---
title: NDC Elections v2 Human Based
description: Specification of the NDC v2 Elections Framework without quadratic SWV, focusing on humans and DAOs
author: Robert Zaremba
---

# NDC Elections v2 Human Based
###### tags: `NDC`

*Draft*

* What is [NDC](https://www.neardc.org)?
* NDC [gov v1 framework](https://github.com/near-ndc/gov/blob/main/framework-v1/README.md)

This is an alternative approach to the version of [NDC Elections v2 Quadratic Stake Weighted Voting](https://hackmd.io/@robert-zaremba/Hy4or17YT) (proposed by me as a simplified version of the official design proposed the HoM Ops Team). It is aligned with the my original ["long term" design](https://hackmd.io/@robert-zaremba/SJ3TM8hIo), and doesn't involve any form of Stake Weighted Voting (for the reasons discussed below).

## Context

A group of people had a strong feedback for NDC v1 to include stake weighted voting into the next elections and the Voting Body system.
The NDC v1 Voting Body is based on proof of personhood:
1. each person has the same voting power,
2. each person

In NDC v1, we were missing a fundamental alignment with the NEAR ecosystem. Being a human doesn't mean to be part of the community. Personally, at NDC v1, I was proposing few criteria to better measure the alignment with NEAR ecosystem: community attestation and 100-300N bond. Both were reject for various reasons, notably a vision of NDC to onboard and empower new people as well as support "small" (by NEAR stake) members. The final bond size for voting was 3N.

We also witnesses identity purchase: one person buying identity (personhood verification) on the market, and owning multiple verified accounts. We foreseen that risk, and as a remedy we proposed the Fair Voting Policy and Elections Integrity Commissions. There was lot of efforts to verify and validate voting data. Unfortunately many community members accused the GWG for creating Censorship (claiming that Elections Integrity Commission was a censorship institution).

### Notes about Stake Weighted Voting (SWV)

Stake weighted voting (**SWV**) makes sense as a first step (to kick off), because it's solid and aligns well with the NEAR ecosystem.

However, it discriminates "poor" people and gives more power to whales (who are empowered anyway).

IMO, SWV is a good factor in the governance system, however, eventually it should not be a dominant one. It must have a reduction function (quadratic voting), and identity verification (see notes below). SWV focuses only on one aspect: wealth. There are other form of a blockchain alignment that, from the NDC aspect, should have even more power: community contributions, research & development (building), grants, advocacy, general ecosystem support. Those are hard to quantify, and definitely harder to make it Sybill resistant. SWV is definitely easier from the Sybill resistance perspective.

My proposals: [NDC Elections v2 with quadratic SWV](https://hackmd.io/@robert-zaremba/Hy4or17YT) and [NDC Gov Ultimate](https://hackmd.io/@robert-zaremba/SJ3TM8hIo) are using SWV with a reduction function.

### Oct 2023 - Jan 2024 NDC efforts

NDC Congress requested to create a quadratic voting system based on SWV. Correct implementation of such a system is not trivial. It requires account identity check (for example IAH) to work correctly. Otherwise, an identity can divide the wealth between multiple accounts to diminish (and consequently neutralize) the quadratic voting effect.

The Voting Ops WG proposed a design to to limit numbers of accounts dividing their stake:
* take a historic snapshot of NEAR staking (to avoid whales manipulation);
* apply quadratic reduction only above certain threshold (to not penalize small stakers).

At the same time the Ops WG advertises that dividing wealth into multiple accounts increase decentralization and statistics (more active accounts). This, in my opinion, is "making a good face to a bad situation" while not handling the problem of wealth concentration.

My proposal of [NDC v2 with quadratic SWV](https://hackmd.io/@robert-zaremba/Hy4or17YT) (to integrate SWV with I Am Human and empower DAOs) was rejected.

### Why doing this?

The NDC v1 Voting Ops Team design is not complete yet, and will have to be approved by the Voting Body. The time is running up and the NDC v1 term is finishing in June 2024. This means, we need to have a working solution by May 2024.

To contribute to a general research, and having more options to discuss, I propose an alternative solution, that is a minimum set of improvements to "human based voting".

## Design

_This is a concept, not a proper specification_.

The new idea focuses on communities and DAOs rather than individuals. It is communities that drive the ecosystem, not stakers.

### Mechanism overview.

We build based on NDC v1 Voting Body mechanism, with the following improvements:

- Limit number of votes / person, but much smaller than number of 'seats'. Reminder: voting-v1 allowed to select number of accounts equal to number of seats in a House. Being able to select the whole house at once supports the "parties", which we witnesses in NDC v1 elections. Proposed limit: 3 (as also suggested by @staRpauSe).

- Require double verification for Fractal: this is to increase difficulty of identity buying. It's not enough that someone will do the verification once. We will ask for more than one verification and maybe at least one other SBT (community , KYC etc...).

SIGNIFICANT CHANGE:

- Instead of electing people, we elect communities. People vote for communities, and communities elect leaders.
- Nominations will start with communities nominate their representative for each house. For CoA and TC: max one representative per community is allowed. For HoM, each community can nominate max 2 representatives.
- Consequently, HoM should be smaller. 11 instead of 15.
- Community, to be valid, must have a valid track of records, and be older than 8 months and be "unique" (culturally and have different objectives)
- We forbid "duplicated" communities (that share same concept and same culture).

This system will limit the chance of having big "blocks" owning the system, because we impose community limits.

NOTE: I don't have a good definition what a community is. We would need to research it. The dynamic between individuals and communities must be considered.