Cross-posting our opinion on DVP here as well for visibility:
Cross-posting for visibility:
Thanks all for the comments!
I’ll move the discussion here; to enable everyone to continue discussing the merits of upgrading the governance smart contracts and the DVP-Quorum proposal.
The first thing to mention is that changing how Quorum is computed and working on increasing active voting power / increased delegation is not mutually exclusive. They are complementary, certainly if the quorum threshold seeks to remain relevant into the long term. We should focus on increasing delegation by tokenholders as well.
@castlecapital: Firstly, it does not recognise the growing issue of voter apathy or seek to address the stagnation in the DAO’s delegated voting power - something we know there is a clear need for and should focus on before discussing altering quorum calculations. We have seen informal delegation events happen in the past, and encourage the DAO, the Foundation and OCL to do more in this regard.
One of the surprising results of the report, as seen in Figure 4, is that voter apathy has actually gone down over time. Still, we need to make sure apathy of voting power continues to be reduced while increasing total delegated tokens beyond what it is currently.
@castlecapital: Secondly, the proposed solution is entirely novel and untested, and therefore likely has not had various edge cases hypothesised and tested for attack surfaces.
The motivation for this report, alongside the vote to continue working on it, is to allow the DAO to decide whether we should focus on building it out, but also to continue evaluating the mechanism alongside any issues that arise. The vote should not be considered an end-state where there is no longer any evaluation on its security or the wider implications.
@krst: This process would be inherently costly - it requires not only smart contract development, but also thorough audits and updates to all tooling that currently relies on existing calculations, such as Tally, Proposals.app, and various dashboards displaying these values. We recall a similar situation in Optimism almost two years ago, where governance contract upgrades resulted in numerous governance tools breaking across the ecosystem.
There is currently a getter function for fetching quorum by block number. So, assuming partners are using the getter function, then they should not have an issue if DVP-Quorum is implemented. I do agree though, we should work with partners to make sure there are not any unexpected implications if the smart contracts are upgraded and of course make sure they are resolved before any on-chain vote or upgrade.
@krst: We are not suggesting that upgrades should never be made, but they should not be undertaken lightly. If we proceed with one, we should consider what other features could be included in such an upgrade. From the top of our minds, examples include partial delegation and private voting or flexible voting—both of which were identified as missing features necessary for the proper implementation of staking mechanisms.
I (personally) do not have a strong opinion on flexible voting or partial voting.
Private voting, on the other hand, is exceedingly difficult to achieve. The first problem is that private voting impacts autonomy as it either relies on an external tallying authority who can halt the vote or it implement a proof-of-work scheme (time puzzles) that is computationally expensive. It is possible to implement self-tallying with voter privacy, but it does not scale beyond a small set of parties (<10). The bigger problem, which I’ve only recently discovered, is that even if you do implement private voting, where the ballots are secret but the final tally is published, the unique characteristics of weighted voting allows an adversary to still break voter privacy and link votes to voters.
With all that in mind, I’d advise against private voting anytime soon, especially if we want to maintain true on-chain autonomy. The scale of problems that arise far outstrip anything we see with DVP-Quorum, it is just a totally different ball game.
@krst: Finally, we believe that alternative mechanisms should be explored before adopting a complete redesign. For example, the Auto-Abstaining Wallet model, implemented by Scroll DAO, presents an interesting approach. It mitigates quorum issues without requiring fundamental contract upgrades, thereby limiting the impact on external systems and reducing additional security risks. Arbitrum could benefit from a more thorough analysis of this model before committing to an approach as impactful as DVP Quorum.
This suggestion has popped up a few times during the discussion.
It is effectively the same as lowering quorum by a fixed amount, where the abstainer can decide whether it should be lowered or not. This can be done even as a short-term solution, but it is also acknowledging that Quorum is too high and it should be lowered under certain conditions. This introduces further considerations for the abstainer’s role down the line. For example, the abstainer might lower quorum if there is strong agreement on the ‘FOR’ side, but not if the abstainer perceives the vote as a hostile takeover.
I’m aware there are mixed opinions in the DAO about taking ARB from the treasury for the purpose of voting. My preference is to find a viable solution to computing quorum, so it isn’t required.
