[Phase 1] HIP-54: Airdrop to Democratic Heroes

DAO
1

Simple Summary

Use the WETH currently owned by the DAO to airdrop humans who have actively participated in POH. This is the most democratic way of allocating the funds, because even minorities will have a voice on how to use the DAO’s assets and we will avoid any fund allocation drama. Each politically active human will receive around 0.077 ETH (~105 USD at the time of writing).

Abstract

As most people reading this may know, active humans have contributed greatly to the adoption and improvement of Proof of Humanity over the past year and a half. The following is a non exhaustive list of contributions (I invite everyone to expand the list in the comment section):

  • Organizing vouching groups and participating in them. Not only free vouching for people who don’t know anyone inside POH is provided, but also has the humanitarian function of checking the profiles to prevent honest mistakes in submissions.
  • Crowdfunding submissions. Several people have organized groups that help poor people register POH and provided funds + gas fees necessary to do so.
  • Volunteer developers have contributed to the project from different angles. Just to name a few examples (but there are so many more!): Ruben’s UBI Burner, Emiliano’s Vaults, JuanuMusic’s Posta and UBI v2, Bilinckis’ contributions to the UI.
  • Several people have spent countless hours trying to improve the registration policies as can be seen in several HIPs and forums.
  • Social media volunteers, such as telegram and discord admins, who help others during onboarding and creators of tutorials and documentation.
  • Some others, like the Proof of Integrity folks, go an extra mile to educate people in need about financial freedom, UBI and POH.
  • Democratic participation itself is an honorable task.
  • Of course all the work done by the Kleros team.

Most of the politically active humans have already dedicated their time and money to improve POH and make it grow. Something fascinating is that this energy, far from dwindling, is increasing.

Listening to every single voice

I’ve seen many different views about how to spend or not spend the DAO’s assets. To be honest, most of them seem like a good idea. The problem is that it is hard to reach a consensus and, if we do, the majority would be imposing their ideas over the minorities.

If we agree on an airdrop to the people who actively participate in POH, then each individual will use the airdrop as they best see fit. Some may organize themselves to fund the research of alternative arbitrators or of Proof of Humanity iterations (v2, v3, etc.). Some others may use the airdrop to keep building. Others may use it to help and educate new users, advertise the project and increase adoption. Some others may use it for themselves (and that is ok too! They’ve earned it, so we could see that as retroactive funding).

As an example: HIP-49 got 247 supporters but that wasn’t enough to pass the proposal. If these 247 humans are really interested in alternative arbitrators, they can use the 19 ETH from this airdrop to research and develop it.

I’ll argue with anyone that an airdrop like this is the most democratic way of allocating the DAO’s funds.

Motivation

Let the politically active humans decide the allocation of resources democratically and without imposing ideas over minorities.

Specification

Distribute all the WETH (~46.48) among humans that are registered in POH and voted in 2 HIPs or more in Snapshot before the date this post was published. Votes made through delegation count as long as the human has voted at least once directly.

If my calculations are right, there are around 600 eligible humans, which means that each one of them is entitled to ~0.077 WETH (105 USD at the time of writing). Needless to say, this number has to be calculated precisely before moving to phase 2 (help is appreciated here).

In order to respect everyone’s opinion, the airdrop of people who vote against the HIP in Phase 2 or 3 will remain in the governor and can be later used through democratic consensus. These remaining funds can’t be airdropped recursively using iterations of this HIP in the future.

Implementation

To make the airdrop more efficient, the WETH will be converted to ETH first. The transactions to each human can happen in a batch transaction or an airdrop contract can be used. Bridging the WETH to Gnosis Chain or similar before distributing it could be a good idea too. Other ideas are welcome. We can discuss the preferred airdrop method in phase 2.

What’s your first impression?
  • I support this HIP
  • I support this HIP with a few modifications (please comment)
  • I don’t support this HIP
  • I will think about it

0 voters

2 Likes
2

Wow, that’s a very innovative approach. Congratulations on the lateral thinking!

