TLDR: BanklessDAO is proposing enabling a partial voter privacy setting on its Snapshot proposals to mitigate potential voter manipulation. The DAO has historically relied heavily on the Snapshot tool to ratify key changes in the rapidly growing organization.

Over the last few months, BanklessDAO has introduced a number of key updates to its governance process. Among these updates were new processes that addressed longstanding issues such as the implementation of a bDIP process and a Consitution. The bDIP process formalized a structure to enact change to the governance process itself while the Constitution serves as “the canonical source for organizational structure”. BanklessDAO has not shied away from experimentation and making improvements to its structure whenever possible. Included in these processes is the ever-important off-chain voting tool Snapshot.

As a DAO’s governance processes mature its reliance on available tools typically grows. In this case, BanklessDAO relies heavily on the Snapshot platform to support its democratic decision-making process and ratify changes to the organization. Since its creation in May 2021, BanklessDAO has run over 50 Snapshot proposals to progress the organization toward its mission of helping the world go bankless.

In the world of token voting, voter manipulation has not disappeared but is often exacerbated by the increased visibility afforded to us by blockchains. Snapshot set off to attempt to fix some of these shortcomings. Snapshot is a key pillar within the current DAO tooling stack. The tool provides hundreds of decentralized organizations with an off-chain (and gasless) token-weighted voting mechanism. Unfortunately, up until recently voting through Snapshot (and other voting systems) was not private: wallet addresses are visible to any who cares to look, and user profiles can easily be assembled through basic research (by using Etherscan, for example). Perhaps more importantly, the lack of privacy means that front-running and other forms of voting manipulation can take place while a vote is live. A voter can be dismayed when seeing live voting results leading to voter apathy and could also open them to the possibility of being influenced to change their vote. To address this, Snapshot (alongside Shutter Network) in October introduced Shielded Voting, which offers partial voter privacy on live proposals. The new feature on the Snapshot platform allows DAOs to hide voting results until the vote has concluded. It is important to note that the encryption mechanism the feature relies upon is not entirely decentralized and may also contain bugs.

The bDAO community is now debating the idea of implementing this feature into its governance process. They’re considering whether the move makes sense, is beneficial to the DAO, and is a productive experiment to run.

The Proposal: Implement Shielded Voting

Introduced on December 2nd by Icedcool, the proposal outlines a request for BanklessDAO to implement Shielded Voting. The new voting feature would be utilized in bDAO’s Snapshot proposals for the remainder of Season 6, which concludes in February 2023.

In general, the proposal frames itself as an experiment with the potential of full adoption into the bDAO constitution. Following the conclusion of Season 6, the experiment would gather community feedback to reassess its value going forward. If the community agrees that the feature has had a positive impact, a bDIP would be created and voted on. The bDIP would make changes to the DAO’s constitution to formally include Shielded Voting as a feature within proposals going forward.

BanklessDAO boasts one of the most well-documented governance processes. Proposals at bDAO generally fall into one of two categories: Grant Requests and Improvement Proposals. Proposals first start off in the forum feedback stage and must meet a quorum within the forum polling depending on the severity of the governance update. Once a proposal has passed this stage it moves to Snapshot. The final step is a 7-day Snapshot vote that requires >66% approval to succeed. Holders of the BANK token are granted voting rights and influence over the direction of the organization.

Icedcool’s proposal currently resides as a draft on the forums, gathering community feedback and input. In addition, the forum post is running a soft consensus poll to further gauge sentiment around the idea.

Comments on the proposal and engagement, in general, have been mixed. On one side, proponents argue there is value in experimenting and being at the forefront especially if it helps prevent voter manipulation. The other side is generally against the idea of adopting an untested and early-stage product that has the power to disrupt a key function at BanklessDAO, its governance.

Big Picture

If DAOs are going to evolve and become increasingly prevalent as their value and utility are demonstrated, the mechanisms DAO governance relies on need to improve — and rapidly. There are all sorts of problems with token-voting governance — beginning with the design and extending through tooling. It is incumbent upon leading services such as Snapshot to address these problems by introducing new features, and it is equally incumbent upon DAOs to push themselves to experiment with those new features. It’s a collaborative effort toward growth. BanklessDAO is one of those communities willing to experiment in public, modeling possibilities for others even as it risks “failure.” In this case, failure would mean that shielded voting isn’t yet sufficiently developed to function properly, perhaps resulting in a scuttled vote. But success would mean that BanklessDAO discovers a voting system much less vulnerable to manipulation — which would be a major step forward.

We’ll be tracking this proposal activity closely at Boardroom, follow our newsletter to stay up to date.  *If you’re a voter in a protocol, make sure to check out Boardroom Portal.

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