PrivateGov - talk from Kusama ZK Day

olanod
Mon, 11 Aug 2025 10:16:09 +0000
Governance

During Kusama ZK Day I presented the idea of PrivateGov ⁽ˢˡᶦᵈᵉˢ⁾, exploring what it means to add a privacy component to OpenGov from a technical point of view.
The talked focused on:

Every organization needs privacy in some form – from corporate boards to public institutions.
Let’s face it, most real-world organizations can’t operate in complete public view. Companies need to keep salaries and financial info private, boards need to make strategic decisions without competitors knowing, and communities need safe spaces for open discussion without fear of pressure. Even public institutions deal with sensitive topics. Current on-chain governance is too open for many of these groups, so we need a way to add privacy without sacrificing the benefits of blockchain.

How we can extend the existing OpenGov (pallet‑referenda) with Virto’s pallet‑communities*, embedding the required ZK primitives.

A phased rollout that starts with small‑ to mid‑size businesses (Virto’s target audience outside Web3) and scales up to DAOs within DAOs and larger audiences like Kusama’s main OpenGov tracks.

*A recent Wish‑For‑Change was approved to include pallet-communities into the Kusama Asset Hub to provide native DAO tooling for KSM holders. This paves the way for the private‑governance extensions described below.

Other highlights and the work ahead

I also had the pleasure to attend the closing ceremony of the Summit’s hackathon and meet with some of its participants, my special kudos go to the winners of the Kusama track who showed cased a private voting solution using the Noir language, the kind of technology we should be integrating in our PrivateGov stack so I’m very much looking forward to collaborate more closely!

What are your thoughts on private governance? at least I stand firm, DAOs need privacy, if DAOs are to ever become mainstream then privacy is a must. At Virto we’d love to continue working towards that goal, to solve not only governance but to full-fill organization’s every need like, ease of use or real-time private collaboration. Let’s make Kusama the go to place for real-world privacy enabled organizations!

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