[Mission Request] Voting Analysis

Governance Fund Missions 🏹
1

Delegate Mission Request Summary

Conduct research and analysis on governance attacks, voting mechanisms, non-plutocratic governance systems, and bicameral governance systems to enhance the decentralization and security of the Collective’s governance process.

S6 Intent 1: Progress Towards Decentralization

Proposing Delegate/Citizen: Gonna.eth

Total grant amount: 50.000 OP

Should this Mission be fulfilled by one or multiple applicants

Multiple applicants

How will this Mission Request help accomplish the above Intent?

This mission request will help accomplish the Progress Towards Decentralization intent by conducting research and analysis on governance attacks, voting mechanisms, non-plutocratic governance systems, and bicameral governance systems. This research will help the Collective identify and mitigate potential risks, explore effective voting mechanisms, and analyze non-plutocratic governance systems and bicameral governance systems, ultimately leading to a more secure, decentralized, and transparent governance process.

What is required to execute this Mission Request?

  1. Define the scope and objectives of the research and analysis.
  2. Catalogue and analyze all governance attacks to date, including their impact, prevalence, and mitigation strategies.
  3. Explore the tradeoffs between public and private voting mechanisms, including their effectiveness, security, and user experience.
  4. Identify attack vectors in non-plutocratic governance systems and develop effective prevention methods.
  5. Analyze the history of bicameral governance systems and their failures, and suggest alternative governance structures.
  6. Develop a report summarizing the findings and recommendations.

How should governance participants measure impact upon completion of this Mission Request?

Governance participants can measure the impact of this mission request by tracking the following metrics:

  1. Number of governance risks and vulnerabilities identified and mitigated.
  2. Adoption of best practices and effective prevention methods.
  3. Improvement in the security and decentralization of the governance process.

Milestones

  1. Scope and objectives defined
  2. Catalogue and analysis of governance attacks completed
  3. Tradeoffs between public and private voting mechanisms explored
  4. Analysis of non-plutocratic governance systems and attack vectors completed
  5. Analysis of bicameral governance systems and alternative structures completed
  6. Report summarizing findings and recommendations completed

Metrics

  1. Number of governance risks and vulnerabilities identified and mitigated.
  2. Adoption of best practices and effective prevention methods.
  3. Improvement in the security and decentralization of the governance process.

Impact

This mission request will have a positive impact on the Collective’s decentralization and security by conducting comprehensive research and analysis on governance attacks, voting mechanisms, non-plutocratic governance systems, and bicameral governance systems. This will lead to a more secure, decentralized, and transparent governance process that benefits the entire Collective.

Has anyone other than the proposer contributed to this Mission Request?
none

Which metric will the success of this Mission Request be evaluated against?

The North star metric against which this Mission Request should be evaluated is # of addresses voting for the first time, as it indicates how the downstream effect of this research as well as the practical implementation of the resulting findings contribute to an increase in active voting participation. This metric was suggested by the Foundation and approved by the Grants Council.

6 Likes
2

Really like the idea but I’m curious how you landed on 50k OP?

To me it feels like research reports are generally hard to scope in a way to make such large grants worthwhile.

Without knowing the reason behind it I’d suggest a lot less.

3

Great point how much do you suggest? Budgeting for research is always hard for me.

4

It can be hard to scope research reports and assess their value. One approach could be to be more specific in the ask, or to have teams propose really specific research outcomes in their applications. You might also consider sourcing open research questions from the Collective Feedback Commission, Delegates, govNERDs, and Citizens.

Here is an example of a Foundation Mission Request that is currently in progress related to a similar topic: Optimism Ecosystem Contributions 🔴✨ · GitHub
It’s probably useful context to avoid duplicate work, but might also inspire some ideas about how this type of research could be scoped.

Disclaimer: I work for the Optimism Foundation but comments are my own

3 Likes
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A North Star Metric has been added at the bottom of this Mission Request in an effort to enable the Collective to make data-driven decisions. By using a single metric for each Mission Request, the Collective is better able to evaluate the performance of all the Season 6 missions in a standardized manner, which will be critical when the Collective makes decisions about Intents, budgets, or other critical components of governance.

6

Tagging @op_julian, to inform this Mission Request was closed at the end of Cycle 25.