, from my perspective as someone who is actively immersed in developing offchain voting solutions for the Ethereum ecosystem.

To start with, zk-POPVOTE, as I see it, is a ground-breaking voting solution with the potential to introduce onchain, token-based anonymous voting to DAOs. The emphasis here is on “token-based”, which is a capability that neither OVOTE nor any other current solutions can provide.

In scenarios where DAOs prefer to structure their governance based on ERC20 or NFTs (as opposed to a list of signers like a Multisig or OVOTE), while also having gasless and/or privacy capacities, a system such as zk-POPVOTE becomes indispensable. While minor tweaks could bring up potential alternatives, the core concept is the same. For more details, you might find my recent article useful: Road to Anonymous Binding Voting for Ethereum

The PoC research being conducted by AZKR and Aztec could potentially revolutionize DAO governance. However, I’d be remiss not to mention that this is not a short-term achievement due to the heavy computation required on the browser scope (proving several Ethereum storage-proofs within a zkSNARK is quite resource-intensive). But the encouraging news is that what seemed impossible a few months back is slowly becoming a reality.

Regarding Tally CLI, it indeed doesn’t directly benefit Aragon OsX. But, it serves as a crucial tool for testing and evaluating the proof-of-concept, an essential phase in the development of such systems.

In my view, AZKR should continue to push the envelope in this direction, without the pressure of delivering a finished product in the near to medium term. The complex nature of this endeavor calls for patience, research, and time.

Lastly, I’d like to comment on TLCS, which is crucial for enabling “shielded” or “secret until the end” voting, a very important feature for any kind of democratic governance. At Vocdoni, our goal is to integrate this service in the future, as it enhances our current solution.

Do bear in mind that this response is strictly my personal viewpoint, not endorsed or reviewed by any member of AZKR. I genuinely hope this provides some clarity and a better understanding of the objectives at hand.

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Super helpful @p4u , thank you! I was definitely missing context on many of what these solutions were, so your explanations are great.

Great to hear Vocdoni is also benefitting from the findings of AZKR. The work being done is certainly innovative and worth pursuing for the greater industry. I’d still push for a clearer strategic plan for pursuing one solution over another internally and ideally a stronger collaboration between AZKR and Product to ensure these solutions come to production as soon as possible. Hopefully we can see more of this for the next quarter!

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Hey Alex, thank you for your transparency around the OKRs. I would like to also provide publicly me individual feedback.

O1. Generalization of Nouns voting solution to zk-POPVOTE:

Your ongoing efforts in both browser and server approaches certainly make sense, given the constraints of Product Development capacity. Personally I think under ideal circumstances, focusing on one solution at a time before moving on to the next might be more efficient. However, pushing forward with both approaches this quarter seems like a reasonable strategy. As you’ve suggested, fostering closer relationships between the Guilds could indeed enhance our coordination and efficiency when that time comes.

O2 Implementation of Time Lock Cryptographic Service (TLCS) from Alpha to Beta

You know already my concerns with this service, but let me put them in written form just for visibility’s sake.

Whereas I understand the importance of this service for “Shielded Voting” and that requirement for the Nouns project, the chosen solution is not, in my opinion, the right approach. It will take the Guild into long and heavy conversations and support for something that was never the main goal, and that concerns me. As I mentioned, I believe architecting this as a rollup focusing on one scheme that can be proven onchain afterwards makes more sense rather than going in the League of Entropy approach.

Of course, I might be wrong, and would like to trust you on this one this quarter and explore the public service path you’ve started preparing. Just be mindful, this was never the main goal, and if you see it starts taking too much time, it will go in detriment of the main objectives for the Guild.

O3 Implementation of ZkRegistry from Alpha to Beta

I really like this one. I can’t see other way of solving this problem and solves something lot’s of players in the ecosystem are having. Also, converting this into an EIP seems like the correct approach.

Very happy with this approach, please contact with the Growth team and ping me if you need help explaining it.

O4 Maintain a reasonable level of dissemination activities

As every quarter, your Guild always exceeds at increasing awareness of the zk technology not only through talks at conferences, but also internally. I really like hearing your team members explain this technology that enables so much. Thank you for this contributions, really appreciate it.


In other order, I think it might be interesting touch other points along the quarter that could make the team more aligned. I’m sure you already plan on doing that as “business as usual”, I guess I just like them seeing written down for everyone acknowledgement of work being done and that those more “peopleware” problems are also being addressed. I’m talking about better defining the role between research and implementations/deliveries, or roadmaps doubts the team might have regarding the role within Aragon. Either way, wether it’s part of a OKR or not is another question, but would love seeing you putting some love to those concerns in one way or another.

Again, thank you for your hard work,

Carlos

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I think it would be good to showcase any proof of concepts, products don’t have to be finished to see progress. A community screencapture could show proof of concept and talk about the pros and current hurdles still yet to be developed. I think it is important to communicate to the less technical majority of progress being made.

Hey Carlos, thanks for your comments. I have now added the following paragraph at the end of the OKR post:

“In addition to the explicit OKRs stated above, the guild will keep working to ensure a smooth inter-guild coordination and effective contribution to the Aragon project. This includes, but is not restricted to: keep the regular meetings with Growth, reinstate the regular meetings with Product, contribute to the Product roadmap definition and execution, participate in Aragon’s discussions, etc.”

Thank you for your suggestions, completely agree with you that we also need to communicate to a less technical audience. In September, we plan to have a public session to present the results in a way that is accessible to a general audience.

Please note that during the execution of the project we have participated in 2 Twitter spaces, have issued 4 progress reports (cf Aragon-Aztec Private Voting - Documentation - Main page - HackMD) and are preparing a final report that will also be made publicly available.

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