tomiDAO Decision-making
Table of Contents:
-Types of proposals
-Types of participants
-Content Moderation Proposals
-Design considerations and vulnerabilities for content moderation
-Process for Content Moderation by the DAO
-Appeals process
-Funding Proposals
-Accountability: Oversight committee
-Technical Update Proposals
-Artist DAO
Types of proposals
Version 1 implementation includes DAO governance for four initial types of proposals:
• Content Moderation Proposals: Anyone can report on websites that violate the terms of use.
A 75% majority of a quorum of TOMI token-holders must agree that the site violates terms
of use for it to be censored.
• Funding Proposals: Pioneer holders submit proposals to the DAO and the Pioneer
token-holders and TOMI token-holders vote on the use of funds.
• Technical Upgrade Proposals. Changes to the operation of the blockchain infrastructure,
tDNS, Pioneer issuance and rights, Cemmeti, tomiToken issuance, fund allocation, and
DAO governance can be proposed by Pioneer holders.
• ArtistDAO proposals.
Types of participants
tomiDAO recognizes three types of participants:
• tomiNetizens. A netizen can be any person who is using tomiNet. Netizens do not have to
hold any tokens to surf the tomiNet. To participate in the DAO as a Netizen, the individual
needs to be holding a self-sovereign identity wallet or other way of confirming they are an
individual person.
• TOMI token holders. Anyone can purchase and hold TOMI tokens. Depending on the type of
decision being made, the voting may be weighted based on the number of TOMI a person
holds, with or without a Gini coefficient.
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• Pioneer NFT holders. TomiPioneers are the initial investors and governance members of
tomi, and they hold a special weight in terms of holding the vision of tomi and being
guardians of network freedom.
Over time, other participants may be denominated. Specifically, after four years, participation NFTs
will be issued but they may take on another name such as Members or Guardians, as the initial stage
is successful and people are no longer taking the risk that the initial Pioneers took in establishing
tomiNet.
Technical requirement: How people vote and who they vote for must be completely anonymous.
Content Moderation Proposals
tomiNet bans highly inappropriate and unethical content. The initial guidelines for banning of
content are:
• Child pornography and pedophilia.
• Extreme and gratuitous violence (does not include most forms of games)
• Illegal arms trading and human trafficking.
tomiNet starts with the most lenient possible policies, with the potential for implementing
additional restrictions only when there is a wide consensus that an activity is universally immoral.
Design considerations and vulnerabilities for content moderation:
• Determining the right policies for a free speech but non-violent web is a difficult balance.
tomiNet exists to encourage resistance to immoral regimes, while at the same time not
wanting to support violent activity. The DAO exists to ban only the most egregious content,
allowing people to use their judgment. tomiNet envisions toolsets (like parental filters)
which will allow people to determine their own levels of comfort in browsing the web. The
content moderation DAO may evolve over time to create ratings that enable such tools
rather than outright censorship of borderline activities.
• Reporting itself is part of the content moderation. If only one person flags a site, it isn’t
doing much harm (because people aren’t visiting the site). If hundreds of people are flagging
a site, it is reaching many people so it is either offensive, or those people are creating a
coordinated attack on certain kinds of content. In the case of collusion to attack certain types
of content, it may be useful to down-regulate people who collude to censor (future feature).
• Reviewing websites with extreme content is an emotionally taxing activity, and seeing
objectionable images can cause psychological damage. It’s important to ensure that people
are not harmed by overexposure to this type of content.
• Technological solutions, for example, filters that blur pictures or AI identification of images,
could be part of the solution in the future in order to avoid harm to people and streamline the
censorship of the most obvious violations. A reviewer can always remove the filter, but the
system could protect them from the initial impacts.
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• The censorship mechanism could become an attack vector. The DAO could be flooded with
spurious reports or someone could flood tomiNet with sites that violate the terms in order to
intentionally flood the DAO with work.
