Governance and DAO

Our experiences with COVID-19 have demonstrated that human health necessitates global collaboration, transcending individual countries or races. As such, our objective is to cultivate an open and decentralized cooperative mechanism independent of specific countries or institutions. We aim to integrate the Hippocrat protocol founded on Bitcoin, the most open and decentralized blockchain, supplemented with layer networks and protocols like Lightning and Liquid. All software, including smart contracts, will be developed adhering to open standards and open source.

This section delineates our initial proposals for critical policies and the Hippocrat approach for instituting them. Distinct governance protocols for each policy will be specified and published in a verifiable manner.

Eligibility for Governance Participation

No specific qualifications are needed for basic governance participation. Everyone is free to comment on policies via forums, propose enhancements to open-source code, etc. The consensus approach will mirror that employed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Nonetheless, certain privileges requiring clear roles and responsibilities, such as approving standard policies, verifying expertise/licenses/affiliations, selecting source code modification rights holder, and choosing the DAO finance holder and related wallet manager, may be conferred to single or multiple members chosen by consensus among DAO members. Moreover, some privileges hinge on the wallet holder possessing a Verifiable Credential (VC) proving their identity as a specific stakeholder, like a patient with a distinct illness or a medical institution representative. This guarantees the wishes of certain stakeholders are represented.

To preclude power concentration and potential abuse, permissions can be distributed among various people with different interests who make decisions ensuring sufficient consensus. These permissions can be verified by the individual's Decentralized Identifier (DID), which can be issued a VC for that permission by the DAO or an existing permission holder. Typically, these permissions come with an expiration date established by policy, and if not renewed, the permissions will lapse.

The Role of DAO

While Hippocrat fundamentally serves as an open-source, voluntary, and open collaboration for software and policy development, having an organization with well-defined responsibilities and roles could streamline the development of crucial Hippocrat elements like the Hippocrat Wallet Software Development Kit (SDK), and drafting standard policies. In this regard, parts of the community can contribute as members of the Hippocrat Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO).

The Hippocrat DAO is envisioned as a decentralized and autonomous organization. We aim to run as many processes as possible through smart contracts, but this might not always be feasible due to technical or legal constraints. In such instances, we need organizations and members run by individuals, based on a system with clear roles and responsibilities. If you possess the requisite expertise and experience for the DAO, you are invited to partake in its governance as a DAO member. The DAO will be comprised of individuals who can help the Hippocrat ecosystem flourish and will maintain a structure independent of any individual or institution. Our ultimate goal is to transfer all protocol development and token fiscal authority held by the founding team to the Hippocrat DAO, thus accelerating Hippocrat development through a decentralized organization.

DAO Treasury Management

The DAO manages profits generated from data exchanges facilitated by the Data Utilization SDK. The DAO retains a portion of the profits as protocol fees. The Treasury, where these fees and tokens from the HippocratDAO Foundation are stored, is overseen by elected representatives from the DAO. They ensure prudent management of revenue and expenses.

This oversight is critical since not all contracts or transactions can be fully automated via smart contracts. Although smart contracts can automate processes like incentive allocations from data transactions, some contracts cannot be encapsulated in a smart contract. This is similar to decision-making in traditional organizations. However, all decisions are transparently documented and disclosed publicly.

When data exchanged is less personally identifiable and of greater public value, an additional public healthcare funding fee is levied, apart from the protocol fee. This collected fee is managed separately from the DAO's operational budget and is strictly used for donations to public healthcare organizations. The less identifiable the data and the greater its public benefit, the higher the fee that can be imposed. This will enable efficient collaborations with national public healthcare organizations.

Management of standard legal terms

DAO provide standard legal notifications, including terms of use and privacy policies, which can be used by data users when obtaining consent from data subjects. These notifications are customized according to country and purpose of data usage. Data users can select suitable items from these notifications through the Data Utilization SDK. Data subjects will then view these when sharing their data via the data wallet. For international data subjects, each will see a legal notice tailored to their nationality.

DAO are tasked with creating nation-specific and context-aware legal notifications to ensure data users effectively utilize data while protecting data subjects. These notifications are stored in a decentralized repository and each file's hash is registered in the Standard Terms Registry, certifying them as Hippocrat standards. If a data user's chosen legal notification is registered in the Standard Terms Registry, the data subject can verify its authenticity. Additionally, items with identical hash values can be consented to automatically. While not all terms default to consent, this saves users from repetitive reading of terms and streamlines obtaining consent.

Modifications to the legal notifications can be made via consensus among governance participants who have the authority to manage data standard terms. This forum has public records, and changes can only be implemented in the registry if a sufficient consensus is reached. This same process also determines allocation of public funding based on data usage's public benefit and individual identifiability.

Data Issuer/Agency Verification Management

Data users or institutions may question the authenticity of the data they are utilizing. Therefore, the data wallet of the data issuer or institution must contain crucial information about the issuer in the form of a Verifiable Credential (VC). This includes details such as name, address, registration number, contact information, and the commission rate to be given to the data issuer when the data is transacted. This information is publicly available, eliminating the need for a separate information sharing process.

However, to ensure third-party trust in this data, Hippocrat operates a registry through the DAO where issuers can be validated and their affiliations can be verified. Once an issuer's information is verified, their Decentralized Identifier (DID) is added to the Data Issuer Registry. If the VC issuer is listed in this registry, the Data Utilization SDK will validate it, thus assuring the data user of its authenticity without further verification.

Protocol Source Code Management

The protocol's official software program source code, including the Hippocrat Wallet SDK and website, is chiefly managed by the DAO. While these are developed in line with open standards and open source, sole reliance on third-party contributions could lead to inefficient or unsustainable development. Certain members are granted permissions to manage the source code, and some actions require a consensus among these members.

Others

In addition to the areas mentioned above, any agenda item that is developed with consensus among the various stakeholders and requires notice can be discussed and decided by governance.