Launch of the Ferrum DAO — FRM Becomes True Governance Token
Dear Ferrum Network community,
We are excited to announce that we are launching DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) Governance for the Ferrum Network. This is a significant step in our journey towards decentralizing the management, development, and growth of Ferrum Network.
FRM Becomes True Governance Token
For a long time, Ferrum operated on a two token economy where FRMx was the governance token. However, the way things were structured around the utility of FRMx allowed Ferrum to be a quasi DAO at best. After the merge of FRM and FRMx, Ferrum now has much more freedom to add utility to the FRM token and allow for a smoother and more democratic way of moving the network forward.
As you will continue to read in the following paragraphs, FRM will now be used to both create and vote on proposals that are submitted to the DAO. With the creation of the Ferrum DAO, FRM will now take on an additional layer of unprecedented utility as it becomes a true governance token.
Voting Eligibility and Process
In our DAO governance structure, your vote matters. To participate in voting on proposals, you must have cFRM staked in the cFRM BSC or cFRM Arbitrum staking pools.
We are utilizing a token-weighted strategy based on the staked balance of cFRM across cFRM staking pools. This means that the more cFRM you have staked, the higher your voting power.
We are employing a single-choice voting system. Each user can select only one option, and the results will reflect these votes as percentages of the total voting power of all voting participants cast on the specific choice. For more details on single-choice voting, please refer to the Snapshot documentation here.
If you have at least 1 cFRM staked in the BSC and Arbitrum cFRM staking pools at the time of the proposal creation, you will be eligible to vote.
Proposal Creation
The criteria for creating proposals is significantly higher to ensure the integrity of our governance process. Currently, it requires a 450,000 combined staked balance between FRM GC Arbitrum Pool, cFRM BSC Pool, and cFRM Arbitrum Pool to qualify to create proposals.
We will soon be creating a proposal to share two options to see if this criteria enforcement needs to be adjusted to ensure the DAO is secure from DAO Governance Attacks. For more details on DAO Governance Attacks, please read this informative article.
Before a proposal is created for voting in Ferrum Network’s space on Snapshot, the proposal creator needs to follow the Proposal Suggestion Template and create a proposal suggestion for discussion in the dao-proposals forum in Discord.
Once this discussion has been received the Ready For Voting tag, then the proposal creator can create the proposal on Ferrum Network’s space on Snapshot, provided they meet the qualification criteria to be a proposal creator. The Ready For Voting tag is assigned to discussions that are created using the Proposal Suggestion Template, engage community interest and gather community votes in the discussion by a moderator to push this for an official vote.
We are utilizing a custom staked-defi-balance strategy to check the qualification of the proposal creators and voters, contributed to Snapshot by Taha Abbasi. More information about this qualification strategy can be found in Snapshot’s public open-source repo here.
Steps
- Any qualified voter can create a proposal suggestion in Discord dao-proposal forum.
A qualified voter must have atleast 1 cFRM in the BSC or Arbitrum Crucible Open Staking Pools.
a. Must check existing proposals by searching forum to ensure it’s not a duplicate
b. Must follow Proposal Suggestion Template
c. If a and b are not followed dao-mods will delete the proposal - A dao-mod reviews the proposal suggestion, assigns prop-suggestion number frc-sug-1 and assigns the tag Discussion indicating to the community that the proposal is now open for discussion.
a. At this point marketing can also push the proposal in announcements etc to let the community know that a new proposal suggestion has been submitted and can be reviewed.
b. The prop-sug number will be added to the title of the proposal in this format: [frc-sug-1] Title - It is now the proposal suggestion creator and proposal supporters’ job to gain community buy in and get traction by engaging the community in the discussion. Once the proposal suggestion creator feels there is enough interest, they can create a post in their proposal tagging dao-mods to create a Pulse Check poll. The proposal creator should also submit a ticket in #mod-support and provide a link to this Pulse Check post to expedite the Pulse Check request.
