The governance of Balancer has experienced on various occasions the execution of “second votes” on Proposals that have already been voted on in the past. In one occasion a same vote has been run twice (1) (2), one week apart, with two different results.
Today, second votes can be requested, despite a legitimate vote has taken place, without the need to give any necessary explanation.
It would therefore seem essential to delineate guidelines that clearly define, without reasonable doubt, in which cases a vote can be repeated.
Proposal
With this BIP, I propose the establishment of general guidelines that can allow the re-execution of a vote that took place in the past.
The proposer of the second vote must present a request on the Balancer Forum specifying the reasons for the request.
Motivations that are considered acceptable for a presentation of an appeal to vote should be:
Clear evidence of vote fraud;
Incorrect transcription of the proposals reported in a forum proposal;
Clear and distinguishable changes made to a previous ballot.
Additionally, a cool off period of 90 days should be required before presenting any new amendment to any previous ballot.
Specifications
Balancer Governance is requested to express their vote on the above proposal that defines second voting guidelines with a Yes and No options.
Thank you for the proposal. I have to be against this as the power of the Governance Council (GC) is simply too great to be exposed to the politics of the day by direct voting for the members. True anons (random ppl with a just made account) being elected represents a significant risk.
The GC is meant to be a pass through entity with minimized decision making authority - only to assess if a proposal is possible to be implemented. Once people with questionable/unknown reputations are elected there is no check on these folks abusing their power. They might vote no to something going to a vote purely because they disagree with it. They might post proposals directly to snapshot despite a no vote from the GC (all GC members have snapshot posting capabilities).
I personally don’t believe the path forward is iterating on the GC, but rather the flat removal of the GC altogether. Cheers.
let’s not cherry pick one example as there has been many situations where there has been a second vote. recently the second vote was required because the group you represent has down voted something at the last second. once your terms were met there was no reason to not put something up for vote again (see below).
i’ve pointed this out many times (i’m fully aware this isn’t how governance works in its current form), everyone can feel free to go back and look at the proposals that needed a second vote. the vast majority of voters voted in favor the first time around it was primarily one party that wanted to protect their own interests that voted no.
i also feel that i’d rather abandon the GC vs. putting more rules around it. otherwise it will be a controlling layer that sits on top of governance which will always be criticized by someone that they aren’t being fair. the whole purpose of the current GC is to make sure proposals are written with enough information to be voted on, which i feel has mostly been done. are there other examples where you feel there was abuses of power?
i believe i was alluding to the fact that the current system doesn’t seem broken to me. we could potentially move the GC voting system on to discourse via a poll (which existed at one point in time), but that seems gameable by a bunch of new accounts joining to vote. another strategy, but ridiculous, is to have a snapshot (or similar system) to proceed with a actual snapshot vote or not, but have the first capture votes by pure number of voters and not weighted
Hey, Andrea! Thanks for this proposal and discussing these ideas.
I think we should always have caution when favoring rules that undermine the governance power that veBAL holders have over the protocol. Having a lock period doesn’t look good to me either. Ultimately, veBAL should be able to override pretty much everything, so having mechanisms where manual blocks are in place wouldn’t benefit the “DAO” aspects of the protocol.
I’m even more against it being a “general guideline”, as it would leave more room for free interpretation. Also (if we are lawyering it up), one can build the case of personal liabilities, conflicts of interests, anons/pseudoanimosity etc.
Just too many complication layers and unknown unknowns.
So I’ll second @zekraken as I don’t see the current framework needs this change, as it currently considers revoting motivation and justification already, on open-forum discussion, while favoring the will of veBAL holders.
Hey, I was going to edit my post, since you removed the Gov Council revamp, but no need then. Thanks.
Still, general guidelines are good and all, I think there wasn’t an opportunity where there wasn’t a clear reason on why revoting wasn’t in place.
