Proposal: Update Security Council Election Start Date to Ensure Time for Security Audit

Proposals
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Proposal: Update Security Council Election Start Date to Ensure Time for Security Audit

Category: Constitutional - Process

High Level Overview

The ArbitrumDAO Constitution specifies that the first Security Council election should start on the 15th September alongside a specification for the election.

An on-chain implementation of the entire election is still a work in progress. The Arbitrum Foundation has sponsored the implementation of a smart contract suite by Offchain Labs, an extension of Tally’s user interface, and the respective audits.

This proposal seeks to revise the ArbitrumDAO Constitution to provide flexibility for the start date of the election. If passed by a Constitutional Vote, the new start date will be on the 15th September or the earliest possible date in which an on-chain election can begin.

The motivation to change the election’s start date is to provide time for the implementation to be completed, security audits to be performed, for the community to gain confidence in the quality of its implementation and for the Arbitrum DAO to vote on a separate Constitutional AIP to install an on-chain election system.

The overarching goal is to still allow the election to begin on the 15th September, but it is prudent to provide leeway and ensure all parties, especially the Arbitrum DAO, are confident in the election software’s security and completeness.

Path to a Smart Contract Enabled Election

This proposal seeks approval from the Arbitrum DAO that the first and all subsequent security elections should be performed via the on-chain election process.

The activation of the Security Council election is dependent on:

  • Complete implementation for the on-chain smart contracts,
  • Complete implementation of the user interface,
  • Smart contract audit by a highly regarded auditing firm,
  • All parties, including the Arbitrum DAO, have gained confidence in the implementation’s completeness and security,
  • Successful Constitutional Vote by the DAO to install the new election software.

A vote on this proposal is approving that the above conditions are mandatory for any election software before it can be installed into the on-chain smart contracts.

Modified Start Date for Election

The implementation sponsored by the Arbitrum Foundation should be ready for the start date of the 15th September.

Even so, given the naunces of implementation details and the potential security risks to a critical part of the system, we believe it is still prudent to provide leeway and extra time for the Security Council elections to begin some time after the required date set out by The Arbitrum Foundation.

After all, it is not just about having a complete implementation, but ensuring all parties have confidence that all efforts have made been to minimize the risk of bugs in the implementation.

Revision to ArbitrumDAO Constitution

The revised text focuses on the election beginning at the earliest possible date from the 15th September. Additionally, the election can only begin once an on-chain election system is installed via a separate Constitutional Vote.

All future elections can begin exactly six months after the previous election. As such, the chosen date for the first election will decide the earliest start date for the next election.

For extra clarity in the text, we have renamed “September Cohort” to “First Cohort” and “March Cohort” to “Second Cohort”

Finally, to remove any ambiguity, all security council members are expected to serve the time until the new Security Council members are installed in the respective smart contracts.

Current text of ArbitrumDAO Constitution:

The Security Council has 12 members, who are divided into a September Cohort of 6 members, and a March Cohort of 6 members. Every year on September 15, 12:00 UTC, an election starts for the 6 September Cohort seats; and every year on March 15, 12:00 UTC, an election starts for the 6 March Cohort seats.

This means that the initial September Cohort will serve an initial term of 6 months, whereas the initial March Cohort will serve an initial term of 1 year.

The initial Security Council Cohorts were determined by randomly splitting the 12 members into two 6-member cohorts - 6 members in the September Cohort and 6 members in the March Cohort. The members of the initial Security Council Cohorts are detailed in a transparency report here.

Proposed Revision of Arbitrum Constitution:

The Security Council has 12 members, who are divided into two Cohorts of 6 members.

The initial Security Council Cohorts were determined by randomly splitting the 12 members into two 6-member cohorts - 6 members in the ‘First Cohort’ and 6 members in the ‘Second Cohort’. The members of the initial Security Council Cohorts are detailed in a transparency report here.

The first security election is scheduled to begin on the 15th September 2023 or the earliest possible date. The election can only begin upon the availability of an on-chain election process that was approved and installed by the Arbitrum DAO. This first election replaces the ‘First Cohort’.

The date chosen for the first election will form the basis for all future elections. Every election will begin exactly 6 months after the previous election has finished and it will replace its respective cohort of 6 members.

All Security Council members are expected to serve their term until the election is complete and the new Security Council members are installed.

