I propose adding an option C: Abstain from voting and get rewards, to each governance vote

I think that a lot of people are entering governance just for rewards and not because they want to vote on questions.

I also think that big exchanges, like coinbase and binance etc, are holding a lot of Algo and putting it in governance where they don’t really have the right to vote on behalf of those coins as they haven’t polled their users.

For both these reasons I think there should be an option C: Abstain from the vote and just be given rewards for participation.

This will remove these noisy, and very large, signals from the questions allowing us to find out what active and engaged governors think while also rewarding participation and involvement in the system.

I also think if a very large number of participants choose option C: Abstain, then that will show that governance could do with some deeper reforms.

Would love to hear any and all feedback. Do you agree or disagree? Does this make sense to do? Are there problems and weaknesses to this proposal?

It seems pretty easy to implement as well as useful to the system.

Or…hear me out. You could direct those people to Folks Finance where voting is not required and Folks users voted last governance period to have Folks delegate the votes of those who did not vote split evenly by the same % of A/B votes, thus having their votes expressed the way the voting community voted.

This would also have the side affect of increasing TVL.

Good point. That’s reasonable for retail but I don’t think coinbase would be willing to put all their users funds in Folks.

The idea is that education on how easy it is to get retail onchain rather than sitting on Coinbase and showing them how much of a cut Coinbase and others are taking should be enough. We won’t get everyone, but the beauty of Algorand is that it is approachable in this manner for quite a large spectrum. The quicker the foundation and content creators educate potential retail, the easier the “Aha!” moment will come when they realize how big of a cut they are losing out on by parking their Algo on a CEX that is in turn using their stake the same way they could or even better.

My personal strategy this governance involves 0 risk of impermanent loss, 0 risk of liquidation (not borrowing), and only partial negative consequences for not voting. All this while utilizing Folks Finance, Pact Fi, and traditional Algorand Governance portal to add TVL and liquidity from a hardware wallet (for the “not your keys not your crypto” folks). This strategy took a whole 5mins of thought and if this middle-aged pro-analog anti-digital hipster can figure it out, then all it should take is more hands helping new Algorand users aboard and time.