However, 90 days in crypto is a life-time. I don’t see a reason for a cool-down period, as any other manual blocks for veBAL voting for that matter. It takes away from the governance legitimacy and undermines its power. Plus, doesn’t look good for the DAO and takes away its ability to maneuver and adjust in a hasty manner.
A cooldown period is super important. It gives enough time to the creator of the proposal to reassess the proposal and make all the necessary changes. Maybe 90 days is a lot, but something between 30-45 days should be acceptable. At the end of the day, its up to veBAL holders to decide the cooldown period. We can have 15 days, 30 days, 45 days, 90 days and no cooldown as the options for the Snapshot.
I don’t understand what this proposal accomplishes. Our governance framework doesn’t have the notion of a hierarchy of decisions, like constitution and laws IRL, does it? Any proposal can revoke a previously approved one, and it would be absurd to remove this power from veBAL holders. If a majority group wants to run a second vote all they have to do is revoke these guidelines first.
Balancer has the concept of “voting rounds”, right? Once a week?
How about just skipping a week in the case of a revote? Or skipping two weeks?
This prevents voters from getting frustrated with the governance process, if they are being asked to vote on the same proposals week after week. This is the main risk IMO - it can quickly lead to mayhem when anyone who doesn’t get their desired outcome can just copy+paste and make everyone vote again.
This is my main concern, otherwise I still agree with this point from @markus:
Any proposal can revoke a previously approved one, and it would be absurd to remove this power from veBAL holders
I would also love to participate. As you indicate here, I think it’s a bigger conversation that will take quite a bit of working TOGETHER to come up with something to bring forward to all token holders for a vote.
Please let me know if there are serious conversations about how to improve balancer governance going on.
Having a 90 day cooldown for revote on a proposal for a decentralized finance protocol is farcical. It is not outside of the realm of possibilities in DeFi to have a situation in which voting on something that didn’t make sense for the protocol when initially proposed 7 days/30 days/60 days ago would need to be voted on again to preserve the best interests of the protocol.
There seems to be a concern that voting on a proposal again is some kind of major inconvenience. If a proposer desires to put their proposal up again during the next cycle and it has already been determined that it can be implemented, so what? If voters still feel the same in a week, they can simply click another button (~2 seconds of time) to express that their opinion has not changed. This would be an indication to the proposer that their proposal does not align with the best interests of the protocol and will likely lead to further discussion and improvements.
This proposal feels dangerously close to being an indirect means to suppress the opinions of veBAL holders. If new information comes to light that would change a voter’s opinion or a proposal is slightly altered/improved based on community feedback and sent back for a vote, I cannot think of a good reason to prevent voters from expressing their opinion during the next voting round, let alone 90 days later.
90 days is a very long time and the strict requirements for a re-vote appear to unnecessarily hamstring governance. The current system is working exactly as it should with the option of voting on proposals as they occur. This proposal appears to be tactical in nature but has strategic consequences. I would think that delaying this going to snapshot until at least the current round of other votes has been implemented would be wise at the very least. There is absolutely no rush!
These requirements do not allow for many of the key elements of voting that have been relied upon by members of the Balancer community. As an example, BIP 103- Karpatkey Balancer Treasury CU Proposal Update was initially rejected on 28 Oct and then following discussions was revoted on 4 Nov and passed.
This kind of flexibility is not a weakness of the process, instead it is a strength. The ability to revote and reconsider is especially important in an environment where there are large voting blocks who vote at the end of the voting window and thus ‘surprise’ the DAO on issues that may have been considered largely not contentious.
It is tactical. And the reason is because it is now even clearer that rules can be bent and applied as some members see fit (Gov Council “has power” or “has no power” all within a few days).
You are bringing the perfect case regarding BIP-103. And that should serve as the general example to follow to better understand point number 3.
I have also noticed some opposition towards the cooldown period. I admit arguments are valid and I could remove it based on feedback.
About all of this, I really don’t know what to say. I have personally never seen a “surprised” DAO. I apologize, but this statement does not constitute a valid argument in my view.