404 DAO will be voting FOR this delegation to Event Horizon, as we see this proposal as a great opportunity to explore the “3rd pillar of governance” as outlined by EH:
This year long experiment will help us better understand the level of interest in governance participation from everyday Arbitrum users. For example, will giving these small voters a greater voice meaningfully increase their involvement in Arbitrum DAO? While not outlined in this proposal, these are the types of questions we hope Event Horizon will work on answering during the one year trial.
Additionally, @krst brought up several interesting ideas in his comment back in March, and while we echo that EH does not necessary need to follow those examples, we do agree that this could be the first step for more interesting ideas to be built.
If I understand correctly, you want to delegate ARB to active voters to increase the number of verified participants and their quality. I really like this idea, it’s what we need. However, I don’t quite agree with the anti-sybil criteria.
DAO is a decentralized structure that goes beyond the usual web2 services. For example, I don’t have a Facebook profile and do not use this social network. But, I can buy this account in a dark store. I don’t have Coinbase verification. But, I can buy it to avoid being identified as a sybil. So these are inefficient criteria in my opinion.
I think important criteria for filtering out Sybils would be:
ENS use - sybils rarely buy them because it’s a significant expense for them.
Wallet Balance - sybils don’t keep a lot of funds in their wallets (especially on the Ethereum network)
Wallet Age - this will definitely filter out most sybils since their wallets have a short history of activity
Gas Spent - this criterion may not be as effective since sybils make many transactions on layer 2 networks. I would change this criterion with the number of transactions on the Ethereum network or the possession of NFTs valued over $1000.
I will gladly vote FOR your proposal, it indeed will make a serious step towards improving the quality of the voting. But please consider my comments, and perhaps you’ll manage to improve your proposal before it goes to Tally. Good luck!
I also wanted to add that I like the way you “packaged” this idea. It looks really decent, and I can see that you have enough experience to realize the idea. Thanks for your commitment to make Arbitrum DAO better.
Our team has had communications in the past around increasing EH’s involvement in both Uniswap and Arbitrum. The general idea around providing “the little guy” with more say in voting decisions is well-founded–but we do have concerns regarding how legitimate this assumption is. Voter apathy often festers when a large group of people have a singular vote. One person begins to believe that their measly single vote will not materially change the direction of a proposal. As a result, that voter ceases voting. A domino effect of apathy leads to lackluster participation, and then we’re back to square one–this is one reason why single-vote NFT models may not be the strongest systems. Equalizing everyone’s voice reduces the marginal incentive to put effort into making informed decisions. This is a phenomenon we could see with EH. The remedy this proposal displays, however, is:
We are very curious to see where the equilibrium point lies. At this point, each voter will likely perceive the cost of voting (which is just effort) to be less than the amount of voting power that they are mobilizing. The more people that vote, the less marginal voting power there is–and vice versa. Since we are also Uniswap stakeholders, seeing the results here will also help inform our decision making on the Uniswap front.
Another concern that we initially had was sybil. The EH team has addressed this well via incorporating the Gitcoin Pass. Generally speaking, the Gitcoin Passport setup isn’t perfect, but we feel that it provides a sufficient enough cost for a sybil attack to be thwarted. We also don’t see the appeal for a large sybil attack on 7M ARB worth of voting power–it’s not large enough in our eyes. The cost to sybil this system simply seems too high to be worth swaying a particular vote.
Part of this proposal is grant funding to deploy on Arbitrum as mainnet gas costs, while deterring Sybil attacks for the moment, are not the ideal state of affairs. And $6 is currently cheap! So yes, we’re excited to deploy on Arbitrum where current gas costs are less than $0.01 (thank you EIP-4844)
I have voted “For” this proposal, as I welcome any (reasonable) attempts to boost governance participation. I think through the discussions above EventHorizaonDAO has shown a willingness to be openminded to feedback and their changes to the initial proposal are appreciated. They also have a history with other projects, so there is some experience here that hopefully smaller delegates who participate in this have a positive experience with it.
Bi-annual reporting including KPIs such as voters, participation rate, voters above key threshold amounts (say $1k worth of ARB), etc. – 5k ARB
A suggestion here, since this is the snapshot phase. I personally think quarterly reports would be better, if not monthly. Maybe a hybrid where the monthly reporting gets out some basic metrics and progress updates, then the bi-annual is more comprehensive. I know this type of thing is balancing act between time / reader apathy, but bi-annual reporting feels a little too infrequent to me. Quarterly is probably the sweet-spot.
The Arbitrum Event Horizon Oversight Committee: A committee of 5 existing, notable delegates will be voted on by the Arbitrum community to be given the ability to guide the Event Horizon voting pool on matters of Arbitrum meta-governance. A simple 3/5 majority would allow this committee to veto the decisions of the voter pool within the 24 hours between the closing of the Event Horizon proposal, and the underlying DAO’s proposal.
