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# System prepended metadata

title: Discovery Process 'Participating in Governance and Voting and the DAO in general'

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# Discovery Process 'Participating in Governance and Voting and the DAO in general'
tags: 

## Objective:
Discover the challenges and barriers to entry that Centrifuge DAO members have to participating in governance 

- we want 7M CFG locked for each vote and 10-15% regular turnout 

### Findings
- Team members don't vote because using signer is so complicated: few team members have been able to set up their wallets by themselves
- Team members are so busy with other tasks they don't have time to participate in governance
- Many team members have felt unsure that participating in governance is a priority and/or unsure what they're meant to participate on
- Large token holders don't vote because they don't know what's going on
- Our governance process is in its early stages and people are still intimidated to engage. Not really
- Our governance documentation is not easy to find and sometimes not clear. Not really
- There's too many governance processes happening at once. NO
- Some of the processes are too complex for high engagement (i.e. Transaction fees, ?) YES
- Because our focus is not on retail users, we are not maximising some of the energy that is there willing to help us. YES
- LTH want clear and easy ways to help.

**Comms and notifications:**
- Have a governance calendar with important votes upcoming

- Establish an email notification system for L1 (Passive holders) with clear instructions on what to read, and how to vote when there is a 'significant decision'

**General**
- Create a team 'Gov skunkworks crew' (i.e. those who can show leadership in gov participation and give them what they need)

**Voting**
- Use talisman with a governance proxy is 10x simpler
- Using a hot wallet instead of a signer is a lot simpler

Romina:
The orientation of the whole PD wallet setup is a knowledge gap around proxies and teams - need the right version of polkadot.js - but you can't use cold storage wallets on opensquare - you have to use the plugin. if there's a 1:1 and you contact them they are willing to comment, and sometimes VOTE

LTH Questions:
- Should they act under an account that says who they are? Or anon
- Token holder with lots of wallets - what's a setup that's really convinient to them
- Give LTH a very clear drive for an action - 1 click option
- Not everyone is actively able to or are wiling to contribute - some want to delegate
- Internal processes determine how they can vote
- Complete pallet (info aggregation feature - i.e. now there is an excel sheet - what is the tool of the future that shows THs the state of play)
    - Some have opt-in updates, comments on new and active votes
    - General news/newsletter (what votes are coming up)
    - A newsletter written diffrently for each part of our list


### DISCOVERY QUESTIONS

Question 1: How would you describe your role in the Centrifuge DAO?

Perfomance a variety of tasks and responsibilities around marketing. Good resource for people to ask questions, help ambassadors and other member. Not too heavily involved in governance apart from RFCs.

Make the ecosystem as trusting, secure and safe for institutional money to transact on the protocol

Build the most institutional grade and ready ecosystem in Defi for financing 

Contribute daily, 24/7, developing opportunities

You would definitely categorise me as a member of the DAO but I think I have very passive role. I don't have the knowledge to contribute more than I do. I read through forum posts and stuff and it more or less makes sense. I even voted for the first time on my own. But many discussions don't make sense to me at all. I'm not from finance, and to contribute just feels like adding hot air. 

i.e. lowering rewards - it's very relevant to me but I don't know the grand scheme and assume those leading the discussion do. I like to think that I voting critically but I wonder if I'm just voting with the masses. Where are the experts who contest things, are they here? If yes the decisions are not interesting or impactful enough for them to get involved. 

With all of our TVL on ethereum it doesn't really matter apart from rewards. Protocol fees, we don't have enough going on for it to make a different. Most blocks have 2 events, right now it's not important. 

Q2: 'Governance' - what does this mean to you?
Current form: a step to help us do things. It hasn't matured enough to the point where it really matters, we have a skeleton for the future. 

Active participation in voting with tokens on the future direction of the protocol

Anybody with voting power can influence the direction of the DAO and what we do and where we go.

C. engagement around forum discussion, formal proposals and debate, on chain voting providing utility for the token

Q3: If a wider definition of Governance was defined as 

- ideating improvements to the protocol/DAO (Y) (Y) (Y)
- posting discussion threads on the forum (N) (Y) (Y)
- participating in Governance Calls (I join but I've never gone on the mic, feels like the convo) (Y)
- creating RFCs (no, but I could)
- answering RFCs (Y) (Y)
- voting on Opensquare (what is this?)(NO) (NO)
- voting Subsquare on-chain (Y) (NO) (NO)
- Execution (N)(Y)
- 

Why are we giving rewards on RWA or Tinlake - it's not incentivising the right people. Assumption that the core team will be against any dissensus to this idea so I never say anything. 

People with power and strong opinions can shut down the debate very easily. 

I could do the technical aspect if wanted to but the thought of messing around with my tokens is a bit scary

Sometmes RFCs are worded in a super technical way - and I would like sometimes get involved but I don't have the time to fully understand. 

If we did something big like give stupid amounts of rewards again I would get in and really protest

Participating in governance is not seen as part of the job. Governance is sprinkles on top of the ice cream. It really should be the cone and the icecream is the protocol. We're not at the cone part yet. 

Which actions do you regularly participate in?

