Introducing Community Approval Requests (CARs)

CARs are designed to facilitate a lean process for the DIA DAO to approve or reject and improve the processes, content and infrastructure of DIA’s cross-chain oracle platform.

Dec 10, 2021

Overview

DIA, as an open-source oracle platform, is built on the foundational belief that crowd-sourcing and crowd-validation lead to a more transparent and resilient product. In order to facilitate this, DIA is progressively rolling out new features to enable the DAO to participate in the governance of DIA’s cross-chain oracle platform.

In October 2021, DIA introduced the DAO Forum, as the go-to space to propose, discuss and vote on ideas to improve the DIA platform. Today, we are thrilled to announce that DIA is aggregating a new DAO module named “Community Approval Requests”, also known as CARs.

What is a CAR?

In simple terms, a CAR is an approval mechanism for DIA’s current and upcoming product implementations. They are designed in order to facilitate a lean process for the DIA DAO to approve or reject processes, content and infrastructure, divided into different product categories and subcategories of DIA’s cross-chain oracle platform.

Most of DIA’s product categories will require a CAR to be validated. Only after DAO approval through the CAR, it will move into production and implementation mode. If a product category has been previously implemented by the team, it will require a crowd validation process through a CAR.

How does it work?

1. Publishing

Whenever a proposal has been formulated, a CAR will be published in the DAO Forum by a core team member. Every CAR will include:

  • Brief description
  • Link to documentation
  • Timeline
  • Optional: External reference URL

2. Discussion

During this phase, lasting 7 days, questions and possible improvements can take place. If the proposal shall be improved, the CAR will be cancelled and instead, a DIA Improvement Proposal –DIP will be created. The DIP will need to be approved following the existing DAO process and later on, verified through a CAR again.

3. Snapshot Vote

Once improvements of the CAR are applied, if any, a snapshot vote will be created to vote on the approval/ rejection of the CAR. This phase will last 3 days. Community members participating in the vote will receive a DIA DAO badge/insignia as a POAP.

4. Verification

If the vote is successful, the product feature will be implemented by the team, and if it exists already, it will be verified.

Initial Roll Out, Methodologies

Initially, the first CARs will be focused on validating the existing DIA oracle methodologies, widely used within DIA’s oracle product offering. These methodologies are defined in the documentation available online. An example of an oracle methodology is the VWAP or outlier cleansing, as well as index methodologies.

In the coming weeks, new CARs for oracle methodologies will be rolled out on a regular basis, following the structure laid out before. Once a methodology is approved through a CAR, it will receive a ‘DAO-verified’ badge in its documentation page, linked to the snapshot vote in which the verification took place. Mechanisms around CARs will be developed and improved over time to ensure maximum quality of outcome.

CAR #001: Moving Average (MA)

The CAR #001: Moving Average (MA) Methodology has been published in the forum and is open for discussion. Community members can suggest improvements in the same forum entry. In 7 days time, and if there are no changes to be done, the CAR will put up for a vote on Snapshot.

See CAR #001 in detail and participate in the discussion

Timeline

  • Discussion: 10 Dec — 17 Dec
  • Vote: 17 Dec — 24Dec
  • Verification: 24 Dec

POAP Rewards

In order to incentivise the DAO interaction, DIA will reward with POAPs (what is a POAP?) the members actively participating and adding value to DIA’s governance process. From now on, DIA token holders participating in votings via vote.diadata.org, will receive a POAP badge as a reward.