Gov-Acc Pipeline.

user : I think the concept of on chain execution has been more challenging than a lot of people would have hoped. assistant : ### What specific governance challenge or problem are you observing? Please be as concrete as possible about what's happening and why it matters. user : So the idea that the proposer needs to be technical enough to compile call data generally, kinda creates a boundary or gate or or a hurdle for for the community to, participate, in in proposing new ideas. Right? The the fact that the call data would be executed creates, like, paralysis with governance teams, and and, you know, is is it feels like there's a lot of friction there. assistant : ### What evidence or examples demonstrate this is a real problem? This could include failed proposals, low participation rates, specific incidents, data you've observed, or patterns you've noticed across projects. user : We see it when supporting DAOs, who made substantial investments in preparing for on chain execution. But then when it comes down to actually creating the proposal, it's not actually decentralized or it's very hard to decentralize because it's, you know, it ends up being, you know, permissioned permissionlessness. Right? Like, the gates and the hurdles involved, are intentional, but setting up those guardrails, we've attempted to solve that problem. And it's you end up, like, borderline creating complexity on par with smart contracts that, like, end up meeting audits just to review how you configure the smart contracts. So, there's just it's just really, really slow. It slows down the process, and it it's just not fast. It doesn't feel good. And, you know, it's kinda disappointing to see on chain execution be this hard. assistant : Would you like to share another governance problem, or should we move on to exploring solutions and who's working on them? user : Another problem. assistant : ### What specific governance challenge or problem are you observing? Please be as concrete as possible about what's happening and why it matters. user : So the concept of identity is is barely solved yet. I think there's a number of gaps in how identity works in web three, and it impacts DAOs both from, like, an admin and management perspective, and, like, setting up semi permissionless models. And then, additionally, when it comes to governance, we're seeing an emergence of, you know, different houses wanting to vote and and, you know, creating complex proposal types where sets of houses wanna vote on one proposal. And so the these these varying systems often have different forms of identity. And so if you could look at, like, the open Zeppelin standard for your for token based voting, you know, that's very clear and well handled. If your identity is is mapped to an on chain account. But as soon as you have a a semi off chain community, for instance, a list of application builders or, a list of executives or a, you know, any list of people. It could be a list of x accounts. Could be a list of, NFT holders. Could be a list of, GitHub handles. These systems don't map well to prevailing, protocols for for doing decentralized governance. assistant : ### What evidence or examples demonstrate this is a real problem? This could include failed proposals, low participation rates, specific incidents, data you've observed, or patterns you've noticed across projects. user : It's the amount of work required to integrate those existing systems and bring them on chain, like, for instance, during, you know, an airdrop or, during a proposal, if you want to give voting power to an off chain identity, you are left like, you wanna do on chain governance, but your stakeholders or your participants only have an off chain identity, it it somebody somewhere has to do that binding and that mapping, in a technical way that's elegant and, like, low friction for the user, you know, and and and we just don't have it. Right? So there's no standard, you know, if if ENS, you know, let's say, if ENS was the thing that handles identity to an ETH account, and, like, Privy lets you bind an email address to an ETH account sort of, then, like, we need it for almost every platform. Like, we need, like, a way to a generalized way of maintaining references to other identities on other on other platforms off chain. And so I just I just have case studies of of what it takes, like, people that wanna run governance processes and and and don't have like, basically, they need they need a a team of developers to build up these solutions, but it's a lot of work and so the cost is really high without without standards. So, yeah, that's kinda the the, you know, evidence right now. Just several DAOs wanting to do those kinds of things, but then being limited by the the prevailing tooling standards. assistant : Would you like to share another governance problem, or should we move on to exploring solutions and who's working on them? user : Another one. assistant : ### What specific governance challenge or problem are you observing? Please be as concrete as possible about what's happening and why it matters. user : Okay. So everybody is well aware of the vote whipping phenomenon that happens behind the scenes of any high stakes governance proposal or controversial proposal. And there's also like, most folks agree that, like, private voting would be great, But there's two problems with private voting, and that is, you know, the the UX and the friction associated with it, like, it stops making sense. Right? It does not it doesn't feel close enough to web two. It it it's a higher friction UX with different trust guarantees, And so there's that, and then there's a it's also got a funding problem. Right? Getting getting people interested and available to work on private voting means someone it has to fund it. And if you're funding private voting, you likely wanna know how people are voting. Right? There's kind of like this dilemma where the people funding governance or the or the organizations funding governance at scale. They have a in they have a, you know, an interest in understanding how their, you know, stakeholders are voting. So while the altruist may want private voting, the funders of governance tech, don't necessarily wanna buy it. assistant : ### What evidence