• Forum has been upgraded, all links, images, etc are as they were. Please see Official Announcements for more information

Sub-dao, voter delegation, or lowering the proposal fee. Best scaling options?

Plateglassarmour

Plateglassarmour

New member
Masternode Owner/Operator
This thread is for the discussion of ideas to help alleviate some of the issues regarding our rapid growth, such as the increasingly large barrier for proposals.

All ideas welcome.

Please be civil.
 
Last edited:
So clearly, there is an acute need to start discussing scaling options.

The proposal fee is now more than $7500, and that is a huge barrier to entry for smaller scale proposals.

Unfortunately, lowering the proposal fee could lead to the breakdown of the ability for masternodes to actually review each proposal.

I can't see the network handling more than 100 proposals in a month successfully.

My initial inclination is a sub-dao, funded by a normal proposal, that would seek to fund smaller scale projects and provide reporting based on the outcome of these projects.

At least as a stop-gap measure, a simple sub-dao could be relatively fast to set up, and would help alleviate a lot of the short term issues.

Over time, more complex structures of oversight and accountability could be worked in, but an initial model could be as simple as one or two trusted members of the community holding funds that are disbursed based on discussion in a forum thread to small projects that have the potential to help the network without presenting a major risk of disappearing with the funds.

Lets hear your thoughts.
 
Last edited:
There are a hundred ways we could set this up.

The person or persons in charge of the sub-dao could collect promising smaller proposals and then submit a prop for the total aggregate each month. A periodic report would demonstrate the various degrees of success for the various projects.

Another method would be to pick a number based on previous data and just assign x Dash to the subDao for them to fund various proposals. The number could be adjusted up or down based on feedback on the projects, ROI, the number of submissions, etc.
 
I would be open to the idea of a sub-dao but I think the scaling is already occurring somewhat naturally. It is getting much more common now for proposers to represent companies or teams of more than one person. Having hundreds/thousands of sub-$10,000 projects is not going to be the way to go in the long run, and it doesn't make sense for the MNOs to be making decisions on that level of granularity. If a sub-DAO would be useful to manage smaller projects (probably by category), the market incentives are already in place and it would be an inevitability for such organizations to pop up.
 
I agree that $7,500 for a proposal is a problem. The sub-DAO idea is intriguing to me, but who would be in charge of the voting process for the sub-DAO to fund smaller projects?
 
I read the pdf in
https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/additional-network-layers-and-governance-v3.19766/
and it looks great in terms of presentation layer and new interface for proposals.

Regarding the delegation model I had in mind is simply the ability to delegate your votes to another masternode so say that an owner Alice has 10 masternodes and wishes to delegate to BOB who has one masternode. BOB then gets 11 votes to cast for each proposal thereby 'voting for alice' in a sense. Say then that Alice whishes to vote on specific proposals anyhow where she thinks BOB is mistaken, she can then override BOB's vote and reclaim her voting power for that specific proposal (or all if she wants to), Alice can also at any time un-assign BOB as a delegate through the power of Alice's private keys on the Masternodes she has. Ok so lets say BOB's masternode goes offline for more than 24/X hours then the power should be handed back to Alice.

Another idea is that voting could be granted/delegated to anyone else not just masternode, say a person/team working for dash as a 3rd party

I am not so familiar with the internal structure of dash on a protocol level as of yet but I think it should be possible to do this with some kind of signature of 'voting power' or the like.. something that can be build into the protocol itself so to speak.. but this is something that the core-team have to implement in that sense.

This according to me could go well in hand with the additional network layers / presentation layers / proposal gateway DashGov.com where a user can delegate his/her votes to a trusted person and cast votes for proposals also. One problem is the anonymity of people granted voting power from others but that is simply unavoidable I think.

In any case we NEED teams/people who goes over the increasing number of proposals and makes decisions or suggestions also for masternode owners that do not have the time lets say. Such a service should be paid, and I do think as mentioned earlier that SUB-DAO is very good initial start and it could also take a 'salary' to take care of small-scale projects / proposals..
 
Last edited:
It is probably true that the number of proposals is kept low by the current high fee, but using a high fee on its own to filter proposals is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, it works but has some obvious consequences.

Maintaining a high fee:
  • does not guarantee the quality of a proposal
  • unfairly penalises proposal owners who cannot afford the fee
  • has the potential for good proposals to never to get submitted
  • leads to proposal owners soliciting for donations to fund the fee in the Dash Nation discord
The ultimate goal should be to provide a solution that ensure fees are not so high as to put unnecessary obstacles in the way of proposers and keeping them from submitting proposals that could provide potential benefits to the overall dash ecosystem, while at the same time ensuring administration overheads for MNOs are kept to a minimum. Any solutions would need to be thouroughly researched to ensure their plausibility.

