Features - Governance

Societal’s features fall into three main categories: Operations, Treasury, and Governance.

Zero Gas Fee Governance

Societal will enable any member of a DAO to propose and vote on proposals without any gas fees. One of the largest factors for low participation in DAOs are the high gas fees associated with participation in governance. By building on Polkadot and connecting to the relay chain, Societal can remove all gas fees on the platform. This will greatly increase the participation rate of DAOs that are managed through Societal.

To reduce spamming on the network, DAOs can institute a proposal limit that each member can create per month. Alternatively, they can have members stake a portion of their tokens to be able to make the proposal. The features that are implemented will depend on the size of the DAO, who the members are, and what the DAO is for.

Proposal Calendar

Societal will have a calendar where users can track all ongoing proposals and their time until expiration. Each DAO will have its own calendar and each user will have a calendar for their account, which will monitor each DAOs they are a member of. When actions are required from the participants, a notification will be sent to all members.

Multiple Types of Governance

Societal understands that there is no perfect governance system and there exists no one-fits-all model. The ideal governance model will depend on the type of DAO, how many members, and its purpose. Some of the different governance models that Societal will offer include:

• One Member, One Vote

• Nominated Voting

• Ownership Weighted Voting

• Identity & Credential Weighted Voting

• General Council and Technical Committee Voting

• NFT and Token Voting

Societal will test and implement novel new governance models. Additionally, DAOs will have the ability to implement their own governance model. After the model is tested and approved by the community, it may also become a standard governance model on the Societal platform.

Governance Treasury Execution

Societal allows for the DAOs treasury to automatically execute external smart contracts, when proposals have been approved through on-chain governance. For example, this allows the community to vote on a proposal to purchase an NFT and after proposals approval, the DAO will execute the transaction on the NFT smart contract.

Private Voting

In current democratic voting systems, your vote is kept private. This is to protect the voter from social pressures that may arise from freely stating one’s opinions. These social pressures may even be enough to pressure a voter into changing their vote to avoid scrutiny from their peers. To avoid this, Societal will implement private voting through trusted execution environments (TEEs), or attribute-based encryption. Private voting will allow members to vote without the fear of judgment, ultimately securing the democracy of DAOs.