Add a Minimum Yes Vote Parameter to Pass Proposals

Proposal Discussion
1

Original Post: Commonwealth

This conversation follows on from Commonwealth

This proposal would signal the development of a new parameter of a percentage of the cast votes that must favor a proposal for it to pass.

The current system allows proposals to pass as long as the number of yes votes exceeds the number of no or no_with_veto votes and the proposal meets the quorum. The current mechanism leads to votes passing with a low proportion of stake being in favor.

This proposal also signals the initial implementation of this parameter at 40%.

Details

This proposal aims to ensure a higher level of support for proposals by increasing the threshold for Yes votes required for their passage.

Amend the governance rules to mandate that for a proposal to pass, the number of yes votes must constitute a minimum of 40% of the total votes cast.

Implications

Establishing a higher requirement for “yes” votes ensures a more robust consensus among the Osmosis community, promoting higher-quality decision-making.

It discourages the passage of proposals with insufficient backing, thereby reducing the likelihood of passing unpopular or vague proposals which are frequently abstained on by validators.

A proposer would need greater community participation and engagement to meet the new yes threshold, as proposals would require more support to succeed.

Conversely, this parameter would make Osmosis governance more conservative, with proposals needing to be approved by a significant amount of stake to pass, rather than passing from a minority of stake in favor, with the rest abstaining.

Impact

This proposal does not apply retroactively to previously passed proposals. These are used here as examples of proposals that would be affected.

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Passing proposals on Osmosis by the proportion of Yes vote compared to 40% parameter

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Passed Proposals that would have failed with a 40% yes Quorum

For a complete list of proposals by Yes percentage, see this sheet: Yes Quorum Parameter - Google Sheets

Implementation

The proposed change would be implemented as an adjustable governance parameter in the gov module during a future software upgrade.

Target on-chain date : 10th June 2023

2

A “No Decision” should be implemented when this happens. Maybe even automatically submitted again after a cooldown period so that it keeps coming back until eventually it gets a definitive decision one way or another.

3

No.

Eliminate abstain for the love of god.

https://forum.osmosis.zone/t/the-governator-manifesto

The abstain vote option can be made obsolete by requiring participation and strictly defining the vote no to mean take no action, the yes option to take whatever action is described and the veto option to mean veto.

Seriously I don’t like this proposal. If you want to abstain don’t vote, right now the abstain vote option is just a virtue signaling mechanism for validators (at best).

  • Validators use abstain to virtue signal “hey I voted”
    • Except they know full well that they are tilting the results of votes by using abstain and therefore we shouldn’t have abstain, it’s a bad idea.

Veto should be eliminated for a lot of things too, it just should not be eliminated for things that can break consensus or otherwise harm the chain, like client update proposals.

I’m likely to veto this proposal, because we still have an abstain option and we shouldn’t.

(Could be there’s a message in there)

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Transferred Comment

luisqa | Interbloc
osmo1mc8x

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7/5/2023

I get the spirit of this proposal but will it really solve the underlying problem of high abstain voting?

We could choose any number to decide what would pass and wouldn’t. Although I understand the argument that only proposals with more broad support should pass, I see no issue with proposals with lower support passing as long as they meet majority support.

I would argue that a higher minimum quorum is a better idea by encouraging voting for at least half of the staked OSMO, setting to a 50% QUORUM for instance, not sure this is the right amount but certainly can be considered.

Voting abstain although an issue in general from low-involvement validators isn’t really solved here and is actually accentuated by this proposal. We should encourage more visibility of governance metrics in the preferred osmosis staking interfaces, randomized validator sorting, etc.

1 Like
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Transferred Comment
VK_S16
osmo1v9pc

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7/4/2023

Based on the data above, a 40% yes quorum would make many previous proposals rejected. Do you think it would change the validator’s or voter’s behavior? And would it increase the validators’ participation?

It’s good to get much support to pass a proposal, but we don’t want to make it hard for the proposers too.

I’m still 50:50 on this. Thanks.

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Transferred Comment

RedRabbit33
osmo1hxfd

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7/3/2023

I would recommend setting a 40% Yes Quorum for the following reasons:

  • Prop 152 would have met the 34% Yes Quorum and passed with 15.4% of total staked OSMO voting in favor of it. Meanwhile Props 271, 317, and 431would have failed the 34% Yes Quorum but had 18.7%, 19.6%, and 16.5% of total staked OSMO voting in favor of it.
  • Props 367 and 420 pass a 34% Yes Quorum by the skin of their teeth; both had 35.2% voting YES. However, only 20.5% of total staked OSMO voted in favor of each prop. Meanwhile, Prop 424 passes a 34% Yes Quorum with 36.7% voting YES, but only 19.7% of total staked OSMO voted in favor for the prop.
  • Props 273 and 350 both pass a 34% YES Quorum with 39.6% and 36.4% voting YES, respectively. But still, less than 25% of total staked OSMO voted in favor of the two props. 23.3% of total staked OSMO voted in favor of Prop 273 while 24.5% voted in favor of Prop 350.
  • On average, of the 12 Props that failed to pass a 34% Yes Quorom, 13.3% of the vote voted No or No with Veto. Props 350 meets a 34% YES Quorum with 36.4% voting yes, but had 13.9% voting No or No with Veto. Prop 424 passes a 34% Yes Quorum with just a little more Yes votes; 36.7% voted Yes.10.4% voted No or No with Veto.
  • A 20% quorum and 34% Yes quorum only requires 6.8% of total staked OSMO to pass. A 20% quorum and 40% Yes quorum requires at least 8% of staked OSMO to pass. 7.9% and 7.2% of staked OSMO are staked with the top 2 validators respectively.
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Transferred Comment

