₳GOV: Agreements Building Platform

Problem Statement - Extension:

Governance and decision making are made mainly by two methods: discussion and voting. Discussions allow the participants to express different opinions and perspectives and to take into consideration the pros and cons, the benefits and the risks before decisions are made.

But discussions are not scalable. Discussions create noise, and when there is too much noise it is hard to identify the signal, i.e. the data that is relevant and contributes to the process. 

In decentralized organizations, the governance is being made by voting on proposals on-chain. The focus on proposals leaves outside wider policy challenges that are relevant to the community, such as process guidelines, community code of conduct, monetary policy etc. Discussions are usually disconnected from the voting process and spread around on different platforms: snapshot.org, twitter, google-docs, telegram, discord, reddit, github and others.

This situation makes the decision-making process ineffective and creates a risk of getting decisions that are not in the best interest of the community and its members. Also, it may discourage many members from taking an active part in the process.

Our Solution:

Consenz is a platform that was created to address those problems and offer a proven solution.

The following discussion-features make Consenz unique, compared to other platforms:

• Instead of an endless and chaotic thread of comments, there is a focus and a product to the process: A document that can be discussed and edited by the participants and reflect their agreements.
• There is a clear structure to the content: comments are attributed to a specific section and function as arguments for or against it; sections are attributed to a specific topic; topics are attributed to the document.
• There is a voting system that allows the users to express their opinion without adding noise to the discussion.
• The voting system also creates a method to deal with conflicts and determine which opinion has the majority of participants' agreements.
• Those agreements are separated from the noise by a simple algorithm that determines which section received enough support and can be added to the document automatically.

The process on consenz creates a "micro-democracy" system - an option to discuss the details of a proposal by all members of the DAOs community without limiting it to a small group of representatives. Consenz combines elements of - and is inspired by - liquid democracy, direct democracy, deliberative democracy and sociocracy.

See our presentation for summary: 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mN67olcX0QRQYP4HbPStffdM5G1m_M4zNmG6mwWP-_I/

The Project Status

Since 2018 we have been building a prototype of Consenz (until lately it was available only in Hebrew) and in 2020-2021 we have completed a proof-of-concept phase. The app prototype has been used by diverse groups for different purposes in Israel, among them:

• Schools' teams used Consenz to create teaching guidelines during the covid19 restrictions.
• Unorganized protest movements used Consenz to create demands lists.
• Environmental organizations and activists used it to collaborate with government and municipality workers to create plans for dealing with the climate crisis.

Now we wish to configure the platform to the Catalyst and Cardano community needs and processes, and ultimately expand to serve all sorts of DAO's in the crypto ecosystem.

In order to do that, we plan to:

• Implement a new UX/UI design based on the lessons and experience that we have collected during the proof-of-concept phase
• Add a gamification layer on top of the existing user interface
• Add a delegation layer on top of the existing user interface, that can be used for reputation representation as well
• Create infrastructure for future integration of the platform voting mechanism to the Cardano blockchain smart contracts for high security, immutability and transparency.
• Open the code by adding proper documentation and improving accessibility for new developers, and invite the developers' community to take part in building and improving the platform.
• Reaching out to other initiatives that are working to improve decision making processes in the Catalyst community for potential collaboration.

ROADMAP

• 2020: Build Functional prototype: Completed
• 2020-2021: 5 iterations with real users for proof of concept: Completed
• Q4 2021: Design new UX/UI: In progress
• >> Q1 2022 Build MVP web app
• Q3 2022: Gamification and Delegation layers
• Q4 2022: Integration with Cardano smart contracts

Costs Breakdown

UX/UI design: 6,200 USD

Code Architecture design: 2,000 USD

Desktop Version Components:

• Group & channel page: 6,000 USD
• Draft page: 5,400 USD
• Section Page: 7,200 USD
• User profile page: 2,800 USD

Admin panel: 7,500 USD

Mobile Native app versions:

• android: 12,000
• IOS: 12,000

QA: 5,000 USD

Onboarding users

• Landing Page: 1,500 USD
• Explanatory video: 1,200 USD

Total: 68,800 USD

Key Metrics to measure

We aim to provide Consenz first to the project catalyst community, and later to other DAOs communities. Quality success metrics will be measured by the use of the products that will be created by the Consenz platform, i.e the documents that will be discussed and created by the catalyst community as early adopters. We wish to see during the first 3 months after the launch of the MVP at least 5 documents that will be used as guidelines, policy shapers and other purposes that answer the Catalyst community needs.

Quantity success metrics will be compared to the overall community participation in the current governance process of project Catalyst, i.e., the number of wallet addresses that cast votes using the official voting app. The metrics will consider exposure (unique user traffic according to google analytics) and onboarding registered users on Consenz.

For Fund9:

• Exposure to 10% of voters
• Onboarding 5% of voters

For Fund10:

• Exposure to 20% of voters
• Onboarding 7% of voters

etc.

The Team:

Consenz is partner of ADAgov.org, Software Development Cooperative. Funded F4, F5, F6.

http://adagov.org/

Consenz founder and project manager: Aharon Porath, a techno-social entrepreneur. Since 2011, Aharon has been involved in a few tech and non-tech ventures to develop consensus-based decision-making methods and platforms for distributed public participation goals.

Aharon has 6 years of experience as a project manager of web platforms and apps, among them - "Open Committee", a web app that enables environmental activists, NGOs and citizens to participate in the decision-making process of Israel's planning department, funded by the government's Israel Innovation Authority.

 Design and Development: Sofi is a software cooperative that provides solutions for municipalities, universities, startups, well-established companies, entrepreneurs and NGOs.

The coop model relies on decentralized, consensus-based decision making, as well as total influence and wage equality for all present and future members.

https://www.soficoop.com/

Product Manager: Roy Golan. Sofi Coop co-founder. Civic participation & collaboration tools enthusiast since 2012.

Community Manager & Business Development: Ofry Erlich. Sofi's business development director. Political activist with exepertise in political parties campaigns & internal processes.

UI/UX Designer: Tzur Sherzer. After managing a big design department, Tzur has joined the team as a lead designer, and is dedicated to the challenge of making the advanced deliberative democratic discussion interface accessible for people from all communities and backgrounds.

Software Architects and Developers: Aviran Katz, Nadav Moreno. With vast experience from dosens of projects, Aviran and Nadav will be leading the development team, with the backup of the entire Sofi development department, as well as external developers.