I like the idea of voter delegation, so long as I understand it correctly and there are mechanisms in place to avoid voter abuse. For example, would one MNO be able to delegate his vote(s) to a sub-dao or another MNO assigned to make decisions on their behalf (maybe using some sort of multisig?)
 
I think it makes sense to have some guidelines for proposal owners. It could just be a standard webform with preset sections and Q&As and each one that is filled adds to a score. The more complete the information is that is provided the higher the overall score would be. The proposer doesn't get to see the score, only MNO's, which could help MNOs determine which are well formed proposals and which are not.
 
goto1415 said:
I like the idea of voter delegation, so long as I understand it correctly and there are mechanisms in place to avoid voter abuse. For example, would one MNO be able to delegate his vote(s) to a sub-dao or another MNO assigned to make decisions on their behalf (maybe using some sort of multisig?)
Click to expand...

Yes exactly, I think firstly a one MN pointing to another MN could be a start as a delegate power, then perhaps even a tree model so that delegation can happen in several layers i.e. forwarding of votes ALICE[11]->BOB[1]->JANE[1] gives JANE 11+1+1 =13 votes representing both ALICE BOB and herself. So in affect BOB forwarded both his and ALICE votes to JANE..... of course representatives has to be somewhat public to get more votes.. and perhaps they(ie JANE) should be rewarded somehow also by the protocol itself for providing this service (ie masternode service) given that she actually votes for bob/alice
 
goto1415 said:
I think it makes sense to have some guidelines for proposal owners. It could just be a standard webform with preset sections and Q&As and each one that is filled adds to a score. The more complete the information is that is provided the higher the overall score would be. The proposer doesn't get to see the score, only MNO's, which could help MNOs determine which are well formed proposals and which are not.
Click to expand...

I don't think there can be an automatic way to assign scores...otherwise people can put whatever into the forms without any quality control.
And as for manual scoring, there was already an attempt at that with the Proposal Evaluation Committee (PEC) which didn't really succeed.
 
Should we have a SUB-DAO that simpley takes all the leftovers from each months budget and actively searches for tasks/projects to do.. kind of like the core-team .. with trusted members accessing the funds like a multi-sig escrow. Right now as said earlier the model that we have is very 'reactive' to whatever comes along and dash does not actively go out and pursue new projects/investment areas, which we could with this ginormeous budget at hand.
 
dancefordistribution said:
Should we have a SUB-DAO that simpley takes all the leftovers from each months budget and actively searches for tasks/projects to do.. kind of like the core-team .. with trusted members accessing the funds like a multi-sig escrow. Right now as said earlier the model that we have is very 'reactive' to whatever comes along and dash does not actively go out and pursue new projects/investment areas, which we could with this ginormeous budget at hand.
Click to expand...

And it's becoming harder to proactively pursue projects that will benefit Dash via proposals because of the risk of losing your initial investment of 5 Dash ($7,500)
 
I think it should be a fixed $ amount. I think $4000-$5000 is a good range where spam is prevented and small projects could pay for it.

On another hand, a very simple solution is setting up a max. number of proposals per month, like 20. Then, if the room is full, you have to wait till any proposal closes its vote process.

Thoughts?
 
AlejandroE said:
I think it should be a fixed $ amount. I think $4000-$5000 is a good range where spam is prevented and small projects could pay for it.

On another hand, a very simple solution is setting up a max. number of proposals per month, like 20. Then, if the room is full, you have to wait till any proposal closes its vote process.

Thoughts?
Click to expand...

I like the idea of a fixed dollar amount
 
AlejandroE said:
I think it should be a fixed $ amount. I think $4000-$5000 is a good range where spam is prevented and small projects could pay for it.

On another hand, a very simple solution is setting up a max. number of proposals per month, like 20. Then, if the room is full, you have to wait till any proposal closes its vote process.

Thoughts?
Click to expand...

I think the biggest potential issue with this solution is that it opens up an attack vector (albeit an expensive one) to spam proposals, so no valid ones could get through.

In terms of potential solutions, a nice sophisticated one could be having a couple of "tiers" of additional governance layers as described in:
https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/additional-network-layers-and-governance-v3.19766/

The tiers could be 1)Full proposals 2)Pre-proposals 3)Sub-proposals

I see the third layer (small proposals) as being voted on like usual by the masternodes, but they would be "optional" to review, and there would be no 10% voting threshold (maybe a 1-2% threshold instead).

