TFChain DAO GEP Voting Process Update [CLOSED]

#1

TFChain DAO GEP Voting Process Update

Introduction

This GEP proposes a new voting process for the ThreeFold DAO, shifting voting eligibility from node-based to token-based. The amount of TFT held in a user’s TFChain mainnet wallet will determine voting power. This now allows all TFT holders to participate in governance.

GEP Voting Process Update

Voters

  • Voting is open to anyone holding TFT in their TFChain mainnet wallet.

Voting Options

  • Voters can vote yes (positive) or no (negative) for a GEP.

Voting Weight

  • The voting weight is the following:
    • 1 TFT = 1 vote

Voting Minimum

  • There is no minimum amount of TFT in a wallet to vote.

Voting Snapshot

  • The voting power of each wallet is based on the amount of TFT held in that wallet at the end of the voting period to prevent double-voting or voting abuse.
    • This ensures each TFT is only counted once.

Voting Period

  • The voting period details (start and end) are announced in each GEP presentation.
  • The voting period will be at least 5 days.
  • The voting period will be at most 21 days.

Passing Criteria

  • A proposal will pass if 50%+1 TFT or more of the total voted TFT is positive.

Abstainers

  • Anyone who does not cast their vote before the voting period ends is considered to have abstained, meaning they do not contribute to the vote.

Voting Platforms

  • Voting will be accessible through the TF Dashboard, which is available on desktop and mobile.
  • A dedicated voting feature will be available through the TF Connect app (release date TBD) for a more streamlined voting experience.
  • You need to have TFT on your TFChain mainnet wallet to vote.

Stash and Controller Accounts

  • We are investigating the possibility of using stash and controller accounts as a way to enhance security.
  • The stash account stores the tokens, while the controller account, linked to the stash account, casts votes with the voting weight of the stash account.
  • This means that you could have your TFT in a cold wallet (stash account) linked to your TFChain wallet (controller account) and you will be able to vote with the TFChain wallet and the vote will be based on the amount of TFT in the cold wallet.

ThreeFold Council

A council member is a person with slightly elevated privileges, represented by an account on chain. It is intended that this person acts in the interest of the grid/chain. There can be at most 12 council members at once (though this should be configurable in the code). A council member has the following abilities on chain:

  • Create a new voting proposal.
  • Link an existing farming policy to a farm, with suggested limits (see farming policy section). The council can only vote (nobody except council members can vote for this) to add or remove a member. For the result of this vote, strict majority is used, i.e. vote passes if votes_for > votes_against. There must also be a time limit on the vote, any council member who doesn’t vote before this time implicitly abstains. Note that in case of removal, the member to be removed can vote against that (no special logic to prevent this).
  • Set the certification level of a farm.

Voting Proposal

First, a council member needs to suggest a proposal. All proposals need to have a description. Once a proposal is submitted, it can be voted on by TFT holders. If the proposal is a chain action, it should automatically be executed after the vote passes.

Council Veto

For any GEP proposal, 3 council “no” votes will veto the proposal. If a member of the council votes no, the no vote needs to be stored. On 3 no votes the proposal is automatically closed. Should this happen, an event should be emitted declaring a council veto, with the address of the no voters.

Possible Proposals

Here are some examples of possible proposals. This list is not exhaustive.

  • Change pricing rules (i.e. change the active pricing policy).
  • Add a new farming policy.
  • Change an existing not immutable farming policy.
  • Upgrade for the chain.
  • Add a certified node validator.
  • Remove a certified node validator.
  • Spend from the treasury.
  • “Generic” proposal, this is not reflected on the grid, but rather just something with a description.

To vote on this GEP, please make sure to visit dashboard.grid.tf . After logging in, click on DAO and cast your vote before Friday October 4th at 10AM CEST.

4 Likes
#2

Note: This current GEP is in the proposal stage, thus the token-based voting process is not yet implemented. If this current GEP passes, token-based voting will be implemented in future GEPs. This means that when you vote for this current GEP, your voting power is node-based, not token-based.

1 Like
#3

Hey TF !

I got few questions regarding this voting proposal:

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 !

Cheers !

1 Like
#4

Excellent questions.

The idea is that for this GEP, we focus on a basic change in the voting process: we ask the community if it wants to change from node-based to token-based voting power for GEPs on the TFDAO.

The basics for this update is that anyone with TFT in a TFChain mainnet wallet can vote on GEPs. We ensure that there is no double-counting of TFT.

To answer your questions for this specific GEP:

  • We implement no locking mechanism.

  • There is no minimal time of holding TFT.

  • We count the TFT in your wallet at the end of the voting period.

  • Anyone can farm or buy TFT and vote with their total TFT.

  • There is no max cap of a wallet voting power.

  • No wallets are excluded.

In future GEPs, we can define further features as you propose. As it is a DAO, the community will be able to decide if it wants to implement such additional features.

#5

As long as there is no secure way to hold my TFT in a hardware wallet in order to vote, I unfortunately cannot vote for it. I hope there will be a solution…

1 Like
#6

In this scenario, big whales that are not farmers could decide on the farming rules, which sounds strange to me…
This is not really about everyone deciding the way forward, but more like the accounts with the most TFT deciding. Risk of centralisation.
In some cases this could be good, but I can see scenario’s where this voting system would be good for the big account holders and disadvantageous for smaller participants…
Just my 2 TFT’s :slight_smile:

3 Likes
#7

With all due respect, and correct me if I’m wrong, but this GEP doesn’t just change the voting mechanism to 1 TFT = 1 vote but also implements a council and grants this council veto power over practically any proposal moving forward? Is there a formal process for appointing/removing council members? Are these people vetted in any way, or are they employees of the foundation? Why is there an even number of council members (which opens the possibility of a split vote)? I’m also wondering why this seemingly came out of nowhere with zero discussion among the community - just this post and a call to vote? At the time of writing the vote is 14-13 in favor of ‘yes’ which, to me at least, indicates more discussion is needed.

