VeriDAO, the NFT collection verification DAO

PROBLEM NFT marketplaces have failed to provide a scalable way to verify NFT collections and to protect their users. Instead they rely on a centralized, semi-automatic process of determining verification. This process leads to headaches and backlogs of verification for these platforms.

For NFT communities, the verification process can be opaque and differ from platform to platform (Rarible, OpenSea, Twitter…). It is also unachievable to smaller projects, where verification on OpenSea requires 100 Eth trading volume.

Worse, established artists that want to experiment with NFTs have no direct access to verifying their own collections as their community is not crypto-aware.

NFT buyers want to purchase collections which are not on the shortlist of verified collections.

NFT verification is a problem that affects collectors, communities, artists and platforms:

• No standard/common process (every marketplace has its own verification mechanisms)
• Unilateral decisions from marketplace (can be banned on Rarible but be traded in OpenSea)
• Inaccessible for small projects or new comers
• Marketplaces want to automate verification but realized it is not possible, that’s why we propose to rely on the community and collective intelligence

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SOLUTION Decentralized processes can solve these types of problems. Proof of humanity is a good working example of robust and reliable decentralized verification.

This project seeks to decentralize the verification of NFTs. People will be able to browse verified collections, current submissions and their progress on the DAO's website or registry.

Once a collection is submitted through the website, it goes through 4 phases:

1. Submission to gather NFT collection information from a collector or a creator
2. Voting race (7 days) to ensure projects which have a legitimate community proceed
3. Challenge (7 days) to ensure that no illegitimate NFT collections receive verification
4. Result to publish the verified collection on our website and API

For the Submission phase, the submitter is required to provide the NFT smart contract address with additional information and to stake ETH as a deposit. Verified collections will have their stake fully returned while scammers will lose their stake to challenger(s) who proved the collection was illegitimate.

The voting phase mobilizes the community and uses their collective intelligence to ensure a trustworthy submission, while rewarding the voters for upvoting the good collection or downvoting the bad/scammy ones.

The challenge phase is based on Kleros for truly decentralized arbitration (ERC792) . This phase incentives Challengers to find bad submissions based on guidelines. Once Challengers find evidence of a bad/scammy submission, they select a category (Incorrect submission, Duplicate, Scammer…) and deposit a small amount of ETH with found evidence(s) to challenge the submission. If they are proven correct, they will receive the Submitter's staked ETH as a reward.

After the challenge period, the result is published publicly and available in our registry and website. Widgets and badges displayed on partners platforms will be automatically updated.

This project uses Svelte for the front-end, standard Web3 provider/wallet will use TheGraph for indexing the submissions and verified collections and Kleros for arbitration (ERC792) to settle disputes during the challenge phase.

If media need to be stored, IPFS or Filecoin will be used.