That way, any masternodes that have extra time and attention could look over some of the smaller (<10 dash or so) proposals without diverting time from reviewing the major proposals of the month.

If this tier has a much lower barrier to entry, and tons of proposals pour in, you could just view proposals by category (like on kickstarter) for whatever category interests you.

Plus there wouldn't be any issue with swamping out the major proposals with lots of tiny stuff, but you could still afford to properly review a lot of smaller projects.

Since that solution (and a lot of the more complex solutions) would require waiting on evolution anyway, I think any good interim solution will have to be very simple, such as a fund payed for by a normal proposal that just directly pays out to some of the smaller projects like DashForce does for meetups.

The fund could just be directly curated by a couple of trusted members of the community that have spare time to run the thing, and they could just provide a summary of what they are funding.

Crude, but I think it could work in the short term.
 
Last edited:
Actually, sounds very interesting. The idea of viewing proposals by category is really usefull cause it organize the whole thing.

Since you said
Plateglassarmour said:
That way, any masternodes that have extra time and attention could look over some of the smaller (<10 dash or so) proposals without diverting time from reviewing the major proposals of the month.
Click to expand...

Im concerned about what if any masternode dont read my small proposal? How can I ensure that my proposal will even be read? I know you said its a crude idea, but I think we can go building it up answeing these questions.
 
A sub-DAO or DIN is ok if it can help follow up the passed proposal. We do need people to asset the effectiveness of some proposal. But make sure we define it's role clearly. What is it main purpose? If it have multiple funtions what are those?


DiscordTag
Naruto#5568
 
We was just discussing this in the Discord, so here's my idea, Crowdfunding a proposal, with two different ways of attack:

  • <5 Dash
    • User has a proposal, but the cost to propose it to the MNOs is more than the finances required for the proposal (example, one of the Discord users is trying to promote Dash in Ghana and needs $700, that's approx 0.5 Dash)
      • Proposal goes to the Dash users, if the Dash users like the proposal then they can crowdfund the proposal to whatever the total is that is requested as long as it is <5 Dash
      • Think Kickstarter/JustGiving for Dash themed projects
  • >5 Dash
    • User has a great idea but they are unable to afford the cost to put forward a proposal to the MNs
      • Proposal goes to the Dash users, if the Dash users like the proposal then they can crowdfund the 5 Dash requirement for the proposal to go in front of the MNOs to vote
      • Proposer is required to make some sort of public donation to the proposal to show they have tried to finance the 5 Dash requirement
Funds will go into an escrow in both methods and will have time limits, if the required funds are not raised in a certain amount of time then it shows disinterest and the funds are returned to the investors.

Hope that made sense :)

Edit: Added example for <5 Dash
 
Can this be implemented in the code?
DAO :5 D for 5000 D / max 1000 D - 10% vote - MAX 6 months - escrow X x /X /vote NO 10%
SUB-DAO LVL 1 : 1 D for 900 D / MAX 100 D - 9% vote - MAX 3 months - escrow X x /X /vote NO 9%
SUB-DAO LVL 2 : 0.5 D for 90 / MAX 10 D - 8% vote - MAX 2 months - escrow 1/4 - 2/4 - 3/4 - 4/4 / vote NO 8%
 
iFr4g said:
>5 Dash
  • User has a great idea but they are unable to afford the cost to put forward a proposal to the MNs
Click to expand...
The problem with this is that it leads to the same issue as lowering the proposal fee: a total number of proposals that is too high to reasonably sort through, regardless of their value.

If We have a sub-dao, it needs to either be A)self contained and have discretion to spend funds on it's own, with some accountability afterwards that people can look at or B)mostly self contained, so that anyone who wants to vote on the sub-dao proposals can do so, but they don't take up the same space as normal proposals.

If you don't divert the attention needed to sort through the proposals, you're not solving the underlying issue.

JOL said:
Can this be implemented in the code?
Click to expand...
Theoretically, it could be implemented in the code, but one of the largest advantages of a sub-dao is that it can be painlessly dropped if it is found to be under serving the network.

As soon as you are talking about protocol level structural changes, it adds months to any timeline to add the features safely, and we need something soon.

I think that the easiest interim solution will be a sub-dao that has discretion to spend its own funds on whatever project looks promising (like Dash Force for meet ups)

It would be simple to set up, and simple to defund if the community felt it was not serving it's needs.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top