Is there a delegate size limit to who can apply for this? I ask because, in theory, if the top 5 delegates by size were on this council they could collude to exert extra influence in any no decision. Not saying anyone would, but something to think about.
Edit: To save space, confirming my opinion has not changed since for the Tally vote. I’lld add, I think the switchover the MSS will be a good addition for this project!
The issue being addressed here is essential; particularly in recent months, as someone progressing towards becoming a more effective delegate with limited voting power, I can attest to the validity of the arguments presented. Moreover, the proposed framework for implementation and the background provided, along with the contingency for ARB return to the treasury in case of unfavorable outcomes, represents sound risk management.
Comments:
I will vote in favor off-chain, yet I have some questions before the move to on-chain voting in Tally, where I will confirm my final decision:
Can participants holding the NFT also be delegates?
Is there a minimum number of participants per proposal planned? If it ends up being just a few NFT holders behind a larger delegate, we might face the same issues as before.
Are there plans to promote this to increase participation? For instance, in the onboarding working group, some members are interested in delegation; this could be an opportunity for them to learn and participate.
Is there a quorum mechanism for abstention if only two NFT holders support a proposal?
Regarding the delegate incentive program participation, given the likelihood of collecting incentives, have you considered how these would be distributed?
I have voted FOR the proposal. I believe it introduces an innovative participation model, allowing small voters to get more involved. As many mentioned, this could expand our prospectives and help us develop and consolidate the ‘3rd pillar of governance’.
The proposal also seems like a safe enough experiment given that:
the oversight committee has a full veto power and can provide solutions to potential issues
the 1-year trial allows us to evaluate the experiment during its implementation period
EventHorizon has already proven success in fostering engagement in the past
regular reports allow us to have insights on participation and voting analysis
Overall, this proposal can enhance the voting process and integrate new methods, and eventually bring benefits to Arbitrum’s governance as a whole.
SEED Latam’s delegation decided to vote FOR this proposal. Even though we’re still not sure how evident the impact of this proposal could be toward improving Arbitrum’s governance, we’re interested in seeing how it plays out. However, given the experimental nature of this proposal, I think we should reduce the total ask to 4-5M ARB and run it for 6 months instead of 1 year.
The below response reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We value the enthusiastic approach Event Horizon has towards governance experimentation with novel approaches. While we’re not entirely sure of the impact such an experiment is going to have, we’ll be voting in favor of the proposal during the temp check because we’re interested in seeing its potential.
We see this whole proposal as an experiment and we want to treat it as such, both in theory and, more importantly, in practice. Instead of just implementing the proposal, letting it run its course, and then coming back to review what was done, we want the DAO to follow along and help Event Horizon iterate where and if needed.
While the people participating in the voter’s block are the ones who decide how the franchiser will vote, the DAO should be in charge of how the experiment is driven forward. To that end, we want to ask Event Horizon to set up a monthly call where they’ll provide a quick update on how the experiment is going and discuss with delegates on how the experiment should proceed.
On another note, as the DAO Advocate for the ARDC, we’ll be assigning the security member of the ARDC to review and assess the possible technical risks associated with implementing the proposal before it moves to an on-chain vote.
Lastly, in a previous comment, we suggested (and 404DAO shared the concern) not having the delegation be optimistically extended past the proposed timeline and instead holding another vote to decide whether to continue or not. While we understand Event Horizon’s hesitation to go through the entire governance process to continue the delegation, we believe it’s important for the DAO to ratify or veto the continuation formally. That’s why we’re declaring already that we’ll put up a snapshot vote at the end of the proposed timeline to ratify the continuation of this program.
I support this, and had the same thought about what would happen at continuation and if it should be automatic or not, and likely the answer to me was no.
We appreciate the support and the willingness to experiment. A few others have asked us for more frequent check ins and we agree. A monthly call is a great idea not only to keep the DAO in the loop, but also to continually iterate and adjust course as we continue building out this voter and contributor onboarding pipeline.
we suggested (and 404DAO shared the concern) not having the delegation be optimistically extended past the proposed timeline and instead holding another vote to decide whether to continue or not
Since receiving that feedback, we’ve agreed to make this non-optimistic. Rereading the proposal, it seems we could have done a better job of making that clearer when we wrote:
this proposal suggests we delegate (not grant) 7,000,000 ARB to a public access-voter block subject to a 1 year renewal
This is ambiguous and in the on-chain vote we will rephrase this as:
this proposal suggests we delegate (not grant) 7,000,000 ARB to a public access-voter block subject to a non-optimistic 1 year renewal**
Finally,
we’ll be assigning the security member of the ARDC to review and assess the possible technical risks associated with implementing the proposal before it moves to an on-chain vote.
This is helpful as we need to fork and audit the Franchiser contract prior to going to the on-chain vote anyways, so we’ll be in touch with respect to this as well given that you are the ARDC rep.
Blockworks Research will be voting FOR this proposal on Snapshot.
