Decentralised Autonomous Governments (DAGs) — Part 2: The Core Features

7 min readAug 21, 2024

AI Generated Image of a Future Where DAGs Exist

Introduction

Welcome back. DAGs (Decentralised Autonomous Governments) offer a transformation in governance by embracing decentralisation, transparency, and open community decision making. Today, we’ll walk through the features of a DAG and focus on how these principles are used across different facets of governance to build a more effective and inclusive system.

This article is part of a series:

Part 1: An Introduction to DAGs
Part 2: The Core Features of a DAG
- The Proposal Process

Recap: The Principles of DAGs

Before we delve into the article, let’s quickly recap the foundational principles of DAGs we covered in the first article:

Decentralisation: Power is distributed across a network, enabling collective decision making and reducing the risk of corruption.
Transparency: All actions within a DAG are open and verifiable by all members, fostering trust and accountability.
Participation: Individuals can directly engage in governance, voting, and submitting proposals, ensuring everyone has a voice.
Innovation: DAGs leverage blockchain technology to address traditional governance challenges, aiming for greater efficiency and security.

The Goals of DAGs

DAGs aim to create a fairer, more democratic governance model with goals such as:

Equitable Decision-Making: Ensuring all community interests are considered.
Enhanced Participation: Lowering barriers for wider inclusion in governance.
Responsiveness: Adapting quickly to changing community needs and global challenges.
Sustainable Development: Focusing on long-term policies for resource and community well-being.
Continuous Innovation: Constantly adopting new technologies to improve governance.

The Proposal Process in DAGs

The Proposal Process in a DAG transforms community ideas into actions through a transparent and participative route. It’s one of the central processes for decentralised governance, showcasing how every community member’s contribution helps shape their collective future.

Steps in the Proposal Process:

Idea Submission: In this system, any community member can contribute ideas, ensuring a democratised governance process where everyone’s voice is heard. For example, a resident might suggest a new public transport route, which, with community support, could be developed into a formal proposal.
Collaborative Problem-Solving: Through collective brainstorming and collaboration, community challenges are addressed with innovative and effective solutions. A community facing a housing shortage, for instance, might work together to develop new zoning laws or affordable housing initiatives.
Innovation and Improvement: Proposals aiming to innovate or improve existing structures are encouraged, driving continuous improvement within the community. For instance, a proposal might suggest integrating renewable energy sources into the town’s power grid, improving both sustainability and resilience.
Community Feedback: Community members submit proposals, kicking off a period of discussion and brainstorming. This phase is crucial for gathering diverse perspectives and ensuring that proposals are comprehensive and well-rounded.
Refinement and Voting: Proposals are refined through collaborative feedback, aligning them with community needs and ensuring they are practical and actionable. This often involves public forums or online discussions where community members can voice their opinions and suggest improvements. Refined proposals are then put to a vote using a transparent, secure digital voting system that ensures decisions are made fairly and democratically. For example, after refining a proposal, the community might use quadratic voting to ensure that the most supported proposals reflect the intensity of preferences.
Implementation and Review: Successful proposals are implemented, with ongoing monitoring to assess their impact and effectiveness. After a new policy is enacted, regular reviews are conducted to measure its success and make necessary adjustments. This continuous review fosters a culture of improvement and learning within the community.

Please see this article for more detail on the proposal process

Proposal process sequence diagram

Participatory Budgeting in DAGs

Participatory budgeting in DAGs gives the community direct influence over how resources are allocated, ensuring transparency and inclusivity in resource management.

Core Aspects of Participatory Budgeting:

Empowering Community Involvement: Every citizen has the opportunity to participate in budgeting decisions, fostering a sense of ownership and ensuring that resources are allocated according to community priorities. For example, in a DAG-managed city, residents could vote on how to allocate funds for public services like parks, schools, and road maintenance.
Transparency and Accountability: By leveraging blockchain technology, DAGs make the budgeting process fully transparent and secure. This ensures that every transaction is traceable, preventing the misuse of funds and ensuring that allocations are made as intended.
Real-Time Adjustments: DAGs allow for real-time adjustments to budget allocations based on community feedback. If a particular project becomes more urgent, the community can quickly vote to reallocate funds, ensuring that resources are directed where they are most needed.

Voting Mechanisms in DAGs

On a broader level, DAGs rely on flexible voting mechanisms, allowing communities to adopt the voting method that best suits their preferences, ensuring a robust democratic process.