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Any update on this? do we still need it? are we gonna proceed with it or not?
Yes, we’ll be posting an update soon.
Comparing Quorum Requirements across DAOs
We take this opportunity to explore how quorum is set across different DAOs in the Ethereum ecosystem including quorum requirements, how votes are counted, and different approval (or veto) mechanisms. The goal is to identify whether the new configuration proposed with ArbitrumDAO’s DVP-Quorum proposal is reasonable compared to industry standards.
If you want to learn more about how DVP-Quorum works, then please check research report 1.
Understanding Quorum
Nearly all DAOs implement a weighted voting system with the following mechanics:
- Snapshot of voting power prior to the vote going live,
- Fixed time period for voters to cast their vote,
- Voters can have one or more votes.
Quorum defines the minimum number of votes that must be cast before an outcome of a vote is considered valid and actionable. We need to consider how votes are counted, what is the total voting supply used to compute quorum, and additional approval requirements.
Counting method. This is simply how votes are counted for the quorum requirement. In approval voting, only ‘FOR’ votes are counted. It is common for DAOs to count both ‘FOR’ and ‘ABSTAIN’ votes to allow ‘REJECT’ votes to be cast without fear it will accidentally push a vote above quorum and ultimately lead to its acceptance. Finally, some DAOs include all votes, including FOR, ABSTAIN or REJECT.
Total votes. Quorum is often set as a percentage of the total supply of votes. For example, if there are 100 votes available, then quorum may dictate that at least 20 votes (20% of all votes) must be cast. However, how to define the total voting supply, can be different across DAOs:
- Total token supply,
- Total tokens registered to participate in the voting system (DVP-Quorum),
- Total tokens except tokens that are explicitly excluded by its owner from voting (voteable token concept in ArbitrumDAO).
Approval requirements. A vote may require additional requirements beyond quorum to be satisfied for the vote to be considered valid or actionable. It may require more FOR than against votes, a supermajority of FOR votes or a supervisory council who retains veto rights to ratify the vote. Additionally, some DAOs may skew how Quorum is computed depending on the voting participation and whether the final tally is close.
Quorum Requirements Across DAOs
Table 1.
| DAO | Total supply | Delegated Voting Power (DVP) | Quorum | % of DVP | % of total supply | Quorum in USD** | Turnout |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ArbitrumDAO (Non-constitutional) | 10bn | 358m | 145m (up to 300m) | 40% | 1.45% | $25.7m ($0.17 / ARB) | 168m – 225m |
| ArbitrumDAO (Constitutional) | 10bn | 358m | 217m (up to 450m) | 60% | 2.17% | $38.5m ($0.17 / ARB) | 213m – 263m |
| AAVE (Short executor) | 16m | N/A | 320k | N/A | 2% | $56m ($175.32 / AAVE) | 581k – 936k |
| AAVE (Long executor) | 16m | N/A | 1.04m | N/A | 6.25% | $182m ($175.32 / AAVE) | 1.07m – 3.2m |
| Uniswap | 1bn | 226m | 40m | 17.7% | 4% | $201.6m ($5.04 / UNI) | 23m – 52m |
| Optimism | 5bn | 83.54m | 25.6m | 30% | 0.5% | $6.7m ($0.26 / OP) | 46m – 62m |
| ENS | 100m | 3.98m | 1m | 25% | 1% | $9.2m ($9.2 / ENS) | 1.32m – 1.61m |
| Lido | 1bn | N/A | 50m | N/A | 5% | $26m ($0.52 / LDO) | 50.94m – 55.42m |
Table 1 presents a list of DAOs alongside quorum requirements and turnout activity:
- Total Supply. The total supply of tokens including non-circulating tokens.
- Delegated Voting Power (DVP). DAOs that require voters to register their tokens for use in the voting system. If delegation is not an option for a DAO, then we mark it as N/A.
- Quorum. Minimum number of votes before a vote is considered valid and actionable.
- Percentage of DVP. If the DAO requires voters to register for the voting system through delegation, then we can compute quorum as a percentage of the total registered tokens.
- Percentage of total supply. All DAOs have a total token supply and we compute the quorum requirements as a percentage of the total supply.
