[Temp Check][Social] Adding ProposalBond to ENS Governor to make proposing more accessible

DAO-Wide Temp Check
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Kent here from Agora. We are ready to post this proposal to a social vote on Snapshot but wanted to make sure that everyone gets a chance to see the proposal text and gets a chance to weight in here before we do that.

Looking forward to the comments and feedback! The text below is the exact text we are looking to post on Snapshot in the coming days.

Abstract

The proposal threshold for propose new executable ENS proposals is high, and rightly so. ENS is one of the most popular DAOs and community in the Web3 community and keeping the quality bar of proposals to the highest standard is very important. However, ENS also has the treasury and the desire to expand the community and make proposing easier and more accessible to enable more builders to come and build in ENS.

Agora proposes adding the functionality of the ProposalBond to the ENS DAO Governor that would allow a proposer to propose with a lower threshold, and then the community could vote [For, Against, Against No Return,Abstain]. If the weight of Against No Return > Against, then the proposer does not get their bond back and the proposal does not pass.

Specification

A discussion in the DAO Meta-Gov working group titled: Seeking Feedback: ENS Governor Upgrade to make proposing more accessible, Agora proposed the following PR on the ENS Governor: Proposal Bond Pull Request which outlines the code needed to make this change happen.

Since the time of that PR and during the follow up discussions, the community has asked for the following additions:

  • Ensure that the ProposalBond work proposed by Agora works with the new Veto rules and security council. This covers the case of a proposal being vetod from within the timelock therefore making sure we have the code to handle that case. The default case here being that the bond would not be returned.
  • Work with OpenZeppelin to see if we can bring this functionality into OZ Governance Core

Agora is committed to building public goods and is already working closely with OpenZeppelin to bring innovations of Agora’s Governor into OZ Governance Core.

Given that the proposal threshold of this new functionality will be the most important piece, there is a general consensus in the discussion group that 1,000 ENS is the right initial value. This parameter can later be set governance and moved up and down as we see fit.

Voting

We are putting this to a simple, for/again/abstain vote

Next Steps

Should the vote pass, we will be closing out the implementation, working with the ENS Security Council to chose auditors for the changes, and then putting up an executable vote to setImplementation of a new governor, with these changes once the code has been approved and reviewed by the security council.

Success Criteria

For this social proposal to pass, the following quorum and voting requirements must be met:

Quorum: The proposal must receive a minimum of 1% of the total supply of $ENS (1 million votes) in the form of “Yes” and “Abstain” votes combined. “No” votes do not count towards quorum.

Approval: Once the quorum is reached, the proposal requires a simple majority (>50%) of “Yes” votes among the “Yes” and “No” votes to pass. “Abstain” votes do not count towards the approval calculation.

3 Likes
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Thank you for putting this forward. It’s much appreciated!

Presumably the weight of Against No Return + Against must also be greater than the weight of For in order for the proposal to fail?

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This is not the role of the Security Council, although I can see why this could be seen as such. The purpose of a Sec Council is simply to prevent governance takeover by token purchase. I would agree that for such a big change an audit is essential and probably the people to work on that should be the metagov stewards, not the security council.

To clarify: a bond is withheld only if a proposal is rejected (the sum of rejections are bigger than the approvals) AND if the “against no return” is bigger than “against”. The name “against no return” is contradictory because it can be read as two contradictory statements: “Against the proposal. No return of funds” or it can be read as “Against not returning funds”. Maybe call it “Reject with penalty” and “reject without penalty”?

6 Likes
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Agreed! Good clarification.

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Good idea Alex. This is a good clarification.

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UPDATE: AUDIT INFORMATION

Given the potential impact of the change, we are going to work with the ENS metagov stewards to do 2 audits on this code: one chosen by Agora, and the other chosen by the stewards.

Agora recommends using OpenZepplin, a reputable and top quality auditor in the governance space.

Agora recommends that the metagov stewards pick from: CodeArena, Trail of Bits, Spearbit or Trust Security. Each of these are quality auditing firms with a proven track record of working with governance contracts.

Both of these audits will be funded by ENS, and code changes will be implemented by Agora as part of their service contract with ENS, at no additional charge.

Results and changes will be posted for everyone to see.

1 Like