Hi everyone, I’m Jessica aka web3_analyst and am a data engineer and IBC lead for Flipside Governance, an arm of Flipside. I am seeking feedback on the following proposal idea:
Background:
Over the past week, 115 proposals as of writing have been submitted on-chain.This is a marked change, as only 43 proposals were submitted on-chain in the entire 365 days leading up to last week.
Unfortunately, a majority of these proposals are malicious in nature and aim at either getting users to click on a link containing malware or mimic a legitimate proposal that has been previously submitted. It should be considered unsafe for users to interact with these proposals in any way, including interacting with links and submitting deposits. A worse scenario would be if any of these proposals made it to vote, where governance participants may be tricked into thinking one of these proposals is legitimate.
There are 39 unique addresses that have submitted a proposal in the last 7 days, however two addresses have submitted 106 proposals in the last week. It can be assumed that none of the proposals submitted by these two addresses are genuine. Another trend that can be seen is that the two addresses most responsible for submitting spam proposals on-chain do not submit a significant deposit to accompany their proposals.
Implementing a Minimum Initial Deposit (MID)
To reduce the number of potentially harmful proposals being submitted on-chain, we propose adding a minimum initial deposit that is required when submitting a proposal. Submitters of legitimate proposals have a good track record of also submitting a significant amount of the required deposit; before the minimum deposit was raised to 250 ATOM it was common to see submitters deposit the entire 64 ATOM necessary for the proposal to move to on-chain voting.
One caveat here is that 250 ATOM may be out of reach for many community members to provide up front as an initial deposit, and we do not wish to exclude them from participating in governance. Therefore, we wish to gather feedback on an appropriate minimum initial deposit amount.
For Discussion: Minimum Initial Deposit Amount
As a starting place for discussion, we propose 10 ATOM as a minimum required initial deposit. Over the past year, 2/3rds of the initial proposal submitters have deposited 10+ ATOM to accompany the submission of their proposal on-chain.
Over the past 8 months, the price of ATOM has remained somewhat consistent. An initial required deposit of 10 ATOM would typically be in the $100-$150 dollar price range in current market conditions. We believe that this amount would be significant enough to deter the submission of spam proposals, while still minimal enough to not prevent community involvement in the governance process.
Next Steps
Following a period of feedback, should the community be in favor of implementing a Minimum Initial Deposit, we can move forward with a governance vote.
About Us
Flipside Governance is the governance arm of Flipside Crypto, a community-enabled data analytics platform. Our governance team contributes to DAOs full-time, providing research, voting & proposal development, and data-driven decision-making. Flipside Governance is active in Cosmos, Osmosis, Evmos, Juno, and Axelar within IBCs and is also involved with AAVE, MakerDAO, Optimism, Safe, and Hop.