Name of DAO
Web3 Encryption Services DAO
Proposal overview
Summary
Web3 Encryption Services (W3ES) intends to form a DAO to develop, govern, maintain, and provide education regarding next-generation encryption libraries & tooling that is:
- Web3-native, that is, rooted in cryptographic addressing (such as wallet keypairs), and built for Web3 environments
- Open-source, and free-to-build, to encourage adoption
- Uses well-researched and adopted cryptographic methods and libraries, such as Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), to secure Web3
- Integrates or compatible with existing libraries and tooling, such as LibP2P, Ether.JS, Web3.JS, and OpenSSL
- Compatible with most Web3 networks and services, assuming cryptographic addressing
By organizing Web3 Encryption Services as a DAO, we hope to:
- Foster community involvement and education, building for services and libraries to meet the evolving needs of Web3 Developers
- Receive guidance, leadership, and participation from core community leaders and organizations
- Receive, manage, and appropriately deploy resources and network fee revenues, both at early stages and over time
- Maintain transparency and trustworthiness throughout the lifespan of the organization
From Web2 to Web3: The State of Things
Web3 is actively decentralizing everything from storage to computation to ownership, but still relying on encryption protocols for our security and privacy that were designed for Web1 and Web2. Many of these protocols were not intended for untrusted public networks like blockchains, they make use of centralized trusted authorities, or do not take advantage of new decentralized technologies.
An excellent example is secured web traffic: 94% of all web traffic today is authenticated by around 10 organizations - certificate authorities - globally. Malicious actors can, and have used these organizations to receive legitimate certificates and establish complex man in the middle attacks, exploiting the very infrastructure that underpins all the web.
As we store more value on decentralized networks (think exchange hot wallets or high-value NFTs), our infrastructure becomes a more lucrative target. Do we want to risk someone manipulating traffic between validator nodes, or between your wallet and a node?
Most existing protocols are rooted in our location - our IP address, a device, a SIM card - and how we associate identity with that location. Web3 networks such as Harmony, Ethereum, and others, use cryptographic addressing - your public and private keypair. “Web3-Native” security, in this case, implies using cryptographic addressing as the main primitive, and does not rely on centralized services, infrastructure, or protocols.
Web3 Encryption Services, as a DAO, fosters the development, support, and deployment of Web3-native encryption.
Example Use Cases
It is important to distinguish between cryptographic signatures and encryption:
Cryptographic signatures are used in Web3 to approve messages, transactions, and is what we’re largely familiar with, but are not easily used to encrypt data.
Encryption uses similar cryptography to ensure the privacy and security of actual data, like files, web traffic, or conversations.
Web3 Encryption Services will allow Web3 applications and services to function more decentralized, with less dependence on centralized infrastructure, locally-stored credentials, and traditional passwords, by encrypting data using the same keypairs used for signatures.
NFTs
As NFTs mature, we’re seeing increasing demand for the ability to control access or make private data associated with the NFTs, such as images, or characteristics. W3ES enables developers to easily encrypt NFT metadata at minting, with nothing more than an owner’s public address.
dApp Development - E2E encryption
Many dApps have need of End-to-End encryption, whether building decentralized chat, or want to securely share files peer to peer. W3ES enables dApp developers to easily enable E2E encryption without using cookies, device verification, SMS verification, etc, for a truly decentralized-secure application.
File storage
Currently, if you want to secure your information before storing on decentralized file storage like IPFS, the dApp or user creates a key locally. This key remains on the local device, or must be managed by the dApp remotely. W3ES would provide a decentralized means for both users and dApps to encrypt user data for storage.
Infrastructure
Many projects, including Harmony, use LibP2P for communications between nodes or endpoints. LibP2P is a great project from Protocol Labs, and uses a protocol similar to TLS without Certificate Authorities. With W3ES, we have an opportunity to provide Web3-native identity using decentralized services like ENS to better verify identity in P2P communications.
Digital Rights Management (DRM)
W3ES is also working on a fully-decentralized Proxy Re-Encryption Scheme. This would allow data owners to provide others with controlled access (such as limited-time) to their data or applications stored on decentralized storage, such as NFT artwork in a virtual reality gallery, or a 24-hour rental of a video file.
The Library and Tools
The team behind W3ES has begun development of three pilot encryption protocols, for application in different use cases.
More technical specifications can be found on our github:
Single-Party Encryption
Single-party encryption enables anyone with a wallet keypair to encrypt any type of data, such as an image file. The encrypted data can be stored on any decentralized storage network, and be recovered from any device, requiring nothing more than the wallet keypair used when encrypting.
Multi-Party Encryption
Multi-Party Encryption allows two or more addresses to create and share an encryption key in a fully-decentralized manner. This key can then be used for end-to-end encryption, such as private chat or securely connecting to a dApp. It can also be used to share access to encrypted data on decentralized networks, such as a collaborative document.
Proxy Re-Encryption
Proxy Re-Encryption allows a data owner to empower a decentralized service the ability to safely provide access to decentralized, encrypted data. When a user is provided access, the service creates a temporary copy of the encrypted data, unique to the user, which can then be revoked and deleted based on certain conditions. Examples may include providing a new medical provider temporary access to you medical records, or one-time access to a journalistic article.
The DAO
Web3 Encryption Services DAO serves as the primary vehicle to coordinate efforts towards building and adopting Web3-native encryption, privacy, and security.
The DAO exists to:
Develop: Build, test, audit, and release open-source primitives, tools, and libraries for the Web3 community.
