Pioneering Decentralized Governance: A Retrospective on DoraHacks’ MACI/aMACI Study and Implementation
As the world’s largest multi-chain Web3 developer incentive platform, DoraHacks provides Web3 organizational tools such as Hackathons, Grants, and Bounties, at the same time striving to develop better decentralized governance infrastructure and mechanisms. Providing users with fair, efficient, and diverse governance methods is an important mission for the DoraHacks team.
In the context of community governance, the problem of collusion behavior is very commonly seen. Such behavior may arise from profit motives or from personal/relational ties and is difficult to avoid under various voting mechanisms. Effective on-chain anti-collusion infrastructure will determine whether decentralized governance can be scaled, for instance, in on-chain governance protocol and Quadratic Funding.
The downsides of collusion are clear. Firstly, the intention of funding is to support the growth of startups, but collusion often results in resource-rich projects gaining more funds, creating a Matthew effect. Secondly, the quadratic algorithm aims to solve fairness issues inherent in traditional governance/voting mechanisms, but its effectiveness is greatly diminished under rampant collusion. Thirdly, the presence of collusion also impedes the mass adoption of advanced on-chain governance tools, including quadratic voting.
After numerous practices and reviews, the DoraHacks team has improved and implemented a more fair and reliable quadratic funding method, which can be further explored on the DoraResearch Blog.
MACI (Minimal Anti-Collusion Infrastructure) is one of the solutions developed by DoraHacks to address fairness issues in quadratic governance. It is based on zkSNARK and provides more privacy for on-chain voting. Unlike transparent voting based on on-chain broadcast, MACI ensures vote anonymity, displaying only results and not voting details. In other words, MACI prevents the blockchain from offering a public voting proof, and the vote recipients cannot verify it. Returning to the example we discussed at the beginning, the next step in community collusion would typically involve exchanging on-chain voting records for rewards, which is not feasible under the MACI voting mechanism.
MACI voting has been applied to the distribution of hackathon prize pools/grant funds on the DoraHacks platform several times. It was first used in the governance of a major Web3 community during the ETHDenver In-Person BUIDLathon in February 2022, where the community collectively determined the allocation of a 1,000,000 SPORK matching pool through MACI-Quadratic Voting, demonstrating the potential of MACI infrastructure to the global crypto community. Later, MACI voting was employed as a key mechanism for community/judge voting in major hackathons such as the ETHDenver Online BUIDLathon, Opensea “Hello NFT” Hackathon, Dora Grant DAO, and 0x Defi Hackathon.
Nonetheless, the traditional MACI voting mechanism has two problems. The first is the high technical barrier — although there is a broad demand for MACI voting, contract development remains a challenge for many members of the crypto community. Addressing this, Dora Factory developed a no-code MACI voting deployment platform, Dora Vota, which was launched in 2023, enabling non-technical communities to easily complete MACI on-chain voting deployments. The built-in voting mechanisms in Vota include both linear and quadratic voting, covering the vast majority of on-chain voting scenarios. MACI administrators can deploy a MACI voting round within minutes with just a few clicks on “Deploy MACI” and simple rule settings.
Dora Dojo’s practice is a successful case of MACI voting application on the Dora Vota platform. This community regularly conducts knowledge-sharing proposal votes, covering frontier technology fields such as cryptography and quantum computing. Through MACI voting, community members can directly decide which proposals deserve funding. Even without knowledge of MACI deployment, community administrators can quickly complete on-chain and frontend deployments through Dora Vota’s guide. Dora Dojo has made MACI voting a monthly event, successfully funding over 20 proposals and showcasing the potential of decentralized governance.
In the practice at Dojo, when community members were asked, “Would you change your vote if not for MACI voting?” over 50% of voters answered “Yes,” citing that they did not want to be known for not voting for a familiar project within the community. This indicates that even without considering collusion, voters have a need to ensure the privacy of their voting choices.
The second issue is that MACI’s zero-knowledge proof operations require an operator, which is the most important basis of trust in MACI. Although the operator itself cannot make false proofs, this can also potentially lead to new collusion between the operator and a third party which restricts MACI from mass adoption. The Ethereum community had several discussions on the solutions, including MPC-based anonymous MACI and ElGamal-based rerandomization. DoraHacks and Dora Factory’s communities have started working on anonymous MACI infrastructure building since 2023. The goal of MACI anonymization is to make even the operator unable to determine “who” did “what,” achieving comprehensive anti-collusion. The operation of aMACI voting involves a voter’s “deactivate key — reset key” action, making the voting identity associated with this key invisible to the operator and achieving the voter’s own anonymization.
DoraHacks independently developed and launched the Anonymous MACI (aMACI) voting infrastructure in 2023. In March 2024, aMACI was implemented during ETHVietnam BUIDLathon in Hanoi, Vietnam, the first-ever use case in a major Web3 event, where 168 community members participated in anonymous on-chain voting based on aMACI to decide the distribution of a $2,000 prize pool.
This practice marks a milestone in the application of anonymous MACI in crpto communities. Previously, Ethereum Research Long-term Grant “ETH Research Grant” on the DoraHacks platform had also used aMACI in multiple community voting rounds to determine project funding results.
As a global pioneer in quadratic funding and MACI mechanism building, DoraHacks is dedicated to creating better decentralized governance mechanisms and tools, bringing a more democratic, efficient, and secure decision-making environment to the crypto community. The launch of anonymous MACI (aMACI) voting protocol further eliminates potential collusion risks in the governance process, ensuring that every community member’s voting rights are equally respected. The release of the Dora Vota platform lowers the technical barrier to MACI deployment, enabling more communities to participate in and benefit from this governance model. As an innovative governance mechanism, MACI brings limitless possibilities for decentralized governance.
Related Articles:Implementation Notes on “MACI anonymization using rerandomizable encryption”https://research.dorahacks.io/2023/05/21/rerandomizable-encryption-maci-anonymization-notes/
PLONK-Based MACIhttps://research.dorahacks.io/2023/02/02/plonk-based-maci/
Quadratic Governance: What’s Working and What’s Not?https://research.dorahacks.io/2022/07/11/quadratic-governance/
Vota: Special Purpose Blockchain for Voting and Decentralized Community Governancehttps://research.dorahacks.io/2023/07/31/vota/
Reduce Quadratic Funding Inequality with a Progressive Tax Systemhttps://research.dorahacks.io/2021/06/16/reduce-quadratic-funding-inequality-with-a-progressive-tax-system/
Grant Funding Distribution Algorithm (Progressive Tax V2)https://github.com/dorahacksglobal/qf-grant-contract/blob/bsc-long-term/grant-distribution-algorithm-en.md
