HIP-31: Seasonal Engagement - Enhancing Stake Weight Eligibility

Governance Validator DAO
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This HIP aims to enhance the representation in the Harmony voting system by introducing an activity threshold for seasonal engagement.

Key Change

  • Introduce a 6-month (or last HIP) involvement threshold to determine stake weight eligibility.

Introduction

Harmony’s current voting system can be refined to ensure that the community’s most engaged and active members have their preferences significantly counted in governance. This proposal seeks to institute an involvement threshold to help achieve this goal. Inspiration for this alteration comes from previous HIPs, including HIP-15 and HIP-21.

6 Month (or Last HIP) Involvement Threshold

Validators must have participated in a governance vote within the last 6 months to have their stake weight considered in voting. If the most recent HIP was over 6 months ago, then participation in the vote for that HIP is required for stake weight eligibility. Vote participation will result in being added to a revolving public list of eligible validators and will be counted as a normal vote. This list may be added either to a public repository or directly to the staking dashboard for easier access.

Ineligible Voting

If a validator does not meet the activity threshold, their stake weight will not be included in the total stake weight calculations. However, they can still participate in the current HIP vote. By doing so, they immediately become eligible, and their stake weight will be counted towards quorum and vote approval.

In Practice

Consider Validator A, who controls a total delegation of 100 million ONE. They have not voted in the last 6 months, nor did they participate in the previous HIP that was more than 6 months ago. When a new HIP is introduced, they decide not to vote, the total stake weight from that HIP would decrease by the 100 million ONE from Validator A.

Let’s take a look at HIP-XX. At the beginning of the voting process, 70 out of 100 validators can be counted toward the quorum and approval percentages. If one of the remaining 30 validators decides to vote, 71 validators will be included in both calculations.

Conclusion

Adopting this modification to the Harmony voting system promotes greater engagement and a more reflective governance process. It prioritizes active contributors, ensuring they are the ones steering the network’s trajectory. This proposal aims to bolster Harmony’s health and growth by ensuring decisions are made by its dedicated participants.

We welcome community feedback on this proposal.

7 Likes
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tl;dr: Seasonal Engagement - Enhancing Stake Weight Eligibility

  • Elevate participation to ensure governance is shaped by active members.
  • Tackle the issue of large validators remaining passive.
  • Set a 6-month activity benchmark for validators’ stake weight in voting.
  • Validators can always vote, but if inactive for 6 months or not voting in the prior HIP that is more than 6 months away, their stake weight is excluded from the total weight.
1 Like
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I think this needs to be more solid than an editable list in a repo.

hmy should be updated to allow users to opt in/out of governance with on chain proof. This should be the only way to be exluded from governance votes. We could update the staking portal to have a login to control the same things for validators but all commands should also be in hmy to control your governance options. A flag True/False for governance could be added to the API data for validators that can be switched by them via hmy/portal login.

Staking portal: I think the staking portal should also be split into two lists, one with active and participating validators that’s the default and move non-governance validators to a back page.

Snapshot: Update the voting proposal to exlude validators who have opted out of governance.

Once these things are in place you can then discuss how to best automatically make validators flip from active true to false. At least with the items above we’d have the basics covered for large validators like Binance to opt out of future voting.

If the HIP is modified with details of how things would work on change we’re fully in support of allowing validators to not participate even though it sorta goes against the entire spirit of staking and governance.

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Staking portal: I think the staking portal should also be split into two lists, one with active and participating validators that’s the default and move non-governance validators to a back page … I like this idea :bulb:

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Loved the idea of having staking portal split with the active validators at least at the governance vote. Also I support the whole idea of being exclude from posterior votes if not voted in the last votes. 6 months I believe its a long time. Maybe the last 2 votes.

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Im confused. I guess ill ask on the next HER :blue_heart:

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I’m on board with this idea as it could positively influence future HIP and protocol improvements by those who are actively engaged in the network.

