Should GnosisDAO lower the quorum threshold for required YES GNO to 4%?

GnosisDAO
#1

Currently, the following has to be reached in phase 3 for a proposal to be accepted:

For proposals to be accepted in this final phase, there must be one outcome with a relative majority of GNO used for signaling on the GnosisDAO Snapshot poll accompanied by a quorum of a minimum of 10% of the circulating supply of GNO. If the relative majority of GNO used in signaling on the Snapshot poll indicates the result Make no changes, the proposal will not be accepted and considered closed.

As Martin mentioned in this post (README: GnosisDAO Governance Process) there are different ways to interpret this:

a) at least 10% of GNO is needed to vote and within those, there needs to be more yes than no votes.
b) the yes votes need to reach this quorum AND more yes than no votes.

From the text both interpretations are possible. b) is the better option because otherwise, a no vote could result in the decision being made. Imagine that yes is leading but overall the quorum has not been reached. Now - if you favor “no” it might be the better option to not vote at all.

The issue with b) is that the required quorum of 10% only counted in YES votes (ca. 150k GNO) is very high and difficult to reach. The first snapshot proposal had about 100k GNO used for voting in total.

Instead of the current 10%, the threshold could be lowered to 4% or 5%, as 4% is used in Compound and Uniswap’s governance models.

8 Likes
README: GnosisDAO Governance Process
#2

Having the Compound and Uniswap models as precedents is definitely helpful for this proposal. I would be in favour of reducing the YES GNO threshold to 4%. It also facilitates quicker proposal turnaround times which may well suit us better in the short term as a newly formed DAO.

Since we are working on distributing GNO and increasing its participation, perhaps we could agree to schedule another proposal in the near future to subsequently increase the YES GNO threshold to 5%? Would serve as a worthwhile goal for us, in terms of being in a place where 5% is an easily reachable target for the YES outcome. Of course, we would have to monitor the participation in the next few snapshots first.

1 Like
#3

I think quorums are evil (they had some use when communication was hard, to avoid people from making voting purposely hard).
Not having quorums means that only active people have a voice in the governance process and that the active minority can make decisions without being blocked by the inactive majority.

So this proposal is less radical than complete removal of the quorum but a 4% quorum is definitely better than a 10% one.

Quorums also tend to be harder to reach the more decentralized the distribution is, so a fixed quorum (like 40k GNO) may scale better than one expressed in %.

4 Likes
#4

I agree, as soon as we have more GNO in circulation, which is the goal, the quorum as a % of circulating supply based on our definition might be even harder to reach. GNO might be used in many ways, which would make it part of circulating supply but not eligible for voting (provided in liquidity pools etc.).

I think 40k GNO is still quite low but I would suggest 75k YES GNO (equal to 5% of current circulating supply). The exact number could be discussed in a phase-2 poll.

1 Like
#5

I also see the advantage of having no quorum at all. There will be quite a few proposals, which should be non-controversial but won’t be able to reach quorum because they are not interesting enough for all GNO holders.

The Balancer GNO pools are probably a good example of a proposal, which will probably receive no NO votes but won’t reach quorum because few GNO holders will care: Should GnosisDAO allow to use GNO locked in balancer pools for voting in snapshot proposals?.

None the less I think having no quorum at all is not a good step at this early stage of the DAO but should be considered at some point.

5 Likes
#6

I think it makes sense to have a quorum and I’m for decreasing it. I would still use percentage for now because it stays flexible and we don’t need to monitor the GNO distribution and make another proposal and vote in the near future for this topic.

I’m also for more specific definition of a quorum - either way that is proposed is fine, we just need everyone to understand it same way.

4 Likes
#7

I support this proposal.

2 Likes
#8

GIP-3: Should GnosisDAO lower the quorum threshold for required YES GNO? New GIP is up! Please vote!

1 Like