Governance, Delegates & delegation 101

[Naxsun]

Introduction

In this earlier post we proposed a Tally Ho DAO organizational structure that also describes the different types of proposals that will be put up for voting. In this follow up post we’ll be going into more details on how the on-chain Governance of the Tally Ho DAO is actually structured.

In a next post we’ll be sharing more details on the relationship of the development team, the DAO and the product roadmap.

How is Tally Ho Governed

The Tally Ho DAO is governed by its community. For on-chain governance this means that there’s a set of smart contracts, using Compound’s Governor Bravo Framework, that manages the process from setting up proposals for voting up to and including execution.

Non exclusively this means the DAO is Governing the

• Treasury
• Tally Ho Software License
• DAO functional organization
  • Elder Doggos Elections
  • Pack Leads elections
  • Decide on Packs budget requests and operational plans
• Swap fees
• Swap contract upgrades
• Earn parameters and contract upgrades
• Governor Bravo parameters

Participating in DAO governance will be voting on proposals related to above mentioned topics. As mentioned in this proposal it’s proposed to work with fixed proposal timelines & vote windows to establish a cadence, increase voter participation and have a clear and transparent agreed process.

How will you vote

In order to practically interact with this set of smart contracts a user interface is needed, meet Boardroom. Boardroom will be the interface through which token holders and delegates participate in Tally Ho DAO governance. As you can see, we’re in good company: https://boardroom.io/projects

Proposals will be listed here, and by connecting your wallet you’ll be able to vote on proposals. The example below shows the Index Coop Boardroom proposal interface, where you see upcoming votes (pending) and 1 proposal vote that is live.

In the forum post containing the proposed DAO’s functional structure organization you can see some details on the proposed flow around this process for the Tally Ho DAO.

Voting

A voter will have 3 options to choose from when voting

• Yes
• No
• Abstain

While a “Yes” and a “No” vote is very simple to understand, “Abstain” may require a bit more context. Abstain is a way to participate in Governance, without affecting the outcome of the vote, and stimulates voter participation.

A certain amount of yes votes needs to be received for a voting outcome to be respected. This is known as the “Quorum”. The Quorum is one of the DAO governed Governor Bravo Parameters.

In order to be able to vote, you must have “vote power”. What is vote power and how is it different from just a token balance? During the Tally Ho DAO launch each eligible user will be prompted to delegate their vote power, but what does that actually mean?

Delegation

Vote delegation is the process where a token holder (address based) delegates its voting power to an address. This is among others inspired by Gitcoins’s approach around their Stewards.

Any token holder that wants their token balance to be reflected in voting power must delegate. The holder can decide to delegate to the same Ethereum address that’s holding the tokens or to any other Ethereum address they manage, which is known as self-delegating. These holders can then actively participate in Governance by voting on proposals.

Holders can also decide to delegate their voting power to an address managed by someone else, a “Delegate”. There are different reasons why a user could decide to delegate. Some of the most common ones are:

• Availability - A holder does not have the availability to actively participate in governance themselves, but do want to make sure their voting power and voice is represented
• Cost - Gas costs are made when voting on proposals (*)

(*) The Governor Bravo system allows to reduce costs around individual votes through ‘voting by signatures’, and their DAO has implemented this in https://comp.vote/ . We intend for the Tally Ho DAO to verify the options here to set-up a system that achieves the same goal

In a way vote delegation can be compared to voting for a politician or political party, with the key difference that a token holder can re-delegate at any time, there are no fixed terms.

Below schematics are a visual representation of this.

Who are Delegates and what is their role

Delegates are people to whom others have delegated their voting powers. The voting power a delegate has can change any Ethereum Block, and is equal to the sum of all delegated votes it has received.

Who are these Delegates?

In December 2021 there was a public call for delegates on the Tally Ho governance forum, gov.tally.cash. Anyone that was interested and met a set of basic requirements could apply. Applications will be vetted by the Community, and these Delegates will be listed in the wallet interface claim flow. This is inspired by the ENS DAO launch of November ‘21. In the claim process, anyone that is eligible will be asked to either self delegate their vote power, or delegate their voting power to any of the Delegates listed in the wallet UI.

