RMRK Curation DAO - Turnout-biased Multichain Voting

In January 2022 ago we started a curation experiment where we allowed RMRK holders on Statemine to propose collections for curation or plagiarism and vote on the proposals. We used Quadratic Voting as the measure of a vote passing or failing.

This has been a moderate success: plenty of collections got curated, but very few of them were downvoted at all, let alone downvoted enough to not make the cut.

While we work on anonymous voting so that casting negative votes carries less social stigma, we have upgraded the voting system to a new one which is active from the launch of Singular 2, on March 3rd (3,3).

How it works

Visit the Curation DAO UI.

Two types of votes can be cast:

• mark as plagiarism or copyright infringement
• curate collection

To submit a new proposal, you need to have 431 RMRK on Karura, Bifrost, or Statemine.

A proposal's title MUST follow a naming template, otherwise it will be deemed invalid regardless of vote outcome.

If you are proposing that a collection be curated, the format is: Curation request: COLL_ID where COLL_ID is the ID of the collection. Example: Curation request: 924cf81bb52a1b5c57-PASTELBEACHMALL.

If you are proposing that a collection be banned as plagiarism or copyright infringement, the format is: Plagiarism: COLL_ID where COLL_ID is the ID of the collection. Example: Plagiarism: 924cf81bb52a1b5c57-PASTELBEACHMALL.

Put your arguments into the body of the proposal, rich markdown (tables etc) is supported. The more proof / arguments, the better:

• if proposing for curation, make sure you include arguments such as an artist's past performance, their volume metrics, their originality, whether or not they have identity set up, etc.
• if proposing for a plagiarism flag, you must include proof - links to existing media that proves these materials existed elsewhere in some form or are infringing on some copyright or trademark.

The Snapshot value determines the block time on which the token balance is counted. This means moving token balances around to get more votes won't count after this block number. It defaults to "now".

The voting period for curation proposals must be 7 days. The voting period for plagiarism reports must be 3 days. The start date should be set to the day of the proposal's creation.

Voting by Proxy

In some cases, RMRK tokens are held by multisig wallets in which case it is difficult to log in and vote. Such accounts should set up a proxy account, and when voting by proxy input the multisig, but use the proxy (from the Polkadot JS extension) to vote.

Counting Votes: Turnout Bias

Following the voting method available on Dotsama chains via the democracy pallet, we now look at turnout to determine the passing of a proposal according to a relative super-majority.

In other words, the more people vote on a proposal, the fewer YES votes are needed to pass it. If all 10 million RMRK tokens show up to vote, then the outcome is a simple majority (50%+).

For details on how this works, please check the Polkadot wiki.

Note that there is no token locking for votes, as opposed to on-chain voting in the various Dotsama chains. The tokens remain unlocked after you vote.

Multi-chain Voting

The OpenSquare UI can now read balances from multiple chains, allowing you to vote with RMRK from Statemine, Bifrost, or Karura.

MOVR is a little harder because it uses a different address format and it is currently not very easy to bind an EVM address to a Substrate one, but this feature is coming.

This does mean that if you have balances on multiple chains, you can choose to log in with each wallet separately and vote several times. In turnout-biased voting this does not matter, but it does in Quadratic Voting.

What's in it for me?

By being an active participant in this effort, you are helping improve Singular.app for everyone. You might also be rewarded in some other way after enough participation, but this is still being discussed and in no way a promise or guarantee.