Ah sorry! I didn’t understand then.
But, what do you mean with “remove voting?”
In the post above, i was proposing the removal of quadratic voting and quadratic rewarding → bring the vote mechanism like testnet until we find a better and long term solution, which will allow to enable quadratic again
What concerns me about this idea is that:
- Dapps like VeDelegate, i guess, could be damaged if the voting will be suspended.
- if we turn back to the test net system, does it mean that we will have also the number of the token distributed in testnet? If yes this will damage the dapps and not only the users.
We need to keep in mind that for some users the token B3RT is not just the main token of VeBetterDao, but also an investment. Some people use VeDelegate just to stake B3RT.
As i said, this was only my point of view, i can’t actively change something on my own and to change some core functionality, a proposal is needed whatever decision the DAO or one of its members want to make
Having said this, i was just proposing to remove quadratic voting and rewards. Not pausing the vote or reducing the rewards by any number.
However, crypto move quickly and i’m really happy to see the new Q2 pool from vedelegate, which in total fairness seeing the situation, could be a good short term solution as well. Great job @favo, problems are always opportunities
PS: This does not change the need of a DID solution (or equivalent) to fix the sybil, of course
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Alright, it looks like a quick fix solution to the problem is at hand ready for voting on August 19th
I think a similar proposal was also written by Green Ambassador Challenge but unfortunately when the proposal was written the veDelegate dApp had not yet released the Boosted Q^2-Pool tool…
Since the proposal put forward by Sunny Lu has already received full support from the community I would say to focus and pass it at all costs when the voting starts on August 19th.
I hope this Topic will be useful to implement medium and long term solutions because some good ideas came out of this discussion.
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Personally, I would have preferred to use this forum for discussions instead of switching back to making proposals without prior discussion. It highlights my thoughts on the governance process, as noted in this discussion.
To play devil’s advocate: The proposal is so generic that it could mean “removing any rewards” or simply disabling the “quadratic” part.
That said, it’s great to see some noise and activity. However, I miss the engagement we had initially. It feels like we’ve reached a silent dead-end.
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I share your sentiment @favo .
The current proposal by Sunny is a temporary fix at best. However i do agree, ideally we should have discussions here before putting it up for support and voting. We will get B3TR. As for processes around what comes first, proposal or discussion, after reviewing other DAO’s there is no enforceable solution. It will have to be honor system by community till we find some solution that works for us. As such, we hope to discover the process together rather in vacuum.
The best I can assure right now is that all community raised options were evaluated. The proposal still needs to pass with Quorum. The DAO team will consult the community here before putting a implementation plan for that proposal soon. Towards that, you raise very pertinent point. Some options are “easy” to do for removing farming incentives. While some are difficult (technically) to achieve given that QF/QV could play important role in long term Sybil resistant solution that minimises farming and incentivises sustainable actions through x-2-earn apps.
Now, towards finding a long term solution, I am sharing initial rough sketches for community to opine on the idea of vebetterdao passports. Passports need to maintain enough scores/stamps etc to be able to participate in governance. Please note, this is very early thinking right now, as such, not every thing is defined yet. For eg: Things like how do you enforce x-2-earn apps to only distribute rewards through sustainable proofs, should score weighting for each app should be same ?, how often should onchain score reset ?It is my hope that all of us together will work to identify loopholes in current thinking and define some standards so we can move to implementation.
High level idea is to create sybil defense mechanism that protects the community from bots / malicious actors and incentivises sustainable actions.
we are heavily inspired by gitcoin passports here. Feasibility study of What parts will be vechain specific and what parts will can be leveraged from gitcoin system are underway. Also gitcoin model is very different that vebetterdao. So its also not just blindly following whatever they have done so.
Thought behind using sustainability proofs as proof of work (known as onchain stamps in gitcoin world) as MVP is to not have any third party integration in critical path for GO to market as they have tendency to delay things. However goal is to reach full solution iteratively and not just stop at MVP.
Shortly, DAO team will start a new detailed topic around this solution. Meanwhile, in spirit of total transparency and early sharing of ideas, i just wanted to share some early thinking.
I invite community to provide their thoughts and constructive feedback.
p.s: if something doesn’t makes sense it probably is a typo mistake or a product of early sharing. Be gentle 
[edit]: fix grammar typos
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Very good @vineet-codes
I took a look at the draft you posted and I’m really satisfied because all the suggestions that were given were included in this proposal 
Then consider that I’m not a developer but a container full of ideas so perhaps on the programming side it could be difficult to apply, going into a bit more detail I think that:
- You need to exploit the dApps, each dApp must have a different score based on its complexity of use, I’ll give you an example, Cleanify to give you rewards “forces” you to use the social network “X” by making you post photos of your actions so you are also using a social network to strengthen your identity, something that a bot could hardly do. So Cleanify could give a higher score to the user unlike Mugshot with its photos of the coffee “anywhere”.
