Remove Abstain Vote Option

After the disgraceful allocation of funds to Cosmic Validator, who received $16,000 for videos that essentially nobody watches, it is clear that the abstain option is abused and unnecessary. The abstain vote makes sense for those with conflicts of interest, but it has not been impactful and only allows validators to dodge responsibility. Less than 27% of the community voted yes and over 47% abstained. Validators are abstaining because they are afraid to tell their peers they are being unreasonable. Validators should not be allowed to hide behind abstain votes as it causes nonsense like this to pass.

Let’s remove the abstain vote or strip validators of their ability to vote their delegators’ share.

we could also try making abstain mandatory for the top 100, 1/2, or 1/3 validators. that could also pull delegations down to lower validators.

Why not indeed. Also to avoid not reaching the quorum, maybe we could allow validators to opt-out from governance and voting processes. Here I mean the validator would opt-out from ALL votes. For example a CEX validator would be able to opt-out like that he doesn’t even impact the quorum

tacolopo:

Cosmic Validator voted yes on their own proposal to vote themselves money

Well, if you are trying to lie and troll you should try a bit harder, anyone can see onchain that we voted abstain on the proposal since the beginning NOT yes as you are lying about trying to attack us. What is disgraceful for Cosmos is having people like you attacking others with lies and misinformation.

common_spelling:

we could also try making abstain mandatory for the top 100, 1/2, or 1/3 validators. that could also pull delegations down to lower validators.

You claim in another forum post closed recently that ‘I hope others wont let stakefish and cosmic validator forget the damage they have done to the cosmos’. So basically you disagree with the proposal and because of this you try to impose your opinion and encourage others to continue attacking us? Thankfully people like you are the minority in the Cosmos ecosystem. Also, as pointed above, tacolopo is a troll and a lier claiming that we voted yes in our own proposal which isn’t true since we voted abstain since the beginning and this can easily be verified onchain. So you are supporting a lier and a troll, this gives you a lot of credibility

@lexa Please you should monitor and moderate when people are clearly sharing misinformation and lies, you can easily verify onchain that we voted abstain in our own proposal since the beginning not yes as tacolopo is falsely claiming

@Cosmic_Validator I did say that, not because of how you voted, (it’s irrelevant given your delegations) but because the outcome appears to be orchestrated by a group of validators that includes yourself as a form of validator quid pro quo and/or an attempt to manufacture consent amongst other validators to raid the community pool. your proposal passing (contrary to community sentiment less the top validator) signals very clearly that validators can not be trusted to govern as the community wishes and validator’s power over aggregate delegator votes becomes an untenable risk the higher up the active set the validator is. your proposal was widely criticized by the majority as a bottom of the barrel validator youtube channel asking for multiple times a reasonable market rate to increase its own exposure and increase delegations to your own validator while minimally increasing exposure to the cosmos. It was widely signaled that retaliatory spending proposals would be made if yours was to pass against community wishes. This means that the outcome of the vote was an attempt to encourage spam spending proposals and manufacture consent to raid the community pool or stakeFish is a…

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My apologies, I thought you voted yes, I corrected the post so newcomers wouldn’t think that. Must’ve mixed it up with 88 and 90. I still think you guys are bad and don’t deserve a dime though.

[Moderator]
@Cosmic_Validator , @common_spelling , @tacolopo

We’re discussing whether to remove the abstain vote option here. Please keep conversation on-topic and focus on bringing in new ideas and creative problem-solving.

This is a very lightly moderated space due to the constraints of me being a single person. The forum is not the place for name-calling and personal attacks - it is a community space for discussing governance. As a community, we are all responsible for maintaining a welcoming environment even when we disagree about things.

