Market-Driven Governance

Core Concept

Unlike traditional DAOs where voting power is static, MarketDAO introduces a revolutionary approach: tradable voting tokens for each election.

This creates a dynamic governance system where voters can:

Buy more voting power if they feel strongly about an issue
Sell their voting power if others value it more
Speculate on election outcomes through voting token markets

The result is a governance framework that more accurately captures the true strength of preferences and creates efficient markets around governance decisions.

Key Features

Saleable Voting Rights

Voting tokens are freely transferable during elections, allowing market forces to influence governance outcomes.

Governance Token Vesting

Purchased governance tokens are subject to a vesting period, protecting the DAO from hostile takeover attempts.

Lazy Vote Token Distribution

Voting tokens are minted on-demand as participants claim them, reducing gas costs for proposal creators.

Multiple Proposal Types

Create resolutions, treasury transfers, governance token minting, and token price update proposals.

Flexible Support Thresholds

Customizable support thresholds and quorum percentages for different governance needs.

Treasury Management

Support for ETH, ERC20, ERC721, and ERC1155 assets in the DAO treasury.

Early Termination

Elections can end early when a clear majority is reached, improving efficiency.

ERC1155 Foundation

Built on the ERC1155 standard for flexible token management, with token ID 0 reserved for governance tokens.

How It Works

Create a Proposal

Governance token holders can submit various types of proposals.
Support Phase

Proposals need to reach a support threshold before triggering an election.
Election

When triggered, governance token holders can claim voting tokens 1:1 with their vested governance token balance.
Trading Period

During elections, voting tokens can be freely bought and sold.
Voting

Cast votes by sending voting tokens to YES/NO addresses.
Execution

If the proposal passes and meets quorum, it is automatically executed.

Implementation Details

MarketDAO is built on Solidity with a focus on security and flexibility:

Built on OpenZeppelin's ERC1155 implementation
Proposal lifecycle with support thresholds and voting periods
Inherits from ReentrancyGuard for security against reentrancy attacks
Separate proposal types for different governance actions
Factory pattern for easy proposal creation

Architecture

The system consists of three main components:

MarketDAO: The main contract that manages tokens, proposals, and voting
Proposal: Base class for all proposal types with the proposal lifecycle
ProposalFactory: Factory contract for creating different types of proposals

Configuration Parameters

When creating a new DAO, you can configure:

Name: The name of the DAO
Support Threshold: Percentage of tokens needed to trigger an election
Quorum Percentage: Percentage of tokens needed for a valid election
Maximum Proposal Age: Time before a proposal expires if it doesn't trigger an election
Election Duration: Length of the voting period in blocks
Treasury Configuration: What asset types the treasury can hold (ETH, ERC20, ERC721, ERC1155)
Allow Minting: Whether new governance tokens can be minted through proposals
Token Price: Initial price for direct token purchases (0 disables direct sales)
Vesting Period: Vesting period for purchased governance tokens in blocks (0 disables vesting)
Initial Token Distribution: Starting allocation of governance tokens

Get Started

MarketDAO is open source and ready for deployment:

Repository: https://github.com/evronm/marketDAO
Contracts: See the src/ directory for all Solidity contracts
Frontend: Included in the repository and compatible with the latest contracts

Clone the repository and follow the deployment instructions in the Technical Reference to deploy your own instance on any EVM-compatible network.

Future Possibilities

MarketDAO is just getting started, with plans for:

Resolution enhancements: Expiring resolutions, cancellation proposals
Multiple choice proposals beyond binary YES/NO
Variable election lengths based on proposal type
Staking mechanisms to prevent proposal spam
Enhanced market integrations for voting token exchanges