Hello everyone,
I am glad to present to you the Vocdoni Guild Proposal for the Aragon DAO.
Description
Vocdoni’s vision is to improve democratic health and promote participatory governance using decentralized and open-source technology. To achieve that, we are building a censorship-resistant, secure, and transparent voting protocol to facilitate decision-making for communities and organizations regardless of whether they are digital natives or traditional organizations. Moreover, under the light of recent events (e.g. Ooki DAO, Tornado cash), secure anonymous voting is becoming a critical DAO management property. Together with Aragon, we aspire to leverage our technology and offer a universal voting solution not only for DAOs, but the entire web3 space and traditional organizations (web2).
The existing voting protocol is developed on top of the Vochain, a public voting blockchain, as well as a set of tools that facilitate its usage such as an API, an SDK and a dApp. The technology has been used by more than 500 organizations permissionlessly, and by 40 companies and institutions, including FC Barcelona and city councils, as in-house custom projects developed. The protocol has provided them with a secure, transparent, easy-to-use and low-cost voting system.
Vocdoni is requesting $1,183,507.59 for a 9-month period to advance in the initiatives listed in this proposal, including:
- enhancement of the Web3 protocol through anonymous, delegated voting and results with verifiable on-chain execution, as well as setting the building blocks for decentralizing the voting blockchain
- make secure voting available to DAOs, building an anonymous verifiable offchain voting plugin for AragonOS and AragonApp (as per Aragon’s 2023 strategy)
- creation of a Voting-as-a-service model, expanding Aragon’s umbrella brand and use cases to the entire web3 space and to traditional organizations and eventually bringing more Aragon DAO users (as per Aragon’s 2023 strategy)
| Period | 9 months (1st March 2023 - 30th November 2023) |
|---|---|
| Full-time Contributors | 8 |
| Part-time Contributors | 1 |
| Main outputs | • Enhanced Web3 Protocol: Anonymous gasless voting with verifiable onchain execution and protocol decentralization |
| - | • DAOs secure offchain Voting: Integration with AragonOS and AragonAPP |
| - | • Voting-as-a-service: Commoditize Voting |
| Total Budget Requested | $ 1,183,507.59(USD) |
| Impact | 1. Provide technology for secure verifiable off-chain voting and make it available through AragonApp to serve DAOs |
| - | 2. Expand Aragon use cases, focusing on bringing decentralized governance to traditional organizations (web2). |
Context
The Vocdoni project was founded in 2018 aiming to create a decentralized digital voting protocol. In 2020, adaping to the changes brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic by pivoting from a mobile app to a more accessible web app. The web app was used by the largest cultural association in Europe for its General Assembly and election, with a census of over 180,000 members.
In January 2021, the project was acquired by the Aragon Association and has continued to provide voting technology for both the web2 and web3 realms, the most outstanding being:
- Develop and Mantain Aragon Voice, a DAO proposal voting platform.
- Release of the new voting dApp for traditional organizations.
- Implementation of 14Fruites project, a digital survey that allowed for the first time, holders of government-issued digital certificates to vote securely, on top of a decentralized infrastructure that we distributed across many external stakeholders, including universities and private organizations.
- Carry out the first official and fully digital voting process organized by a public institution in Spain, the city council of Bellpuig.
- Release an alpha version of anonymous voting
Additionally, in the past six months, the team has been working towards becoming a protocol-oriented company, focusing on developers and integrators as its target user. To achieve this and to drive adoption, we released a new API, SDK, and developer portal. At the same time, we improved our protocol by simplifying it and making it more robust, modular and composable (refactoring the census package, reducing dependencies from 3rd parties protocols (IPFS), adapted to the new Tendermint release and removing legacy code) and added anonymous voting capabilities to our dApp. Paving the way for the transition to an infrastructure and protocol player, we closed several partnerships and collaborations with international projects and integrators, including Orbis, Decidim and BLOOCK.
The strategy followed to this date, has positioned the project as an important player in the local market attracting high-profile Web2 clients such as the Barcelona Football Club, the Official College of Engineers of Catalunya, and city councils such as Bellpuig and Bisbal d’Empordà. Those projects helped us gain press attention, which only in 2022 amounted more than +800 unique impacts on media outlets worldwide, as well as appearances on TV and Radio.
