[Constitutional] AIP: Constitutional Quorum Threshold Reduction

[Arbitrum]

Constitutional AIP

Abstract

This AIP proposes a reduction of the constitutional quorum threshold by 0.5%, lowering it from 5% to 4.5% of the total Arbitrum votable tokens. The goal is to ensure that well-supported proposals can successfully conclude by aligning quorum requirements with current levels of voter participation, reducing the risk of legitimate initiatives failing due to quorum thresholds not being met.

For non-constitutional proposals, the existing 3% quorum threshold will remain unchanged.

Motivation

Over the past year, the 5% quorum threshold for constitutional proposals within the ArbitrumDAO has been challenging, despite support from a broad range of delegates. As the circulating supply of $ARB continues to grow and voter turnout remains relatively flat, quorum requirements are becoming increasingly difficult to meet. The two images below from ARDC research on governance risks analysis suggest that quorum on constitutional proposals could reach 300M (in base case) in about a year, while participation rate as % of votable supply has gone down from 8% in early 2024 to 4-5% in early 2025. Reducing the constitutional quorum threshold by 0.5% provides a short-term adjustment that enables critical governance to move forward while longer-term reforms are considered and developed.

Rationale

ArbitrumDAO is governed by the principles of decentralization, participation, and credible neutrality. This proposal balances those principles by modestly reducing the constitutional quorum threshold to better reflect the current governance environment without undermining the legitimacy of approved proposals. This proposal also would not require any upgrades to existing smart contracts, helping maintain community trust and operational simplicity.

The 0.5% reduction was selected as a conservative adjustment that is expected to meaningfully improve the likelihood of well-supported proposals reaching quorum, while still maintaining a high enough threshold to deter governance attacks.

Key Terms

• Constitutional Proposal: A type of proposal within the ArbitrumDAO that modifies governance structures outlined in the ArbitrumDAO Constitution. These require higher quorum thresholds than non-Constitutional proposals.

• Quorum: The minimum number of tokens required to participate in voting for a proposal to be valid and eligible to pass. In this context, it is calculated as a percentage of the total $ARB votable tokens.

Specifications

This proposal updates the constitutional quorum threshold from 5% of the total votable tokens to 4.5%.

As of April 2025, with ~4.3B ARB in votable tokens (formula is total supply of ARB token, which is 10B, minus the amount delegated to the exclude address), the quorum reduction would decrease the requirement by approximately 25 million ARB tokens, bringing the effective quorum from ~215M to ~190M ARB.

No upgrades to core governance smart contracts are required. Instead, this proposal will include an action contract that uses existing functionality to modify the quorum constant used in the calculation of constitutional quorum thresholds. The action contract will need to be audited, and this is expected to take 1 day.

The 0.5% reduction represents a minimal-risk, fast-to-implement interim solution, while other long-term solutions can be considered, such as flexible quorum, or franchiser contract.

Steps to Implement

The proposal will follow these steps:

1. Forum discussion: This AIP is posted to the ArbitrumDAO forum for discussion and feedback from the community.
2. Temperature Check: An informal offchain vote is conducted on Snapshot to gauge community support.
3. On-Chain Vote: A formal Constitutional AIP and call-to-vote is proposed to Tally for the on-chain vote. This proposal itself will be subject to the existing 5% quorum to pass.
4. Update Governance Parameters: If passed, the new 4.5% quorum requirement would take effect immediately for all future constitutional proposals.

No smart contract changes or audits are required, which reduces implementation complexity and cost. The entire process is expected to take roughly 52 days.

Overall Cost

This AIP does not request any grant or budget allocation. It introduces no operational, technical, or recurring costs and does not require smart contract upgrades or audits. Governance configuration changes are handled via on-chain proposal execution and incur only the standard gas costs associated with DAO transactions.

[Griff]

I agree with this proposal, we should lower the threshold.

It’s clearly been a struggle to hit the 5% quorum, and getting there takes an too much time and energy from key contributors just to catherd delegates into voting. It’s a waste of time for important people that could be doing more impactful work. This isn’t how we win.

Let’s lower it.

