"Allowing a community to express its opinions freely, devoid of external pressures, is a powerful tool to empower its members and bring forth their true desires."
"A microdemocracy can unleash decision-making outside established power circles."
What is a microdemocracy
Microdemocracies brings blockchain-tech to normal groups of people and provides them with super-powers that are simply impossible to achieve without it.
A microdemocracy is a safe space where each member is clearly identified and can join using a decentralized, invitation-only, process.
Once inside, members can create and post messages on the group board. Other members can 'like' these messages. The author of a message or a like remains anonymous, except for the fact that they must be group members.
Blockchain and zero-knowledge proofs enable the creation of "neutral" platforms. Neither the application managers nor anyone else can manipulate the community's member list or identify/manipulate the author of a message or 'like.'
Demo
Technology and Mechanism
Account Abstraction
Microdemocracies is built on top of amazing tools that make its user experience simple for users not familiar with blockchain technology, web3 wallets or gas fees. It is however compatible with web3 wallets for users who do possess one.
Decentralized Community Bootstrap
In the background, microdemocracies creates a DAO on-chain for each group, and uses a tree-of-thrust mechanism where existing members can invite new members. To protect against Sybil attacks, the mechanism includes the option for existing members to flag invalid entries.
Conflicts are resolved by voting, but only a small subset of group members are needed. The hierarchical nature of the tree-of-trust guarantee that each level holds accountable to those above it.
Finally, a built-in mechanism flattens the hierarchical nature of the tree making sure that, after a period of time, an accepted member cannot be expelled by higher levels.
Next steps
Our focus right now is on creating partnerships with communities that, not only would like to use, but really need to use our app to unlock internal governance processes.
Some examples of these communities are
- Employees at a company who are unhappy with the current management.
- Public employees at an institution who want to have a channel to denounce misbehavior.
- Councils at different institutions who have an unbalanced distribution of power and influence when they were expected to be balanced.
Microdemocracies History
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applied to the OpenCivics Consortium Round 02 5 months ago which was rejected