Allow delegators to revoke their votes

Requests for Comment
1

The Problem.

The design of the delegation system hinders the UNI holders’ ability to express their will.

Currently, delegating your votes makes almost no sense. If you want the delegate to vote for you, you have to trust him/her blindly.

If you try to vote for or against the first proposal, you find a message:

“Only UNI votes that were self delegated or delegated to another address before block 11042288 are eligible for voting.”

So it works like a snapshot.

And if you disagree with the voting decision of your delegate, you can do nothing.

This system creates an opportunity for collusion among the delegates.

The safer way to make changes within the current system is to use autonomous proposals.
And if you want to vote - you have to vote yourself.

This safer way is not inclusive, though.

It gets expensive to vote for smaller UNI holders, and it’s not easy to create a proposal.

Having a sound delegate system does have a role. ‘Voting’ delegates could act as political parties. ‘Proposing’ delegates could help the community to put the most desired proposals up to vote.

Currently, delegators just deprive themselves of the opportunity to express disagreement with the delegate’s decisions.

==

The Solution.

I propose to implement two practices:

  • the preparation period
  • the ability to revoke the vote.

The preparation period is the time when you’re able to assess the proposal without being able to vote on it.

It is also an opportunity for auditors to do their job and warn the community if something is wrong with the code.

The ability to revoke the vote.

Ideally, the delegators should be able to revoke their vote until the voting is closed, even if the delegate has already cast it.

If there’s no way to make the casted vote revokable, there should at least be an opportunity to revoke the vote before it has been cast.

This way, even though with additional friction, the well-intentioned delegates would be able to allow the delegators who disagree with their decision to withdraw their voting power.

If we can’t realize the ability to revoke the vote for technical reasons, then we need to expand the preparation period.

Borderline is that we need to have mechanisms that allow voters to respond to the proposals and decisions of the delegates in regard to them.

Should we introduce the preparation period?
  • Yes
  • No
  • Neutral
  • Not Sure
0 voters
Should delegators have an option to revoke their votes?
  • Yes
  • No
  • Neutral
  • Not sure
0 voters
6 Likes
2

I completely agree that it’s a major problem if delegators cannot revoke their delegated vote during the voting period. As you said, it gives far too much authority to the delegate.

I’d like more info on why it was built this way. What was the initial reasoning behind it? @haydenadams can you speak to this?

I definitely do believe that delegators should be able to revoke their vote if they are unhappy with the way the delegate is voting but I’d need more info before I could back one specific fix.

2 Likes
3

We should definitely be pushing a proposal to revoke delegated uni asap. Not so sure how the preparation period is helpful though. Maybe I’m misunderstanding that part?

4

The main idea behind the preparation period is that it would give time:
a) for the community to get acquainted with the proposal and think it through.
b) for the auditors to review the proposed code changes and warn the community if something is wrong or if the code suggests something that is not stated in the words.

If we couldn’t introduce the ability to revoke the votes,
introducing the preparation period would still solve some of the issues of the present system:

  1. Delegates could announce their votes before the preparation period ends. So that their delegators could have an option to revoke their votes before the voting begins.
  2. If you have your UNI unclaimed in the liquidity mining program, or locked in UNI/ETH pair, or just somewhere else.
    The preparation period allows you to self-delegate before the voting starts if you find the matter important.
1 Like
5

I understand now. Still seems like a subpar solution compared to just allowing holders to revoke at any time during the vote.

6

It more or less comes down to how technically easy it is to fix everything wrong with the current system.

If people can vote whenever they want, redelegate and revoke their votes, the preparation period seems unnecessary.

But it is much easier to introduce the preparation period as a ‘hotfix’ and then to rework the whole way the system operates.

It won’t be hard to introduce the preparation period, and it won’t be hard to cancel it once it’s obsolete.

7

Again though that is something that would need to be voted in and pass the 40M quorum to become a reality… seeing the issue here? If Dharma and Gauntlet 2 of the biggest holders cant pass a proposal how does anyone in the community ever expect to pass a proposal without changing both values.

While I think people were trying their best I think a lot of people voted on false pretenses and have been mislead. I would like to think it anything this shows how important it is to discuss topics before putting them to vote looking at facts and information so another similar situation doesnt happen again in the future

8

It’s also come to light a lot of people it would seem own tokens purely because speculators said it would get up to $20, $30, $40 and now it isn’t people are disappointed… hate to take this is a told you so moment because it wouldnt be right it’s in fact a sad moment seeing so much fall out of one side vs the other throwing false information around in an effort to see one side win over the other but I think speculation got the best of people and the whole situation got out of hand. This was followed by manipulation in media claiming certain sides of the argument as bad actors with no evidence… hopefully this will be a learning curve for us all going forward on all side to listen and bring facts before voting.

