Launching Governance v2.0
A fresh look, new discussion phase, and redesigned fee structure allow for better proposals and improved governance!
Aquarius Governance launched in November 2021, giving the community a tool to create & vote on proposals that affect the ecosystem. We saw five proposals created within the first three months, with three accepted, one rejected, and one cancelled due to low participation.
The accepted proposals allowed:
- Ultra Stellar to become the first adopter of AQUA as a loyalty & rewards token within their products (Proposal 18)
- Adjustments to be made to Airdrop #2, with the locker tool also introduced (Proposal 19)
- A 50% boost to upvotes placed on markets paired with AQUA on the SDEX & AMM reward voting tool (Proposal 22)
🔍 Observations
Although governance worked, both the Aquarius team & community could see the system was not reaching its full potential. Some issues noticed were:
- Low participation in proposal discussions
- Proposal creators unavailable to explain further details on their proposals
- No way for creators to edit a proposal once submitted
- Fewer than expected proposals, potentially due to fees
- Last-minute voting on proposals making it unclear how the community actually felt for the majority of a proposal’s voting lifespan
We knew these issues could all be improved with the correct implementations, so we temporarily suspended governance, giving us the time to work on upgrading the current system.
Today we are proud to announce the completion of the upgrades and warmly welcome you to Aquarius Governance v2.0, a brand new way to create, edit, and discuss proposals! Take a read below to learn all about the new features.
🧑⚖️ Governance v2.0 Upgrades
1 — Discussion Phase
Although discussions were present on our social channels previously, talks weren’t essential before a proposal’s creation. Having the community discuss ideas allowed for more well-formed proposals and gave creators time to make adjustments if the community weren’t entirely behind their ideas.
As such, governance now includes a mandatory seven day discussion phase, which starts upon creation. Putting a proposal up for discussion is vastly cheaper than a full proposal publication and encourages creators and the community to discuss proposals before publishing for a community vote.
This new feature means creators can:
- Get feedback before publishing
- Judge if any edits are needed to strengthen a proposal
- Decide not to proceed if there is little support
2 — Editing
If feedback suggests possible changes to a proposal, creators can now edit their proposals inside governance!
Upon proposal creation, a thirty-day countdown activates for final publication or any edits the proposal might need. Each edit is treated as a new proposal submission and restarts the thirty days, allowing extra time for further discussions. If no edits happen within the thirty-day window or publication doesn’t occur, proposals expire and become finished.
Voters can navigate through all proposal versions to see how they have changed over time. We hope to see more detailed proposals with this new feature, strengthened by community participation in the discussion phase.
3 — Fee Structure
The fee structure has changed to complement these features. The overall cost to create and publish a proposal stays the same, but instead of one fee to publish a proposal straight to a vote, there are three fees as follows:
- Creation — 100,000 AQUA
Creation enables the new discussion phase, allowing talks to happen before the creator pays the full fee for publication. This fee is 10% of the 1 million AQUA needed for publication if no edits are required. - Editing — 100,000 AQUA
Editing incurs a fee to encourage better initial proposals while also lowering the chance of constant changes to a proposal. If too many edits occur, voters can quickly lose track of what a proposal stands for. - Publication — 900,000 AQUA
Publication allows for an AQUA community vote for the proposal. This final stage is how the previous system worked and activates “for” & “against” voting against a proposal.
Any proposals that pass with more than 50% of “for” votes & are over the 5% participation threshold will see their creators rewarded with 1,500,000 AQUA.
4 — Vote Lock Periods
Under v1.0, AQUA used for governance votes would unlock at the end of a proposal’s voting period, regardless of when a user voted. Unlocks no longer happen this way with v2.0!
Instead, AQUA now unlocks based on how quickly a vote occurs after a proposal is published. The unlock logic takes the time difference between a proposal’s start time and when a vote occurs and multiplies it by two. This multiplied time is added to the end of a proposal’s vote period, giving a final unlock time.
Example:
A proposal goes live on May. 1, 00:00 UTC for 7 days, so voting ends May. 8, 00:00 UTC.
One user votes immediately on May. 1, 00:00 UTC. No multiplier is given and their AQUA unlocks on May. 8, 00:00 UTC.
Another user votes 3.5 days into the vote on May. 4, 12:00 UTC. The 3.5 days are multiplied by 2, giving 7 days, and this is added to the voting end time. This user’s AQUA unlocks on May. 15, 00:00 UTC.
The shorter unlocking time for early voters encourages earlier participation in proposal voting, which benefits the whole governance process! This adjustment means the community has a better insight into how votes are going and see if proposals are likely to reach quorum ahead of the deadline.
So remember, the quicker you act on a proposal, the sooner your AQUA will be available once a vote ends.
5 — Layout Redesigns
Our final goal was to redesign the layout, allowing for better navigation of proposals. You can now review past and present proposals using the active, under discussion, and finished tabs.
We have also introduced a card view for each proposal, showing crucial information and stats at a glance! A preview of each proposal is viewable, and any extra information displayed will depend on the current stage of the proposal.
- Proposals in discussion show the creation date, last edit date, and discussion channel.
- Active proposals show when voting ends, live results, and the discussion channel.
- Finished proposals show when the vote ended, the final results, and the overall participation rate.
🚀 Launch
Governance 2.0 is live and ready for your ideas at gov.aqua.network! We hope you enjoy the upgrades and look forward to seeing all future discussions.
For the complete guide to governance, ensure to head over to our Aquarius Governance medium article.
We have one more announcement for those who have made it this far through the article. Governance wasn’t the only upgrade we were working on through Q2, with us previously teasing something nICE was coming soon. Now Gov 2.0 has launched, the wait is almost over for us to reveal everything about the incoming upgrades!
Stay tuned for next Friday (May 27) for the transformation of Aquarius, and discover more about these nICE developments!
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