Balancer DAO Governance Guidelines

Governance
1

Summary

This post aims to establish clear guidelines and timelines for the Balancer DAO governance process to ensure transparent, well-reviewed, and properly executed governance actions. These guidelines address recent instances of last-minute governance submissions and establish a framework that better aligns with our commitment to decentralization.

Motivation

The Balancer DAO has experienced several instances where governance proposals were submitted and processed with minimal review time, potentially compromising our high standards of decentralization and thorough community review. This guideline introduces structured timelines and requirements to ensure:

  1. Sufficient time for community review and discussion

  2. Proper technical validation of proposals

  3. Organized and predictable execution schedules

  4. Clear distinction between standard and urgent governance actions

Implementation Details

  • Governance votes start on Thursdays 20:00 CET and conclude on Monday 20:00 CET
  • Votes will be queued by Wednesday 20:00 CET allowing for a 24h period for final adjustments

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Regular Governance Deadlines

  1. General Proposals

  • Must be posted to the forums for at least 48h before being “ready” for snapshot by Wednesday 20:00 CET, meaning for a proposal to go to vote on the running week it needs to be posted at least on the forums by Monday 20:00 CET

  • No exceptions for standard proposals

  • If a proposal interfaces via real-world contracts, it needs a (legal) review and sign-off by the Balancer Foundation. Requests can be handled via @0xDanko. Depending on the request this might need more time for due diligence, so plan accordingly.

  1. Gauge Additions

  • Must be posted to the forums by Wednesday 20:00 CET latest

  • If a gauge has a rate provider, it must have an approved pull request in the code review repository before governance submission

  • Subject of rate provider check-in adheres to the same Wednesday 20:00 CET deadline

  1. Funding Proposals

  • Mandatory one-week forum discussion period before snapshot submission

  • Must be posted on forums with complete details and justification while adhering to SP and grantee standards as outlined by BIP-702

  • Week-long review period cannot be waived except for emergency situations

  • Funding might be requested retroactively.

Execution Schedule

  1. Standard DAO Multi-sig Execution

  • Regular execution schedule: Once per month (End of Month, usually last week)

  • Applies to most governance actions including gauge kills

  1. Urgent DAO Multi-sig Transactions

  • Must be explicitly classified as urgent / with a specific execution date

  • Requires clear documentation justifying the need for immediate execution

  • Exceptional process must be detailed in the proposal

  1. ** Gauge additions and removals

  • Successfully voted in gauges will be activated by the Maxis typically on Tuesdays after a successful vote

  • Gauge proposals with gauge removals will be executed with DAO multi-sig payloads in the last week of the month

Technical Requirements

  1. Payload Management

  • All governance actions involving payloads must have a pull request in the Maxi ops repository. Repository: GitHub - BalancerMaxis/multisig-ops

  • Payloads must be placed in appropriate week folders corresponding to execution schedule (e.g. execution in week 5 → place in folder BIPs/2025-W5)

  1. Operations Interface

  • Proposals for gauge adds, removals and payment requests can be submitted through the operations UI: https://balancer.defilytica.tools/

  • UI provides standardized submission format and necessary checks

Timeline Implementation

This better defined governance process will go into effect immediately. All new proposals must adhere to these new guidelines, with a brief grace period of one week to allow for adjustment to the new system.

Monitoring and Adjustment

The effectiveness of these new guidelines will now be monitored for 4 voting cycles. Feedback from the community will be collected and considered for potential adjustments to improve the process further. After consolidating feedback and learnings from this new approach, we will evaluate if this guideline will be formerly voted in by governance.

9 Likes
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great to see this crystalised finally, clarity around these deadlines for everyone :slight_smile:

6 Likes
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Very important to have this guidelines set!

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Greatly appreciate the practicality baked into this. Gauge adds are one of our biggest concerns and to have them in by Wednesday evening is totally realistic. Mistakes happen when things are rushed to the voting phase, or community members do not have proper time to digest the more complex proposals. All realistic expectations and should be easy for everyone to abide by. Thanks for putting pen to paper on this!

6 Likes