What if bakers (eg. exchanges) could set their delegate to permanently voting “pass”? They could do this once and as long as they bake from that address “pass” will be voted without further action. This status would signal that this baker abstains from taking part in the votes.
I’m hesitant to embrace this idea. I’m concerned it would risk jeopardizing the integrity of the quorum if too many Bakers did this.
I’m much, much more open to the idea of rewarding/penalizing participation (Voting nudge) provided the reward/penalty does not cause “undue influence.” While rewarding (or penalizing) participation can also compromise voting data integrity it can be implemented incrementally on a spectrum so that this “undue influence” is minimal while maximizing voting participation. In contrast, allowing Bakers to permanently “pass” a vote is a binary implementation that undermines the quorum and cannot really be implemented in an incremental fashion to maximize its benefit/risk ratio.
What exactly would be trying to address by this permanent “pass” option?
Short term here are some solutions we can implement:
- voting security (separating the keys so that a baker does not need to expose their high value key in order to vote)
- education/outreach (continuing to communicate and write posts about the importance of participation)
- Signaling & Delegator communication (to better enable bakers to understand their delegation in order to give the community a greater sense of participation and empowerment)
It was just a shower thought. I thought it might be a good thing for exchanges baking Tezos, if they could abstain from votes permanently if they choose so, without leaving the impression that they don’t care and without further actions to be done (like voting pass every amendment cycle). IMHO that status could signal that they deliberately abstain from influencing the direction of the project. It would also be something that could be monitored.
Update: I was not aware that @murbard also considered auto-pass as an addition to his proposal here: Voting nudge. If auto-pass is considered a viable way to move forward, it could even be implemented before the punishment of Arthur’s proposal and we would see if it is used.
IMHO, voting pass every time is still better for the quorum than to abstain completely from the vote, as it signals conscious abstinence.
