The text is being finalized for a snapshot vote to clarify whether or not node operators whose RPL collateral falls below 10% should be eligible or ineligible to vote in Snapshot governance in the future. This determines a fundamental property of our governance, and will likely carry on with subsequent on-chain governance implementations; it’s a vote about what voting system will be best for Rocket Pool going forward.
Please weigh-in to the discussion with your opinions, concerns, questions, pros and cons.
Should node operators with less than 10% collateral be eligible to vote? Why are you going to vote the way you are going to vote?
First, I would encourage you to vote with the option you believe is best for the protocol, and not for what you believe the original intent / language of RPIP-4 implied. You are of course free to vote with whichever motivation you prefer, but whatever the outcome of these votes are, should they agree, will be adopted as the voting strategy that we have going forward, not the voting strategy that we believe we had originally.
I’m in support of all RPL staked between 0 and 150% counting as voting power.
These node operators have at least 1 minipool. Therefore, they have skin in the game. This is my moral argument.
With Kane’s on-chain governance system, it is probably not possible to predict when a snapshot will be taken, so it is impractical to expect people to top up to 10%. They will always have to play a guessing game with the volatility of RPL and the timing of the submission of the proposal and its accompanying merkle tree. This is my practicality argument.
But Patches, won’t this reduce the utility of RPL?
I think this argument is rooted in the misguided belief that people below 10% will buy RPL to be able to vote in governance. I understand that there is a hypothetical node operator who will, and that makes RPL more appealing to a speculator by hardening the soft price floor. However, I think it’s a wash between these hypothetical node operators and the hypothetical node operators who avoid Rocket Pool altogether because they don’t like that they will lose their voting power if their nodes fall below collateral minima.
In fact, I would argue that being guaranteed a voice in governance so long as you run at least one minipool improves the utility of RPL.
But Patches, if the minimum is 0%, can’t I vote without running a minipool?
No, 150% of 0 is still 0.
Of my two arguments, I feel more compelled by the practicality one. I dislike the notion that voting eligibility will become a guessing game. However, I have a perpetual distaste for measures that disenfranchise voters who are subject to the same governance. Anyone who runs a minipool is subject to RP governance, and they should share in the democratic process.
I’m from Switzerland were we constantly get to vote if a bill should pass or not.
Every adult Swiss person is allowed to vote. Their income doesn’t matter, their age doesn’t matter (as long as they’re adults), their sexuality doesn’t matter, their religion doesn’t matter, nothing matters, you get to vote whether you want this specific adjustment to our laws and regulations or not. You can even start a petition and if you get enough signatures, the public will need to vote on what you propose.
We as a country together decide what we want our lives to be. I can vote to adjust taxes for the rich people no matter my income and fortune.
And so it should be with Rocket Pool governance. We as a community together need to decide what we want our beloved Rocket Pool to be, nobody excluded.
Whoever is a node operator should be able to vote.
My primary concern, by a mile, is that we get agreement between the two votes. What’s important to me is that we have clarity on the voting body, far over which option wins out.
We have been completely blocked on governance for over a month already, and will continue to be blocked until we determine our voting body. This isn’t theoretical, this actually got attention while I was working on RPL staking rework vote text. It has also blocked a budget update RPIP and prevented me from even working on anything after that (cuz there’s little point until we’re unblocked).
In terms of who I think should vote, I can argue it both ways and think I have a slight personal leaning for “all”. I will be opening up with an “Abstain” position, and will primarily use my vote to help push towards agreement if there’s a mismatch.
Folks that delegate to me: if you don’t like that usage, feel free to override (see vote guide) or delegate elsewhere ahead of the vote.
Although my initial inclination would be that “effective” RPL should match for both RPL rewards and voting, making the relevant range 10%-150%, I think we avoid the most problems with the least potential detrimental impact by allowing voting down to 0%.
The effects of those votes becomes vanishingly small, anyway, as we steel ourselves against accusations of disenfranchising the little guys.
I agree with Val, though, that for me the most important thing is that this moves on. I am not a bandwagon jumper, but I am likely to throw my vote behind whichever choice seems more popular.