Johnny Wyles
osmo1

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7/3/2023

Good point. I’ve added those values into the sheet and coloured anything under 25% of total stake in favour to make it easier to see.

40% seems to include all the lower participation votes, including a few that, while I believe should have passed, I recall were contentious.

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Transferred Comment

Leonoor’s Cryptoman
osmo14amd

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7/2/2023

I fully understand where this is coming from, but it it just a patch for a bigger problem.

Validator use the “Abstain” option way to often as a nice way out to look active in governance, while just taking the easy way out in reality. So I would personally be more in favor of hardcoding a requirement for validators to justify what they voted to force them to choose a side.

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Transferred Comment
Johnny Wyles
osmo1

•

7/3/2023

In turn that is a symptom of validator contributions not being too visible though. If we hardcoded a memo requirement then it could also be filled with dummy text to get around this requirement.

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Transferred Comment

RedRabbit33
osmo1hxfd

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7/3/2023

My bigger concern is with the 26 validators that combined have 24.2% of the vote but either are busy and don’t have the time or are to lazy and just don’t care to even cast an abstain vote.

  • 8 validators that have 4.7% of the vote but haven’t had the time to participate in a single vote,
  • 3 validators that have voted only on one proposal but have 3.9% of the vote,
  • 15 validators that have voted on fewer than 20 proposals but have 15.8% of the vote.

Are these validators (and their delegators) that are too busy or too lazy to even cast an abstain vote adding value or extracting value?

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Transferred Comment

Johnny Wyles
osmo1

•

7/3/2023

It depends on your viewpoint… I’m still of the opinion that validators provide a validation service. Anything extra (governance, relaying, tooling) attracts greater delegations.

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Transferred Comment


Leonoor’s Cryptoman
osmo14amd

•

7/4/2023

Yeah, where in fact, they don’t.

Relayers are already for a loooong period running on a loss.

Governance work is not really bothering the delegators.

So if you take a step back; 2 things work:

  • creating drama big time all the time
  • providing some actual valuable and unique tooling

with the later I totally agree to attract delegations, but for the rest validators are just struggling to get around. Not nice to say, but hard reality.

And even worse; I fully understand why you have that opinion. But is also the same fact that chains have the same opinion apparently or do not bother, making governance more like a farce in some occassions than actually leveraging their power to do good.

1 Like
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Transferred Comment


Johnny Wyles
osmo1

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7/5/2023

Don’t forget promising airdrops and nfts that never come.

I totally get the reality of it. Most people stake with the big validators because they are perceived as safe, or the ones they recognise the name of. Ideally it would be more random - then contribution would be a larger driver.

I still think the biggest thing we can do is promote alternative frontends here.

Take a look at the chains by nakomoto coefficient https://decentralization.smartstake.io/

Terra2’s frontend forces a random allocation by default.

The other top few all have randomised display when going to stake (mostly through the Omniflix staking interface) apart from Kujira which actively tells people to stake lower down in the display.

Keplr does ordered by voting power.

1 Like
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Transferred Comment


Leonoor’s Cryptoman
osmo14amd

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7/6/2023

Agreed to that.

But that is a different topic than where this thread started. The original ideas won’t make the difference, the alternative front-end will.

So I would personally say to close this thread, since it is not really effective and focus our time to push parties like Keplr to (finally) step up and improve their frontend.

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Transferred Comment


ajs
osmo1lh63

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6/29/2023

This is much needed, it’s clear that several incentive requests that very few people actually wanted slipped through the cracks for the reasons mentioned. Fully support this proposal.

16

I will put this on the back burner until we sort out the Governator idea. Making small changes like this that then get overwritten in a more sweeping and thorough overhaul makes little sense.

2 Likes
17

Validators aren’t required to vote on anything… yet :slight_smile:

1 Like
18

Even though its on the back burner for now, just mention that my logic behind a 40% Yes Quorum also stems from the fact that it is close to a 2.5 SD from the mean percent voting Yes and that it appears that the percent of Abstain votes are increasing…

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I am also adamantly opposed to eliminating “abstain” unless it is replaced with a “recuse” option. Voters that wish to still participate so as to ensure general quorum can be met and fulfill their civic duty, but due to a conflict of interest or the matter at hand directly pertaining to them, should have the right to fulfill their ethical duty to abstain or recuse themselves. Principled principals should always be allowed to participate in a vote.

1 Like