Tally - Research Copy
-- PRE-CALL CHECKLIST ---
Topic, Project, and Guest
- Guest: Dennison Bertram
- very Brief overview on guest background:
- founder of withtally.com
- Topic: Brief one line intro about concept to be explored.
- dao governance framework
- short guest bio.
- how the guest is related to the topic
- creating tools for daos to use for their governance and decentralization
- noteworthy achievements
- founder of dapp hero
- founder of buyBTC.cz (first btc exchange in czech republic 2012)
Detail the problems this product is trying to solve
- what do people need to stop doing?
- trusting 5 random people online that control the multisig in a dao
- inability to act quickly in times of need
- why should they stop doing it?
- security problem, trust issues, legal issues for multisig signers, inability to act quickly
- list an example of the problem
- compound bug where people were able to claim more comp rewards than they were supposed to. because of the way that the compound governance works, they were unable to patch the bug for an entire week because of the timelock they have in place on their system.
- sometimes multisig signers are holding $1million dollars worth of tokens and the community is ok with it, but if the market changes and the price of the token 100x now this small group of multisig signers is in charge of $100million and the community might not feel as safe allowing control of that much money in the hands of so few people.
- multisig signers may have to fear legal reprecussions of being in charge of other peoples' money. especially in the united states.
- how does the product improve or fix this
- tally allows for specific sets of multisigs to have specific powers. this can work in multiple ways, for instance you could have one multisig of security experts that make proposals to the treasury and the token holders vote yes or no. or vice-versa where the token holders are allowed to make proposals and an executive group of multisig signers can veto the proposals.
- tally gives the option for daos to delegate power for certain members to act quickly.
How the product works
- basic information about the product
- tally is a governance system like an upgraded snapshot with more features
- it allows for the separation of power in creation, executing, and canceling proposals across multiple users or multisig signers.
- allows for composability of authority in governance
- almost like the checks and balances of power in dao voting power
- details of product stemming off high level overview
- tally allows for governance the ability to remove inactive or malicious multisig signers,
- it allows you to separate the people who are allowed to create proposals with those that might be delegated extra power as security auditors who may cancel the proposals.
- tally can allow for token holders to delegate their voting power to other individual members or a group of multisig signers of their dao.
- tally also allows for users to vote on decisions directly themselves.
- tally has multiple governance framework templates available for daos to use or request to be tailored for their dao
- outline advanced topics of the product
- blockchain governance identity - on chain action is recorded for each individual giving them an on chain identity of sorts in the idea that your voting (or lack thereof) will highlight your governance participation. this includes how often you vote, your voting power based on the amount of tokens you hold, and the amount of tokens delegated to you.
- results of the product so far
Value proposition
- overview on other products in the space that also solve this problem and how their solutions differ
- dxdao
- aragon
- boardroom
- why should I use this product over the other products
Practical applications of product:
- detail current functionality of project, where it is deployed, TVL, audited?
- compound, uniswap, indexed, pooltogether, radicle, idle, inverse, unslashed, fei, Bprotocol, cryptex, gitcoin, conjure, ampleforth, rari capital, nouns dao, babylon finance, unlock, dope wars, DiFi
- highlight current upgrades soon to be released
- speculate future use cases
- the recent article by frogmonkee says how currently funds in daos are centralized in the multisig signers and/or the treasury committee. the future of dao treasuries is for the treasuries themselves to decentralize. this happens from the small initial core team distributing out tokens to smaller subsets of the dao for them to control and manage in their own way.
- this picture from frogmonkee's article illustrates how the decentralization of the capital flow will happen in the future.
- tally could help to improve this model by utilizing the ability to put extra governance around each node in this system and the system as a whole
- we can extend this line of thinking by zooming out of frogs picture further and further to try and imagine how each dao would relate to each other dao in a network of interacting treasuries. tally could help to highlight conflicts of interest or incentive alignment circumstances in dao to dao governance and voting.
- outline steps for a beginner to get started
- visit withtally dot com to explore current governance with onboarded protocols or to vote or delegate if you are in a dao that utilizes tally.
- hop in their discord to ask questions
- best case scenario of project
Risks
- detail risks associated with project.
- technical risks, like what happened with uniswap where voting 'no' was actually voting yes?
- worst case scenario example
- tally is abused or taken advantage of in a popularity contest in order for players in the system to use game theory in order to gain more votes. people that delegate usually do so because they are not as active in the ecosystem or community as those they are delegating their power too. what stops this from becoming a popularity contest or from these delegates from voting in their own interests instead of the interests of those they represent? i understand they could undelegate their tokens to them, but the whole point of delegating in the first place was because they are not paying that much attention and are not active in the governance.
- general risks in the industry
- smart contract risk
Roadmap/future applications
- technical updates
- community updates or changes
- nouns dao recently added, first nft dao on tally
REFERENCES
- source all relevant project links including discord, website, twitter, podcast, medium, mirror, substack, gitbook, etc.
- discord - https://discord.gg/AzG7wf75e6
- website - https://www.withtally.com
- User docs: https://docs.withtally.com/
- Weekly newsletter: https://newsletter.withtally.com/
- Governance wiki: https://wiki.withtally.com/docs
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/votewithtally
- Telegram announcements channel: https://t.me/withTally
- detailed background information about guest
Founder- WithTally.com
Tools for decentralized decision making and governance for distributed ledger ecosystems.
Backers: Blockchain Capital, Placeholder Capital, Notation Capital, Castle Island, 1KX, Lemniscap, Bollinger
Founder - DappHero
Low code Ethereum website building tools
Backers: Notation Capital
Founder - BuyBTC.cz
First Bitcoin exchange in the Czech Republic, 2012
Previously:
Creative Technologist, Artist, Filmmaker
Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Nespresso, Heineken, GQ, InStyle, Dolce&Gabbana, FURLA, Cosmopolitain, VICE, I-D.
Sources
- https://www.withtally.com - website
- https://medium.com/tally-blog - medium
- https://youtu.be/JsSyK7IdbSo - Adam Levy interviews Dennison Bertram (Oct 14, 2021)
- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g_5shFhY7LnwkdHmj1K9ZWZt4cC3gSt8/view - compound-developer-community-call-2020-12-09.mp3 (starting at 17:35)
- https://defiprime.com/tally - Nick Sawinyhon interviews Dennison Bertram (23 Mar 2021)
- https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/the-next-big-unlock-for-daos - article by frogmonkee on the decentralization of dao capital flows
- https://youtu.be/K6vwE5F2ayg - Aave Grants DAO Summit, Streamed live on Sep 30, 2021 starting at 1:39:00