Ah, I think Cosmic Validator might have even more sway as attempts to remediate the governance methods that allowed them getting 5-20k for videos nobody watches is now going to get censored. This is honestly really bad.

common_spelling: contrary to community sentiment less the top validator Well, community sentiment is not a few twitter accounts. Let’s analyse the real sentiment by looking at the yes, no, abstain and also weighted votes. But first, Tacolopo, are you aware about weighted votes? It is not just yes, no or abstain, it is also possible to vote choosing different % weight for yes, no or abstain. So even if you remove the abstain option, it would be possible to do a weighted vote of 50% yes and 50% no which would essentially be like an abstain vote. Then, you would need to remove both abstain and weighted votes which doesn’t seem a good idea leaving just the yes or no options. This could lead to many who would vote abstain to not vote since only yes or no would be available and then reaching quorum for proposals could become a challenge. In summary, removing the abstain vote doesn’t make sense since weighted vote can still be used to vote abstain, and removing weighted vote I don’t think it is a good idea. Now, going back to the sentiment looking at the votes in the proposal: • YES: 8548 individual votes, and 24 validator votes • NO (including a few NWV): 4670 individual…

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you can celebrate spoof’d numbers all you want, it doesnt change the fact that validators control the chain using delegators votes & without being required to have any skin in the game. prop82 also had an unusual number of dusted wallets vote yes and some people claiming the vote was advocated for by the community and stolen or whatever. the lack of validator investment in the chains they govern poorly, incentivizes validators to use other people’s voting power NOT to benefit the chain or those who delegate to them, but themselves and their validator cohort. This was obviously the case in prop89. the risk presented by sloppy governance seen in 89 illustrates the nepotism amongst validators and prevents the ecosystem from growing and attracting the outside investment that IBC ecosystem should. 89 exemplifies this trend among validators, and the attempt to manufacture consent to raid the community pool for personal benefit rather than public goods as CP funds are intended suggest that validator voting power needs to be restricted. I dont think that removing abstain as an option addresses this issue at all, but believe a solution or partial solution can be achieved by using…

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Are you serious? Have you really come to the Cosmos Forum to air your anger at a successful prop? The majority have spoken bro… And rather than looking to the future you have come here to scream and hold your breath. Then to put your whining under the title Remove Abstain Vote Option… Lame!

We can and haven’t spoken about misusing No With Veto and it’s impact of governance, but you lot want to remove validators access to Abstain Vote Option? How about we talk about removing NWV from validator options as well?

I think removing it is a better idea as making it mandatory would help contribute to quorum and thus allow bad props to pass with very little support

I have come to advocate for a governance alteration, hence the purpose of the forum “bro”. BTW the majority did not speak “bro” as the yes vote was 27% “bro” which is not a majority. Are you serious? Did you really come here to complain about someone complaining “bro”? “Lame” “bro”! Now let’s stop with the nonsense and get to actual discussion. If we were to allow validators to vote on behalf of non-voting delegated share, then the only thing that should be stripped is Abstain. I am very open to stripping validators of voting for non-voting delegated share altogether. Happy to coauthor a prop on this with you.

And your solution is to not allow validators to Abstain? This doesn’t seem wise, props would fail because they cannot hit quorum if validators don’t vote or be forced into votes that they think the wider diaspora should make rather than Whales.

Okay, good luck advocating for this position…

@Hush that is irrelevant. quorum is more or less arbitrary under the current paradigm. currently there are <100 validators that determine governance by voting with their delegator’s stake, artificially meeting quorum to appear as if users are participating. delegators overriding validator votes makes approximately no difference to the outcome of the proposal.

Hush:

And your solution is to not allow validators to Abstain? This doesn’t seem wise, props would fail because they cannot hit quorum if validators don’t vote or be forced into votes that they think the wider diaspora should make rather than Whales.

despite the nominal reduction in total votes, i would wager that community participation would increase if delegator’s votes actually mattered to the outcome of governance.

the lack of validator investment in the chains they govern (poorly) incentivizes validators to use other people’s voting power NOT to benefit the chain they are governing nor delegators, instead, validators vote to benefit themselves and their validator cohort.

This was obviously the case in prop89 and 82, for example.

Yes, don’t allow them to abstain as it is precisely the issue that we are hitting quorum without taking concrete positions. Voting should only be done by those who have the active stake (their share) and actively participate. Doesn’t make sense to embolden validators with the power to vote with other people’s funds, that is not the purpose of delegating. Quorm can be reduced to reflect active participation. If there aren’t enough active independent voters, we can write a proposal to lower quorum.