- Quorum in USD. We measure the quorum requirements in USD terms as tokens can be purchased on the open-market and this represents the minimum USD that must be spent in order for an adversary to pass a proposal assuming all other voters are inactive.
- Turnout. We present the range of voter turnout based on the past 5 proposals in the respective DAO. Note, for AAVE Long Executor, there are only four proposals available over the course of 3 years.
Throughout this report, we are only focused on approval voting systems, in which the delegates must vote in favour of a proposal for it to be valid and actionable. Some DAOs implement optimistic voting systems or two-tier voting systems, where voters need to actively veto a decision otherwise it will pass, but this is outside the scope of our discussion.
Every DAO has its own nuances on computing quorum and how the voting system works. We will go through each DAO individually to explain how the results in the table were derived.
ArbitrumDAO. Arbitrum implements a variant of OpenZeppelin’s Governor. All voters must delegate their tokens before they can vote. Quorum is set as a fixed percentage of the total supply of votable tokens*. It is set at 3% (up to 300m/10bn) for non-constitutional proposals and 4.5% (up to 450m/10bn) for constitutional proposals. In practice, the current quorum values are 1.4% (145m) and 2.1% (217m). It counts FOR and ABSTAIN votes towards quorum.
AAVE. AAVE implements its own governance system that works on Ethereum alongside Avalanche and Polygon to facilitate cheaper fees for votes. All tokens are eligible to be used in the voting system without any explicit registration. Only FOR votes are counted towards quorum. There are two quorum thresholds set at 2% of token supply (320,000 tokens) for the short executor and 6.5% of token supply (1,040,000 tokens) for the long executor. There is an additional quorum feature using a minimal differential that effectively raises quorum requirements if the final tally is close and FOR is not winning by a significant margin.
Uniswap. Uniswap implements a variant of Compound’s Governor and votes are cast on Ethereum mainnet. It supports delegation and sets a fixed threshold of 40m UNI tokens as quorum which is 4% of the total token supply. Only FOR votes are counted towards quorum. Interestingly at the time of gathering data, 1 out of the past 5 proposals failed to reach quorum. It has no additional approval mechanisms beyond tokenholder voting.
Optimism. Optimism implements a variant of OpenZeppelin’s Governor and votes must be cast on OP Mainnet. It supports delegation. It has supermajority approval voting requiring 76% FOR votes and normal votes with 51% FOR votes. In both cases, quorum is set to 30% of total delegated tokens – essentially like the DVP-quorum proposal except the total DVP is updated via a trusted multisig. There are 83.54M OP tokens delegated with quorum set at approximately ~25.6M OP tokens. All voting options count towards quorum including FOR, ABSTAIN, and REJECT. It also implements different types of veto depending on the proposal.
ENS. ENS implements a variant of OpenZeppelin’s Governor and votes are cast on Ethereum mainnet. It supports delegation. Quorum is set at 1% (1m/100m) of the total token supply alongside a minimum requirement of 50% FOR votes for executable proposals and ⅔ FOR votes for constitutional amendments. Approximately 3.98 million ENS tokens are delegated. It counts FOR or ABSTAIN votes towards quorum.
Lido. Lido implements its own governance smart contracts and votes are cast on Ethereum. It supports delegation. Quorum is set at 5% (5m / 1bn) of the total token supply and only considers FOR votes when counting the votes. Total delegated voting power is difficult to compute as users are not required to delegate their tokens before casting their vote.
*A voteable token is any token that is not explicitly excluded from voting. The previous report explains the concept in more detail, but we will skip it for the purpose of our discussion. Its main impact is that quorum is computed based on all tokens except excluded tokens.
*Quorum in USD, the dollar value of token multiplied by quorum. All token prices were taken from CoinGecko on December 19, 2025.
Discussion
DVP-Quorum proposal seeks to change how quorum is computed. It will set quorum as a fixed percentage relative to the total delegated voting power. In practice, the recommended configuration will reduce quorum requirements:
- Constitutional proposals. 217m to 179m votes with a baseline of 150m votes, assuming 50% of DVP.
- Non-constitutional proposals. 145m to 143.2m votes with a baseline of 100m votes, assuming 40% of DVP.
The reduction for non-constitutional proposals is not consequential as it is only reduced by less than 2 million votes. We focus primarily on constitutional proposals as this has the greatest reduction of 38m votes.