Process for Content Moderation by the DAO
TOMI token-holders and Pioneer holders participate in the DAO. Content moderation votes are 1-
wallet-1-vote. Initially, changes to the content moderation policies will go through a process similar
to Technical Proposals (until the DAO decides otherwise).
1. Content can be flagged by any person using tomiNet. When someone flags the content, they
will indicate which policy it violates. Content must be flagged by at least 3 individuals to
reach the DAO. People can flag a maximum of 20 sites per day or 50 sites per month, unless
they ask for special permission. (For example, if they work in a profession where they
would have a reason to be searching for nasty websites, or where their particular search
terms might result in such results.)
2. Each day, the DAO creates a daily list of sites that were reported. (Preferably there would be
AI that can compare images/videos that are banned to the ones reported and automatically
ban anything that has already gone through the DAO but are just being revived at a new
address.)
3. The DAO chooses 500 token-holders per every 60 sites flagged, and requests that they
review the content that has been flagged. The DAO uses a round-robin algorithm that
ensures that every token holder is summoned at least once per year, and that no token holder
is called to moderate more than 5X more than the person called the least.
4. When a voter logs in, they are shown sites from the list in a mixed order which
prioritizes the sites that have the most complaints but still provides a semi-random order so
that not everyone sees the list in the same order.
5. For each site, the voter indicates yes if they agree it violates the guidelines or no if not. The
voter can stop at any time or when they have voted on all the sites presented. After 1 hour,
the DAO stops showing them sites, even if there are more sites on the list.
6. Voting on a site ends when:
◦ There is 100% agreement (yes or no) from the first 25 voters.
◦ There is 90% agreement from the first 60 voters.
◦ 120 votes are collected. To ban a site, 80% must vote that it violates community
standards.
7. If the site is to be banned according to the DAO vote, the site NFT is blocked. The owner
receives the information on the reason it was reported.
8. If they want, voters receive a POAP indicating their participation in the DAO vote for
having been part of the “good governance” team. In the future the system may use Verified
Credentials for asserting their participation.
Note on Social Networks and Messaging Platforms: tomiDAO will not moderate content on social
networking sites and other discussion sites. A networking site could be censored by tomi, but not
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parts of the speech. It is the responsibility of such sites to provide closed members-only areas for
speech that could have them censored from the open web areas of tomiNet.
Appeals process
Banned sites may be reinstated under one of the following situations:
• Incorrect assessment of the site (formal appeal) or request for recommendations.
• Changes made to an existing site based on the site owner’s understanding of the violation.
• Purchase of an NFT URL that was previously banned and reinstatement by a new site owner.
In order to enter into the Appeals process, the owner must stake $100 in TOMI for the first appeal,
$1,000 for 2nd appeal, $10,000 for 3rd appeal, etc. The staked amount vouches for the goodwill of
the site owner. If the site still has highly unethical content, the staked amount is awarded to the
people who had to view the offensive content.
Appeals will be handled by DAO members who:
• Volunteered for the council and provided their credentials to be on the Appeals Council.
• Were approved by at least 45/50 DAO voters that they can be trusted on the council.
• The council may include hundreds or even thousands of members.
When an appeal is accepted:
1. The DAO algorithmically chooses 3 people to handle the appeal.
2. The 3 must agree unanimously that the site has made the appropriate changes to be
reinstated.
3. If the site is not to be reinstated, the council members must provide specific changes that
would need to be made to reinstate the site.
4. If the site passes the reinstatement process, it goes through the full content moderation
voting process by the DAO before the URL is reinstated.
Funding Proposals
Funding proposals are based on a quarterly allocation of funds. Different categories may run on a
staggered schedule (for example, marketing funding might be considered in January-April-JuneSeptember and Community funding might be considered February-May-July-October). The process
for both will be similar.
1. Over the course of the quarter, the community will discuss on the Telegram and
Mattermost/Mastodon channels the most salient issues, challenges and opportunities. People
can float ideas for proposals and how to address challenges.