Related to prop 89, can anyone help me to understand how the proposal was passed with 26.74% yes vote? From what I know, to pass, the proposal must have more than 2/3 of the total staked ATOM voting yes. Thanks.

it requires 40% of staked Atom to reach quorum and be eligible for passage. abstain counts toward quorum, but neither for nor against, so it counts as as part of total votes cast. validators vote with other peoples votes making governance <100 validators incentivized to govern in their own interests and at the expense of delegators, and in the case of prop89, appearing to pay themselves out of the community pool. The last minute intervention of stakefish to pass the proposal prompted wide spread criticism and demonstrated the unreasonable voting power held by the top validators. delegators can change their validators abstain vote by voting like normal. so by validators voluntarily abstaining they left it up to the current participants to vote so it doesnt appear as if they are giving each other kickbacks. a marketingDAO should be proposed with annual budget for content creator support for whatever spending criteria, not: never ending retaliatory passage of funding proposals from validator content creators. top validators have all that governance power, yet many have nothing at stake themselves. to subsidize the lower validator profit of a bear market, validators are…

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Quorum is the point. Arbitrary or not, it is one of the variable that we have all agreed to and plays a serious part in governance. This answer would only make any kind of sense if you are requesting governace remove quorum and go for a simple Yes/No vote. And again good luck with that.

If you leave in quorum requirements and remove abstain votes, what you are demanding is a halt in governance. Most props will not hit quorum or validators will default to a, “NO”, vote, as a no vote will styme change and keep the status quo. We would get even more friction than we have now and little to no proposition would pass, even if more actual wallets vote, “YES”.

How removing abstain votes solves a problem (if this is a problem)? Delegators are overriding the vote already.

I didn’t vote on this proposal, but my validator seem to vote NO: which was indifferent to me. We are talking about very small PR budget here. Right now, these content creators has great pressure on them to do something better. I am kinda hopeful at this point that they might create some nicer videos, hope they are outsourcing editing / visual production to professionals (and this is a tight budget tbh).

Lexa is no longer in charge of the moderation, and I will do my best on following up on all the channels/socials but due to Christmas Holidays might be particularly challenging. Would recommend to everyone to accept governance decision and don’t blame people because of it. At the same time, people have all the right to try to change things if they don’t find them right. Let’s try to all be constructive with our criticism as we are all here with the best of the hub in our minds

there s no point to quorum, it is decorative.
the top 100 validators decide what passes or not by using other peoples votes. many have no investment into the chain and are using their power to take from delegators and distribute community funds to themselves.

Delegators do have the ability to override votes, but the vast majority of materialized voting power is coming from validators, which in this case was abstain. Removing abstain solves the problem by not reaching quorum without legitimate support from individuals.

The number of wallets voting a certain way is irrelevant, there are tons of examples of wallets with barely any stake voting yes on proposals; this is also often unrelated to the proposer (aka not assuming bad intent on cosmic validator). For example, Akash prop 21 had ~13000 yes votes most of which were wallets with barely any balance. We’re interested in the total stake exerted by individual voters.

no, it just forces validators to cast other peoples votes yes or no.

abstain means the validator doesnt find the proposal malicious, but doesnt agree with the proposal, and delegators votes will be the only ones to count toward the decision.

if all validators voted abstain, governance would be decided by the stake holders=the community

not sure why, but slow mode makes it so i cant edit my original reply, forcing us to stare at that unsightly deleted response box

Yes I don’t think we are disagreeing on most things. But because abstain counts towards quorum I am counting it as having an effect. If validators were forced yes or no, hopefully they would err towards no. Even if not, in my opinion abstain is the copout answer for a validator to look like they are participating in governance while refusing to take any stand. If they don’t want to take a stand, they just shouldn’t vote. Although I agree it seems to be the best option to remove them voting delegator’s stake altogether.

I think @lexa put us in slow mode when Cosmic Validator complained to censor us.

Will check about this

“Abstain” is imo one of the ugliest options possible in governance, but sometimes necessary. For example; not everyone is as skilled in smart contract uploads which go through governance. That kind of stuff needs an abstain for validators/delegators who simply do not have the expertise, but want to help a proposal reach quorum and putting trust in the people who have the expertise.

However, I do agree that some validators use “abstain” a bit too often (some seem to have a subscription to it). Doing abstain on each and every proposal is worse than not voting to me. Since on Mintscan it will look like a validator cares about governance, but in reality doesn’t give a ****.

