Looking to see if any devs may be interested in this project - The Tezos Opus

Below is an idea to create a voting system that allows users to execute contracts as a community on areas that may “fill a gap”. I’ve run into one, rather large problem… I don’t know how to program. I’m looking for insight from developers on interest, feasibility, and time frame.

I’m willing to refine the idea, rewrite the idea, have it reviewed by a law firm, write the proposal for a grant, learn to code (not a realistic timeline) or even spend money out of my own pocket to bring something to life that might benefit the community. After some research, I think the only way to propose the idea to the Tezos Foundation is to gain enough knowledge and develop a plan while creating a proposal. This, of course, takes a team of developers and a lot of knowledge that I am lacking. It doesn’t matter to me if a group wants to take the idea and make it their own. I just want to see Tezos thrive. I want the “haters” to either put up or shut up, and I want Tezos to outlast us all.

Please, give me an honest opinion. Here it is:

Established Funding for Community Interests

It has come to the attention of the community that achieving a unified voice as to the direction of each marketing campaign very seldom falls into “our” hands. The purpose of this proposal is to establish an accountable and structured solution to help allocate a portion of funds from The Tezos Foundation grant system into the Homebase DAO protocol. In doing so, the community will have the power to collaborate, reason, and reach consensus through a uniformed voting process in which every member has an equal vote. Proposals suggested by the community can include any ideas to further the Tezos ecosystem including, but not limited to, marketing, developer funding, education, hackathons, sponsorships, and community rewards. Note: It is possible to establish multiple “community funds” for individual regions. IE North America, Asia, Middle East, etc. to remediate any cultural or geographical differences that may create gridlock. In which case, funds should be distributed proportionally depending on the voting pool size.

Execution

Should this proposal be accepted, The Tezos Foundation will be responsible for placing ten percent of the annual budget and/or the baking rewards generated by the Foundation bakers, not to exceed fifteen million dollars. Valuation is dependent on market evaluation as of January 6th of the present year and reviewed in the semiannual Foundation statement, then placed into the Homebase DAO platform and allocated to the Tezos Opus. The yearly expenditure shall be place into the smart contract platform with the ability to be removed by The Tezos Foundation with sixty-five percent quorum among voters partaking in the system. The Tezos Foundation reserves the right to evaluate the annual spending habits of the Community Market Funding and either continue to fund, request for remediation, or cease to exist, in the last quarter, per annum. This is a necessity to ensure that during the infancy of the project, malicious attempts to exploit bugs in the platform can be mitigated and/or controlled.

A voting committee will be formed by members of the Tezos community that show good faith for the well-being of the future of the Tezos ecosystem; Each member who wishes to gain voting rights will be required to lock one thousand Tez for no less than one year into an account to represent their unified interest in the future of the Tezos ecosystem. The funds may be baked and/or delegated but the rewards will not be returned to the Tez holder to ensure that the locked funds only appreciate if The Tezos ecosystem is benefited by the decisions of the members who partake in voting. The baking rewards shall be accumulated and placed into the “Community Fund” on the first day of each quarter. Regardless of the price of Tezos, the locked token amount shall remain the same for the first year. The amount may be ratified by a three-fourths vote amendment but a one year starting total of one thousand Tez is required to establish constituency.
In order to ensure that members have not created multiple addresses to cast more than a single vote, a voter registration must be included. That allows a smart contract to securely lock and store data including, name, government ID and address. This is used to ensure that no malicious votes are being cast by users with multiple wallets.

