Last week we introduced Community Collabs, a methodology we’ll be following to further include our community in key strategic decisions. If you missed that post you can view it here. Critical to the success of this process is voting. It ensures that in a world of differing opinions we can move forward with an approach that has the broadest appeal. We are looking to run our first community votes starting today via our Discord channel, #Empowa-Voting, so before we take this live we wanted to share our approach to voting.
Community voting as a means of project governance is not new in crypto, but we are seeking to include the Empowa ethos in our approach. Given this, we are approaching the voting in the following way.
The role of the EMP Token
The EMP token is designed to be the utility token of our ecosystem and this includes its role in governance. Most projects will weight voting directly proportional to the number of tokens held. We have an issue with this approach as it favours whales and may see us taking a decision that isn’t favoured by the majority, but rather by a few large token holders.
To combat this we will be implementing quadratic voting.
Quadratic Voting is a method of collective decision-making in which a participant votes not just for or against an issue, but also expresses how strongly they feel about it. It can help protect the interests of small groups of voters that care deeply about particular issues. To read more about quadratic voting click here
We feel this approach still provides those with a larger vested interest i.e. more tokens, to have a larger say, but balances this against our desire to have the broader community offer their input and not have those with smaller bags be crowded out.
Okay, but why even give those with more tokens more of a say why not one wallet / one user one vote?
First, let’s tackle the one-user one-vote. To implement this we would need everyone to KYC to simply vote. We see this as a significant barrier to entry and would potentially discourage community members from engaging with the vote and in that way helping to shape the direction of the project.
We also respect people’s desire for anonymity which isn’t possible if we require KYC.
Regarding one wallet one vote, this is already flawed as users with more tokens could move these tokens into multiple wallets and thereby have multiple votes. So this approach wouldn’t combat the risk of whales.
We also don’t think it is fair that a user who is heavily invested in our success through owning multiple tokens should have equal say to someone who happened to pick up a single EMP token. While it is true that owning more EMP does not directly correlate to how invested you are in our success and outside factors like affordability play a role we hope we can still account for this using the quadratic voting approach.
Hold on, I choose to support Empowa by buying an NFT. Does this mean I don’t have a say in how the project is run?
Definitely not! Purchasing an Empowa NFT is the most impactful way to support our project. By buying an NFT you have a direct and real-world impact, after all, you are financing a home for a family and locking up more EMP. So our voting approach will also factor in NFT ownership. Each NFT will come with voting rights in our governance structure.
Okay, I get that, but my Founding Community NFT didn’t finance a house. What rights do I have?
The Founding Community showed the most faith in our mission joining our journey when we had little more to show than a white paper. So these NFTs will carry the largest single voting rights, with the Premium version having more votes assigned to it than the standard Founding Community NFT.
We hope this added utility further demonstrates our commitment to this community and our promise to continue to add value.
This is all very exciting, so when does it come into effect?
Currently, no tool allows for governance with the above complexity, we are talking to projects building governance as a service application to see if the above will be possible with their tools. Ultimately we believe it will be, but it will likely take time to fully realise all the functionality we’ve requested so, for now, we’ll be launching a far simpler version of voting and look to expand on this as the functionality is released.
I’m here for the journey, so how do I vote now and what weighting will my vote receive?
Voting will take place via a dedicated Discord channel #Empowa-Voting. To gain access you’ll need to verify your wallet. Users who have either EMP, a WMT Seed NFT or FC NFT will be able to access the vote. Every user will only have one vote for now. Voting will be done by responding with the appropriate emoji to the question posted. The exact process will be made very obvious in the Discord channel.
So when is the first vote?
The first vote will start today Saturday the 1st of October and close at 12:00 UTC on Wednesday the 5th of October