DVP-Quorum used in Optimism. Optimism implements a similar concept to DVP-Quorum since at least 2022. The implementation trusts the Optimism Foundation as an oracle to set the value of DVP that is then used to compute quorum. The governance framework also includes a range of safety features that includes veto rights for different parties depending on the proposal type, whereas in Arbitrum the only party with veto rights is the Security Council. Nevertheless, this provides evidence that the concept of DVP-Quorum is not strictly novel or experimental, as it has been used for at least 3 years in another ecosystem. Although the Arbitrum implementation DVP is computed on-chain as opposed to trusting an oracle does appear to be a first.
ArbitrumDAO’s high quorum requirements. If we only focus on quorum as a percentage of DVP, then the current value for constitutional proposals in the ArbitrumDAO is significantly higher than other ecosystems. In the ArbitrumDAO, it is effectively set at 60% and this is double the next highest quorum which is Optimism at 30%. The reduction sought in the DVP-Quorum proposal, 50% of DVP, will still be significantly higher than other ecosystems.
Only ArbitrumDAO’s requires explicit exclusion. ArbitrumDAO’s governance smart contracts implements a concept called a voteable token. All tokens are considered ‘voteable’ unless the owner explicitly excludes the tokens from voting. Ironically, even if a token is ‘voteable’, it cannot be used for voting unless the token holder delegates their tokens. Quorum is computed as a percentage of the total supply of ‘voteable’ tokens. As unlocks occur every month, we are witnessing ‘excluded’ tokens re-enter circulation and thus increase quorum in the voting system, even though the tokens cannot be used for voting. DVP-quorum removes this concept of a voteable token altogether.
Quorum in USD terms is modest. It is important to evaluate quorum in USD terms as this represents the minimum USD required to buy tokens in the open market and pass a proposal in the DAO. Keep in mind, in order for an adversary to attack the governance system, they need to overtake the set of active voters and not just the minimum quorum requirements. ArbitrumDAO’s constitutional and non-constitutional quorums are in the same range of Lido, greater than Optimism and ENS, but less than AAVE and Uniswap. This will remain the same even with the changes proposed by DVP-Quorum. Readers should keep in mind that nearly all governance tokens have had a price impact this year and this measurement is very time-dependent and volatile.
Approval requirements differ. In the ArbitrumDAO, as long as a proposal passes via the on-chain voting system, then the only obstacle is for the Security Council to veto it. Other DAOs have implemented various safeguards beyond strict tokenholder voting. For example, Optimism enables veto-rights depending on different proposal types, Lido allows holders of staked ETH to halt governance decisions to provide time to negotiate or simply exit the system, Aave has a minimal differential that raises quorum requirements if the vote is contested with a significant quantity of AGAINST votes. ENS has implemented a 2-year security council to cancel malicious proposals. Only Uniswap has not implemented any additional safety mechanisms beyond tokenholder voting.
Turnout. Interestingly, ArbitrumDAO’s constitutional proposals and Lido proposals are often very close to quorum. In fact, if we look beyond the latest 5 proposals for Lido, there are several proposals that simply fail to meet quorum. The turnout for other DAOs, like Optimism and AAVE, enjoy a multiplier where turnout is often 2-3 times above the quorum requirement. We did not examine the distribution of voting power within each ecosystem and therefore cannot assess whether voting power is truly distributed among delegates or if there are a few large holders who can dictate if quorum is reached.
Quorum compared to shareholding voting. We took time to evaluate the quorum requirements for some of the most valuable public companies in the world. We found that Apple, Meta, Amazon, Tesla, and Netflix, all have 50% quorum requirements of all outstanding shares which is equivalent to the total token supply for DAOs.
For example, in Tesla’s most recent shareholder vote:
- ~3.2bn shares of common stock were outstanding,
- ~1.6bn requirement for quorum,
- ~2.7bn shares voted including FOR/AGAINST/ABSTAIN and Broker Non-votes.
DAO voting, relative to shareholder voting, still has significantly less quorum requirements and voting participation by an order of magnitude. Of course, the type of control exercised by a DAO is vastly different to shareholder voting, it is still a system that relies on weighted voting. The main point is that DVP-Quorum will not change the calculus in regards to quorum compared to shareholder voting, but if participation does significantly increase, then DVP-Quorum may enable the ArbitrumDAO to eventually reach similar quorum requirements.