You are still a node operator in the network and economically aligned with the protocol so I think yes, they should be able to vote under 10%. Governance is not a value accretive enough property to motivate people to up their stake to vote. To me, most cases of undercollateralization are due to value loss and the inability to re-up with a desire to see the ratio rise on its own. Rarely is the mentality that the user wants to minimize RPL exposure.
I don’t believe voting or security is weakened in any way by this change. What I think the protocol should be concerned about is users falling under collateral and leaving the protocol altogether. I believe not being able to vote disenfranchises people and makes it more likely that they leave, harming growth.
Governance and economics don’t need to abide by exactly the same rules.
Maybe this is getting too complex but what if we take a middle way where just as voting weight decreases with a rising amount of effective RPL staked we could also decrease it with a shrinking amount of uneffectively staked RPL below the 10% threashhold?
maybe not worth the complication but since small amounts of RPL have more voting weight it seems fair to at least apply a penalty for not hitting the threshold.
EDIT: i will support the 0-150 camp but am strongly in favor of having a mechanism that counteracts the quadratic voting benefits of small stake below 10%.
I’m in favor of 0%-150%, but that’s not important right now. Whether 0-150 or 10-150 wins is of less consequence than what happens if the result is not matching or if the vote text is deemed to be ambiguous in the future.
do the people who don’t hold enough RPL to meet the 10% threshold, hold enough voting power to move the end vote result?
Any Whales going to vote in support of undercollateralized voting?
I am all for 0-150% for voting. For people that can only manage low RPL staking (around 10% instead of around 150%) I feel as though it’s not reasonable for them to be micromanaging their staked RPL so that it’s always at 10%. Since voting snapshots are not on a regular basis in my opinion it would be unfair for someone who is staking around 10% to get hit for some reason and not have the chance to get back over 10% before the voting snapshot goes off. In comparison, reward snapshots come on a regular basis so node operators have some notice of when they will need to top off before the rewards hits.
I feel like not allowing people under 10% to vote kinda goes against the ethos of the protocol. Someone who is willing and able to operate a node and believes in the protocol enough to spinup minipools should get a voice in governance.
I don’t have a problem in theory with letting votes count below 10% but I don’t think the vote power should increase below 10%. For example a voter with a 5% stake has 70% of the power of a 10% RPL voter, half the power of a 20% RPL voter and 30% of the power of a 50% RPL voter. If we let <10% vote I’d like to see anything less than 10% scale down linearly from the 10% vote power. So for example a 2% RPL voter would have 20% of the power of a 10% voter.
Edit: for the record I’m for clearing this vote as fast as possible either way.
@mao@a35u More complex options could be future votes (assuming enough interest). No need to keep all governance blocked.
@hackworth They could make quorum easier or harder if they are more/less likely to delegate-or-vote. Not sure I expect them to be differently likely to delegate-or-vote.
@ethereanbull It’s not going to be more than half the vote to carry it alone, if that’s what you’re asking. It can certainly swing something closeish though.
I echo jaspers sentiments. I keep topping off every month since the slide started but I never hit the snapshot right to be able to vote since. I’m honestly so tired of the annoyance right now that I was thinking of just letting it go this time…But I probably won’t be able to vote on this one because I’m at 9.86%.
Like @mao and @a35u, I agree that at least 0-10% should have nerfed voting power to counteract the sybil attack enabling property of quadratic voting. Going to copy-paste my post from the last thread here since it was more directly applicable to this topic:
I think voting power from staked RPL should align with staked RPL that earns rewards as closely as possible to a) reduce complexity and b) act as an additional incentive to maintain the RPL bond value
The quadratic voting system would give outsized weight to multiple Nodes with the smallest staked RPL amount. Requiring >10% RPL prevents this sort of Sybil attack by requiring significant monetary investment/alignment.
Allowing those with <10% RPL combined with quadratic voting in my opinion unfairly gives Nodes too much voting power for their holdings.
I agree that arbitrary snapshots make it hard to maintain >10% RPL. I would propose snapshotting all pDAO votes aligned with the last rewards snapshot so a NO only has to worry about their RPL bond once a month.
Maybe even only have a monthly cadence for pDAO votes aligned with the rewards snapshot. Would potentially slow down voting decisions but could increase turnout.