Goals

To Provide District0x with a set of different forms of governance and Voting Balance, giving freedom of choice and trying to prevent different form of social attacks to districts. I Think that Blockchain Technology philosophically speaking is about decentralization and freedom of choice, even if that choice is to centralize something.

Forms of Government

Upon District creation, creator/s need to choose a form of Government that will last forever for said District. Each of these governments forms will provide a set of tools for this community to develop and they need to be clearly understood and accepted by all participants of a District, as some sort of “terms & Agreement” in order to join a District. These “Laws” need to be tightly integrated with Aragon and DAO Creations. If user does not agree anymore with said form of government he/she is able to walk away of said District.

Voting Shares Every user will have vote shares according to a function to the time spent in the district. “X” stands for Timeframe spent at District, left to be discussed which basis is chosen, for example Days, Months, etc.

*_F(x) = 1+x(xLOGx)_**

X = Timeframe Y = Voting Shares

With this Function Older District Users will have more voting Power. This Model suppose that users that helped the district to grow will likely make healthy choices for it

Left to be discussed if the exact Vote Shares needs to be known by the voting users, or simply let them know that “Time at district” and “voting power” is related. Google for example do not disclose its search ranking Algorithm. Also Voting Funtion can be Discussed.

Besides this, no voting action at a district can be taken as valid if more than 66% of the voters have less than 1 “timeframe”. However, until 1 “timeframe” passed by, first votes of a district will likely be compound by more than 66% of 1 “Timeframe” voters.

Democracy

“A government where the majority makes the decisions by voting proposals.”

To make a proposal to be voted, the person needs to spend an X amount of DNT (X to be discussed) Proposals will have 2 instances

Plebiscite: People submit date and the matter (detailed) that needs to be voted and its argument. Options available
- Yes: If “yes” wins, proposal qualifies for “Decision”.
- No: If “no” wins, proposal is dismissed.

Condition: It is needed at least 66% of quorum (District participants) for a “Yes” to be valid and proceed to the next stage.

Decision: Same procedure as plebiscite but this time we can have “n” options. We need to have a default and non-editable voting option called “Not was it was plebiscited”, if this option wins the election, the user that proposed the voting gets a penalty (Penalty to be discussed).

Also needs to be discussed the time between “plebiscite” and “Decision”, where many ideas can come up around the discussion for the voted subject.

Republic

“A government where people choose other people to make decisions for us.”

User vote for Candidates.

Candidates: To qualify as candidate you will have to have
- Stake DNT (to be discussed)
- Be part of said District of at least 66% of total District Life Time

Presidential Term: 180 Days.

Elections: Every 180 days after District Creation. District Creator will be the first President during the initial 180 Days.

Proof Of life: Elected president needs to have at least 1 login to the District every 4 days, if no logins occurred during said timeframe, District will be declared as Headless. Elections will be automatically activated to happen 30 days after Declaration of Headless State.

Kill switch: District Needs to have a “Private Key” that allows to halt all capabilities of the President; this can be useful in case that the president suffers a “Hack”. If Kill switch is used, District0x needs to be contacted to restore the user to its owner.

Nonc Santo: People are open to evaluate Presidents through a Plebiscite with the statement “Halt all president capabilities due to procedures that may affect District life and development” with Following Options.

Plebiscite needs to get at least 66% of quorum (district participant).

Wins Yes: Elections will be automatically activated to happen 30 days after Plebiscite.
Wins No: No other “Nonc Santo” voting Action can take place during 60 Days (To be discussed)

President Capabilities: President will act very much like a moderator in a forum, will have high permissions on the district regarding lists, frontpage, user bans, etc. Besides this, he/she can make “Decisions” to be voted (like previously described in Democracy) without going to “Plebiscite” first. Other Capabilities to be discussed once we know all districts options and Features.

Left to be discussed other forms of Governance.

First, really happy to see more discussion and conversations around governance! 👍

Second, my understanding is that districts will be tied to an underlying Aragon Entity, and DNT holders will be able to stake into this entity in order to participate in its governance, including the ability to set by-laws that dictate how voting and even further staking would work. Presumably, any governance module that the Aragon project supports would be available for districts to use.

So if a direct democracy, representative democracy, futarchy, or liquid democracy is preferred districts would be able to do that (assuming an appropriate module is provided by Aragon).

As far as how this would work I've got a couple of questions...

You state that this should be selected upon creation and never changed, why would you want to enforce that inflexibility?

Why wouldn't districts be able to change their governance procedures based on vote or according to their by-laws?

