NFTs beyond art: Vote by Equipping - a game changer?

THIS ARTICLE IS WORK IN PROGRESS AND WILL BE UPDATED PUBLISHED ON 2022-03-28 - LAST UPDATE: 2022-11-07

Abstract: The possibility to have a visualy and technically easy accessable option to perform on-chain votings for referendums, DAOs, hodlers, communities might be a game changer in the NFT-world. Until now NFTs are mostly connected to art. But NFTs have a myriad of usecases that are non-art or only mixed with art. RMRK2 allows nesting NFTs into each other and the equipping of nested NFTs. With this in mind Team Tricky created VBE, Vote by Equipping, using only the interface of singular.app to create an easy usable way to express opinions or vote, using composable v2NFTs with their equippable children. To see live how the voting works, check the BETA BIRD collection with the VBE PoC in action: https://singular.app/collections/9ecdab6f55355b191a-THE%5FBeta%5FBirds - each hodler got two BUBBLES to decide on a vote out of these two options, by equipping one of them.

Overview of possible use cases VBE can be used for small votings like having owners of a collection decide on something, like shown with the Beta Bird sample above. Further bigger votings can be done by sending out special made voting NFT-sets, containing some parent NFT to equipp the voting-options into. It can be used for community votings and DAOs, without using own interface or with own interfaces. Even Dotsama referendums would be possible using VBE.

Advantages over other voting systems The use of the singular UI as known method for most NFT-space users is a strong point. One NFT = one vote also has advantages if the voting NFTs are given out with considering the implications for holders of multiple NFTs. Accounts could be given special voting NFT by their activity or other criterias, voting would be independent of KSM/DOT power.

Implications Votings with big numbers of voters need to be counted using data fetching. A voting timeframe is needed to be given and votes that didn't count are to be adressed. Talking about the Beta Birds a visual counting is possible with only 42 possible votings. Still we take this as example to show how to machine read the voting:

query BetaBirdVotersQuery { nfts(where: {collectionId: {_eq: "9ecdab6f55355b191a-THE_Beta_Birds"}, resources: {nfts: {children: {collectionId: {_eq: "9ecdab6f55355b191a-THE_Bubbles"}, equipped: {equippable: {_contains: "9ecdab6f55355b191a-THE_Bubbles"}}, id: {_iregex: "VOTING"}}}}}) { id owner resources { nfts { children(where: {equipped: {equippable: {_contains: "9ecdab6f55355b191a-THE_Bubbles"}, part_id: {_eq: "bubble"}}}) { id equipped { equippable part_id type } } } } } }

Limitations For equipping a bit KSM dust is needed, so owners without KSM will have to be dusted. For DOT the problem is bigger, as the keeping alive of accounts is so expensive, that dusting accounts can't be afforded by the group that gives voting NFTs to accounts in most usecases. The voting is always public atm, there is no technical solution available for secret votings, as the NFT status can be read on chain, even if no visual representation would be shown (which is possible). A workaround would be the sending of crypted seeds for predusted accounts with the voting NFTs to the future voters, so they can use some account that is not connected by any trace to their main accounts.

FUTURE USE CASES Smart Contracts would be able to trigger actions if certain tresholds are reached, so with RMRK3 we would be able to have minting of NFTs, burning of NFTs, starting of sales and other actions be triggered by VBE results.

UPDATE 2022-11-07: FIRST EVALUATION
The initial response was very high. So the concept itself can be called a working one. The users responded mainly by calling them out in twitter - and chaosDAO where many holders of BetaBirds have their home. The main Problem for implementation of a NFT based voting system is the need of an UI that supports push messages for holders. Either a dedicated UI is needed or a messaging system that allows on chain messages that are read out by a general UI like singular.app, for everyone that has NFTs fitting to the collection the message is sent to (by the creator of the collection to prevent spam). Best would be a implementation for such a thing in the pallet specs for RMRK3 or a similar broad approach.