The voting system will mimic the method used by the Tezos main protocol but with shortened stages. There will be twelve voting periods per year, with the proposal period starting on the first of every month and the promotion vote being held on the last three consecutive days of every month.
Scheduling

• Proposal period: delegates can submit protocol amendment proposals using the proposals operation. At the end of a proposal period, the two proposals with most supporters are selected and we move to peer review vote period. If there are no proposals, or a tie between proposals creating more than two passing proposals, a new tie breaking vote it held. If the vote returns in a tie again, both proposals are moved into the following months proposal period. Each delegate can submit a maximum of 2 proposals per voting period, including duplicates. (One week)
• Peer review period: delegates can discuss and debate the potential pro’s and cons. At any point in the second week, voters may cast one vote to accept or not accept the winning proposals into the final stage by using the ballot operation. At the end of the vote period, if participation reaches a sixty five percent quorum, in favor, we proceed to a promotion period. Otherwise, the proposals can be revised and are moved into the following month’s proposal period unless withdrawn. (Two weeks)
• Promotion vote period: The remaining days leading to the last three days of the month are left for persuasive arguments to be made in favor or against the proposal. Delegates can cast one “yay” or one “nay” vote using the ballot operation. At the end of a promotional vote period, if participation reaches a super-majority of eighty percent in favor, it is activated as an “proposal passed.” Otherwise, the proposal is sent to the proposal period of the following month. (Last three days of each month)

Voters will be able to switch their votes up until the last day of each voting session. Once a proposal is passed, all voters, regardless of voting decision, shall be recorded into a “Decision Ledger” and kept for future voting needs.

Proposals

Each proposal must include the following, at minimum before being presented to the board:

  1. Purpose for the proposal
  2. Plan/Explanation of how the proposal fills the needs of the community
  3. Background and history research of firm, agency, or event being proposed as references to previous completed projects or events.
  4. Payment schedule cost breakdown.
  5. Metrics for success
  6. Supervisor (Member or multiple members in charge of tracking metrics of success. Any fees for doing so should be excluded and itemized separately from the proposed amount being paid to execute the contract.) IE “(X) amount Tez shall be split between three supervisors and paid in full upon the completions of (proposed) for their due diligence in maintaining contact, with (Y) firm and reporting the progress to the community, throughout the fiscal year or until the project is completed.” Upon acceptance of the proposal, users would be able to be able to elect any parties showing interest in the supervisory role based on reputation and competence.

Supervision

Should the community choose, a single member or multiple members, may be selected to fill a supervisory role to any proposal. Proposals may not be supervised solely by the proposer. All supervisors must be approved by a simple majority vote of Fifty-one percent. Each member has the choice to be selected as the supervisor. The number of positions shall be filled with the highest approval rating first until the roles filled in their entirety. Any compensation should be itemized into a separate schedule and paid upfront or according to a schedule of values and sent in installments upon completion of certain milestones. 1(a)The board must be made aware of any allocation of funds planned to be used to compensate supervisory roles, including any involvement between supervisor and proposal in which the supervisor will benefit financially from the execution of the proposal.

A vote can be called to remove any member if the voting committee deems the member unable or unfit to complete the required tasks. A supermajority of seventy five percent must be met to remove a member from a supervisory role unless evidence is presented in which Section 1(a) is violated. In which case, a majority vote of fifty-one percent vote is needed to remove the supervisor from the role and involvement from the project. Voters must have partaken in the original proposal in order to remove a supervisor.

Legal

All legal powers and legal matters shall be dealt with by the Tezos Foundation. No voting member will ever have full control or custody of the funds. All payments will be made directly to any firm or agency in accordance with local laws and jurisdictions.

Members are required to partake in fifty percent of votes per annum (six months of “yay” or “nay” votes in order to maintain an active status. Members can withdraw from the committee at any time after the one-year locked period and withdraw the amount placed into the “hold account”. If funds are withdrawn voting privilege is immediately revoked. After the establishment of the first committee, new members must wait until the start of the second voting cycle (two months) before gaining voting power to mitigate late and/or partially informed “swing voting”. Any disputes not covered herein would should be decided by a seventy-five percent majority vote.

