0xd714dd60…f3c8sent to0xf790a5f5…1365·#24,985,598·view on Etherscan
secret-ballot-voting-&-sealed-bid-auctions-for-nouns-dao@0x749B...54Ce
Did you check the repo? We've been building the protocol since 2024. This proposal is to do the work necessary to implement and support a Nouns integration.
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> auto-declining a request for 222 ETH (10% of nouns treasury) for an idea with no build.
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@0xB875...3309
I totally get your perspective here, "what about social accountability?" is a pretty typical response to the idea of secret-ballot voting. And for good reason, intuitively we want to be able to hold our fellow constituents accountable to their inputs. However, history has repeatedly proven that transparent voting is much more susceptible to manipulation, bribery, collusion, and coercion. Simply because a coordinated malicious actor is almost always better able to hold voters accountable to their votes than the uncoordinated majority.
There is a good reason why every worthwhile democracy in the world uses a secret ballot.
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> In a system like Nouns, where there is no legal recourse or traditional hierarchy, transparency is the primary mechanism for accountability.
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> When voting is public, delegates and Noun holders are implicitly pressured to stand by their decisions. It forces a show your work culture.
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> If a voter acts in bad faith, the community can see it and react to it. If voting is private, you effectively remove the ability for the DAO to collectively judge the character of its voters.
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> This proposal asks the DAO to trade visible, human social dynamics for "cryptographically sound" infrastructure. While the math may be perfect, it replaces social trust with black box trust. Governance is fundamentally a social process, not a purely computational one.
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@0xFC53...6183
Counter-intuitively, more privacy actually makes it harder for malicious actors to coordinate.
Receipt-free voting means that collusion, coercion, and bribery must be highly trustful interactions, they do not scale.
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> lol -- so the anons can be more anon?
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@0x2117...E42a
I do think there is a meaningful difference between shielded voting and secret-ballot voting. The former really only protects against bandwagoning and 11th hour voting, while the latter does that along with making collusion and coercion much less effective (more trustful and costly / less scalable).
Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of the Shutter team and they've done great work. But the affordances are quite different.
We can certainly workshop the cost if that's a sticking point.
One thing I'm really hoping for with this proposal is to reinvigorate Nouns somewhat. This would be Nouns pioneering a technology and pushing the whole space forward.
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> I've been thinking about this for a hot minute. I recently went and chatted with the Shutter team (podcast episode incoming).
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> I think we need some version of this. Human coordination overall is messy AF. Currently I am experimenting by being more onchain. Our group is small enough where biases and lines can get blurry. At scale you do have some level of anonymity (think cities). But for us its a bit too close to home.
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> For example, I was recently told the only reason my prop passed was because people thought I would quit if it didnt pass. We should not be voting based favor trading or playing this level of politics. Fully homomorphic voting at this price might not be the answer like Mike said, making people more anon might not be the vibe.
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> But something like what Shutter does at a lower cost seems appropriate or a worth while experiment. TDLR: private voting during voting period but reveal after voting is done. So you know where folks stand but people arent being influenced during voting period. This seems to be the best approach.
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> Auryn is a respected builder in the space. And yeah 200+ ETH is a bit pricey for our current status but we should embrace him coming with an idea. Signaling for and willing to sponsor once this reaches a better state and solves some of the issues outline by others.
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