🔊The Proposal and Voting Process

Make suggestions and updates to Seamless Protocol.

Community participation is vital to the development and maintenance of Seamless Protocol. Community members may propose suggestions through the following proposal and voting process.

Proposal and Voting Process Flow

Step 1 Ideation Phase

To submit a proposal, start by posting in the Seamless Governance Hub. Prior to submission, please try to condense your proposal into a focused and organized format.

When posting in the Seamless Governance Hub, select the appropriate category: Protocol Changes Proposal (PCP), Governance Changes Proposal (GCP), or General Proposal (GP). To make it clear to the community which type of proposal you are submitting, add a prefix of “PCP”, “GCP”, or "GP" to the title of your proposal.

Protocol Changes are proposals pertaining to any risk parameter changes, the addition of new asset markets, decisions about the SEAM token emissions rate, etc.

Governance Changes cover changes to broader protocol governance structures, format, processes and quorum thresholds, and therefore require a higher margin of “For” votes to pass.

General Proposals are utilized for various offchain initiatives such as nominating SCGP committee members, or other future special initiatives that do not have an onchain component.

Here is an example of a community-created template and previous proposal: LINK. As best practice, engage the community prior to and after posting. Feel free to share a summary of your proposal in the Seamless Community Discord, in the #governance-improvements channel.

After a proposal is submitted to the Seamless Governance Hub, community members are encouraged to comment, discuss and ask questions (i.e. the Ideation Phase). The default duration for the Ideation Phase is 5 days. Note: If the proposer feels that the discussion needs more time or additional comments, they can request an extension by replying to the thread, noting the extension. The maximum extension duration is an additional 5 days.

After the Ideation Phase concludes, the proposer should repost their summarized proposal as a new comment under the same thread. Edits or changes reflecting community feedback should be incorporated into the newly summarized proposal at this stage, and a proposal number (e.g., PCP-1, GCP-1, or GP-1) should be added.

After this summary proposal is posted, a 2 day time window will be open for a final review of the proposal and address any challenges from the community. The duration is extendable with a written request from the community or proposer as a forum comment before the proposal is published on Snapshot for temperature-check voting.

Step 2 Proposal Submitted on Snapshot Labs

*Note this section is only relevant for General Proposals (GP)

General Proposals (or GPs) are governance proposals that are fit for only an offchain vote on Snapshot Labs. This will be utilized for various offchain initiatives such as nominating SCGP committee members, or other future special initiatives that do not have an onchain component. In cases where there are protocol changes or other similar onchain changes, the normal onchain governance process will be utilized.

Examples of GPs include but are not limited to: updating a fast track procedure, voting in a new change to the governance process that is not onchain, or capturing community sentiment or feedback on a particular plan.

Once posted in the Seamless Governance Hub, if an initial proposal gains general community interest after an open comment period, the proposal should be submitted via the Snapshot Labs portal to receive early signaling of whether people are “For” or “Against” the proposed change.

Snapshot proposals currently have an open voting period of 3 days. Quorum will be set to 1 million SEAM and a simple majority is required to have been considered as “passed”.

To summarize -- this offchain voting step via Snapshot Labs is specific to General Proposals (GP). These GPs are utilized for various offchain initiatives that do not require onchain governance.

Step 3 Onchain Voting (SIP) Phase

After the temperature check on Snapshot Labs, for proposals that involve smart contract changes, the next step is to submit the proposal onchain through the Tally interface (PCP or GCP). A "cool-down period" of at least 24 hours between the end of the Snapshot vote and commencement of on-chain vote is strongly recommended.

Any wallet with sufficient voting power can create a Seamless Improvement Proposal (SIP). The current Proposal voting power requirement is set at 0.2% of the SEAM token supply.

These Seamless Improvement Proposals (SIP) can fall into two categories:

• Protocol Changes

• Governance Changes

Protocol Changes are proposals pertaining to any risk parameter changes, the addition of new asset markets, decisions about the SEAM token emissions rate, etc.

Governance Changes cover changes to broader protocol governance structures, format, processes and quorum thresholds, and therefore require a higher margin of “For” votes to pass.

When submitting a SIP, authors will need to include a detailed description and the accompanying executable code, so that the operations will be automatically executed if the proposal is approved.

*Note General Proposals (GP) do not have an onchain voting component.

Step 4 The Voting Period Phase

The voting period begins after a 2 day window and lasts for 3-10 days depending on the category of the proposal:

• Protocol Changes - 3 Day Voting Period

• Governance Changes - 10 Day Voting Period

During the voting period, only wallets with delegated voting power are able to vote—this includes wallets that have self-delegated. Users who choose to delegate their voting power to other delegates are unable to vote themselves.

For those with voting power, you can submit a vote of "For", "Against", or "Abstain" on the SIP.

At the conclusion of the voting period, a proposal succeeds if it meets the following thresholds:

• Protocol Changes

  • Proposal has received quorum of at least 1,500,000 SEAM votes casted

  • Proposal has received the following outcome: Number of For votes > Number of Against votes

• Governance Changes

  • Proposal has received quorum of at least 1,500,000 SEAM votes casted

  • Proposal has received the following outcome: Number of For votes > 2x Number of Against votes

Step 5 Timelock Phase

If quorum is met AND vote passes, the timelock automatically executes the proposal code onchain. The timelock execution delay ranges from 2-5 days depending on the category of the proposal:

• Protocol Changes - 2 Day (48 Hours) Timelock

• Governance Changes - 5 Day (120 Hours) Timelock

*Note* If quorum is not met OR if quorum is met but the vote does not pass, the submitted proposal fails, and the code is not executed.

Step 6 Execution Phase

After the Timelock phase has passed (2-5 days), any user on the BASE network can execute the proposal. This will trigger all the executable code and operations that were in the proposal to be performed.

The onchain voting process follows the diagram below:

Fast-Track Procedures

Per GP 8 - Unveiling the Fast-Track Procedure 2.0, The Seamless DAO occasionally needs to act more swiftly than the traditional 7-day governance process allows. When these times arise, there are two ways initiate the Fast Track process for General Proposals (GPs) and Protocol Changes Proposals (PCPs).

Scenario 1: Initiating Fast Track at the beginning of the governance process

The fast-track proposal is slated for an on-chain/off-chain (for those proposals that do not require an on-chain component) vote within 24 hours after its publication on Discourse. For a proposal to qualify for this expedited vote, it must garner explicit support from a majority of Discourse Level 2 users (active Seamless community governance members).

Scenario 2: Initiating Fast Track AFTER the normal governance process has begun

A fast-track proposal can be initiated at any time after the normal governance process has begun if it garners explicit support from a majority of Discourse Level 2 users.

Please note that the Fast Track Procedure shall not be applied to Governance Changes Proposals (GCPs).