Thank you for the questions and comments. Please see our categorized responses below:
@paulofonseca note that since this proposal, this ratio has changed to 3% vs 4.5%. The baseline quorums we’ve proposed are in line with this ratio. However, we do not believe that maintaining this ratio is a hard requirement, especially as we now have a few years of voting data to rely upon to help make a more informed decision.
The goal of the report (and hopefully forthcoming proposal) is indeed to make it relatively easier to pass constitutional proposals as it is now reaching a point where it is increasingly difficult to achieve quorum.
In regards to being a governance security concern, we should step back and understand what quorum is trying to achieve. When we think of security, there is normally a trade-off on safety (i.e., what is the final decision that can’t be reversed) and liveness (i.e., minimum number of parties that must be present to make a decision, and inversely, the minimum number of parties that can block a decision by simply not showing up).
Quorum is focused on liveness. Today, as shown in the data, we are just about achieving quorum for constitutional proposals. The inverse is that, it only takes 1-2 top delegates to ignore the proposal for it to fail. That, in its own right, is a governance security concern if 1-2 parties can block entire upgrades.
In a forthcoming proposal, our plan is to provide the DAO with a range of options to vote on, in regards to what the final % of the total delegated voting power should be. It is worth keeping in mind that this proposal is not necessarily a quorum reduction proposal, but to tie the quorum threshold to the total delegated voting power, to ensure it remains a reasonable threshold into the future.
We should not pick configuration values because they’re common in governmental voting, especially as they have differing approaches to tallying the final result. This is why we worked on the report, to look at historical data and hopefully find a configuration that is reasonable. Additionally, if we set it at 66.7%, then it becomes even harder to pass a constitutional proposal compared to today which is exactly what we are trying to avoid.
As noted in our post, 100M ARB is the proposed baseline quorum for non-constitutional proposals. Their quorum is defined as maximum of {100M ARB, α*DVP}, where α is the value the DAO needs to choose.
If we choose an α close to 0.4, the non-constitutional quorum will be very close to what it is right now, meaning no trust assumptions change.
The inverse is that it currently takes 1-2 large delegates to block any upgrades. This is a trade-off the report is exploring, and based on historical voting data, we think the proposed configuration is reasonable. If you are interested in exploring the Nakamoto Coefficient concept more, we’d recommend reading https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity25/presentation/fabrega-entropy that proposes a similar metric for evaluating the decentralization of DAOs.
Note that this proposal is not a quorum reduction proposal. We are reevaluating how quorum should be defined in ArbitrumDAO going forward given existing values of DVP, apathy, as well as learnings over the past two years.
The recommended baseline quorum thresholds are based on historical quorum averages. The average non-constitutional quorum over the last two years is 104M ARB. Our baseline of 100 ARB for non-constitutional proposals is derived from this datapoint.
The average constitutional quorum over the last two years is 176M ARB. However, if we exclude values from 2025, when it was arguably very difficult to achieve constitutional quorum, the average drops to 156M ARB. Our baseline of 150 ARB for constitutional proposals is derived from this datapoint. Kindly refer to this Dune dashboard for more info.
Additionally, one needs to note that the 100M and 150M baselines will only be met if α*DVP is lower than the baseline, and as such it represents the bare minimum.
It is possible for others to receive a delegation, as done in the past like with Event Horizon, but the intention of this proposal is to provide the DAO with a long-term, systematic, and reliable approach.
It is worth highlighting that the Arbitrum Foundation is prohibited from voting on any proposal, so the AF is unable to receive delegation from the DAO treasury and vote ‘abstain’ to help achieve quorum. A better solution is to first re-design how quorum is computed, set reasonable configurations, and adjust further if needed.
Thanks everyone for all the questions and comments so far! We’ll be hosting an open discussion call on Monday, Sept. 29th at 2:30pm UTC to discuss this report further. All comments and suggestions from the community are welcome, as this is an important discussion.