Token holders can choose to delegate their voting powers to a Delegate that they feel best represents their interests, and as mentioned earlier, can decide to re-delegate at any time.

What is expected of a Delegate

Delegates are expected to actively participate in Tally Ho Governance by being up to speed on what’s going on, actively join discussions and be aware of the details of what’s being proposed, form an opinion and vote on proposals accordingly. It is expected that a Delegate’s vote participation % is an important KPI.

Lastly, it’s possible that the DAO will propose to compensate the Delegates for their effort and cost that they’re putting into active governance participation. The Elder Doggos council could have an advisory role in this.

Facts & examples

• One address can only delegate its full voting power to one address, meaning it can not do partial delegations to multiple addresses.
• The voting weight of each respective Ethereum address is equal to the sum of all voting power it got delegated.
• A token holder can re-delegate their voting power to a different address at any stage. The changes will be reflected in governance as of the next block on the Ethereum blockchain after completion of the transaction.
• When a delegating holder’s address balance changes, the subsequent delegated voting power changes accordingly.

Example - Token balance change
Day 1:
Holder Address: 0xDoggoHolder1 Balance: 100$DOGGO
Delegates to: 0xDoggoHolder2

Holder Address: 0xDoggoHolder2 Balance: 150$DOGGO
Delegates to: 0xDoggoHolder2

Voting power 0xDoggoHolder 1: 0 votes
Voting power 0xDoggoHolder2: 250 votes

Day 50
Holder Address: 0xDoggoHolder1 Balance: 20$DOGGO
Delegates to: 0xDoggoHolder2

Holder Address: 0xDoggoHolder2 Balance: 150$DOGGO
Delegates to: 0xDoggoHolder2

Voting power 0xDoggoHolder 1: 0 votes
Voting power 0xDoggoHolder2: 170 votes

We’re very interested in your thoughts, suggestions and questions on this!

Tally Ho DAO designers

[masonproj]

Great writeup! Getting excited for the DAO launch, can’t wait to cast my first votes!

Two easy questions:

@Naxsun

A voter will have 3 options to choose from when voting

• Yes
• No
• Abstain

Are abstains going to be meant for situations like when someone might have a conflict of interest or something along those lines?

@Naxsun

• Cost - Gas costs are made when voting on proposals *

Was the ‘*’ to denote a footnote somewhere or emphasis on the point? Just curious cause didn’t see a footnote related to that and was just curious.

Thanks!

[Naxsun]

Thanks for the feedback and going through it in detail!

Are abstains going to be meant for situations like when someone might have a conflict of interest or something along those lines?

Yeah that could be a potential reason. Another reason could be that someone does not have a strong opinion on yes or no, but does want to participate in Governance. It could be that this is an important metric that the DAO tracks for future use.

Governor Alpha did not have this option, it was added in Governor Bravo for this reason.

Was the ‘*’ to denote a footnote somewhere or emphasis on the point? Just curious cause didn’t see a footnote related to that and was just curious.

Good spot! That’s a copy - paste error. The forum sees the * as a bulletpoint Added it between brackets now.

(*) The Governor Bravo system allows to reduce costs around individual votes through ‘voting by signatures’, and their DAO has implemented this in https://comp.vote/ . We intend for the Tally Ho DAO to verify the options here to set-up a system that achieves the same goal

[maessedai]

So basically the gas cost would be minimal because signatories are done off chain? I was just a little confused on this point.

[Naxsun]

So for on-chain execution, votes must be submitted on-chain. So every voter that submits his votes would usually pay the corresponding gas.

However, Compound has set-up Governor Bravo that it also allows to vote by signature, and have multiple votes submitted on-chain in a batch. The party submitting the batch of votes would incur the gas cost, which could for example be the DAO.

So it’s something that we want to look into, what are the options to set this up and what are potential implications

[maessedai]

Got ya that clarifies.

