YIP 12: reducing the quorum for accepting proposal

Proposals YIPs
1

Simple Summay

At the moment, it is difficult for the yEarn governance mechanism to achieve a quorum of 33%. For the governance system to function, the threshold must be lowered so that at least some decisions can be made.

Abstract

It is proposed to reduce the quorum threshold for accepting the proposal to 20%.
At the moment, no changes to the on-chain are necessary, since the quorum check is currently being carried out off-chain. Thus, it is enough to simply make a decision by onchain voting.

Motivation

At the moment, it is difficult for the yEarn governance mechanism to achieve a quorum of 33%. We could observe this even with the important proposal 1, which could not reach the quorum.
This is due to both

  • general passivity and lack of motivation to participate in governance system;
  • negative motivation to participate (lock of funds).

Thus, yEarn protocol is under the threat of forever remaining as it is, since all proposals may not reach the required quorum (with a high probability, the activity in voting will only decrease over time).

There are many different solutions, which I will describe below, and I propose to start discussing them in the topic, but it is critical now to make a simple decision that will allow the protocol to evolve, and the community to make decisions on the development of the protocol.
In my opinion, such a decision may be to reduce the quorum threshold to 20%, which I put up for voting.

Other ways to solve the quorum problem:

  • you get rewards for staking only if you vote;
  • delegation of votes (implementation will take some time);
  • quorum should be not for ALL tokens, but for only those “escrowed” to be voting;
  • should have a quorum schedule which after x amount of time with no proposal meeting quorum the threshold goes down 1%-2% for year1, 0.5%-1% for year 2, etc.

You can and should vote for this on-chain proposal at number 12 here: https://ygov.finance/vote

FOR: The threshold for accepting the proposal drops to 20%
AGAINST: No change for threshold

This YIP (yEarn Improvement Proposal) can also be found here:
https://iearn-finance.github.io/YIPS/YIPS/yip-12

12 Likes
2

I agree with the sentiment here, but why are we going for 20%? What is the rational?

This is already the case.

3

With YIP10 we should be able to reach quorum easier. I do not think we need to reduce the threshold level since YIP10 will reduce dependency on passive liquidity investors.

2 Likes
5

It would have been great if you guys did this Proposal How-To before putting the vote up.

6

This clause implied the receipt of YFI also for staking BPT/yCRV tokens. If you don’t vote, you won’t receive any rewards for yield.

1 Like
7

Maybe we should first understand why quorum isn’t reached.

I don’t think it is passivenes or lack of motivation considering how quickly people reorganised their funds to hop onboard for YIP0.

1 Like
8

As I understand, there is no motivation for the farmers to vote, but there is motivation not to vote (since voting imposes a lock on funds).
The need to spend time considering proposals and passivity is also present in my opinion.

2 Likes
9

The fact that there is a bunch of random proposals up with no description also does not help. I think people only voted on the first one because they were taking it seriously. After random proposals were put up and people realized that there was no system to the madness they just stopped voting. Hence the idea of having polls in the forum and letting people discuss proposal for at least 3 days before putting them on chain.

3 Likes
10

I agree that we don’t know yet the effects of YIP10 on the quorum but I doubt it will be positive enough to overcome 30% curse. I’d go with making it as low as 20% and make it higher if/when we know there’s a regular quorum of over 30% on important proposals. In other words, FOR.

1 Like
11

I agree with this, seeing even #1 not reach quorum is a sign that the current setting needs to be reduced.

If YIP 10 passes, it’s likely we’ll see an even lower quorum in polls as well. Reducing the quorum to 20% would be good as a base to start with and can always be tuned up later.

3 Likes
12

In the status quo, large stablecoin holders with a vested interest are able to push the vote past quorum.

If/when YFI only voting is enacted, this will no longer be true.

Due to our fair launch, any individual’s voting power is limited and thus we may fall victim to voter apathy if quorum is not reduced.

3 Likes
13

Any analysis of YFI unique wallet distribution today?

14

https://bloxy.info/token_holders/0x0bc529c00c6401aef6d220be8c6ea1667f6ad93e

2 Likes
15

image
image1280Ă—317 197 KB

some data to consider from @banteg in the telegram

2 Likes
16

This is a reminder that pool#1 finished rewarding liquidity providers today and pool#2 finishes tomorrow. It is very likely that most of that liquidity that was not illegible to vote. Will probably be moving to pool#3 where they will be able to vote. This is something that we need to take into consideration and that it could increase the number of voters substantially making this proposal less relevant.

2 Likes
17

I feel it will have the opposite effect since it will bring a lot of purely yield-hunting tokens to the governance pool.

2 Likes
18

Not sure, I just rotated crops to pool#3 today because I was actually dying to vote and was just waiting for it to wind down. So I can only speak from experience. I guess we will find out, at least then we will be able to vote based on actual data and not just assumptions.

1 Like
19

I agree that if we change the number, there should be a rational behind it.

If rewarding participant isn’t enough of an incentive to reach Quorum, perhaps penalty for not participating could be a way out.

Of course you never want lazy participants to chip in and vote on stuff they don’t know or understand just to get reward or not get penalized. That is not the point of the governance and will always be a problem (unless vote delegation).

Looking forward reading more comments on this.

20

While moving to pool 3 you still have to lock your funds for voting. This is pure psychology – people want to be liquid + “crops” will be there only for couple of days.

As a ref point, polkadot voting rarely gets >10%, on normal day they have ~2-5%.

If you don’t like the numbers, please, vote against. But take into account that delegation will take sometime a lot of time to implement – effectively, locking protocol in an idling state.

UPD: Aragon, apparently has the same numbers.

3 Likes
21

I am on the contrarily optimistic side.

With YIP 10:

  • The voting base would transit from BPT holders to YFI holders.
    That is, from a relatively more yield-sensitive (hence more lock-reluctant) crowd, to a more believing (hence less lock-reluctant) crowd.

  • Voting would be directly incentivised.
    Assuming YFI stakers would be eligible to both voting and fee reward claiming.

I would prefer seeing YIP 10 in action before voting on a change in quorum.

2 Likes