Aragon ZK Research and Aztec have collaborated to conduct research on private voting for Nouns DAO over the past few months. They have recently completed their research and have produced a proof-of-concept, as well as general and technical reports. The teams have also developed two time-locked cryptography protocols to support their work.
The Nouns DAO Private Voting Research Sprint was funded by Nouns DAO, a social and cultural DAO known for its governance experimentation, to discover solutions for private voting within their organization. Three teams were provided with funding, including the team composed of Aragon ZK Research and Aztec. They were given three months to complete their research and deliver their findings.
The primary question addressed in the research sprint was: “Up to which point is it possible to build a user-friendly, trustless, fair, weighted, and ballot-secret voting system in Ethereum?” The answer to this question is that, with the progress made during the sprint, it is indeed possible. A demo has been developed to demonstrate the concept.
The only parameter not covered in this research was weighted voting. The proof of concept allows for one vote per NFT (non-fungible token). Therefore, if a person owns multiple NFTs, they will need to cast a separate vote for each NFT.
The importance of onchain private voting lies in the fact that all votes in DAOs are currently public due to the transparency of the blockchain. However, private voting has been a desired goal in the web3 industry. There are various reasons why members of a DAO may not want their votes to be publicly available, including concerns about personal relationships and security. Fully encrypted private voting can prevent vote manipulation through coercion or bribery. The option for private voting is crucial, and having it on the blockchain ensures that there are no intermediary parties involved.
The private voting proof of concept developed by the teams demonstrates that private and trustless voting on Ethereum is indeed possible. The concept is not yet a market-ready product, but it showcases the potential for private voting in the industry. The proof of concept can be tested through a command-line interface (CLI) rather than a graphical user interface (GUI).
To participate in the voting process, wallet owners need to register their public keys before the voting begins. This registration process only needs to be done once. The voting process is then created, and registered wallet owners who meet the eligibility requirements can cast their votes. The votes are submitted to the Nouns voting smart contract. After the voting period ends and the decryption key is released, the results can be tallied and verified. The final results of the vote are shared without revealing the wallet addresses of the voters.
Future developments include researching a solution for multisig support and developing a solution for vote aggregation. These tasks will contribute to the production of a final product for Nouns DAO. Aragon ZK Research will also be applying the learnings to DAOs on Aragon OSx, while Aztec Labs will continue contributing to the development of Noir to enhance private voting experiences.
For further details, interested readers can explore the provided links to access the research documentation and repositories related to this project.