Discussion about SafeDAO voting power

Proposals General
12

Same here ser, I only want some clarity. I’ve followed the project close since I got into the space.

The first safe I created: 0x86d49e5484A682E6cc96Cb158f425549ea8fC3C5

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I’ve been using Safe since the first versions. And I’ve never had issues, I’ve even taught many, many people how to deploy safes, navigate third party apps (safely) and tons of troubleshooting.

At one point I even wrote a guide for how to successfully use Gnosis when message signing was difficult or unsupported— and believe me, that took hours to troubleshoot and find a way around message signing with the safe contract.

Having dealt with a ‘shadow’ DAO before, I want this to be different because the space deserves it.

EDIT

Well, I decided to ask Twitter too: https://twitter.com/raynemang/status/1592575257491443713

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13

Thank you for the positivity and I’m glad to see that your goals align.

excuses my grammar here as i am not proofing this…

If I look at this situation narrowly then yes, I agree that clarification on why these two wallets voted against unlocking would be helpful in moving forward; however, when I see the bigger picture, it all doesn’t really matter.

What happens when another vote comes by that u disagree with and was decided by 3 or 4 wallets? do you want them to dox and explain to u why? there will only be satisfaction when everyone agrees with your options.

Those with more voting power were granted that because of their hard work and dedication to building the project. Their options should matter regardless if they explain them in detail or simply cast a vote. The idea that stronger decentralization equals more people is flawed and probably why we as an industry are struggling to keep DAO’s alive.

Those that offer more value should have more votes, that simple. The airdrop was the first step in realizing those values. The second step should be recognizing those with value and bringing them to the spotlight. Token unlocking will obscure our value as a voter before we even know what our value is worth.

We don’t need a vote to contribute something meaningful.

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14

haha no

This is indeed a basic transparency requirement, especially when the DAO participation structure fixed now.

I’m not denying anyone’s contribution, but you must know that the voting power of these two whale voters (12M) is greater than all users combined.

If you think that DAO only needs 5 people to participate (already more than 50% of the voting power), then what is the point of voting by more than a thousand community members?

If the team does not explain who these whale voters are, then all normal users should not participate in the next vote, because their vote will change nothing.

Do you think I’m wrong? :smiley:

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15

Excellent point of view fren!

My only qualm with this is lack of transparency. I won’t stand for a lack of transparency in the space anymore

Even a simple response from whomever the voters are : simply don’t agree

I will take that

but no more will I stand by and allow people to blanket cast votes

Esp. majority holders or accounts with such large holdings — because it sways the vote in their favour which is against decentralization because it amounts to single point of failure (Very much like a board of directors)

Governance systems get abused that way plain and simple

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16

Do you think this DAO was decided by you or me?

No, this DAO is currently in the hands of these two whale voters, and the opinions of others are worthless.

Could you please tell me what it means for the majority of the remaining community members to participate in governance?

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17

No, u are right that the current balance is not in favor of the majority on voters. The calculations used in the airdrop should have been argued more for reaching it’s final stage of approval (a disagreed with the second airdrop calculation as it tripled the eligible users and diluted voting power for users with value to add).

If you are airdropped close to the minimum amount of 400 then your vote is worthless, what’s the point of the airdrop then? it’s to delegate to your respective representative that shares your values. So a DAO with transferless tokens is a delegation market. Market yourself.

What is the standard number or participates to determine if a DAO is truly decentralized? :thinking:

Also, in all your comments, only wallets that have voted are mentioned when calculating the ratio of total voting power. Are u forgetting that only a very small amount of the overall voting power actually voted? it’s misleading information to those that don’t understand how it works.

18

At least not 5

Am I correct?

Especially for a “public good”

19

Are we arguing that these two wallets should dox themselves because they went against the vote? are we looking for accountability? peace of mind? idk, it just seems like there’s no means to an end going this route.

As there’s a lot of voters that did not participate, would the reaction have been the same if 20 or 30 whales voted against?

20

wrong, those two wallets would not have effected the results of the latest vote.

21

Every public good starts off small. We, the minority, have been invited to participate in these chats and make a contribution. As I indicated early, DAO’s are not that decentralized as people think they are. For the DAO to work it needs strong guidance, goals and structure. THEN, we address the voter imbalances and amplify the voices of the minority.

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22

To save for semantics, I agree, It doesn’t matter if the wallets are completely doxxed and we should avoid that for OPSEC reasons. Although, these are safe contracts that are directly connected to each other through ownership— effectively, the balance is 12M for one entity imo, it’s just spread across two accounts on chain.

