[Phase-3][Binding] HIP-22: Creation of the UBI DAO

Universal Basic Income
21

I would not say we are completely aligned since you have only sold me on the split, not the governance model, nor the bundling of the two decisions.

22

I donā€™t think there is any problem to send some UBI to a new DAO, sure itā€™s giving assets to the DAO but also giving it the task to work on UBI.

For quadratic voting in function of UBI holdings?

1 Like
23

For quadratic voting in function of UBI holdings?

Yeahā€¦ or probably closer to QF since we would be using UBI balancesā€¦ but if we tie this to PoH for sybil resistance, the trade off is losing the anonymity of your holdings if you want to use those for governance. I think this could be a good trade off in order to make UBI governance more transparent and accountable as a whole

Combining QF with PoH could have very interesting implications and UBI governance could be a great model for this. I can see other projects imitating this path.

24

@Mads would you suggest splitting the decision in two? One for the UBI DAO creation and another one for fund allocation of the new DAO?

25

Yes, I think there are just too many details that need to be ironed out for both decisions to have them in the same proposal. They are both big and need independent discussion.

4 Likes
26

Agreed, maybe the fund allocation requires its own HIP. Any suggestions on how to frame that one, welcomed. I can draft a HIP for that as well.

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27

So, I had an interesting debate with @paulaberman which led to the following outcome in order to guarantee that the UBI DAO remains democratic. We face the challenge of generating demand-side pressure for UBI, and thus increasing its utility for governance makes sense; but at the same time we donā€™t want to break the democratic virtue of our community and end up with a system where only large whales get to decide.

For that reason, we thought that maybe capping the UBI required to participate in governance might make sense. To do this, we implement a model of Quadratic Voting that requires you have at least an X amount of UBI in order to get the right to vote. Since UBI gets minted over timed, this means that X is equal to N amount of timeā€¦ so no one gets really left behind, but in order to influence the monetary policy of UBI you must have at least a certain amount of time as a valid PoH memberā€¦ or buy the UBI necessary in the market.

This means that to participate in the UBI DAO you are required to have, as an example, say 3600 UBIā€¦ this means you either have been involved with PoH for at least 5 months or you bought 3600 UBI on the open market to participate (~200 dollars right now).

The UBIVOTE contract to be used alongside Snapshot would probably look something like this:

function balanceOf(address _human) public view returns (uint256) {
    if(ubiToken.balanceOf(msg.sender) >= requiredUBI && proofOfHumanity.isRegistered(msg.sender)) {
        return requiredUBI;
    }
    return 0;
 }

And it would have a setRequiredUBI ( uint256 _amount ) function as well used by the contract governor (the UBI DAO).

With this, is just a matter of figuring out a sweetspot that generates interest in buying UBI but preventing influence from whale formation.

Thoughts?

4 Likes
28

Just to clarify, 3600 is just an exampleā€¦ I would personally go for a much higher number. One that demonstrates that if you really want to participate in the governance of UBI, you must commit to buying at least 1 year worth of its valueā€¦ or something closer to 10,000 UBI.

This way, we get relevant demand-side pressure while keeping the system democratic. If you want to engage in governance without putting a cent into the token, you can wait a year. Otherwise, you get to participate by effectively getting skin in the game.

I think this could work well in the long run and bridges the interests of different sectors from our community.

TL;DR: I want an UBI democratically led by long term holders.

2 Likes
29

This is all a very solid idea and allows both earning and purchasing participants to govern while increasing demand for the UBI token.

Itā€™s a bummer to not have 1-for-1 voting in UBI because I feel like thatā€™s the biggest advantage of having a human-identifying protocol.

Might sound crazy, but what about a two bodied government:

  1. House of Representatives - introduces proposals, tokens donā€™t matter just 1:1 voting
  2. Senate - final approval on proposals, token-weighted voting

both could be quadratic whenever there are multiple decisions to make.

  • nir.eth
1 Like
30

Hi Nir! The bicameral idea is actually how this proposal was born on the Telegram groupsā€¦ but we are moving away from that idea and simply splitting the governance of the two contracts (PoH and UBI). I think this will be the most efficient way to manage things over the long termā€¦

ā€¦ I really like the model we found on this thread for UBI. Democratically empowering long term holders is definitely in the best interest of the community as a whole.