As @Cosmic_Validator rightfully says, removing “Abstain” is not the option is you leave the weighted option to exist. The way out would be to limit the usage of “Abstain” per validator through code OR that delegators start caring where they put their stake. There are a lot of validators who actually care how the chain they validate on is developing. If delegators start caring about that and delegate accordingly this whole problem would be gone.

i think this might cause many props staying below quorum, validators might not vote instead of abstaining (like big CEX are not voting for any proposals).

quorum is ornamental. governance is decided by the same handful of validators. this is even more evident when validators choose to vote with abstain and let their delegators make the decisions by overriding their vote.

There clearly is a need for a change up in also the voting mechanism of governance. Abstain vote is meant to be there when an entity expresses no opinion / doesn’t have the technical knowledge to express that opinion but still wish to participate to the vote getting passed (I am assuming that an entity would want this because the rest of the ecosystem who have a more ‘educated’ guess will act and vote accordingly.) It is true that some entities like to use the abstain vote more than others. This could cause issues as these entities would just be, as some people said, not giving a damn about conducting proper governance. Also, those who abstain a lot could also be showing that they possibly lack the proper knowledge to partake in governance which is another issue. I don’t think removing the abstain vote is ideal cause it could be useful in some cases when it comes to those who really can’t make an educated and best guess about a certain proposal. There should be other measures in place possibly such as maybe limiting the number of abstains an entity can make. However, this could lead to other issues such as the entity making a random yes / no decision so more thought would…

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Little bit Disagree, the real problem is Token cosmos holder doesn’t participated at governance. So i prefer a proposal to educate holders ! Indeed A new project is building on Cosmos, GOVMOS with Phil_RX.

I think they put that on hold at the moment from the forum thread i was following.

Indeed !

Introducing the Govmos Initiative to reform governance Governance Meta

Update 21/12/2022 : After a month spent into trying to reform governance we decided to put this initiative on hold. It’s been a month of 16+ hours a day to try bringing new ideas on the table. Just to face that our approach is not taken seriously. Therefore we don’t want to spend more time trying to convince people that just don’t want to. Our standpoint is now clearer than ever, the current governance structure is definitely not sustainable, nor scalable, but we can’t force our way in. So we …

Thx

validators vote in their own interests with other peoples stake. The issue is the lack of incentive for validators to vote in the interest of the chains they validate. everything seems to be headed toward an amalgamation of abstracted liquidity from all chains which puts validators in even more control of the market within the ecosystem. no chains are sovereign, the cosmos is ruled by a cohort of validators controlling all of its chains. why would people become an investor in any cosmos chain when its success is based on the whims of a few validators?

tacolopo:

strip validators of their ability to vote their delegators’ share.

First, thanks for initiating this on the forum.

Possible rule (?):

• Validators w/ .17% voting power, or above (aka Top 80) are required to abstain from proposals

I echo @common_spelling’s sentiment:

common_spelling:

favor reducing validator voting power to =√delegations + self-stake
but
forcing the top 1/3-1/2 of validators to abstain (delegators can still override the abstain) would reduce some risk of harmful validator cartels and boost decentralization.

Also agree that completely removing the abstain isn’t the solution here, although again appreciate the initiative.

Not to harshly exclude, but I’m sure we don’t want other big players like Coinbase or Binance to participate in governance, especially when considering the ratio of self bonded vs delegations, etc.

Much to consider and further evidence to tackle/implement the Atom One Constitution, together.

@catdotfish @lexa thank you for the work you do in moderating

+1 for the idea to have a buffer time for delegators. It would avoid last minute shift, also it’ll let time to redelegate if the vote doesn’t fit the user

Abstain needs to stay. It is better validators not understanding the proposal can use it and not randomly vote something.

There are already some motivators for validators not to use abstain too often. ICF for example penalize validators for voting too often Abstain and perhaps Stride and others do it also.

Good addition!

Having some method for financial incentives for validators to vote other than “Abstain” is good. It does not mean the validator in question will research what she/he votes for though… so some method for qualitative voting would also be nice. Maybe the inclusion of a reasoning in the memo of a tx (although that seems kinda harsh :))

We are fully against removing abstain. If you feel like someone votes in their own favor, you have the option to change your vote or to remove your stake from them. We are strong because we are a united, decentralized community that has the ability to voice what they want, including the right to abstain