[Phase-3] HIP-34 Snapshot Proposers

DAO
1 
HIP: 34
title: Snapshot Proposers
author: Clément Lesaege
status: Phase-3
created: 2021-12-16

Simple Summary

This proposal ensures that the board doesn’t have discretionary power to censor proposals by:

  • Extending the list of proposers.
  • Specifying that proposers are simply administrative agents and do not have discretionary powers.
  • Providing a fail-safe in case all proposers were to maliciously censor proposals.

Motivation

Snapshot used to allow anyone to make proposals while allowing board members to remove proposals. However, as PoH got more traction and its governance watched by more people, it became attractive for spammers to use the space for spam.

The first attempt to prevent submission spam was rejected but this still left a legal void on how snapshot should be administrated.

As spamming became more intense, a board member changed snapshot settings to prevent people other than board members to submit proposals.

This now lead to the risk of the board having the power to censor proposals.

Specification

  • The main snapshot page is reserved for official proposals (following HIP-5 and its possible amendments).
  • All proposers are given the technical ability to put proposals to vote.
  • Proposers are comprised of:
    • Board members and their delegates.
    • People employed by the DAO.
    • People elected as proposer through a proposal.
  • It is possible for proposers to be anonymous.
  • After being informed of a proposal request, a proposer must verify that it complies with HIP-5 (and its potential amendments), if it does, he puts it to vote without delay. Proposers do not have any discretion in whether a proposal is put to vote or not. It is a purely administrative task to avoid spam / invalid proposals from cluttering the interface.
  • In case a valid proposal were not to be put to vote within a week by any proposer, anyone can create a new snapshot page with a 10 days proposal changing the official snapshot page and electing one or multiple new proposers. It should include “Make no change” and “Change the snapshot page and add proposers”. It should also be displayed on the forum.
    A proposer can also post this proposal on the current snapshot page.
    If the amount of “Change the snapshot page and add proposers” votes on any of the snapshot page exceeds the amount of “Make no change” on both snapshot pages, the proposal is accepted.
    In case no proposal is created by a proposer within the voting period of the proposal on the new snapshot page and the amount of “Change the board composition and snapshot page” exceeds the amount of “Make no change”, the proposal is also accepted.
  • In case of proposals/votes being censored by another mean (ex: snapshot issue, issue with the snapshot administrator not adding proposers correctly) a similar process can be used to change the voting platform to a new platform.
2

@clesaege do you have in mind the mechanism for electing the “proposoooor”?

3

I find this HIP more clear regarding having specific workers with the task of uploading proposals and not restricted to board members only. Looks good to me.

4

could be voted on Snapshot as well.

1 Like
5

Yeah, just make an HIP adding a bunch of them. It’s just an administrative responsibility and we just need one being active.

2 Likes
6

The proposal has been moved to phase-2.

1 Like
7

This would take at least of 12 days to define “Proposoooors” (5 days of phase 2 + 7 days of phase 3)
I’m fine with it and will vote YES on it, but just to clarify that it would take a while to define them.

Would be nice to clarify that on Phase 3, as well as the temporary implementation of this HIP until we come up with a better strategy/system for creating proposals

8

Can’t it just be an automatic delegation to users that have clearly and obviously passed through the proper stages of a proposal in the forum? Would sound like the most logical way of filtering out spammers.

2 Likes
9

If we go this path, I think that the proposors defined by a HIP could be fast-tracked in just one short HIP that is binding. Let’s say 3 days and only one phase. This could be added to the body of this hip for phase 3.

1 Like
10

I would also like to propose to add a clause that considers invalid a proposal from a single member without the support of the majority of the mission board members

This prevents an excess of power from the Snapshot admins to just authorize themselves to any hip they like.

1 Like
11

I believe we could start it as soon as Phase 2 of this proposal ends (if it gets approved), if that’s a concern.

I’m seeing a lot of strong opinions on who should be the proposers already, I would love to see the community trying to align themselves and not take too much time into picking at least the first round of “community proposers”.

12

I believe that all Humans registered and participating in this forum have the right to make proposals for the evolution of the project.
That possibility must be expanded from 5 to almost 700 that we are now.
If any member uses that right for something malicious, the community may request the snapshot administration to restrict that right.

2 Likes
13

It cannot be. Snapshot is an offchain voting system which requires an administration. The only alternative is to use on chain voting which would drastically reduce the turnout.

That would be a completely different idea. Here it’s just about the administration of the page. This HIP does not propose to restrict who can start a proposal. The two step process is already there to ensure that voter only need to care for phase 3 and phase 2 is already doing a good job filtering proposals so I don’t believe more filtering is needed.

Thanks, that’s exactly what this proposal is doing. Note that snapshots are handled by ENS so we still need an administrator. The best way to avoid any abuse of power is to have a failsafe creating a new voting platform if they do.

14

I passed it to phase 3.

1 Like
15

Hi everyone, in light of the controversies that this HIP is generating, some discussion was put in p´lace and after doing some research, we found this feature on Snpashot. (thanks to @jputzel )
Why didn’t we implement this on the POH Snapshot?
Can we go with it instead of moving forward with this HIP34?
We can use the balanceOf of the Proof of Humanity contract to allow authors to write proposals.
In the case of Spam we can easily identify who is spamming and implement other strategies to penalize them from writing new proposals if they spam.

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16

I believe the idea of the HIP is to restrict the number of possible spammers, to people that show interest in being “proposers”.

I don’t think allowing all registered humans will be that helpful to avoid spam, even though it might certainly help a bit.

17

I believe the opposite because:
1- We can always identify the spammer. If authorship is restricted only to humans, we will be able to tell which human did it,.
2- The balanceOf function contract can be wrapped onto another one with a logic for penalizing spammers.

18

Considering that

  • Banning all the proposals unilaterally and without proper DAO discussion.
  • This HIP is holding the normal proposing procedure based on irrelevant or not very important situation
  • There are better workarounds than closing the proposing mechanisms and creating this ad-hoc mechanism which in my opinion is underspecified.
  • There is a better way out of this dilemma.

I voted NO to this HIP. I would also ask to the Snapshot admins to open up the snapshot back to its original state, unless there is an explicit consensus from the DAO to shut it down.