In the Web3 space we delivered Aragon Voice, an Ethereum dApp that allows gasless token-based voting. The dApp allowed the Aragon community to perform significant voting processes to define the future of Aragon. Leveraging on this experience, our next challenge lies in providing the Aragon DAO with a cutting-edge anonymous voting tool that fulfills DAO security requirements.
You can read more about the project’s history here.
Strategic Approach
Vocdoni’s main technological innovation is the creation of a censorship-resistant, secure, and transparent voting protocol. Our roadmap will provide all the necessary security guarantees that such a complex application requires, embracing Aragon’s initiative to lead on governance security. Under the light of recent cases, such as Ooki DAO, secure anonymous voting is a necessary property for DAO governance. Based on that premise, and according to Aragon’s objectives for 2023, we will upgrade our usage of zk-SNARKS technologies in the protocol, enabling seamless off-chain anonymous voting with delegation support and off-chain gasless voting with on-chain verifiable execution.
The implementation of these efforts will be undertaken with careful consideration of the AragonOS, which is a powerful and flexible operating system for decentralized organizations. By leveraging the features of the AragonOS, we can ensure that these efforts are not only effective but also seamlessly integrated into the broader Aragon ecosystem.
In the same direction, we will start transitioning our voting blockchain (a.k.a. Vochain) to a federated proof-of-stake model, that would provide stronger resistance to censorship while decreasing the complexity compared to a simple proof-of-stake model. This work, combined with the projected research on tokenomics will explore mid/long term strategies for utility applications of the ANT.
In the domain of verifiability, which is a key governance security attribute, we plan to submit future proposals that would enable the collaboration with the Research guild (AZKR), to integrate a zkBridge and a zero-knowledge voting aggregator (based on OVOTE) into our protocol, to deliver on-chain voting validation – meaning that transaction data (votes/results) available in our L2 voting blockchain can be verified on-chain by anyone, making it auditable, reliable and transparent.
At the same time, we will work on ensuring that the protocol can be universally accessible by establishing a Voting-as-a-service model based on the new API and SDK. While decentralization and web3 technologies lie at the core of our protocol, we have always been committed to delivering decentralized governance tools to every organization or collective in need of these tools, irrespective of their technical capacity. This allows us to contribute to the Aragon Governance strategy by expanding the technology use cases to traditional organizations. Our work would enhance compatibility with the needs of corporations, non-profits, jurisdictions, and other types of traditional organizations, to empower easy adoption of Aragon’s stack.
As we work towards becoming the de-facto standard for secure and anonymous voting infrastructure, we are focusing in the short term (2023) on learning and fast iteration by performing voting processes with soft legal requirements (low-stake). By leveraging integration partners, we will improve our product rapidly, test usability, and validate product-market fit. Meanwhile, we will start opening up the VaaS model by establishing even more key partnerships with networks of integrators, leading web3 governance projects and social participation platforms. On the Web3 space we’ll focus on bringing voting capabilities to DAOs through aragon.app, as well as to social dApps and protocols (Gitcoin Passport, Orbis, Lens Protocol, etc.).
Our medium-term strategy focuses on low-volume/high-margin income by maximizing organic growth through external integrations and networks of distributors and consultants. Having our technology validated, we will be able to host mid-stake participation processes and build a feature-rich VaaS. Please see the following section of the proposal for more information on our partnerships. As our primary revenue stream, we intend to charge usage fees at the protocol level.
To ensure the necessary technological components of the voting protocol are built with security and user-friendliness in mind, the company adheres to a set of design principles including Composability, Accessibility, E2E verifiability, Trustlessness, Free and open source, Resilience, Scalability, Anti-coercion and Automatization (click here to know more about those principles).
Primary Initiatives
Enhanced Web3 protocol: decentralized anonymous gasless voting with verifiable onchain execution
Enhancing Web3 compatibility is an essential goal, as it allows for seamless interaction between the Ethereum blockchain and our digital voting protocol, making it usable and production-ready for DAOs. To achieve this compatibility, our team is focusing on the use of zk-SNARKS technology to enable off-chain gasless voting with verifiable onchain execution.