2. One month before the vote on proposals opens, the group will create an offline poll (using
pol.is or other type of polling platform) to suggest the most important areas for proposals.
Although there is no requirement to stick to those priorities, they provide a guideline for
proposal makers. The community may also create templates for the proposals addressing
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those issues, which will make it easier for the community to compare proposals to one
another.
3. All proposals must be submitted by the proposal deadline. Only Pioneer holders can submit
proposals, and every Pioneer holder is limited to submitting three proposals per voting
period. Also, they are limited to submitting one proposals to their own wallet per voting
period. (Pioneers can submit proposals for funding other people, so that experts can solicit
the support of a Pioneer to submit the proposal on their behalf.) Every proposal must have
specific deliverables and milestones against which success of the proposal will be measured.
4. Voting weight is determined by the number of Pioneers held, the amount of time the Pioneer
was held by that wallet, and the number of TOMI held by each wallet. The calculation will
be determined by the core team for the first 2 years, and after that by the DAO.
5. At the start of the 7-day voting period, dedicated voting tokens will be dropped into each
wallet, according to the weight of each person. e can get any number of tokens from 1 to
1000. During voting, people delegate their tokens to the proposals they like the most.
6. At the end of the voting period, there will be a ranked list of the proposals for funding, based
on their popularity in the vote. The proposals will be funded from top down, based on the
amount of funding available during that quarter.
Note: All voting will be through zero-knowledge technology so it is impossible to know how people
voted or whether they voted at all.
Accountability: Oversight committee
For each proposal, the DAO will allocate 2% of the funds of the accepted proposal for oversight.
Each year, the DAO will elect an oversight committee of 21 people with expertise in the appropriate
areas for assessing the proposals submitted.
1. At the milestones, the committee will assess whether the deliverable matches the promise of
the proposal.
2. The wallets that execute their deliverables will receive reputation in their self-sovereign
identity wallets, and those who do not deliver, likewise, will have that indicated on their
reputation scores.
3. The Pioneer who supported the proposals will also accumulate a reputation based on how
many of the proposals they supported were successful.
4. The reputation of the funded individuals will be transparent and available when they make
additional proposals to the DAO.
5. Pioneers who consistently support poor proposals will be limited in how many proposals
they can back per year or potentially blocked from backing proposals if it is a consistent
pattern.
People who are receiving funding cannot be on the oversight committee. If an oversight committee
member is part of a team with an approved proposal, they cannot participate in the oversight on that
proposal. Committee members may serve a maximum of two years consecutively.
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Technical Update Proposals
Technical proposal updates fall into three categories: proposals and bounties.
• Only Pioneers have the right to vote on technical proposals.
• The Oversight on technical updates will be performed by the core team rather than by an
elected committee.
Proposals can be implemented in one of the following ways:
• Through the same process as funding proposals. The technical proposal can be proposed
before code is written, and it may or may not include a request for funding. Rather than a
ranked voting, yes/no voting will be used for technical changes.
• Automated update of code. In these proposals, a team has created code and they are asking
for the code to be integrated into the blockchain. When these proposals are approved, there
is a 7-day objection/testing/audit period, after which the code automatically becomes
integrated into the codebase.
• Bounty proposals. The team may put out a call for code to be written with a specific bounty
and set a specific period of time during which programmers can submit code or submit
proposals to write the code (depending on the complexity of the problem). At the end of the
submission period, a ranked voting mechanism would be used to choose the winners of the
bounty.
Artist DAO
DAO Owl is researching JokeDAO as the infrastructure for the ArtistDAO. The jokeDAO has
developed a DAO methodology they use for choosing a “best joke” every week, which is an
identical operation for how the ArtistDAO aims to create a daily auction on the best artwork and
award tokens to the winner. DAO Owl will participate for a few weeks and learn more. The
JokeDAO team is very responsive and is open to customizations for dedicated projects.