Governance and Decentralization

Socious uses both SOCIO token and “Impact Score” in the form of verifiable credentials powered by Hyperledger Identus (formerly known as Atala Prism), a self sovereign identity platform, to facilitate governance and voting rights allocation. Through on-chain governance processes, DAO members are able to vote on various aspects of organizational operations, allowing community-wide decision-making. Decisions on allocating funding, building new partnerships, and developing the platform can all be executed through this decentralized process.

To ensure that voting power is both widely distributed and held by informed decision-makers, Socious Impact Scores in the form of verifiable credentials are non-transferable while SOCIO token is transferrable. This unique combination guarantees that voting rights and power remain with those who have actively contributed to the ecosystem, thereby promoting a more equitable and participatory governance model. The verifiable credentials contain information on the user's interests/expertise on specific social/environmental issues based on their behaviors in the Socious ecosystem. The voting power is calculated using the square root of their SOCIO Holdings multiplied by their Impact Score and their interests/expertise on the topic that is being voted on. This quadratic voting mechanism for SOCIO holdings and logarithmic scaling of Impact Scores helps prevent plutocratic control while still rewarding meaningful participation. For example, if the topic is about allocating funding to an environmental project, the votes of the users who have contributed their time/money to environmental projects will be weighed accordingly.

Those who have an impact points above 10,000 are considered “Socious Experts” and are able to make decisions on various aspects of the Socious ecosystem including verification of impact organizations, reviewing reported organizations/users/content, and dispute resolution. In centralized platforms, these decisions are made by the company that owns the platform, which may lead to issues of censorship and abuse. On Socious, these decisions are made by a panel of three Socious Experts. For example, an organization submits an application to be verified as an impact organization in order to receive an array of benefits that come with the status. A panel of three Socious Experts will be randomly chosen to review the organization’s application and vote on whether the organization should be verified as an impact organization. The three Impact Experts will receive SOCIO as a reward for their contribution. Participation in the panel is completely voluntary, so Socious Experts can opt out of the possibility to be randomly selected to participate.

Socious Experts also participate in dispute resolutions between the organization and the hired freelancer. For example, when an organization believes that a project was not completed, but the contributor claims it was completed. In this case, either party can submit a dispute; they agree to disclose certain information only to the panel of three decision-makers. When they submit a dispute, they need to stake a certain amount of SOCIO for dispute settlement fees. The winning party will receive the refund/payment. The losing party will lose the amount staked and the judges will receive the staked amount.

While our long-term goal is full decentralization, a core team needs to adapt to changing environments and make quick decisions in order to build an ecosystem that people love to be a part of in the long term. As we make progress on our milestones, the core Socious team will gradually step out of the decision-making process, achieving a truly decentralized and fully autonomous organization.