Objective:
The primary aim of this discussion is to optimize the Cosmos Hub governance, fostering greater inclusivity, responsiveness, and efficiency. We have seen a tremendous 71%+ turnout in the prop 848 but we felt the validator centralization and VP abuse it was the delegators who showed up in the last 12 hours to change the decision, By adjusting key parameters such as quorum, voting time, validator voting power representation, introducing mandatory forum discussions, and eliminating the abstain vote option, I seek to enhance the overall governance experience for stakeholders.
Changes Proposed:
Quorum Adjustment:
Current: Quorum set at 40% of total bonded tokens.
Proposed: Reduce quorum to 25% of total voting power.
Rationale:
Lowering the quorum requirement ensures that decisions can be reached more swiftly, preventing gridlock in cases where a significant portion of the network is not actively participating in governance.
Voting Time Reduction:
Current: 14 days for voting.
Proposed: Reduce voting time to 7 days.
Rationale:
A shorter voting period accelerates decision-making processes, allowing the network to respond promptly to emerging challenges or opportunities.
Validator Voting Power Representation Adjustment:
Current: Validators’ voting power directly represents their total staked tokens.
Proposed: Reduce validator’s voting power representation by 50%. If a validator holds 1% of the total voting power, their casted vote will represent 0.5% VP unless overridden by delegators.
Rationale:
Mitigates centralization concerns by giving delegators more direct influence over governance decisions, ensuring a fairer distribution of power.
Mandatory Forum Discussion Period:
Proposed: Introduce a mandatory 4-week forum discussion period before the proposal moves to the voting stage.
Rationale:
Enhances the deliberative process by promoting thorough discussions and allowing stakeholders to provide nuanced perspectives and consider potential implications before voting.
Removal of Abstain Vote Option:
Current: Option to vote “abstain”.
Proposed: Remove the option to abstain from voting.
Rationale:
Encourages active participation and prevents voters from remaining neutral, ensuring a more decisive outcome for each proposal.
Expected Benefits:
Inclusivity: Lowering quorum requirements and reducing voting time encourages more stakeholders to actively participate in the governance process.
Decisiveness: Adjusting validator voting power representation and removing the abstain option facilitates more decisive governance outcomes.
Transparency: Introducing a mandatory forum discussion period enhances transparency, allowing for comprehensive deliberation and reducing the likelihood of rushed decisions.
Conclusion:
These proposed changes are designed to create a governance framework that is more responsive, inclusive, and transparent. By reducing barriers to participation, promoting active discussion, and refining voting dynamics, the Cosmos Hub can better adapt to the evolving needs of its diverse stakeholder community. This proposal seeks to fortify the Cosmos Hub’s governance foundation, ensuring it remains robust and agile in the face of an ever-changing decentralized landscape.
Did we every have a proposal that didnt reach quorum? What is the percentage? Isnt a higher participation rate better?
I dont think it makes sense to reduce the voting period, especuially while introducing a 4 weeks discussion period and state accelerated decision-making as the reason. Many delegators dont follow the forum but check the on chain proposals, so in generel i would say keep the voting period and if you want to accelerate the whole process reduce the discussion period. As we all know the voting period is also the most intense discussion period.
I dont like the idea in general. If i want someone to represent me in governance then he should be able to do this with all my voting power. The issue here is not the delegation system that you are trying to change, it is that we are not able to achieve decentralization. Instead of fixing the symptoms we should try to fix the root cause.
Yes see but see 2.
There are cases i want to vote Abstain as a validator (ex. community pool spendings to other validators). This is our signal that we want our delegators to cast their votes on their own.
I would also like to point out that I do not support populist statements such as:
we felt the validator centralization and VP abuse it was the delegators who showed up in the last 12 hours to change the decision
According to mintscan the ration between yes and no/nwv has been worse for individual wallets than for validators. We have to stop these fights inside the community and accept that people/organisations have different opinions.
Yes, you are right. Not a single proposal was rejected because of Qouram, most of the time the turnout remains around 50%, but when I suggest changing the validator representation by -50%, we are effectively increasing the Qouram, (assuming most of the VP comes from validators).
I believe I understand what you trying to suggest, but there are reasons why I think we need these changes.
a) Not all proposals are highly contested, most of the proposals go to the HUB and have the clear confidence of the broader community. we only have ~10% rejected proposals in history and we are making this change for the majority of the proposals based on historical data.
b) Implementing the mandatory discussion period should make sure that every input from the community has been already incorporated in the final prop.
