Proposal: SyncVotes — Build and Manage DAOs on Canton Network

Development Fund Proposal Submission

Proposal file: /proposals/cantondao.md

Summary

SyncVotes is an open-source on-chain governance platform for Canton Network — live at syncvotes.com on two networks: Canton MainNet (invite-only) and Canton TestNet (invite-free public demo). Organizations create DAOs, submit typed proposals, vote, and manage governance fully on-ledger via Daml smart contracts. Milestone 1 is delivered, and since the May revision a substantial slice of the originally-M2/M3 scope has shipped as interim releases at the author's expense (v0.5.0 → v0.7.1, all SCU lineage upgrades, no teardowns): the privacy track (strict-Private observer model + per-party authenticated reads over participant auth-services), typed proposals, quorum with early close, snapshot-weighted voting verified at a 2,700-voter electorate with flat ~2.3 KB ballots, a permanent governance record (rationale, attachment digests, finalize/execute audit trail, withdraw-with-record), and the CIP-0104 attribution correction (v0.6.1 — the CIP pays confirmers, not observers, so the app-provider is now a signatory on Public envelopes). The FA application was approved by the FAV Committee (July 2026). This proposal funds the remaining v3 economic engine and the open-source SDK: per-DAO treasury sponsorship under CIP-0073 MintingDelegations, a bounded refund pipeline with fraud detection, deposit-and-slash anti-spam, token-based DAO models, MultisigProposal, SubDAO hierarchies, third-party audit, and a reusable canton-governance-sdk. 700,000 CC across 3 milestones (unchanged).

Checklist

• [x] Proposal file added under /proposals/
• [x] Milestones and funding amounts defined
• [x] Acceptance criteria included
• [x] Alignment with Canton priorities described

Notes for Reviewers

• The author is an active Canton MainNet validator (web34ever) and operates the participant node infrastructure required for this project.
• The platform is live and verifiable today — the invite-free TestNet demo at app.syncvotes.com exercises the complete loop: create DAO → typed proposal (with attachments + rationale) → weighted or unweighted vote → finalize (early close) → execute → withdraw-with-record.
• The privacy questions raised in this PR's review discussion have shipped. Private DAO contracts are observed by members only — both platform parties (syncvotes-operator, syncvotes-app-provider) are excluded at the ledger. Members read Private state through the Canton JSON Ledger API with per-request actAs=[member] JWTs over participant auth-services (the approach worked through in the linked Canton forum thread — now live on the MainNet participant). Multi-hosted parties (BitSafe Decentralization Manager, #298) remain the complementary institutional layer, scoped as an M3 integration.
• Wallet state, honestly: production keys are CIP-0103 exclusively — the dApp SDK picker is integrated, a self-hosted instance of the reference Canton Wallet Gateway (hyperledger-labs/splice-wallet-kernel) runs against our own validator, and the WalletConnect transport is wired so consumer Canton wallets connect as vendors ship CIP-0103 support. A clearly-labeled built-in dev wallet (client-side keys, browser-encrypted) exists for evaluation only and is not marketed as production custody; the funded roadmap replaces it with external-key parties and hardware-wallet adapters.
• Reward attribution via CIP-0104. No FeaturedAppActivityMarker contracts. v0.6.1 aligned the contracts with the CIP's confirmer rule; reward weight accrues from traffic burn on envelopes confirmed by the syncvotes-app-provider party.
• Bounded refund formula min(0.85·r, 0.95·c) returns the majority of CIP-0104 reward to the originating DAO Treasury while preserving a strict net-loss-to-DAO invariant of at least 5% of burn — farming has negative expected value by construction.
• Scale proof: the v0.7.0 weighted-voting design was load-verified at the committed migration partner's production shape — 2,700-entry WeightSnapshot (~323 KB once per epoch), flat ~2.3 KB per ballot vs ~211 KB per vote on the naive consuming path (CIP-0098-aligned envelope sizing).
• This proposal does not overlap with Super Validator governance. SyncVotes lets any organization create its own DAO for its own needs.
• The canton-governance-sdk (Milestone 3) is shared infrastructure — Daml templates + Go + TypeScript clients reusable by any Canton team.
• First migration partner committed: PostHuman Decentralized Validator is migrating its DAOs and SubDAOs from Cosmos/DAODAO to SyncVotes on Canton; the weighted-voting release was built and verified against that migration's production shape.
• Funding unchanged at 700,000 CC. The interim deliveries above were absorbed at the author's expense; the remaining funded work (treasury + refund economics, token-based voting, multisig, Sub