mDAO Proposal: Voting on validators stake using on-chain gauges through the MNDE token

[dobby]

Well done, Chefs! I’m a big fan of pretty much everything I’ve read so far from the team on Marinade’s governance construct and the thought process behind it. And let’s be honest here - the conversations we are having on fairness and providing support for newer and/or smaller validators don’t really happen much in other forums/discord chats. If we as a community can stay anchored around these values, I think it will go a long way.

Totally agree with @gekonn’s sentiment on fairness as well as the context on being early here:

@gekonn

Being early: buying 5000 Solana to self stake for $2 back then or for $100 now requires a different level of conviction. MNDE could be a new round of influence being distributed, a new chance for people. Current liquidity miners, retro-drop recipients, contributors, GM praising discord members, AMA questioning marinators are already frontrunning the big guys. Big money is not the only way, leading to A+B:

• A: Low liquidity of MNDE on the market. Rich cannot easily buy large quantities without slippage now. But buying $1000? No problem.
• B: Let’s not ignore other forms of capital: The validatooor does not have to only employ their MNDE to work for them, they can reach out to others to support their effort by voting. I expect the influential members of the validator community will be able to employ their social capital to get more delegation. A simple example is a DAOs running a validator and DAO members allocating stake to it via individually owned MNDE to support the DAO.

I would even suggest that the best possible way to promote fairness today is to reach out to some of these smaller validators and make sure they are aware of Marinade’s mission, values, and the opportunity to provide sticky support for their operations. At current prices, you can participate in protocol governance for ~ $100 USD (and potentially compound voting power as suggested in “How Marinade’s MNDE will fuel on-chain DAO governance”)

Let’s also not lose sight of the cap that the Marinade team has established - the largest amount of the overall Marinade pool that can be allocated to a single validator is 1.5%. More info here.

I wanted to pose a few additional questions:

1. Are there any plans to formalize a process to get closer to full decentralization through a gauge voting system (ie steps to get to 50% delegation controlled by the algo formula / 50% governed by DAO or 25/75 or whatever that maximum number might be)?

2. I understand the desire to start smaller with 10% controlled by DAO voting and see how things go through a trial period, but have you considered starting at 15% or even 20%?

IMO, more power in the hands of the community from the very beginning could potentially:

• Help accelerate Marinade’s TVL growth and make progress toward the goal of 30 million SOL staked in 2022 (currently 6.6 million SOL), substantially improving Solana network decentralization and providing massive support for smaller validators.

• Maximize the impact of that sticky stake and predictability for smaller validators right out of the starting gate (assuming total MNDE locked in governance increases over time)

• Further increase the incentive to buy & hold MNDE in the near term

3. How often will governance NFT/MNDE holders have to vote? Will it be a set it & forget it type of thing, or will it be a weekly cadence similar to the Saber gauges on Tribeca?

Look forward to continuing this discussion!