Protocol Development
Principles
Section titled “Principles”There are several principles that guide the development of the Powers protocol. At their core, these principles embody the CROPS values — Censorship Resistant, Open source, Private, and Secure — that any credibly neutral infrastructure must uphold.
- Trustless. The protocol operates in a trustless manner: It is self-sovereign, verifiable, censorship resistant, accesible, transparent and voluntary. There are no restriction to the type of governance structures that are implemented using Powers.
- Open source. The core protocol, mandates and app are open source.
- Private. Users retain sovereignty over their data and identity. The protocol does not require disclosure of personal information, and integrations with identity or attestation services (such as ZKPassport) are opt-in and zero-knowledge where possible.
- Modularity. Mandates provide an open and fully modular layer of smart contracts that integrates with on- and off-chain services, existing DAOs, as well as with other implementations of the protocol. Anyone should be able to create their own mandates.
- On-chain first. The protocol opts for on-chain storage solutions where possible, while remaining vigilant regarding excessive gas usage. It avoids solutions that rely on (gated) APIs or RPCs.
- Inclusivity. While the protocol has an on-chain first ethos, it should seamlessly integrate with off-chain solutions and protocols deployed on other chains. Barriers to use should be usable as low as possible.
- Security. No protocol will ever be a 100% safe. But a role restricted governance protocol allows for additional safety checks by eliminating single points of failure. Protocol and mandate development will always aim to leverage these security capabilities and include continuous security auditing .
- Community. Protocol development and security demand constant attention. The ultimate aim is to create a sustainable community that develops and secures the protocol.
- Decentralization through pluralism. Powers aims to revolutionize on-chain governance. Dividing powers within a governance protocol along roles that need to be assigned, we can - finally - begin to truly decentralize power in onchain organisations.
Milestones
Section titled “Milestones”- AI skills: resources for AI agents to create governance systems.
- Integration of AI agents into deliberation and decision-making processes.
- and more.
v0.6 (current)
Section titled “v0.6 (current)”- Introduction flows: grouping mandates into human and Powers-readable governance paths.
- Full stack support for Account Abstraction.
- integration XMTP for role restricted deliberation.
- Forum UI: A user friendly UI for governance and deliberation.
- and more.
- Start to build Cultural Stewards: an inititive to shepard Powers’ community and test Powers protocol for complex organisations.
- Developing mandate infrastructure for nested organisations.
- Integrations for ZKPassport, Safe, ENS and more.
- Testing, auditing of core protocols and selected mandates.
- and more.
- Development additional mandates and deployment Power Base organisation.
- First security audit core protocol.
- Optimized core protocol for on-chain data storage and retrieval.
- Improved error handling.
- Implement integration modules for existing protocols.
- Implement integration for off-chain services.
- Revise naming of function and variables in Powers.sol.
- Refactor mandates into singleton contracts. Refactor Powers accordingly.
- App for live demo’s Powers implementations.
- Simplified Powers.sol
- Implemented modular mandates.
- Implemented first dynamic UI / UX to interact with a wide range of governance structures.
- Renamed the protocol to Powers protocol.
- First PoC of Role restricted governance protocol. Initially named Separated Powers.
- Build for the RnDao’s CollabTech hackathon in Oct-Nov 2024.