Q4 How would you like to get communications about what is happening in the DAO?
 
A notification only channel in slack +1. I try to look at the forum here and there. 
Gov notifications: An RFC or Opensquare, Snapshot should have automated so it's standardisd

I'm not sure how we're notified about when a forum post goes to a on chain vote.

A summary of actions

Q5. If you haven't voted on opensquare can you tell me about why/what prevented you? 
I would love to do it 

I would need to fully understand what I'm voting on: it's unclear what is being voted on and why it is important to me to vote. With my work I don't have time to educate myself fully about things like transaction fees and basis point - am I meant to know this stuff?

It doesn't really matter if I vote, the votes still pass

My gut tells all the stuff about rewards ends up hurting the token values at the primative level. No one is buying tokens on the open market, they're buying OTC. And then we just burning tokens. It feels deflationary and when I think about trying to push back against this it's scary

I have some big opinions on things like rewards and  fees but the governance call doesn't seem the place - there's really smart people in there and it's too intimidating

I want to have the debate, with select people who are invested and care about certain things: not the masses. 

Are we debating on-chain voting and why that's important? 

The argument for why we need on chain voting on certain topics is vague. 

It's too hard (i.e. too much work) to get into the debate and convince the people who have strong, immovable opinions

Voting with the token is mission criticial for the token having value. But it's really not easy

Voting doesn't really give utility. In what project is the main utility really from voting. With our lack of utility in other areas we can argue that it is... but it would be a mistake to solely count on it.

We should be keeping track of who is voting via a dashboard

Devoting scared space to governance - check it every day or every week. 

I would trust other people to vote on some of these subjects or it needs to be clearer what to do.

Governance summary updates in the forum 
Updates on voter turnout on each vote
Notifications
Have champions for the topic

Reasons:
- If people don't vote we won't be able to be raise money because
- If you don't participant X(really bad) will happen
- If people don't vote some of our projects will fail
- 

I didn't know to vote onchain, but I figured it out

Q6. If you haven't voted on-chain can you tell me about what prevented you?

I don't know where to find the governance setup doc that will actually help me

Tie the fundraise the value of the token to governance

What do you get from holding the token
- You can't stake it
- You can only use it to dilute your own token
- You can just use it to vote on proposals which are only tangentially driving value (i.e. fees sure, but it's not enough)
- 

Before my on-chain vote I thought it would be a huge deal but after seeing how simple it is it won't be a problem for me. Because of that the channel updates will be enough

Q7. Why do you suppose others might be not participating in governance?

They don't know it's part of the job. If you don't participate the world keeps spinning, you still keep your pay check, there's no real downside. even if someone attacked the protocol via governance, 

We don't see examples of governance making a big change, few cases where it really impacts us directly.

C:We've gotten out of discord and that's good. WOL and working in public is the first step. Topic bias - governance driven or ecosystem building topics are hard for the devs to engage 

A: Similar issues to me, wasn't sure what I was supposed to do, some might struggle with the tech - a lot of us are coming from ethereum, Polkadot is a different mental model. Just this call with you has made it very clear how it all functions.

Q6. What are the improvements you'd like to see to enable more governance participation?

On token voting: It seems to me that everyone is eager to contribute but once the first hurdle (i.e. getting proxies set up) is passed and a vote is made, it seems the biggest challenges are: knowing when to vote, knowing how to vote, and what the contents of the proposals are  

It's also intimidating to try participate in the discussions on the forum and in the calls because of the level of knowledge of some people (i.e. they're experts and I feel like I don't know enough. 

What is governance and what are the subtopics of governance?


How can people help contribute to the DAO
They need ideas from those with knowledge which inspire
Need more vision and indications on staking
Need people who know about tokenomics who can make proposals about the 
Utility of the platform - will become the institutional home for private credit - now that I have this token what can I do with it
Update on underwriting token - 

FAQ: 
Q. If I use all my tokens on a vote (i.e. 100% ) does this mean if a vote comes along tomorrow I don't have anything to use? What happens with the CFG that is blocked? (Micro deposit for on-chain voting)

Q. How much should I lock up? What token weight (value) and value lock should I use for an on-chain vote?

Q. How many tokens do i vote with?

Q. Does it even matter if I vote?

Q. If everyone is voting yes is my vote important? 
Why should I care about the voting event and outcome?

Q. should i even vote if I don't fully understand the proposal?

Q. What is 'Updating Tinlake Rewards Allocation' - what is a simple way to explain what it means?

Q. Why does sub square not recognised the token weight? (Proxy address needs to be added in sub square settings)

Q. How do I recognise if an active vote/council motion is trustworthy? (Check forum for introduction etc. or check the contributor, governance forum is the place to get context on proposals and the reasons behind them, what values a contributor would have)

Q. How do I get updated about governance events? 

Core Contributor token voting questions:
Q. Why do we need a cold + hot wallet?
Q. Why is a cold storage device needed and why does CNF not provide one?

Extra:
* I want a list of actions that i need to do sent to me 
* Governance is not really part of our culture yet - how do we make it part of our culture
* People don't think it's part of their jobs
* People don't get thanked for it



How can active contributors vote?
