Ratification Governance Proposal

Introduction

(There is additional information and context in this governance post).

The Stargate Foundation proposed a new Governance process in July 2024. Amongst other rules, a minimum quorum of 1,200,000 was proposed to be formalised at a later date. This formalisation never occurred, with subsequent proposals having unclear quorums.

Below is a list of proposals that achieved sufficient approval (>70%), but did not meet quorum. A full list of proposals in the past 11 months can be found in the other forum post linked above.

Proposal Title Approve/Yes No Abstain (if applicable) Total # Votes % Yes
USDC Pool on BNB Chain 839,600 4,400 844,000 99.48%
Stargate on Soneium 688,800 3,400 692,200 99.51%
Integrate with LightLink Network 569,600 10,300 46,200 626,100 90.98%
Stargate Deployment on Unichain 789,200 4,400 793,600 99.45%
Stargate Deployment to Sonic 539,300 25,100 564,400 95.55%
RFP Request: Comprehensive Data Dashboard 781,900 N/A 781,900 100.00%
ETH Pool on the Hemi Network 513,200 23,400 13,500 550,100 93.29%
Stargate Deployment to Gnosis Chain 898,300 25,800 6,100 930,200 96.57%
Final Data RFP Vote - Choice of Artemis Options 710,000 N/A 710,000 100.00%
ETH Pool on Manta Pacific 790,300 16,700 807,000 97.93%
Stargate Deployment on Abstract 984,300 178,100 1,162,400 84.68%
ETH and USDC pools on Cronos zkEVM 381,500 30,300 33,600 445,400 85.65%

Proposal

The Foundation is recommending that the DAO ratify these proposals approving their continued implementation.

Out of the 12 proposals above, 10 relate to new chain deployments for Stargate. Out of the 10, 9 of the deployments have come at $0 financial cost to the DAO (i.e. no incentives paid in STG, with capital seeded by the chain team themselves, or migration of latent capital within Stargate). The USDC pool on BSC has received 10% of Stargate’s BSC incentives from its deployment until ~4 months ago.

The remaining 2 proposals are relating to the DAO-commissioned Artemis Public Data Dashboard.

Execution

This proposal will live in the DAO’s Discourse Forum for 7 days, in order for the DAO to provide feedback. Each of these will have their own Snapshot vote following those 7 days.

The Execution of this proposal will depend on those discussions and the outcome of this vote.

If the DAO decides to unilaterally approve all proposals under the new quorum, no action will be taken.

3 Likes

I suggest we ratify all of these proposals in one go, instead of having a separate Snapshot vote for each.

2 Likes

Hey Sendok - thanks for that feedback. We will see if others have similar feedback and proceed based on that feedback!

My only concern is that in the 1,200,000 vote model we won’t reach a quorum.
In the >70%+ model we have participation and are able to follow up with new proposals

Agree with Sendok on bundling proposals, however if we need to revote, can we be judicious and bundle material from non-material proposals.

Honestly, I don’t know why some chain deployments with $0 cost needed to go to vote. They were BAU decisions.

Bundle zero cost chain deployments all-in-as-one if legal counsel say they need voting in at all.

I originally was thinking an omnibus solution was wise, and had suggested this directly previously in fact, but I’ve been talked out of it. The reasoning is simple but was non-obvious to me:

a proposal is for the proposal overall given all of its contents. so you can imagine a situation where every piece of the proposal is not something the DAO would approve, but enough individual pieces of it are, such that the proposal itself passes.

From a legal and maybe ethical pov therefore it’s probably wiser to get explicit DAO approval for each individual re-vote. It might seem a bit more faffy, but it’s definitely cleaner in the end and nobody can say “no, I didn’t want That1, but I had to vote yes because I wanted That2, and it was bundled with each other such that I had no choice if I wanted That2 to go through.”

What happens if this proposal is not ratified? Will these pools/chains be removed from Stargate? If so, I imagine that this is will be a huge development cost to Stargate.

I’m surprised that so many proposals did not pass, and that it has only been noticed now by the team.

What kind of legal issues do you see here? It feels to me like this should all just be passed, otherwise it will be very costly to the DAO and to users who have been accustomed to having a certain user experience.

Also, apologies if I have missed something here - but is Stargate paid to deploy on protocols/chains? Just looking through some of the previous proposals which I’ve never heard of (LightLink, Hemi), it feels to me like maybe Stargate should be charging protocols to put up a proposal and deploy on Startgate, with the rewards distributed to veStakers. Maybe if that was the case, there would be higher participation and approval. It is clear to me, that there is a lack of interest from the wider Stargate community in participating in the proposals - maybe because there is no incentive to do so. I, myself, will admit I have never participated in voting as I see no financial benefit to do so. Meanwhile, I routinely participate in Jupiter’s governance because of the potential rewards.