What is the intended effect of having voting shares increase based on a function of time staked in the district? Is there a cap?

The goal seems to attempt to solve the problem described in #2 but I'm not sure why the time-based function would be better than the curation market approach to staking described there.

If we assume that there is no cap and the voting power of a stake continuously goes up the longer he or she stakes, a district that doesn't have much outside interest will become even less interesting for future stakers over time.

If there is a cap, this seems like it just creates a delay between when a user joins a district and when they can use the full weight of their voting power. I think there is definitely some benefit to this type of mechanism, though I don't think it is sufficient on its own -- it could be combined with a curation market or pricing curve based approach to staking.

Does the time-based voting mechanism work proportionally on how much DNT a user stakes, or simply that they are a user?

If it's the former, this seems to reinforce the point above. If it's the latter, what happens if a user creates many accounts each with a small amount of DNT and stakes into a district?

Thanks for your response @lkngtn I will answer your question...

1) You state that this ("form of government") should be selected upon creation and never changed, why would you want to enforce that inflexibility?

My initial thought was, if we enforce this, we set the ground to create competitives districts and see which model has better results for that particular matter and form of government. Lets say that we a have a district that is a "democratic cake shop", if another user want to create a cake shop, I think is very likely that it will select another form of government "Republic cake shop" so he can set this new district aside from its competitor from its very beginning, for this case we will have a form of government & Market competition. However, he also can create another "democratic cake shop", in that case we will have just Market competition. In the long run we can have a very nice set of data in term of economic development according to Markets, forms of government and any other input upon district creation. Anyway, I think that a change on the form of government can be healthy for the district too, so it needs to be further discussed.

2) What is the intended effect of having voting shares increase based on a function of time staked in the district? Is there a cap?

I thought of this having the premise that everything can be purchased , everything except Time, that is why this resource is used in this model to favor voting shares. DNT or any other form of currency staked in order to get shares of votes seems to me that leaves the district prone to attack, and it favors the model of "rich get richer" actions, why ? Economic cost of "buying" votes at the very beggining of the Districts ("long tail" districts, not talking about Big ones) wont represent much of a "penalty" for a malicious whale, he can control "competitive districts" from the very beginning, preventing development. This Staking model is indeed useful if majority of users joins just one or few districts related to a particular market, where the total pool of staked DNT can represent a very big challenge for the malicious whale. But in the same way, a very big District in District0x can organize themselves to stake DNT in another "competitive district" just to prevent further development of the latter... However it will be nice to see a model where we can make a function of Time and Stake, getting best of both worlds.

Nice question about cap, I forgot to include it.

Yes there is a Cap of 10 timeframes for the model proposed, how ever we can discuss the following options once the user exceeds this 10 timeframes cap

He Keeps his Voting Shares
He cant vote anymore

Second option will favor a development and will encourage people to stay in districts since eventually they will become important members of the entity.

3) Does the time-based voting mechanism work proportionally on how much DNT a user stakes, or simply that they are a user?

No, its regardless the staked DNT, just time as a part of the district.

One of the thing to take seriously of this model are "zombie users". For example I can create a user and join a district and leave it there since the district creation, thus on the long run I will have enough voting power to act maliciously. One of the remediations in order to use his voting power, would be to set a "Max Idle Time", or keep a "base level activity". However nothing can prevent that a user can become corrupt and act against the district.

Apologies if these are addressed in the comments above

Upon District creation, creator/s need to choose a form of Government that will last forever for said District.

This is not the case, we fully intend for any district to select a governance module in the respective Aragon entity upon creation, but at any point this can be put to a vote and changed.

With this Function Older District Users will have more voting Power. This Model suppose that users that helped the district to grow will likely make healthy choices for it.

I don't think this is likely to be true if voting shares are issued with respect to the amount of time a user has spent staked. In fact, I think this supposition would by and large be false. Users would stake to districts early and often with no intention of supporting a district in any way, and would be reinforcing staked positions into successful districts over time so they can grab a larger and larger share of districts that are finding success without their participation.

I am curious, though, if any thought has been put into the idea of users maintaining a partial voting share bonus after unstaking, which they can reclaim thereafter by re-staking from the same account. This mechanism could have benefits not just for a time-based voteshare allotment, but for any voteshare model that conditionally issues bonus voteshares. THIS portion of the curve being time-based is potentially quite a pervasive solution.

Vitalik address in much more technical way what I wrote before here, hybrid models based on stakes and Time could lead to a better results.

https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/08/21/introduction-futarchy/

district0x / governance

DGP 4 : Voting & Forms of Government #4