the future of onchain governance with zk coprocessors
the Tally newsletter, issue 118
welcome back to the Tally newsletter, your weekly source for DAO governance insights. i'm coolhorsegirl and i’m so happy to be here. 🟣
in a world where DAO members' voting power can be spread across numerous networks and smart contract services, scaling one DAO across chains has been a challenge. enter zk coprocessors.
Aave is upgrading governance to v3 this week! and Nouns DAO may market in Taipei and may be branding bidets of all things. let’s get into it 👇
🤿 deep dive: the future of onchain governance with zk coprocessors
what will governance look like in a world where members of a DAO have their voting power split across tens, hundreds, or thousands of networks and in just as many smart contract services? how can we scale one DAO across chains?
a few months back we were provided our recommendation on the most promising technical implementation of Superchain decentralized governance to Optimism. our solution has implications beyond Superchain, though, and to cross-chain governance. we’re talking zk coprocessors.
zk coprocessors—like Axiom and RISC Zero—enable smart contracts to access historical data and conduct verified computations on that data. they allow one party to prove to another that they possess certain information, without revealing that information itself. basically, zk coprocessors provide the ability to validate votes and proposals without exposing sensitive data, adding a layer of privacy and security.
so what’s that mean in practice? most DAOs run on a certain set of smart contracts on a certain chain. but increasingly, we’re seeing DAOs that operate cross-chain like on Optimism’s Superchain—which makes them harder to interact with Tally (and most governance frontends) at current moment. but using zk coprocessors, DAOs once incompatible with Tally will be able to use Tally in the same way single-chain DAOs do.
zk coprocessors:
are efficient and cost-effective for cross-chain voting
aggregate and validate multiple proofs into a single, easily verifiable on-chain proof
allow for offchain computations while maintaining low on-chain verification costs
offer manageable proof generation time, even for users with large proving sets
are scalable with modular smart contract architecture
enable expressive proofs for evolving governance requirements without increasing proving costs
this is big stuff for cross-chain governance. you can read our deep dive here.
⌛️ onchain proposals
👻 Aave
summary: big stuff—this proposes the migration of the Aave governance from v2 to v3, transferring all permissions from the v2 system to v3, executing all required smart contracts upgrades and miscellaneous preparations.
voting ends: october 23rd
🟡 NounsDAO
Summary: this proposal would transfer a Noun and 16 ETH each to t2 members of the Verbs team as well as thanks for helping Nouns undergo protocol developments like the Fork.
Voting ends: october 20th
Wet Butt, So What? Noun’s Bidet Revolution!
summary: MakeWater is seeking $34,000 USDC to provide low-income families with Nouns-branded bidets and some marketing around the initiative.
voting ends: october 20th
summary: 101k USDC to bring Nouns to Taipei Blockchain Week, including conference sponsorship and heavy marketing on 2 of the 5 days of the conference. and of course, noggles in plenty.
voting ends: october 21st
📝 what we’re reading & listening to
a complete rundown of which projects did and didn’t get STIPs in a bunch of Google sheets. you can separate by category, amount, votes, everything. it’s especially interesting looking at which projects hit quorum but didn’t make it before the 50m ARB ran up—Arbitrum DAO will likely move to do something with those runner-ups.
🎧 Communicating in Crypto, and Beyond on web3 with a16z
where you work with people that are both remote and in person, or a mix of regulars and newcomers/strangers on the daily, this is so important. it’s not just a trad take, though, and has some valuable lessons for our industry.
🐦 Are blockchain systems legal or illegal (or something else)? by BlockhainGov
introducing alegality, “situated beyond the boundaries of existing legal orders and, therefore, challenging them.” dive deeper in this article.
💫 DAO talk: zoomer meets world || DT weekly ep. 59
🤭 meme of the week
more chains on Tally! this time, Mantle. as per, reach out if you’re building on Mantle (or any other chain) and want to launch on Tally. we’re here to help.
~ coolhorsegirl 🐴
p.s.- spending a few weeks in the Scottish countryside.
