Aragon Voting App

  1. Possibility to stake ANT and get Aragon Voting Tokens (AVT) based on time staked formula. for each day you stake 1 ANT you mint 1/365 AVT.

  2. Rewards in AVT for people who vote . The more you vote like the majority the more AVT you earn the more influence you have in Aragon. you can never drop below the amount of voting tokens based on the time-staked formula, but you can lose earned AVT if you vote against the majority. The earlier you stake your AVT behind a Proposal the more AVT you can earn but also the more you can loose.
    The Proposal creator gets also a reward because without him there is not voting. Thats why 80% of the minted AVT goes to the voter and 20% goes to the proposal creator because also a good proposal attracts more AVT than a bad one. A contract would mint AVT based on a formula, if the proposal is accepted, and distribute those newly minted AVT then to the participants (proposal creator and voters) based on parameters like time/position you staked, amount you staked and total AVT staked. If the proposal gets denied than all people who staked their tokens get slashed based on a formula similar to the minting formula.

  3. creating one voting App where every other Voting App is included.

perhaps it is even possible to create a separate App like https://www.lumeos.io/ mobile and/or Web based.

What’s the difference between AVT and ANT since ANT also has voting feature?

yes in this scenario the voting functionality of ANT would be outsourced to AVT in order to gamify the voting mechanism.

I like this idea, reminds me of a bonding curve on each of the voting options. @lkngtn thoughts?

This is really cool, but why not just create an Aragon voting app for this?

  • ANT would be put in a “voting rewards” pot (by the AA)
  • A fixed “voting reward” would be set in the app (first by the AA, then eventually by ANT holders)
  • ANT holders would vote on proposals available in the voting app (put there by the AA as per AGP-1)
  • votes would be weighted by the length of time ANT has stayed in an account (automatically calculated by an ACL Oracle such as a modified Token Oracle)
  • ANT that votes in line with majority consensus will receive 80% of the fixed “voting reward”
  • Proposal authors will receive 20% of the fixed voting reward (perhaps using the amounts specified in AGP-119)

This would require creating a modified voting app and a modified token oracle.

This way you still align incentives for people to hold ANT, long time ANT holders have more weight than recent buyers, and people are incentivized to vote for things they think will pass. In addition, ANT holders will also be able to use ANT for all other ANT related services. Seems like the best of both worlds.

1 Like

I think there are some interesting things conceptually here, I think introducing staking (and time) into the voting process is really interesting (this is one of the interesting elements of the conviction voting mechanism for example).

I also think that rewarding people for voting participation is an interesting area to explore and there has been some interesting discussion in that regard here AGP Discussion: ANV Reward Policy

As far as combining all voting apps into one app, I think that there is definitely room for improvement and aggregation, but not sure that simply creating an app that includes tabs for different apps is the way to go. I think some of the work on AragonJS Lite would be relevant to creating a voting dashboard specifically for AGPs that makes the whole process feel like one experience. I think this is probably closer to what you are indicating when you say a seperate app – and I tend to agree with that. The Aragon Client may not be the right context for certain types of interactions (like large groups showing up to vote, but not participate in day to day operations of an org).

From a technical architecture perspective, this doesn’t make much sense to me. But there are definitely ways to approach giving rewards like described in such a way that you do not need a separate token.

When staking is involved (in voting, or another process) its very complex ensure that ANT can be simultaneously useful for other activities and likely requires very specific and tight coupling between each interaction and the staking mechanism. This is true whether or not there is another token involved (eg AVT).

Why not?

There would be no staking. Just create a helper function/app/thing that calculates the amount of time ANT has been held by each address. Then create a voting app that uses a “time_held” parameter to weight the voting power of addresses that hold ANT. Then ANT holders don’t have to lock up their ANT in order to vote, but you’re still giving long time holders more weight in network votes vs recent buyers.

Regarding rewards, just create a helper function/app/thing that calculates which addresses voted, and which of those addresses voted in consensus of the majority. Then create a voting rewards app that pays out rewards to voters and proposal authors based based on the outcome of votes.

Considering the extremely low engagement in the Aragon governance process, as well as the complexity around the Aragon governance process, adding yet another thing for the Aragon community to do (that increases financial and mental costs!) to engage in governance seems like a bad idea.

Having an ACL Oracle calculate voting weight doesn’t really make sense, the voting app could contain that logic, but it doesn’t not make sense for this be an ACL Oracle… as it is not extending the ACL logic.

This is non-trivial without staking/locking, as you don’t have a way to keep track of when token balances change and change how voting weight is accumulating. This is a very similar challenge for tracking the accumulation of conviction behind specific proposals in conviction voting.

Agreed rewards based on participation are fairly straightforward and could be implemented in a number of ways… I really don’t know if its practical to get into the nuts and bolts of that versus just having a high level discussion first about what should be rewarded and why…

Those are all good points!

It’s essential that we improve Aragon governance UX and increase ANT holder access to Aragon services, but locking up ANT to vote creates friction in both of those directions. My main point here is that it is possible to achieve the effects of time weighted voting and vote/author rewards without using an independent token. I believe that the benefits to this approach outweigh the up front costs of figuring out how to build such a contraption.

Soooooo thought experiment: What if a generic atomic swap mechanism is created for ERC-20 tokens?

As mentioned in this ANV Whale Watching post, if tokens acquire more voting weight depending on how long they are held, people can still use atomic swaps to trade them. This completely wrecks the entire game of measuring hodl waves. You could have your cake (extra voting weight) and eat it too (trade your tokens). Atomic swaps allow you to trustlessly trade the keys of addresses that hold tokens rather than trading the tokens to different addresses. This applies to any mechanism that measures the length of time that a token has been held, or any contract that uses a mapping to tie an address to the owner of a token. In short, any “non-transferable” token can actually be transferred.

1 Like

Yep, this is true. Further to this, you could have a DAO (or even a simple smart contract) hold the tokens and trade ownership of that effectively selling the voting power

1 Like

Or a DarkDAO!