It’s important and relevant that there’s also ongoing work to drive more organic engagement from larger stakeholders (which I fully support and hope to see succeed), this was a major topic of the SOS call today even… so this change is a no-brainer, while we push for engagement in other ways.

[Zeptimus]

I just seen this proposal and went to Karma and saw almost all delegates are losing voting power. Seeing token holders lose confidence in the ecosystem should be ringing alarm bells for all of us. The dropping delegate voting power is a governance issue and a market signal that holders are selling and moving elsewhere.

I support lowering the quorum threshold as a practical response to our current reality. Let’s be clear though - this is treating a symptom, not the disease. The real problem is that token holders need actual reasons to stay in the Arbitrum ecosystem.

Lowering the threshold makes governance more agile, which is good, but without addressing token holder incentives, we’re just rearranging deck chairs. The market will always speak louder than forums.

@cupojoseph - Not long ago was campaigning pushing for increased voting difficulty. I believe your opinion here would be very valuable for the discussion.

[cupojoseph]

The OP’s suggestion seems fine to me based on participation. Thank you for the good graphs and data.
If good proposals are struggling to get this level, bad ones would too. We want it to be easy to pass popular good proposals. My suggestions on quorum updates are just to consider making it harder for bad ones to pass.

Thanks for the tag!

Alternative

another idea or direction which may be more positive sum for the DAO but also more work to achieve the same outcome:

instead of lowering the threshold by ~22M votes, why dont we move 22M ARB from the treasury into 1/1 gnosis-safes controlled by the DAO. And use them to delegate to existing contributors.

100k to the top 200 current contributors? 200k to the top 100 contributors?

lower quorum while price is also lower means less resilience. more votes for engaged delegates means more resilience.

more on how this could work from another proposal made previously:

Arbitrum DAO's Delegate Engagement Apathy Determent program (Arb DAO DEAD Program) - Pilot

On the heels of the ARB Staking Working group’s recent recommendations I want to propose a new program, made possible by ARB staking which would further push the same goals. TL;DR Using the new ARB governance staking system the DAO can maintain 100% ownership over ARB tokens in the treasury while delegating them to different contributing members of the DAO. We should pilot a program that rewards our top 25 most active contributors who have small delegations with responsibility and 200k ARB del…

[Hawheik]

The objective is to ensure that we do not “lock ourselves out of reasonable reach of quorum”, which is without a doubt very important for the continued smooth operation of the DAO.

We could do this by adjusting as in this proposal, then continuously monitoring and passing further proposals to adjust whenever needed, up and down. But that relies on our continued vigilance and essentially rubber-stamping routine adjustments regularly, which while doable, doesn’t seem ideal.

Is it viable to instead augment the smart contract stack to automatically calculate the quorum requirements to be whatever is the largest number of the following:
a) 80% of the average total votes cast for all the above-quorum votes the last 3 months
a) 65% of the average total votes cast for all the above-quorum votes the last 6 months
b) 50% of the average total votes cast for all the above-quorum votes the last 12 months
(with an option for the security council to override the quorum number at any time, in case of exceptional circumstances such as intentional manipulation of the quorum numbers through inflated voting, to create a lockout)

The percentages and periods are not important, but it’s the principle of automatic continuous quorum level-setting I want to bring to the table. This would automatically adjust the quorum level up or downwards according to voter interest over time, while maintain a reasonable margin to not make quorum a prohibitively high bar.

Would it be better to have that than to have to make regular manual adjustments?

Would it be viable to add to the current set of smart contracts?

[EzR3aL]

Supportive of the proposal, but we should be thinking about the why and what?

Why are delegates loosing voting power?
Why is it hard to gain new voting power?
What can be done to tackle this and whats the main reason?

@Zeptimus

Seeing token holders lose confidence in the ecosystem should be ringing alarm bells for all of us.

I don’t think thats the reason at all. We all should be aware that probably 80% or even more of ARB holder are airdrop recipients or people that believed the token will appreciate in value.
But since inception of the ARB token it only knows one direction and that is downwards.

Most people do not care at all about governance or delegation and what impact it can has. For them its about making money. So if they see their investment is loosing value everyday of course they are going to sell and thats why everyone in here is loosing VP.

The only ones sticking to their token will early investor, the foundation and everyone still locked in a vesting contract. The “normie- retail” investor is not going to stick to something that has gone down in value as much as 90% and then say " hey let me delegate my token to EzR3aL, seems like a nice guy".

This is an illusion. And the only way to get more VP and be able to have a higher quorum threshold is by bringing value to the token and making it interesting for retail. Even if we like it or not, thats the reality. As long as Arbitrum is just a “useless” governance token with no value holding it longterm by offering yield from sequencer fees or something else, this situation will not change. And this is not only about Arbitrum, the same applies to other competitor protocols like Optimism and their token as well as ZKsync and the ZK token.

[Euphoria]

The following reflects the views of the Lampros DAO governance team, composed of Chain_L (@Blueweb), @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.

@Arbitrum

As the circulating supply of $ARB continues to grow and voter turnout remains relatively flat, quorum requirements are becoming increasingly difficult to meet.

We fully agree with this observation. Voter participation has dropped to around 4 to 5% in recent months, and the relative voting power of delegates has also slightly declined. Keeping the quorum at 5% under these conditions could unintentionally stall governance processes. The DAO must adapt its quorum requirements to reflect actual participation levels and ensure that sound initiatives are not blocked by procedural thresholds.

@Arbitrum

Reducing the constitutional quorum threshold by 0.5% provides a short-term adjustment that enables critical governance to move forward while longer-term reforms are considered and developed.

We see this 4.5% quorum as a practical interim measure. It helps prevent governance gridlock without weakening the legitimacy of outcomes. As delegates, we also recognize the need to address the long-term issue, which is declining engagement. Exploring future reforms like flexible quorum mechanisms is a logical next step, but this proposal offers the right fix for the current context. It keeps governance moving while broader participation strategies take shape.

That said, quorum is only one part of the picture of what we see. In parallel, the DAO should invest in mechanisms to attract more voters and increase participation from token holders. Over time, the goal should be to raise engagement, not just adjust thresholds downward.

Importantly, we see no red flags in this 0.5% reduction. It is a modest and well-reasoned calibration based on turnout data, not a radical departure from current safeguards. One forward-looking question we have is, how will we monitor whether 4.5% remains appropriate? What metrics will guide future adjustments? Can we set a periodic review to meet the current level of requirements in the future?

We are in support of this proposal as it addresses a current governance constraint. As we mentioned above, we also recommend that the DAO consider periodic quorum reviews to ensure thresholds evolve alongside participation. This approach helps keep Arbitrum governance responsive, inclusive, and secure over time.

[Ignas]

0.5% reduction in quorum can help improve governance and reduce the risk of stagnation, especially when a DAO struggles to adapt to external changes.

Then smaller voters like myself lol may feel like their vote counts more, which could encourage more participation.

Looking at other DAOs like Lido where the onchain quorum is around 5%, reducing Arbitrum’s to 4.5% isn’t a huge change. It still keeps the threshold at a reasonable level for the current situation.

The only major risk is vote buying or lobbying and seems the DAO has not found a solution to this. Wouldn’t it make sense to solve that question first before voting on this one?

That said, I feel reducing quorum is more of a band aid solution rather than something that truly drives meaningful participation.

Echoing @EzR3aL, we need to get to the root of the problem.

@EzR3aL

Why are delegates loosing voting power?
Why is it hard to gain new voting power?
What can be done to tackle this and whats the main reason?

Delegates are losing voting power, investors are loss of motivation to join in governance. So to make DeFi DAOs sustainable, I suggest we must align incentives to encourage active participation from the broader crypto community. That’s how we can keep them engage and ensure delegates maintain their VP.

In sum, while quorum issues are just one part of the puzzle, I still see this as short term solution to stabilize governance. I’m supporting this proposal.

[Tane]

Thanks for the detailed proposal! Here is our analysis and thought on this proposal.

TL;DR

We agree that a quorum misaligned with voter participation can paralyze ArbitrumDAO, but we believe lowering the constitutional threshold from 5 % → 4.5 % exposes the treasury to avoidable economic risk. Under today’s conservative prices (ARB = 0.31 USD), the cost to buy the new quorum nearly approaches the 57 M USD of liquid assets in the treasury; a modest ETH rally or further ARB weakness could flip the cost‑benefit equation in favor of an attacker.