3 Likes
#8

Hi there!

The council already exists. Nothing has changed in regards to the councils’ power. It was added to the forum post as a reminder / for people who are unaware of the existence of the council.

The information has been and still is on our Github repo.

Kind regards,
Sabrina

#9

Thanks for clarifying. Is there a list of current council members? From the link you shared it would seem that only council members can vote to add or remove a member?

With regards to the proposed shift in governance structure - I wonder how bitcoin would fare if the miners were asked to vote on shifting power from themselves to anyone holding BTC? From what I can tell, this is analogous to what’s being asked here. My fear is that the incentives of TFT holders do not automatically align with those of farmers and, as @TFFarmer mentioned above, a couple of single large wallets could decide to change farming rules to the point of destabilizing the network.

Vote is currently 16-15 in favor of ‘no’ - this is obviously a topic of contention.

1 Like
#10

In the history of capitalism we have seen countless examples of what a brilliant idea it is to take the power from many…those who are working together to get things done, to create something valuable, meaningful… and give it to few who are in the possession of the money.

Great to see once again how mankind improves by the lessons it has learned from its mistakes.

A smart guy once said: „insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results". That must be outdated I guess.

1 Like
#11

With 1tft=1 vote, and no minimum holding time, and low tft price, seems you could essentially figure out the cost to ‘buy’ an outcome for a particular vote… or that speculators would be having maybe strong input into decisions, with maybe misaligned incentives to farmers.
But also farmers with most capital invested or best equipment probably deserve to have priority in a sense. Esp as the project is struggling for large scale adoption currently.
I think a small holding time requirement would help to prevent some sort of (theoretical, potential) security or abuse issues with proposing votes with absurd outcomes and buying a result… I also am not understanding the main impetus for this change in the first place, what is the claimed benefit as opposed to current system?
Also with no max limit is this not a pay to play governance structure?
Open to change but I don’t see a reason to rush imo.
Cheers

1 Like
#12

Thanks everyone for the feedback. Keep it up. We take note of everything and we can see how to move forward. Most likely this GEP won’t pass and we can see how to improve on the proposal with all the feedback here. There are a lot of excellent ideas, e.g. checking how to vote with hardware wallet, having locking period of TFT to vote, etc. We will consider all of this.

#13

Dear Mik,

Thank you for your diplomacy but it seems like you don’t get the real issue here. It’s not about the details in the mechanism. It’s about the fundamental changes in the way how future DAO votes might take place. That’s what this is all about!!! Can’t you see this?!? We are talking about nothing less then taking power of farmers and giving it to token holders/owners!! That are simply other people!! With absolutely different interests!!! I mean that’s not too hard to understand?!? The moment a DAO vote like this is passed the consensus of the community will be represented by the few with most TFT. And that will never represent the interest of the community! How can you not understand this?!?!?

1 Like
#14

I get your POV here but I think there are different ways to look at this.

You are basically saying farmers don’t have tokens, and those who have tokens have the majority and are a few. But farmers have literally the first access to TFT: as we speak, every TFT that exists comes from farmers minting TFT.

With token-based voting, anyone with TFT can vote, so it allows more people to access the community DAO and participate. People can either farm TFT, or buy TFT to farmers (via the market), and then access voting.

I think it can expand the base of the ThreeFold community and give more incentive for people to have the token. It even incites people to become farmers, as farmers mint TFT and vote with it.

That being said, I think we can improve the features of this GEP. Currently it isn’t passing, and we have strong feedback from community members to improve on it. So thanks for the feedback!

1 Like
#15

The purpose of this change of voting mechanism, was to:

  1. Include more people to the DAO voting. Currently all non-farmers are excluded from voting, even though they also are part of the community. Voting based on TFT’s will not exclude farmers.

  2. Most similar projects use some kind of token based voting system. This can not be compared to Bitcoin where the miners indeed have all the power, but the power is limited to the Bitcoin blockchain itself. With the ThreeFold Foundation DAO voting, there is more to vote on besides changes in TFChain or Zos.

The DAO proposal has been rejected, but let’s continue the discussion.

1 Like
#16

Hi all –

Thank you to those who voted and brought feedback. This GEP did not pass. For sure we will need further discussion on this topic. For now we are gathering points brought forward here and in the chats, and next steps will be communicated!

2 Likes
#17

Imo, before thinking about such DAO TFT-based voting (in opposition to resource-based voting) we should clarify the minting scenario.
At the moment TFT is minted on Stellar and the TFT-based voting will consider TFT on TFChain for calculating the voting weight.
And there is no specific incentive for farmer to “bridge” its TFT to TFChain.
So, with current minting situation, a farmer could legitimately feel “dropped” from the governance.
I guess we should address this point before switching to TFT-based voting and adjust the communication around it.

3 Likes
#18

Update

The community voted against the new GEP voting process for grid V3. Thus, we are keeping the current voting process, with node-based voting. Currently, there is no plan to have a new GEP concerning the GEP voting process for grid V3. We will keep the community updated if there are changes concerning this.

If you have any questions, please create a new forum post. Thanks!

Thanks everyone.

#19