Support: Manage, deploy, and collect funds and resources in support of the Web3 community.
Community: Education, advocacy, interaction, and adoption are critical to a safer, self-sovereign Web3. The DAO will commit resources to nurture and grow a community of experts, users, and builders.
More specifics on the DAO structure can be found here, and is open to comments:
Project Roadmap
For the sake of simplicity, we have broken up the roadmap into two tracks: DAO Development and Technical Development.
DAO Roadmap
Phase I - Founding
- Identify & Recruit Council Leadership
- Discuss and ratify DAO structure & bylaws
- Deploy and fund W3ES
- Recruit officers
- Begin operations
Phase II - Bootstrapping & Development
- Community events (hackathons, conferences, panels, etc)
- Content Creation in general education, advocacy, and tutorials
- Community curation, e.g. discord, telegram, github, forums
- Recruitment and community building, bounties, partnerships
- Identify and support 5 pilot programs in strategic Web3 spaces: NFTs, DeFi, Storage, Infrastructure, Gaming, Developer tools
Phase III - Community Integration & Decentralization
- Public distribution of governance token
- Encourage further decentralization or Sub-DAOs
Technology Roadmap
Phase I - Basic Encryption Libraries
- Security Audits for Single-party, multiparty encryption protocols
- Production-ready libraries for beta-testing
Phase II - Pilot Projects & Web3 Key Management
- Decentralized Hardware (SGX) security protocol
- Development of decentralized key management protocol
- Support for 5 pilot programs
Phase III - Proxy Re-encryption, dApp Dev Support
- Proxy Re-encryption using Decentralized Hardware protocols
- Ongoing support for pilot program, new use cases
Proposal Ask
$1,000,000
Per the Harmony DAO guidelines, we propose to ask for as close to the maximum available grant as possible, $1M. These resources will be used to cover:
- Salaries for 5 officers, determined on their expertise and geographic location, sufficient to cover local living expenses and compensate for their time and work
- Third-Party Audits for each protocol, estimated at $30k-$50k each
- Bounties, grants, and sponsorships for development & research
- Conference, hackathon, and event sponsorship, education, and prizes
- Development of educational resources
Once the DAO is active and protocols are tested and published, the DAO will be sustained by network fees associated with identity verification, handshake facilitation, and key generation, where appropriate.
Community, Metrics, and Adoption
Community
Anyone interested in the security and privacy of Web3 can become a general token holder. This includes developers, researchers, regulators, infrastructure providers, and foundations. General token holders are expected to:
- Review, propose, and vote on initiatives
- Participate in general elections
- Contribute to discussions regarding the organization and its efforts.
From the general token holders, the organization also requires 9 members to serve as a Leadership Council, as well as appoint 5 functional officers to carry out the tasks associated with the DAO.
Tokenomics for governance will be determined by the community and council leadership.
Metrics
Adoption is the primary goal of the W3ES DAO. It can be measured in terms of:
- Usage: How many dApps are utilizing the services and libraries W3ES offers
- Integration: How many common libraries, such as Ethers.JS and OpenSSL, have included W3ES as part of their core offering
- Development: How many, and how complete are the different W3ES libraries
- Education: With what frequency, and with what reach, is W3ES helping bring awareness to the security and privacy needs and solutions of the Web3 community
- Impact: How many end users are actively benefiting from W3ES, measured in terms of active addresses, volume of encrypted data stored on network, and through network fees
The quarterly actual goals or target metrics should be determined by the DAO at formation, based on resources, community, and participation.
Adoption
Adoption will largely be driven through education and awareness:
- Sponsoring and participating in Web3 conferences and meet-ups, both virtual and in-person
- Sponsoring and mentoring in Web3 Hackathons, offering prizes and guidance
- Offering bounties and sponsorships for the development of certain community-approved initiatives
- Producing quality documentation, tutorials, introductions, and thought-pieces, both in written word and video formats
- Establishing strategic partnerships with organizations and communities, such as Gitcoin, ENS, Consensys, Harmony, EF, etc
External links
Developed by Guer Labs
Project History and Team
W3ES was founded by Guer Labs.
Guer Labs is a bootstrapped 2-person team based in San Francisco, CA and Paris, France. They were recently accepted to Station F, a French Accelerator and co-working space, as part of their January 2022 batch of The Founder’s Program. They have been building in the Web3 space since 2017, have participated in hackathons such as EthGlobal’s HackFS and ScalingETH, as well as participated in Gitcoin/Protocol Labs Apollo-Kernel Program.
The first code for W3ES was completed in June 2021, with the concept of W3ES taking shape in October of the same year. They have spent the past months building awareness at conferences, collecting feedback, and working on practical implementations with Ethers.JS, Web3.JS, and WebAssembly. Our work in encryption began in 2018, when we realized that for Web3 to reach its full potential, we would need Web3-native means of securing and managing access to data.
The team consists of James Bourque and Steven Matthiesen, who are excited to expand the team in the form of a DAO on Harmony!
James Bourque - Operations and Research: Background in business operations and project management, James has been focused on driving the project in a meaningful way. Focused full time since Apr 2019 on Guer Labs, has conducted much of the research into the relevant cryptography since 2017, developed the overall system architecture, and wrote/compiled the encryption code itself.
Steven Matthiesen - Engineering: Full-stack Engineer, developing in Web3 since 2017, working in JS, GoLang, JSON, React, Solidity, HTML. BS in Computer Science from University of Arizona - Magna Cum Laude. Steven enjoys working in the full stack and enjoys the challenge of building projects that are fully decentralized.
