Hi guys,
After seeing a lot of frustration with people regarding governance, why some polls get passed while others rejected, why it feels like things are slow to get done, why some people are burning 1000’s of Anchor on useless polls, I figured I’d post a guide as to my understanding of governance and how to realise the change you want to see on the protocol.
First things first, Anchor token is king for changes. You can make just about any change you want to Anchor if you hold enough Anchor to submit a proposal, and, with 51% of the governance vote held by developers you can be sure that if your idea is favored by them you will have strong backing. Regardless, if you fail to pass a poll you will lose your 1000 Anchor which is a ton of money, this incentivises only quality polls that have a lot of stakeholder interest and have developer support to be posted and passed.
Note: If you do not want to risk exposure to Anchor you can borrow ANC on edge protocol, you can deposit your aust and borrow ANC tokens against it and use that to submit a government proposal or vote on a proposal. This is for Anchor earn depositors that have no interest in risking ownership of Anchor tokens.
That criteria has absolutely nothing to do with the market, the community sentiment, weather or not Anchor will live or die. It’s simply the mechanism used for individuals to make change on the protocol. That is what gives Anchor token it’s intrinsic value. Like with the Curve wars eventually an Anchor wars can ensue. If all you do is deposit UST on Anchor and nothing else you don’t have any weight in governance or decision making at any point of the communication chain.
There is no point for you to visit or participate or complain to governance that your account got hacked, that we reduced the earn rate, that we whitelisted degenerative collateral, that yield reserves are depleting, that UST is going to explode in a fire and take us all downw ith it. Honestly these posts and polls, while they do incentivise good ideas and discussions, do not lead to anything getting done or get anywhere.
We have to take note that Anchor proposals should be simple, efficient to implement, and have meaningful impact. Trying to build a whole new aust model or vesting or governance mechanism will not find any support and may even be veto’d by the developers who are focused on building what they believe is best for anchor and don’t want excess work on their workflow. Such ideas should be developed first in code and pushed to the Anchor git, then the master developers will review and if they approve congratulations you skipped governance to get your idea through.
So for modifying parameters or basic change proposals the next step is to find and gather community support. Polls on the Anchor forums is an excellent start as the forums have a direct link from the web app. A large portion of the community is also on Twitter, Reddit, and Discord so I would reccomend drafting a proposal from forum first then linking it to those sites for interest. Make sure to stay active on your proposal to answer any questions or concerns from would be voters. This is no different than being a politician and going to communities to raise interest and support. If you don’t find a lot of response or feedback it means there is not a lot of community interest for your idea and you might have to go back to the drawing board. Sometimes you might end up finding out that your proposal is already in the works behind the scenes with developers / etc, often times you will get to learn who key stakeholders are to watch for support. This is a natural part of community formation.
Once you’ve felt like you’ve gathered a good amount of feedback and support, possibly making edits to your proposal then the final step is to put the on chain governance poll and pray for the best. Luckily even if you dont get a lot of feedback on forums / sites people are always checking the governance tab and if you linked your forum post once the governance poll goes live then this is when you will get the most discussion / discourse around your proposal.
My observation is you will find most stakeholders on Discord and most users (depositors and borrowers alike) on Anchor forums. These two platforms are the ones most used for direct community chat so it’s the best place to start developing your proposal idea. Once your looking for more community exposure then reddit and twitter will have most public eyes on it. Generally if you can get a decent number of people interested on the forums and discord then your proposal has a good shot of passing on chain.
Hopes this helps everyone with their proposal drafting. Would love to see some good community proposals to vote on!
PS: if mod finds this a good guide maybe we can consider pinning it?