Visual DAO Framework

Background On the Problem

DAOs are complicated. Not just because of the blockchain, but because of everything not on the blockchain. DAOs are a collection of traditional software, things like websites and servers, AND smart contracts, blockchain wallets, UTXOs.

The interplay between blockchain bits and traditional bits is left out. We don't have a framework that is built for the hybrid world we're entering. One that lets non-coders see the system in its entirety - lets you surf its clusters and edges without getting bogged down in white papers and thousands of lines of code. One that gives developers and participants the assurances that what they build will behave. One that gives auditors and architects alike simple tools to simulate and prove the system is acting as expected.

Our Solution

That's the Visual DAO Framework. That's our mission. A three-layer approach to a new generation of services that bridge traditional software with blockchain and brings the whole community along with it.

We will build a Graph DAO framework and standards, co-developed by community programmers, mathematicians, artists, and communicators. A series of open conferences will present concepts and concerns at the beginning of each stage of the roadmap. Final acceptance will be visualization and simulation of the community selected and designed DAO use cases.  Developers will be able to simulate entire DAOs on command or safely split DAOs into modular components for feature testing.

What could make a valid DAO?

• A DAO is only valid if it can be represented as a fully connected graph.
• A DAO is only valid if it defines its own external interfaces.
• A DAO is only valid if it controls its own data.
• A DAO is only valid if it can be deployed as described by the graph.
• A DAO is only valid if its behavior is as its stakeholders expect.
• A DAO is only valid if it can be simulated by its stakeholders.

Example Use Cases

• Lotteries
• Donations
• *Choosing member roles
• *System permissions handling
• Summed systems – Electing people and granting them systems access (yielding API keys, resetting account ownership off-chain)

Who We Are

Vincent Brandon

Data and ML Engineer. Certified professional project manager. Development lead.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-brandon-b36b6728/

Randall Harmon

Software architect and full-stack developer. Asker of interesting questions. Architecture & Integration Lead

https://www.linkedin.com/in/randall-harmon-aa52765/

Stephen Whitenstall

Test management consultant for development and DAO simulation.

**We are still looking for a mathematics & foundations consultant.  We want our framework to map onto established modeling paradigms.  If you are interested, please comment, DM, or find us on Discord! 

Community Growth

Growth in users at each layer. Here's how this work might help you:

Voters

Voters primarily interact with the visualization layer. As teams present their work, they can provide generated visualizations and active simulations to stakeholders (you!). Instead of showing a fake bunch of bubbles and lines with a great speech, development teams can present their core DAO logic as it exists in visual form, even demoing it live.

DAO Participants

Individuals participating in the DAO can gain confidence in their interaction (buying stake, sending money, employment, lottery, charity, and more). Visualization allows non-technical participants to explore how their interaction impacts DAO behavior. Community auditors and security researchers peer review the dynamics of proposed DAOs.

Core Developers

Developers will use the framework to piece together their core DAO components. The framework will allow for the quick composition of the trusted (off-chain) and verified (on-chain) components and functionality via intuitive abstractions. Developers connect resource abstractions with strict functional logic and get the benefit of auto visualization, simulation, and deployment planning. Developers can be sure that the deployment targets (on-chain and off-chain interfaces, addresses, and data stores) will be community validated and enterprise-ready where possible.

Artists, Designers

DAOs adhering to the Framework can be fully visualized as connected graphs. These graphs can be rendered in blender, pushed to graph databases, drawn by JavaScript's Mermaid or python's Matplotlib, and more. Data journalists can tell stories of the DAO and its behavior, finding innovative ways to communicate the inner workings of the DAO starting with a valid representation of the core DAO components.

Architects

Software architects and business leaders can translate requirements or UML into graphs directly on the visual layer, creating a wireframe for the development team. As development continues, architects have a way of verifying DAO construction intuitively, against their early visuals. Anyone can simulate the network at any time, so project managers are not in the dark about connectedness, functionality, or performance.

Quality Assurance Specialists

Quality control specialists have multiple ways to validate system behavior and development work. Visually, auditors can check graphs for unwanted leaves – signifying backdoors, insecure interfaces, bad data sources. Because the code is written in a framework, the simulation will fail if not constructed properly – CI/CD gets a boost with the simple simulation of the entire network without standing up heavy infrastructure. The strict nature of the framework means that testing individual edges (executing functions directly) has an easy chain to follow – visually via the graph and code.

Roadmap

The core team and consultants engage in development cycles to prepare assets for an event. This helps scope research, ideation, and development as well as provide transparent milestones to the community. All events will be recorded for public viewing.