Key takeaways
We performed a short survey of DAOs within the Ethereum ecosystem to compare quorum requirements, which votes count towards quorum, and identify any additional approval or veto mechanisms.
The key findings are:
- ArbitrumDAO is an outlier when quorum is measured as a percentage of delegated voting power, with a threshold more than twice that of Optimism. Additionally, the turnout for ArbitrumDAO’s constitutional proposals and Lido is often very close to the quorum requirement.
- In USD terms, ArbitrumDAO sits in the middle. It is higher than Lido, ENS, and Optimism, but lower than Aave and Uniswap. DVP-Quorum does not materially change this comparison.
- DVP-Quorum used in the wild, Optimism has adopted it since at least 2022, albeit relying on a trusted multi-sig to set total delegated voting power, but indicates the concept is already used in practice .
- DAOs implement additional approval requirements. ArbitrumDAO can rely on the Security Council, but other approaches may be worth exploring.
Overall, DVP-Quorum does not materially alter ArbitrumDAO’s position relative to other ecosystems. In fact, it may be useful to other DAOs like Lido, who are also facing challenges with quorum. Finally, ArbitrumDAO still has room to improve participation of overall voting weight as witnessed in Aave and Uniswap.
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the type of research that is needed is not if this type of quorum exists in other DAOs or not.
spoiler alert: it doesn’t exist in any other DAO that has equivalent onchain control like Arbitrum DAO has.
the comparison with Optimism is completely irrelevant since the tokenholders in Optimism don’t directly control anything.
the type of research that is needed is what type of governance attacks does this type of quorum enable that weren’t possible before (and how can we prevent them if possible), especially since the $ARB token price has hit the lowest it has ever been, a couple of days ago…
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Thanks for the detailed comparison of the other DAOs. I’ve got a few thoughts on the shift in incentives and the practical reality of these “attack costs.”
1. Passive Veto and the Urgency Around Delegation
My main concern is that moving to DVP-Quorum takes away the urgency to build up our delegate supply. Under the current system, undelegated tokens work as a “passive veto” ; they inflate the supply and push us to actively campaign for delegation in order to get over the threshold. If we switch over to DVP, that pressure valve disappears; if delegation drops off, the quorum bar just drops down with it.
While this fixes the “liveness” problem, it might work against our long-term goal of boosting participation. With the current initiatives in place to reward delegates, it seems like a no-brainer to focus on adding extra voting power to the delegates we already have and are paying them rather than just lowering the bar across the board.
2. Theoretical vs. Practical Attack Costs
When it comes to the “Quorum in USD” table: I think we need to be careful with these metrics. In practice, attacking the DAO is way harder than what the math suggests.
- Slippage: You can’t just buy 145M+ ARB at the current spot price. The liquidity isn’t there for that. Trying to buy up that amount would send the price through the roof, making the actual cost way higher.
- Borrowing Limits: Even the “renting” attack vector (borrowing votes through DeFi) has real ceilings in terms of liquidity. So, while the theoretical security margin might look lower under DVP, the practical barrier to entry stays quite high because of market depth.
3. Stress Testing
One edge case worth talking through is a high-volatility event. How does DVP-Quorum behave during a “capitulation” where the price tanks significantly and we potentially see delegates rage-quit (arb holders selling)?
- Liveness: Does the quorum adjust downward fast enough to let the DAO react to the crisis?
- Security: Or does it open up a window where the cost of an attack becomes dangerously low (because of the lower DVP base) before the system stabilizes?
4. Abstain Backstop like Scroll
Instead of just structurally lowering the quorum, we could have a wallet controlled by the OpCo that is strictly required to vote ABSTAIN only on proposals that are clearly well-intentioned/non-controversial but struggling to hit the threshold.
This could bridge the gap for liveness without permanently tying the quorum mechanics to a fluctuating DVP.
Hi everyone, just to formally mention this on this thread, as mentioned on the governance call, the proposal cancellation changes have been bundled with the DVP changes on the constitutional onchain AIP that is on Tally at the moment.