I also agree that some intergration in the staking portal could be a beneficial move.

2 Likes
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We definitely need something like this.

If the previous hip was over 6 months ago, wouldn’t the stake weight count in a new hip?

Edit- I understand now that it’s 6 months or last hip, you can disregard that question.

@theo1 are you a validator? All these hips keep getting proposed but I was under the impression that validators had to write hips. According to the VDAO charter at least.

I appreciate everything you do Theo

1 Like
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No objection to the concept and suggested improvements made by others. I am curious to hear the team’s response to @PeaceLoveHarmony, though. I understand that Harmony runs internal validators, but external validators have always been those charged with network governance. Are these HIPs coming directly from Harmony?

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Update: Addressing Questions and Concerns

First, thank you to everyone who has taken the time to review HIP-31 and give suggestions to how this will be implemented.

Per inquiries from @easynode, @Don_Holland, and @CryptoTech, HIP-31 will be implemented via an update to the Staking Dashboard. Should HIP-31 pass, a preliminary implementation would look as follows:

  • “Governance” tab on staking dashboard to feature eligible validators.
  • Eligible validators visible from staking dashboard to allow delegators to clearly see who is voting (potentially via a green outline).
  • Governance Vote Dashboard (following similar layout to @FortuneValidator’s current vstats page) to keep track of the current vote.
  • Total stake weight is calculated from eligible validators.

HIPs proposed come as a result of conversations and suggestions with validators, snapshot proposals will continue to be proposed by validators. There are still many aspects we need to tackle, some of which have been pending for quite some time.

In the future, we may be able to add contracts for the eligibility flags, however, this would need a complete on-chain voting infrastructure along with it.

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Great update, much needed improvement

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Does this not include the option to change a validator data flag on chain to yes/no for governance via hmy and/or logging into the dashboard?

I think we use a custom governance check on snapshot, could that be updated to simply read the new flag in the metadata on harmony and figure out who’s eligible and what their weight is?

I do agree though a better voting solution that does it properly like gov.harmony.one would be awesome so we can get back to the integrity level of voting we used to have at Harmony.

1 Like
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Sounds fair enough. I can appreciate this approach to encourage ongoing involvement a d participation on the evaluation of the HarmonyONE network. :blue_heart:

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Updated Proposal Given Feedback and Including Protocol-Only Updates:

HIP-31 Seasonal Engagement: Enhanced Stake Weight Eligibility

Goals:

  • Improve Harmony’s governance by prioritizing active and engaged validators, ensuring a reflective and balanced decision-making process.

Changes:

  • Implement a 6-month (or last HIP) involvement threshold for validators to be considered eligible in stake weight calculations via an on-chain flag.

  • Ineligible validators can still engage with the vote as long as they have switched their flag prior to the snapshot opening, by doing so, they regain their eligibility instantly.

Operations:

  • The total stake weight and quorum calculations will solely include eligible validators adhering to the activity threshold.

Achieving Quorum:

  • Total_stake and validator_stakes are recorded at a specific block.

  • To achieve quorum, the sum of all votes received must be at least 50% of the total_stake, excluding known centralized exchanges and large validators unwilling to participate.

  • A consensus vote of 66.67% (Yes) is required, based on the voting pool constituted by eligible validators.

For questions and additional information, visit the forum.

Poll - Default Validator Flag
True: Initialize all validator flags to true, opt-out of governance
False: Initialize all validators flags to false, opt-in to governance

  • True
  • False
0 voters
6 Likes
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it’s been confirmed with @sophoah that this flagging will be implemented on-chain (which was one of the hottest concerns for me and other trusted validators), so I think it’s a good move for the governance improvements on harmony

meanwhile, there is no proper and approved tech solution for that from the engineering team yet, so all validators’ suggestions are welcomed

TRUE

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I agree. The on chain flag is a great addition for anyone wishing to opt out of governance.

This proposal has my support.

3 Likes