Polaris

Polaris is the governance layer for the next generation of the decentralized web. We present a protocol that allows for any blockchain, present and future, to trustlessly use a secure set of governance mechanisms hosted on the network. Polaris is organized in a “hub and spoke” model that allows any other blockchain or dApp to efficiently connect. These users of Polaris connect to a governance module on the platform that offers a focus of coordination for the challenge under consideration. The flagship module of Polaris will be the futarchy mechanism under development where prediction markets are used to drive outcomes that improve a system-wide metric dictating the welfare of an organization. We strongly believe futarchy offers the best form of decentralized governance to date as we can hold participants accountable to their activity. As we will see later, existing forms of governance are susceptible to various attacks as they fail to punish powerful actors who use their influence to extract undue value from the rest of the community. After offering some motivations for our vision of governance, we will explore in more detail the “hub and spoke” model of the Polaris protocol and the design of the futarchy module. We describe the token model behind the protocol and examine a series of use cases where Polaris presents a way to prevent the destruction of massive amounts of value. We conclude with some risks and describe possible mitigations.