To facilitate this process, the Vochain will act as a distributed register, where Ethereum users can associate their Ethereum address with a new ZK identity and/or delegate their voting power to another existing account. This identity can be used to build a ZK census, which contains a list of ZK identities of Ethereum users registered in the Vochain. The census can be created using a ZK census relayer service integrated into the Vocdoni stack, which allows for the creation of a SNARK-friendly census from the current Ethereum data snapshot in a flexible and programmable way.
Once the census has been created, participants can cast their votes using the zk-SNARKS anonymization mechanism available in the Vochain. Once the election is finished, the results can be sent back to Ethereum using Chainlink or other mechanisms.
Decentralization is a crucial feature for a voting protocol to achieve censorship resistance. However, we understand that integrating such changes requires a gradual approach. In the first stage of this proposal, we will develop the fundamental building blocks to migrate Vochain from a Proof-of-Authority consensus mechanism to Federated Proof-of-Stake (FPoS).
FPoS is a consensus mechanism where participation in the validator set is restricted to a federation of selected parties. The authority, which could be a DAO or its subsidiary, is responsible for determining the details of the federation, including the power to approve new validators, reward mechanisms, and enforce network security and decentralization. In this initial iteration, our goal is to establish the technical foundation of the FPoS network. We will work to gain a deeper understanding of how a tokenomics model and the FPoS network can operate and become self-sustainable with the assistance of experts.
DAOs secure offchain Voting: Integration with AragonOS and AragonAPP
The Vocdoni team is committed to offer secure offchain voting to DAOs through the Aragon stack and by working closely with the Product guild. With the upcoming enhanced web3 protocol, anonymous offchain voting with verifiable onchain execution will become a reality.
The integaration will be achieved through the two following deliverables. The first deliverable will be an MVP that provides voting capabilities to the Aragon app using signature-based voting. Based on this work, the second deliverable will introduce anonymous voting with delegation support, making it possible for any DAO created with the new stack to benefit from Vocdoni’s capabilities.
To achieve these milestones, a common proposal creation specification must be defined. The team aims to adopt the ongoing EIP4824 as the basis for the spec and integrate it into their protocol. This will not only enable Aragon DAOs but any other actor on the web3 ecosystem to utilize the Vocdoni capabilities.
By integrating with AragonOS and AragonAPP, Vocdoni is taking a significant step toward improving the security and trustworthiness of offchain voting mechanisms. This integration will provide DAO builders with a user-friendly and intuitive interface for conducting voting activities while ensuring complete anonymity and verifiability. It will also help to establish offchain voting as a standard feature in the web3 ecosystem, unlocking new possibilities for decentralized decision-making and governance.
Voting-as-a-service: Commoditize Secure Voting
Our goal is to become the ‘Stripe of voting’ and we aim to achieve this by making the voting protocol accessible and easy to use for third-party projects and developers. Key components in achieving this goal are the API and SDK, which enable easy integration of the voting protocol into existing solutions. These developments contribute to creating a compatibility layer with traditional organizations, facilitating their integration into the Aragon ecosystem.
The API and SDK will be enhanced to provide a professional level of service and achieve the full potential of the Voting-as-a-Service (VaaS) product, the Vocdoni team is working on refining the business model, expanding our partnerships strategy (focusing on integrators and web3 projects) and improving the usability of the tools. A UI templating system is also an important aspect of the VaaS offering, as it allows projects to quickly and easily create a tailored voting page without requiring deep technical knowledge.
The developer portal serves as the entry point for accessing the API, SDK, and other resources needed to use our voting protocol. By providing a comprehensive set of tools and resources, we are working towards the goal of becoming the leading provider of voting services and actively working to build and foster a strong developer community. This community is crucial for the success and adoption of the technology, and we are working to attract developers who can contribute to the platform and shape its future direction.
Other Initiatives
To maximize the success of the primary initiatives, the three following initiatives will increase the use and awareness of the above protocol, as well as the exposure of the Aragon and Vocdoni brands, especially linking them to secure, transparent and privacy-centric governance. Considering the importance of security in the web3 space, these efforts will help Aragon to continue building on Aragon’s reputation for security, attracting high stake DAOs.