Phase 1 – Ideation, Setup, Workflow (2 Months)

Events:

[CC1] Community Conference: Early Use Cases (picks 3) 8/18/2021

[CC2] Community Conference: Architecture Concepts, Language Selection

[WG1] Working Group: Visual Construction of Cases

[WG2] Working Group: Case Primitives Review

[WG3] Working Group: Functional Connections of Primitives, Hybrid On/Off-chain Sub-Networks

Phase 2 – Alpha Framework (2 Months)

Events:

[WG4] Working Group: Simulation of Primitives, Functions

[WG5] Working Group: POC Construction of Single Case

[CC3] Community Conference: Framework updates, POC, Feedback

Community Development Events

The Cardano community is the ultimate user of Graph DAO, its tooling, and visualizations. We will offer incentives to registrants to garner insight at key steps throughout the conception and buildout of the framework layers. Community development events, community conferences, and working groups, are limited seat scoped events where the core development team will present findings, concepts, and programming patterns and get directed feedback to accelerate decision making and stakeholder alignment. Registration will be first come first serve for interested parties that submit short descriptions of why they would like to join and what they plan to contribute.

Community Conferences ~60min (Seating limited to 10)

Community conferences are relaxed, but focused discussions to set design parameters for the Graph DAO framework and review use cases.

Incentive

Prizes will be offered via lottery to participants.

Working Groups ~90min (Seating limited to 5)

Working groups are highly engaged focus groups aimed to provide specific feedback on Graph DAO framework assets, construction, and usage. Attendees will be expected to follow instructions to set up development environments and review select materials prior to attendance.

Incentive

Participation fees are equally distributed to all participants.

Defining Success

This project can only be successful with the help of the community. We want to involve diverse stakeholders throughout development.

3 Months In

At the three-month mark, we should be well into Phase II, implementing the framework. In order to get this far we will have held and produced. All works, meetings, available online through the framework documentation and development site (static site hosted on Github or similar)

• Framework documentation website and associated repository.
• Held four (4) community events and distributed all prizes and participation rewards.
• Selected the primary language for the framework and have developed expected abstraction interfaces (class structures and composition).
• Reached consensus on and published the foundations of the framework, it's guiding principles in construction of DAOs, and basic requirements for on and off-chain primitives and functions.
• Visually represent the three (3) test cases adhering to consensus architectural constraints.
• Reached consensus on and published design of all on-chain and off-chain primitives required for POC use cases.
• Reached consensus on and published edge definition and functional requirements, layer translations, and noted any breaking edge cases requiring further review.
• Pre-Alpha framework committed to open repository.  1 of 3 POC demonstrated.

6 Months In

• All 3 use cases (DAOs) be built, visualized, and simulated. 
• Framework documentation website evolves to implementation and core concepts guides.
• Alpha Framework opened to the community for testing, issue submission, extension.
• Held three (3) community events and distributed all prizes and participation rewards.
• First community-driven pull requests begin.
• New Metric: Early adopter DAOs being prototyped in Cotyl.  Our goal is to have 3 to five developers using the framework in their DAO-based application.

12 Months In (Dependent of development velocity, community engagement, and Fund 7/8 award)

• Beta framework communicated to the public.
• The majority of issue generation is community-driven.
• The release schedule for V1 production framework is published.

Budget

This is a research and production exercise. We know that discovery will yield extra work in one or more categories. The 'Flex' development fund allows for onboarded professionals to continue work.

Core Team Salary ($56,000):

Development Lead ($25,000)

Architecture & Integration Lead Consultant ($15,000)

Test management consultant for Simulation ($500)

Flex Development ($15,000)

Mathematical Foundations Consultant ($500)

Events ($6,850):

Community Conferences - $300/Conference * 2 Conferences = $600 in prizes

Working Groups - $1250/Conference * 5 Conferences = $6250 ($250/member)

Float @ ~15% (9500)

Total ($72350)

Licensing and Intellectual Property

All framework code and documentation will be licensed under:

GNU General Public License version 3 (https://opensource.org/licenses/GPL-3.0)

Sub-Proposals

There are Cardano-specific assets useful to communication and development efforts across the ecosystem. These are not budgeted for here but would be directly impactful to the end product.

• (Fund 7: ~$3000) Open source icons for governance primitives and common abstraction. Create themed sets of globally impactful icons to represent common on-chain objects.  We will have a better understanding of communications needs and gaps as we approach MVP.  We will begin listing common abstractions used in describing DAOs and hybrid blockchain software to put forward a starter list in Fund 7.