Passing Proposals

Upon a passing vote, the process would start in selecting a supervisor(s). The supervisor would then begin the introductory period in which they would coordinate the transfer of funds through the smart contract platform in order to finalize the contract. Legally binding contracts will be executed on the Tezos blockchain and available to the voting committee to review. Should personal information of the supervisor be required, such as name or address, originals should be stored by the Tezos Foundation and Redacted copies should be posted. Supervisors then continue their duties as outlined in the proposal.

The Tezos Opus

The purpose of this proposal is to establish a voice in which The Tezos Community can continue to thrive long after the Tezos Foundation ceases to exist in perpetuity. The Tezos ecosystem was specifically designed to function by allowing the community members to vote on changes to the protocol. However, the responsibility of continually marketing, educating, and promoting is reliant on The Tezos Foundation. This proposal is to create a voice and collective movement to delegate the power equally and encourages the community members who wish to be involved with the future of Tezos. Tezos is more than technology. It is a unique governance token that can only continue to exist if the community decides that it’s strengths can be greater than its weaknesses. “We” are that strength and we must find a way to lead ourselves through any obstacles that may arise and into the future. Together.

3 Likes

So the latest drive to get “TF to do something” is really missing the legal context IMO. And I think if most of these ideas were presented in a different way, but not changing the content of the idea, we could get active on marketing.

Everytime I see, “TF do X” I think, please god no. I invested into Tezos by purchasing tokens, but I did not invest into a security. Let’s take the Howey test, which is what the SEC uses to help define securities:

  1. An investment of money
  2. With the expectation of profits
  3. In a “common enterprise”
  4. From the efforts of a promoter or third party

Requests for #4 is reaching critical mass rn, and I really hope TF doesn’t fold because of this. We can’t just propose “TF do X”, it’s against XTZs classification as not a security.

All legal powers and legal matters shall be dealt with by the Tezos Foundation.

Non-starter imo.

But I’m not saying I don’t agree about the marketing! I do, and I like your proposal, it just needs a minor edit so it can work with TF’s non-dilutive funding (grant) model.

Take instances of “Tezos Foundation” and replace it with something like “Tezos Marketing Guild” or something. That would be your community-run DAO. Get the folks who run [at]MarketingTezos on Twitter to help with the proposal, they are opening contact with TF after the recent twitter campaign on Feb 5th.

The point is to keep TF out of it, and let TF be your bank. I’ve seen your comments and you are a sharp person, these efforts need leaders and you could get this going!

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Thank you for the kind reply. I agree that I would prefer to leave “TF do X” out of everything. However, the TF probably has lawyers on retainer. The Tezos Opus shouldn’t need any legal power unless something goes horribly awry and money is stolen or funneled out of the Opus. If that were to happen, the power of the Opus would be compromised anyway. So I suppose I was looking it is as a fail safe switch. If it can’t be decided by a 75% majority vote, it means that the system has failed and the TF, who is supplying the money in the form of a grant, would need to retrieve the funds. I fully agree that I would much rather not involve the TF at all once the allocation or agreement to allocate is contracted but sadly, with this much money involved, the option needs to be in place to protect all parties involved.

You’re right about #4. This does make it seem like the TF is the entity controlling Tezos, but they are here to simply fund Tezos. I think this proposal would further move Tezos away from being considered a security. The TF does maintain the ability to protect funds through legal action though. Since this is a proposal to apply through the grant process, Wouldn’t TF have the right to protect their investments?

Again, thanks for the reply and the kind words. I rarely get feedback but feedback like this is extremely crucial in moving forward. I’m probably not the best person to be in the position of “leader” for a movement like this, but I’m taking a leap of faith so that we can start somewhere.

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Nice, your 1st paragraph makes sense. Possibly could explore putting those type of rules in the bylaws of the DAO so that the actions happen automatically.

Definitely agree that separating the marketing from TF would be perfect balance. Grants are a great way to do it. I’m very interested in this idea of having a % of the TF warchest onto HomebaseDAO, I’m gonna start looking into the tech side of that and see where they are :smiley: just started learning ligo recently so I think I can understand it more and possibly test it.

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Great! Thank you!

