Infamous 82

Cosmos

Cosmos is a key Layer 0. It connects different blockchains into a meta-blockchain system. On Layer 0, a smart contract on one network may execute a transaction on another. This blockchain interconnectivity is at the heart of Cosmos. Moreover, Cosmos provides a framework to build blockchain networks themselves.

ATOM is Cosmos's native coin that has three primary use cases:

Users must pay their transaction fees using ATOM, proportional to the computational power required.
ATOM is also used to take part in Cosmos Hub's governance system. The more ATOM you hold, the more voting power you have in platform decisions.
The coin is staked behind validators for rewards in taking part in the consensus algorithm.

Scopes

Total Voting Stats
New Voters vs non-New Voters
Vote Switching
Compare with Recent Proposals

Cosmos Governance

The Cosmos network is not only a Proof of Stake blockchain network but also one that utilizes on-chain governance. In order for the blockchain to continually upgrade and improve over time, community members will coordinate formally on-chain and informally off-chain to participate in discussions and debates surrounding the trade-offs of specific changes. Proposals go through four different phases before either being accepted and executed or rejected.

Phase 1: The Deposit Period Anyone can submit a text proposal to the system, but the proposal needs to be backed with a minimum deposit of 64 ATOMs within two weeks after the submission date to proceed into the voting phase.

Phase 2: The Voting Period The deposit period ends once the proposal reaches the minimum deposit amount and a two-week-long voting period begins. There are four voting options (“Yes”, “No”, “No with Veto”, “Abstain”)

Only staked (bonded) tokens can participate in governance.
Voting power is measured in terms of stake.
The amount of ATOMs staked determines the direct influence of the user on the decision-making process (coin voting).
Delegators inherit the vote of the validators they are delegated to unless they individually cast their vote, which will overwrite validator decisions.

Phase 3: Tallying Results Following requirements need to be satisfied for a proposal to get a passing vote:

Quorum: More than 40% of the total staked tokens need to have participated in the vote.
Threshold: More than 50% of the tokens that participated in the vote (after excluding “Abstain” votes) need to have voted in favor of the proposal (“Yes”).
Veto: The number of votes cast for "No with Veto" shouldn't be greater than 33.4% of the tokens that participated (after excluding “Abstain” votes). The proposal gets rejected if one of these requirements is not met at the end of the voting period. And if a proposal fails to pass the vote for any reason, the deposited tokens associated with the submission are not refunded and instead transferred to the community pool.

Governance Votes

The following items summarize the voting options and what it means for this proposal:

YES - You approve of and wish to ratify the contents of the proposed paper
NO - You don’t approve of the contents of paper. Please indicate why on the Cosmos Hub forum.
NO WITH VETO - A ‘NoWithVeto’ vote indicates a proposal either (1) is deemed to be spam, i.e., irrelevant to Cosmos Hub, (2) disproportionately infringes on minority interests, or (3) violates or encourages violation of the rules of engagement as currently set out by Cosmos Hub governance. If the number of ‘NoWithVeto’ votes is greater than a third of total votes, the proposal is rejected and the deposits are burned.
ABSTAIN - You wish to contribute to quorum but you formally decline to vote either for or against the proposal.

🟠 Observations

total number of 58.4K unique wallets voted 70.5K times (some of them voted multiple times)
most users voted “YES” but in the last days of the voting period the most number of the votes were “NO WITH VETO”
78% of voters (45,568), voted Yes as their final vote, 16.7% voted No With Veto, 2.95% voted No, and 2.39% voted Abstain.

🟠 Observations

4080 voters (6.98%) were new voter wallets, meaning that proposal #82 was the first proposal they voted for.
new voters voting distribution is the same as non-new voters, most of them (77.57%) voted for Yes, and 22% voted for No with Veto. these numbers for non-new voters are 78.3% for Yes and 16.2% for No With Veto.

🟠 Observations

since proposal #71 which was in May 2022, the voting contribution decreased, one reason can be the market conditions After May.
in proposals #81 and #82 the contribution increased, from under 36K voters in the last proposals to 44.3K and 58.4K voters
the average number of voters and votes in proposals 60-81 is 46.9K voters and 51.2K votes, but in proposal #82 these numbers increased and reached 58.33K voters and 70.54K votes.

🟠 Observations

the number of vote switching rate in the first days was high and most of them changed their Yes vote to No With Veto
in total 42.2% of vote-switching transactions, changed Yes to No With Veto || 16.3% Yes to No || 12.8% No to Yes || and No to No with Veto
90% of voters, only voted on one Option and 8.55% voted on 2 Options
New voters didn’t change their votes much compare to non-new voters
out of total switcher voters, 73.7% switch only once, 17.7% switched two times, and 0.4% switch 5-9 times

🟠 Observations

as this chart shows, some voters, voter even more than 20 and 30 times, and one voter has 55 votes!

