Separation of Powers + Checks and Balances

[burrrata]

@s_ben

giving people the power to speak up and freely express themselves without fear of losing their income would be huge. That alone could make for a much better working experience and better decision-making over time, as good ideas won’t get killed on the social layer before they have a chance to make it to the governance layer (or at least inform the discussion).

Yes.

@s_ben

Another important aspect I think is anonymous voting. Not sure where that comes into play here, but there’s a reason American’s voting system is anonymous. If someone can prove you voted a certain way, they can coerce you to vote a certain way. And will.

Totally, however zero-knowledge voting requires a lot of computation. Given how SourceCred is computed offchain maybe voting could be too? Would require research, but yeah totally agree.

Another thing that might help here is Etheruem mixers. This only applies if A) voting happens on Ethereum, and B) voting tokens are transferable. If voting is not transferable (for example Cred weighted voting) then a zero-knowledge voting app would be needed.

@s_ben

Another strategy is to “localize” votes. Whales by definition don’t tend to worry about small decisions. Their time and attention is limited. If there were votes, for instance, about small funding decisions within a bigger project, or minor policy change, they may be happy to abstain and let the “plebs” in the trenches with more knowledge about the subject determine the outcome, or be fine with being excluded by some mechanism.

Doesn’t work. Whales have opinions. Strong opinions. This means that if something is localized, but then happens to get on a whale’s radar: game over.

One way around this, however, is to have independent autonomous communities. For example, if you have a network maybe that platform has some governance that happens at the network level. There could be lots of organizations on that network however. Those networks would have their own reputation and governance that is separate from the network. This way the organizations can be autonomous and whales can’t affect them directly other than at the network level. If these organizations rely on funding from whales then there’s lots of potential influence, but if they don’t need the whales for much, then whales can focus on swimming in the ocean vs the pond.

@s_ben

Yet another strategy that’s been discussed are mechanisms like quadratic voting, which SourceCred could be in a good position to experiment with, as contributions over time are generally more Sibyl-resistant than other metrics for determining who the humans are.

YES! Is there a SourceCred wishlist somewhere that we can add this to?

@s_ben

the gamification element (badges, etc.) provide a clear path to more permissions

Would be cool to explore and leverage this more.

@s_ben

Reddit is also an inspiration. I know the most toxic communities get all the press, but there are some large, skillfull communities that downright give me hope for humanity. And most make ample use of moderation tools typically customized by the mods

Just today a subreddit integrated with an Aragon DAO so that members can vote and do stuff on the sub. It’s starting small, but this idea is to give the community control of it’s destiny and a way to engage in governance beyond just having moderators.

@decentralion

it totally fails to recognize some categories of work. I think the best example of this is legal work and sensitive strategic planning: @ianjdarrow has been a great help to me on both of these fronts, but because the conversations are 1:1 chats, they don’t produce legible activity. And if SourceCred fails to recognize some contributors, it’s both a moral failing (unfair!) and a utilitarian failing (incentivizing high value contributions is important!).

This is rather unfortunate. The heart of the system is that it recognizes and rewards contributions. What gets measured gets managed, so no contributions left behind! How would a protocol like SourceCred value 1 on 1 interacts like this tho? Would the cred just flow from you to them, or would there be some other way to value it if it adds value to the entire platform (like legal council might)?