KYC can not be trusted because some small country can decide to easily game the system. Other than that the idea is solid!

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I’m still looking at your suggestions of quadratic voting and trying to innovate ideas on how to make it work without having members use multiple wallets. I’m thinking it’s going to need to get connected with another voting system I just haven’t found the right match yet. I wonder if the new ticket system may be able to grant users access by allowing them to access the voting platform. Send a confirmation text to a telephone number that has a code. This verifies that more than one mobile number isn’t receiving multiple tickets that allow access to the system… Or something along those lines. No KYC, just a mobile number that grants access to the platform through an authenticator on a phone. Whatcha think?

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Excellent idea using mobile number, perhaps a step above KYC however im not 100% text message is a secure enough protocol. Maybe it is and the combination of mobile plus something else could guarantee uniqueness… like 2 factor or 3 factor authentication?

After running a few senarios through my head it seems only allowing one-year-old bakers to vote would help mitigate multiple wallet creation issues. At least if they try to create multiple bakeries this only strengthens our network with more bakeries who need to wait an entire year before gaining the privilege to lock their coins for governance. If they can prove themselves for a year they deserve to vote and this is easy to calculate on chain with 100% certainty. Unlike mobile which has the potential to be hacked by a man-in-the-middle type of attack, for example.

Whoever locks the most coins for governance only has to wait 1 year to unlock, while whoever locks the least (8,000 xtz) need to wait 3 years. This makes it a 4 year commitment to the system. Also, reduce voting power with square root function so that SqRt(8,000 xtz) = 89 votes; and SqRt(250,000 xtz) = 500 votes. This means big players could be over powered by little players who don’t mind committing to this ecosystem for a longer period of time. The balance is fair and provable on-chain without the help of any 3rd party.

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Yeah, I guess I should have clarified. I’m thinking just a two system authenticator like phone (with an authenticator), email, and password should be enough to thwart too many fake accounts being created. At least is adds a lot of hassle if someone wants to try. I like the reduced time locked but I my idea is more one person, one vote, we all have and equal voice, type thing. 1,000 is a number that not just anybody can buy 10 Tez to cast a vote in a system they aren’t invested but not so much that people have to mortgage their houses to get in. It can be amended as the price climbs but I think it’s a pretty solid starting point. I’ll start revising tonight. Again, thanks for the help. I’m still thinking, maybe you lock 1,000 for three years, and reduce the time as more Tez is locked down to a year. Like a “pay to reduce your sentence” type thing. That makes the incentive to lock stronger if you want access to your funds after a year and also strengthens the ecosystem.

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hey @perfectparadox have you gotten any farther on this?

I want to try a (light) POC of using either hDAO or homebaseDAO to fund some marketing. I remember this post so I wanted to hit you up specifically.

nothing too crazy or any funds locked up, but i’d be interested if we could formulate a way to post a ‘reciept’ and let those in the marketingDAO pay for it if they have the funds/desire

I’m thinking of trying to promote one of those twitterspam days where we all get muted for spamming tezos stuff. then getting (or doing) a small social media analysis and seeing what the impact was. Then publish the amount the analysis costed with a receipt to the chain and let ppl donate to cover it.

I’m hoping to kill 3 birds with stone: bring the monthly twitterspam back, see if we can really decentralized’ly fund something thats not just foodswaps, and proof of concept into using Tezos’ first DAO tools. (also personal curiosity with DAOs)

I don’t really have a plan yet, but I will be doing research into the available DAO tools to see what could possibly be done on the tech side :smiley:

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Hey! I just got back from climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. Yesterday was my first day back. I’ll be reaching out to some Dev teams this week, starting with TQ to see if there is any interest in building this. I’m not looking to make money on the project, but not having any programming abilities is where my slowdown has come from. Hopefully, there is a dev team out there that would like to be part of this but as aforementioned, I took a quick trip that didn’t involve wifi so hopefully I can get some footing this week. I’ll let you know! Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or ideas.