EGP-21: Enable the transferability of ELFI

Author: MacNBTC (https://twitter.com/MacnBTC) Type: Protocol Proposal Status: Snapshot (Off-chain vote) Date Proposed: <2022-01-23> Date Ratified: TBD

Sentence Summary

Enable the transferability of ELFI by unlocking the voting vaults where the delegated ELFI tokens are currently locked in.

Paragraph Summary

This EGP is focused on enabling the transferability of ELFI to allow for the changing of hands of voters. It has been close to 1 year since the release of ELFI, and sufficient (necessary) progress has been made in the development of the DAO. Now is the time for all of the participants within the DAO and the users outside of the DAO looking in to be given the ability to freely choose how they want to express their form of participation.

Motivation

I was one of the earliest supporters of the protocol, and I was avidly supportive of keeping ELFI untransferrable until decent progress has been made. I believe that time is now. The DAO is currently at a standstill in terms of participation. Progress on all fronts are still being made, but the numbers do not grow.

Currently 7.8 million votes are delegated, but only roughly 1.1 million of those votes are participating actively on any given proposal. Maybe some are due to the category of those proposals not pertaining to the voting participant, but a 14% average voting turnout highlights the bigger issue that major voting apathy exists and the votes are delegated to the wrong hands.

Transferability fixes this, because users who are indifferent can simply leave and it brings an opportunity for other users who want to participate in the DAO and take ownership of the network to freely exercise their right to do so. As it currently stands, no new DAO participants can take ownership and reap the benefits of contributing to the DAO. Although they’re encouraged to freely come in and do the work, there is no real motivation to do so as they simply feel that the growth of the network and the DAO will not benefit them and they’re essentially just doing work for someone else.

As sufficient time has passed, it’s important that we begin the process of enabling transferability as soon as possible. At the 1 year mark of ELFI, the team and investors will begin vesting ownership of the network further thus making Element even more centralized. If users who currently have no ownership of the Element protocol but wish to do so simply do not have that ability whilst the team and investors ownership continue to grow, then the aspect of transferability would have done the opposite of what it was intended to do at the start.

Specification

The proposed technical solution is an upgrade to the LockingVault contract to allow all staked and delegated ELFI to be withdrawn and transferable, I defer to John or someone on the team if there is a simpler solution.

Proposed Code

Currently under development by John (pickleback) - will be ready prior to an on-chain vote if passed. This is a simple implementation.

Test Cases

N/A

Security Considerations

N/A

Technical Review Plan or Audit Information

Technical review will be done by Greg or any relevant parties.

Next Steps (Voting Outcome Summary)

Option A [YES]: Implement EGP-21 to enable the transferability of ELFI.

Option B [NO]: The EGP-21 implementation will be rejected and will not be implemented.

Option C [ABSTAIN]

Further Information & Comments: