During my presentation at DAO Denver 2023 I spoke about how DAOs can leverage ZKP tooling to make their communities more privacy friendly. Some examples I talk about are shielded treasures and anonymous voting.
DAOs have been struggling for a while with default financial transparency. Through the use zero knowledge proofs (ZKPs) DAOs could potentially make their treasuries private. This practice is a common occurrence in the traditional business environment, where it is unusual for an entity, be it a company or a non-governmental organization, to publicly disclose the entirety of their treasury.
While there are merits to maintaining a certain level of transparency in treasuries, it is not without its drawbacks. Currently, DAOs operate with open treasuries, leaving them vulnerable to being outbid in auctions as their maximum bid is publicly known. A potential solution to this issue might be the integration of Tornado Cash Nova and Juice Box, thereby enabling the creation of shielded treasuries.
As the world of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) continues to grow and evolve, the need for improved privacy and scalability becomes more apparent. Enter zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), a groundbreaking technology that offers the perfect solution for these challenges. In this blog post, we’ll explore how ZKPs are already being used in the crypto and web3 space and dive into some exciting use cases for DAOs, including shielded treasuries, anonymous voting, gasless voting, and proof of reputation.
Every day, the average crypto and web user interacts with simple ZKP systems. For instance, ZK proofs are used when signing an on-chain transaction, as you prove you possess the private key to your wallet without revealing it.
But how can we apply ZKPs to the world of DAOs?
Several innovative use cases have emerged, such as:
Shielded treasuries for DAOs
DAOs can keep their treasuries hidden, allowing them to participate in sealed bid auctions without revealing their total assets. An excellent example is the 2001 ConstitutionDAO bid, where a DAO aimed to purchase a physical copy of the US Constitution. The public nature of their treasury allowed a rival bidder to outbid them by a small margin, illustrating the need for shielded treasuries.
Griffin Dunaif and Dan Boneh have proposed Private Treasuries, which can be built using Tornado Cash Nova. This enables a DAO management platform similar to Juicebox, where only the person managing the DAO can see the funds.
Anonymous voting for DAOs
DAO members can cast their votes without revealing their identities, ensuring a private and secure voting process. In 2015, Zhao and Chan proposed a zkSNARK-based protocol for private Bitcoin voting. The commitments are broadcast publicly, while the underlying values and opening keys remain secret. On-chain results need to be revealed by participants themselves.
ZK for scaling, gasless voting for DAOs
Aragon has developed SNARV, a general framework for e-voting protocols, with two implementations: OVOTE, a Layer 2 design for Ethereum voting similar to zkRollup, and BatRaVot, a lightweight voting protocol that supports delegate voting. BatRaVot is currently a proof of concept aimed at reducing gas costs, but Aragon plans to add privacy functions in the future.
By aggregating votes off-chain and using zkSNARK proofs, gas costs are significantly reduced. Aragon’s OVOTE is a prime example. When users want to vote, they create a ballot with wallet information, their choice, and a small proof. An aggregator then collects all the votes, sending them to a smart contract, thus reducing gas fees.
Snapshot X is another fascinating project, developed by Snapshot in collaboration with StarkWare. This voting framework, built on StarkNet (a Layer 2 ZK-Rollup), enables any DAO to run their governance on-chain on Layer 2 and execute transactions on Ethereum. Snapshot X also supports shielded voting through the Shutter Network, where results are only revealed after the voting period ends (btw no ZKPs are used for this semi-private feature though).
Proof of reputation for DAOs
Users can prove their reputation in a DAO without exposing their identity. UniRep and Interep are two projects that focus on this use case. UniRep is a private, non-repudiable reputation system based on ZKPs. It gives users true anonymity using short lived psuedonyms. A single user has a number of valid identifiers at any given time. Interep allows DApps or services to verify users’ reputation without revealing their identities. This is possible thanks to the use of zkSNARKs and Semaphore.
The world of ZKPs is vast, and projects like the Ethereum Privacy and Scaling Exploration, Aragon and Snapshot are all exploring the potential use cases of ZKPs for DAOs. A lot of these are right now at an early development stage, but as we move forward, we can expect more exciting developments bringing enhanced privacy tooling to the DAO landscape.
This blog was originally a talk I gave at DCENTRAL Miami, if you’re too lazy to read you can watch it here.
The goal of this talk was to look at the different players within the DAO landscape, to understand where we’re headed next. What I find personally most fascinating about DAOs and the wider web3 field is that everyone seems to have a different understanding of what DAOs actually are. For some people it’s all about community, for others it’s “just” an internet LLC. A pretty cool problem that underlines the decentralized nature of it all.
I’ll not make an attempt here to define what a DAO is, but I’ll invite you to read along to consider some different examples of what a DAO can be.
The early days 2013 – 2016: DAOs & DACs are starting to pop up
The idea of DAOs pops up first in 2013 in a blog post by Vitalik Buterin on Bitcoin.com.A year later the term finds mentoning in the Ethereum Whitepaper. There, DAOs are defined as decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) – long-term smart contracts that contain the assets and encode the bylaws of an entire organization.” This early definition focuses mostly on how funds are managed within an organization, being entirely governed on-chain.
Besides DAOs Vitalik also mentions the idea of DACs, decentralized autonomous corporations, and decentralized organizations (DOs). DOs come probably the most close to today’s DAO landscape. They describe on-chain communities without auto-executable code where humans first need to discuss and coordinate to find consensus.
There are two different use cases that become already apparent back then for DAOs.
Maker DAO was started in 2014 by Rune Christensen. The goal of the DAO is to build DAI, an algorithmic stable coin that is backed by a basket of crypto assets, including USDC and ETH, initially though only starting out with ETH. Before grounding itself in the offline world through the creation of the Maker foundation, Maker DAO acted pretty much like an internet LLC.
On the other hand is The DAO, which was started in 2016. The DAO raised 9 figures to invest into the Ethereum ecosystem, but got hacked, which led to the Ethereum hard fork. This was a DAO that invests into building, more like a decentralized VC fund. Laura Shin wrote an entire book on its entire story, I recommend checking it out.
Even though The DAO is no longer around, the original investors can still be tracked down on-chain. DAOs are portable communities that still exist even after an “official” shut down. The team from Personae labs has build and Ethereum OG twitter account through which early participants in The DAO can tweet anonymously from, their membership being attested through zk proofs, without doxing their real identities. Unlike a facebook group or a crowdfunding campaign those communities can be tapped into and leveraged way beyond their actual purpose and time.
2nd wave DAOs 2017 – 2019: co-investing
Even though The DAO failed spectacularly, the idea of co-investment DAOs stayed around. Shortly after, several co-investment DAOs popped up like Meta Cartel, Moloch DAO and Gitcoin. Today co-investing DAOs have probably emerged as the biggest DAO category and it would be impossible to name them all.
3rd wave DAOs 2020: A Cambrian Explosion
With the pandemic hitting and the last bull run we’ve seen a cambrian explosion of different DAO categories. The DAOs named here are not meant to represent entire ecosystems, but to just exemplify the various categories.
Protocol Governance DAOs
By now every major protocol has at least partially turned itself into a DAO or launched a DAO on the side to manage the funding of public goods built with the protocol, grants, or sometimes just parties. Here being a token holder does usually only give you the right to decide what gets built and not the right to (just randomly) contribute. Two examples for protocol DAOs are Aave or ENS where protocol governance is mostly done through DAO proposals and then executed by employees / core contributors of the DAO.
The problem is that governance tokens don’t necessarily mean auto-execution of proposals. As a recent vote on Arbitrium has shown, votes in some cases are just merely considered a recommendation. Without knowing this with 100% certainty I’m assuming the Arbitrium Foundation is based in Switzerland, where indeed Swiss lawyers will recommend to interpret token votes issued by governance token holders only as a recommendation. If the token holders would have actual voting power Swiss law would deem them a security.
At the end of the day this kind of protocol governance is nothing more than a legal LARP to avoid securities fraud. I’m not saying governance shouldn’t be done, but we also shouldn’t kid ourselves with these pseudo votes dominated by whales that are eventually only just recommendations and not on-chain actions.
Anyways, everyone has a protocol governance DAO now. Some more examples are the Aave grants DAO to distribute funds to ecosystem builders. So does the Ethereum L2 Polygon, however Polygon itself is not a DAO and governed just like a normal company. (Of course not all of those will be impacted by this Swiss security law dilemma.)
The biggest category in the DAO landscape are DAOs that function as on-chain communities. These groups usually don’t build one thing together but often come together to support the building of things or gather around a specific interest. Some sub-categories are:
Co-working DAOs
Developer DAO: a collective of hundreds of web3 developers, a network to tap into for hackathons, resources, learning and gigs
These groups could literally be facebook groups but have decided to organize in a decentral setting on-chain. To be honest, I didn’t take these groups very seriously at first sight, but I think they really lead the way in exemplifying what a decentralized web could mean.
I do wonder though whether the over-financialisation through token games will work in favor or against the wider adoption and growth of these groups.
DAOs as company structures
These DAOs are different from protocol governance DAOs. A lot of protocols still pay their employees in fiat whereas the DAOs that operate in this category are really a lot more like an internet LLC where all payments are being made in crypto. Some company decisions can be inspected on-chain, but the main purpose of the DAO is to just run the company, without much outside interference in its workings. Just like a privately held company would do as well.
An example is the Sarcophagus DAO, a fully on-chain company, all investments were made in crypto, all salaries are paid in crypto and some contributors are AFAIK anonymous.
The DAO DAO, builds DAO tooling for DAOs, fully organized as a DAO, all salaries are paid in DAO tokens. Speaking of a circular economy.
But having an IRL company in the back of a DAO still seems to be more beneficial. The Sushi DAO, the decentralized autonomous organization behind crypto exchange SushiSwap recently voted on the creation of a Panamanian foundation, a Panamanian corporation and a Cayman Islands foundation to govern & structure the different aspects of the Sushi Swap business.
Why do we need DAOs?
A couple of days ago I gave a talk for a normie, non-crypto native audience. They really struggled with the “why DAOs” which I think is fair enough. A lot of this can be done without a blockchain, you can just incorporate a company, have shareholder agreements, voting etc.
The innovation beyond the “everything is on chain” and therefore transparent, inspectable, immutable, is rather in how to allow for the formation of global communities whose members are anonymous, pseudonymous or open. It goes back to the original 1990s promise of the internet, namely that: “online nobody knows that you’re a dog.”
DAOs harness this paradigm and enable people to build an economy on the internet where contributors remain anonymous. Here is a strong focus on DAOs as a corporation, a meritocratic internet LLC.
More anonymous contributions.
You vote in crypto for a proposal and everyone will know that until the end of time. Same when you’re debating that given proposal or making a proposal yourself. People are working on solutions to make this process anonymous, but until then DAO governors will only be able to vote in public which certainly skews results.
An example of this is Nouns DAO. They just implemented a way for governors to vote & debate anonymously powered by zero knowledge proofs. Votes becoming anonymous on chain is similar to how democracy already works IRL. You vote for party A and no one but you knows about that.
DAO Governance ≠ Fiat Governance
Or when on-chain governance is conflated with legal rights.
Constitution DAO: is a co-ownership project. They collected millions in ETH to buy the US constitution, failed and then the gas costs were too high to pay everyone back. Another interesting problem here was that the DAO had no shielded treasury, meaning everyone could see how much the DAO was able to bid on the constitution which made it easy to outbid them.
Spice DAO thought the buying an old copy of a script for a never produced Dune movie would give them the IP rights to produce that movie themselves. They shut down and paid back investors once they got aware of that. In principle a cool idea to crowdsource the production of a movie though.
DAOs as a new class of legal entity?
If DAOs fully replace traditional jobs, they could introduce insurance mechanisms and taxation systems among themselves to fund public goods accessible to their members, or establish exclusive physical spaces for members scattered around the world. Currently, DAOs operate somewhat beyond the traditional borders of states, but as they gain more recognition from governments, they could eventually emerge as governments themselves. Thus, we might witness the evolution of DAOs from company-like entities to collectively emerging as non-territorial network states.
I recently moderated a panel discussion called “Digital Assets & Financial Institutions: DeFi Revolution,” featuring experts who shared their perspectives on the evolving world of decentralized finance (DeFi) during WOW Summit in Hong Kong.
A key takeaway from the discussion was the potential for DeFi to connect traditional finance with digital assets. The panelists highlighted the benefits of integrating DeFi solutions into current financial systems, creating opportunities for investors and institutions alike.
I had a chat with Marcus Patel from publish0x about the future of decentralized technology.
“She understands that where blockchain brings in transparency and openness, Zero-Knowledge technologies are ever more important. With the world only beginning to scratch the surface, different applications of ZK within both Web3 and Web2 will become evident. Marlene is visibly excited to be a part of a journey that will continue to evolve and offer better privacy and security.”
We discussed the meaning of community in Web3 and whether it’s always community first or whether Web3 stands for – IMHO – mainly decentralized infrastructure. Check out the video below for my “controversial” statement.
I got invited by DAO Planet to speak at Dcentral Miami about the Past, Present and Future of DAOs.
Why do we need DAOs in the first place?
You can just incorporate a company, have shareholder agreements and voting rights. No Need for a DAO.
The true innovation of DAOs goes beyond everything being on chain, it goes back to one of the early memes of the 1990s Internet:
“Online nobody knows that you’re a dog.” 🐕
DAOs are meritorcracies and enable a pseudonomous economy. It doesn’t matter who you are and where you come from, instead your skills are front & center.
I joined an livestream with Ignacio Palomera from Bondex to talk about the role of web3 in the data economy. We discuss how decentralized technologies are enabling people to own their data with full transparency, control, and fair revenue sharing.
The holidays are around the corner, so time to prep some answers for noisy relatives.
The other day I was interviewed by a university researcher about crypto culture. One of her questions was about our *why*. Why do we build these immutable, permissionless technologies?
Before I answer, a little side quest:
Crypto is not FTX. Crypto is not Celsius. Is crypto Luna?
Confession time, I didn’t know what Luna was before it went into shambles, just that I didn’t trust 20% APY on fiat. I’m not an American citizen, so I couldn’t use Celsius, and I don’t trade much on CEXes, so no need for FTX.
I also don’t find any of these three projects or companies particularly interesting. They don’t have anything to do with my personal *why crypto*.
On to the *why*. For me, crypto is (1) prepping financial, communication & governance infrastructure and (2) experimenting with new forms of finance, communication & governance.
There’s no killer app in crypto (yet). At first sight, there’s no apparent need for any of the stuff we’re building, especially not for those residing in stable, developed nations. But maybe there will be one day, and perhaps while we’re running all these game theoretical experiments on the future of finance, communication & governance, we will discover something new.
What could that be?
—> more transparent systems within existing governments where budgets & their spending can all be inspected on-chain. The same goes for companies & NGOs.
—> new governments in the cloud, think network states, or think country X is being physically invaded by country Y, but decides to continue its existence in cyberspace
For this, we need more than just immutable ledgers to do the accounting work; we also need decentralized storage, communication & governance systems. Something that cannot be shut off, neither by the good guys nor by the bad guys. For me, that’s web3.
I’ve no idea where the idea on web3 took the wrong turn, and it became jpgs and VR mini-games. And I don’t know when people started thinking that crypto is equal to gambling on centralized exchanges, but all of this has very little to do with my personal *why*.
The internet is broken. While Web 2.0 is rampant with surveillance capitalism, the next phase of the internet will have decentralisation at its core. How would Web3, with blockchain as its backbone, be different? Could it lead to a more cooperative web? What is the future of the internet? Here’s my talk for Goethe Institut Jakarta, the Center for Digital Society and Engage Media.
Marlene Ronstedt 