This week we spoke with two Panvala League members: Aaron Soskin of DePo DAO and Petr Porobov of Upala.
DePo DAO and Decentralized Politics
“It has never been more clear that we need to hit the refresh button on democracy.” - Aaron Soskin
This week we had the pleasure of learning about DePo DAO and the future of decentralized politics from Aaron Soskin, Founder of Govrn.io. DePo DAO’s mission is to support truly collaborative, open-source efforts that are non-partisan from the beginning and remain that way to the end. Recognizing that there are few decentralized politics initiatives, last March Aaron and Bill Warren of Pool Party set out to create infrastructure and funding for projects that encourage direct, participatory models of democracy. “Our dogmatism only extends so far as we know that the system is broken and we need to design systems where people feel heard and valued,” Bill writes. DePo DAO is committed to experimentation—they are passionate about exploring how to build and fund tech that allows politics to be a public good owned by the people it governs. And they are looking for engagement! “We need thinkers -- there are no bad ideas -- we want people to show up and have conversations about these topics,” Aaron told us.
If interested in responding to this call for ideas and engaging in dialogue about decentralized politics, you can visit DePo DAO’s website, read more here, or chat with them directly on discord!
Discussing Digital Identity Solutions with Petr Porobov
What will digital identity look like in the future? And how can we trust it? Petr Porobov is creatively answering these two questions by building Upala, a solution for decentralized digital identity. Upala operates by providing members with a digital identity uniqueness score that is valued in dollars, called the “price of forgery.” This represents the amount of money that an identity holder can get at any time for deleting their ID. By having this monetary stake, user trust becomes more transparent as individuals refrain from taking a payout in order to maintain the legitimization of their ID. Clever, no? Upala is built so that groups (be it friends, work communities etc.) can assign scores for their members, creating internal identity systems for their group. Petr came up with this idea two years ago after feeling inspired to build an identity system, and the project reached a pivotal point a few months ago when Upala began to integrate with Gitcoin. At the moment, Petr is looking for people, funds, and contributors to support, develop, and test this project.
Want to get involved? You can read more about Upala here, visit their website and twitter, and connect with Petr on telegram. We are excited to see Upala continue to revolutionize digital identity!
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