A new model for social coordination powered by blockchains and smart contracts, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) have emerged as a key means for facilitating Web3 community organization. According to DeepDAO, the combined value of treasury assets secured by DAOs is currently more than $8B, with over 400k addresses having either proposed or voted on a DAO governance proposal. Voting services like Snapshot and Tally support many DAOs in building and organizing their communities. While DAOs are still in their nascent stages, they show great promise as an engine for building communities around a business, common cause, or shared interest.

D3LAB won the Chainlink Fall Hackathon 2021 DAO prize with a proposal for a new Sybil-resistant quadratic voting system called Probabilistic Quadrating Voting (PQV), which solves the problem of Sybil attacks in quadratic voting systems for DAOs. Built by Sanghyeon Park, Elin Park, Junmo Lee, and In-gun Kim, PQV adds a probabilistic element to the existing quadratic voting system by leveraging Chainlink VRF, resulting in simulated scenarios where running Sybil attacks is unprofitable for attackers. D3LAB implemented the system in the Governor-C smart contract, a fully decentralized, Sybil-resistant quadratic voting system based on PQV and Chainlink VRF.

Following their hackathon success, the D3LAB team wanted to continue to pursue their vision for enhancing DAO governance processes. With this in mind, we are excited to announce that D3LAB has been awarded a Chainlink Community Grant to develop an upgraded version of PQV and the Governor-C smart contract on an open-source basis so other developers and DAOs can benefit.

As a part of this grant, the D3LAB team will develop an upgraded and more cost-effective version of PQV and Governor-C and apply the system to other types of Web3 governance technologies such as quadratic funding and quadratic attention payments. D3LAB will also research the possibility of upgrading proof-of-stake and delegated proof-of-stake networks using PQV. The early hypothesis is that PQV will help improve the effectiveness and fairness of proof-of-stake networks, and the team will do early-stage research to test this theory.

DAOs have long been limited by the issues arising from ‘one dollar, one vote’ and ‘one person, one vote’ voting systems, as these systems often expose governance processes to Sybil attacks. D3LAB’s PQV system is an improved quadratic voting system that is fully decentralized and Sybil-resistant and uses verifiable randomness provided by Chainlink VRF to add a probabilistic element to quadratic voting.

Another issue that DAOs currently face is a lack of ready-made infrastructure. With their inherent permissionless composability, open-source smart contracts allow for rapid and frictionless innovation cycles in decentralized finance (DeFi), NFTs, and other blockchain-based ecosystems. DAOs can greatly benefit from open standards like PQV, which developers and communities can seamlessly integrate to enhance their governance systems and invent new ways to organize online communities without having to build their own foundational infrastructure from scratch.

Commenting on the grant award, D3LAB team member In-gun Kim stated, “We are excited to have received a grant from the Chainlink Community to enhance our Probabilistic Quadratic Voting system and develop an upgraded version of the Governor-C contract. DAOs looking to improve their governance mechanisms will be able to seamlessly integrate our voting system and leverage Sybil-resistant quadratic voting to make collective decisions more fairly. We expect this set of tools to contribute to creating a healthier DAO ecosystem and ultimately foster more innovation in the Web3 space by enhancing other governance technologies, such as quadratic funding.”

Through the Chainlink Community Grants program, we look forward to continuing to empower more Chainlink ecosystem teams and researchers who are both researching and building key tools and infrastructure that accelerate the development of hybrid smart contracts and secure oracle networks. We will continue supporting the community as a key driver of Chainlink’s rapid growth, because only together can we make hybrid smart contracts into the dominant form of digital agreement.

About the Chainlink Grant Program

If you want to learn more about the Grant Program, read this blog post that further expands upon its goals and the criteria for submission. If you would like to participate in the Chainlink Grant Program, please apply here. Chainlink Community Grants are provided in cash and/or LINK.