Governor Bravo introduced many new ways for the compound community to modify the governance process. One of these new features is the ability to change the proposal threshold, which is currently set to 100k COMP. An address needs to have the proposal threshold delegated to their account to create a proposal.
Idea
I believe the community should consider changing the proposal threshold to about ~65k COMP. The 100k proposal threshold acts as a way to ensure that only the highest quality and vetted proposals make it to the actual governance process, but it may make it too hard. Many CAPs (Compound Autonomous Proposals) struggle to make it to the 100k threshold even when there is clear communal support.
I believe that a threshold of 65k COMP will be enough to ensure quality, but make it easier for future ideas supported by the community to make it through the governance process.
Good idea, though i would love to see it go down to 50k as there are alot more delegated entities around that area, including Dharma who made nice proposals before.
The proposal threshold is a tool to set the âspeedâ of governance, and prevent toxic proposals (whether deliberately malicious, or too hasty). The 2-day review period created in Proposal 43 should further reduce the risk of a toxic proposal.
Lowering the threshold will generally increase the quantity of proposals (easier for CAPs to become live proposals, and more stakeholders who can directly create proposals).
This isnât a parameter that should change often (governance should be as predictable as possible), but it seems that the timing is right following the launch of Governor Bravo. I support either @arr00âs suggestion of 65k, or @blckâs suggestion of 50k; whichever number we choose should have a bit of science behind it
Instead of hard-coding a set number, Compound could calculate this number by using 2 variables:
Total COMP in circulation
Number of COMP holders
This could bring some science into the threshold. Because at 100k COMP, looks like only 10 addresses can propose on what could potentially affect 158,000 holders.
I would imagine a âdecentralizedâ finance project would have less decentralization at the beginning, but we are far from the beginning with Compound holding over $16B worth of supplied assets and with over $7B worth of borrowed assets.
Using the 2 variables above Compound could make the minimum amount auto adjust to allow more decentralization with time. Maybe a snapshot of the variables every 6 months or so. To start it off, 20k COMP would be fair in my opinion when looking where Compound is today. This would include less than 70 addresses, and not all 70 are probably going to want to rush to make proposals. Even if they do, the not-so-good proposals would be voted out.
To prevent accounts from spamming proposals, set a time limit/voting decay for accounts which created a proposal. If their proposal gets vetoed, then using a method like âslashingâ could be implemented. Where the userâs voting privilege is slowly restored. This should further push proposers to create rock-solid proposals that will launch Compound to the Moon!
@CryptoCraig thanks for weighing in; an important counterpoint is that the proposal threshold doesnât determine how many addresses can propose changes; it determines the quantity of votes necessary for a proposal to enter the voting process.
Addresses with 100,000 delegated to them can directly create live proposals.
Any address with 100 can create an autonomous proposal; currently 476 addresses can create proposals, and the proposal threshold itself wonât change this.
I understand now. So, a user would just need to have 100 COMP (either owned or delegated to them?) to create an autonomous proposal (CAP).
Then, how does the community know to vote on the proposal at that point, with it still needing 100k votes? Sorry if this is answered somewhere, I am just very interested in Compound as this is where Iâve decided to park a good portion of my digital assets.
Proposal submissions and voting should happen on specific days, like when movies debut. This would allow voters the time needed to review a proposal and a day that they would need to come to the polls. This would also assist a CAP to reach the threshold of votes.
I still think that more COMP holders should require less votes. At 188k holders, Compound will probably have a large percentage of votes coming from the largest holders. However, in 20 years, if Compound were to accumulate 4 million holders, then COMP balances will be more distributed resulting in a greater percentage of holders needed for proposals to get to the current threshold. You said it yourself, @rleshner , there needs to be some kind of science to it, which is exactly what I think.
If just picking a number is what Compound needs right now, I say do it. But, a simple formula should be able to handle this in the future.
Feel free to stop by Discord to chat & ask questions & learn!
A user needs to own 100 to create an autonomous proposal. These proposals are typically advertised on this forum, Discord, and Twitter to gather support. Sometimes this process takes hours, sometimes days, sometimes they never gather the requisite support needed.
There is a two-day review period before voting begins on a proposal (this is a recent upgrade).
I think lowering the proposal threshold to 50k is a great idea. I have been meaning to make this post, so I am thrilled someone else has. By lowering it to 50k, weâll be roughly doubling the number of users that can create proposals, and I think those are good users to have involved.
