Ideas for OpenGov

Governance
1

Hey everyone.

Inspired by the phenomenal work of Alice_Und_Bob and a recent tweet of his, I wanted to share here two ideas that I tweeted in response to him, so that it hopefully gets seen by different people (and not lost to X’s algorithm).

In a nutshell, I have two ideas:
1. Introduce budgets to treasury spending.
This was covered in a separate tweet to him which I will link here.
But I support the idea further below.

And

2. Incentivise more OpenGov participation and level DOT’s democratic landscape a bit!

HERE GOES…

1. Introduce budgets to treasury spending.

To answer your question “How can we arrive at a budget when everyone wants different things?”

I stand by my belief in a budget, one that is voted for by the community/stakeholders (and can be adjusted monthly, quarterly, and annually according to inflation and price etc).

At the moment, stakeholders are voting for referenda based on whether they think it’s a good idea or not.

There are no further factors involved in their vote beyond the following:

  • Benefit to ecosystem/protocol.
  • Personal benefit.
  • Tribalistic allegiances with proposer.

It’s time to add another factor: “Treasury funds remaining for the month”!

EG. If the treasury only has 5% monthly budget remaining, and there are four open proposals: with three of them from grifters and one for a very serious liquidity solution to a reputable project, hopefully voters become more nuanced and recognise the importance of voting NAYE on grifters’ proposals and AYE on proposal #4 in this example.

2. Incentivise more OpenGov participation and level DOT’s democratic landscape a bit!

Herewith another feature that should be considered for OpenGov:

Conviction and wallet-value based democracy is far from fool proof, as we have seen. There are numerous technically proficient DOT holders whose votes are lost amidst the activity of whales (or! Are just not incentivised enough to vote [or even delegate] due to the size of their bag.)

Allow these users to earn voting power by their participation in Polkadot forums and OpenGov in general. This could balance the playing field of OpenGov somewhat, PLUS will incentivise forum, community & democratic participation.

That voting power could be represented by an additional, “voting-only” token. Granted, this would be difficult to build into Polkadot’s architecture, but it would be the easiest solution. The alternative is earning DOT for participation, but this would incentivise the wrong type of people.

Just some thoughts for consideration. :slight_smile:

2

There’s already enough votes being given away for free.

If you want a larger vote - buy more DOT - it’s literally that simple.

Diluting the voting power of every shareholder with free votes further takes away from the token utility & its value.

Polkadot is decentralized and permissionless and anyone who has the means to purchase voting power is entitled to do so as it is written and as it should stand.

1 DOT = 1 VOTE

3

Not “that” simple. If a Whale bought DOT when it was $2.90 near launch, they have a lot more opportunity to exercise their ideas, intentions and wishes than a person who might join the ecosystem say in 6 months time when the price is ~$20.

This person coming in later might be more technically proficient, perhaps more intelligent, maybe even with specific experience and qualifications in democratic process itself, but because of market timing and pure happenstance, they will never be able to exercise as much power as our early whale friend who degenned their grandma’s inheritance into a pink coin they liked during Covid. :man_shrugging: That’s a system that appears somewhat flawed to me, and has room for improvement.

1 Like
4

Your thought process is full of immature assumptions and clearly pays no respect to those who have allocated their capital early with conviction.

If technically proficient people want more of a say, there are plenty of tools at their disposal to get them - DV, or delegated votes. They can also build something that earns DOT which can be used to vote.

Those who have purchase heavy and early deserve the votes they have.

Votes should be purchased, officially delegated, or earned.

Otherwise we risk the competitive nature of the entire OpenGov system.

5

Introducing a new “voting only” token is not trivial nor really the right solution.

I think what you really want are easy ways for people to delegate their token to active contributors in the space.

It would be amazing to someone build an embedable link, which can work on any platform (forum, polkassembly, subsquare, even twitter) where you can one click delegate voting rights to someone in the ecosystem.

Beyond that, I think that it could make sense to create low value incentives for participating in the governance system of Polkadot. The Lottery Pallet was always an idea around something like this, but I think it could be done entirely off-chain too.

3 Likes
6

No need to attack the maturity of my assumptions.
I was merely presenting a perspective, offering “ideas for consideration”. Progress is always about evaluating ideas before implementing them, and disagreeable evaluation does not require acrimonious sentiment.
Anyways, appreciate your perspective. :facepunch:

1 Like
7

One hundred percent, @shawntabrizi . I can only imagine the significant endeavours required to build a “voting only” token system. :sweat_smile:

And absolutely. The easier it is for people to delegate and for them to be incentivised into governance participation the better!

8

Fair enough.

Let’s just please not generalize where individuals’ wealth comes from.

Many people work very hard for their money and take immense risks to push in to speculative projects - Polkadot is no exception.

They need to be considered as well.

Being first is everything.

J.