Welcome to JK's "Cool Tools"
Hi there! I'm JK.
This is the first article I'm publishing on Mirror.
Welcome to the latest edition of "Cool Tools" I'm publishing on Mirror. This is the place where you'll explore the coolest and most intriguing aspects of the Web3 and crypto world.
If you're familiar with Kevin Kelly's "Cool Tools," you'll understand the inspiration behind this – the goal of this project is to share a diverse range of tools, devices, resources, and technologies to help people improve their lives and work.
In my "Cool Tools" section, you'll periodically discover a wide array of tools, projects, technologies, and resources from the Web3 and crypto world. These will cover everything from blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies to decentralized applications and NFTs. I'll be sharing my own discoveries as well as recommendations from the broader community, ensuring that you stay informed and enthralled by the latest and most fascinating content in this ever-evolving field.
Just as Cool Tools encourages people to share practical tools, I encourage you to actively participate by suggesting Web3 and crypto tools and resources that you believe are worth sharing. Let's explore this exciting domain together.
You can reach out to me on Twitter: @jk1024th
Thank you for visiting, and I look forward to sharing the wonders of the Web3 and crypto world with you! All articles will be published in both English and Chinese, so don't forget to subscribe to my Mirror page to ensure you don't miss any new and cool discoveries.
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Coolness Index:⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
In this issue, I introduce Nouns DAO's Private Voting, developed in collaboration with the Aragon ZK Research Association (AZKR) and Aztec Labs.
This project involves research and implementation of private voting technology, originating from a proposal in Nouns DAO.
Here is an introduction and summary of the project:
The primary purpose of this design is to build a voting system on Ethereum that simultaneously meets the following requirements:
user-friendly, trustless, fair, weighed, and ballot-secret.
Aragon ZK Research Association (AZKR) and Aztec Labs believe that these conditions can be met simultaneously.
The Aztec team achieves this by implementing storage proofs in @NoirLang (the universal zero knowledge language), allowing Nouners to prove their identity without revealing which Noun they own, using this proof as a member of the DAO for voting.
This is similar to the use case of @Sismo_eth: users prove that address A meets the conditions to claim an NFT, and then use address B to claim the NFT.
Aragon ZK Research Association explores the design and implementation of voting solutions supported by these proofs.
Aztec Labs President @jaosef has explained the above content in a video before:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1696548136620343760
Based on the content of the technical report submitted by Aragon ZK Research (AZKR), the design has achieved the following properties:
Ballot secrecy It is impossible to link a voter with a choice
Eligibility Only legitimate voters can vote
Eligibility verifiability Anyone can verify that each vote in the set of all cast votes was cast by an eligible voter
Fairness No early results can be obtained which could influence the remaining voters
Individual verifiability (IV) A voter can verify that her vote is included in the set of all cast votes
Proxy vote An eligible voter may delegate their voting power to a representative
Robustness The system should be robust to a certain degree of malfunction or corruption and still deliver correct results
Unconditional privacy Nobody should be able to learn any additional information even several centuries after the voting process
Universal verifiability (UV) Anyone can check that the election outcome corresponds to the ballots published on the bulletin board
Uniqueness No voter should be able to vote more than one time
Weighted voting votes inherently vary in strength depending on the voter
🔍 For related content regarding the above report, you can directly view the code through the following link: https://github.com/aragonzkresearch/noir-trie-proofs
In fact, the design of this privacy voting system was reached through the governance proposal process of Nouns DAO.
In February 2023, Nouns DAO initiated a proposal solicitation with the intention of funding three research projects, “Calling all ZK/cryptography researchers to research solutions to private voting for Nouns DAO and beyond!”
Subsequently, Aragon ZK Research Association (AZKR) and Aztec Labs jointly created a collaborative proposal, which received the second most votes from Nouns DAO holders, thus becoming one of the three selected proposals.
According to information provided by both teams, Nouns DAO had three meetings with them during the research process: one at the beginning, one mid-term, and one at the end.
For most DAOs, this is a positive case to reference: the project team, during an execution phase lasting approximately three months, published multiple progress reports, and the sponsor Nouns DAO engaged in several meetings with the execution team to ensure the project progressed as planned. This stands in contrast to some DAOs' past products, which were short-lived and had funds go to waste.
This product aims to address crucial issues in DAO voting, such as privacy and verifiability, and its creation process is rooted in DAO governance voting.
While current DAO voting is primarily conducted within the crypto sphere, for this privacy voting system to have broader adoption potential, it needs to exhibit high scalability to support large-scale voting and better integration with external systems.
It also seems like it could be applied in a broader real-world context — that's why I consider it a cool tool in my eyes. :p