[Constitutional] DVP Quorum for ArbitrumDAO: Implementation & Parameters

[Arbitrum]

We want to thank everyone for voting in the temperature check and for all the comments and feedback on this topic. As the onchain vote on DVP quorum and proposal cancellation is starting tomorrow, we want to address some of the outstanding questions/feedback.

@cornellbc.eth

[…] our main concern is that this proposal does not make a targeted attempt at solving the voter apathy problem (the core issue), and the centralization tradeoffs as well as DAO attack risks seem to outweigh the benefits.

For us, removing an incentive for smaller or inactive voters to participate is more than a necessary tradeoff. We think anything that removes the urgency for smaller voters to vote is critically in the wrong direction. We’d prefer to see something that also takes a stab at improving voter turnout/engagement.

As concluded in research report 2, ArbitrumDAO boasts one of the highest participation rates in the ecosystem. At certain points in 2025, over 70% of delegated tokens were active in governance, while the second most active DAO by the same metric had a participation rate close to 30%. Over 10,000 wallets have voted in at least one onchain proposal in the last year, and close to 35% of the active wallets have voted in 50% of onchain proposals [data]. While there is room for participation to increase further, especially as a percentage of total supply, that should be pursued independent of this proposal, and there are existing efforts aiming to address this.

As it relates to your other points, please refer to discussions in previous posts, including on security/attack vectors here and here.

@blockful

Even under the current configuration, it is extremely “cheap” to attack Arbitrum, given the DAO’s TVL and treasury. The cost to reach quorum has fallen by 67% since this proposal was first discussed, from $56M to $18.3M for constitutional proposals.

@cp0x

The more concerning issue is security. At current ARB prices, with the reduced quorum, roughly $17M worth of voting power would be enough to reach constitutional quorum and very likely determine the outcome of almost any proposal. Governance attacks become significantly cheaper.

Kindly refer to discussions on security in the previous posts, i.e., 1 and 2, as well as the responsibilities of the Security Council outlined in the DAO constitution. Importantly, the DAO has in place several security instruments to block adversarial takeover attempts irrespective of the dollar value of reaching quorum.

@krst

However, we want to reiterate that this change primarily alleviates symptoms rather than addressing the root cause of low delegation, which remains a structural concern. With only a small percentage of ARB holders participating and voting power already concentrated, this model may further reinforce the issues we are already observing in the governance.

We agree with the need to bring more DVP into the system. There are ongoing efforts across OpCo, AF, and OCL to get more tokenholders to delegate their ARB, which have already resulted in an increase of delegated voting power by ~50M in December 2025. We expect that the system will continue to gain more delegation in the months and years to come.

@Saurabh

Additional modelling would strengthen confidence in the parameter selection:

• ARB price decline and large sales - If ARB price falls significantly and large holders sell, delegated voting power reduces. How does the model behave in this scenario?

At low DVP values, the baseline quorum value will apply. In the edge case of DVP dropping even further, such that the baseline quorum value is no longer feasible (either active DVP < baseline quorum or DVP < baseline quorum), the DAO will need to reassess how to get more delegation into the system so that decisions are backed by a sufficient amount of ARB.

@Saurabh

Delegate concentration shifts - What happens if major delegates exit or change their delegation patterns?

After the upgrade, the DAO will have a larger cushion between constitutional quorum requirement and participation. It’s also important to note that under the new model, it will be much costlier to pass a malicious proposal or to block a beneficial proposal by forming an abstaining coalition. Please also refer to the previous discussions under the initial research report on how the system adapts to delegate behavior changes.

@Saurabh

Post-implementation monitoring - Validating the parameters perform as expected once live

Both the Arbitrum Foundation and Offchain Labs will be monitoring the performance of the upgraded model, using metrics like voting trends across different voter sets and proposal types (including any DVP quorum impact), DVP and quorum adjustment over time, delegate influx and churn, etc.