[SCP-TBD] Modifying Ideation Polling

[0xean]

Summary

Our current forum based polling (that has been a stopgap in the absence of boardroom) does not accurately represent our official snapshot voting where 1 FOX is equivalent to 1 vote. This proposal would move ideation to snapshot to remove this discrepancy and ensure that ideation polling accurately captures token holders sentiment.

Abstract

Our forum based polling doesn’t ensure voters are FOX holders nor does it have any sybil resistance. In theory, this could be used as a way to manipulate the DAO’s governance process. Forum polls have meant to be a temporary solution that has lasted too long. If passed, this proposal would leverage snapshot voting to mitigate these risks. An ideation post would now include a link to a snapshot vote that is tagged with [Ideation] in the title. For example, a title would now read [SCP-99][Ideation] Modifying Ideation Polling for an Ideation vote and the official vote would read [SCP-99] Modifying Ideation Polling.

Motivation

Ideation polling should be identical to the final snapshot vote from FOX token holders. Technically, this is the simplest way we can achieve this today. It eliminates the risk of manipulation of our governance process that currently exists with the forum where anyone is able to vote regardless of their FOX holdings and we lack protection from a sybil attack.

Specification

1. Each ideation post will now include a link to an ideation snapshot vote
2. This ideation snapshot vote will be tagged with [Ideation] in the title
3. This ideation snapshot vote will be the deciding factor if a proposal goes to the final snapshot voting process

Benefits

We will close the risks associated with forum based polling in a simple manner that requires no additional tooling to our DAO stack.

Drawbacks

The user experience may be a bit harder for new governance participants and it adds some trivial amount of complexity when creating a new proposal.

[giantkin]

Mentioned was looking at metaforo, maybe can set that up to use weighted fox. (atm it can be gated fox, not sure if its already setup or not)

[0xean]

Yup @willy is reaching out to them to see if they would be able to provide a solution. While I do think their product is awesome and may ultimately be a better long term solution, I don’t think we should wait to fix this issue for ourselves now with tooling that already exists.

[0xApotheosis]

Excellent idea, @0xean - I’ve often had the concern that forum polls might be manipulated to sway optics. Actioning this proposal would address that!

[hunt]

While I agree with you in some ways here regarding the ability for forum to be utilized in a way that can be malicious—there is a larger threat IMO related to large voters that has already provided a sentiment/environment of ‘why should I vote when it won’t mean anything’ among a number of people I speak to regularly within the community. Alarmingly when I have recently asked multiple people about whether they voted yet on proposals that is a reply I’ve gotten more than a few times.

As we push the 1fox=1vote narrative further, I have seen not only more aggressive ‘whale’ voting but I have actually tracked wallets that are splitting up fox into 1-6m wallets and effectively swinging votes as an individual trying to hide it (as best as can be done on chain?). The reality is, we (my opinion) as a community should be much more focused on achieving more voting participation as we can in this early stage of our DAO governance process. The situation seems pretty clear to me, if our voting data is showing that (large) sablier holders are the ones passing proposals and it’s not anyone that wasn’t handed FOX by AG or Erik, the legitimacy of this organization as a DAO can be questioned quite easily. Just because a group of ex-centralized contributors and voters for that matter aren’t centrally located in Denver, doesn’t provide that this is a DAO. Personally I would love to see quorum lowered to 2.5-3m and would like to see a restriction on 1m+ votes. I’m sure nothing I said above is popular opinion but thanks for at least hearing it out.

Added afterthought: I also don’t think my suggestions should be long lasting, but I would love to see FOX much more widely distributed, or for current holders to at least start voting prior to creating a system prone to control due to poor thinking when actually observing our voting data on snapshot.

[willy]

thanks @0xean, fully agree with the spirit of this proposal.

I do think we should consider Metaforo as an alternative approach to solving the vulnerability in our gov process while keeping our SnapShot instance focused on official governance proposals.

Check out Metaforo’s website as well as the demo their team has set up for us: https://test.metaforo.io/g/shapeshift

As you can see, Metaforo is able to migrate all of our legacy forum posts so we can have a smooth transition. New users can connect their wallet to participate in the forum, and existing forum users can sign into their discourse account and then bind their wallet after login.

In addition to all of our forum posts, Metaforo imports are Snapshot proposals and adds the ability for users to add comments and/or send tips to proposal creators and commenters.

Metaforo already has the ability to create polls and limit the ability to vote to addresses holding at least x FOX (x can be configured for each poll). Yesterday we asked them if they could also calculate voting power using our SnapShot strategies, and they responded very positively!

I’ve asked how soon they can have this functionality implemented and will report back. So far I’ve been super impressed with what Metaforo has built, their willingness to incorporate our feedback and feature requests, and the speed at which they’re shipping.

Assuming they can have this feature live within 2 weeks, I’d like to propose that we migrate both our Forum and our ideation process over to Metaforo rather than moving ideation to Snapshot for the following reasons:

1. The barrier for getting a post into ideation is minimal, and I would prefer to keep our snapshot space limited to vetted proposals.
2. FOX holders that are active in governance but not in the day-to-day may not understand the distinction between official proposals and ideation posts
3. Even if we move the ideation votes to snapshot, we’ll still need to keep the discussion in the forum. Metaforo lets us keep voting and discussion in one place, and adds the additional functionality of tipping.

I don’t want to slow down this proposal though, so perhaps we can move forward with the optionality (ie. If Metaforo has this functionality available by x date, migrate our forum and use Metaforo for ideation. If not, proceed with the Snapshot plan.

Thanks for the consideration! Curious to hear everyone’s thoughts on Metaforo, both as a forum replacement and for Ideation.

[0xean]

Thanks as always for the leg work on this!

Metaforo seems like a great solution with a better UX. Maybe we should put up a proposal for the migration that is a few days behind this one in the governance process and when metaforo is able to deliver the needed functionality it will just replace this proposed change.

[willy]

Sounds like a great plan ser, let’s dao it!

Happy to spearhead the proposal for migrating the forum too

[willy]

Agreed this is something we can improve upon (though separate issue from this sybil vulnerability in ideation).

The community could certainly decide to lower Quorum or implement caps on voting, but neither would actually solve the voting power imbalance between whales’ and smaller hoiders.

I would support the DAO switching from 1 FOX = 1 vote to quadratic voting as soon as we can reliably prevent sybil attacks. That’s my favorite solution to this problem, and one that should be easy to implement once the sybil problem is solved. Until then, I think 1 FOX = 1 vote has been working well and not convinced we need to spend time and effort changing anything, but always open to ideas for how we can dao better.

[hunt]

Yeah I’m with you there its a complex problem that I don’t necessarily have any idea on how to answer immediately beyond possibly dropping that quorum down from 4m just to promote a sense of votes ‘mattering’. At the same time, having a quorum lower than 4m provides an environment of proposal passing that require exponentially less capital to get through hard quorum than is being requested. Def. agree that I sidetracked things a bit here from intended purpose but thanks for the convo nonetheless. I support this @0xean and further support metaforo looking promising so far with the team being responsive to date.

[0xean]

Thanks to everyone who has responded for the feedback. It’s been 5 days, and it seems there have been no requests for material changes to this proposal (besides the follow up for metaforo when ready).

I am going to move this to ideation at this point to keep the process moving.

[0xean]

[SCP-97] Modifying Ideation Polling moved to ideation.