As a project funded by Aragon and part of its Ecosystem, we adhere to the official Aragon brand guidelines (outlined by the Aragon Growth Team), which include displaying the “Powered by Aragon” badge on all of our communication assets, websites, products, and tools. It ensures that the “Aragon” brand, strengthened by our contributions, is prominently displayed in all relevant communications and products. We will follow this approach until we establish new guidelines altogether with Aragon DAO to boost both main and child brands’ impact.
Partnerships strategy: Increase the reach & relevance for Aragon/Vocdoni
Our objective is to implement a strong growth strategy to increase the usage of our voting technology, taking advantage of its permissionless and adaptable attributes. To achieve this, we plan to double down on building partnerships with actors that can become users, prescribers, and good fellow companions of the protocol.
We have already begun approaching potential partners, including integrators, governance platforms, and other Web3 projects and protocols. With these efforts, we have seen promising results such as an integrator using Vocdoni to provide digital voting to clients (BLOOCK), an organization using Vocdoni for a referendum with more than 150k registered voters in Germany, social dApps for voting developed during the Web3Social Hackathon (organized by Orbis), a voting module for Decidim (a governance platform with 1M participants, used by hundreds of city councils, governments and organizations around the world). Additionally, we will create a strategy to attract builders through improving technical documentation, creating guides, tutorials, and video tutorials, social media activities, hackathons, and bounty programs.
To date, we have initiated conversations and collaborations with numerous actors, including Zodiac, Gitcoin Passport, Devs on the Farcaster protocol, and General Magic, among others in our pipeline. Our goal is to gain traction organically while expanding our technology internationally through this new approach.
Be reliable and secure: Apply for certifications required to work with traditional companies and the public sector.
To increase the reputation and quality seal of elections organized with our tech stack, we must ensure that Aragon/Vocdoni are recognized as a secure, private, and compliant technology. This is also relevant for obtaining high-stake elections in the traditional world as well as for official government elections, which require a series of formal guarantees to be carried out.
To guarantee that the processes and technologies used adhere to the highest quality standards, we will reinforce our API/SDK with a security suite, we will audit our code base, and perform a trusted zkSnarks setup ceremony.
Future initiatives
The following initiatives are not covered by this proposal, nevertheless are presented for coherence purposes in order to explain the future direction.
zkBridge
The zkBridge allows for the creation of a zkRollup validity proof, demonstrating the validity of a batch of Vochain block headers by proving the correctness of signatures for active FPoS validators over a set of state transitions. With this proof uploaded on Ethereum, any content living in the Vochain state (such as election results) can be then uploaded and verified by a smart contract. It is important to point out, that for the zkBridge to be secure and trustworthy, it is essential that the Vochain network has a highly decentralized and incentivized consensus mechanism such as FPoS.
OVOTE
In addition to enhancing Web3 interoperability through the creation of a zkBridge, our team also has the goal of integrating an OVOTE-based mechanism into the Vocdoni Protocol. This Vochain extension would validate vote transactions and generate a proof demonstrating the validity of an election result for a specific census and a number of registered votes.To integrate this mechanism into the protocol, together with the Aragon Research Guild (AZKR), we will introduce changes to the OVOTE protocol, aligning it with the specific needs and constraints of the production Vocdoni network. These changes may include modifications to the cryptographic techniques used, the structure of the census, or the process for generating and validating proofs.
Work Plan
To carry out the previously described strategy, we have prepared a roadmap with the various initiatives and sub-initiatives, each with a defined timeline and considering the dependencies between them, to progress efficiently:
View the roadmap in detail and full resolution here.
