Improvements for SNS treasury and other critical proposals & removal of following

Governance SNS Project Governance
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Hi everyone,

First, I want to thank everyone for sharing their thoughts, concerns, and ideas for improvements. This was a very constructive discussion with many excellent inputs!

After revising all the ideas that were shared, we adapted the original proposal with the community’s ideas. In the following we present the resulting proposal.

What are critical SNS proposals?

As in the original post, we propose to consider the following SNS proposal topics to be “critical SNS proposals”. (See original post for motivation.)

  • Transfer_sns_treasury_funds proposals: These proposals allow an SNS to move ICP or SNS tokens from the SNS’s treasury to a given account.

  • Mint_sns_tokens proposals (name tbd): This type of proposal will allow the SNS to mint new SNS tokens. Note that this proposal type does not exist yet, but is being developed as shared here.

  • Deregister_dapp_canisters proposals: These proposals allow an SNS to give up control over a dapp canister and hand it back to a (centralized) controller.

Updated overview of proposed improvements

The newly proposed high level measures, and their current status & next steps, are as follows.

  1. Increase the required threshold for all critical proposals: Critical proposals are only adopted if at the end of the voting period ⅔ (67%) of the used voting power votes in favor of the proposal and at least 20% of the total voting power voted yes. Critical proposals are executed immediately if ⅔ (67%) of the total voting power votes in favor of the proposal.
    Details: Increasing the thresholds was presented to the community in this and this forum post and work on this has started. In this forum thread the community proposed alternative values for these thresholds. We now propose to adjust the design according to the community’s proposal.
    Next steps: This will slightly change the ongoing work, but the changes are small and the already planned work can easily be adapted accordingly. We plan to update this forum thread accordingly and keep you posted on the progress there.

  2. Remove critical proposals from the catch-all “All topics”: Voters can follow other neurons on critical proposals, but each neuron has to make an active decision of following for each critical proposals type as the “All topics”-following is not applied to critical proposals. Users who have multiple neurons can actively vote with just one of them and follow this one neuron with all their other neurons.
    It would be possible to reset following on critical proposals in all existing SNSs as an addition to this measure.
    Details: This is an alternative to “Remove following for critical proposals” as proposed above that was proposed by the community. This means that the complete removal of following would not be pursued anymore.
    Next steps: If the community does not express concerns here, we plan to remove critical proposals from the catch-all and propose it to the NNS as part of the normal SNS release process. We would then discuss in a separate forum thread whether, in addition, following on critical proposals should also be reset in existing SNSs. This addition can then be done separately if this is what the community agrees on.

  3. Limit SNS treasury proposals: Limit the amount of tokens that can be moved by SNS treasury proposals. This might, for example, be a limit of how many ICP and SNS tokens can be moved out of the SNS treasury per week or month.
    Details: This measure was included in the original proposal above. The community expressed some concerns about this measure hindering legitimate proposals. We think this disadvantage is outweighed by the following advantages: This is one of the only measures that helps to slow down attacks where a malicious party gets a large portion of the voting power. Moreover, legitimate proposals that require a large portion of the treasury can still be done, they might just require more than one proposal and a bit more time. Since treasury movements are normally planned well in advance and not urgent, this is acceptable. The concerns about slower legitimate proposals can additionally be mitigated by choosing a time period that is not too long (e.g., only weeks or even days).
    Next steps: We propose to share a more concrete design proposal in the coming weeks, which will then be discussed with the community. This will include agreeing on an appropriate time period.

  4. Increase the voting period for critical proposals: Increase the voting period for critical proposals to be 5-10 days (as opposed to 4-8 days for normal proposals). As these proposals require a larger voting participation it might be beneficial to give voters a bit more time to participate. On the other hand, the voting period should not be too long in order not to unnecessarily block legitimate proposals. The wait-for-quiet algorithm already ensures that controversial proposals will have a longer voting period so that voters have the time to react (now a proposal that starts with a 4 day voting period can be increased to have at most 8 days, after the change a 5 days can be increased to 10 days).
    Details: This is a community proposal from this thread.
    Next steps: If the community does not express concerns, we plan to realize this and propose it to the NNS as part of the normal SNS release process.

Summary of next steps

While it is important to consider all planned improvements in one overall plan, the individual improvements can be worked on, discussed in detail, and released one-by-one. If the community agrees to the high level plan, the summary of the next steps from our side are as follows.

  • Add the following measures to our roadmap and, when ready, propose them to the NNS as part of the normal SNS release process.
    • Increase the required thresholds for all critical proposals to 67% and 20%.
    • Remove critical proposals from the catch-all “All topics”.
    • Increase the voting period for critical proposals to 5-10 days.
  • Work on designs for the following measures and share more detailed designs with the community in a separate thread.
    • Limit SNS treasury proposals.
    • Clarify if following on critical proposals should be reset in existing SNSs.

As always, we are looking forward to your feedback! I wish everyone a great day!

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