However, I don’t know if this integration is feasible on the development side. - The onchain score reset in the initial version should be reset every week while when the long-term solution is implemented it is possible to assume that this reset will be extended for a fairly long period of time (six-monthly/yearly) because the elements that will generate the VebetterDAO passport will be solid.
These are some notes that came to me in a hurry and I wrote them down, I reserve the right to enrich the content if other ideas come to mind.
thank you.
Agree with you on point 1. the difficulty of doing an x-2-earn action needs to be some how incorporated into total score calculation. preferably automatic. preferably onchain. i.e. system should automatically figure out based on for eg. allocation round ranking for apps which is directly related to user vot3 preferences. If it’s manual and someone needs to update every now and then, it makes the system centralised and brittle. open to ideas.
On point 2, agreed also. Current thinking is, The onchain proof of work score contributions will reset every week. however ofchain identity attestations and proof of investment score can last longer times.
On point 2, agreed also. Current thinking is, The onchain proof of work score contributions will reset every week. however ofchain identity attestations and proof of investment score can last longer times.
I disagree with the part where a user needs to do multiple actions every week, because I am afraid that my application would be negatively impacted by this:
I release a new challenge every couple of weeks so users are no able to do one/multiple activities each week. I would love for users of my application to be able to vote for me without having to use other applications they might not be interested in.
In my opinion the on chain proof of work should last a longer time and it shouldn’t be reset, but weighted so recent activities weight more, but older activities still matter.
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Each x-2-earn app will need to work on their DAU and WAU metric. How can an app incentivise weekly engagements is something for apps to think about. Do remember, x-2-earn apps have special power in DAO, only they can write proofs. how does an app leverage that power is upto them. With great power comes responsibility.
but i see your point. Note that any increase in score reset time frame will open doors for farmers. Open to ideas. we are all ears. pls share.
Bottom line, DAO is adapting so x-2-earn apps will need to adapt too. Full heads up and time will be given for apps to get ready.
any new thoughts/ideas/questions now that people have had time to think over the approach presented on governance voting eligibility calculations ?
Goal: create sybil defense mechanism that protects the community from bots / malicious actors and incentivises sustainable actions.
some open points we are thinking about:
- difficulty (effort/impact ?) calculation for each sustainable action i.e. x-2-earn app. this is to counter the fact that some x-2-earn action are easier/difficult to complete than others. preferably from onchain data only.
- using scores from more rounds than just one for voting eligibility. perhaps by some weighting mechanism.
- minimise protocol level trust (incentive engineering) on x-2-earn app operators for governance voting eligibility calculation.
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May I take a step back and address something @vineet-codes mentioned regarding Sybil attacks:
it will be useful for us as a community to define the said “problem” in detail first. Then device an identification mechanism to detect un-desired behaviour.
What specific problem does quadratic rewarding solve? When it comes to rewards, it feels a bit forced and unnecessary without a clear explanation of the problem it addresses.
Perhaps this approach isn’t necessary if we can identify a different mechanism.
Personally, I don’t see an issue with linear rewarding (not voting!). If the token is intended as a financial incentive, quadratic rewarding could undermine this goal. If the goal is a “fair” airdrop or distribution, then voting rewards might not be the best approach.
Lol. ok.
TLDR: Want Active Governance through Incentivisation (voter rewards). But incentives attract sybil and whales. not good. build something to stop sybil and keep protect governance manipulation.
Let me take a stab at it.
Goal of VeBetterDAO is to incentivise more sustainable actions in the world and build a community through its x-2-earn apps. More actions better the world will be. It does so by allocation incentives for apps and governance incentives for active dao decision making.
It’s a DAO so all key decisions (token allocations, proposals etc) should be approved/voted by community. However, DAO’s have a voter apathy problem and centralisation of voting power issue (decision making). Which defeats the purpose of a DAO in most cases. How to avoid this is the problem.
From DAO design point of view, the voting rewards (voting participation pool) are there to incentivise active governance which includes token minting/allocation parameter, distribution decisions (rounds) and changes (proposals). The severity/criticality of these decisions will increase more once the dao is progressively decentralised.
Normal voting (1 token / 1 vote) introduces a lot of documented manipulation (financial, collusion etc) techniques. which in some sense is directly opposite to sustainable governance mission that vebetterdao aims for.
QF/QV gives a optimal game theoretic solution to those issues that arise traditional/normal voting and still keep the rewards to incentivise active participation in governance. Gives more democratic weights to wallets with lower balance and protects to some extent again whale influence domination. However as we are seeing, it is prone to sybil manipulation and requires a defence mechanism to counter that. Typical solution include proof of identity, proof of work and proof of investment. Effectively skin in the game.
VeBetterDao Passports is an attempt to build this mechanism.
ps: For purposes of this discussion, we are assuming that apps are honest and fair. What safeguards should be put in place to minimise exposure on that reliance is a different topic.