By the end of the proposal period, we should have achieved the following deliverables, using the proposed OKRs to measure the success of our work plan and the proposed roadmap to guide our efforts. These deliverables will serve as proof of our success on executing our strategy and the value we have contributed to the Aragon ecosystem:
Objectives Q1 2023
Objective 1: Improve Vocdoni Protocol Web3 interoperability, focusing on Census and Verifiability
- KR1: ZK-friendly client accounts can be created via the SDK and API
- KR2: Top 20 EVM-compatible tokens, based on market cap, are supported by our new Census Builder
- KR3: Voting process results can be uploaded to EVM-based chains
Objective 2: Improve API/SDK security and adoption with integrations tools
- KR4: ≥5 usage metrics are available to monitor in an analytics dashboard
- KR5: ≥2 external projects/integrators being able to run a pilot voting process with the new SDK/UI-templating system
- KR6: Integrate zk-SNARKS Anonymous Voting to the SDK
- KR7: >80% score in security test suite provided by the DevOps Team
Objective 3: Lay the foundations of the Vocdoni Builder Community
- KR8: Developer Advocacy Strategy and annual roadmap has been defined and approved by the guild steward, product manager, comms head, and also Aragon’s Developer Advocate
- KR9: Publish 3 written technical articles or guides, and one in video format.
- KR10: Improve the Developer Portal experience by implementing the Diataxis Framework.
Team
The Vocdoni team is a highly skilled and development-oriented group. With over 70% of its members being engineers and a substantial combined experience in blockchain, distributed systems, smart contracts, and backend, the team is perfectly equipped to develop and deliver top-quality products and services. In addition to the technical expertise, the team also includes several members with other necessary skills, including product management, partnerships and communication. This allows us to take a holistic approach to product development, ensuring that their products meet the needs of their customers and the market.
The team is organized into the following key areas:
- Decentralized infrastructure and blockchain technology (4 members)
- SDK development (2 members)
- Parntnerships and Developer Relations, (1 member and 1 part-time)
- Product management (1 member).
H1 - Engineering Tech Lead & Co-founder. A computer science and distributed systems researcher with +8 years on mesh networking and 10+ years of blockchain-based projects. Responsible for guiding the high-level architectural discussions for the Vocdoni protocol.
H2 - Engineering coordinator & Guild steward: A PhD in distributed systems with 3+ years experience in software development and middlewares.
Responsible for coordinating the engineering team, SDK/UI developer and also representing the guild as a steward to the Aragon DAO.
H3 - Product Manager: A computer scientist with a master’s degree on smart cities, with +15 years of experience in software development & product management.
Responsible for translating the product strategy into actionable tasks and guiding the development team on what to do next and how in terms of reaching product goals.
H4 - Partnerships lead: A marketing expert and postgraduate in Social Economy Business Management, with 8+ years in blockchain comms and 7+ years in early-stage projects comms and community building.
Responsible for setting, leading and executing the communication and marketing strategy, enabling partnership opportunities and represent Vocdoni as a spokesperson.
H5 - Core & Smart Contracts Engineer: Computer Science, 6+ years of experience on blockchain-based projects. Backend and smart contracts developer. Guest Lecturer at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.
Responsible for designing and developing the smart contracts that bring the on-chain functionalities of the Vocdoni Protocol and one of the main contributors to the Vochain development.
H6 - Core Engineer: A backend engineer with 6+ years of experience as Innovation Research, focused on Privacy Enhanced Technologies.
Responsible for the development of the zkSNARKs circuits for the anonymous voting and contributor to the Vochain development.
H7 - Core Engineer: A distributed systems expert with +5 years of experience with mesh networks and decentralized systems.
Responsible for the correct functioning of the protocol distributed networks, as well as contributor to the Vochain development and DevOps.
H8 - SDK Engineer: A computer scientist with 12+ years of experience in software development.
Responsible for developing and maintaining the Vocdoni SDK
Part Time Contributors
P1 - Admin and Comms and ProjectsAssistant: A designer with 5+ years of experience on project management, leading different kinds of projects and dealing with customer’s needs.
Responsible for kicking-off and manage projects with clients and partners, as well as bringing the best experience to the costumers. Also provides support to Comms and Ops.
External contributors
We will collaborate with highly-experienced external contributors, already familiar with the project, in order to outsource non-core developments such as UI/UX, backend team support.
Funding Breakdown
The total requested funding period is 9 months, from March 1st 2023 to November 30th 2023.
