Optimistic Respect-based Executive Contract (OREC) is a smart contract that executes transactions on behalf of a DAO, that has a non-transferrable reputation token (which we call “Respect” here). The main use case is performing code updates of a DAO (if OREC is set as an owner of a proxy contract) but it can be used for other transactions as well.
It is optimistic because it trusts a minority of contributors who take the initiative to act on behalf of a DAO even if they hold a small amount of Respect. The security comes from a time delay during which other contributors can easily block a transaction if they collectively have a significant enough amount of Respect relative to what the initiators have.
- Proposal - proposal to execute some transaction. Once proposal is passed this transaction can be executed;
voting_period
- first stage of proposal. Anyone can vote eitherYES
orNO
here;prop_weight_threshold
- minimum amount of Respect votingYES
for proposal to be eligible for passing;veto_period
- second stage of proposal. Anyone can voteNO
but no one can voteYES
;respect_contract
- contract storing Respect balances;
- Anyone can create a proposal to execute some transaction;
- For
voting_period
from proposal creation anyone can voteYES
orNO
on a proposal; - After
voting_period
from proposal creation, anyone can voteNO
, but no one can voteYES
on a proposal. This lasts forveto_period
; - Every vote is weighted by the amount of Respect a voter has according to
respect_contract
at the time of the vote; - Proposal is said to be passed if all of these conditions hold:
voting_period + veto_period
has passed since proposal creation;- At least
prop_weight_threshold
of Respect is votingYES
; yes_weight > 2 * no_weight
, whereyes_weight
is amount of Respect votingYES
andno_weight
is amount of Respect votingNO
;
- Passed proposal can be executed. Anyone can trigger execution;
The motivation behind this mechanism is to tolerate majority of participants being passive, allowing proposals to be passed without having high voter participation, while also enabling a community to rally around to block any proposal fairly easily.
There’s a usually a big category of participants who are not proactive in governance decisions but are aware and would be able to react in case of contentious proposals being passed. The reason to block a proposal could simply be the perspective that proposal needs more consideration. So proactive governance participants could simply ask passive participant to “Veto” with an argument that “we need more discussion around this”. So passive voter would not need to understand the proposal fully to “Veto”, they would simply need to get a sense of it’s importance. This way we can utilize “passive but aware” category of participants for security thus avoiding reliance on any (typically arbitrary) quorum requirements and allowing organization to move forward even in cases of low voting turnout.
If we consider total turnout to be union of Respect voting in both stages then a one way to think about it, is that 2/3rds + 1 of turnout is able to pass a proposal, which also means that 1/3rd of turnout is able to block it.