Spartan Council updates: voting live for next epoch + integration into Staking dApp!

Synthetix -

It’s all happening right now for the Spartan Council! Fresh off last week’s first Council-led community governance call, the next Spartan Council election has begun for the next epoch. This epoch will run for three months as per SCCP-78, and there are now 22 community members in the running for the 8 Council seats. Spartan Council members are community-elected figures who are paid a monthly stipend in SNX for the responsibility of managing updates to the Synthetix protocol.

Aside from the epoch duration, there are a range of other minor changes to the governance process, which are detailed in this post.

Live on the Staking dApp

Community governance is now live on Staking! Head to https://staking.synthetix.io/gov/spartancouncil.eth to view the first of four tabs, all dealing with Synthetix governance. The spartancouncil.eth tab allows SNX stakers to vote in the new Spartan Council election for this next epoch. The other tabs are available at the following links:

Anyone can create proposals and vote on each relevant space if they meet the relevant criteria (usually that they were staking SNX at a specific past block), with the exception of SCCPs and SIPs, which are only votable by the Spartan Council.

Please note that if you submit a SIP or SCCP, you’ll first need to write it up on Github using the correct formatting. While submitting, when you are asked for a block number it refers to the block number at which a user’s voting balance is determined. Please see further in the blog post for the full SCCP/SIP submission process.

At this stage, SNX stakers on L2 cannot participate in community governance voting. This is because Snapshot currently only accepts one network per space, therefore we cannot use both L1 and L2. A custom subgraph is in the works for reading the L2 data that will enable L2 stakers in the future to vote on the election.

Here is the new Spartan Council NFT contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x023c66b7e13d30a3c46aa433fd2829763d5817c5

Voting in Staking will use the nominees’ wallet addresses rather than their Discord usernames, so make sure to check out the spreadsheet of nominees to check which wallet represents which nominee.

Voting dilution

Dilution is a concept introduced in SIP-104 that allows voters to dissent on their delegated Council Member’s decision per proposal. In other words, if a voter disagrees with a decision made by the Council Member they voted for, they can dilute their Member’s voting power for that specific proposal.

Here’s an example:

  • Alice has voted for Bob in the most recent Spartan Council election. Bob wins a seat in the election with a total WD (weighted debt) of 50. Alice contributed 10 WD out of 50 WD. On SIP-01, Bob votes ‘Yes’ on a decision that Alice does not agree on. If Alice dilutes Bob, then his vote will be worth 0.8 WD instead of 1 WD.
  • Requirements:
  • The user must have voted in the most recent election with a valid WD (i.e WD > 0)
  • The user must have voted for a successful Spartan Council member
  • To dilute, visit Staking -> governance tab -> click SCCP/SIP tab -> select the proposal -> select ‘withdraw’
  • Once a user has withdrawn, they can also revert their dilution with the ‘support’ button.

Here is the new CouncilDilution contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x30Ba359FE295E311D24BcCb1502c7a6e89Fb2100

New SCCP and SIP process

There’s a new process for writing and submitting SCCPs and SIPs, as following:

  1. SCCP/SIP authors present their ideas in the #governance channel in Discord to get an idea of the community sentiment. If an idea immediately faces significant rejection, particularly from Spartan Council members, it will probably be difficult to be passed.
  2. Review the SIP submission formatting requirements: https://sips.synthetix.io/sips/sip-1
  3. The author then submits a proposal on https://sips.synthetix.io/ via a Pull Request on https://github.com/Synthetixio/SIPs
  4. The author then alerts the Spartan Council within the #governance channel on Discord to schedule a ‘SIP author interview’, which is conducted and recorded by the Spartan Council. They will consider the impact of the SIP on the Synthetix protocol.
  5. A proposal outlining the SIP will be created on the Synthetix SCCP/SIP snapshot space.
  6. The Spartan Council will then conduct a vote on the Synthetix SCCP/SIP snapshot space.
  7. The Spartan Council will then assign it an “approved” status if it is passed.
  8. It is then implemented by either the protocolDAO or the SIP author.
  9. Once implemented, the SIP author will receive an SNX reward from the grantsDAO for proposing a successful SIP.
    We’re very excited about this next stage of community governance at Synthetix. If you have any questions, you can ask away in Discord!