or examples demonstrate this is a real problem? This could include failed proposals, low participation rates, specific incidents, data you've observed, or patterns you've noticed across projects. user : So when it comes to the UX of private voting, there is Agora's tried several ways of several prototypes, and, it's cumbersome. Right? Like, the trade offs around the, you know, the the cryptographic techniques that we have involve cumbersome UI and a cumbersome UX such that people, you know, you know, it's like, it's unclear whether or not people will be okay with the trade offs. Like, of course, you can do tried, for private voting in a web two like way, and you trust the the institution to do the tally. You could we could do that tomorrow. Right? And it would feel great, but it would it would include a trust guarantee. It would you know, that there would be somebody who could dox you. Right? You you could get get called into court and decide, you know, you have to reveal who voted and how or whatever. Right? But doing it in a in a truly, like, zero knowledge proof private way means key ceremonies. It means, trade offs between when in the process the tally can be revealed and, you know, tricky things around, you know, confirming if you voted or not. There there's a lot of implications to it that are that are challenging. assistant : Would you like to share another governance problem, or should we move on to exploring solutions and who's working on them? user : lets move on. assistant : ### What approaches, tools, or mechanisms could address the governance problems we've discussed? Share any potential solutions you're aware of or have considered - these could be technical tools, process innovations, research directions, or organizational approaches. user : So for the problems I've listed, particularly the on chain execution drag and the identity problem, Agora has attempted a solution that crosses both of those solved problems with a with a new protocol. It's it's, it's an attestation based framework that basically abandons the concept of on chain execution for a moment, knowing that you could glue this governance framework to on chain execution in the long run. It just decouples it from, like, the if if the open Zeppelin standard, you know, is set up and optimized for on chain execution, you could say this other one is set up and optimized for on chain proposals where groups can make decisions together without the security model risks of and complexity associated with, you know, requiring on chain execution. But that's not to say it can't be added on after. And and basically, the protocol is like a heavy attestation based flow where the DAO, the proposal type setup, who can vote on what. It's all very declarative. And then the the the this protocol also helps with identity because and and voting weights because it pulls apart the weight, the voting power, and the and the identity. It decouples those things and just records this identity voted this way. So this this ETH account voted this way rather than this ETH account with this much voting power voted this way, And it pushes the voting power either off chain or into a Merkle tree, on a per proposal basis. So so those are solutions that we're exploring and using actually with with a couple different dials right now. And and and so what you know, it it innovates in terms of, like, what it's optimizing for compared to the OpenZeppelin standard. Right? I'm not saying it's better or worse. I'm saying it's different and just optimizes for different things. assistant : ### Which teams, projects, or researchers do you know are actively working on these solutions or related governance innovations? This helps us map who's contributing to solving these challenges. user : I can't speak to other many other teams. I know Agora governance is is working on it. assistant : Would you like to share more solutions or identify additional actors working in this space, or should we move to wrapping up? user : wrap up assistant : ### Thank you for mapping governance challenges and solutions Here's a summary of your contributions: **Problems Identified:** 1. **On-chain execution complexity** - The technical barrier of compiling call data creates friction for community participation in proposing ideas, and the security concerns around executing call data create paralysis for governance teams 2. **Identity fragmentation** - Web3 lacks standards for mapping off-chain identities (Twitter accounts, GitHub handles, NFT holders, application builders, etc.) to on-chain governance systems, especially as DAOs want multi-house voting structures 3. **Private voting challenges** - While there's demand for private voting to prevent vote whipping, it faces both UX friction (cryptographic techniques create cumbersome experiences) and a funding misalignment (funders of governance tech want visibility into how stakeholders vote) **Evidence Provided:** - DAOs making substantial investments in on-chain execution but struggling with "permissioned permissionlessness" - the guardrails become so complex they require audit-level review - Multiple DAOs wanting to give voting power to off-chain identities but requiring full development teams to build custom solutions due to lack of standards - Agora's own prototypes of private voting revealing significant UX trade-offs - either trust-based (web2-like but with doxing risk) or zero-knowledge (with key ceremonies and complex timing constraints) **Solutions & Approaches:** - **Attestation-based governance framework** - Decouples proposals from on-chain execution while remaining compatible with it later; uses declarative proposal type setup and separates voting identity from voting power through Merkle trees on a per-proposal basis; optimizes for different goals than OpenZeppelin standard **Active Contributors:** - Agora governance (working on attestation-based framework for identity and execution challenges) Your input will be synthesized with other participants' contributions to help build the gov/acc research roadmap. This will inform the visualization and workshop at EthCC, where we'll work on coordinated solutions to these governance challenges. Does this summary capture your main points accurately, or would you like to clarify or add anything?