If off-chain information is part of that, could a poll or minimum activity on the topic be a requirement as well?
What about something like n% of the VOT3s from the last passed proposal? I believe MakerDAO has something similar.
An alternative to lower the risk without changing too much of the current system, can be that the deposited VOT3 from proposal are added to the voting power the next week.
Yes this would be something offchain, I was thinking that when creating the proposal you MUST set the url of the discourse discussion.
A poll or number of likes can be fine, but that is also something that can be easily faked (even the minimum activity). The reason behind this is to prevent people creating proposals without first giving the opportunity to the community to discuss it.
The 7 day window is also just a minimum amount, some proposals could be discussed a lot more. This is where the " Stake to submit rule could prevent people to create proposals early on, because they would risk to not see that supported and that will just lock their money.
I’m not sure that our contracts would be ready to support something like this. Eg: what happens if you have 2 proposals in same round? Which one do you pick? I think having something more predictable could help.
This is very tricky, I personally do not have a good solution or proposal here.
My point is: if supporting a proposal is not causing any type of loss for you, why having it in the first place? It will same as adding a like button and saying “once we reach this amount of likes we can vote on it”. With this attitude my concern is that basically all the proposals that are created will arrive to the voting stage. Instead now you are making a conscious decision that this proposal is important for the community to vote on and you “sacrifice” some of your voting power to push it forward. I think the real problem is that the support amount is so high that without x2earn apps it’s very hard to reach, and it creates uncertainty: “I can lock my money, but if I do and the threshold is not reached I just wasted my voting power for nothing, so I will just look what happens without become an active participant”. Or at least this is my take on it.
Right now, many users avoid supporting proposals in the first round. Why?
Because if the proposal doesn’t reach the required threshold, the VOT3 they locked brings no benefit, and they can’t use it in later rounds.
This behavior slows down the entire process and leads to a passive attitude, where people just wait for “someone else” to take action.
On top of that, users who only vote in the second round are still able to maximize weekly rewards, even if they never actively supported a proposal before.
In my opinion, this mechanism needs to be improved.
My proposal:
Multiplier in the second round for those who supported the proposal in the first round.
→ Example: if you gave 100 VOT3 in the first round, your vote in the second round counts as 1.2x (like 120 VOT3).
The right to maximize weekly rewards only if you supported the proposal in the first round and then voted for the same proposal in the second round.
→ This way, users are incentivized to act early and responsibly.
Penalty for supporting low-quality or meaningless proposals just to gain access to the multiplier or extra rewards.
→ If the proposal makes it to the final round and gets rejected, the VOT3 used in the first round can only be reclaimed after 1 month.
How to prevent abuse:
To stop users from blindly supporting any proposal in the first round just to get rewards:
The multiplier and bonus rewards only activate if you support the same proposal again in the second round. VOT3 must remain locked for at least 72 hours before the support deadline. Proposals must meet minimum quality requirements (e.g., 7 days live on the forum, active discussion, clear structure). If a proposal is rejected in the final round, VOT3 from the first round can only be claimed after 1 month as a penalty for careless support. A reputation system could be added: if a wallet frequently supports rejected proposals, it temporarily loses access to multipliers.
Goal:
Make the first round the most important and active phase of the DAO process, where:
Early supporters get rewarded.
Careless voters take a risk.
Proposals are filtered better from the start.
VOT3 becomes a powerful and active tool, not just a passive token.
I believe this could be a meaningful way to encourage more active, responsible, and merit-based participation in VeBetterDAO.
Why does everything has to do with more money and multipliers and etc?
As I stated above I agree with the “why” people is not supporting, but throwing money at people is not the solution imho.
Also proposals shouldn’t revolutionize how the dao works. On ethereum or bitcoin or somewhere else you do not change the protocol consensus every few weeks. I think we should find a solution that: solves the problem, has an elegant and viable implementation, it’s easy to explain to web2 users.
I get your point, and I agree that the solution shouldn’t be just about “giving more money.”
My proposal isn’t about throwing rewards randomly, but about correcting a misaligned incentive: right now, those who act early take all the risk and often get nothing, while passive users can still maximize rewards.
A small multiplier or bonus is just a simple way to reward proactive participation, not a revolution.
It’s easy to explain: “Support early, vote consistently, get a small bonus. Support blindly and get penalized.”
Of course, it needs to be paired with filters for proposal quality. But I believe we need lightweight mechanisms to make participation more fair and active.
I believe we need to ask ourselves a fundamental question:
What do we want for the DAO?
An ecosystem with active participation and responsibility, or a system where users behave like robots, just executing mechanical actions to optimize rewards?
As far as I understand, the current weekly reward system works like this:
If there are no governance proposals in the final round, you only need to vote for the dApps to maximize your rewards.
If there is a proposal in the final round, you need to:
vote for the dApps and
cast a vote on the proposal (“yes,” “no,” or “abstain”) to get the full rewards.
But this system is broken, and here’s why:
Many users avoid supporting proposals in the first round because they don’t want to lose their VOT3 and miss the snapshot for the following round.