[nikitakle]

Pretty clear system. Personally, it would be more convenient for me to use snapshot to participate in voting, because the projects in which I currently participate with the right to vote use this method for voting. This way I spend less time. I open the interface
snapshot and see all the projects in which I need to vote at once. It’s worth considering this moment.

Now for the delegates. It’s a good idea to add a list of delegates to the wallet (although this feature is also available on the snapshot in the delegates section). If we are delegates and have the right to vote, indicate from what number of tokens I can create my own proposal for voting (namely, start voting, and not propose it on the form). I am very interested in what order the delegates will go, by the number of tokens delegated to them or by recommendations? Will the information about the delegate that was provided in the application be implemented somehow?

[Naxsun]

Hey, thanks for your thoughtful response!

Pretty clear system. Personally, it would be more convenient for me to use snapshot to participate in voting, because the projects in which I currently participate with the right to vote use this method for voting. This way I spend less time. I open the interface
snapshot and see all the projects in which I need to vote at once. It’s worth considering this moment.

So we’re looking into having snapshot integrated into the boardroom UI for proposals with off-chain execution. As far as I know it doesn’t allow for on-chain execution though, so for on-chain execution we intend to use the boardroom UI.

@nikitakle

Now for the delegates. It’s a good idea to add a list of delegates to the wallet (although this feature is also available on the snapshot in the delegates section). If we are delegates and have the right to vote, indicate from what number of tokens I can create my own proposal for voting (namely, start voting, and not propose it on the form). I am very interested in what order the delegates will go, by the number of tokens delegated to them or by recommendations? Will the information about the delegate that was provided in the application be implemented somehow?

So the vote proposal is a Governor Bravo parameter that will be available indeed, and can be updated by the DAO based on proposals as well.

There’s been talks on the best way to order / sort the delegates in the wallet UI as well, more will be shared on that as well.

[bybobbay]

@Naxsun

Delegates are expected to actively participate in Tally Ho Governance by being up to speed on what’s going on, actively join discussions and be aware of the details of what’s being proposed, form an opinion and vote on proposals accordingly. It is expected that a Delegate’s vote participation % is an important KPI.

Lastly, it’s possible that the DAO will propose to compensate the Delegates for their effort and cost that they’re putting into active governance participation. The Elder Doggos council could have an advisory role in this.

We could take inspiration from MakerDAO delegate analytics in order to analyze which delegates are actively voting. If rewards are considered for delegates, then it is even more important that we have some form of metrics to base ourselves against for delegation.

If possible, it would be ideal to push the compensation for delegates, because we can’t expect delegates to dedicate a lot of their time and receive no compensation for their work. This would incentivize delegates to actively participate in the forum, thus creating a win-win situation for the DAO and the delegate.

The only issue with compensation for delegation is that delegates could mindlessly vote without reading the full proposal, so some form of community calls for delegates to discuss proposals should be encouraged to ensure people have a ‘complete’ understanding of the proposal.

We also need to create some form of the lifecycle for the voting and proposal process. Have a look at Element Finance who has clear documentation on following the lifecycle of moving a proposal which is simple to understand. Especially if we use delegates, then those with limited voting ability should be aware of the lifecycle they know how they can push a proposal through even with limited power because it can be intimidating venturing through the unknown of forums haha.

[jeffyou]

ETH Address:
0x8debebf42640e422c38c284bdc67a654be5fd43a

Why I want to be a delegate:

The wallet is wonderful. I can easily make many accounts at very fast time.and it can show all my assets in total, also the NFT. I should ask my friends and others to use it.

I confirm that:

• I’m willing and able to participate in governance of the upcoming DAO. I understand this is an ongoing role that requires active participation: (Agree/Disagree/Comment)
  Agree

• I understand that delegates are unpaid volunteers for the time being. Being a delegate does not qualify me for immediate payment in tokens: (Agree/Disagree/Comment)
  Agree

My Web3 qualifications:

(Projects you’ve contributed to, DAOs you are a member of, previous delegate experience, etc.)

Additional links:

• GitHub (optional): FutureIsCrypto
• Twitter (optional):@gomyway007
• Discord (optional):gomyway#0141