The current DAO model

With DAOs making their way into mainstream adoption during the recent crypto boom cycle, it is becoming increasingly important to reflect on their successes and shortcomings in order to maximize their efficiency and effectiveness. For those newer to the space, a DAO is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization aimed toward a singular goal or purpose. In many ways, a DAO acts like a traditional LLC with shareholders being essential to the company's foundation; however, they typically have a direct-vote governance model where stakeholders are able to directly influence a project's decision-making in more ways than just capital investment.

Shortcomings

As DAOs become the preferred model for many blockchain based projects, there are  several roadblocks that prevent DAOs from reaching their full potential. These issues are:

• Equitability-

  Creating a voting structure that allows all participants to have equitable voting capabilities despite differences in financial involvement.

• Scalability-

  Creating frameworks that scale and allow teams within the project to continue to move at the same velocity and efficiency as when they were initially founded.

• Decentralization-

  Keeping voting powers spread throughout the entirety of the DAO so that no particular party has full control over the decision making for the project.

• Lack of participation-

  Keeping participants engaged in the decision-making process as the project continues to grow.

• Hiring, onboarding, & managing talent-

  Finding key participants that have skill sets that can be leveraged by the DAO and for the DAO.

• Founders stuck with responsibility of single handedly managing DAO-

  Finding effective ways of “handing off the torch” to participants in ways that allow the DAO to keep growing.

For the history buffs out there, these issues are the same as those faced by the Roman Republic in ~500 B.C.E.. What on paper seemed to be a largely democratic system, fell victim to tragedy of the commons and anti-commons where wealthy aristocrats leveraged power for making decisions in their own favor. Despite these issues, Rome was able to accomplish feats previously unknown to man.

With the web opening the door for easier lines of communication and blockchain allowing for both transparency and immutability, direct-voting structures such as DAOs can be leveraged far more effectively than before. But how does one keep power decentralized and participants engaged? - Enter the age of Ascension.

Ascension DAO

Ascension is a DAO governance framework created by CryptoMonkz that utilizes gamification to encourage competition for power among fractionalized portions of the DAO known as factions. In practice, Ascension plays out much like a strategy game where factions compete for voting power over the allocation of the DAOs treasury funds. Under the hood, it gets a bit more complex: battle mechanics use the stats, modifiers, and CHI (the DAO’s native token), established in the CryptoMonkz ERC-1155 contract, in allowing participants to create new propositions, votes, and elections - representing their factions in the community and the Chamber. There is a lot to unpack here, so let's get straight into it.

Participants - Individual DAO Members

The initial participants of Ascension are holders of the Crypto Monkz NFT; however, it is not limited to solely Crypto Monkz holders. In fact, Crypto Monkz invites other communities to battle over the DAO treasury. Since Crypto Monkz lives on an ERC-1155 smart contract, any external community can request to participate and current members can vote to invite external parties.. If voting succeeds, the new communities’ address along with the appropriate metadata is added to the smart contract and they can participate in combat from that point forward. In order for voting to occur in the form of combat, the following Ascension metadata must be added:

• ID
• Name
• Description
• Genome
• Version
• Attributes
• Health
• Attack
• Defense
• Faction

Each individual NFT participating in the DAO has the ability to attack and defend in order to ensure their votes are counted in the current voting round. Knowing this, it is in the interest of participants to join and form factions made up of individual participants with similar interests in order to both protect and deny other members from their votes.

Participants - Factions

While most DAOs fundamentally push teamwork through attempting to align every single member to a singular vision, Ascension encourages competition. Individuals are encouraged to form and join groups of like-minded community members with self-preservation in mind. In combat, it is quite easy for an individual participant to lose their vote, thus factions are formed.

Individuals looking to form a faction must mint a Faction Token for a price that is determined by the Ascension Chamber (an elected governing body). This pledge goes directly into the DAO treasury when minted, and the Faction Token goes directly to the faction leader’s wallet. All factions formed must submit the following information when minting a faction token:

• ID
• Name
• Symbol
• Crest
• Leader Character ID

Faction Leaders

When a faction is first formed, the individual minting the faction token is automatically assigned as the faction leader; however, if the leader chooses to renounce their leadership, a vote will be initiated for remaining faction members to vote on a new leader. This voting period lasts two 24-hour cycles. During the first cycle, the members vote on faction candidates in order to narrow the voting group to 2 members. The second cycle will then nominate the faction leader from the two and transfer control of the faction as well as all board positions in the Chamber owned by the previous faction leader.

