This proposal seeks to increase the minimum deposit amount required to submit a governance proposal on the Cosmos Hub from 250 $ATOM to 500 $ATOM to further deter spam.
Background
For a proposal to enter the voting period, a minimum deposit of $ATOM, configurable by governance, is required. Currently that minimum deposit is set at 250 $ATOM.
If a proposal is vetoed by more than 1/3 of the Quorum, all 250 $ATOM is burned. This design is put in place to disincentivize spam.
The minimum deposit amount has been last modified 2 years ago by Proposal #87.
Motivation
The motivation to increase the Minimum Deposit is simple: To reduce spam.
Since the beginning of 2024 there has been 49 spam proposals on the Hub, all of which has been VETOâd. There are also 4 spam proposals during their voting period and 2 spam proposals in the deposit period. For more information, you can visit here.
These proposals do not seem to be slowing down which suggests that the cost to the spammers, which amounts to more than 12k $ATOM burned, isnât enough to deter spam.
Itâs also worth noting that the 250 ATOM deposit amount suggested by Prop #87 was based on the price of ATOM at the time, which traded at 10$. With the recent price decline, that is no longer the case.
At the time of writing and with the current ATOM price of 4.20$ the suggested increase will bring the cost of submitting a proposal on the Hub to â2100$, which is still lower than the amount approved by Proposal #87 ( in $ value).
Implementation
This is a parameter change. If approved, the proposed increase will be automatically applied by governance.
Voting Options
Yes: Youâre in favour of increasing the minimum deposit amount from 250 $ATOM to 500 $ATOM
No: Youâre against increasing the minimum deposit amount from 250 $ATOM to 500 $ATOM
Abstain: Youâre neither for nor against but wish to contribute to quorum.
No with Veto: Strongly oppose the proposal and deem it a spam, harmful to the Hub.
I support that, with the note that once ATOMâs price is back to 10$ or something similar, we should rethink this, as with $10 ATOM the deposit price would be around $5000, which is pretty high and would stop those who do not have these tokens from submitting a proper governance proposals.
I agree with @freak12techno â raising the deposit sounds good when ATOM is low but when the token rises, so will the necessary deposit (including the one to make a param change to bring the deposit down again).
So my perspective is:
We have unfortunately had pretty consistent spam proposals on-chain since they first showed up. ATOM has fluctuated in value throughout that time â but have the proposals actually reduced when the USD cost of the deposit is high? I donât think it has, which implies that whoever is funding these spam proposals is willing to burn significant ATOM just to have these things on chain.
Integrators have done a good job on the front-end to hide spam proposals and I continue to think thatâs the way to deal with spam.
As a clarification:
We performed some testnet experiments on burning deposits in February and found that failing to meet quorum should also burn deposits.
Thereâs been some misconceptions and confusion around this because I think it really has gone back and forth based on the sdk version and whether deposits are burned solely for being vetoed or also for failing to meet quorum.
I donât think validators need to veto things to burn the deposit and punish the depositor. They should just ignore the spam.
I actually disagree with this approach. My reasoning is: imagine someone new to the ecosystem going to the explorer and seeing a proposal with like 99.8% veto votes on it, and this would probably lead to them thinking why all these people are voting veto on that and maybe this is something shady about it. On the contrary, having no people voting on a proposal might be indistinguishable from the regular proposals nobody had any chance to vote on yet.
Also, some explorers (namely, Mintscan) hide these proposals which have more than a specific percent of veto votes, and validators/stakers not voting on proposals instead of vetoing them might break this UI.
(This is probably out of scope of this discussion, yet I think itâs important to note that).
On ATOM price fluctuation: one of the cool things that can be done to avoid the deposit price being changed significantly due to ATOM price fluctuation might be using some stablecoin as a deposit denom. Thatâs exactly what Kujira did. Not sure whether this applies here, as AFAIK we donât have any native stablecoins on Hub, but sounds like a nice approach, so the deposit price stays the same regardless of ATOM price.
Thatâs a really good point honestly. Vetoing spam does serve as a strong social signal.
A stablecoin deposit is a neat idea. Iâd like to see more stablecoin action on the Hub in general, especially if we continue funding core teams from community funds.
I disagree with this proposal. Barely any have made it to voting, raising the bar will do nothing to stop props that donât make it to voting, and 250 ATOM is still over a thousand dollars. Thatâs a lot of money to put up already to make a proposal. We need to make it easier to participate, not harder.
Please be sure to review other pending proposals to prevent overlapping coordination efforts:
We raised community feedback on this issue some time ago, and the response was generally positive, aligning with your proposal to increase the minimum deposit to 500 ATOMs. However, we decided to place that proposal on hold to encourage a broader discussion on the governance framework. Despite this, we fully agree with the rationale behind raising the âMinDeposit,â and should you proceed with an on-chain proposal, we would fully support it with a positive vote.
