Mission-Aligned Voting

Moloch DAO frameworks include a GuildKick mechanism, a specific form of mission-aligned voting. If a member is deemed to be acting against the DAO's interests, a proposal can be made to forcibly remove them (slashing their shares). This requires a vote from other members, who must assess the accused member's alignment with the collective mission, providing a check on malicious actors.

A foundational use case for mission alignment is combating Sybil attacks. Systems like Proof-of-Personhood (e.g., Worldcoin, BrightID) grant one vote per verified human, not per token. This ensures governance power reflects a community of individuals aligned with a protocol's human-centric mission, rather than being captured by wealthy entities who can amass many tokens or identities.

Curve Finance's veCRV model introduces alignment through time commitment. Users lock CRV tokens to receive veCRV, which grants boosted rewards and governance power. The longer the lock-up, the greater the power. This aligns voters with the long-term health of the protocol, as their voting power is tied to a committed, illiquid stake, discouraging short-term speculation in governance decisions.

The Aragon framework supports designing DAOs with non-financial voting power. A Reputation token (non-transferable) can be assigned based on contributions, participation, or other meritocratic criteria. This creates a contribution-aligned governance system where influence is earned through actions that benefit the DAO's mission, creating a direct link between work done and decision-making power.

A system where the cost of acquiring additional votes on a proposal increases quadratically, limiting the influence of large token holders and promoting pluralism.

• Cost = (votes)²: Buying 2 votes costs 4 credits, 3 votes costs 9 credits.
• Quadratic Funding: Used in grant matching (e.g., Gitcoin Grants), where the amount matched is proportional to the square of the sum of the square roots of contributions.
• Goal: Measures the breadth of support, not just the depth of capital.

Allows token holders to delegate their voting power to experts or representatives, creating a fluid and knowledgeable electorate. This enables vote streaming, where delegation can be revoked at any time.

• Specialized delegates: Voters can delegate different voting power to different experts (e.g., security, treasury).
• Reduces voter apathy: Low-information participants can still contribute to governance.
• Tools: Used by protocols like Compound and Uniswap via platforms like Tally and Sybil.

Creates a financial market around proposal outcomes to aggregate decentralized information. Participants buy and sell proposal shares tied to a yes/no outcome.

• Price discovery: The market price reflects the perceived probability of a proposal passing.
• Skin in the game: Requires capital commitment, filtering unserious proposals.
• Example: Kleros uses bonding curves for its Governor module to curate proposals.

Uses Soulbound Tokens (SBTs) or non-transferable reputation scores to grant voting rights, decoupling governance power from mere token ownership.

• One-person-one-vote models: Prevents plutocracy by assigning voting power per verified identity.
• Contributor rewards: Grants governance power based on proven participation or work (e.g., SourceCred).
• Sybil resistance: Often paired with proof-of-personhood systems like BrightID or Worldcoin.

A core critique is that delegation to mission-aligned entities does not solve the fundamental problem of voter apathy. Most token holders remain passive, delegating their voting power without ongoing engagement. This can centralize decision-making in the hands of a few delegates, creating a new form of plutocracy where a small group of whales or professional delegates control outcomes, rather than fostering broad, informed participation.

There is no objective method to define or enforce a single "mission." Different stakeholders (e.g., developers, investors, users) have inherently different priorities and interpretations of success. This leads to challenges in:

• Selectorate Capture: The group that defines the mission criteria (e.g., a foundation or core team) can bias it toward their own interests.
• Mission Drift: A delegate's interpretation of the mission may evolve or diverge from the community's view over time, with no clear mechanism for recall beyond the next election cycle.

Mission-aligned voting is vulnerable to the same bribery and vote-buying problems as traditional token voting. A delegate pledged to "long-term value" could still be bribed by a proposer to vote a certain way on a specific proposal, with the bribe framed as "consulting fees." This makes the "mission" a cheap talk commitment unless enforced by costly, verifiable slashing mechanisms, which are difficult to implement for subjective governance decisions.

Evaluating a delegate's "mission alignment" requires significant research into their past votes, statements, and potential conflicts of interest. This adds a layer of informational complexity for the average token holder, who may lack the time or expertise. The system can devolve into voting based on delegate reputation or marketing rather than a deep analysis of their true alignment, replicating the shortcomings of representative democracy.

Locking voting power to a predefined mission can make a protocol inflexible. If market conditions or technological paradigms shift (e.g., the rise of Layer 2s, new cryptographic primitives), a rigidly mission-aligned delegate body may be slow to pivot or approve experimental proposals that fall outside the original mission scope, potentially stifling innovation and adaptive governance.