- Osmosis is a proof-of-stake blockchain, where staking your coins gives you a say in the future of the chain. Once you have staked $OSMO, you can vote on proposals about which liquidity pools receive incentives, enabling superfluid staking in specific pools, spending of community pool funds, chain upgrades, and more.
- Proposals have a few stages:
👉 Discussion stage: where the proposal is first opened up for discussion with the community. This takes place on the governance forum. The proposer needs to define what type of proposal they are submitting, and explain the what, why and how in detail. Community members log in to to discuss proposals, offer support (or not) and suggest improvements before they are sent on-chain for voting.
👉 Deposit period: the next stage before voting. Once the community sentiment is gauged and improvement suggestions considered, the proposer submits it on-chain and needs to obtain the $OSMO 'deposit' required to start a vote. The proposer can deposit it themselves or people can put their own Osmo towards the deposit. The deposit amount required can be changed by governance vote - see the current deposit requirement on mintscan.io. This deposit amount is returned to the depositor(s) as long as the minimum deposit requirement is met, and the vote does not result in a No With Veto outcome.
👉 Voting stage: Once the minimum deposit is met, the proposal becomes available for voting for validators and delegators (stakers). The requirements for passing are detailed in the Parameters page linked above. At the time of writing, 20% of stakers need to vote to hit 'quorum', and 50% of those votes must be Yes to pass. For proposals that appear harmful to the network, voters may consider voting No With Veto. If 33.4% of all votes are No With Veto, the proposal fails and the proposer loses his deposit. Abstain votes only contribute to Quorum, and are regularly used by validators who do not want to influence the result of a proposal.
Keplr's web dashboard displays these votes in an easily understandable pie-chart. The proposal pictured below passed because: 1) more than 20% of stakers voted (54.04% turnout), and 2) ignoring the Abstain votes, more than 50% of the remaining votes were Yes.
👉 Action stage: If the proposal passes, it then needs to be implemented. Some types of proposals are automatically actioned, such as Community Spend proposals and Parameter Changes. Text proposals need more time to plan and execute.
- Voting on a proposal is very simple. There are a few places you can vote, such as Keplr mobile app, ping.pub, and Station desktop wallet. Here we will be using the Keplr browser dashboard at wallet.keplr.app. Open the dashboard and click on Osmosis in the Chains menu on the left. Then navigate to the Staking tab through the top menu.
- Proposals are listed here in order from most recent to oldest. You can filter to proposals that have passed, failed, or are in the deposit or voting stage, or even to proposals you have voted on. Click on the proposal you wish to vote on.
- Click on Vote, confirm your choice and sign the transaction. That's it, you're done!
- 🧪 Notes: Voting power is weighted by how many coins you had staked at the time of a proposal going on-chain. That means that if you stake coins after a proposal goes live, they do not count towards the result. This is to prevent manipulation.
🧪 Validators vote with the weight of the coins staked with them. When you vote personally, it overrides your validator's vote. If you are someone who doesn't have the time to vote on every proposal, check your validator's votes once in a while to see if their views align with your own. If not, you may want to consider redelegating to a validator who votes closer to the way you would.