---

Numbers & Assumptions

Parameter	Value	Note
Votable supply (conservative)	4.75 B ARB
ARB price (conservative)	0.31 USD	conservative assumption
Treasury USD stables	33.9 M USD	STEP report Apr‑2025
Treasury ETH	12.9 k ETH ≈ 23.2 M USD	ETH @ 1 799 USD STEP report Apr‑2025
Total liquid assets	57.1 M USD	Sum of the above

The proposed 4.5 % quorum equates to roughly 213.8 M ARB ≈ 66.3 M USD, only ~9 M USD above the treasury’s liquid holdings. If ARB fell below 0.27 USD or ETH printed new local highs, the attack could turn profitable.

Why a lower quorum creates a larger target

Lowering the quorum reduces the number of tokens required to govern, so the cost of a hostile take‑over falls one‑for‑one with the threshold. Because the treasury holds liquid ETH and stablecoins, an adversary could, in theory, borrow or purchase the necessary ARB, pass a withdrawal proposal, and exit with more value than they spent. This scenario is not merely academic; it is the same playbook that almost succeeded in Compound when a single whale (known as humpy) accumulated voting power and tried to funnel funds to a personal address, only to be stopped by emergency guardians and community outcry (see the incident analysis).

Limitations of the simple break‑even model

The calculation above is intentionally conservative. In reality,
(1) acquiring >200 M ARB would likely push the price up and inflate the attacker’s bill;
(2) a hostile actor could also dump the treasury’s own ARB on the market, extracting value well beyond our 57 M USD estimate; and
(3) OTC liquidity premiums and on‑chain slippage further distort the arithmetic.

At the same time, Arbitrum’s Security Council can pause malicious execution, so an incentive alone does not equal instant compromises, but the narrower the economic margin, the greater the reliance on emergency intervention.

Possible alternative – Treasury Delegation

Rather than lowering the quorum, we advocate treasury delegation. By delegating a slice of the DAO‑owned ARB. say ≈ 22 M ARB, to a curated set of active, accountable delegates, the DAO lifts effective participation while keeping the constitutional threshold intact, as described by @cupojoseph.

@cupojoseph

instead of lowering the threshold by ~22M votes, why dont we move 22M ARB from the treasury into 1/1 gnosis-safes controlled by the DAO. And use them to delegate to existing contributors.

To be more concrete, we believe a treasury delegation scheme should follow three principles. First, it must avoid over-concentrating voting power: the allocation should be evenly spread across a fixed, moderate-sized cohort of delegates. Second, delegate selection should rely on transparent, objective metrics, such as past voting attendance and alignment scores, so that anyone can independently verify fairness. Third, every delegation should carry a hard expiry that auto-revokes voting power unless the DAO explicitly renews it, preventing perpetual entrenchment.

At the same time, we understand that this is not the ideal solution, but rather something temporal. We also believe that there needs to be a fundamental solution implemented so that token holders are encouraged to vote/delegate to strengthen this DAO governance.

@EzR3aL

Why are delegates loosing voting power?
Why is it hard to gain new voting power?
What can be done to tackle this and whats the main reason?

@Zeptimus

this is treating a symptom, not the disease

Conclusion

Lowering the quorum fixes a short‑term participation symptom, but it shifts systemic risk onto the Security Council and narrows the economic moat around the treasury. Delegating dormant ARB from the treasury to proven delegates achieves the same practical goal, more votes, while preserving the cost of a buy‑out. We therefore oppose the 4.5 % proposal and urge the DAO to pursue treasury delegation or other alternatives instead.

[Gabriel]

I’m on board with trimming the constitutional quorum to 4.5 %. We need to move faster as a DAO, and if the 5 % bar is already blocking sensible upgrades, better to fix the bottleneck now than watch proposals time out.

The new figure is still higher than what other DAOs require, so the security budget stays robust.