Having passed two CAPs, I found it too challenging to get the 100k votes required when I knew the proposal would pass. Generally, getting 100k votes delegated to a user is quite challenging, and while 50k is still a lot, I think it is the next logical step.
I think adjusting it to 65k would have a limited effect since only two users have those amounts.
I think there are two approaches to take here, the more conservative, and more ambitious.
Conservative - Decrease proposal threshold to 65k which will immediately allow 1 more EOA to propose and make the CAP process considerably easier
Ambitious - Decrease proposal threshold to 50k which will immediately allow 11 more EOAs to propose and make the CAP process considerably easier.
I would argue that the change in the ease of getting CAPs through is relatively small between 50k and 65k from empirical evidence. If I recall correctly, most CAPs that were successful got to 65k quite quickly while getting from ~65k to 100k was the harder part.
So what it really comes down to is how ambitious we want to be right now. Do we want to immediately add allow another 11 EOAs with varying levels of engagement in the community to propose, or do we want to be conservative and just make the CAP process much simpler?
Personally, I believe that due to the newly added 2 day delay, we canât go wrong; however, I prefer to err on the side of caution and initially set the proposal threshold to 65k.
I think another viewpoint would be interesting to think of here, is the current limit PREVENTING good ideas from coming forward and being passed? Compound is by far the most active and productive governance out there, do folks feel like there are proposals that arenât making it because of the limit?
Also, if there were to be more proposals making it to the floor, what sort of proposals do we think these would be? Requests for funds? Changes to the protocol? I think the difference is that changing the protocol is inherently risky to the entire project, while giving out money is fairly low risk (you can lose funds but the protocol is not in danger). I think considering what type of proposal we are more likely to incentivize is worthwhile considering as well as there might be another way to accommodate those proposals without changing the threshold.
I would love to propose several basic proposals and that I am sure would pass but trying to get 100k votes on a CAP is a real pain. Unless the CAP will make a big change, it is hard to get voters to delegate. In an ideal world, the CAP proposal threshold would be lower than the single user threshold, but that isnât how the system works, and it would require a good amount of work to change it.
I canât be the only one who has a list of low-hanging uncontentious changes that should be made and struggle with the high threshold.
@getty would it be crazy to suggest that maybe for these kinds of proposals we did something like:
If the proposal is inherently good and benefits the protocol, then we can assume we want the proposal to pass. The problem, perhaps the social capital required to wrangle the votes is expensive.
What if we compensate the folks with small amounts of COMP who delegate votes to a CAP that successfully passes a subsequent vote?
In this way, if the idea is strong, and folks likely think it will pass, they will likely support the CAP to pass the threshold, knowing that if the vote passes they will receive some small reward for doing the work of identifying a valuable proposal in advance?
It seems like folks wouldnât really work to game this (although itâs crypto, so who knows) because the payout only happens if the vote passes. Most folks who would work to game such a vote donât have significant COMP to make a difference at either threshold.
(another edit)
I donât think we even need to make any protocol changes to make this work. We simply make the last instruction in the proposal a âcompensate the CAP delegators with 1 comp split proportionallyâ
Making the proposal threshold for CAPs lower than the normal proposal threshold would be a trivial taskâhowever, it would doesnât make much sense to me as users could just spin up CAPs and delegate to them instead of delegating to EOAs.
That might be a neat idea but I think an incentive wonât move the needle for those holders. If you are someone with +10k comp getting a few COMP incentives doesnât make much sense. In my mind, they are already invested and highly incentivized to support the proposal. The bigger problem in my mind is the high proposal threshold and the lack of voters set up to delegate.
True, I didnât think it all the way through.
The biggest things I think the protocol could do to improve governance is lower the proposal threshold to 50k, move COMP rewards from the COMP borrow lend market to voters, and set up a system where users can use COMP as collateral and vote.
That 65k voter (0x0d8846e5d4af5dd24be37f460c07046fd80d96a3) has done an awesome job supporting CAPs. Without them it would be much much harder to get a CAP to a full proposal. We need more voters like them.
Getting delegation of voters is a problem we see elsewhere in other governances. It might be worthwhile running a program (maybe with yours truly Tally) to help get folks to delegate their vote to active participants. Maybe that would be worthwhile subsidizing.
delegated to them can directly create live proposals.