A deep dive into how dGov shapes the future of Web3

TLDR of what we'll cover in this blog post:

- Hackathons, Grants and Bounty Programs
- Dora Hacks and the global hacker movement
- MACI (Minimal Anti Collusion Infrastructure)
- aMACI, Quadratic Voting & Funding

What is DoraHacks?

DoraHacks is the world's largest multi-chain Web3 developer incentives platform. It provides organizational tools such as:

- Hackathons
- Grants
- Bounty programs

while simultaneously striving to develop better dGov infra and mechanisms.

What is dGov?

Decentralized Governance uses blockchain tools to democratize decision-making, enhance transparency, and ensure fair resource distribution promoting community-driven participation.

One major feature of dGov is MACI.

MACI = Minimal Anti Collusion Infrastructure

MACI refers to an advanced voting framework designed by DoraHacks to enhance privacy & security in decentralized systems, leveraging zk proofs.

MACI allows for:

a) Anonymous Voting

b) Collusion Resistance

MACI enables on-chain voting without revealing the participants' identities or voting preferences.

This secure and privacy-focused voting mechanisms works especially well within Cosmos, as Dora Vota is built on Cosmos tech.

Here's an example of MACI voting on the Cosmos Hub.

Dora Vota

Dora Vota is a sovereign L1 chain specialized for dGOV built by Dora Factory.

It offers a no-code MACI voting platform for non-technical communities to easily complete MACI on-chain voting deployments.

Dora Vota offers both linear and quadratic voting solutions.

MACI voting outside of Cosmos

MACI is also used outside Cosmos, empowering communities with features like anonymous quadratic voting (QV) used for prize and grant distributions at hackathons and crypto conferences.

- ETH Denver "BUIDLathon"
- OpenSea "Hello NFT" Hackathon

Quadratic Voting in a nutshell

QV lets ppl allocate votes based on the strength of their preferences. This system makes voting fairer by reflecting how strongly ppl feel about issues, preventing the majority from easily overpowering a passionate minority.

Read more about quadratic voting.

Anonymous MACI (aMACI)

One issue with MACI voting is, that a community adopting it needs to trust the operator who oversees all votes and provides zk-proofs of it.

The operator's ability to act maliciously is limited, yet there're 2 potential actions the operator could take:

1) The operator could do nothing => voting stalls
2) The operator could collude => leads to a skewed outcome

To eliminate trust assumptions in MACI, it's necessary to ensure that votes are also anonymous to the operator.

This is where aMACI comes into play.

aMACI allows users to deactivate their keys after the initial signup and set new ones for voting.

This way the operator can no longer link a vote to a user and collusion becomes impossible.

aMACI in Action:

During the ETHVietnam 2024 event, 168 hackathon participants engaged in an aMACI community voting round.

The goal was to distribute a $2k prize pool via aMACI to a select group of projects that participated in the hackathon.

To sum it up:

aMACI significantly reduces reliance on the operator, introducing enhanced privacy for voters and stronger collusion resistance.

The adoption of aMACI could benefit countless communities around the globe, accelerating the development of dGov.

DoraHacks offers digital infrastructure to host dGov practices like Quadratic Funding and Voting via (a)MACI.

These solutions can not only be used by on-chain communities like the Cosmos Hub, but also real-world events like hackathons.

Check it out here: DoraHacks

Thanks for reading folks, we hope you've found this article helpful.

Disclaimer

This article is intended to educate readers about certain topics and should not be considered financial advice in any way.