Removal of rewards for Abstain votes in governence

Remove rewards from Abstain when voting on governance

Proposal Summary

Rewarding “Abstain” votes in the DAO currently creates a perverse incentive where participants can earn rewards without meaningfully engaging in governance decisions. This undermines the integrity of the voting process by encouraging passive participation and reducing the signal quality of voter sentiment. To maintain a system that rewards thoughtful and active contribution, it is necessary to remove or significantly reduce rewards for abstaining.

Proposal Type

Specify the type of proposal:

  • On-chain Action
  • Text-only Proposal

Motivation

Rewarding users for selecting “Abstain” during governance votes can unintentionally dilute the purpose and effectiveness of the DAO’s decision-making process. The primary motivation for removing rewards for abstention is to encourage active and deliberate participation. When users are rewarded simply for abstaining, it creates a low-effort path to earning rewards without contributing any clear opinion or direction to the proposal at hand. This inflates voter turnout statistics, skews engagement metrics, and reduces the clarity of governance outcomes.

Additionally, rewarding abstentions may attract opportunistic behavior where participants vote without reading or considering proposals, simply to earn a reward. By removing rewards for abstain votes, the DAO reinforces its commitment to meaningful governance, ensures that incentives are aligned with informed participation, and upholds the integrity of the voting process.

Detailed Specification

To implement this change, the smart contract or backend logic that handles vote processing and reward distribution will be updated to exclude “Abstain” votes from earning rewards. This involves adding a conditional check to ensure that only “Yes” and “No” votes trigger reward calculations. Any existing records of “Abstain” votes will remain unaffected historically, preserving data integrity. This change will be deployed through a standard upgrade or governance-approved proposal, depending on the DAO’s contract upgrade mechanism.

Goals

  • Encourage meaningful participation by incentivizing voters to take a clear stance on proposals.
  • Prevent passive reward farming through non-committal voting behavior.
  • Improve governance signal quality by ensuring votes reflect genuine community sentiment.
  • Optimizereward distribution toward voters who actively shape proposal outcomes.
  • Alignincentives with the DAO’s mission of accountable and informed decision-making.
  • Enhance data integrity by reducing noise in vote outcome analysis.

Success Metrics

  • % reduction in abstain votes relative to total votes cast.
  • % increase in Yes/No votes as a share of all votes.
  • Ratio of meaningful votes (Yes/No) to total votes improving over time.

Community Engagement

Please see discourse post:

Conclusion

Removing rewards for “Abstain” votes strengthens the integrity and purpose of the governance process. It encourages participants to engage more thoughtfully with proposals, ensures rewards are aligned with active decision-making, and reduces the potential for passive exploitation of the system. This change prioritizes meaningful participation and supports a more effective and representative DAO.


Author Information

  • Name: magic.vet
  • Vechain address: 0x14863fe9e40dee2e325943a536037d7830acd92b

Date:
June 30, 2025

1 Like

Why comment on this proposal after submitting it for support without any feedback? It would be more effective to present it to the community first and gather their input before submission.

3 Likes

Can always be cancelled and resubmitted with updated text

1 Like

There’s definitely a place for abstaining, and I think that rewards should be given for voting abstain. Otherwise, people will vote yes/no only to get rewarded, which would skew the votes unfairly.

The issue I see is the vedelegate votes being listed as auto-abstain when no vote has been selected.

Auto-abstain shouldn’t exist, and I think rewards shouldn’t be given for non-votes, but those who manually select abstain should still be rewarded imo.

4 Likes

Good point, yeah its really the auto-abstain that needs to be removed

1 Like

Absolutely agree, if someone ones to free-ride, better let him abstain than flip a coin. Just auto voting or auto abstaining should simply not be a thing.