That said, lowering the quorum can’t be our reflex every time turnout dips. We need a longer-term plan to lift participation and tackle the root problem. The current delegate-incentive program is great, but it doesn’t actually grow voting power, so let’s test fresh levers—e.g., a legal-clarity toolkit for investors worried about governance liability, and redelegation campaigns to wake up idle tokens. These are just starting points, but we should research and roadmap solutions now, because the issue will resurface if we don’t.

Gabriel

[Entropy]

Entropy is supportive of the Arbitrum Foundation’s proposal to lower the constitutional quorum threshold to 4.5% of votable tokens. As the ARDC’s research highlighted, the current quorum margin is quite thin for constitutional proposals with the current requirement now exceeding the average turnout rate. It is particularly concerning to consider that at the current threshold of ~218.6m ARB, the only proposal to even meet this threshold in the history of the Arbitrum DAO is the recent vote to adopt Timeboost (~243.9m ARB). Similar to the Arbitrum Foundation and many other delegates, we feel it is prudent to address this issue before a legitimate proposal fails to pass due to quorum requirements. Moreso, a proposal to reduce quorum is a constitutional proposal in itself, making the risk of not getting ahead of the problem all that much greater.

Adding some additional context to the current state of delegated ARB and votable supply, since the ARDC posted its research on governance attack risks, total delegated votes has rebounded back to ~364m ARB and is close to its sustained peak of ~372m ARB back in late 2023.

While the recent uptick shows the efforts of the Arbitrum Foundation and top delegates to activate non-delegated ARB have been mildly successful, the unfortunate truth is that the resulting delegations from this work are not keeping pace with the rate of increase of the quorum threshold. In Q4 of 2023, the percentage of delegated tokens out of votable tokens peaked at around 15% with non-delegated votable ARB sitting at around ~2.05B. Since then the amount of non-delegated ARB has nearly doubled to ~4B, while the amount of delegated tokens has remained relatively flat, pushing the ratio down to almost 8.3% today.

@cupojoseph makes an interesting suggestion to delegate ARB from the DAO treasury, something members of our team have previously proposed. In reality though, a number much larger than 22m would be required to make a substantial difference given the current rate of quorum’s increase we would be faced with a similar situation in just a few months. This rate of increase is primarily why Entropy is in favor of lowering the calculation from 5% to 4.5%. Such a change not only immediately reduces constitutional quorum, but it will also slightly slow the rate of quorum increase in the future (~500k ARB per month based solely on ARB unlocks). Additionally, after a lot of collective thought from our team on this matter, we do not believe delegating treasury ARB is an ideal solution given that ARB governance power is one of the core value propositions of holding ARB today. We hope to return value to token holders in the future, but we want to ensure the voter base that shapes our path to value accrual has “skin in the game” rather than receiving delegation with no monetary stake. We are open to changing our opinions on this matter, but for now, we view the decrease in quorum as the most sensible near-term solution. It is worth noting that reducing quorum comes with its own tradeoff, increasing the likelihood of a governance attack, but Entropy still views it as a necessary step to take today.

Overall, we acknowledge the concerns around governance resiliency, but at this point in time lowering the constitutional threshold is warranted and provides the DAO a short-term solution while it continues to make improvements to its operational efficiency that make organic engagement from large token holders more appealing.

[web3citizenxyz]

Based on observing most of the onchain proposals requiring an extension, and that this will get worse over time at the same rate of participation, it makes sense to make a change. As raised by griff, EzR3al and others above and by others in today’s call, it should be pushed together with other initiatives targeting delegate engagement.

Overall, we support this initiative.

[AranaDigital]

We are in support of altering the quorum threshold from 5 % to 4.5 %. We support this change because the participation rate, measured as a percentage of votable supply, has fallen from 8 % in early 2024 to 4–5 % in early 2025. As the circulating supply of $ARB grows and voter turnout remains relatively flat, the participation rate decreases, making quorum requirements increasingly difficult to meet. If the threshold is not lowered, legitimate proposals may fail to pass solely because they cannot reach quorum.

[karpatkey]

We understand and appreciate the rationale behind this proposal. Reaching a quorum for constitutional proposals has become increasingly difficult, and this is clearly an issue that needs to be addressed to keep the DAO functional.

That said, we believe @Tane raised a critical concern regarding the governance attack surface that this proposal may inadvertently widen.

@Tane

The proposed 4.5 % quorum equates to roughly 213.8 M ARB ≈ 66.3 M USD, only ~9 M USD above the treasury’s liquid holdings. If ARB fell below 0.27 USD or ETH printed new local highs, the attack could turn profitable.

According to @Tane’s analysis, the market value of ARB required to reach the proposed 4.5% quorum is approximately $66.3M, while the value of the DAO’s liquid treasury holdings (USD and ETH) is $57.1M. This means the cost to reach quorum is only ~$9M above the liquid value of the treasury. When factoring in the significant ARB holdings in the treasury, the total market value approaches $1B. While ARB can’t be instantly sold without slippage, this still represents an added incentive for a potential attacker.
While acquiring >200 M ARB would have a market impact and increase the attacker’s cost, alternatives like borrowing ARB do exist (as mentioned in the ARDC’s analysis of governance risks).

We’ve already seen real-world examples like Compound where governance attacks have occurred. Given Arbitrum DAO’s large treasury, it is a prime target for such threats.

As highlighted in the ARDC’s analysis of governance risks, the core problem isn’t just high quorum thresholds—it’s that these thresholds are increasing while participation remains stagnant. Over the past year, participation as a percentage of votable supply has dropped from around 8% to just 4–5%.

While we support the need to reduce the constitutional quorum to enable necessary protocol upgrades, we believe the Arbitrum Foundation and delegates should first prioritise implementing some of the ARDC’s recommendations. In particular, we’d like to highlight the following:

1. Partner with vote-buying platforms to implement automatic “No” votes for proposals flagged by the Security Council or exceeding specific funding thresholds.
2. Cap token transfers per governance proposal.
3. Enhance Security Council oversight for high-stakes votes.
4. Focus on increasing active delegated participation.
5. Encourage new delegation to improve voter engagement.

In short, let’s not rush a quorum change without taking parallel steps to harden governance security and improve participation.

[TodayInDeFi]

We believe lowering the quorum is reasonable measure to keep DAO functioning and avoid governance deadlock.

Rationale
Just based on tokenomics alone, according to the ARB emission rate and the known unlock schedule, the circulating supply of ARB will increase at a pace that makes it hard for the current voting participation for constitutional proposals to stay at the current level of 4-5% - which is already barely at the level needed for Quorum

(Source: Arbitrum DAO: Delegates Dune Dashboard by Entropy)

But while lowering the quorum modestly to 4.5% is a good short term fix with few downsides, it’s not a total long-term solution; more is needed: The root cause of the situation is the dampened interest for ARB holders to participate in the governance, and i think there are two reasons why that’s the case.

1 Knowledge Gap

The knowledge required for newcomers to keep up is overwhelming, especially for constitutional proposals. there are always a lot of jargons and technical terms, and it can be very discouraging to understand the contexts, participate, and make contributions.

2. No incentive to participate

the other reason is that there’s no incentives to participate. there are DAOs out there with higher quorum but has no problem meeting the threshold, such as Lido. In addition to the fast track setup, it’s also because there are direct incentives for protocols and chains to participate in Lido governance, such as wstETH integration or reward programs that can help those protocols grow.

For Arb, as a chain and infrastructure we don’t have such direct incentive to attract participation thus far outside of occasional STEP proposals

Solutions

To bridge the knowledge gap for new participants to keep track of the ongoing discussions or live votes, a weekly/biweekly newsletter to explain contexts, explain jargons, technical terms or backgrounds, and summarize relevant information can really help. this can be done with reasonable cost and we also have expertise in the field to make it happen.

To incentivize participation, I think it might make sense to direct a portion of the sequencer fee sharing from ARB staking program to incentivize governance participation. for example, ARB stakers who either delegate or participate can earn a higher share of the yield.

Regarding ARB treasury delegation: I don’t believe it’s an ideal solution. Not only because it’s also an one-time fix, but it also contradicts with what we want to achieve with the delegate incentive program. I believe the purpose of DIP is to encourage those who have expertise and insight to contribute to the relevant fields to shape Arb ecosystem while also taking the delegates’ monetray stake into account. Delegating treasury can overshadow these well designed design principles and overly empower delegates who may not have the best insights or stake.

In summary, I do think this proposal to lower the quorum is needed just to address the mechanical issue of emissions making it harder to achieve quorum at curretn participationrates, but if we don’t solve the underlying issues of a knowledge gap for voting and reasons to participate. we might need to lower the quorum again in the near future as ARB circulating supply will keep growing.

[cp0x]

Thank you for the proposal

I understand the goal perfectly well and it is supported by everyone - not to lose control
But this can be done in different ways.

The method presented here seems to me to be one of the most problematic:

1. At the moment, the cost of the ARB token has fallen to minimum values, several times lower than at its peak, which means that the seizure of control is currently the cheapest (compared to other periods). If earlier it was hundreds of millions of $, now 80 million $ is enough to re-vote everyone.
2. Against the background of reduced security, we propose to further reduce the voting threshold for the most important Constitutional votes. At the same time, this is a hypothetical possibility of losing control. In fact, this has not happened yet

In this regard, we can use other methods.
The main one that I propose and which also does not require any changes to the management contracts:

1. Delegate 25 million ARB between “trusted” delegates. How to define “trusted” is a debatable issue, but one of the obvious solutions is Karma. Take the top 25/50 delegates, who vote at least 90% to provide a safety cushion.
2. However, I do not propose to do this right now. The mechanism itself needs to be developed, but such delegations should be made temporarily, before the constitutional vote, and also only in the event of a failure of the corresponding vote.
3. This approach guarantees control over management if necessary and will not reduce security.
4. Yes, this is a bad approach in terms of decentralization, but this is a temporary delegation, not a permanent one as in other DAOs)

[Curia]

Thanks for bringing this proposal forward. Governance data is something we’ve been tracking closely in the Arbitrum ecosystem, and we’d like to add context that may clarify the rationale for adjusting the quorum threshold.

Key observations

1. Stable votable supply vs. rising votable ARB.
   • The overall votable supply has barely moved—about 353.46 M ARB in Jan 2024 vs. 363.65 M ARB in May 2025.

• Votable ARB (the amount that could be used for voting) keeps edging upward, but the share that is actually delegated and participating has not.

• Result: the quorum bar drifts higher even though real engagement is flat.

2. Participation is concentrating, not expanding.

   • Average voting power per delegate is climbing, while the number of delegates who vote is falling.

     For Voting power cast for both onchain & onchain ( from 1st Jan 2024- 7th May 2025)

     

     For Voting power cast for only onchain ( from 1st Jan 2024- 7th May 2025)

     
     

   Number of delegate that participate

   
   • Voting power are migrating from smaller voters to larger ones; total voting power cast is not the bottleneck—breadth of participation is.

Given these observations, we agree that this proposal is necessary. Reducing the constitutional quorum threshold from 5% to 4.5% is a reasonable and timely short-term adjustment that can help ensure well-supported proposals are not blocked due to insufficient participation. However, we believe this should be treated as an interim fix. Because quorum is tied to votable ARB (a figure that continues to grow), with the same problem will re-emerge. A longer-term solution should align quorum with actual participation rather than theoretical capacity.

All in all, we see two potential complementary levers going foward:

1. Adjust governance parameters

• Immediate: adopt the 4.5 % threshold (this proposal).
• Next: research a dynamic quorum that flexes with recent delegate activity or other engagement metrics so it remains realistic as conditions change.

2. Address token-holder & delegate behaviour

Idle, non-delegated ARB is at the heart of the gap between supply and participation. Ways to bring it into play:

Overall, we support lowering the quorum to 4.5 % as a timely step. In parallel, revisiting the quorum calculation itself and launching initiatives that boost genuine participation will help bolster ArbitrumDAO’s long-term governance resilience.

[bertani]

Thank you for putting forward this important proposal. I agree that the current 5% quorum requirement for constitutional proposals is becoming increasingly difficult to meet as more ARB tokens are distributed across a wider base of holders. This creates a real risk of DAO paralysis, and I support the initiative to address it.

