This is a decentralized voting application that will allow voters to anonymously verify they belong to a set of registered voters and cast votes by signalling their endorsement of a particular string.
Application type
zkDAO
Proposal Overview
This application will allow anyone to create a poll and automatically become the coordinator of said poll. Users can then register to vote on the poll and vote for their choice. We will be using Zero-Knowledge proofs to handle the registration and voting by the users. Each poll will have a unique external nullifier and the user will only be able to vote once per each external nullifier.
Use Cases
This application will serve as a DAO tool to allow decentralized organizations to register polls for their members to anonymously vote for an initiative or candidate while also ensuring that each voting member is properly authenticated and only votes once per poll. According to the Messari Report, DAO tooling is an existential need right now across crypto communities and privacy has always been a major concern in the blockchain space. The whole essence of a free and fair election is to ensure that the voters are not discriminated against for their choice. In the case of a blockchain-based voting system, all the votes are public and can be tied back to a particular address. This style of voting opens an avenue for collusion and discrimination.
To solve this issue, we are building an application that will allow various DAOs to allow their members to anonymously register and vote.
Competitive Landscape
Currently, there are some decentralized applications focused on DAO tooling such as Aragon, Snapshot among others. Though they are well-established brands in the DAO tooling market, they lack the capability to run an anonymous poll on behalf of the DAOs. This capability is where AnonyVote comes in.
Proposal Ask
The AnonyVote application will be established to be community-driven and self-funded by the DAO in a bid to bring privacy to the DAOs. In order to get this up and running, we will be requesting the $15k/year stable basic income to take care of initial development, welfare and operations costs.
This ask will be in line with the laid down milestones as detailed below
launching a feature-complete product on our testnet
forming a DAO with 5-out-of-9 multisig with our DAOs
launching on our mainnet with audit
attracting 1k daily active users (with launch video, full PR promotion)
attracting 10k daily active users (with a detailed roadmap, governance process)
may i also suggest that if possible, the applicant tries to push for an earlier mainnet launch too. as they say in Paul Graham’s YCombinator (one of the best known accelerators for startups), the best time to launch is always: NOW. don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good. once you launch, you can and will always need to fine tune. meaningful fine tuning often only happens when you have users to give you feedback.
Yes we can work with an upgradable contract and launch on the mainnet earlier, that way even after launch we can always fine-tune and add more features to the application
with 5 positive votes from governors, this project will be funded. congratulations! @tosin we will contact you re: induction to zkDAO, and will begin paying you DBI at $3k/year starting April 1 since you’ve already achieved Milestone 1.
Thanks for the approval. I have started working on a beta version to be released to mainnet earlier. I will update the community on this thread with the progress report
@tosin please use this space for update on progress and future milestones too. we hope you get more DBI soon, as soon as you form a DAO for the longevity of the protocol
In accordance with the milestones, a DAO has been formed and a multisig account (0xd16eef9ae1b643e93C4E931c20c93445472e7c6A) created with 5 out of 9 signatories.
Details of the DAO can be found below
AnonyVote DAO Mandates
Maintain and support the AnonyVote application as it scales
Build anonyVote and introduce more functionalities as it reaches its goal as the best DAO voting platform
Promote the application to be the go-to tool for all DAOs in the Harmony ecosystem and beyond
Founding Governors Tosin
Governor at zkDAO and teaching staff at ZKU. Tosin is a software engineer at a leading bank in Africa and contributing to the Harmony Blockchain in the areas of zero-knowledge proofs and privacy. Hakwan
Governor at zkDAO and course director of ZKU. Hakwan has over 14 years of experience in tertiary education. Besides working at Harmony as a core team member, he also directs the Laboratory for Consciousness at the RIKEN Institute (Center for Brain Science) near Tokyo. Cathie
Founder of zkPhoto, governor at zkDAO, and teaching staff at ZKU. Cathie is a public speaker and instructor on the topics of machine learning, blockchain, and web3 development in Hong Kong. Semar
Governor at zkDAO and teaching staff at ZKU. Semar also works at Webb-Protocol as a software engineer. Alex
Governor at zkDAO and teaching staff at ZKU. Alex is a master’s degree student and TA at the Faculty of Technical Sciences in Novi Sad, Serbia. Kayuet
She is currently a tenured associate professor at UCLA. She studies social networks and has previously worked with Harmony on research about data marketplace and privacy. She will contribute to the DAO with her expertise in university-level administration and funding management. Pran
Teaching staff at ZKU. Pran is an engineer contributing to Cardano and Harmony ecosystems, working on wallets, bridges, and zero-knowledge proof. Kousik
He is a final year bachelor’s degree student in Computer Science at Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati from India. He is a cryptography and zero-knowledge enthusiast keen on pursuing a Master’s degree in the same. He is currently a TA at ZKU. Daniel
He is an Electrical/Electronic Engineer, Blockchain expert and expert Web Copywriter. He has contributed to various early-stage startups, from business development to team management, corporate and brand communications, and scale optimisation. He is also a governor of Harmony Naija DAO and Harmony Africa DAO