- A dao-mod will review the request, and create a Pulse Check Poll “Should we send frc-sug-1 for an official vote?” with voting options “yes” and “no”. This Pulse Check poll will be open for 5 days and requires 200 votes with majority yes votes to pass.
a. If the Pulse check fails, the proposal is archived, assigned a Pulse Check Failed tag a post is made with the date the failed tag was assigned and a similar proposal cannot be raised again for a 30 day period..
b. If the Pulse check passes then we proceed to the next stage - After the Pulse Check passes the dao-mod will update the status to Ready For Voting by assigning the tag and notify qualified-proposal-creators that they may submit the proposal for official voting on snapshot.
a. The proposal creator will also assign a proposal number to this proposal suggestion now that it has passed the Pulse Check. The proposal number will be in this format prop-001. This number shall be added to the Title of the topic in this format [prop-001] Title. - At this point qualified-proposal-creators may pick up the proposal and submitted it for an official vote on snapshot. They must follow the Proposal Template (also available in snapshot) and include a link to the Discord topic in the discussion section of the snapshot proposal creation process.
a. After creating the proposal in snapshot, the qualified-proposal-creators must return to the Discord dao-proposals forum and add a link to the snapshot proposal and tag dao-mods to update the status to Waiting Period. The qualified-proposal-creators must also create a ticket in mod-support with a link to this post to expedite the status update. - Once dao-mods update the status to Waiting Period, marketing can assist proposal creators and supporters by announcing the proposal with snapshot link and discussion link to notify the community to get involved in the discussion and get ready to participate in the upcoming vote.
- The dao-mod who set the status to Waiting Period for this proposal must set a reminder to update the status to Voting Period once the Waiting Period (currently 7 days after proposal creation on snapshot) is over. dao-mods should get the exact time from the snapshot proposal itself and all times must be shared in UTC in the following format: 29-May-2023 at 14:30 UTC
a. During the voting period marketing and proposal creators can assist in sharing the proposal to get the community involved.
b. Proposals require 20,000,000 cFRM/FRM voting Power to form a quorum and pass i.e. if less than 20,000,000 cFRM/FRM staked holders vote a proposal will automatically fail due to a lack of a quorum. - At the end of the voting period a proposal is either Approved or Denied, the proposal creator can notify the dao-mods to update the status by adding a post in the proposal in Discord. The proposal creator must also create a ticket in mod-support to expedite this request.
- The executing party must execute the proposal per the terms defined in the proposals Execution Plan section.
Crucible and Preventing Governance Attacks
As Ferrum continues to evolve, the value of Crucible does so as well. Crucible was designed in a manner to incentivize behavior that is in the best interest of not only the token economy but the community as well. By requiring voters and proposal creators to be staked in Crucible, the Ferrum DAO is ensuring that bad actors or those who are not acting in the best interest of Ferrum, are deterred from either voting or creating proposals.
Most DAOs need to build out customized staking pools or other mechanisms to lock the tokens of voters or proposers throughout the duration of a voting period. This can be a cumbersome process that diminishes voter turnout and general DAO activity. Crucible allows the Ferrum DAO to be both agile and effective in both getting things done and doing so securely at the same time.
Conclusion
DAO governance represents a major milestone in the development of Ferrum Network. This will empower our community and ensure our decisions align with the interests of those who are most invested in our success. We’re looking forward to seeing your participation in shaping the future of Ferrum Network.
Thank you for your continued support.
The Ferrum Network Team
About Ferrum Network
Ferrum is Pioneering Interoperability 2.0 — a new era of interconnected blockchains. Powered by a multichain messaging engine known as Quantum Portal, Ferrum Network’s mainnet will bring value, data, and functional interoperability to every chain in the industry.
Utilize Ferrum Network to build and deploy solutions on one network and instantly enable multichain functionality without the burden or technical debt that comes with managing a multichain infrastructure.