15 Likes
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Sounds good. Ok we wait for 15th September.

1 Like
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Sounds good. Ok we wait for 15th September.

1 Like
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Sounds good.
Sounds good.

6

Sounds good. very good

7

That’s good.

Will the members get to contest election for the next term?
If so, then what can be the maximum term a member can have?

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The below response reflects the views of L2Beat’s governance team, composed of @kaereste and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking and ideation of the two.

We’ll be voting in favor of this proposal as it’s imperative that the implementation, and security audits are completed. We are understanding of the time required to execute such actions, of the fact that complications can and often do arise, and that extensive checks are required to ensure airtight implementation.

However, we also feel we’re responsible for addressing some issues that we found with the proposed amendments. We believe that the following should be addressed.

Timeline

The Constitution had 15th of September as a fixed date for the start of the elections for the Security Council, while the proposed amendment is to start the elections on 15th of September, or the earliest possible date after September 15th.

We believe that “the earliest possible date” is too vague, and although we do understand the need to be flexible, we’re curious to know what is a reasonably expected timeline for the completion of security audit and implementation of the contracts?

We’d like the Foundation to provide the DAO with regular status updates on the progress of the implementation so that we can be sure we’re on track and the process isn’t going to take an unreasonable amount of time to be completed.

Future Election Start Date

The proposed revisioned text states that:

Every election will begin exactly 6 months after the previous election has finished and it will replace its respective cohort of 6 members

Since the election process will take 55 days from election to implementation (as outlined in the proposed implementation spec), we think the start of future elections should be 6 months after the previous election has started. In that way, the elections will be finished and the new cohort will be ready to be installed just as the term of the running cohort has finished.

Therefore, this is the proposed revised text:

Every election will begin exactly 6 months after the previous election has started and it will replace its respective cohort of 6 members.

We’d appreciate the input on the above points from the Foundation, and we urge other delegates to also raise any concerns, should they believe something requires further clarification.

EDIT: Due to the technical issue on our side we cannot cast a vote for the snapshot temperature check. This issue will be resolved in a few days though and we will be voting in the on-chain vote.

6 Likes
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We’d like the Foundation to provide the DAO with regular status updates on the progress of the implementation so that we can be sure we’re on track and the process isn’t going to take an unreasonable amount of time to be completed.

We can commit to an update every 2 weeks on the progress of the election software implementation. All updates will be posted on this forum thread. Our first update will be the 14th August 2023 and every 14 days after that.

Every election will begin exactly 6 months after the previous election has started and it will replace its respective cohort of 6 members.

We are happy with this revision. We will remove the word ‘exactly’ such that it is:

Every election should begin 6 months after the previous election has started and it will replace its respective cohort of 6 members.

To provide some context about the current implementation. It will set all future election dates upon the activation of the first election.

So if the election begins on the 15th September 2023, then all future elections dates are already decided:

  • 15th March 2024
  • 15th September 2024,
  • 15th March 2025.

Anyone will be able to send a transaction on that date to kick-start the election process. As long as people activate the election on time, then we should be able to stick to the 6 month cycles for elections.

We will also add an additional line:

This first election replaces the ‘First Cohort’. The next election replaces the ‘Second Cohort’ and so forth.

So the full text will be:

The Security Council has 12 members, who are divided into two Cohorts of 6 members.

The initial Security Council Cohorts were determined by randomly splitting the 12 members into two 6-member cohorts - 6 members in the ‘First Cohort’ and 6 members in the ‘Second Cohort’. The members of the initial Security Council Cohorts are detailed in a transparency report here.

The first security election is scheduled to begin on the 15th September 2023 or the earliest possible date. The election can only begin upon the availability of an on-chain election process that was approved and installed by the Arbitrum DAO. This first election replaces the ‘First Cohort’. The next election replaces the ‘Second Cohort’ and so forth.

The date chosen for the first election will form the basis for all future elections. Every election should begin 6 months after the previous election has started and it will replace its respective cohort of 6 members.

All Security Council members are expected to serve their term until the election is complete and the new Security Council members are installed.

2 Likes
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The proposal is now live on-chain including the revisions made above.

1 Like
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The below response reflects the views of L2Beat’s governance team, composed of @kaereste and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking and ideation of the two.

Since the amendments addressing our original comment have been made, we’ll be voting FOR the proposal.

11 Likes
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The proposal has passed Quorum and the voting will complete in ~8 hours.

The implementation of the Security Council elections is ready to be voted for via the on-chain governance smart contracts:

Closing this thread