Octant Docs

# Quadratic Funding

Epoch 4 introduced quadratic funding (opens new window) to Octant, a mechanism that empowers communities by assigning greater weight to a large number of small donations over a small number of large donations. This method ensures that projects with a broad base of support benefit the most. Widely regarded as an excellent consensus-building mechanism, quadratic funding is considered an optimal way to distribute funds to public goods in democratic communities (opens new window).

Epoch 4 also introduced two additional changes to Octant's public goods funding mechanism:

  1. Removal of the minimum funding threshold;
  2. Introduction of a maximum funding cap for projects, set at 20% of the Matched Rewards pool.

All individual contributions to participating public goods projects receive matching up to the funding cap. Users can still donate to projects that have reached the cap, but these donations will not receive additional matching.

# Anti-Sybil Measures

The integrity of the quadratic funding relies on ensuring that users do not create multiple accounts, a practice known as a Sybil attack (opens new window). To mitigate the risk of users trying to gain undue influence through sock-puppet accounts, Octant uses a Uniqueness Quotient mechanism based on the Gitcoin Passport (opens new window) score, the most widely used anti-Sybil solution in the Web3 space.

# Verifying Uniqueness

To confirm each Octant account represents a unique individual, the app fetches the Gitcoin Passport score (opens new window) for each user. Users with a Gitcoin Passport score of 20 or higher will receive the maximum available matching funding. Users with a score lower than 20 will have their donations scaled down by 80% as an anti-Sybil measure.

# Improving Your Uniqueness Score

You can check your score in the Settings view of the Octant app. If your score is lower than 20, you have two options to improve it:

  1. Boost Your Gitcoin Passport Score: Visit our custom Gitcoin Passport dashboard (opens new window) and add more stamps to increase your score (opens new window). Once you've boosted your score, return to the Octant app, go to the Settings view, and click the Recalculate button.
  2. Delegate from Another Account: If you have a different account with a Gitcoin Passport score of at least 20, you can use the "Delegate" option in Settings. You'll be asked to sign a message with this secondary address to prove ownership. If the score is sufficient, it will be assigned to your primary Octant account (the one you use to lock GLM into Octant). Once the score is assigned, you'll be prompted to switch back to your primary account to confirm the delegation by signing a message with it.

For detailed, step-by-step instructions on the delegation process, please refer to the "Using the App" section of the Documentation.

Important notes:

  • Only delegate from an address with a Gitcoin Passport score of at least 20.
  • You can only successfully delegate to one address. If your delegation attempt fails because the secondary address has a lower score than your primary account, you can try again with another account.
  • If you try to delegate from an account with GLM locked in Octant, the delegation will be rejected.
  • The app records your Uniqueness Quotient score and the associated matching funding leverage when you make your first allocation. These recorded values remain unchanged until the end of the Allocation Window.
  • To maximize your matching leverage, ensure you've taken steps to improve your score before making your first allocation. Boosting your score after making your first allocation will not increase your leverage in the ongoing Allocation Window.
  • There are only two ways to increase your Uniqueness Quotient: adding new Gitcoin Passport stamps to your locking address or delegating the score from a different address that you own. The Octant team cannot increase your score for you. If you have issues with your Gitcoin Passport score, please refer to Passport's documentation (opens new window).

# Privacy and Security Measures

To preserve user privacy, the delegation scheme uses obfuscation. Both the primary and secondary addresses are hashed using the SHA-256 hash function with a hardcoded salt. Only the primary address is stored in plaintext in our database. To prevent multiple delegations to the same high-scoring account, the app checks for previous delegation hashes in the database.

# Existing Community Considerations

As a courtesy to the existing Octant community, we've partnered with the Gitcoin Passport team to create a special Guest List for our custom Passport dashboard (opens new window). Addresses on this Guest List will receive a special Passport stamp worth 21 points (valid only for Octant-related actions). The Guest List has been vetted by Gitcoin Passport to remove Sybil accounts and includes only users with an effective locked balance of at least 100 GLM on June 25th, 2024. Users who joined Octant after this date will need to verify their uniqueness as described above.

Please note that in order to apply the Guest List stamp to your Uniqueness Quotient score, you need to first sign in to our custom Gitcoin Passport dashboard (opens new window). Only after signing in there will your Uniqueness Quotient score be updated in the Settings view of the app.

The Guest List is a transitory measure and will not be updated in the future. Please do not ask to be added to it.

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