→ This leads to everyone waiting for someone else to “sacrifice” their voting power first.
Delegation services like vedelegate, which aim to maximize rewards for users, automatically set the vote to “abstain” by default during final-round proposals.
→ This promotes passive, automated behavior, which goes against the spirit of real DAO participation.
To be clear: the problem is not Vedelegate itself, because it plays by the rules of the current system. The real problem is that the system, as it is, rewards passivity over commitment, and that is what needs to be rebalanced.
As @favo suggested, we can consider the Vot3 tokens you deposited to support proposals as part of your voting power calculation. This means you will earn rewards with those tokens when voting. This would solve the problem of “What if support is not reached? I just lost voting power for no reason.”
Originally, this limitation was added to encourage users to have some “skin in the game” when supporting proposals: if you have nothing to lose, you’ll support anything. So, what do we have to lose here? The fact that our tokens are locked. For how long? With the current implementation, they are locked until the proposal becomes active, until the round is reached (without support), or until the creator cancels the proposal.
If we want to add more “skin in the game,” we could extend this duration so that you can only withdraw those tokens at the end of the proposal lifecycle: when the proposal is cancelled, if support is not reached, or when the proposal ends (after users vote on it). However, I’m not 100% sure about this part. Should we add some more downsides like this one??
Since more people will start supporting proposals, does it then make sense to have a limit on the amount of Vot3 tokens needed to support a proposal? If we set a limit, it will become easier to support proposals over time, which may not be optimal.
We need to ensure that we do not introduce new risks to the governance system. If, in the future, it becomes too easy to support proposals and vote on them (remember, with this change, even if you supported a proposal, you can still vote with those tokens), we risk opening up an attack vector for our DAO.
I am doing some research on other DAO’s proposal submission requirements. I will circle back about the total deposit requirement for proposal to advance to voting phase later.
Below are my initial thoughts about the gate for the initial submission:
maybe not necessarily to punish a proposal that does not advance.
deposit (stake) requirement can be 10000 VOT3 (approx. cost $1000). A configurable parameter we can revisit periodically.
another option for consideration: require a level 2 GM NFT to submit?
It should be noted that if someone does not meet the requirement, he can always post in the forum, and the foundation or others are happy to help submit if it is a serious proposal.
I personally like the minimum requirement of a Level 2 GM NFT to submit.
That will help keep out a lot of proposals that are not serious, or have “skin in the game”. A Moon NFT or higher fulfills that requirement IMHO.
I also like @favo’s idea of VOT3 tokens deposited to support proposals factors into your voting power calculation.
I understand the original intent @Dan was to encourage users to have more “skin in the game” when supporting proposals - but why does it have to be an all-or-nothing approach?
If VOT3 used in support round is part of the voting calculation for governance rewards, maybe its power is halved or some other sort of ratio? I feel that could be a good compromise to explore.
To me, the problem is that those who come up with and support proposals basically put all their skin in the game, but then see no benefit via governance rewards. And currently, it is mainly a select few of the same users doing so, for the betterment of the entire DAO.
I agree with almost everything that has been said here. I agree with @elcaliffo that users earning rewards on other people’s sacrificed voting rewards isn’t fair. If you have not supported a proposal, you should not earn the rewards for voting on it in my opinion.
I also agree with @favo here on changing the way we limit the vot3s required in a round. Currently it’s based on a certain % of the b3tr in circulation. This does not really make sense in my eyes as we know that a vast majority of that is locked up in treasuries, thousands of farming wallets, inactive accounts etc. Why should these be taken into consideration when setting the vot3s requirement for a proposal?
I would much rather see some percent of the active voters on dApps to be the limit on proposals. An average of vot3s voted with in the last round or x months, for example. This better aligns with active users engaging in the VeBetterDAO in my mind. As for the %, it feels like roughly half the current required vot3s would be good currently, but we cant let that scale out of control either. A limit or decay system would be good.
I do not really like the point about locking 0.1 or 0.5% of the limit however. Someone with not a lot of accumulated vot3s but a strong will to contribute would require them having a more established player run the campaign for the proposal, which isnt always possible. If I run the risk of losing 500B3TR or whatever it amounts to if my proposal doesnt pass, I honestly would never make one. Locking it for the duration of the proposal is fine but I would say it should be claimable back later regardless of outcome if we go that route.
I much prefer having a gm nft rank2 be the requirement. It incentivizes participation in the dao outside proposals and also ties into an upcoming proposal me and a few others are working on to change the endorsement model to one based on the gm nfts instead.
The 7 day forum window I like. Same with b3mo analyzing the post. A few of the recent proposals have barely had more than a paragraph of text, so a minimum quality and length on the proposal should be implemented.
A question on the 72h withdrawal. How would that work? I fear it would lead to a lot of “false hope” if people deposit/withdraw constantly and essentially just make the 7 day support phase a 72h one. Or did I misunderstand?
