As discussed in the $CITIZEN forum, I’d like to solicit help on working on a proposal for creating Visas.
Kong is currently very binary in its membership: those with tokens are granted access and can participate. What if there were a lighter-weight way for people to come inside and be part of the community?
The basic idea is to have a Visa which would allow the holder to join for a temporary period of time, perhaps 6 months. During this time, they’d be a member of the community with full $CITIZEN access.
Interest in Kong will grow as we launch more things publicly and as the idea of creating new kinds of states captures the attention of more people. As inbound interest increases, having other means for people to learn about and experience KONG besides full citizenship is important. Visas could be a way for newcomers to explore and contribute to KONG and for
our community to get to know them. This is a natural path for them to then be nominated for $CTZN and join permanently.
We could implement it with a $CTZNVISA token. The contract would send it to the receipt’s wallet with an end date as a property. If the $CTZNVISA holder tried to use the token after that date, it would not longer work.
In the future, you can could imagine adding more properties in the future to define the exact scope of the $CTZNVISA and what rights it gave the holder.
There’s a number of implementation details which would need to be sorted out. I wanted to put this out there to get feedback and see if there were others who want to explore this idea. Please reply with your thoughts.
I really like this idea – some immediate questions I believe we should resolve:
Do we need any humans in the loop, or is this a fully automated system (e.g. a contract where anyone can mint?). I like the idea of trying to remove barriers as much as possible, so maybe the fact that you need to do an on chain transaction to mint is sufficient.
Maybe we just lean in and go with $VISA?
What prevents someone from just getting rolling visa’s rather than converting to $CTZN eventually? I am thinking that you can only have one visa per account, which is a low barrier but implies someone would have to make somewhat of an effort go down this path.
Should visa holders sign the founding charter? Or maybe some alternative document?
While I believe that visa holders should be able to to participate in $CITIZEN Discord channels (and events), I do not believe they should be able to vote in Snapshot proposals.
I could imagine that we tie this in with my proposal regarding giving out $CTZN in recognition of those who have carried out service to KONG Land.
As for Cameron’s third point, what about ZK proofs + proof of humanity? (Where the ZK proofs preserve anonymity) Seems like the perfect application of the tech imo. Could also see the sybil resistance framework being useful for future KL functions. I floated POH in an earlier community call but then we collectively realized some sort of reputation system would probably be even better for Sybil resistance. Since there is no reputation system possible here I think it could be useful.
Ok, so maybe – anyone with a POH check (either Proof of Humanity or BrightID? We ought to choose one) can apply for a KONG Land visa which lasts…6 months? The visa will be represented by a non-transferrable NFT.
Paramaters to select:
Ticker – ($CTZNVISA, $VISA? – given this will be for an erc721 I am less concerned about collisions).
Term – I think that 6 months is probably enough time to jump in, notably if we have some clear means of achieving full citizenship.
Ability to renew – I think that we either should only allow a single visa or allow for a single renewal.
POH choice – I believe we should keep it binary, either Proof of Humanity or BrightID. I’ve completed the BrightID check, have not tried Proof of Humanity yet.
Path to $CITIZEN – I don’t think we necessarily need to include this in the proposal, but it might be worthwhile to at least sign post that the goal of a visa program is full conversion to $CTZN, either through a formal process or by acquisition on the part of the holder.
I think proof of humanity or Bright ID is essential for Kong as a whole. I have been trying to get fully verified with bright ID, so +1 on it. I do need to make more connections; perhaps we could have a bright ID event to vouch for each other and get more citizens verified.
I’ve never used proof of humanity, I’ve heard mixed review. I’m open to trying it.
Another route is simply conviction stakes. Perhaps this is a good opportunity to revive KONG and the lockdrop contract, where hopeful CTZN or a sponsor can lock up a nominal stake in ETH and be rewarded in KONG, exactly like PoH.
Locking the stake awards a VISA token and once the CTZN is admitted (eg by immigration committee or simple lockdrop expiration without challenge), the VISA token is burned for CTZN which returns the stake and a KONG reward to the staker.