Definitely need to think about this more.

1 Like
3

I like the idea, although airdropping all the funds will leave the DAO empty.
U think we first need to figure out a way for the dao to generate incómodo before giving it all out.
With a sustainable source of income, we can continuosly use the funds for more airdrops/allocations/grants/etc

1 Like
4

We have a shared fund that we can discuss and spend, all this proposal does is reduce access to those funds to the private discussions of smaller groups. It privileges those who have been here up till now over those who have yet to arrive. It rewards the extremes of the community who have had some reason to be involved and punishes those who have decided to step back, observe and learn.

What about the person who arrives tomorrow and wants to participate? What value did this decision bring to them? Would this not strike the newcomer as the treasury being plundered by a small group of ~600 pursuing their own ideals?

To follow your example- this would be in effect granting 40% of the dao treasury to R&D on alternative arbitrators, despite the fact the dao voted against this decision! Put this way it instead sounds like an attack on our collective resources and does not sound at all democratic.

1 Like
5

I thought about creating this attack myself, just to show that it’s possible. But I refrained from creating it because I thought there was an risk it would actually pass.

For the purpose of adversarial thinking, it would have been more effective if you distribute the reward to whoever votes Yes both in Phase 3.

I’m preaching to the choir here but obvious consequences:

  • Passing this kills PoH. No one will send funding to a project known to distribute treasury.
  • If this passes, people will associate 1p1v and PoH with treasure drain attacks, bribing and populism. Maybe, it’s for the best, and will be a statement of 1p1v vulnerabilities.
4 Likes
6

Why on earth would you defund a DAO?

4 Likes
7

We have a shared fund that we can discuss and spend, all this proposal does is reduce access to those funds to the private discussions of smaller groups. It privileges those who have been here up till now over those who have yet to arrive. It rewards the extremes of the community who have had some reason to be involved and punishes those who have decided to step back, observe and learn.

I agree, we should be more inclusive. We should everyone who wishes, not just those who were early and stuck around.

I will support this HIP to advance further and beyond phase 2 if we amend the inclusion criterion to anyone who votes Yes for the HIP to pass, like @green suggests.

1 Like
8

The DAO also has 4M UBI and DAI from gitcoin grants (I don’t know where that money is though. Anyone knows?). Take into account that this is not just “giving it all out”. This airdrop should accelerate development and adoption of POH, which in return could attract more funding. Also, this airdrop happening now does not mean that it will happen again in the future.

1 Like
9

You could say the same thing in any big grant allocation HIP discussion. The DAO’s funds should be used diversely, efficiently and effectively. Some of the ETH distributed in this airdrop won’t be used for useful things, but {1} we will be putting the eggs on many different baskets, which means that at least a considerable part of them might have a positive effect, and {2} we will be rewarding people who have very likely contributed to this project greatly already and will continue to do so. Do you prefer a single, popular, big grant given to a single requester through majority voting?

If you are implying that there are valuable contributors of POH who have not actively participated in Snapshot, please develop the idea further. We could try to identify them through another method and include them in the airdrop.

I doubt that all of the 247 HIP49 supporters will allocate the airdrop to that purpose. It was just an example to illustrate a point. However, if that happens, who am I to judge?

10

FUD

This is NOT an attack. What this HIP is trying to accomplish has some similarities to debates surrounding:

  • retroactive funding
  • Friedman educational vouchers vs. direct government spending on schools.
  • UBI as replacement for direct government spending.
11

The airdrop is meant to target people who have contributed to POH from different angles. I think that to have voted in 2 previous HIPs is a good proxy for that. Including in the airdrop anyone who votes Yes kills the whole purpose of this HIP because it will make the airdrop vulnerable to opportunists and farmers.

I’m open to include more people in the airdrop, but I’d like to hear better methods to determine who is eligible.

1 Like