GEP: Token Based Voting

#1

Hi everyone,

This GEP is a second proposal to move the ThreeFold DAO to a token weighted voting system, rather than the current system where voting is weighted by the capacity contained in the nodes of each farm. The technical details of the proposal are the same as those found in the original GEP post. The rest of this post will talk about why we think this is worth reconsidering, especially right now.

First and foremost, we think that this move will help ensure that the voices of all ecosystem stakeholders are represented in the votes. It will also bring our project in line with the normal way of doing things in the DePIN space.

Furthermore, since the last vote on this subject, several events have arisen that impacted the ability of nodes to create uptime reports and affected nodes thus did not have a full opportunity to achieve their uptime requirements for minting. Our minting process involves running a fixed algorithm over data contained in TFChain. Every TFT minted is the result of capacity provided to the network. We take any adjustments to that minting process quite seriously and any changes, including one time adjustments to address specific events, must be approved by a DAO vote.

This creates a situation whereby, under the current voting model, farmers alone have the power to approve or deny GEPs to address minting issues and thus control whether or not additional tokens are minted. There’s a clear conflict of interest here, and we feel it is not responsible to bring forward any more votes of this kind under the current DAO structure. By moving to a token based voting model, we can ensure that the entire community has a say in these decisions and that the outcomes clearly represent an impartial view of the will of the community.

It’s an exciting time for ThreeFold as we look forward to the launch of v4, the INCA token, and the commercial phase of our project. This means that we are receiving attention from potential investors and a larger audience in general. With that in mind, we are taking even greater care in matters of governance and the distribution of TFT. By moving to token based voting, we can demonstrate our alignment with the larger DePIN ecosystem and also demonstrate that each DAO vote represents the broad interests of stakeholders in our community.

Please make your voice heard by voting on this GEP. Note that you can now vote on the TF Connect app, as well as the Dashboard.

Voting Dates:

  • Start of voting period: January 12
  • End of voting period: January 22

Thank you for taking the time to read and to vote.

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#2
#3
#4

I would ask exactly the same questions as for the 1st GEP prop.

"Is there any infos about max cap of wallet voting power ? or maybe wich big wallet would be exclude ? (TF foundation or something ?)

Maybe it could also have a minimal time of holding tft to vote on proposals to prevent other kind of abuse ?

In short, how is this secure against someone or a big company buying tons of TFT and take too much voting power ?

Other than that, i’m sure giving voting power to holders is a good move !

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#5

Would it be fair to assume the outcome of this vote ‘may’ have a great impact on the future INCA and investors interest to align with the DePIN industry? In other words, the community votes no and it may jeopordise the succes of the next stages?

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#6

I do see the point you make about conflict of interest, but i would disagree.

It’s not like any farmer can use the DAO to generate extra TFT’s randomly, or according to his own insights. The situations where minting of “extra/additional” tokens applies is only when there clearly was some kind of issue with the network, hence beyond the control of the farmer. The TF team does agree on this, otherwise there wouldn’t even be a DAO vote. The current farming model is very strict, and especially nodes on farmerbot can be greatly affected by any of these irregularities. We shouldn’t therefore call them additional tokens, but settlements of missing tokens, as you could argue that they were incorrectly not paid out.

It is up to the TF team to decide whether or not a network irregularity could have been the cause of nodes missing uptime thresholds, and in which situations this applies. Downtimes in the affected timeframes should then be adjusted to zero. Whether this is done by adjusting the minting code, or by later separate payments, is also up to the TF team to decide.

To summarize, I don’t think we should have DAO votes for ‘extra minting’, and hence I don’t see a conflict of interest. Personally I am not convinced the voting power is better off with the token holders than with the farmers. But let’s see where the discussion goes.

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#7

On a technical level, it’s somewhat difficult to enforce a minimal holding time, since voting would happen on TFChain but most TFT is still held on Stellar. That clock would start ticking after the tokens were bridged.

Generally speaking, we would prefer to keep any voting mechanism as simple as possible. There are various disadvantages to trying to complicate things, and most potential improvements don’t hold up to scrutiny (limiting voting power per wallet can be circumvented with additional wallets, etc).

Personally I think it makes sense that the treasury be excluded from voting. That specific measure didn’t get formalized as part of this vote though.

I’d say that moving to token based voting now could helpful for the project in terms of how we are presenting within the industry. When it comes to INCA and v4, the governance won’t necessarily be a continuity of v3, so in that sense the impact there is limited.

If there’s a period of time where some node could not successfully report uptime, then the only remedy is to credit all nodes with full uptime during the affected period. This also inevitably implies that some payments after the adjustment might be for nodes that would not have been eligible had the issue not occurred. Those amounts are probably small, but ultimately it can’t be as simple as “just put back the missing tokens”.

The system we’ve established is based on immutable data in a blockchain and an algorithm that can only be updated by vote of our DAO. The only way to address situations like those we’re discussing is in fact to modify the algorithm to treat a specific period of time specially and run it again.

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