Disambiguation About Vote Enforcement

There have been some discussion about when votes are enforced.
This post will clarify current enforcement and explain the roadmap toward full decentralization.

Right explanation

The Kleros DAO has specific rights over:

Note that the Token² Curate List is an arbitrable application. And arbitrable applications do not necessarily need to be governed by the Kleros DAO. For example the Ethfinex badge is governed by Ethfinex which can change the policy. Another example is the Escrow which is not governed by anyone (there is no need to update rules or parameters there).

Policy VS Primary Document

There are two main source of rules:

  • Policies, they are decided by Kleros and for Kleros. Their goal is to protect the system. Those rules give general guidelines which allow more efficient process, avoid unethical use-cases and protect jurors from spending a significant time on a dispute with an inadequate pay.
  • Primary Documents, this is what was agreed upon by the parties of the dispute. This is shown in the interface of parties interacting with the application. Those are decided by application governance which may be decentralized (Token² Curated Registry), centralized (Ethfinex Badge) or non existant (In this case the parties may draft it themselves like in the Escrow).

Policies prevail above Primary Documents, otherwise users could attack Kleros (ex: asking votes on unethical usecases). Users have a lower protection than Kleros, but Kleros still has high interest not to misbehave as users can easily “vote with their feet” and stop using Kleros would problematic policies be enacted. It’s also a common rules not to apply policies to disputes created before the policy was implemented.

Enforcement of votes
Kleros follows a logic of progressive decentralization. This means that the end goal is to have a fully decentralized system but that intermediate steps are better than nothing.
Aragon does not allow for automatic enforcement of arbitrary decisions (the execute fonction of Aragon, is not implemented and doesn’t do anything).

  • In the current system. The enforcement is centralized, the Kleros team translates technically decisions voted through governance and uses the governor to implement those. Implementation may not immediately follow a vote due to the time required for technical work (or even text editing one for policies or primary documents). This is a good intermediary step but is not sufficient.
  • In the in in development system, a Kleros court (Blockchain->Technical) will serves to verify this enforcement. Anyone having implemented vote results will be able to submit a list of calls (system update, parameter update, rule changes) required to implement those, along with a deposit. Then anyone who doesn’t believe they properly translate what was voted in plain English will be able to create a dispute. Jurors would then decide if those calls properly translates what was voted in plain English. You can watch work in progress there.
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