Direct Voting - the forgotten path to decentralizing governance and the need to remove the 500ADA deposit requirement

Governance General Governance Conversation
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Direct Voting on Cardano is an issue rarely, if ever, discussed in the halls of Cardano governance and its key decision makers. We all know it exists, we all know it could help with decentralizing the decision making process, and even increase participation yet we seem to be shackled to the idea of governance through DReps alone.

To be clear, I am very much in favour of the DRep system, however it should be on the same merits as any other governance option and as of now its not.

Countless posts on X, Discord and this very forum promoting delegation to a DRep or even registration as a DRep have been made yet none have promoted users to register as a Direct Voter. One explanation is that it is hard to promote an action that penalizes the user with a 500ADA deposit (refundable, assuming you have 500ADA to spare).

As of yet there is no discussion to consider improving the circumstances which would encourage direct voting. The imposition of the 500 ADA deposit requirement on any person wishing to vote for themselves alone (not a requirement for registering as a DRrep) is discriminatory and does not help to democratize and decentralize the decision making process.

We want to create a blockchain that gives a voice to everyone, yet we impose a ā€œpenaltyā€ on any one wishing to vote directly and casually allow users who do not wish to participate in governance a ā€œfreeā€ pass to constantly abstain or to signal no confidence.

According to the FAQ of the Cardano GovTools

"Direct voters are a concept that GovTool adds on top of the on-chain DRep mechanism. Direct Voters are not explicitly supported by the protocol but are instead an abstraction over the on-chain DReps.

Like DReps a Direct Voter is someone that can vote on any Governance Action with their own Voting Power. They do not wish to campaign for delegations from others or be shown via the DRep Directory.

GovTool considers (on-chain) DReps who do not wish to attach metadata to their DRep as Direct voters. The rationale being, those who wish to vote but not represent others are unlikely to want to attach metadata to their registration. They do not wish to be a ā€˜representativeā€™.

Other tools likely show Direct Voters as DReps, as on-chain they are.

The idea of a direct voter came out of user tests for GovTool, where calling everyone who just wants to vote a ā€˜delegated representativeā€™ caused much confusion. Direct voter concept aims to reduce the potential for this confusion."

The above explanation is clear, what its lacking however is the justification as to why the 500ADA deposit is required to register as a Direct Voter when the on chain effect is exactly the same as registering as a DRep who does not want to be a representative.

I do not want to make any assumptions as to why this discrepancy exists and has become an accepted norm. I only wish to open a discussion not currently being made.

Please share your thoughts with me and vote below

  • If the 500ADA deposit requirement was removed I would become a Direct Voter
  • I would probably still delegate to a DRep
0 voters

vote in this poll

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Anyone making claims about this issue should at least mention this principal reason why the 500 ada ā€œincentiveā€ was originally imposed ā€” to converge upon a smaller set of DReps actually submitting votes ā€” since the bandwidth to the Cardano Ledger cannot currently handle everybody voting for themselves, and will not be able to for some time.

This was abundantly discussed & confirmed when CIP-1694 was being formulated here:

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I donā€™t understand your point. Registering as a dRep also needs a 500 ADA deposit. ā€œDirect votersā€ are dReps, so they have to make that deposit. There is no ā€œdiscrepancyā€.

I donā€™t buy the argumentation of the gov.tools people that this reduces confusion, though. I have seen far more confusion arising from this invention.

That was the claim, yes. I have never seen much data to support this claim.

If the chain cannot handle if the people who are interested in its governance do one or two transactions per epoch to vote, then this chain has far bigger problems. There is no way that this can be more load then simply trading on Cardano which requires far more transactions than votes on occasional governance actions.

Ceterum censeo, I still think that the dRep concept is a horrible idea and should have never been implemented.

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You are right, I mistakenly thought that for DReps the pre-requisite was 500ADA of delegated ADA. Regardless, shouldā€™nt we be able to vote on our own, without the need to deposit any amount in the same way a user delegates to a DRep for free. The point was to get a conversation going, on creating the best possible circumstances to encourage more, participation, decentralization, diversification and inclusion in Cardano governance. Do you disagree in principle?

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No, not at all. As said, I would have massively preferred a governance system with no dReps at all. So, of course, I am for lower hurdles to participate (and maybe also for lower hurdles for proposing governance actions). As it is now, since dReps and direct voters are the exact same thing, this would mean less deposit for both.

Could be changed with a parameter governance action, but that might have some barriers in what would have to be given as justification for that action.

(This is a little unfair, since for introducing the quite high deposit, they could just pull the 500 ADA value out of thin air because we had to have some value. We also have that effect with other parameters that were once chosen quite arbitrarily ā€“ minPoolCost comes to mind ā€“ but to now change that they demand models, simulations, and contingency plans.)

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The max amount of DReps that voted in the last actions were below 50%. I donā€™t see a need for more DReps until this number increases significantly tbh.

The last thing we wanna have is thousands of registered DReps on chain that are doing nothing.

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ā€¦, but this is about removing barriers for voting directly, being your own dRep, not really about more dReps in the sense of people trying to get delegations from others.

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A majority of the registered DReps on chain now are individuals who want to participate in voting without bearing any responsibility of representing others. This has somewhat led to the low participation turnout in several other governance processes. If the 500ADA deposit is reduced, obviously we would see drastic increment in the numbers.