Vocdoni is in the process of creating its own legal wrapper and will use Opex Core AG Wrapper as an OPS service provider (symbolic fee included in Other Opex). Both the team compensation, the yearly bonus & the unexpected expenses have been carried over from the previous conditions. We will be requesting the non-seasonal budget in the first season and it will be controlled by a multi-sig owned by core Vocdoni members.
| Yearly Summary | ||
|---|---|---|
| Concept | Amount (USD) | % |
| Team Compensation | $ 692,037.83 | 58.47 |
| FTE’s | 8 | |
| PTE’s | 1 | |
| Average Salary (Yearly projection) | $ 108,554.95 | |
| Bonus (12%) | $ 83,044.54 | 7.02 |
| Team Expenses | $ 67,200.00 | 5.68 |
| Total Other Opex | $ 28,172.90 | 2.38 |
| Third Party Providers | $ 200,000.00 | 16.90 |
| Non Seasonal | ||
| Hackathons/Bounties/Talks Expenses | $ 66,000.00 | 5.58 |
| Legal | $ 15,000.00 | 1.27 |
| Unexpected expenses (3% of the above) | $ 32,052.32 | 2.71 |
| Total Budget | $ 1,183,507.59 | 100.00 |
| - | - | - |
| Total Season 1 (+non-seasonal) | $ 469,504.08 | 39.67 |
| Total Season 2 | $ 356,451.76 | 30.12 |
| Total Season 3 | $ 357,551.76 | 30.21 |
| Total Budget | $ 1,183,507.59 | 100 |
Risk and Dependencies
We presenthere the potential risks and challenges that we may face throughout the year. These include security breaches, technological failures, and regulatory changes. To mitigate these risks, Vocdoni has implemented robust security measures, built-in redundancies, and has a dedicated team of engineers. In addition, the company is planning to undergo audits and certifications to further enhance the overall security of the protocol.
The following table summarizes these risks:
Risk Table:
Critical risks for implementation
(T: type {T: technological, P: practical, E: economic} ; Sev.: severity; Prob.: probability)
| Risk | T | Sev. | Prob. |
|---|---|---|---|
| R1 Product market fit Not able to get traction with our value proposition. | E | Med. | Med |
| R2 Cryptography high innovation risk We are using cutting edge cryptographic functions that have not endured yet the test of time. | T | High | Low |
| R3 Sensible market Digital voting is an extremely sensible and controversial topic. Most institutions are risk averse and the media finds it “juicy” to attack. | P | Low | High |
| R4 Network attacks There are high incentives to attack voting processes and their components. | P | Med. | High |
| R5 Miss the window of opportunity Multiple technologies make E2E verifiable voting possible now. There are poorly-performing solutions with a shorter time-to-market. | E | High | High |
| R6 Copies The entire stack is free and open source, allowing anyone to clone it. | P | Low | High |
| R7 Regulatory Changes Changes in laws or regulations at the national or international level could impact the company’s ability to operate. | P | Med. | Low |
| R8 External technical dependencies We make use of code and libraries maintained by other projects. Bugs or lack of maintenance of those projects can disrupt our development. | T | Low | High |
| Risk Mitigation Measures |
|---|
| R1 Product market fit: Agile based development with fast iteration cycles. New API/SDK strategy. Developer advocacy. Bounties. Partnerships. |
| R2 Cryptography high innovation risk: Technical audits. Open-source-based development enables constant peer review and, using bug bounties, we can maximize the incentives for hackers and researchers to scrutinize our system. Research and academic papers. |
| R3 Sensible market: Build a solid reputation. Accurate communication of risks. Legal support. |
| R4 Network attacks: Decentralized infrastructure. Proof-of-Stake. Censorship-proof design. Strong infrastructure ecosystem. encryption and multi-factor authentication. |
| R5 Miss the window of opportunity: Aggressive go-to-market strategy. Fast release cycles. Attractive pricing. |
| R6 Copies: Main strategy: reputed project. In addition, all the code is released with an open-source license. No restrictions on commercial exploitation are currently applied, although we reserve the right to change this in the future if bad practices jeopardize the project. |
| R7 Regulatory Changes: Legal Support. Address the international market where the risk is lower. |
| R8 External technical dependencies: No proprietary software is used. Open source development allows our team to take over the “abandoned” project. Risk analysis before choosing dependencies. |
Look forward to hearing the feedback on the Proposal!
EDIT: The proposal can be found live here
Thanks,
ManosD
