What is MACI?

Quote from pse.dev:

“Minimal Anti-Collusion Infrastructure (MACI) is a private, on-chain, voting system.

MACI is a protocol designed to provide a highly secure e-voting solution. It enables organizations to conduct on-chain voting processes with a significantly reduced risk of cheating, such as bribery or collusion.

MACI uses zero-knowledge proofs to implement a receipt-free voting scheme, making it impossible for anyone other than the vote coordinator to verify how a specific user voted. This ensures the correct execution of votes and allows anyone to verify the results. It is particularly beneficial for governance and funding events, where its anti-collusion mechanisms help ensure fair and transparent outcomes.”

Use Case: Who would need MACI?

DAO Operations and Governance: Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) could utilize MACI for decision-making processes within the organization. This includes voting on proposals, electing leaders, or deciding on strategic directions.

E.g. When there are multiple proposals from the DAO members, MACI can be used to choose the most important proposal that the organization should give more resources and manpower as priority.

Election Processes: In decentralized systems or communities, MACI can be used for conducting elections for roles or positions within the ecosystem. This ensures fairness and prevents collusion in the election process.

E.g. MACI can be used to choose new DAO admins or other roles among the candidates.

Community Fund Management: Crypto communities often have community funds for development, marketing, or other purposes. MACI can be used to enable transparent voting on fund allocation proposals, preventing collusion and ensuring the community has a say in how funds are spent.

E.g. Dora Dojo is a community-driven knowledge-sharing communit, and several topics are proposed in the community forum every week. Dojo members and partners decide which is the most important topic via MACI voting, and the respective topic proposer will continue study on this topic and get rewarded when sharing his/her learnings.

Protocol Upgrades: Web3 protocols often undergo upgrades or changes. MACI can be employed to gather community sentiment on proposed protocol changes, helping to avoid collusion and ensuring a more inclusive decision-making process.

E.g. With several features that can be put on the development schedule, community members can vote via MACI to decide which feature should be developed and released first.