That said, while reducing the quorum to 4.5% may offer a short-term fix, I share the concerns raised by @Tane and others about the security implications. Lowering the quorum threshold does reduce friction, but it also opens the door to potential governance attacks. Striking the right balance between operational efficiency and long-term resilience is crucial.

More importantly, I don’t believe that reducing quorum requirements addresses the root of the issue: persistent voter apathy and low engagement among ARB holders. Active participation remains a significant challenge across the DAO landscape. Rather than lowering standards, we should be focusing our efforts on increasing engagement and expanding the base of active governance participants.

Treasury delegation, as suggested by several delegates, is a promising alternative that aligns with this long-term vision. The Uniswap DAO offers a valuable precedent—having implemented a treasury delegation program since December 2023 with positive outcomes, and now entering a second round. Adopting a similar model in Arbitrum could help ensure sufficient quorum without compromising governance integrity. I support this short-term solution.

But, as @EzR3aL pointed out, we need to answer deeper questions about why voting power is stagnating and what structural barriers are preventing broader participation. While projects like the Governance Bootcamp and ARB Delegation Week are a step in the right direction, they are one-off initiatives. We need recurring, well-resourced initiatives to improve governance literacy, streamline delegation, reduce friction for participation, and create bite-sized, digestible formats that make it easier for the average ARB holder to stay informed and engaged. Not everyone has the time to wade through long forum posts, but many would gladly delegate if given trusted, accessible summaries and delegation tools.

To continue the parallel with Uniswap DAO, the DAO is actively tackling this issue with solutions like Unistaker and UVN. In Arbitrum, we need to find our own solutions to have more ARB tokens engaged with the DAO. To help with this, I suggest expanding the Arbitrum D.A.O. grants program with a track dedicated to governance grants inspired by Optimism governance grants (examples one and two).

[WinVerse]

Thank you for putting this up, Arbitrum.

We agree that the 5% bar has been a significant hurdle for constitutional proposals, and a reduction offers a reasonable short-term remedy. However, we have a few observations and alternative suggestions.

@Arbitrum

As of April 2025, with ~4.3B ARB in votable tokens (formula is total supply of ARB token, which is 10B, minus the amount delegated to the exclude address), the quorum reduction would decrease the requirement by approximately 25 million ARB tokens, bringing the effective quorum from ~215M to ~190M ARB.

Is ~190M really a sweet spot?

Reviewing the last eight non-constitutional proposals, six have surpassed 190M votes. While 215M may indeed be prohibitive, 190M risks swinging the pendulum too far in the opposite direction, effectively lowering the hurdle below what most ordinary proposals already achieve. Constitutional votes are, by definition, more impactful and arguably should carry a higher bar than routine treasury or mechanics changes.

Possible Alternative Solutions

1. Phased or Tiered Reduction

• Short term (4.75% → ~204M ARB)
  Reduces immediate friction but stays above the 200M threshold—a psychologically significant barrier that most recent votes have hovered around.
• Medium term (after 3–6 months)
  Reassess on-chain turnout data. If participation remains stagnant, then consider a further reduction to 4.5% (~193M ARB) or lower.

2. DIP Utilization
   
   

The strategy utilized by SEED for the Security Council elections demonstrated how DIP can boost early turnout. Mandating a first week vote might be a drag, but we could implement a similar approach where we:

• Offer a small ARB bonus to delegates who vote within the first week of the voting period.
• Structure the bonus to decline over time, encouraging prompt engagement without over-rewarding late voters.

By combining a phased quorum adjustment with targeted incentives for early voting, we can balance accessibility and rigor, ensuring constitutional changes maintain high legitimacy while reducing unnecessary barriers.

[abelcodes]

While I understand and support the intention behind this proposal, I have some concerns about whether this is the right long-term solution. If voter participation continues to decline, will the quorum threshold keep being reduced indefinitely? At what point does it stop? Although this 0.5% reduction may help in the short term, it doesn’t address the root cause of low participation. I believe it would strengthen the proposal to define a fixed time frame for this reduced quorum threshold, during which the DAO can actively explore and implement longer-term solutions to increase voter engagement and address quorum challenges more sustainably.