We propose to explore the potential of delegation voting within our ecosystem. This proposal is intended to streamline decision-making and enhance participation in governance matters. Before any changes are introduced, we believe it is crucial to gather your feedback and encourage an open discussion on this topic.
Motivation
A key aspect we seek to discuss is the risk of concentration: what if a large portion of voting power is delegated to a single entity, such as ConsenSys? Should we consider imposing limits on delegation to any one party, such as 20% or 33%? We’d also like your thoughts on whether you are interested in delegation, or if it might be better to maintain the status quo. Are there any trade-offs you foresee?
The adaptive quorum allows for flexibility in decision-making, ensuring that critical updates receive enough attention while allowing less critical decisions to proceed with a lower threshold. However, potential issues we may foresee is lack of interest among voters or voters being occupied with their own projects, leading to missed opportunities to approve critical changes.
This is where delegation voting becomes important, as it allows voters to assign their voting power to trusted delegates outside their organization, relieving you of the need to vote each time while ensuring continued participation in governance matters.
Here’s how it could work:
For critical updates or major governance changes, the quorum threshold remains fixed at a higher percentage, meaning a larger portion of stakeholders must participate in the vote to ensure significant decisions are well-supported and carefully considered. As the overall number of stakeholders increases, the absolute number of votes required to meet quorum will also increase, maintaining proportionality.
For routine or less impactful proposals, the quorum percentage is set lower, allowing these decisions to be made with fewer participants while still ensuring proper governance oversight without overwhelming the entire community.
This can also be an opportunity to consider extending governance participation to other key actors in the ecosystem, such as Disco, Ceramic, and Index. We are interested in your thoughts on this possible expansion?
We would love to hear your thoughts on this proposal.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or suggestions, as your feedback will be invaluable in shaping the future of our governance.
i think as long as consensys is aligned a higher limit is probably best to prevent a governance takeover
re: delegation
not sure, need more info
re: flex
prob flex on flexibility is needed here, i think a core steward committe of projects with incentive to participate should likely lead critical decisions, with less incentivized providing signalling
re: expanding
not sure need more info, i think of these projects as representing their users ~ so likely should be proportional to their user base
I think delegation voting is positive which can boost engagement, and also the risk of concentration shall be considered, so I agree to set a delegation power limit, no preference on 20% or 33%.
Also, I think dynamic/adaptive quorum is necessary to make sure the proposals will be actively processed.
Delegation seems to be a good choice as it’s efficient and we can get higher engagement in governance proposals. As for concentration, more details are needed to decide on a percentage. I also agree that we can expand governance participation to other actors to realize greater decentralization.
the idea of delegation voting is promising, but tbh simply capping delegation at 20-33% may not fully prevent concentration of power. Consider dynamic limits or audits to ensure fairness, and adding delegation is great for engagement, but ensure there’s a way to hold delegates accountable.
another point is delegation voting reduces voter fatigue, which is a big plus, but you might risk apathy, maybe require occasional direct voting to keep people involved?
flexible quorum thresholds are a good way to balance decision-making, but high quorum requirements could delay critical updates, maybe a backup plan could avoid governance gridlock.
It’s really great to see such engagement and feedback on such an important issue. I agree that having capping delegation at 20-33% is important, but I think it’s important to identify who the delegates are.
I’m not sure how best to go about this, but I assume that it will probably require a few teams to volunteer. It will be interesting to see which teams will be interested in volunteering to be delegates and which teams are interested in delegating, or prefer to retain their own voting power.
Up until now we haven’t really had any contentious issues, thankfully, but that may change in the future if someone proposes any significant changes. That being said, every issue goes through a discussion period, and so I think the risk of concentration of voting power through delegation is probably not that risky.
I’d love to know more about your thoughts on this though @teddy .
Also, @Rita : did you have any thoughts on what delegation would look like? Would it start be a call for delegates?
Kyle here from Passport XYZ - Delegative voting is helpful, and often ensure “stewards” or “guardians” or whatever name you want to bestow are aligned and informed. This is often the problem to solve - “how might we keep token holders informed of key issues around critical decisions such that they can be activated for such votes?” Having a smaller cohort of individuals to coordinate with reduces complexity.
The Passport XYZ team would love to participate and be a delegate if there are open calls for vision-aligned teams to support Linea.
Being a bit candid, I am not sure I fully understand the problem we are trying to solve through delegation. There are a number of options available with respect to voting mechanisms (Quadratic Voting, Conviction voting, delegative voting, etc.). We likely don’t need to recreate the wheel, but without proper definition of the problem to solve and the outcome we want, its hard to know what’s going to be the best approach.
Delegation does often help “activate” more of the token supply, if that’s the problem we are trying to solve for?
If I understand correctly, I think the problem is that as the community grows, and the more stakeholders have voting power, the higher the number of participants are required in order to reach quorum. For issues that mean changes to the core contracts, the quorum is 66%. There is a potential risk that we may not be able to reach quorum in the future for important upgrades if we can’t get sufficient engagement on certain issues. This can happen simply because certain teams are very busy at certain times and not everyone always has bandwidth to consider + discuss changes and vote on them.
Currently we have a 1p1v system for all stakeholders with an adaptive quorum and so far it has worked well, but if we want to keep the quorum, then I think delegation will become necessary at some point.