The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Manugotsuka, and is based on their combined research, fact-checking, and ideation.
We voted AGAINST.
While the current quorum model needs improvement, we are not convinced that this proposal is the right solution for the identified issues.
First, it does not address the underlying issue of tokenholders not delegating their tokens to participate in governance. I recall that this issue was raised during a DAO meeting in Denver in February of this year, where the conclusion was that there would be an initiative to activate approximately 300M ARB for active voting power. Shortly after, there was indeed a small spike in delegated ARB, but it was nowhere near the discussed values, and its effect has since diminished. Therefore, we would first like to better understand whether these initiatives to activate more ARB voting power have failed or simply were never implemented.
Next, the proposed solution represents a significant change that would require upgrading two of the most important governance contracts. This process would be inherently costly - it requires not only smart contract development, but also thorough audits and updates to all tooling that currently relies on existing calculations, such as Tally, Proposals.app, and various dashboards displaying these values. We recall a similar situation in Optimism almost two years ago, where governance contract upgrades resulted in numerous governance tools breaking across the ecosystem.
We are not suggesting that upgrades should never be made, but they should not be undertaken lightly. If we proceed with one, we should consider what other features could be included in such an upgrade. From the top of our minds, examples include partial delegation and private voting or flexible voting—both of which were identified as missing features necessary for the proper implementation of staking mechanisms.
At the very least, a proper impact analysis - along with a detailed plan for addressing potential issues and a thorough cost breakdown - should be presented before requesting approval for this approach.
Furthermore, we share some concerns about potential additional security issues and governance attack vectors that have been raised previously in this discussion.
Finally, we believe that alternative mechanisms should be explored before adopting a complete redesign. For example, the Auto-Abstaining Wallet model, implemented by Scroll DAO, presents an interesting approach. It mitigates quorum issues without requiring fundamental contract upgrades, thereby limiting the impact on external systems and reducing additional security risks. Arbitrum could benefit from a more thorough analysis of this model before committing to an approach as impactful as DVP Quorum.
We support continued research and open discussion, but do not believe this proposal, in its current form, should move forward at this time.