Challenging Faction Leaders

If, at any point, a faction member seeks to claim leadership over the faction, they can buy a mutiny flag from the MNKZ store. Using that flag, they can reach out for signatures from current faction members to meet a set threshold (set by the Chamber). If the threshold is met, a vote will be initiated by the contesting faction member and the current faction leader.

Challenging a faction leader leads to a few outcomes depending on how it plays out:

1. The leader responds to the challenge: The faction leader chooses the consequences of the battle (in the case they win) i.e. punishing the challenger as well as the voters of the mutiny flag.
2. The leader does not respond to the challenge: The challenger can proceed with the vote without having any consequences arise.

Regardless of the faction leaders’ response, the vote proceeds for the next 24 hours and the winner is granted/retains leadership of the faction.

Faction Membership

Adding Members: Any member who is currently factionless can join any faction for free. To join a faction, the member must submit an application to the faction leader for review. Upon approval the member will have status with the faction and be able to participate with the unit.

Faction Royalty: Although joining a faction is free, protection and participation does come at a cost. Any member who participates in a faction will have a faction fee. This fee will be a percentage set by the faction deducted from each member’s faction earnings. In short, if the faction wins any amount through battle over the treasury, a percent of earnings will be deducted from individual members and paid to the faction’s vault to be managed by the leader.

Removing Members: If a faction member no longer wishes to be a part of the faction, they can have their faction revoked for a fee through the MNKZ store.

Force Kicking Members: If a member is not seen to be fit by the faction, the faction leader can start a vote to force kick a member. In order for the member to be effectively kicked from the faction, there must be a majority vote held against that member.

Rage Quitting: In the case that a leader or member of a faction is conducting themselves in ways that may be harmful to the DAO, the Chamber can raise a vote to ban the member from participation in the DAO.

One of the added benefits of faction membership is the ability to nominate faction membership into the Chamber- the DAOs smaller more focused governing party. If a faction earns seats in the Chamber, the faction will be able to select members to represent their faction in larger positions of governance over the DAO.

Participants - The Chamber

One of the key sources of power factions will compete for is seats to the Chamber- the governing body that guides the following core parts of the DAO:

• Outreach & Access-
  Relationships between the DAO and outside projects.
• Branding-
  Guidelines surrounding Intellectual Property, social media, websites, and overall brand integrity.
• Marketing-
  Influencer agreements, paid advertising, and press releases/coverage.
• Treasury-
  Managing treasury assets (both reserves and initial investments) as well as identifying key ways to grow and maintain new sources of funding for developing future projects.
• Factory-
  Managing token supplies of projects. This includes minting new tokens, burning token reserves & issuing new contracts.
• Sales & Merchandising-
  Overlooking the trade/sell of DAO products as well as issuing new contracts surrounding new items.

The Chamber originally consists of 3 members and is designed to a size of 5-11 members as the project scales.

Chamber Abilities - Members

As a guiding power, Chamber members have the following abilities:

1. Fund grants to the DAO
2. Vote on community proposals
3. Carry out the successfully passed proposals

Of these members, there is a special role known as the Chairman.

Chamber Abilities - Chairman

Being the only unique seat on the Chamber, the Chairman has the following abilities/ responsibilities:

1. Breaking ties on even chamber votes
2. Administrating meetings
3. Setting the tone and pace of chamber actions
4. Determining the priority of proposals submitted by the community

Chamber - Executive Oversight

As the project continues to develop toward autonomy, there is a primarily symbolic position that holds some influence on the DAO. This position is known as Executive Oversight. With very limited abilities, this position exists to mentor and advise the chamber to ensure constant growth. This position primarily has three abilities which are to be used in critical decisions that may put the DAO at risk:

• Freeze DAO activities for a short fixed amount of time for the purpose of investigating potential fraudulent activity within the DAO i.e. a 1 week freeze to review a potential contract flaw being abused.
• Send a vote back for a second cycle for a supermajority rather than majority vote if the proposition has a high risk of negatively impacting the DAO.
• Triggering a revote for a Chamber seat if the member is no longer active or acting against the interest of their faction/DAO.