Some accountability should be maintained if we are to adhere to the constitution or at least if number 2 has merit, then we should aim to identify entities that sway the vote by 12M. Which is a considerable percentage and enough to pass the quorum threshold by 2 million votes.

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I also hear you, DAOs are not as ‘decentralized’ as they insist. Having worked for one, I can attest to that with experience. But, we do have the ability to change that and push for a more reasonable level of decentralization.

The point of decentralization is to sufficiently distribute power as to not have single points of failure or concentrated influence over a networks operation. SafeDAO as it is— without transferrability —is insufficiently decentralized at the protocol level. Because the smaller holders in concentration, must meet together in entirety to combat a few majority holders and cannot become majority holders themselves— without an unprecedented level of coordination.

If major holders can corroborate to ensure a directional vote, then the process gets corrupted by personal incentives.

Without the “largest voter” the vote was nearly balanced at 8.3 M to 11 M. Given a few more days, it boils down to a contested proposal and not a landslide decision: which for what it’s worth, any smaller voters would likely abstain from the vote after seeing 12M get added in opposition— because as you said:

Which I think is also pervasive to the argument itself, because 400 votes are not worthless and clouds overall judgment. At the end of the day, a few votes should/could be the deciding factor.

As I stated before as well, I really don’t mind what the vote turns out to be and am happy to participate in democratic processes regardless of the decision. Overall, freedom of choice will help the industry become resilient and long lasting.

TLDR: Going forward, I’d simply appreciate more clarity around voters, regardless of their token amts. and not overly invasive either.

I’d also like to see an ‘abstain from vote’ field added for those who either don’t want to vote because they have no opinion, have conflicts of interest or otherwise feel their votes won’t change the outcomes: at least this way we can possibly gain a better understanding of motives and proposal interpretation.

The less we jumble decisions together, the more clear it is to voice an opinion.

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23

just gonna throw my 2 cents in here because i know there’s a million people thinking it but are too polite to say it. a lot of people were excited about this airdrop, and the project as a whole, but the way things are turning out this is looking to be a very big disappointment.

i’ll explain why, and give an off the top of my head brainstorm-esque solution for each below:

aa: the dao can’t even decide when or why to open a proposal, this is defeating the entire purpose of the concept of a dao. in my opinion, the main reason for this is people seem to be way over thinking or over complicating things for reasons i have yet to figure out

ab: keep it simple, don’t over complicate things for the sake of over complicating things. don’t be afraid of multiple less complicated proposals in favor of one big proposal with all sorts of information and technical details. 99% of the people participating aren’t developers, 70% aren’t primarily english speakers.

ba: things move slow, and delays are constant

bb: i know software is hard, but the undecidedness and delays just kill any enthusiasm. keep things fast paced, get things done, get people involved. set weekly goals, and try to do a proposal every week or two. even if they’re not critical. active community = success.

ca: team seems to be heavily biased towards keeping tokens locked

cb: it would be a lot easier if the team just told us why they want to keep them locked. is it fears of government/law breaking, fear of launching during bear, or something else entirely? honesty is the best policy. if its a valid reason people won’t have any issues with it. an important tidbit, and this goes for everyone worried about the price of the token: the state of this dao as it exists at this moment is infinitely more damaging to the price of the token than launching during the bear. delaying and making things take months instead of days or hours, people lose interest. people have extremely short attention spans, crypto is a fast moving space, it’s easy to become irrelevant and once that happens it’s a whole lot harder to become relevant again.

da: two wallets controlling a majority of voting power

db: if the above 3 complaints achieve some semblance of resulution, this one fixes itself. but as it is now, this is kind of not good and anyone who denies is themselves in denial. in my opinion a logarithmic token:vote power ratio as opposed to linear makes a lot of sense, and solves the problem of whales while still giving them a greater say than the smaller holders

anyways i’m by no means an expert and the more i know the more i know i dont know so take everything i say with a grain of sand. this post might have been better elsewhere, apologies if considered off-topic. also the intent of this post isn’t to offend anyone, also apologies. thanks for listening.

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24

Does anybody know if the investors tokens are locked in any way aside from the contract being paused?

Have those invested agreed to not sell their holdings for X amount of time?

Might explain why the investors voted against unpausing, if they can stop trade by vote until they can participate in it.

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25

I agree with you very much. The above 8 million safe accounts should be transparent and open. If five people in the community the final say, what should they vote for and do? Then safe will be very dangerous in the future!

26

@theobtl You ask me to reply to someones comment from a different thread, on this thread because it more suits the topic here?

And yet this thread is dead as a door mouse.

The last question to be asked has been completely ignored.