Key Voting Mechanisms:

Variety of Voting Systems: DAGs offer multiple voting mechanisms, such as proportional allocation, quadratic voting, and ranked-choice voting, enabling communities to choose the method that best reflects their values. For instance, quadratic voting could be used to ensure that minority voices are heard in decisions about cultural or social initiatives.
Meta-DAG Governance: A Meta-DAG acts as a governance layer that oversees and manages the DAG’s internal processes. Within this framework, communities can vote on and modify their preferred voting mechanisms, ensuring that the governance system evolves with the community’s needs. For example, a community might initially use ranked-choice voting but later decide to switch to liquid democracy as it grows and its needs change. This flexibility allows for continuous adaptation and refinement of governance structures.
Smart Contract Integration: Selected voting mechanisms are integrated into the DAG via smart contracts, automating the process and ensuring that decisions are executed exactly as the community intended. This automation reduces the risk of human error and ensures consistency across the governance process.
Upholding Democratic Integrity: These mechanisms uphold the principle of one person, one vote, ensuring equitable participation and protecting the system from undue influence. For instance, safeguards are in place to prevent vote-buying or manipulation, preserving the fairness of the process.

Digital Citizenship and Local Governance in DAGs

In a Decentralised Autonomous Government (DAG) system, the concept of digital citizenship takes on a new dimension, closely tying participation rights to geographical location while ensuring that every voice matters. This model allows citizens to engage meaningfully at various levels — local, regional, and national — depending on the issues at hand.

Here’s how a DAG ensures that community members have a direct and significant role in shaping their immediate environment, while also contributing to broader governance structures:

Geographical Relevance and Multi-Layered Engagement: In a DAG, digital citizenship is directly tied to geographical location, ensuring that decisions are made by those who live in the affected area. This principle supports governance at multiple levels — local, regional, and national — allowing citizens to participate where their input is most relevant. Whether it’s local decisions like funding for a park, regional projects such as infrastructure, or national policies, this system ensures that those most impacted by issues are shaping the solutions.
Secure and Inclusive Participation: Advanced digital identity verification ensures that only verified residents can participate in decision-making, whether at the local, regional, or national level. This security measure prevents fraud and keeps the governance process fair and inclusive.
Scalability and Relevance: As DAGs expand, they must scale governance while preserving the relevance of individual voices. Local governance can scale to regional collaboration without losing focus, and regional DAGs can connect to form a cohesive national governance structure, maintaining trust and meaningful participation across all levels.

Incentivisation Mechanisms in DAGs

DAGs leverage various incentivisation mechanisms to encourage active participation and reward contributions, ensuring the vibrancy and integrity of the governance process while maintaining fairness and equality among all participants.

Types of Incentivisation Mechanisms:

Token-Based Rewards: Blockchain technology is used to issue tokens as rewards for participation in governance activities such as voting, proposal submission, and community engagement. These tokens can be used within the DAG ecosystem, offering tangible benefits like access to services or even trading for goods or services.
Reputation Systems: Reputation scores are assigned based on members’ contributions and engagement. However, these scores do not influence voting power or decision-making authority. Instead, they can be recognised as a form of social acknowledgment within the community, encouraging positive participation. Reputation might be used to highlight members who are particularly active or who contribute valuable insights, but it does not grant any additional privileges or power over others.
Micro-Task Incentives: For smaller, task-oriented contributions, DAGs offer micro-rewards. Tasks might include moderation duties, community support, or project implementation, with rewards directly tied to the complexity and importance of the task. This incentivises participation in the day-to-day activities that keep the community running smoothly.
Participation Dividends: By actively participating in a DAG, individuals can accumulate rewards that serve as an alternative way to make money. As members engage more in governance processes, their contributions can lead to significant financial rewards, providing a supplementary income that could complement Universal Basic Income (UBI). This approach offers a new way for individuals to financially benefit from their civic engagement while supporting a more equitable and participatory governance model.
Merit-Based Opportunities: While every member has an equal vote and voice, there may be opportunities for members to take on specific tasks or roles based on their skills, interests, and contributions. These roles do not confer additional decision-making power but allow members to contribute in ways that align with their strengths, helping to facilitate the community’s processes.

Conclusion

Overall, Decentralised Autonomous Governments (DAGs) represent the foundation of a new governance system, where digital citizenship, participatory budgeting, diverse voting mechanisms, and innovative incentivisation models play a central role. These features enhance community engagement, ensure equitable participation, and offer a fresh channel for individuals to contribute meaningfully to society.

By making full-time participation in governance a viable and rewarding option, DAGs could fundamentally change how we view civic duty and community involvement.

Your feedback is key to helping us continue crafting and implementing these systems. Together, we can create the future that democracies deserve in the information age.