Vote Switching

Compare with Recent Proposals (#60-#82)

New Voters

Proposal #82

After months of discussions and a two-week voting period, the Cosmos community voted against implementing proposal #82- “ATOM 2.0: A new vision for Cosmos Hub.” The vote asked whether the ideas outlined in a recently written whitepaper should be integrated and fundamentally change the nature of the Cosmos hub ecosystems and the platform’s native token ATOM. Based on a whitepaper penned by Cosmos co-founder Ethan Buchman and eleven others, the proposal was marketed as the next step in Cosmos Hub’s evolution. Among other things, the whitepaper suggested drastically changing ATOM’s tokenomics and building two new tools, the Interchain Allocator and the Interchain Scheduler, which they argued would help cement Cosmos Hub as one of the most important appchains in the broader Cosmos ecosystem. The proposal, now considered by some in the community as the most controversial in the history of Cosmos, saw an unusually high turnout of 73.41% of all ATOM tokens, with the vote remaining tight until the very end. Ultimately, 47.51% of coins were pledged in favor, 37.39% voted “NoWithVeto,” 13.27% abstained, and 1.82% simply voted no. While most tokens were indeed pledged in favor, Cosmos Hub’s governance mechanics ensure that a proposal cannot pass if more than 33.4% of voters opt for “NoWithVeto”—a system that prevents the Hub from falling prey to 51% attacks. “NoWithVeto” is, therefore, a strong signal community members use to communicate their belief that a proposal is actively harmful to Cosmos Hub’s interests.

ATOM Delegation

🟠 Observations

before the voting period, the delegation activity b voters was lower, but since the starting day the redelegation volume spiked to 278.5K ATOM, and the number of users increased by about 1K.
in the two last days of the voting period on Nov 13 and 14, the delegate and redelegate volume spiked heavily
the unbond (undelegated) volume increased a bit by voters but not as much as the delegation.
In the last few days, the most delegate and redelegate volume were from users whose final vote was No With Veto. also, the Yes voters delegation volume was high, especially on the last day.
the total ATOM holders re-delegation volume spiked heavily on Nov 7th and reached 8M ATOM. in 2-3 days after the end of voting, the unbond(undelegated) volume spiked and 8.93M ATOM was unbonded in these 2 days.

ATOM Balance

🟠 Observations

the average voter’s ATOM balance was 231 ATOM at the end of voting.
42.8% of voters had between 10-100 ATOM, 40.9% had lower than 10 ATOM, 0.36%(137 wallets) had more than 10K ATOM
the bigger wallets (above 1K ATOM) voted on YES and No With Veto the most.
15 whale wallets (above 10K) switched their 1 time and 15 other whales switched 2 times.

💡 Conclusion

total number of 58.4K unique wallets voted 70.5K times (some of them voted multiple times)
most users voted “YES” but in the last days of the voting period the most number of the votes were “NO WITH VETO”
78% of voters (45,568), voted Yes as their final vote, 16.7% voted No With Veto, 2.95% voted No, and 2.39% voted Abstain.
4080 voters (6.98%) were new voter wallets, and voting distribution is almost the same as non-new voters, most of them (77.57%) voted for Yes, and 22% voted for No with Veto. these numbers for non-new voters are 78.3% for Yes and 16.2% for No With Veto.
in proposals #81 and #82 the contribution increased, from under 36K voters in the last proposals to 44.3K and 58.4K voters
before the voting period, the delegation activity by voters was lower, but since the starting day the redelegation volume spiked to 278.5K ATOM, and the number of users increased by about 1K.
in the two last days of the voting period on Nov 13 and 14, the delegate and redelegate volume spiked heavily by voters
In the last days of voting, most delegate and redelegate volume were from users whose final vote was No With Veto. also, the Yes voters delegation volume was high, especially on the last day.
the total ATOM holder’s re-delegation volume spiked heavily on Nov 7th and reached 8M ATOM. in 2-3 days after the end of voting, the unbond(undelegated) volume spiked and 8.93M ATOM was unbonded in these 2 days.
the average voter’s ATOM balance was 231 ATOM at the end of voting.
42.8% of voters had between 10-100 ATOM, 40.9% had lower than 10 ATOM, 0.36%(137 whale wallets) had more than 10K ATOM
the bigger wallets (above 1K ATOM) voted on YES and No With Veto the most.

THE END

Twitter: @misaghlb

Discord: misaghlb#2424

:calendar: Analyze Date: 2022/12/11

Method

because the cosmos database on the flipside is new, there is no specific table for voting, delegations, and balance. so I created the CTE tables to extract and organize these data.

Vote Options:

  when TRY_PARSE_JSON(c.attribute_value):option = '1' then 'Yes'
  when TRY_PARSE_JSON(c.attribute_value):option = '3' then 'No'
  when TRY_PARSE_JSON(c.attribute_value):option = '4' then 'No with Veto'
  when TRY_PARSE_JSON(c.attribute_value):option = '2' then 'Abstain'

Voting:

  from cosmos.core.fact_msg_attributes a
  join cosmos.core.fact_msg_attributes b on a.tx_id = b.tx_id and b.ATTRIBUTE_KEY = 'sender' and b.MSG_TYPE = 'transfer'
  join cosmos.core.fact_msg_attributes c on a.tx_id = c.tx_id and c.ATTRIBUTE_KEY = 'option' and c.MSG_TYPE = 'proposal_vote'
  where a.msg_type = 'proposal_vote'
  and a.attribute_key = 'proposal_id'

Delegations:

  from cosmos.core.fact_msg_attributes a
  join cosmos.core.fact_msg_attributes b on a.tx_id = b.tx_id and b.MSG_TYPE = 'message' and b.ATTRIBUTE_KEY = 'sender' and a.MSG_GROUP = b.MSG_GROUP and b.ATTRIBUTE_INDEX = 1
  where 1=1 
  and a.MSG_TYPE in ('delegate', 'redelegate', 'unbond')
and a.ATTRIBUTE_KEY = 'amount'
and a.ATTRIBUTE_VALUE like '%uatom'

most charts show only the final vote of each voter which is written header (in delegation and balance sections only final votes are counted)
the switch means if a user changes their vote to another option, not the same option.