Nevertheless, we invite you to combine efforts with our previous proposal, feel free to reach out to us via contact@pro-delegators.com.
Thatâs a good idea @freak12techno. My only suggestion would be to make it so that the $USDC is not burnt but instead sent to the community pool. This is because, unlike burning $ATOM, the Hub doesnât benefit from burning $USDC.
But until then, I think we should keep adjusting the minimum deposit accordingly.
Fully agree here. Mostly because these spam proposals are exploiting the LSM to target staked $ATOM. Making the USD price irrelevant, as both the cost and the return
of the attackers are denominated in ATOM. Which is why there is a higher chance to reduce the spam by increasing the number of $ATOM required regardless of USD price.
My argument about the USD cost refers to what the community deemed an acceptable amount to submit a proposal in USD terms on Prop #87. And that the suggested increase, in ATOM, still maintains the same cost to put up a prop in USD terms.
Should it be the only way though? Especially considering that more than 50% of proposals in 2024 were spam.
Iâm not sure I understand this, do you mean most spam proposals havenât made it to voting period? If so visit DAODAOâs front to see all proposals. There are 4 spam proposals in the voting period as we speak.
There are literally hundreds that havenât made it to voting. So yes, factually, most spam proposals havenât made it to voting. There is already a major financial burden to spam proposals as a thousand dollars goes down the drain when they are vetoâd. As Cosmos use and enthusiasm continues to falter, stop making the barrier to participation harder.
Even if hundreds of spam proposals made it to voting, it really means nothing except free funds for the community pool.
Though spam proposals are a nuisance, current mechanisms seem to be working. As a strong advocate for the minority (Shrimp) party of the broader community, will disagree with this proposal with a firm âNo.â It discourages newer Stakersâ from participating through proposals and enabling Whales, or respectfully those with much more capital, to easily continue reigning governance. RE price, we are in an upward trend, deeming this proposal arguably unnecessary.
Can agree with this approach, to a degree. Imagine having adopted the dual token signal via âPhotonâ as the fee token, but I digress.
Problem is I donât see Shrimps making proposals⌠considering you need to engage with a long post here on the forum first and gather consensus. For every 1 small guy proposal you probably have 50 regular proposals from the different entities (informal, AADAOâŚetc) and 50 spam proposalsâŚ
For those acknowledging there are, in fact, Shrimps (minority), we should vote NWV, which by definition disproportionately (1/50) infringes on minority interests.
As stated in the Hub dot Cosmos dot Network website, NoWithVeto: A âNoWithVetoâ vote indicates⌠(1)⌠(2) disproportionately infringes on minority interests, or (3) violates or encourages violation of the rules of engagement as currently set out by Cosmos Hub governance.
By acknowledging the existence of âShrimps,â without straying too far from the original post by Citadel One, you alert the broader communityâs need to prioritize omitting âNWVâ from Hub governance prior to raising the deposit amount.
allow a longer deposit time, and let multiple addresses deposit into a prop. raise the price to 1k. if a prop is good, the market will push it through. easy peasy
I will never be able to easily afford putting up a prop for 1000$.
Knowing that I might be drifting slightly away from the topic:
Iâve seen well known validators Veto proposal due to personal conflicts/bias against the proposer.
Iâve seen vetoâs because they were written âpoorlyâ, and just because of that. Also Iâve seen badly proposals being voted yes by the same validators who would criticize language, simply because it was âneedeâ (CW prop).
Iâve seen validators veto proposals because they were bribed to do so.
And Iâve seen validators ignore the ârulesâ of the aadao election (920-922).
Reducing is space is nice, but I urge you to discuss about more important governance flaws, that actually are reason why governance is broken - according to MANY people in the eco.
So yea, put it up to 3k$ while youâre at it if you really wanna reduce spam. But donât act like 1000$ is gonna help having a community that is eager to try to change things. Itâs the opposite.
Oh, and I should say, I have more atoms than the self stake of probably the most validators. But since I am not a validator, I canât just use the money I make for validating while being a shitty actor in the eco like quite a few.
I think a better idea is to just have a mandatory minimum amount for it to even be put on chain in the first place.
Just increasing the overall deposit is not enough, and it becomes a hassle to just be constantly tweaking it.
I donât think Iâve ever seen a situation where someone couldnât find help to throw a proposal up.
In addition, most times where that would possibly be an issue, the person is not uploading it themselves anyway. It is usually the case that they are asking a validator or someone to give them a hand to put it on chain. Most of them also have no issue funding it.
To go a little bit out on a ledge here I would say that any wallet created less than 30 days ago has no business putting a proposal on chain anyway.
I know we all love âpermissionlessâ and fight for âfreedomâ and for everyone to have a voice, but really think about this one. Who is this actually stopping other than spammers or scammers? Maybe people putting up a proposal they think will be very controversial.
Personally I am of the belief that you should put it up with your main wallet or itâs not even worth putting on chain period.