For anyone who wants to try PoH, I’m authenticated and will vouch for you
My .02 - I may have missed it, but there needs to be a clear reason for the creation of all of these different layers, which is clearly spelled out in a simple overview. Since the “visa” system is meant to be different from the CTZN system I would just note the following:
“visas” should have a clear purpose. Is it just learning about and experiencing KONG besides full citizenship? What is there to learn/experience that people could not understand from open source research? Building? Governance? Apprenticeship? Content creation? This requires thinking about implementation in the creation phase.
A “visa” should be relatively easy to obtain (within parameters) and should be convertible to CTZN. So, the parameters for obtaining a “visa” could be as simple as POH or ZK proofs + POH. Requiring people to lock stakes and do other technical (or semi-technical) things potentially excludes people who might have non-technical contributions to make. Plus, what incentive do people have to lock stakes or take financial risk if this is just learning about the ecosystem and potentially contributing?
The “visa” should be convertible to CTZN and that process should be clear, simple, and decentralized. I strongly disagree with the trend towards centralizing this type of decision in bodies like an “immigration committee”. For example, the person might need a certain amount of non-fungible reputational credibility (similar to what @ramicaza mentions, or some other measure) to mint a CTZN. This would ensure that people converting to CTZN have already been active and vetted (to a degree) by their community participation. There are also already governance measures baked in to kick people out, if needed, so making the entry in should be simple and decentralized, which should in turn attract a diverse range of potential contributors.
Whether a “visa” should be renewable, as well as the frequency of renewability, really depends on its purpose. Why wouldn’t you allow a “visa” to be indefinitely renewable if the person is an active and regular contributor, building credibility, but does not (for example) want to sign the founding charter? Or has some other reason for not aspiring to “full citizenship”.
TL;DR a “visa” should allow a human to build and contribute with a very low barrier for entry. Contributions should be measured in some form of non-fungible credibility/reputation and result in a decentralized opportunity to become a CTZN without centralized gatekeeping. The community can always kick someone out if there’s an issue.
A couple of additional notes after typing this up:
This is essentially proposing an “optimistic” “immigration” framework that assumes any potential “visa” holder will contribute. Then, actual contributions are measured in some way, which leads to conferral of CTZN.
One example of how this might function is in the case of people who request HALO chips to test. Perhaps receiving a test HALO chip requires the person to first get a “visa” (simply POH), then they are able to gain reputational credit through their experimentation and continued engagement. It’s a way to bring people in who are already interested + you can potentially automate the shipping of chips so that core contributors can focus on things besides administrative tasks. Plus, by demonstrating to the community what they’re working on, it could spawn collaborations in an organic and decentralized way.
I agree with this; it would probably make the most sense to prioritize visas over other immigration policies/initiatives to simplify entry to KONG Land.
The “visa” should be convertible to CTZN and that process should be clear, simple, and decentralized. I strongly disagree with the trend towards centralizing this type of decision in bodies like an “immigration committee”. For example, the person might need a certain amount of non-fungible reputational credibility (similar to what @ramicaza mentions, or some other measure) to mint a CTZN. This would ensure that people converting to CTZN have already been active and vetted (to a degree) by their community participation.
I strongly agree that we should remove blockers like committees here; my biggest concern is that this implies that we need to have a reputation system in place in order to codify visa->$CTZN. Is selecting this system implicit to starting a visa?
I strongly agree that we should remove blockers like committees here; my biggest concern is that this implies that we need to have a reputation system in place in order to codify visa->$CTZN. Is selecting this system implicit to starting a visa?
I would strongly argue for putting into place a reputation system (or some other framework if a reputation system is too onerous or $$) before introducing visas.
The governance mechanics are already fairly confusing (I still don’t understand the relationship between CTZN and CITIZEN, including whether CTZN>CITIZEN means alpha CITIZEN or something else). It seems that rather than introducing additional layers of complexity (and bureaucracy), there should be a clear(er) understanding of the mechanics for these different statuses before layering more on.
