“In a world of composability, where anybody can build on top of you, your app is a protocol, and your protocol is an app,” stated David Phelps, cofounder of jokerace, a governance contest platform for communities, during a recent X space event hosted by Aragon. He continued, “We’re just very locked in these terms of app versus protocol because that’s an outdated mental model that doesn’t hold up in a world of composability.” This highlights the power of jokerace: composability. Although jokerace may appear as a different user interface for onchain governance, its true power lies not only in the actions you can take within the app but also in the actions you can take beyond the app onchain. Jokerace serves as a platform for communities to create, execute, and document decisions. As described by David, it is a proto-app since it caters to consumers with its frontend interface (the jokerace contest platform) and developers with its backend infrastructure or information (in this case, onchain data) that can be utilized by anyone. This is where DAOs (onchain organizations built on decentralized infrastructure) come into play. “You can actually have the results of a vote trigger an action onchain,” David explained. “And because we’re fully onchain, it’s fully composable. As long as you can read the data, you can have that trigger an action.” Onchain actions, such as sending tokens to an address or interacting with an external smart contract, are integral to the functioning of DAOs. Therefore, DAOs can utilize jokerace to serve as the decision-making layer, while an Aragon DAO acts as the execution layer for a community. For instance, governance tokens could be airdropped to all individuals who voted on a specific submission in a jokerace, or a hackathon could be organized where outstanding submissions are rewarded with governance tokens. It is even possible to develop a plugin that connects jokerace results with an Aragon DAO onchain. The possibilities are endless, and the integration of jokeraces and Aragon DAOs can greatly enhance communities and their decision-making processes.