We really like the idea of empowering long-tail voters to have a more substantial influence in governance, and this seems to be a great potential avenue for further experimentation. The 50K ARB grant allocation also seems sensible.
Having said the above, we would appreciate clarification to a few questions, as well as prefer to see some additions to the proposal before voting on it on Tally:
To gauge the balance between long-tail voters’ demand to participate in such a program and the amount to be delegated, a more rigorous rationale for the 7M ARB allocation would preferably be included. For example: based on a voting power of $A, accounting for B% of active votes, we’ve historically seen C voters participate, meaning that we’re expecting this delegation to lead to a voter participation of D, implying a voting power of $E per voter. Quickly looking at historical participation through your platform, unless we’re misunderstanding something, it seems that around 10-20 wallets leverage this avenue per vote across protocols. Although the vote power for other projects is considerably lower than the requested allocation here (however, not always on a relative basis), voter activity is still quite low. It would be beneficial to have tangible estimations regarding how much participation you expect and historical data on how voter participation has developed to better understand how we should expect this program to mature.
How were the originally provided milestone KPIs derived (we understand why they were excluded from the proposal)?
In addition to increasing the frequency of reports from bi-annually to quarterly and holding monthly calls, we’d prefer for a publicly available data dashboard to be created, through which the community and committee can follow how activity develops and whether or not the amount of ARB delegated should be increased/decreased.
Could you provide more information on the oversight committee: how will the application process for these positions be structured, what conflict of interest policies will be applied, and is it expected that committee members will receive a salary?
The Princeton Blockchain Club is voting FOR Event Horizon’s metagov pool at the Snapshot stage.
For what it’s worth, we think that the Arbitrum has pretty solid activity and participation compared to a lot of other DAOs of our size. However, we should aim to keep increasing participation/decentralization, and this proposal could be pretty helpful in achieving this.
After looking through this thread, we’re much more comfortable voting for the prop now that the renewal is clearly non-optimistic. Makes it much better as an experiment - we want the DAO to do a final check in a year from now and make sure the broader goals are being met.
Seconding @BlockworksResearch and @cattin though - would like to see a stronger justification for the 7m ARB delegation, or a reduction of the current ask before the final vote
Savvy DAO is voting FOR Event Horizon’s metagov pool.
REASONING:
Democratic Participation Enhancement: The proposal significantly increases the impact of small-scale voters on governance decisions, democratizing the process and ensuring broader representation within the Arbitrum ecosystem. This is achieved through the creation of a free-to-use pool of voting ARB dedicated to retail participants, effectively forming a sub-DAO that empowers retail involvement.
Adaptive Participation Model: Event Horizon’s innovative mechanism adjusts the influence of individual voters based on participation levels—ensuring that when fewer participate, each has a greater impact, and when participation is high, the ecosystem benefits from increased engagement. This adaptive approach fosters active involvement and ensures that governance is both dynamic and responsive to the community’s level of engagement.
Alignment with Core Values: The proposal supports Arbitrum’s mission of inclusivity by lowering barriers to governance participation, facilitating a diverse range of ideas and innovations within the community. It does so by making it easier for new and less financially equipped members to contribute meaningfully to the DAO’s decision-making processes.
These enhancements to the feedback highlight how the Event Horizon proposal not only broadens participation but also introduces a scalable and flexible model to adjust voting power, aligning with both immediate and long-term goals of the Arbitrum ecosystem.
This is a welcome experiment. We do think that 7M would very likely not move the needle in most proposals, however, we would love to see what effect creating this pool will bring and how it might affect future proposals. Hopefully, we begin to see said contributors not only participate by voting across the pool but also communicate their rationales here in Forum.
I voted FOR in this proposal. I very much like the idea of increasing participation within the DAO, in general. I also support ratifying at the end of the period instead of automatically renewing, although it signifies some more DAO work as it has to go through a vote again, since it’s a trial that should be the more conservative approach.
Anti Sybil approach makes sense - before on-chain vote goes live, is it possible that you share more in-depth details about the Gitcoin Passport implementation? For example:
what score would be the minimum Humanity Score required? (reference for people unfamiliar, max score is 100)
from addresses that have already minted the Voter Pass in Ethereum, is there any way to know how many of them will qualify? (Not sure if this is possible, I imagine a Gitcoin “integration” would be required since you have to sign a txn to check your score)
The primary reason being this is a great experiment to run and focuses on decentralizing governance and allowing retail to participate (if they are so inclined). It will give us good insights into how many of the community members will truly take the time to participate in governance activities.
OpenZeppelin, as the Security Member of the ARDC, was asked to review the draft proposal for Event Horizon to assess the security implications of its implementation. We began our investigation following DefiSafety’s documentation checklist and then branched out to track down other questions we had.
Edit: After initial publication, we received additional feedback from the Event Horizon team that we’re going to re-assess before continuing to share the publication.