PROPOSAL NAME:
Enhancing Financial Decision-Making with Super Majority Voting of 69% for Allocations over US $250,000
TEAM DESCRIPTION:
Author: Captain Trippy - (Former) ApeCoin DAO Special Council
PROPOSAL DESCRIPTION:
This AIP proposes a modification to the ApeCoin DAO’s decision-making process by requiring a super majority vote for any proposal that involves spending or allocating more than USD two hundred fifty thousand dollars ($250,000) of DAO resources. A super majority, for the purposes of this AIP, is defined as at least 69% of the total number of tokens cast during voting in favor of the proposal without consideration of any abstained votes. In the case of proposals with funding requests designated in $APE (or any other non-USD denomination), a USD-value determination must be made during the review period prior to the voting phase, and to be clarified for the community under the Overall Cost section of the relevant proposals.
This passing of this proposal would constitute a material change to AIP-1 (notably Phase 7 of the AIP Process) and AIP-2.
BENEFIT TO APECOIN ECOSYSTEM:
Enhanced Financial Stewardship: Ensures that large financial decisions have broader community support, reflecting a higher consensus and reducing risks.
Increased Community Engagement: Encourages a more active participation from the community, knowing their input is crucial for major financial decisions.
Risk Mitigation: Mitigates financial risk by ensuring substantial financial allocations are thoroughly vetted and widely supported within the community.
Transparency and Trust: Builds greater trust and transparency within the community, as significant financial decisions require clear and convincing support.
DEFINITIONS:
Super Majority: A requirement that any proposal must receive at least 69% affirmative of the tokens cast during voting without consideration of abstained votes to pass, used here for major financial decisions.
Financial Proposal: Any ApeCoin DAO AIP requesting the allocation or spending of funds exceeding $250,000 US dollars.
STEPS TO IMPLEMENT:
All AIPs entering the Draft phase with an Overall Cost designated in $APE (or non-USD denomination) would have the USD value of their request “locked in,” and would be reported for the community in the AIP’s Overall Cost section.
Any AIP with a reported USD value of greater than $250,000 USD would require at least 69% of the tokens cast “For” that AIP upon final vote in order to pass.
Amend the ApeCoin DAO’s governance documents to reflect this change and communicate the new process to all members.
REPORTING EXPECTATIONS:
The expectation is that this proposal would be implemented by the DAO’s administrative team. The community should regularly review the impact of this proposal. If accepted, the administration and the community should review the impact of the updates after the 3-month period for conflict ends.
OVERALL COST:
Total amount requested from the ApeCoin Ecosystem Fund = $0.
The APE Foundation will be responsible for determining which AIPs qualify for the supermajority vote and communicating that to the ApeCoin DAO community, as well as properly setting this up for Snapshot.
This is great and I would be supportive, the suggestion could also include tiers so maybe you say 1-2m is 2/3 and 2m and above is 3/4 because there is also the minority veto you don’t want to hold a good idea hostage on.
This btw should also include fundamental policies such as amending governance AIPs for instance.
Adding my voice to the choir. Makes a ton of sense and continues to move the DAO in the direction of a true community voice while protecting our treasury.
This would just allow large voters to nuke any large AIP unless you can get every single of them on board, essentially the opposite of decentralized governance.
I think the move towards tweaking the voting approach makes a lot of sense.
@yatsiu brought up some great points as well of maybe adding a tier system.
I’m curious how this idea might be tweaked to also protect against large wallets having solo veto power? I acknowledge that might not be part of your goal here, but it’s probably worth keeping in mind. I also acknowledge that DAOs inherently have some folks with more voting power and others with less, so maybe that isn’t fixable. @CaptainZwingli
I don’t have much time and am on mobile however, I quickly looked at a few recent votes that both HORIZEN and MOCA main wallets had taken part in. (NB: I did not include Yat or Herve personal wallets (approx 1.2m combined), and ofc there may be other wallets we don’t know of as they are not labelled/obfuscated.)
What you’ll notice is the percentage of their combined vote in relation to vote totals - 71.5%, 73.8% & 67%.
All this proposal from CT aims to do is make certain that for an AIP over 1m to pass HORIZENLABS & MOCAVERSE must agree or not disagree - not voting or abstaining being the only situations they wouldn’t have almost total SAY.
This idea for me is exactly what we don’t need - the few further tightening their stranglehold over the many.
I believe this is a valid point, as it can lead to minority veto deadlocks.
Thinking on the fly, perhaps the solution should focus on involving a set number of participants and ensuring greater awareness of proposals exceeding $1 million. Such proposals should either be discussed at a town hall meeting or have a dedicated Twitter account for those edge cases instead of relying solely on a percentage approval.
As I read it, the AIP is trying to solve the problem of allowing 1 large voting block from potentially directing large amounts of funds at their discretion (which technically could happen now). I think the vast majority of us would agree that this is a noble pursuit.
The commenters bring up another good point in not allowing 1 large voting block to then have the same power to unilaterally veto any A!P requesting a large amount of funds. Something that I also think is a noble pursuit.
If CT’s proposal isn’t it, can we collectively ideate on how to accomplish these goals we all seem to want see through?
Is it requiring a mininum number of votes for AIPs over certain amounts? Minumum number of wallets? Different voting mechanism (e.g. quadratic)?
Let’s use our collective knowledge and effort to figure out the solution here.
I realize now that I misinterpreted the proposed voting mechanism. Initially, I thought of ‘vote’ as representing unique wallets in favor, rather than voting power based on token holdings.
Given the significant voting power held by Horizen and Mocaverse, I don’t really see the benefit of a super majority requirement. Like others have said, this could potentially hinder a great idea that enjoys broad support among the community but not necessarily from Horizen or Mocaverse.
Trippy, I love the idea and think it’s necessary to ensure that bad proposals are not just giving away the Foundation Treasury based on favors or other non-beneficial criteria.
I do, however, worry about the 75% threshold. I think it may be too high and agree with Yat’s approach of having a 2/3 up until let’s say $5-10m, which it then reverts to 75% super majority.
For example, I just went on to the Ipsos website (one of the US’s largest polling companies) and the only issue that had over a 75% of Americans agreeing/disagreeing was that “It is too expensive for the average person to attend an in-person sporting event” and 20% of people still disagreed (clearly they haven’t tried to go to a Knicks game!). My point being that we do have a risk of overcorrection and paralysis in passing worthy initiatives if we don’t get the thresholds correct.
If the goal is to lower the voting influence of very large holders like Horizen Labs or Mocaverse, another approach is creating a system more akin to a representative democracy. There could be elections held for delegation representatives. The top 50 delegations (similar to parties in a parliamentary system) would each get one vote. That would be a major change to way things are done now but could do a lot to help protect minority interests and empower sub groups like guilds and geographic-specific Ape Clubs.