Lower governance quorum to 8%

Proposals
1

Summary:

The purpose of this proposal is to lower the quorum required to pass proposals on the Zilliqa governance platform to 8% of the circulating supply of gZIL, ensuring continued and healthy development of the protocol and ecosystem.

Due to the wide distribution of gZIL and a lack of engagement from many gZIL holders in the governance process, it has become extremely challenging to reach the quorum needed to continue passing proposals on the Zilliqa governance portal despite the majority support signalled from active participants.

This change is proposed to ensure that important proposals can continue to be implemented upon achieving the consensus of active gZIL holders participating in the governance process and mitigate against the prospect of stagnation for the ZIlliqa ecosystem.

Lowering the quorum will boost the efficiency, activity, and engagement of Zilliqa’s decentralised governance system, and those engaged in this governance process will be empowered to effect proposals that have been discussed and achieved majority support from active gZIL holders.

This forum post outlines the details of this proposed quorum reduction and will serve as a discussion phase ahead of the posting of the proposal on Snapshot.

Abstract:

Zilliqa Improvement Proposal (ZIP) 12 requires all proposals to be discussed for at least 3 days on this forum and include a poll before they will be assigned a ZIP number and moved to Snapshot voting. gZIL holders and Zilliqa community members are invited to discuss the proposed quorum requirement, contribute to this post, and vote on the poll below.

The proposed change comes with two options - to reduce the quorum or leave it unchanged. If after at least three days there is a 25% “For” vote in the forum poll, this proposal may then move to formal voting via Snapshot under the ZIP guidelines.

Poll options:

  • In favour: New quorum for passing proposals on Snapshot changes to 8%. Existing proposal to set minimum SSN commission fees at 4% will be passed.
  • Against: No change (quorum remains at 20%)

The formal vote on this proposal will be open for one week. If the vote is passed, the recent vote on minimum SSN commission fees will also be passed due to majority support and compliance with the new quorum requirement.

As a special exception, and due to the challenge this proposal aims to address, it may be that quorum is not reached during formal voting despite a majority voting in favour of the proposal. In this case, the proposal will be passed to ensure that active gZIL holders are empowered to pass future proposals.

Motivation:

There are a number of motivations for reducing the quorum required to pass proposals to 8% of circulating supply. gZIL holdings are highly atomised, which has led to reduced engagement in the governance process and made it more difficult for those actively participating in the decentralised governance of Zilliqa to affect improvements to the protocol, network, and ecosystem.

Proposals that address important aspects of the Zilliqa network have stalled due to not reaching quorum despite majority support from active gZIL holders. The recent proposal to set the minimum commission fee of 4% for SSNs received a majority vote in favour under formal voting, but only 56% of the required quorum was reached, leaving it unable to pass.

It is important to the Zilliqa ecosystem that these types of proposals are able to pass or fail under the decentralised governance system, ensuring that protocol and network changes continue to be governed by active gZIL holders. By reducing the quorum required to pass formal votes on proposals, decentralised governance can continue healthily and unhindered by inactive users.

Specification:

Once the forum post gathers enough support, the proposal will then be implemented for voting via Snapshot. Formal voting on Snapshot will remain live for seven days.

If this proposal passes under formal voting, the quorum requirements for all future votes on Snapshot will be set to 8% of the circulating supply of gZIL. This does not alter the voting power of gZIL holders but does ensure it is easier for them to pass or reject proposals affecting the Zilliqa network.

The adjustment of the quorum requirements for passing proposals on Snapshot is a healthy mechanism for decentralised governance and can be compared to the adjustment of block difficulty on a proof-of-work blockchain. As total hash rate on the network increases or decreases, the difficulty to mine a block rises or falls in line with this to ensure maximum efficiency and security.

If passed, the quorum of 8% is not immutable and can be revised appropriately in future under the decentralised governance process to accommodate levels of engagement from gZIL holders.

Poll:

  • In favour: New quorum for passing proposals on Snapshot changes to 8%. Existing proposal to set minimum SSN commission fees at 4% will be passed.
  • Against: No change (quorum remains at 20%)

0 voters

3 Likes
2

Hi there,

Could also be added that 20% of the staking pool will be used for staking with gzil? Then gzil needs to be added to the staking pool.

Kind regards

2 Likes
3

Hi! Milan from Ignite DAO here. As many of you know I agree with this proposal. The quorum is set very high and I think 8% would be a good target to get enough voters to participate:)

6 Likes
4

If the Zilliqa team and community are genuine about their commitment to protocol governance then they will hopefully agree that artificially lowering the quorum as voter engagement drops is not the right solution to the problem - I think the governance framework itself requires a radical update and should borrow from better-participated DAO/governance structures.

A potential solution:

gZIL holders become delegators and delegate their stake to validators based on alignment of shared values and other incentives. These validators could be existing SSNs (e.g. it could become mandatory for SSNs to provide this service) or new, governance oriented entities.

By default, the validators vote on behalf of their delegators and get slashed for not participating in votes (along with all those delegating their gZIL to that validator).