Let me summarize the problem as I understand it:
- Voting Rewards are required to combat apathy.
- Quadratic Voting (QV) prevents centralization in the decision-making process for voting outcomes.
But why do we treat QF (Quadratic Funding) and QV (Quadratic Voting) as if they are inseparable?
Quadratic Voting
In my view, quadratic voting combined with allocation limits works well. Knowing the involved parties makes it easier to handle any potential conflicts that may arise. All parties (x-2-dApps) are known and networked through the VeBetterDAO.
To further strengthen this against potential manipulation, the votes or weights could be summed up over multiple rounds instead of relying on a single snapshot.
Quadratic Funding/Rewards
To combat apathy with rewards, a linear approach could achieve the same goal while simplifying the process, rather than adding more complexity. The current voting rewards are a larger incentive than participating in the x-2-earn-apps, which discourages participation in these apps.
Let me also question the quadratic aspect: Why does it need to be the steep square root formula? Could we consider a different approach?
For example, alternatives can be seen in Pendle:
Or with Helium:
In these examples, participants lock their votes, and their voting power changes over time. This change could either increase or decrease over time.
Instead of directly receiving rewards, the rewards could also be linked to app allocations.
The benefits of locks are also an increase of value of the underlying token (B3TR) due growing scarcity.
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No one is saying qf/qv come in pair. Linear doesn’t works for rewarding too, thats not desired behaviour either. testnet data will show you that. Weather it should be quadratic or some other curve is something can be analysed and changed later. In our research quadratic rewarding was good enough.
The high level idea is that people who do sustainable actions regularly should be prioritised in governance voting decisions and rewards. And few small token holders should be able to topple/negate whale voting influence. sybil is making it hard to see those benefits.
above sustainability proof based passport mvp idea can reliably stop sybil, then we should be in a good space. other measures can be added and discussed later.
We will also have time to look at changing to better mechanism for rewarding. because i am afraid there is no right or wrong here. hence so many curves for many philosophical points. 1 vot3 guarantees lock of 1 b3tr. in someway we have locking. we can look at time of weighting too. but this will take time to identify and align with all.
Also rewards are high in beginning to attract more users and bootstrap a community that is aligned on sustainable actions. governance rewards decay over time, significantly higher than allocation emissions.
Linear doesn’t works for rewarding too, thats not desired behaviour either. testnet data will show you that. Weather it should be quadratic or some other curve is something can be analysed and changed later. In our research quadratic rewarding was good enough.
Can you share more about this and what data you gathered on the testnet?
The high level idea is that people who do sustainable actions regularly should be prioritised in governance voting decisions and rewards.
I agree that activity in the x-2-apps should get priority, right now its the opposite. Can this not be changed?
And few small token holders should be able to topple/negate whale voting influence. sybil is making it hard to see those benefits.
Why should 10 voters with 1 VOT3 negate the vote of one person with 100 VOT3? It feels a bit too hard, especially because those with small amounts are likely the ones with the smallest stake in the DAO and newcomers, while the ones with more are present for longer and have a higher stake in the DAO.
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Which one do you think is better ? 1st or 2nd ? This is voting rewards claimed by users in particular round of testnet. one is real and one simulated QV based rewards based on same data.
Yes by putting proof of sustainable work restrictions as eligibility for governance voting. higher voting rewards will bring users back to participate in governance. Thats the current thinking.
level the playing field a bit against plutocracy. By how much it should decrease is negotiable.hence saying open to different mechanism
Which one do you think is better ? 1st or 2nd ? This is voting rewards claimed by users in particular round of testnet. one is real and one simulated QV based rewards based on same data.
Can’t answer without knowing the stake each user bubble has. First looks good if the red bubble has a bigger stake and feels more equal.
The second looks like every participant is handled equally and receives the same, no matter the amount.
Yes by putting proof of sustainable work restrictions as eligibility for governance voting. higher voting rewards will bring users back to participate in governance. Thats the current thinking.
So an idea is already to change the quadratic formula and replace it with something that is based on activity? So this is exactly where we can start to think about alternatives too? So how can we brainstorm the right way?
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The fist one is actual rewards earned by users in testnet round 3. And 2nd one is what the rewards distribution would look like for same users with same balances etc if QV was in place.
In our experiments, whale growth round by round is also curtailed. Also please note that these are governance rewards for people to actively engage in governance. not an investment vehicle. for such use cases treasury may launch staking services etc. as such priority right now is to have more users with reasonable influence rather than one strong one.
Priority right now is to introduce requirement of having recent sustainable actions in a user/wallet before being allowed in governance voting. This will make the sybil farming less feasible and would stop most actors who just want to maximise tokens.
We are open to revisit quadratic rewarding curve then. If a better mechanism exists to ensure fair governance, i don’t see a reason to not change.
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