The purpose of suggesting this is to give a clear message to delegators that their vote matters more than the validator’s vote, it can achieve more active participation from the retail. The current state of affairs will remain the same for validators as every validator will forfeit 50% of VP representation.
Delegators can override the vote, if it is abstain, no, or yes. and I believe a weighted vote is a better option than abstaining if a validator finds them in a situation where they want their community to vote. Essentially the weighted vote is more of a community representation.
What I meant there was in the last 24 hours we didn’t see any major vote from the validators and the 848 might have failed with 48.5 but then individual wallets started to show up and the proposal passed. Please correct me if you think I am mistaken somewhere.
First of all thank you for your reply. I want to follow up on some of the topics.
I believe I understand what you trying to suggest, but there are reasons why I think we need these changes.
a) Not all proposals are highly contested, most of the proposals go to the HUB and have the clear confidence of the broader community. we only have ~10% rejected proposals in history and we are making this change for the majority of the proposals based on historical data.
b) Implementing the mandatory discussion period should make sure that every input from the community has been already incorporated in the final prop.
I think i would agree with this statement if there were more than 100 people dicussing governance in this forum. Also not everyone is able to spend time once a week for proposals so i would like to give people more felxibility with their votes.
The purpose of suggesting this is to give a clear message to delegators that their vote matters more than the validator’s vote, it can achieve more active participation from the retail. The current state of affairs will remain the same for validators as every validator will forfeit 50% of VP representation.
That a delegators vote matters more than a validator’s is currently 100% true since validators dont have voting power on their own but i understand what you want to say. I think there are many different approaches though that also could further improve decentralization like square rooted VP or a max VP per validator. I know thats not exactly the topic but if we want to fundamentaly change the system then it should be well thought out.
As we see in the in prop. 848 valitators has so much power so they can dictate and colude to achieve the desired outcome, individuals accounts has not any meaningfull weight .
Time of live proposal should be reduced also, 14 days is to much i agree 7 days would be sufficient, previous discussion in forum, in this regard the proposal should be at least 7 days open to discussion.
Quorum should remain the same until proven otherwise.
Abstain is necessary, it represents a ideological posture and has nothing to do with participation.
Thanks for initiating this long overdue conversation about Cosmos Hub governance.
Quorum Adjustment:
Thus far, there was never an issue with reaching the 40% threshold to reach quorum. However, should the validators VP be lowered, which I’m in favor of, the quorum should be adjusted accordingly.
Generally I don’t see any problems with lowering the quorum to 25-30% as long as the voting period is long enough (> 1 week) so that everybody has a fair chance to make a deliberate decision on how to vote.
Voting Time Reduction:
I agree that 14 days is a very long time and massively slows down the decision-making process of the Hub. However, lowering it to 7days is to drastic imo, 10 days would be more adequate I think.
Validator Voting Power:
I think that voting on governance proposals should not be the main task of a validator. Their primary task is to validate txs, produce blocks and secure the network. Governance should be an opt in task for validators, rather than an obligation.
A separation of validators (block production) and governors (governance) would make much more sense imo, similar to how ICS chains operate today. This would take away some overhead from validators that don’t want to be engaged in on chain governance. However, that does not mean that a validator cannot be a governor. It should be optional!
=> In the meantime, until a validator and governor separation can be implemented, I think that the VP should be decreased at least to 50%, perhaps even lower to 25% or 1/3 as Sunny suggested recently.
Forum Discussion Period:
A 4 week mandatory period seems to long, 2-3 weeks should be enough I think. This should only apply to parameter changes like adjustments to the inflation rate, voting period, quorum threshold etc. Software upgrades should be exempt of this rule.
Abstain Vote:
I don’t think this option should be removed as long as validators are “forced” to vote on governance.
In general I guess, that most of us agree that some mechanisms of Hub governance are obsolete and have to be revised and adjusted. I’m not sure whether it makes sense to change some parameters step by step, similar as with prop #848, or to take some time and come up with one comprehensive proposal to fully overhaul governance, including new primitives like a validator and governor separation, multiple choice votes etc.
Thank you for your comprehensive response. I believe we need to push these changes one by one. The changes with most people agree we need to push first.