DAO Proposal: Upala Digital Idenity and BladerunnerDAO

🔥 DAO Proposals
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Greetings humans🖖

Upala Digital Identity

Upala is an anti-Sybil system for DApps and a decentralized digital identity in the future.

Why are we building Upala:

  • On Ethereum. DApps need Sybil-resistance.
  • In the world. There are over 1 bln people without any ID. Without it they cannot access basic services including healthcare, social protection, education and finance. And those who have an ID have to condone that it is monopolized by the government.

How Upala works

:boom::robot: Explosive bots

Upala provides a digital identity uniqueness score. The score is valued in dollars. It represents the explosion price - an amount of money that an identity holder can get at any time for deleting their ID. The higher the explosion price the higher the owner values the ID and the safer it is for DApps to interact with.

The building block of Upala is a group (consisting of people or other groups). The explosions payouts are provided by group pools. Thus groups tend to consist of people (groups) who believe that other members value their IDs equally.

:moneybag::dark_sunglasses: Price of forgery

Groups may earn from user deposits and/or by providing user scores to dapps for a fee. This incentivizes groups to gather as many users as possible. Users are incentivized to choose groups assigning the highest scores. At the same time the higher the score (i.e. the explosion price), the higher is the incentive to forge an identity. The market drives these prices to the equilibrium for every user - much in the same way as insurance rates work.

:dollar::gear: Incentive layer

Upala is a protocol. It allows different identity systems to be built and united under the same scoring standard. The protocol can wrap over existing systems (Bright ID, Idena, etc.) and unite them.

Learn more:

Progress

Deliverable

The purpose of this grant is to build the BladerunnerDAO​:zap::sheep: - the minimal viable identity system on top of Upala.

BladeRunnerDAO​:zap::sheep: will use membership in existing DAOs as an entry test (proof-of-human) and auto-assign scores to the members. It will also provide functionality to add other DAOs and other types of entry-tests. Probably it will even grow organically to manage Upala itself.

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In smart contracts terms the BladerunnerDAO​:zap::sheep: consists of:

  • The Upala protocol - a ledger that keeps track of users, groups and scores and provides scoring/exploding functionality.
  • The BladerunnerDAO - a DAO (smart contract) that manages its own Upala group. Members of the DAO decide which entry tests to approve and what scores to assign to them.
  • Entry test - a smart contract and an Upala group, managed by it. Entry tests assign scores to users based on a condition. The first entry tests will use MolochDAO and MetaCartel memberships as an entry condition.

BladerunnerDAO roadmap:

Testnet:

  • BladerunnerDAO smart contract
  • Entry tests smart contracts
  • Front-end for users (Upala User Wallet)
  • Front-end for BladerunnerDAO (Upala Group Managment)

Mainnet launch:

  • Tests for front-ends
  • Tests for contracts (Upala and Bladerunner)
  • Upgradability for Upala protocol

The commitment:
The commitment for this grant is highlighted in bold.
Duration: 2 mouths
Funding request: $6000

Sustainability and growth

Upala has several options for generating profit. The actions that we can make payable are:

  • User makes a deposit to a group
  • Group provides a score to DApp
  • User or group is created
  • Member joins a group
  • Group alters member’s score

But before that we have to overcome the adoption gap. There is a lot of work ahead and there is no way we can do it with a single grant. So here is how we plan to sustain development after this grant’s money runs out:

  • Grants. We’ll keep applying for other/same grants. (Received one in September’19 from Panvala. Thank you @niran for noticing us early).
  • Partnerships. We hope to find common interest with Aragon, Gnosis and other projects and get some funding for integration. (Thank you @aaron for showing the opportunity).
  • Upala will keep participating in hackathons for prizes, talents and promotion. (Got the 3rd prize from Portis at EthGlobal’s HackMoney recently).
  • Venture capital. Currently discussing investment with MetaCartel Ventures.

Closing thoughts

A reliable anti-sybil system is crucial for projects dealing with voting, UBI, advertisement, loans, etc. Solving the unique human problem will bring a variety of new usecases for Ethereum and will boost adoption in the long run. After crypto-currencies and smart contracts a truly decentralized digital identity is probably the next big step towards a better society.

If you are reading this you are a part of resistance! Join us human!

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I like this, fits well with the idea of MC being a DAO nation and providing identity as a service to its citizens

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This is one of the most promising ideas trying to figure out proof of personhood

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Really like the experiment using DAO membership as decentralized identify - One thought just around the funding amount & how the $6000 would be spent? People, time, audits, etc. Maybe slightly less or split grant payment?

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Thanks for the question, James!

This amount is needed to fund building the BladerunnerDAO on Kovan. Milestones are in the proposal. The grant will cover everything except the front-end for BladerunnerDAO management, which I hope to fund via Aragon, @aaron :wink:

By funding, I mean covering my expenses. I’m still working solo and full-time on this. The grant will sustain me for two months (and help me with debts too :pensive: ). Please take into account the amount and quality of work already done.

I plan to do audits after introducing upgradability - as the last step before the main net launch.

I guess splitting the amount would be a good option - safer for me to be approved, more practical for MC. Maybe half the grant before and another half after the job?