Are you asking me to move my statement to the thread you’re choosing to ignore entirely?

Perhaps pantomime was not accurate enough, Circle Jerk seems more apt now.

27

You’ve done a lot of research and analysis on the facts. There’s nothing else I can add to these facts, I apologise. Please don’t assume I’m the one deciding on these facts — I’m merely coordinating how SAFE token holders come to decisions since the launch of SafeDAO or relay decisions taken beforehand.

As of commentary and potential changes, the team is working on a comprehensive blog post that may answer some of your question and will hopefully provide a basis for discussion for anything that needs to be changed.

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28

In regards to the result of sep #3. those 2 wallets could have abstained and shifted the vote weight single handedly to abstaining being the majority.

29

Strong guidance, goals and structure stem from good communication from the leaders.

The issue being taken here is, as you put it:

We, the minority, have been invited to participate in these chats and make a contribution.

We have been invited to view the conversation at best. Participation requires mutual respect.
Without equal weighting there is not mutual respect between the different vested groups.

To be clear, and fair, there was no requirement for Gnosis to airdrop safe users with tokens at all.
The crypto industry has made many people fat, lazy and expectant of airdrops when they’re purely a means to entice new customers no different than a samples tray in a market.

Gnosis safe airdropping tokens to users is akin to a Company going public and GIFTING shares to its clients as well as the paying investors and vested partners.

But they did.
Which means they’re beholden to those they’ve chosen to share power with to explain themselves to some degree. Regardless of whether they acted as individuals or on behalf of gnosis.
Do you honestly think there was ZERO internal discussion between the gnosis team members as to how to vote in sep2, if to vote at all?
Of course there was, and if we are to be ONE organization that is autonomous and decentralized we need to start communicating as one organization. Not as groups within groups.
Hence the reasonable request for information as to know the intentions of said voters better.
Considering the FTX fiasco one would think that EVERYONE HERE would be 100% for transparency to ensure the fidelity and longevity of the project.

The SAFE users are the clients of the SafeDAO
You don’t give your clients a gift horse with rotten teeth.
Not unless you’re actually trying to dissuade them from building trust in your business.

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31

You’re absolutely right that SafeDAO as an organisation does not yet distribute information and knowledge effectively between its various stakeholder groups, including users, Guardians/delegates, investors and the Safe team. To me it seems we need to improve here on two fronts:

  1. Spaces and channels to increase the visibility of information on each stakeholders’ goals and intentions

  2. Norms and routines to increase the depth/richness of information on each stakeholders’ goals and intentions

For both 1) and 2), this forum is currently seen as the ‘source of truth’ where the governance process should take place exclusively so that anyone reading this forum can comprehend the governance lifecycle of a proposal. Specifically, phases 1 and 2 must take place here and conclude with a Snapshot proposal. Practically, large parts of the pre-phase 1 process are not systematically transparent yet where individuals or small groups often start brainstorming on a proposal outside this forum using other tools. Surely, that’s useful and appropriate for the brainstorming process – the question to me are just the conditions and timeline when the conversation is initiated on this forum. Nobody should be forced to publish an immature draft they don’t want to share yet, but we can tweak the conditions of phase 0 and phase 1.

For 1), spaces and channels, we currently have:

  • a) interactive discussions as part of the official governance process
    – this forum
  • b) interactive discussions around governance but not part of the official governance process
    – the Discord channel “governance” for non-essential, informal conversations
    – SafeDAO community calls and roundups
  • c) one-way communication and notifications on current issues in SafeDAO
    – email notifications through this forum (enabled by default)
    – the ‘safegovernance’-Twitter account tweeting four status updates on each SEP
    – a Telegram group for Guardians to direct their attention to the forum
    – In addition, I wonder whether a SafeDAO newsletter would be useful - pls let me know your thoughts.

For 2), norms and routines, there’s less structure yet:

Notes:

  • The above focuses on qualitative data which is most useful to understand goals and intentions. We also have (and need more) quantitative data analyses, such as Flipside Crypto’s @quasimatt’s dashboard or exploring Showkarma who are working on a proposal for SafeDAO.
  • Questions on how and where we communicate have been brought up by @links before here and that thread may be a good place to continue the practicalities and specifics, but that conversation should be informed by this thread discussing the high-level objectives around transparency and governance participation in SafeDAO.

So, back to the question of how to more effectively distribute information across SafeDAO stakeholders & and how to make the intentions of each voter more explicit:

What’s your view on the state as summarised above, and what else would you like to see done?

32

i think what i meant was If they chose not to vote the results would have stayed the same.