At the end of the day I will be respecting the vote, for or against and I have definitely taken some lessons of my own away from this for the next time

9

There is no problem with the 4% quorum.
There is a problem with the system where not everyone can vote as they like.

I’ll quote @Agusx1211 from another topic:

This proposal has been made when the total delegated UNI was around 43m, however right now there is almost 74m delegated UNI.

So the proposal has been made when 43m out of 185m of UNI was able to vote.

If the system worked in a way that all circulating UNI could vote, reaching the quorum would be much easier.
And it’s an infinitely better solution than reducing the quorum from 4% to 3%.

Because this way everyone is able to participate. Currently, the majority of UNI holders can’t.

So decreasing the quorum while having the majority of votes excluded from the process just brings more weight towards the already delegated votes. It effectively increases the weight of big delegates instead of democratizing the process.

==

Also, let’s take a look at the UNI release schedule.

As you can see, by march 2021 there will be 300 mln UNI.
Even we keep the present system and the current ratio of delegated votes, it would leave us with 120 mln UNI able to vote. And this is an overly conservative estimate in my opinion.

It is quite easy to reach the 40 mln quorum when even 120 mln UNI are able to vote, don’t you think?

4 Likes
10

Again would depend if all 120M uni were delegated before the block posted in the future proposals.

If people continue not to delegate then they will continue to be inapplicable to vote, if the system remains the same (This is something I dont agree to, I agree that telling people if they dont delegate before a block they are “unapplicable to vote” is wrong and a discussion should be had around if we think that should change).

Also as you said March 2021, think a lot of people would have been expecting another proposal before March 2021 but maybe I’m wrong, I can’t speak for anyone else.

11

I agree they already reached their quorum they said they’d never have just 2 days ago. As the supply increases by over 2 mil a week… I actually think the quorum limits are quite low and should be INCREASED, not decreased. Too much governance can be a bad thing as well… Just look at our own government :smile:

1 Like
12

I believe that people should be able to take definite and serious decisions and not changing minds revoking votes. When you have taken your decision, it shouldn’t be a way to change your mind. You need to be responsible for your opinion.

1 Like
13

Any particular reason why you think thats best? what harm could cause that someone changes their vote?

14

Hello Agus. Have you ever changed your vote when you vote for the national elections or for anything? Do you have idea what chaos that could create? Not even in ancient Greek Athens which was the center of the democracy that was possible and could divert the society from democracy to ochlocracy according to Plato. google the term. It’s a recipe for chaos and catastrophe.

As an example can you imagine people voting for Biden and then the next day to change their vote and vote for Trump?
Once you have cast your vote or you have designated a delegate then its over. People should take ownership responsibility of their decisions.

15

People do revoke their votes in real politics when they go out on the streets and overthrow the government.
Plato viewed democracy as a vicious form of governance and cherished aristocracy.
The current discussion, though, has nothing to do neither with Greek Athens nor with American elections.

Uniswap governance is about approving or disapproving the changes to the code the swapping protocol operates on. It also is about the distribution of the governance treasury and the fees the platform accrues.
So as Uniswap governance is quite limited in what it does, analogies with real politics do not quite fit here.

What does fit, though, are real and possible scenarios of how voting could turn out. Let’s take a look at some examples:

  1. You vote on day 1 for a proposal, and on day 3, auditors find out that the proposal you’ve voted for contains a critical bug that will freeze all the money deposited to Uniswap LP contracts. Would you still prefer not to have an option to revoke your vote?

  2. You’ve delegated your voting power to a well-intentioned delegate because you wanted to support creating a particular proposal.
    Then another proposal comes up where you strongly disagree with the delegate’s decision, as it affects your financial interests negatively.
    Even though in this scenario both of you are well-intentioned, there’s nothing you can do to stop your delegate from voting the opposite way you’d like him/her to.

  3. When it comes to ill-intentioned delegates, things become worse, as they can collude and take advantage of the blind trust you grant them.

1 Like
16

Snapshot voting on the Preparation Period introduction starts on Oct 30 and finishes on Nov 1.

https://gov.uniswap.org/t/temperature-check-should-we-increase-the-votingdelay/7818

17

I can understand your point but revolts isn’t a matter of democracy. it’s a matter of ochlocracy and manipulation of the masses.
In democratic regimes, if the people aren’t happy with the governance of their delegates, in the NEXT elections they can change their mind and vote against them and bring other delegates who believe that they will be better. However, when in any time people are revoking arbitrarily the authority given that can lead to dictatorships. All the dictators who “revolted” against the established governments claimed exactly the same thing. That they revolted because they dont agree with the current authority who are useless. And trust me they do so by manipulating the crowds. We are either going to have law and order and democracy or ochlocracy where anyone can change his mind or manipulate the crowds for his own interest at any given time. If someone wants to revoke his vote, he can do it in the NEXT elections not in any random given time. And according to the rulebook, elections are only held in specific periods.