Between August 23rd and August 30th, the Orbs Network held its first governance vote, in which a majority decided to reinstate the minimum self-delegation requirement.

A week after the OGV-1 vote ended, a second vote was held regarding the exact details of the minimum self-stake. After a close race, the community has chosen to set the minimum self delegation requirement for the Orbs Guardians at 3%.

Following these two governance votes and the decisions selected by the community, the ORBS staking contracts on Ethereum and Polygon will be updated to reinstate a 3% minimum self delegation.

This change will take effect on 2/10/22, to allow adequate time for all Guardians to make any necessary preparations.

Flashback: Guardians’ self Delegation

Guardians’ self delegation was first introduced in V2.5 of the Orbs PoS Universe, and was set at 8% of the Guardian’s total delegated stake.

The purpose of this requirement was to ensure that Guardians had a commitment to honest and secure operation of the network, as well as a commitment to their communities of Delegators. Requiring a minimum self-stake was intended to align incentives to solidify and strengthen these commitments. The requirement also had the additional benefit of preventing certain types of attack and abuse scenarios.

With the launch of V3 of the Orbs PoS, including multi-chain staking on Ethereum and Polygon, this requirement was removed. The primary reasoning behind this removal was to reduce operating friction during the launch of multi-chain staking, and avoid potential loss of staking rewards in a situation where Guardians would be forced to maneuver ORBS between Ethereum and Polygon.

Since its launch on 29/3/22, the total delegated stake on Ethereum and Polygon solidified to a stable steady state. Following the results of the votes in OGV-1 and OGV-2, the community has deemed that these concerns have lessened enough to reinstate the self-delegation requirement, albeit with a lower percentage requirement.

Vote of Confidence In the Community

OGV-1+2 has been the first set of votes introduced as part of a greater Orbs governance initiative. Votes for both proposals exceeded 500m ORBS tokens, which are approximately 60% of the total staked ORBS, a remarkable achievement!

This displays the strength of the Orbs community, the diversity of its viewpoints, and the high level of passion and engagement. The community has proven its ability to engage in discussion of serious questions facing the project and to come together to make decisions on what direction to take. This is a major step forward in the project’s governance and decentralization!

Stay tuned for more updates on Orbs governance on our official Telegram channels, as well as on https://www.orbs.com/governance-blog/. You can also join the discussion at the governance channel of our discord.