Governance & Voting Mechanics

As DAOs scale in size and scope, it typically becomes increasingly difficult for projects to incentivize voting. This can have many adverse effects in respect to efficiency, equity, and growth of any project; however there are a couple remedies Ascension seeks to leverage in order to keep community members engaged. Rather than having linear voting where fixed costs can be used to purchase increased voting power as seen in traditional DAO frameworks, Ascension proposes voting in the form of feudalistic combat. Each member who owns a MNKZ NFT is eligible to vote in any voting period based on both the amount of Crypto Monkz NFT’s they own as well as their NFT’s respective stats. This means that there are multiple dimensions members must consider as they participate in the DAO.

Through gamified combat, Monkz will participate in voting rounds in order to pass propositions, elect members as faction leaders, and even nominate members into Chamber positions.

Voting Mechanics

Whenever a community member or faction seeks to push a proposition to the greater DAO, an Ascension combat period is initiated. Each community member in the DAO then has the ability to either defend(pass) or attack(decline) the proposition through a staking function in the Ascension contract. Once a monk is staked, they will be locked into the contract for combat. Any monk that decides not to participate in the voting period will have no vote, but will not have any adverse repercussions.

Getting Technical

Let’s say a proposition to extend the length of a combat period is proposed by a member of the Mirror Faction (yes, mirror can participate in Ascension) The faction has already agreed internally to attempt to push this proposition so its members are in full alignment and team up. They have a total of 10 combatants with both defense and health attributes with a sum of 2,000 points. Additional factions come together in support of this proposition with another 10 combatants with a sum of 2,500 defense and health points. The total defense of this proposition would sum to 4,500 points. The rest of the factions in opposition to this proposition have a total of 15 combatants with attack points summing to 5,300 points. The combat period is currently set to 24 hours with no additional participants voting to attack or defend the proposition. After a 24 hour cycle this proposition does not pass to the Chamber since the attack outweighs the defense by 800 points.

This voting mechanic relies on both voter turnout as well as combatant stats; however, in the near future, modifiers such as weapons and armor will be released to up the ante of the combat mechanics- allowing multipliers to both attack and defense respectively. Members and Factions seeking to leverage more voting power are encouraged to earn and trade these modifiers.

Stats- Defense, Offense, & Utility

When participants stake their NFT during any given combat period, they are choosing to stake in either as an attacker or defender. Due to this nature, the most considerable base stats for combat end up being Attack, Defense, and Health. Despite this, there is an additional stat, CHI, that is equally important for additional utility functions within the DAO.

Defensive Stats

Both Defense & Health fall under the defensive stat branch. When participants choose to stake their NFT’s to defend a proposition, the sum of these stats make up a participants’ defensive capabilities. With modifiers on the way, armor will be a modifier that enhances the Defense stat to increase their total sum.

Offensive Stats

Attack is the single offensive stats participants have; however, they are subject to much more powerful modifiers. With additional era’s (Ancient, Modern, Futuristic)approaching the DAO, the caliber of weapons will increase. An introduction of rare mythological weapons will also be introduced and Factions will compete for these rare weapons that can sway combat in ways not yet imagined.

Utility Stats

Chi is the base stat that will allow for most of the DAOs’ core functions (outside of battle). Chi is the measure of spiritual ability of any given monk and will serve as one of the key currencies within the Ascension. Although we can’t release too many details on Chi, it is heard that it is used to summon weapons, armors, abilities, special items, and create Factions.

Final Thoughts

Ascension was developed to be a modular framework for building projects of scale. With the combination of combat mechanics, a power hierarchy built with decentralization in mind, and a list of growing incentives, Ascension continues to work to minimize the inherent flaws associated with forming DAOs. As a V1 smart contract, there is a lot in store for Ascension, but in due time we will see the power of community and ownership play a huge role in the development of the project.

The current progress leading up to Ascension has been phenomenal. The community has built the Academy which is a series of courses designed to get newcomers up to speed in all things web3. The range of educational content starts as simple as creating a new wallet and moves to concepts like market-making through liquidity providing.

If you’d like to learn more about the project be sure to check out the links below-

Website:

Discord:

Twitter: