Purpose
$TOMO Holder can propose and vote for the network governance (ideas, protocol adjustment …). It will be opened the gate for all $TOMO holders can contribute to the TomoChain governance, mission, and vision in the long term.
Voting governance protocol
All $TOMO holders can create a new proposal. The proposal will be saved in the governance smart-contract.
$TOMO holder has to pay 100 $TOMO to Ecosystem Wallet to propose a new idea. (100 $TOMO against the spam and pay the service fee to whom run the governance dapp)
Only Masternode owners can vote for the proposal. The capacity of the vote is equal to the capacity of the node that is owned by the owner.
$TOMO holders can vote/unvote (stake/unstake) for the Masternodes to increase/decrease the capacity of the node to indirectly increase/decrease the capacity of the proposal.
The proposal will be approved if the total capacity of the proposal > 50% the total of the capacity of the Masternodes
The total capacity of the proposal = The total capacity of the upvote - Total capacity of the downvote
The capacity of the slashed masternode will NOT to be counted into the capacity of the vote.
If the proposal is approved, it can be executed automatically in the consensus or it will be implemented by TomoChain team or the other teams who will be fund by TomoChain ecosystem. It depends on the type of the proposal.
$TOMO holder has to pay 100 $TOMO to Ecosystem Wallet to propose a new idea. (100 $TOMO against the spam and pay the service fee to whom run the governance dapp)
Are these 100 $TOMO refundable once the proposal is finalised (approved/rejected)?
Is there any duration for the proposal?
The proposal will be approved if the total capacity of the proposal >= 75% the total of the capacity of the Masternodes
How will the total capacity of the masternodes be calculated at the end of the proposal? Will it be total locked supply here or just the masternode votes that participates in a proposal?
Example: Current total locked supply is ~45M $TOMO. Now, proposal A is proposed. 100 masternodes participates in the voting of that proposal putting a total of 30 million votes. Out of those 30 million, 27 million votes in the favor of the proposal and 5 million votes against it. Will this proposal get passed?
From my point of view, the total votes in favor of the proposal should be at least 75% of the total locked supply (45M) (which is 33.75M). Hence with 27M, it shall not be passed.
A valuable governance idea should attract almost, if not all, Masternodes’ attention and support.
If 25% of masternodes are passive & never vote, then no proposal will ever pass unless unanimous with active 75%. Non voting capacity could be discounted even 50%
This was the dilemma for Polkadot as well while designing the governance.
Decentralized public networks that have attempted to formalize specific voting methods often run into the issue of low voter turnout. This is also an issue in traditional governance systems, where unless highly politicized issues are given to the public, public referenda are very unlikely to gain a sizable turnout.
Expecting a percentage like 75% voter turnout is unrealistic but at the same time lowering that percentage poses centralisation on the governance.
Probably we need to discuss in the lines of creating a rotating council, which is appointed by tomo holders via votes, and then the council can vote on the proposals.
One idea to incentivize MasterNode voting is to reward votes using proposed fees proportionally. If we limit voting to MasterNode plus rewards from fees, I think it could be enough to make voter turn out a significant number. Furthermore, MasterNodes who do not vote often could also be punished by stakers by unstaking. In my opinion, we have a good chance of having a meaning governance with good turnout with PoSV concensus.
There could be a polling vote with multiple options instead of a simple YES or NO vote.
There could be different voting issues (infrastructures, funding, marketing etc.) that require different quorums.
Current DAOs like Moloch DAO, Meta Cartel and others are good places to explore for voting governance structures too.
The biggest issues (including those stated by @KONG and @mohak are):
(1) Low Voter Turnout: <30% voter turnout is common.
There are reasons for low voter turnout
Not all validators want to participate
Some may not be aware of the ability to participate
Some may not be qualified to vote due to a lack of fundamental understanding of the proposal
Keep in mind both Binance + KuCoin run about 33% of all MNs with roughly that in locked TOMO on their MNs. At least Binance has claimed they do not want to get involved in governance (STEEM fiasco aside). If this is the case and neither Binance+Kucoin vote, then even if every other MN votes, nothing will pass
Reducing participation thresholds may be required here.
(2) Whale Voters
Weighted voting is common place by whales within other ecosystems. Throw a few million TOMO on your Masternode and now you have more power than a dozen other Masternodes. This could be done by a couple of our active community Whales owning large numbers of MNs, by Exchanges operating multiple MNs, or TomoChain itself. It’s not to say any would actually do this, but the possibility is there. Look at EOS or Steem for examples of centrally controlled governance structures due to the ability of a handful of Validators to dictate the direction of the chains.
I’m not a fan of that structure and much prefer every MN to be equal, with a single vote to cast.
With a single vote per MN approach, involved stakers can move around their votes to Masternodes which maintain a shared view. The only way to circumvent this in a hostile fashion would be to buy out 75% of the MNs (based on the currently suggested participation requirement of 75%), which is also equal to our threshold for our blockchain to maintain its ability to be a decentralized platform anyway.
Curious about other suggestions to manage the above
Could you expand on the idea? Are you thinking about a process that elects participants from the Masternode community which then allows for them to cast votes on proposals?
I agree that 50% + 1 is OK for most cases.
We can develop many types of votes or polls.
The voting governance also will be good for marketing, when we have a good proposal, we can run a marketing campaign to get all $TOMO holders, Masternode Owner (includes big names like Binance, Kucoin) to join the vote.
I propose that there be some kind of user-enacted “emergency chute” or maybe an emergency nullifying of vote outcome to be built in.
Similar to BTC, you want multiple types of stake holders to have an influence, even if indirect. My understanding is that a lot of direct decision power in BTC is given to the developers and miners. It wasn’t until the UASF (User Activated Soft Fork) that I realized everyday BTC users also had a say - even if it is only used scarcely. I like that aspect.
The more parties that have the potential for a legitimate say the better. If tomo-holders or dapp-creators or active-users has the potential to upset the vote of MNs on a singly crucial vote, I like this. It brings more constituents a voice on tomo’s direction.
Quadratic Voting. Vitalik writes in depth about Gitcoin’s implemention of it. It’s pretty new stuff. I have done business with gitcoin before - it’s a neat org living underneath Consensys Inc.
Quadratic Voting has the purpose of making it more and more expensive to send your next +1 vote. This makes it expensive for whales to vote big.
They then added-in pairwise-bonding algorithms to encourage diversification of vote power… if one choice received votes from a variety of parties VS another choice got votes from 2 parties yet more overall votes, there would be some weight given to the diversely-voted choice.
@Kyn@etienne-napoleone I am interested to hear your thoughts on how tomo might envelop some of these ideas.
Certainly interesting mixing up how funds are allocated by both amount and the diversity of voters. I suppose the question is if it was implemented across the 150 MN operators who each have differing voting power, what kinds of outcomes could we see?
If someone could simulate this scenario on a Google Sheet it’d be a good way to carry the conversation forward.