Hopping on a flight in a few minutes so let me know if this was unclear or if I missed something, ill post more thoughts later.
Ok, it seems to me we are all pretty much aligned on this. To sum things up about the proposal:
Before creating a proposal there must be a thread in the forum with an ETA of at least 7 days
GM NFT level 2 is needed in order to create proposals
VOT3 tokens deposited to support proposals factors into your voting power calculation
VOT3 used to support can be withdrawn at the end of the proposal lifecylcle
Under discussion:
Figure out if we need to change the VOT3 tokens needed to support a proposal, waiting for Ben to provide some data on how other DAOs set this field. But in my opinion this should not be a number to easy to reach.
Being that said, I would like to touch one point: it is clear to me, and by reading above it seems also to you, that there is a problem in our DAO which is the fact it does not really benefit who actively engages, and I think the issue is veDelegate (and other similar services) voting “abstain” on behalf of the user even if the user did not express his vote, in order to pump rewards as much as possible.
This has a very negative impact on rewards, because now everyone gets the same share, and it becomes just a matter of “who has more money”. This is bad because participation and engagement is not rewarded any more. There is no difference in the rewards between an active user, diligently reading and voting for proposals, and a user that just “sets and forgets”.
We should treat the fact that this is possible as a bug instead of as a feature, imho.
Another problem is that since veDelegate does this, and since veDelegate now has a big share of the “market” the quorum on proposals is meaningless, opening attack vectors, such as:
minority of users taking important decisions
“insider trading”/“front running” the proposal results from experienced devs (because if you know how to get that information, you can know in advance the results of a proposal).
To understand how serious this is, just look at the previous proposals and see how many people abstained. All those users got free money for doing absolutely nothing. That money had to belong to active participants. So as I said, I would treat this as a bug and make it “illegal”.
Personally, I’m not sure if we should treat this discussion in this thread and put it in this proposal or if I should create a new thread in order to do a separate proposal. But I am firmly convinced this is a big elephant in the room that no one wants talk about just because everyone is making money out of it. But we should realize that the only one actually making money here are people that do not give a fuck.
Great discussion and solid proposal. I agree — this feels like a no-brainer and is ready to move to the next stage.
As for the veDelegate conversation, I suggest we move that to a separate thread. Since veDelegate will soon lose its allocation, this change won’t directly address the specific issue you’ve raised, but it’s definitely something we need to monitor closely. We should keep an eye on how this shift impacts those relying on veDelegate and whether it drives the intended behavior within the DAO.
*EDIT: Now that I think about it, adding a simple feature to the proposal like “Abstain votes don’t get rewarded” could simply fix the issue you talked about.
I think abstain votes should get rewarded, because you are actually expressing your position. But you need to actively press that button. If someone does it for you automatically it does not seem right.
Good point. I think what Quorum should be adjusted to should be discussed in that thread as well. As many proposals struggled with Quorum before those Vedelegate abstains.
I agree with almost everything but sorry I am against “VOT3 tokens deposited to support proposals factors into your voting power calculation”.
To me this makes the support phase irrelevant if supporting = voting yes = get rewards. We cannot reward for supporting, it makes no sense.. as much as it hurts us right now. Everyone will then just support to get rewards which is the opposite of what we want. If we make life easier with the other suggested changes we wont need to support with everything we have and can still earn rewards afterwards.
To be honest, I would get rid of voting rewards for proposals all together and leave that for voting on dApp allocations. Reduce the support and proposal quorums significantly to allow only those who are serious about making change to participate. But I accept I will be in the complete minority on this, just putting it out there. We go with what the majority want.
It is a valid point that people will support in order to get rewards, but I think the mistake here is that those are not extra rewards on top of what you were getting. If no proposal is created you already get max rewards, creating proposals will dilluite those. Of course this is true only if same amount of people that vote in weekly allocations also vote for proposals.
Getting rid of voting rewards for proposals I’m not sure it’s right, it’s the maximum form of engagement imho and it should be rewarded, even more than just voting weekly.
Regarding the ‘locked-in’ support: If someone supports a proposal early on and it looks like the proposal might pass, could large players later withdraw their support? This could cause the proposal to lose enough support and require backing again. Or would the vot3s still count as support?
I’m not sure if we need the option to withdraw support at all if it’s already counting deposited vot3s in the voting power calculation?
As for the required level of support I agree, it shouldnt be easy to pass. But currently it’s next to impossible without treasuries supporting. Lost voting rewards don’t affect most treasuries (if they play it fair) anyway.
Maybe just making it easier for supporters is enough without changing the limits. Hard to say in advance how it will play out. But a decay system would likely be needed still.
As for the abstains. I’m 100% with you. Setting and forgetting proposal votes and earning rewards on it should not be allowed. Active participation is needed. A separate thread for that is the play in my mind too.
Great job all so far! I really think this is important to handle now before the vot3s required reach impossible levels.
My proposal:
How to prevent abuse:
The multiplier and bonus rewards only activate if you support the same proposal again in the second round.
Goal: