Increase resilience to outside attackers by updating DAO parameters to not count ‘Abstain’ votes in Quorum.
Constitutional.
Abstract
Increase the resilience of the DAO to outside threats, for example bribe markets, by not counting ABSTAIN votes in quorum. This will make it harder for automated bribe systems to pass contentious proposals, and also easier to defeat spammed malicious proposals which is now a larger threat than at any time the DAO’s existence. We should ask ARDC to analyze the effects this change would have had on all previous votes, and if the number of votes required to reach quorum should also be updated with this potential change.
Motivation
For the first time, an automated bribe market (lobbyfi) has enough delegation to create proposals. This is a major change from only the top handful of delegates, all of which are generally trusted and currently being paid by the DAO, having enough delegation to create proposals.
Rationale
The recent contentious Op-Co proposal barely reached quorum, but was pushed over by abstain votes. If we only counted Yes votes towards quorum it would have passed by a <620k ARB margin (0.5% of quorum required.) For refence, there is ~35M ARB on aave available to borrow. Imagine another proposal created by LobbyFi or another market passing by this much or malicious proposals just barely
We do not want to wait until proposals can be made through automatic bribes from future protocols for the first time, or for contentious proposals which are generally disfavored to pass only because someone abstained at the last minute. It’s time to fight back and be proactive in securing our governance.
Key Terms
Quorum - the number of votes needed to participate in order for a proposal to the DAO to pass. Currently NO votes are not counted towards quorum, but ABSTAIN votes are counted.
Governor - Contract which counts votes and controls quorum.
Specifications
My understanding is this is a setting in the Governor which can not be updated by the DAO, and so would require a contract upgrade to the Governor. If there is enough interest in pursuing this strategy we will try to work with the OCL dev team who originally deployed the Governor to address the technical implementation before any onchain votes are made. It is heavily modified from the OZ Governor and may require their expertise.
Steps
- Ask ARDC for research help and to publish an analysis on the effects of making this change.
- Review their recommendation and analysis, and allow time for more discussions, including with the Lobbyfi team to see if they have input as well.
- temp check
- Come up with technical implementation of new Governor
- vote on proposed parameter changes
Maybe 6 - 8 weeks?
Overall Cost
Primary cost here is engineering time and ARDC time, which should already be accounted for. I believe at least asking for this analysis and possibly some worst case situation simulation is worth pursuing. I will defer to ARDC on costs.
All feedback on this strategy and any other ideas to increase resilience are greatly welcome and appreciated. Thank you.
EDIT:
awesome dune dash here:
https://dune.com/entropy_advisors/arbitrum-dao-governance-proposals