Beam DAO Voting

1

Hi.

For your consideration, the first draft of the Beam DAO Voting Process

Introduction

Beam DAO is a decentralized community that shares a common interest in the success of Beam protocol and ecosystem. Beam DAO members participate in the governance process of the Beam protocol through a voting process which is described in this document.

The process of establishing the DAO governance structure and procedures will take time during which the current governing body for Beam protocol, which is the Beam Foundation will continue its duties and also serve as a facilitator for the Beam DAO. The facilitator is responsible for leading and curating the voting process as well as implementing the decisions that require off chain actions such as deploying new contracts or developing new functionality.

Structure of the Voting Process

1. BeamX

BeamX is a Beam DAO governance token and is used to participate in the voting process. Participation is achieved by locking BeamX in the Voting contract at the beginning of each voting epoch (see below).

Amount of locked BeamX tokens determines the Voting Power of the account that has locked the tokens. Initially 1 BeamX is equal to 1 Vote, however there is an option to add Voting Power Factor to further incentivize staking of BeamX tokens and participation in the voting process in the future (for example if the tokens are locked for the entire month they get additional Voting Power Factor of 1.1, etc).

2. Voting Epoch

Voting process is divided into epochs. Each epoch lasts 2 weeks (or 20160 blocks).

The voting power of each account is determined by the amount of BeamX locked in the Voting contract at the beginning of the epoch, multiplied by the Voting Power Factor if applicable (by default Voting Power is equal to the amount of BEAMX staked)

3. Proposals

Each Voting Epoch is assigned a predetermined list of Proposals which is first discussed in the forum and is officially elected to be raised in an on-chain vote. The list is determined and closed before the start of the voting period and can not be changed during its duration. First type of proposals that will be supported is the ‘Special Non Binding’ proposals.

4. Special Non Binding Proposals (SNB)

Special Non Binding proposals will be the first type of proposals implemented in the Voting Contract. These proposals will include opinion polls and suggestions that are non binding and will be implemented at the discretion of the Facilitator.

This type of proposals are defined by the following characteristics:

  1. They are first raised in the Beam forum, where they are discussed by Beam Community members.
  2. Once the proposal has been sufficiently defined and gathers support it can be formulated according to the BIP Proposal format guidelines and submitted for an on-chain vote. Submission of SNB proposals will be done by the facilitator
  3. Each proposal will be assigned a Quorum, the minimal amount of Voting Power that needs to be involved in accepting the proposal.
  4. This type of proposal will be non Binding which means that the Facilitator will not be legally bound to implement the proposal even if it was accepted, provided of course an explanation is provided to the community. In this case the proposal can be revised and discussed in the forum again and then resubmitted for an on chain vote.

5 . Other proposal types

Additional proposal types to be implemented later include:

Special Binding Proposals - raised and discussed through the forum but binding for the Facilitator. These proposals will usually require a greater quorum.

Regular On-chain Proposals - will be used to vote for onchain contract parameters and DAO liquidity distribution.

8 Likes
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I can imagine how non binding proposal is going to work. But how binding proposals are going to be binding for fascilitator?

Also make BIP proposal format publically accessible (without request for access).

2 Likes
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Imo this has been over-thought and too structured. This idea that a non-binding proposals must be approved / escalated and via the forum and so on, is completely unnecessary. It is suffice to say a poll that is non-binding with no monetary reward can be conducted by anyone who pays X beam for the privilege. That’s it really. You just need to find an appropriate level and accept there will always be some spam / nonsense / off-topic.

If you look at Zecpages for example - Zcash twitter-like posts - it costs just 18 cents to publish and there isn’t that much activity. It doesn’t take much to imagine that beam could be more popular, but still, I think a price of 10 beam to post is enough to discourage too much spam. Another comparable example is the plastic bag tax that various countries impose. It’s a relatively low price, pennies, yet it’s very effective because people just hate paying for stuff.

From a user perspective, you could add categories and hashtags, and then, if necessary, we can build websites that help filter it.

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4

Let’s encompass voices in the DAO. It’s good to talk :wink:

2 Likes