[Constitutional] AIP: Security Council Election Process Improvements

[SEEDGov]

Hi @Arbitrum. Thank you for this proposal.

We won’t go into detail on every change, as we agree with most of them.

Regarding the ongoing discussion on the following item:

@Arbitrum

Progress Security Council members. Allow any existing Security Council members who have re-applied to bypass the Nominee Selection phase and into the Member Election phase.

We agree with the perspective provided by JoJo — allowing current Security Council members to skip the nomination phase actually opens up space for other strong candidates to receive votes:

@JoJo

But: passing that phase means, here, to get that 0.1% of total votable supply, that potentially can’t go to other candidates. To say in other terms, if we have a low turnaround of voting in security elections (or a rising quorum which gets us to the same result), allowing incumbent already vetted to not have to go through that again means increasing the chance to have fresh names for the actual election.

In any case, if a member is not performing as expected — or if the DAO simply no longer wants them on the Security Council — it can just choose not to vote for that candidate in the Member Election Phase. It’s also important to remember that there is a compliance review stage in which the Foundation can remove candidates due to conflicts of interest. We suggest that this continue to be enforced in cases where a Security Council member is being advanced directly into the Member Election Phase.

@Arbitrum

Adjust qualification thresholds. In the Nominee Selection phase, change the qualifying threshold from 0.2% to 0.1% of circulating ARB.

Now, we’d like to elaborate further on the proposal to reduce the threshold from 0.2% to 0.1%.

The rationale behind the growing ARB supply justifying a lower threshold makes sense at first glance. However, it’s worth noting that L2BEAT did not use their voting power during the last Nomination Phase because, from their perspective, “all the candidates they wanted to see qualify for the elections phase had already done so.” So they chose not to vote for the remaining nine candidates.

Of course, that’s their perspective — and that’s fine — but it shows that more candidates could have qualified, and didn’t, for reasons unrelated to either the threshold or the amount of active VP available.

Looking at past elections:

• Sept 2023: 24 qualified out of 41 candidates (4.7M threshold)

• March 2024: 22 qualified out of 44 candidates (5.4M threshold)

• Sept 2024: 13 qualified out of 39 candidates (8.6M threshold)

• March 2025: 13 qualified out of 22 candidates (8.5M threshold)

We went from 44 to 22 candidates in a single year. In 2025, the average VP used in Constitutional proposals was 234M ARB, and 201M in non-constitutional ones. In the last Member Election Phase (March 2025), turnout reached 63.47% of delegated votes — meaning 231,118,431 ARB participated.

Theoretically, if the same level of participation applied to the Nomination Phase with a threshold of around 9.1M ARB (0.2%), up to 25 candidates could have qualified. If the threshold is reduced to 0.1%, this number doubles to 50.

This figure is even higher than the number of applicants in the last process. So, while we understand the motivation (increased votable supply makes it harder for some candidates to qualify), we believe the root problem goes beyond that technicality.

Therefore, it might be worth exploring how to improve both the quantity and the quality of candidates.

Some questions we’re asking ourselves:

• How can we attract more high-quality candidates?

• Should the DAO or AF take a more proactive approach to sourcing them?

• Why has the number of candidates dropped by 50%?

• Is the position attractive enough (financially or otherwise) to draw the kind of candidates we want?

We believe that before approving any threshold change (again — we’re not opposed to it, we just think there’s a deeper issue), we need to address these questions. Otherwise, we may be lowering the bar for candidates who lack the quality or reputation to serve on the Security Council.

As mentioned earlier, during the last Nomination Phase, the DAO had enough VP to allow all 22 candidates to qualify — but delegates chose not to use it. This is empirical evidence that there wasn’t enough trust in the qualifications of the remaining nine candidates.

Let’s imagine a scenario where we again have 22 candidates, 6 of whom are already members of the Security Council and automatically advance. That leaves 16 candidates for the Nomination Phase. At a 0.1% threshold (4.55M ARB approximately), it would take only ~73M ARB for all of them to qualify.

Now consider two possibilities:

1. Delegates use their VP (up to 73M ARB), and everyone qualifies — regardless of merit. (Note: any remaining delegates would not be able to vote afterward.)

2. Delegates don’t use their VP or fall short of the 73M threshold, which limits the final pool to the 6 incumbents + a few who passed nomination. (This is a likely outcome — in fact, it already happened. This was one of the reasons why voting in the Nomination Phase was not made mandatory to qualify for the DIP.)

Neither outcome seems to improve the process. From our perspective, the problem is not the amount of VP available but rather the shrinking number of viable options for delegates to choose from.

For this reason, we encourage the DAO to initiate a discussion on how to enhance the candidate pool for future elections — regardless of whether this specific initiative proceeds.