# Foundations for Grassroots Democratic Metaverse

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.04090 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04090/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 66 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Mar 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Participatory Budgeting: Models and Approaches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.00606/) (2020)
- [Aggregation over Metric Spaces: Proposing and Voting in Elections, Budgeting, and Legislation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.06277/) (2018)
- [United for Change: Deliberative Coalition Formation to Change the Status Quo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.08031/) (2020)
- [Who Watches the Watchmen? A Review of Subjective Approaches for Sybil-resistance in Proof of Personhood Protocols](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.05300/) (2020)
- [All You Need is DAG](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.08325/) (2021)
- [Building a Sybil-Resilient Digital Community Utilizing Trust-Graph Connectivity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.00752/) (2019)
- [In the Beginning there were n Agents: Founding and Amending a Constitution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.03111/) (2020)
- [Safe Voting: Resilience to Abstention and Sybils](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.05271/) (2020)
- [Democratic Forking: Choosing Sides with Social Choice](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03652/) (2021)
- [Bullshark: DAG BFT Protocols Made Practical](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05677/) (2022)
- [Towards large-scale deliberative decision-making: small groups and the importance of triads](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.08143/) (2016)
- [AT2: Asynchronous Trustworthy Transfers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.10844/) (2018)
- [Genuine Personal Identifiers and Mutual Sureties for Sybil-Resilient Community Formation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.09630/) (2019)
- [Online Payments by Merely Broadcasting Messages (Extended Version)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.13184/) (2020)
- [Digital Social Contracts: A Foundation for an Egalitarian and Just Digital Society](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.06261/) (2020)
- [Egalitarian and Just Digital Currency Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14631/) (2020)
- [On Payment Channels in Asynchronous Money Transfer Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.06693/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [AI-Generated Compromises for Coalition Formation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06837/) (2025)
- [AI-Generated Compromises for Coalition Formation: Modeling, Simulation, and a Textual Case Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.05983/) (2025)
- [Volition Elicitation: Operational Semantics for People and Their Machines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.14138/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

While the physical lives of many of us are in democracies (one person, one vote - e.g., the EU and the US), our digital lives are mostly in autocracies (one person, all votes - e.g., Facebook). Cryptocurrencies promise liberation but stop short, at plutocracy (one coin, one vote). What would it take for us to live our digital lives in a digital democracy? This paper offers a vision, a theoretical framework, and an architecture for a grassroots network of autonomous, people-owned, people-operated, and people-governed digital communities, namely a grassroots democratic metaverse. It also charts a roadmap towards realizing it, and identifies unexplored territory for further research.