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31

In my humble opinion, decoupling voting from the possession of assets is the entire point of Proof of Humanity.

That said, given this path of connecting assets to voting rights is being proposed and supported by many in prominent positions within our community, I will offer a suggestion, with a view to make this more inclusive of our extraordinary community, which is really where all the value of what we are building lies on: place the cap at 2160 UBI, which is the amount that members would get over 3 months - soon the majority of people on PoH will reach that mark. 5 months would mean that everyone would have to buy UBI in order to vote, which, from where Iā€™m standing, would be a tremendously disappointing outcome.

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32

To be clear, I donā€™t favor this proposal as a whole. Just offered the suggestion to make it more acceptable, but will be voting ā€œnoā€ for the reason i mentioned. PoH, in my view, is all about decoupling governance from finances. It would be a mind bendingly unproductive thing to go through the entire hassle of building a sybil resistant registry only to leave monetary policy in charge of elites.

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33

The requirement of UBI to be able to use UBIVOTE should be a parameter that is votable by the community.

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34

Hmm, mulling over the Quadratic Funding, I still donā€™t think it is a good idea.

Equating voting power with a financial asset will tend to make people think in terms of financial incentives. And what are the financial incentives? For instance to change issuance so it is given to those with the most $UBI ! Or use the voting power to gain profitable concessions.

I donā€™t see how this problem can be fully mitigated. So it would be a no for me on QF, but I am still pro-split.

1 Like
35

We should probably split this HIP into 2 or 3 HIPS.

If you pay attention to my last post on this thread, we effectively went from QF to QV, requiring a specific amount of UBI to vote which means, either you buy it upfront or you wait time to get the right to vote.

36

Hi all!

Iā€™ve created a proof of concept Snapshot space for UBI voting. It implements the UBIVOTE contract with the quadratic formula suggested by ClemĆ©nt, namely:

(voting power = sqrt(balance) * isHuman())

Feel free to test it by voting on this fake proposal.

2 Likes
37

This is awesome. Thanks! Just out of curiosity is the code available somewhere?

38

I donā€™t think putting a cap makes sense. Using quadratic voting already provides for limiting the influence of rich people (someone having 100 times more UBI would only get 10 times more votes).
Putting an arbitrary cap is not credibly neutral and the cap is likely to be a subject of proposal by different political factions who would argue for a cap which advantages them. This will lead to a bad issue of ā€œHaving people in power decided the rules of powerā€ and the ā€œclassā€ which is advantaged by the cap will use its power to keep the cap at a value which advantages them.

We can see that happening in classic politics. For example.

  • US: No cap on political donations ā†’ Advantage the rich which benefit from not having a cap which ends up in power and thus have no incentive to make a cap.
  • France: Cap on political donation (disadvantage the rich) and tax reduction for donators (disadavantage the poors as the tax reduction is on income tax which isnā€™t paid by the poor so they donā€™t get the tax deduction making the cost of their donations ~3X the cost of donations for other classes) ā†’ Advantage to the middle class.

I think we should avoid those pitfalls and use credibly neutrals mechanisms. Quadratic voting in respect to UBI holding/burning being one of them.

2 Likes
39

I tend to agree with you @clesaege: I have thought about this the last 48 hs. and I think the cap only makes it more explicit between two classes, one having power and the other being effectively powerless.

At the same time, not having a cap still allows everyone to participate and minorities (as its usual the case with QV) can always pool power to pursuit their agenda.

The Q in QV/QF is key here. Plus the UBIVOTE implementation above looks pretty well once you have the guarantee that PoH is being used for sybil resistance.

Another aspect to consider:

Since having a valid PoH is required, the governance of UBI would effectively require that those who want to participate in its governance have to demonstrate their UBI holdings in their nameā€¦ this incentive can help understand UBI distribution and itā€™s gini coefficient.

Letā€™s not loose sight that UBI is currency.

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40

Yup! The UBIVOTE contract code can be found in this Pull Request on the UBI Github repo. The contract is based on the Proof of Humanity proxy.

Let me know if you have any suggestions!

4 Likes