Dark DAO

Dark DAOs are a new way to build trustworthy vote-buying systems targeting other DAOs using key encumbrance. Our implementation of two kinds of Dark DAOs written entirely in Solidity demonstrate how simple it can be to set one up.

This repository contains the Dark DAO systems described in our paper.

In this repository, we show two different Dark DAO "flavors":

• A Basic Dark DAO that demonstrates simple vote-buying between a briber and vote sellers. Vote sellers must store their DAO tokens inside an encumbered account that is controlled by a key-encumbered wallet smart contract.
• A user-friendly Tokenized Dark DAO "Lite" that automatically sells user voting power at auction. It is accessible to ordinary users via a liquid ERC-20 DAO token derivative. Key encumbrance is managed entirely by the Dark DAO contract.

Details

In order for trustworthy DAO vote-selling to be possible, the private key of the account holding the DAO tokens must be both generated and encumbered inside a trusted execution enclave (TEE) and enrolled in an encumbrance policy which may restrict which voting messages its owner can sign. This way, when voting power is sold, the holder of the DAO tokens cannot change or override the vote-buyer's votes. To that end, we use Oasis Sapphire as a backend to store key material and further hide vote-selling activities.

How does it work?

The Basic Dark DAO provides a simple, straightforward mechanism for selling DAO voting power to another party. Importantly, this kind of vote-selling is largely invisible to outside observers, since the DAO tokens remain in the vote-seller's account. In this type of Dark DAO, a briber sets up a Basic Dark DAO contract to swing a particular DAO proposal, funds it, and publicizes it. The briber specifies exactly how much users would be paid if they let the briber vote using their DAO tokens. Users who own DAO tokens in an encumbered account and who are already enrolled in a special DAO voting encumbrance policy can take the bribe and sell their votes.

We aren't sure how many people would go through the effort of managing their Ethereum account on a smart contract on another chain just to sell their DAO votes. The Tokenized Dark DAO "Lite" allows users to purchase and hold an ERC-20 DAO token derivative (a DD token) on Ethereum that is redeemable for the underlying target-DAO token plus bribe money which the Dark DAO accumulates from selling votes. The Dark DAO contract manages all key-encumbered wallets for users and runs its own auction for every DAO proposal, allowing anyone to bid to purchase the Dark DAO's votes. The Dark DAO itself still runs on Oasis, but users could just buy the DD token on ordinary Ethereum token markets and leave to arbitrageurs the task of converting the tokens and interacting with Oasis.

Test out a tokenized Dark DAO Lite locally

We created a front-end interface to let you experiment with our Tokenized Dark DAO "Lite" design locally. Follow the setup instructions to try it out for yourself.

See the TokenizedDarkDAO class for writing your own scripts that interact with an existing Tokenized Dark DAO.

Run test cases locally

Requirements:

• Docker
• NodeJS
• geth

First, install the dependencies:

npm i

Run an Oasis Sapphire dev environment:

docker run -it -p8545:8545 -p8546:8546 ghcr.io/oasisprotocol/sapphire-dev -to "0x72A6CF1837105827077250171974056B40377488"

Note that these accounts are ephemeral and will be lost when you restart. Also, the TEE environment in the development environment is simulated.

The tokenized Dark DAO test cases require a local development network using geth:

cd geth-devnet
# Create a network using the genesis.json file
./init_geth_devnet.sh
# Run the dev network
./run_geth_devnet.sh

Run the test cases:

npx hardhat test --network dev

Contributions

TypeScript code formatting:

npx xo --fix

Solidity code formatting:

npm run format-solidity

Acknowledgements

The elliptic curve contracts are based on elliptic-curve-solidity under the MIT license.

The tokenized Dark DAO uses Proveth in its Dark DAO contract to verify proofs of DAO token balances on Ethereum.

Disclaimer

The source code contained in this repository has not been audited. It is an academic prototype. Our smart contracts might contain serious bugs. Key-encumbrance policies and Dark DAOs are novel concepts, so there are not yet any established standards or best practices to assist with safe deployment.