Ideas for changing the rules for consensus-level proposals

TL;DR

In the previous consensus-level proposal to create the optimism treasury, the proposal received an overwhelming majority of buidler cardholder votes, but failed to meet the 70% consensus-level vote threshold, so the proposal was not passed

[LIP31: Deploy LXDAO Treasury on Optimism (Consensus Proposal)]
Number of votes in favour: 37, needed to reach 70% consensus level proposal rule (65*0.7=45.5 votes)

Proposal Status: Not Adopted

Description

This is a consensus-level proposal that involves the creation of a treasury and the relocation of treasury funds, etc. It needs to reach a 70% turnout, so that the majority of buidler card holders agree to it.

According to our observation, the creation of optimism is a good proposal for LXDAO as a whole, as it solves the problem of issuing Gas fees from the treasury, and at the same time, we can have more connections with optimism in turn, as our strategic direction of public goods and optimism’s direction of development are highly overlapping, and it is also completely in line with the concept of RetroPFG.

We presented this idea at the community meeting before the snapshot proposal was released, and it was supported by most of the members present.

We didn’t get a single negative vote on the proposal, which was mainly due to some buidler card holders not participating in the vote and not enough active governance.

In the case of a good proposal that is clearly aimed at the community, but ends up being voted down because the consensus level threshold is not met, this seems to me to be a governance burden, for which I propose some research on consensus level proposals and some ideas for fixing them

Before fixing it, here’s some research on the governance of DAOs related to public goods

What is a consensus-level proposal

Consensus level voting criteria should be used for proposals that have reached consensus level, such as proposals for the replacement of the treasury, a large migration of treasury funds, and the redesign of governance powers

Consensus level proposals should be labelled ‘Consensus Proposal’ in the proposal terminology, and consensus level proposals should be discussed and confirmed in at least 2 community meetings.

Instead of adopting the rule of dynamic threshold, Consensus Level adopts the following rule

Voting Threshold: 70%

Number of votes in favour of the proposal: ≥ 50%

Optimism Governance

Optimism has a tiered governance of proposals and requires a minimum quorum of 30 per cent, with different thresholds for approval, ranging from 51 per cent for general types of proposals, such as governance fund allocations and treasury appropriations, to 76 per cent for consensus-level proposals, such as agreement upgrades and inflation rate adjustments (3/4).

All v0.3 governance proposals must fall within one of the following categories:

  • Governance Fund
  • Protocol Upgrade
  • Inflation Adjustment
  • Director Removal
  • Treasury Appropriations
  • Rights Protections
  • Elections
  • Ratification
  • Reflection Period

The different requirements for submission and approval of each Proposal Type are summarized below. If a specific template is not specified below, proposals should follow this standard proposal template. Additional proposal types may be added in future Seasons.

All Mission Applications are processed by either an elected Grants Council or the Foundation. Mission Applications should follow the process outlined on each individual Mission Request.

Proposal Type Proposing House Description Submission Requirements Vote Duration Quorum Approval Threshold Veto Threshold Veto Rights
Governance Fund Token House The Governance Fund may be used to support development of the Collective and/or growth of the ecosystem. Forum + On-Chain Voting Two-week review period plus one week voting window 30% 51% N/A N/A
Protocol Upgrade Token House Scheduled changes to the on-chain smart contracts comprising the mainnet Optimism protocol Forum + On-Chain Voting Two-week review period plus one week voting window 30% 76% TBD Citizens’ House
Inflation Adjustment Token House Changes to the inflation rate of newly minted OP (currently capped at 2% annually) Forum + On-Chain Voting. Proposals should follow Inflation Adjustment Proposal Template - 📌 Policies and Templates - Optimism Collective. Two-week review period plus one week voting window 30% 76% TBD Citizens’ House
Director Removal Token House Removal of a director of the Optimism Foundation Forum + On-Chain Voting Two-week review period plus one week voting window 30% 76% N/A N/A
Treasury Appropriations Token House The amount of OP the Optimism Foundation may spend or distribute annually, beginning in Year 2 of its existence (the Year 1 budget is 30% of the initial total OP supply) Proposals to be initiated by the Foundation Two-week review period plus one week voting window 30% 51% N/A N/A
Rights Protections Token House OP holders must consent to any changes to the founding documents of the Optimism Foundation, if those changes would materially reduce their rights Proposals to be initiated by the Foundation Two-week review period plus one week voting window 30% 51% N/A N/A
Code of Conduct Violation Token House The Token House may vote on violations of the Code of Conduct - 📌 Policies and Templates - Optimism Collective that pertain to Security Council Delegate Suspensions or Grant Misusage. All other Code of Conduct violations will be processed by the Code of Conduct Council, subject to veto by the Token House as outlined in the Council Charter. Proposals to be initiated by the Foundation in response to reported violations Two-week review period plus one week voting window 30% 51% N/A N/A
Grant Clawback Token House A locked grant may be clawed back before distribution for failure to execute on critical milestones, as defined by proposers and documented publicly Forum + On-Chain Voting Two-week review period plus one week voting window 30% 51 N/A N/A
Council Dissolution Token House A persistent Council may be dissolved if it is no longer fulfilling its Charter Forum + On-Chain Voting Two-week review period plus one week voting window 30% 51 N/A N/A
Ratification Token House Ratification of governance documents Proposals to be initiated by the Foundation Two-week review period plus one week voting window 30% 51 N/A N/A
Reflection Period Proposals (including elections) Token House Experiments with new governance structures, programs, and/or processes Proposals to be initiated by the Foundation Two-week review period plus one week voting window 30% 51 N/A N/A

The Proposing House column will be updated to include Citizens’ House, for relevant proposal types, when those proposal types become valid in the Citizens’ House

A Token House Governance proposal will be approved if it meets the following minimum voting thresholds

  • Quorum: Measured as a percentage of the total supply of voteable OPs at the start of the voting period.