This would ensure quorum is always met, and would encourage delegators to pay attention to how their chosen validators are voting.

Validators could come up with their own means of polling their delegators for controversial proposals e.g. discord/telegram groups/governance portal.

If a delegator disagrees with how their chosen validator is going to vote, they can either transfer their stake to another validator or vote directly themselves. But slashing applies to individual voters too - if you don’t participate, you get slashed.

Slashed gZIL is burned, reducing the total supply. And the supply will gradually shift from inactive holders to active holders.

Crucially, to properly incentivise the responsibility of actively participating in the governance process and compensate delegators for the risk of being slashed, gZIL stakers receive a higher proportion of the staking block rewards, based on how much gZIL they hold; like a sort of multiplier.

This way, if you hold gZIL, you get properly incentivised and rewarded for participating in governance. It also ensures more of the staking rewards are going to the more active/committed/long-term holders.

Governance participation :chart_with_upwards_trend:
gZIL usage :chart_with_upwards_trend:
gZIL price :chart_with_upwards_trend:
gZIL supply :chart_with_downwards_trend:

6 Likes
5

I agree with majority of what you said. The only thing i would add is that there is no need to reduce supply of Gzil.
It’s already scarce.
Just proper usecase.

2 Likes
6

I like the suggestions above but I think (1) they need to have their own vote or proposal and (2) it needs to be feasible and discussed with the core team, because they will have to spend time, money and resources to implement things. The latter is important because you can have vote go through but if its not possible to implement then you’ll get stuck.

1 Like
7

I agree with the quorum changes, we all have our chance to vote and it is up to us to be active stewards.

However, I do not like the idea of one vote settling two separate issues. Even knowing that the prior proposal proportionally passed I am discomforted by attaching both issues to a single vote. Two separate proposals in sequence, I see nothing wrong with that.

For that sole reason, I will be voting no.

1 Like
8

@will_speaks, the team is spending time really thinking through the “gzil” strategy, as clearly there are challenges with it. Thanks for sharing your thoughts we will add this content to the discussion.

1 Like
9

Slashing/burning is a bad idea as you will be burning someones wealth. What if a person took a break from crypto due to family issues, etc?

I think more appropriate mechanism would be innactive gzils to be counted out of the quorum and only will be counted back into quorum when person starts voting.

2 Likes
10

Totally agree with you. As a normal gZil holder and being a minority, i may not want to be involved in all these votes or have other issues to take care of that i miss some votes. but I will get penalized to do so just being a holder? Doesn’t make sense.

11

I agree that the quorum requirements should be decreased to make it possible to vote and pass for future important proposals for Zilliqa ecosystem. It’s very sad when an important proposal is unable to pass because the required quorum was not reached when a majority of community wants it (recent proposal to set the minimum commission fee of 4% for SSNs is one of such examples).

12

By default, validators would vote for you, so taking time away wouldn’t necessarily mean you’d get your stake slashed. And the risk of slashing would be offset by the increased staking rewards.

But gZIL is a governance token - it is not intended to be a speculative asset - and I think it’s absolutely right for that to be the focus of its (re)design. Any increase in price through its increased utility would just be a bonus (and make governance attacks more expensive).

13

I agree with Bastianas, the idea of reducing the quorum and addressing the SSN should be treated as separate votes.

1 Like
14

gZil is still subject to market forces, and its current state is partly reflective of the disconnect from the perceived legitimate utility. I agree with the notion of node operators being anchored to the interest of gZil holders.

1 Like
15

Do you guys really have the nerve to speak about INACTIVE gZil voters after throwing the whole gZil idea under the bus and leaving It to rot for more than 2 years??
Also, this is the worse idea ever. It only means, people will be able to make big decisions without having to buy/own more gZil.
If you want more voting power to reach quorum, why don’t you buy more gZil off the market? Spend some time on social media, get the hype for gZil going again, buy some more gZil, price goes up - then everyone will be devoted to voting. You basically abandoned the project and now you’re trying to judge other “inactive voters”

What you are doing with this proposal is shady. And It’s a true signal for me that leaving this ecosystem is probably a good idea, since none of these fellas up in the comments ever came close to stating what needed to be said.

1 Like
16

I agree that there should be 2 seperate votings.

What if there were Gzil holders who observed voting and seen that the quorum will not be met by the end of period and just decided not to bother to vote- even though they would have voted no if the quorum was achieved or within reach?

Make 2 seperate votings if you are changing game rules.

17

I agree with the quorum changes, we all have our chance to vote and it is up to us to be active stewards.

18

This proposal has achieved the prescribed > 25% of votes in favour over 3d and will be live for voting on Snapshot as of 11:00 tomorrow -

https://governance.zilliqa.com/#/gzil/proposal/QmXCTSFwyXDPb7pPa6VtT43wkLv4uiA6eYJ89uhdotHdyY

if the site is slow to load for you, please connect a wallet - this should bring it up to speed. This is being tracked internally and we will fix it as soon as we have enough effort available - in the meantime, sorry for the inconvenience (and any contributions welcome!)

19

Changed your mind, huh?

20

I can only connect a zil pay wallet?