Stake against a proposal

[sembrestels]

In one of the Giveth blog posts about conviction voting we see this description of a Ternary choice feature:

Because the focus lies on the signage of proposals, the choice is binary (only “support” or “no support” is possible, the default is “no support”). Ternary choice is an optional extension to the mechanics, to add an “active resistance” by enabling token holders to “support against”.

Right now we only support the binary choice (staking tokens or not), and I think that the third option can be very interesting for many communities. We should not only enforce the freedom to have, but also the freedom to not have.

As a silly example, imagine somebody wants to "Build a wall between US and Mexico". With our current conviction voting system, if a big enough group of people are convinced enough (during enough time) their proposal is going to pass, despite the majoritarian opinion of the group is against it. A ternary choice voting could protect the entire group of misaligned ideas.

Thoughts on this?

[sembrestels]

@mzargham would advocate against it in an MVP because it creates a lot of extra adverse incentives in significantly complexifies the voting game, its worthy of research.

we actually want people to engage in discussion, if you a proposal is gaining steam and you can see its gaining support, you have time to intervene by calling out the risks or addressing why you oppose
we actually want to empower the process not side step it
this a philosophical tack on to why i think we may not need it
there is a lot packed into adding the anti-vote, and for the time being just think of conviction voting as a form of dynamic approval voting, you can signal approval or abstain. Interestingly there is an implicit way to vote against if conviction voting is paired with a bonding curve --> use a trigger function proportional to supply, bloat the supply by buying tokens, then don't vote in favor, the aggregate effect is pressure against, but in principle it would very very expensive to outright veto.
but if you could vote against you probably wouldn't need to buy that much to counter the positive signalling
point is: it gets complex fast when you look at the possibilities for games that arise between for camp and against camp
we really prefer to make people expose their preferences and then have actual discourse to resolve potential bottlenecks
if you care enough to vote against you should care enough to explain why to a party who shares enough core values with you to be part of the same DAO
lots of room for future research around this question: once we understand better the effect of negative voting it could be an option set at the time of implementation.