Abstract
ZKNation started with the ZKCredo, a manifesto with strong cypherpunk values and decentralization. But how does the Token Assembly know if it is on track to fulfill its destiny?
This Token Program Proposal (TPP) requests funding research and development of a governance liveness, security risks monitor and decentralizaiton measurement Forse Terminal for ZKNation’s DAO governance. The monitor will be an easily shareable and interactive website that documents the journey to decentralization.
Motivation
ZKNation relies on the integrity of the Token Assembly, Security Council, and Guardians. They’re also dependent on meeting quorum in as little time as possible in the case of emergency protocol upgrades.
Governance liveness, the ability of the Token Assembly to respond, can be quantitatively assessed, and this TPP seeks to develop and maintain a dashboard that builds upon the fantastic ZKSync governance Dune dashboard available here and extends it significantly, while making real-time data available.
Collusion, defined as coordinated actions to manipulate governance outcomes, needs to be detected early on. This TPP aims to develop a dashboard to monitor governance security risks, notify interested stakeholders and show a clear path to improving security for ZKSync’s governance.
At the same time the EU’s MiCA calls for meaningful decentralization and the CLARITY acts current progress hints at a similar direction, if a protocol wants to secure favorable regulatory conditions. In the US favorable treatment might result in being under the purview of the CFTC vs the SEC and in the EU it means avoiding the painful compliance costs of registering as a CASP.
The proposed Forse Terminal will consist of beautiful, easily shareable data visualizations that will help promote the progress the ZKNation is making towards governance security, liveness and decentralization. The ongoing monitoring and sharing of this pertinent data will help attract aligned participants to ZKNation governance and the wider Elastic Chain ecosystem and help keep the ZKNation accountable on its path to true, meaningful decentralization and security.
Specification
Research Scope
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Governance Liveness parameters: Quorum as a percentage of active votable supply, Time to quorum, number of proposals, and potentially some deeper analytics into quorum likeliness per proposal, rating proposals on a scale of conscientiousness, etc.
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Whale Address Behavior: Analyze token concentration, voting power, and transaction patterns of large holders.
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Delegate Influence:
- Monitor concentration of delegated voting power among top delegates.
- Compare potential to exercised voting power. Identifying how often which delegates could have and did change the outcome of a vote.
- Analyze voting alignment among delegates to detect potential coordination.
- Delegation Network Analysis: Map delegation relationships to identify which addresses delegate to whom, visualizing the flow of voting power. Identify central nodes accumulating significant delegated power, detect circular delegation patterns, and monitor changes before key governance events. This will use network graph techniques to uncover hidden patterns of influence and potential collusion among delegates.
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Address Clustering: Detects clusters of addresses potentially controlled by one entity.
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Vote Buying Detection: Track suspicious token transfers or delegation spikes before votes.
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Governance Body Collusion: Assess alignment between Guardian vetoes, Security Council actions, and whale/delegate interests. Analyse addresses in these bodies and find possible links to known whales or delegates.
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Decentralization: Measuring meaningful decentralization and updating measurements to reflect regulatory guidance and case law. This will include the Gini and Nakamoto coefficients, the number of delegates and voters needed to pass or block a proposal and help identify singular sources of control and ownership.
Terminal Features
- Real-time and per proposal metrics on governance liveness with time series of parameters.
- Real-time metrics on token distribution, voting patterns, and address clusters.
- Anomaly detection for unusual transfers or delegation changes.
- Visualizations like network graphs for clustering and heatmaps for voting alignment.
- Decentralization measurements and visible progress towards meaningful and robust decentralizaiton.
- Integration with ZKSync’s governance data (e.g., vote.zknation.io, forum.zknation.io).
- Open-source, with code and documentation on GitHub.
- Notifications via Email or Telegram to alert interested parties on important events.
One example of how to display delegation is this wonderful analysis by Fritsch, Müller and Wattenhofer. (Source)
Budget
The final budget depends on the scope of features the community is most excited about. We’d offer very competitive conditions to ZKNation to make sure the DAO receives excellent value.
Timeline
- Duration: 3 months (12 weeks) to development, dashboard will be maintained for 24 months.
- Phase 1: Research and Design (Weeks 1-3): Gather requirements, design architecture, select tools.
- Phase 2: Data Collection and Analysis (Weeks 4-6): Integrate data, develop algorithms.
- Phase 3: Dashboard Development (Weeks 7-9): Build frontend/backend, test iteratively.
- Phase 4: Deployment and Community Training (Weeks 10-12): Launch publicly, provide documentation/training.
- Note: Personnel hours are distributed across phases, with flexibility for adjustments.
Team
- Project Lead: Waldemar Panin, Project Manager at Forse Analytics by StableLab.
- Team Members: To be assigned post-approval, with expertise in blockchain analytics, data science, and dashboard development. Updates will be shared on the forum. Forse Analytics has previously built dashboards for OP, Uniswap, Arbitrum and Sky / MakerDAO.
Accountability
- Monthly progress reports on the forum.
- Presentation of the results at the three-month mark in two community calls at different timeslots to encompass ZKNation’s global nature.
Rationale
- A compass towards decentralization: This project can serve as a guide towards greater decentralization by contrasting governance liveness and security metrics into a single source of information.
- Enhanced Security: Early collusion detection strengthens governance integrity. Uncovering hidden patterns of influence enhance the pull of decentralization.
- Community Empowerment: Transparent insights enable proactive threat responses. Light is the best disinfectant.
- Innovation Leadership: An open-source tool could benefit other DAOs, reinforcing ZKSync’s leadership.
Risks and Mitigation
- Data Availability: Forse analytics has multiple data sources and has perfected its data pipeline to iron out errors in data acquisition.
- Technical Complexity: Ingestion of a new chain with a unique architecture, something the Forse team has done before, though.
- Delays: Buffer time is built into the 3-month timeline.
Call to Action
As a top 10 delegate, StableLab is committed to ZKNation’s success. This project is an important step towards transparency and will serve as a compass towards decentralization, in line with ZKNation’s cypherpunk ethos. We welcome feedback on scope or budget. Let’s build a secure, resilient ZKNation together!