    Minimum number of OP votes (including abstentions) associated with the proposal. In this context, quorum “voteable supply” means the total amount of OPs that have been delegated and are available to vote.

  • Approval Threshold: Measured as the number of approval votes as a percentage of the total number of votes in favor/against the proposal. Approval Threshold for each proposal is measured as the number of approval votes as a percentage of the total number of votes in favor/against the proposal. *This does not include abstentions

  • Veto Threshold: The minimum number of OP votes required to oppose a proposal, measured as _a % of the total supply of OPs available to vote at the start of the voting period.

NounsDAO Governance

NounsDAO classifies grant proposals into three categories

Small Grants: Funding in the range of 0.1 to 25 E, it is run by a group of NounsDAO members and is a “flexible pool” that can be deployed when a project is time-sensitive, the request is too small for an official proposal, or retroactive funding is needed because the work has already been done. Unlike retro, which is a retroactive award for projects that have already been produced, it is an advance on projects that need funding.

Prop House: In Prop House, creators submit their ideas as bids to win an ETH auction. Each round specifies the number of winners for a specific ETH amount. Anyone can submit their idea as a proposal. At the end of the round, community members vote on their favourite proposals for funding.

Proposals: 10e~1000e, voted by all nouns holders, based on dynamic threshold rules

Introduction to dynamic threshold rules:

(Dynamic thresholds are almost identical to our normal proposal voting rules for LXDAO)

Nounsdao Ongoing Ballots

Why optimism and NounsDAO as research?

optimism and nounsDAO are both DAOs with strong support for the public goods sector, and their governance design has a lot of references for our idea change. In the previous research of the governance team, we have studied the governance structure and voting rules of many other DAOs, such as makerdao, cruve, cultdao, etc., but we chose optimism and nounsdao, which are consistent with the public goods sector, as our governance design references due to the different attributes of the DAOs and communities. Due to the different attributes of DAOs and communities, we chose optimism and nounsdao, which are consistent with the public goods domain, as our reference for governance design.

Based on this

I would like to modify the rules for consensus-level proposals as follows

Lower the voting threshold: from 70% to 50%.

Also adopt a dynamic threshold voting rule

According to this rule, a consensus-level proposal, under extreme conditions, will not pass as long as a quarter of the people vote against it, which greatly increases the weight of the opposition, and the need to get the majority to convince the opposing side, but of course, according to our Onboarding approach, we believe that in the face of a good proposal that is good for the community, there will not be this kind of ‘spoilers’ come into play.

    • I agree that the voting threshold for consensus-level proposals should be reduced to 50 per cent and that dynamic threshold rules should be adopted.
    • I do not agree that the voting threshold for consensus-level proposals should be lowered to 50 per cent.
    • I think the idea needs to be refined
0 voters

Additional discussion

Governance inactives

In the previous proposal ballot counts, we identified a number of buidler card holders but governance inactives, which we have observed can be roughly divided into the following three categories

  • Did not receive notification of the vote (resolvable)
  • Those who are unable to vote due to some events or objective reasons (to be resolved)
  • People who contribute to LXDAO but don’t want to participate in governance (to be resolved).
  • Those who are indifferent (needs to be thought about)

In the previous idea of promoting active governance, we mentioned using incentives to promote voting About buidler's plans to add LXP
In ancient Athens, those who agreed to go to a “council” ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesia_(ancient_Athens)](Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Ecclesia_(ancient_Athens))) were compensated for their efforts and were paid the equivalent of 1 day’s wages.

There are 2 perspectives under the issue of improving inactive governance, incentives and penalties

Incentives are a way to encourage people to vote, but may lead to indifference to the content of the proposal and care about the benefits, so it’s also like we ask the community for more effective suggestions and ideas

The penalty is mainly to punish people who have been indifferent to LXDAO for a long time (buidler card holders)

But this is an important issue and one we need to think about carefully, the penalty system is a particularly bad one, and as DAOs all ideas should be encouraged and conscientious.

But we also need to address the long-term governance of inactive people, I have come up with some ideas after some research and reflection

  • 1-to-1 counselling and care: create a governance handbook, and communicate and ask questions one-on-one with long-time non-voting members
  • Designing a mechanism similar to Ergo’s Storage Rent, which is simply a mechanism for charging old, potentially abandoned wallets to (among other things) reclaim their “wallets”. (among other things) recover “dust” and funds from “lost” wallets, etc., and return ERGs to the ecosystem… …

What we need to solve is the problem of inactive governance, and we need to let more people participate in voting. Although setting a threshold can quickly solve the current problem, in the long run, the problem still exists

Tristan: 70% 变成 50% 是一种治理不活跃的表现,应该先想办法解决治理活跃的问题,而不是修改投票规则,衰减:只有 1 和 0.5,如果长期不投票的就变成 0,外部专家:对提案的建议权,建议的激励
Ray: 投票权衰减,由 1 到 0,长期不投票者进行衰减,二次方投票:适用于资金分配
Bruce: 新开投票权的凭证,主动申请,一个月 1000 的激励池,如果有投票权的人去投票,那么会获得激励,有 buidler card 的人可以参与申请
Jessica: SeeDAO 节点大会,节点可以参与治理,当季的贡献值达到 2W 积分申领节点,衰减
Cikey: 不了解提案(提案内容分析)专家寄语
Emptyman: 提案引起不了很多人的关注,利益相关,反对者设置在路演环节

Action:

  1. 治理机制如何诞生出推进伟大的公共物品
  2. 增加治理激励规则,鼓励深度思考者
  3. 思考反对票的正当性与激励,重视正当反对投票的票数,增加提案‘’挑战者‘’