[DAO: QmcMjpH] A proposal for minimum VP participation thresholds required to pass DAO proposals

by 0x9982b469910c2ee2ea566dcfcc250cdd34056397 (MrEric)

Overview

As participation in the DAO increases and more proposals are submitted, there is an increased risk of approving malicious, spammy, or poorly-formulated proposals. To protect the DAO from such proposals being passed unknowingly, a minimum amount of participating VP should be required to vote in favor of a proposal in order for it to be passed and enacted.

This risk is especially relevant to community grants funded by the DAO. With the recent approval of this grants framework, users will soon be able to request MANA to fund projects by means of one-time payments and vesting contracts.

The lack of a minimum VP needed to pass a vote combined with an increase in proposal submissions may result in many underqualified or fraudulent grants receiving approval. While the DAO Committee is responsible for initiating the transfer of funds for grants, the final approval for grants should come from a majority vote within the community, not the DAO Committee.

Specification

The minimum VP participation required to approve a proposal may vary depending on the proposal category. Given the financial risk associated with community grants, the minimum should be higher for these proposals.

  • A minimum of 1 million VP should be required to vote YES on a grant request for it to be approved, if the YES votes have the majority
  • A minimum of 500k VP should be required to vote YES on POI additions, Name Bans, and Catalyst node additions for these actions to be enacted by the DAO, if the YES votes have the majority

These thresholds should be subject to change in future, as seen fit by the DAO.

As can be seen in recently approved POI additions this level of support is not difficult to reach, but still plays an important role in preventing unnoticed proposals from “slipping through” the DAO.

Benefits

  • Helps to ensure that enacted proposals more accurately reflect the sentiment of the greater community
  • Helps to prevent the DAO from funding underqualified, poorly-formulated, or fraudulent grants
  • Helps to ensure that high quality POIs are added
  • Helps to prevent the addition of low-quality Catalyst nodes to Decentraland’s network that might negatively impact users’ experience
  • Prevents abuse of the Banned Name list

For

Implement the described minimum VP participation needed to approve proposals.

Against

Continue allowing proposals to pass without a minimum VP participation.

  • For
  • Against

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

Hi all!

I agree that it must be protected, especially when all related with the founds.

But I have voted no because the whales will always have the right number of votes even if there is only 1 participant, and it does not seem to me that the problem is really solved.

I also think that the proposals should be more concrete.

Votes about funds: X minimum requirement.
Votes about names: X minimum requirement.
etc…
Not a general proposal that will later be implemented at the discretion of the foundation.

I am not convinced to add a minimum of VP when only one person could have it.
Although I know that requiring a minimum number of participants can lead to fraudulent uses (someone could send a little mana to several accounts, being a single person). But it seems like a better option.

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The problem with the total votes is that is easily gameable, specially on polygon since it has no cost to spread funds between accounts. I would be worried about exchanges using their users’ funds to influence the polls, but “whales” are also the users with the most at stake, most skin in the game, and the ones that have a financial interest on the project succeeding, so they are aligned at least on keeping the proposals high quality.

I’m not against accounting for a minimum of votes, just saying that is an easily gameable metric, and what’s most important is VP in the end.

What I think is very unfunded is the “all whales bad” mentality.

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Hi sabe,
it’s true, the number of votes is not the solution by the same thing that you indicate, but let me explain this:

" A minimum of 1 million VP should be required to vote YES on a grant request for it to be approved, if the YES votes have the majority."

I don’t see it as a solution for this case when some wallets have more than 1 million VP, and those wallets will not be affected.
It is only a functional restriction against smallest VP users groups.
Do we want a dao where only whales have the possibility to approve proposals?

If, for example, a whale decides to give funds to itself, and the community is asleep or don’t have time to vote against it, it will not have any restrictions (except a masive vote against it).

That is why I do not think that this is a real solution to the case, since there are exceptions that will not be affected.

In fact, in my opinion, it will simply give more power to the whales, it is not necessarily good or bad, but it is not balanced.

In my opinion we should have a deep discussion in the forum before approve this.
And maybe extends the duration of the proposals, and make it more visibles for the community, its a better point to start than restrict the dao request by minimal VP.

And for example, to avoid spam in the dao, a required small fee (only to add the proposal) should be effective.

I want to echo something similar to what @Ina is saying. I agree, I think this is in the right direction, and it is important to have some form of gatekeeping when it comes to proposals passing. I think however the discussion and decision-making on what this threshold and mechanism should be needs to be separated from each other. So the poll should not introduce the problem and a solution to it. The solution and threshold should be researched, assessed and gamed out in different scenerios to consider how it could impact the future. For this reason while I support the spirit of the proposal I am not in favor of it as it currently stands.

Overall, Yes I am in favor of some form of threshold for passage of a proposal. but No, I’m not in favor of the solution provided in this proposal, not necessarily because it is wrong or won’t work, but just because I think we need more time to consider what and how this threshold should be implemented. Is it VP and how much? Is it # of votes? Some formula that combines the two to account for whales and plebs.

Thank you however for introducing this important issue!

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Using the first proposal for DAO Grant Framework as an indicator I think 1 million is a very high bar for current community involvement considering it ended with 3.9 million (all yes, 0 no’s). And that proposal was a no brainer yes to the community. Now consider some people saying no or indifferent and choosing not to vote. I do not think there is enough community members active in the DAO for 1 million right now, mostly people just trading it to trade. I agree that we need a way to keep spam down but the current proposal with min 1million Mana can be cheated.

One last thought: I will be interested if this proposal itself passes with +1 million VP. Speculation here: Should a min 1 million vote to pass be enacted based on a proposal that itself cannot get to 1 million?

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Interesting! It is funny because it did not pass the 1 million vote threshold. Somewhat demonstrating the point you are making. Although did pass the 500K threshold for other vote markers, of which this proposal would be more closely aligned to being categorized as I would think.

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