---
# System prepended metadata

title: ZK Voting Market Research
tags: [buidl guidl]

---

---
type: slide
tags: buidl guidl
---


# ZK Voting Market Research

---

## Is there a a need for decentralized, anonymous voting to operate a DAO or would a semi-private solution work?

---

## ZKQD
* Built using semaphore
* Allows for eth addresses to be hidden
* Requires an admin, which can see the eth addresses

_Do DAOs need voting to be completely anonymous?_ 

---

## Is Anonymous On-chain Voting needed?
 * Seedclub, an accelerator DAO
     * Uses $CLUB as an on-chain voting mechanism to signal interesting projects to the selection committee 
     * Committee members hold more $CLUB tokens and could influence other 
    * Seedclub hasn't experienced a problem since the voting history is obscured on the website and requires holders to dig on-chain
* Obscuring the vote reduces the whale influence
* But it also validates the problem of whales having influence on others voting
* Is obscuring the _best_ solution?

---

## On-chain Treasury Voting
* RookDAO
    * A full-time RookDAO contributor regularly participates in governance voting
    * When a treasury vote comes up and he votes and others disagree, he deals with angry from disagreeing parties
    * He would prefer anonymity to avoid this distraction from his job
* Anonymitity could provide coverage for decision making, reducing individual transparency, but allowing the DAO voice to be heard

---

## Could ZK voting solve whale voting power concentration?
* Whales and voting
    * [90% of DAO voting power is held by 1% in many defi DAOs](https://cointelegraph.com/news/less-than-1-of-all-holders-have-90-of-the-voting-power-in-daos-report) 
    * Previously at decentraland DAO, 3% of the DAO hold 86.53% of the DAOs total voting power
    * Hiding voting history of eth addresses wouldn't solve this issue, DAOs would have to institute more democratic voting mechanisms like quadratic voting or conviction voting

---

## Does ZK Voting compete with Coordinape?
* Coordinape works for smaller teams to show appreciation of their work where the team knows what everyone is doing
* If used on a larger scale, it could turn into a popularity contest rather than an appreciation mechanism.
* The Bankless DAO uses coordinape, but only for additional bonus since the percentage of the coordinape pool gets smaller as the DAO grows (source: mariokondo.eth)

---

## What are 'competitors' doing?
* Superfluid & UMA
    * Built a KPI token stream based on hitting certain conditions
    * Are interested in privacy-based compensation features and have said salaries will remain public "[Until [they] implement on privacy networks like zkZync](https://twitter.com/Superfluid_HQ/status/1580836044999565312)"
* Snapshot launched shielded voting which uses threshold encryption rather than ZKP and it isn't decentralized

---

## Is there a market for zero knowledge voting?
* Yes
    * Superfluid has stated they will build compensation products on zkSync
    * Snapshot has released a product for private, centralized voting
    * Seedclub DAO obscures votes
    * DAO operators want anonymous votes
* If Buidl Guidl shows a ZK voting solution on Ethereum, it could signal to developers that they don't need to wait for zkSync mainnet to create zero knowledge products


---

## Next Steps
   * Ask Buidl Guidl members for help to connect with other DAO operators and ask about zero knowledge voting

---
