51% protection without vetoing, quitting, or splitting.

# 51% protection without vetoing, quitting, or splitting. Nouns is an autonomous art project that creates digital originals and puts them on auction. Tying a Noun to any amount in the project's treasury is category error. There is no relationship between the two. A purchaser has bought an artwork. The project receives those funds. The artwork and the pool of funds are unrelated. Splitting and quitting link a Noun to the treasury in a way which fundamentally alters the project. Instead of building an open-source brand, tying a Noun to a portion of the Nouns DAO treasury makes the DAO an individual for-profit organization. ### Rage Split Prevents Nouns Flywheel Enshrining Rage Split creates the forever incentive that when "book value" is greater than auction value, the difference of funds will always be siphoned from away from Nouns DAO. Should Nouns DAO find a fly-wheel to generate funds outside and inexcess of auction proceeds (e.g. via droposals), the funds immediately become a target for a "minority split". As an open-source brand that funds itself by increasing the provenance value of its artwork, this is detrimental to the project. ### Veto is Too Powerful Vetoer was put in place to deter treasury draining attacks, but it is too powerful. A malicious or government-compelled vetoer can “block” all proposals. This makes Nouns DAO easy to stop. What if instead of vetoer, the Nouns Foundation became an “unblocker”, limiting the human attack while maintaining the human-oracle/oversight function? ### A non-veto, non-split, non-quit design The vetoer is retired, and instead an "unblock" power is put in place. This power is held by the Nouns Foundation, an entity that has a board and is governed by juristicional law. We rely on Nouns DAO members themselves to act as an oracle for 51% attacks. If a proposal is malicious, DAO voters can vote to "BLOCK" the proposal. This registers an AGAINST vote as well as adds to a BLOCK tally. When 30% of DAO voters BLOCK a proposal it can no longer be voted on and cannot pass. If however, the Nouns Foundation finds that a legitimage proposal (one that does not perform a malicious activity) is blocked, the "unblock" power can be exercised and the proposal voting can proceed as normal. The same dynamic quorum and voting majority rules apply to an "unblocked" propsoal as a regular proposal and the proposal lifecycle continues as normal ### Advantages 1) Nouns are clearly not backed by ETH. There is no implied value for a Noun based on the amount of funds in the treasury. Nouns DAO does not endorse this world-view in its source-code. 1) Better than 51%: anonymous (aka non-colluding, using acquired Nouns only) attackers require `100-(blocking vote percentage)+1` % votes in order to perform an attack. In this example, 71% voting power. 1) The Nouns Foundation can no longer prevent the DAO from passing proposals. The unblocker's role is simply to detect malicous "blocking" of proposals. 1) Much easier to discover collusion on malicious proposals. Short of acquiring 71% of Noun supply, an attacker must collude with the onlyl entity capable of unblocking a malicious proposal. That entity and its members fall under juristicatioinal law, and should a malicious proposal be unblocked, there are clear legal rammifactions for its members. 1) Continued blocking is capital constrained. Unlike the current veto ability, blocking voters require capital to gain and maintain their ability. To regain the same "blocking" ability as the current veto, blockers (and/or Nouns Foundation) must maintain 30% of votes over all periods of time. Assuming daily auctions continue, eventually either captical constraints will force illegitimate blockers to stop or enforcement actions against the Nouns Foundation compel it to unblock. ### Disadvantages 1) It is still theoretically possible to perform a 51% attack and drain the treasury. In addition to 51% of voting power, an attacker must collude with or compel 51% of the Nouns Foundation. Howver, under the current system 51% of votes can be achieved anonymously, collusion with members of Nouns Foundation cannot. Reputation and legal risks keep the Nouns Foundation board honest. 1) Reliance on the Nouns Foundation for this single purpose might rub some as being antithetical to a DAO. I disagree. Nouns is an autonomous art project. It is a unique entity which requires humans to be present to make voting decisions and humans to act as oracles for attacks. Nouns is backed by people.