₳GOV: URL Conversations

Most DAO platforms rely on resources (proposals, auditing material, discussions) to be authored and take place inside the community platform.

Instead, we propose the user to carries the DAO (or any other community or team) with them through a browser extension similar to a light wallet. The extension, which shares and organises bookmarks of online resources then forms the basis for DAO tooling - enabling the capability to tag and comment on resources distributed around the internet, including a community's own tools.

For example, a community may already have a slack channel and a forum. Do they really need to migrate that into ANOTHER platform without any of the speciality functionality they have come to expect from their chat service or forum? 

Similarly your own Project Catalyst experience may consist of many bookmarks of spreadsheets, proposals, project websites and podcasts - however the only place you may be able to comment on these could be in discord, or telegram - and hope that those who use this resource see your passing message.

The key factor in a browser based extension approach is that, like most light wallets, its able to coordinate around multiple, already present, distributed services (both on and off-chain) without integrating explicitly into the services explicitly. If you can see it in your browser, you can mark it up.

By using a browser extension we can:

• bring the community to the resource, rather than insert the resource into the community.
• aggregate distributed resources like bookmarks
• curate resources (both on and off chain) in authority
• propose, comment and audit  based of content from anywhere, even existing articles.
• overcome problems such as integration into a wide range of existing platforms, rather, we rely on the URL of a resource as an "landmark" or "key" under which to place comments.
• create structured, productive conversations

An user story would be:

A catalyst proposer has an idea: thebestnewsoftware.org. Catalyst users can visit this site, and comment on it's state by using the sidebar of the browser extension. If Catalyst users believe the site is a scam or a threat to the integrity of the proposal or the treasury, then through this extension and discussion it can be flagged to the wider community.

In addition, within the extension we propose building a commenting system that facilitates a structured, meaningful self-curated discussion, rather than relentless noise or circular conversations that provide no value. The commenting system will provide opportunity to create arguments of outcome: pros / cons, upside / downsides.

If all you have is a random distributed group of participants, can you impose much of anything on the group behaviour other than allocation of budget? We can foster a community when we can meet face to face, or where our lives connect around a certain issue but can we do the same asynchronously online?

Who is it for?

The browser extension would be available for all users (not just members of the Catalyst community) as a first version product. It would allow users to create a community aggregating resources and commenting on various sites as members of this community. In raising proposals, flagging information to the wider community it is eventually seen that this approach will allow members who wish to curate, aggregate and flag websites and online resources. 

Why is it important?

With distributed resources, its hard to comment and discuss without bringing these resources into a platform. This includes criticism, feedback and flagging misinformation. This technology is absent from  every DAO's tooling. 

We can now enable users to review and aggregate websites, create markup and static captures - so that snapshots of content can be used for reference and auditing. It will allow users to create traceable comment chains. Snapshots would utilise disk space and would initially be stored at cost on centralised services and eventually moved to IPFS.

Key Metrics We Will Measure

• Number of DAO toolset/frameworks available for DAO Ops (>1).

Timelines

1 Month - Design

3 Months - MVP Development (Commenting, Feed)

6 Months - V1 Development (Structured Conversations, Flagging, Proposing)

Intellectual Property

Extension will be released open source an will be funded based on hosting costs for snapshot data.

Funds

We're requesting

$10,000 for PM and management. [Seeking FUNDING in F7]

$25,000 for design.  [Seeking FUNDING in F7]

$110,000 for development (coding, automated services) (F8)

$25,000 testing and deployment to chrome extensions store. (F9)

Launch Date

We expect to launch the solution within 3 months from the last Funding Date.

Development Group

SofiCoop - https://www.soficoop.com is a rapidly growing cooperative of developers that believe in the cooperative design and development approach.