Summary

This proposal aims to solve the lack of privacy and the information asymmetry in the voting process by enabling shielded voting and thus increasing fairness and encouraging more participation in governance.

Currently, the voting process is completely transparent in the sense that everyone can see how each token holder voted, while the vote is still ongoing. This lack of privacy and information symmetry can lead to manipulation or social pressure in the worst case as well as discourage people from voting altogether.

Motivation

One problem with the current voting process is that it allows people to see how others in the community have voted while the vote is still ongoing. This can influence the decisions of individual voters, who may be swayed by the choices of those around them, whether they know them personally or not.

By keeping votes private until the voting has ended, we can improve the governance process:

• Voters can avoid being influenced by outside factors
• Voters can make their decisions based solely on what they believe is best for the organization
• This helps to avoid voter apathy: If a voter looks at preliminary results and they go clearly in one direction already, that might deter them from voting at all.
• Makes it harder for large token holders (“whales”) to strategically sway proposals. If you can’t easily calculate how many votes you might need to win over or even “buy”, it becomes a lot harder to sway a proposal at the last minute.

Specification

Project lead and responsible for the implementation: Schmackofant from the tech working group

This article from Snapshot describes how the “Shielded Voting” feature works: https://snapshot.mirror.xyz/yGz91njKbw-sXsnAT6RkoMzPwvuddZritz37h1OWO8o

From the Snapshot feature description: “Shielded voting is a voting system in which the voter's choices are private during the voting period and get revealed when the proposal closes. This prevents the voting process itself from influencing the vote results.”

Please note that with “Shielded Voting” enabled, nobody will be able to see preliminary results for the proposals. The result (pass/fail for proposals with binary options) will only be revealed at the end.

Also, note that the current practice of observing how others (such as VitaDAO stewards or known ENS handles) vote and voting yourself accordingly (“soft delegation”) will not work anymore either. This practice can be implemented through delegated voting though, which we suggest being implemented as well in a separate proposal: https://gov.vitadao.com/t/vdp-65-introducing-delegated-voting/

Implementation

If this proposal passes, Schmackofant and the tech working group will enable “Shielded Voting” on VitaDAO’s Snapshot space.