Wasn’t the purpose of CTZN to recruit people who could build/contribute? Has that not worked? Why would someone want a visa if they could be given a CTZN token? Are people thinking of selling visas to raise funds? Just trying to understand this push for a visa system when the rationale behind CTZN seemed to also be opening up participation.
$CITIZEN ERC721 + signature on the founding charter is the only “$CITIZEN” that can participate in Snapshot votes.
Both Alpha $CITIZEN ERC20 and (soon) $CTZN ERC20 can burn into the $CITIZEN ERC721 contract. Over time the goal is to just move to “$CITIZEN” where it implies the ERC721.
$CTZN was intended for that but it’s been tied up in other items – namely a formal proposal needs to be put forth on its usage as it’s an asset of the treasury held by KONG Land. I posted something here a while back but unfortunately have 0 bandwidth to shepherd a proposal through to vote here.
I believe that @volpe proposed the visa system as a means of allowing open access to KONG Land without having to charge for $CTZN while still retaining options there moving forward (e.g. if KONG Land wanted to auction $CTZN it could).
Another proposal could just be to distribute the ~4600 $CTZN held by the treasury to anyone who requests it on a first-come-first-served basis. I won’t attempt to speak for others here on $CTZN, but my guess is that many folks would prefer not to take that path.
I think this would be a great use-case for some type of non-transferrable (soulbound) NFT system where people earn non-transferrable reputational badges that can result in earning CTZN. Optimism’s “Citizens House” is a really interesting use case and I think Sismo is doing interesting things with soulbound tokens, as well.
Raid Guild also has an interesting (though complex) system, that seems more in line with what @cadillion mentioned regarding reputation stakes. Could be worth a look though: Become an Apprentice | RaidGuild Handbook
So I just heard that the CabinDAO folks are doing some cool stuff here is well. I think we need someone to champion a solution that they like the most here. Would be good to get some of the $CITIZENs who overlap with MetaFactory to comment here on what has/has not worked.
I wonder if we could come up with a simpler off-chain metric to begin with (e.g. complete an open bounty with at least XXXX $LAND value).
I’d be willing to work on this, for sure. Maybe @volpe would be up for a chat? My hang up is that I’m not a buidler, so would have to work with others on that aspect. I like your idea of a simpler off-chain metric as a placeholder while working on a more thought-out framework for intake and progression through roles. I would be really interested to know what other projects’ experiences have been in terms of onboarding and building reputation.
It seems like a lot of projects have just been handling this through Discord roles and collab.land, but KongLand could take the lead in developing a decentralized, on-chain process for newbies to join and build their own soulbound rep (in kind of a gamified way). MetaFactory has a cool onboarding process through their forum, which kind of orients you to the project, etc. KongLand’s simple off-chain process could be something like completing a similar orientation, which earns a non-transferrable POAP that grants a “visa” valid of a certain period of time. People will still need to know how/whether they can obtain CTZN, but maybe the remaining CTZN are distributed to people who earn the time-limited, soulbound POAP and complete an additional task within the “visa” validity period? Just spitballing here, but willing to work with people on something more concrete.
Currently there is no process for this, AFAIK even the original mailing addresses for the passports were held for only one month.
Proof of Humanity requires you to post a stake with a video of yourself holding the written address you want to be associated with. This will remain staked for the duration of a challenge period, where individuals can take your stake if they find a duplicate submission elsewhere. The video remains public after the challenge period ends and the stake is returned.
BrightID requires you to form a social graph with other BrightID users. Users can challenge a sufficiently similar social graph and burn the address from the network if it is found to be a duplicate identity.
Civic requires you to KYC directly with them, and then they post a proof to the Civic contract. You can use this proof anywhere that respects Civic attestations.
Nobody has a good ZK connector or ring signature scheme yet for connecting a “forwarding address” to any of these solutions, but obviously this would be preferred.