[AIP-27] Implement Weighted Voting for Aura

Proposals
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Authors: Aura Maxis

Summary

This proposal seeks to move Aura to a Weighted Voting system.

Motivation

Aura is a veBAL wrapper with a delegation option, meaning that users empower Aura or others to vote on users’ behalf. In many situations, there is non-unanimous voting on Aura Snapshot on a specific BIP. With the current settings on Balancer’s Snapshot, only the option with the most votes is the one voted on by Aura, and is voted on with 100% of the available votes.

This AIP seeks to adopt proportional voting, where votes cast on Aura Snapshot will be carried through proportionally on Balancer. If the voting proposal on Aura Snapshot space is, for example, 30% “For” and 70% “Against”, Aura will cast a vote in the Balancer snapshot space with the very same proportions and using all of Aura’s voting power. This AIP will also introduce an “abstain” voting option, which will be counted in weighted votes.

Balancer’s Snapshot is currently set to “Single Choice Voting”, so a voter can only assign votes to one option. BIP-300 shall change this to a weighted system, to facilitate Aura’s move to weighted voting.

This AIP’s goal is to make Aura’s voting process more democratic and representative, thus amplifying the voices of individuals in the governance process. Weighted voting allows for more nuanced decision-making and accurate representation of community sentiment.

Specification

Should this AIP be approved, the following changes will be implemented:

  1. Aura’s votes in the Balancer Snapshot space will be weighted proportionally to reflect the voting outcome on the Aura snapshot space;

  2. An “abstain” option will be introduced to the voting process, which will be counted proportionally in subsequent votes;

  3. All votes will continue to be executed by the protocol multisig, which represents a diverse community, including Balancer community members.

Voting

This forum post will be live for approximately 3 days before the Snapshot proposal goes live. We appreciate and encourage an open discussion.

This vote will be a single-choice vote. You may vote “For” or “Against” this proposal, or choose to abstain from the vote.

A “For” voting in this proposal will support the changing of Aura’s Snapshot voting system from “Single Choice Voting” to “Weighted Voting”.

8 Likes
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This AIP will make Aura’s voting process more democratic and representative, thus amplifying the voices of individuals in the governance process. Weighted voting allows for more nuanced decision-making and accurate representation of community sentiment. I support this proposal.

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so when aura delegate abstains you’ll now start placing that vote and allowing it to contribute to reaching quorum? or did I misunderstand that part

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Great point. Hadn’t thought of that.

I think the better/more aligned thing to do would be to change the Balancer Abstain such that it does not count towards Quorum.

This gives AURA voters the ability to abstain with their votes. Otherwise, by default every round all aura votes count and our Quorum makes no sense.

I guess if there is the need for foundation voters to show presence but not vote by abstaining on some BIPs, we could offer something like (abstain frfr), and (don’t vote but gud bip) as options :slight_smile:

1 Like
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Yes, it will reflect the “abstein” options as well.

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so when aura delegate abstains you’ll now start placing that vote and allowing it to contribute to reaching quorum?

Yea I think this would need to happen, since votes for weighted voting necessarily need to add up to 100% of voting power.

I think the better/more aligned thing to do would be to change the Balancer Abstain such that it does not count towards Quorum.

Agree, I think this makes sense. 1 yes vote and 1.999m abstains should not result in a passing vote

^ editing on this. I think this is probably an extreme example that wouldn’t play out. Generally speaking abstentions do count towards quorum, so maybe just let this go along until there is strong reason to change it.

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need a quicc BIP for that then probably.

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I’ll take care of it and we’ll get it to snapshot ASAP.

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We can discuss and vote on it here. I think it provides the best governance options. If Aura wants to never use abstain and just vote yes/no based on yes/no votes they can, but this technically allows for a wrapper to signal that some of their vote should not be used.

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The assumption here being that the current percentage level of delegated vlAURA votes is high enough to ensure that the voice of Aura interests is still maintained. ie, that a repeat of the governance wars from last year should not be possible unless a significant proportion of Aura voters also disagree. The risk of course being that there are a LOT of Balancer votes every week and very few people have the time and inclination to read them all, so without a high delegation level then Aura voters might be left out of something important for the future of the ecosystem.

So long as the majority of voters are delegated then this will likely be a huge win for the ecosystem and allows for new delegates to come forward and promote decentralisation. Great stuff from the Maxis.

4 Likes
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https://vote.aura.finance/#/proposal/0xf3a4467ab3f9572ef3db3e17319ff2e7961a4fc7e6adc671dca2d983ece98e62

1 Like