It’s that time again! From December 5 through December 7 (12 AM UTC), all staked holders of Illuvium have the opportunity to elect their DAO governance council, the Illuvinati. Today, I’ll share how the election works, some brief review of past elections, and a call to action for each of you.
What is the Illuvinati?
The Illuvinati is a governing body of five individuals elected by members of the DAO. All items that are voted on with the exception of the Illuvinati election are only voted on by the council. Over the past few months, there has been an effort to make the council discussions, votes, and decisions more public. These can be viewed in notes shared by the community manager (Wendy) and from comments directly shared by the council members themselves. Check out Vetemor's video on the Illuvium DAO governance here for a deeper dive.
In short, while Discord remains the primary community communication hub, this is your one chance to directly participate in Illuvium governance until March 2022, so vote!
Who is eligible to vote?
Anyone who holds and has staked ILV, the Illuvium governance token, is eligible to vote. This includes those staked in yield farming, but also those who acquired tokens via the pre-seed or seed sale, or the team members. As each of those three groups of tokens are locked, they are deemed staked for purposes of voting.
You can learn more about the tokenomics of Illuvium here.
Note: if you hold ILV but haven’t staked, you cannot vote.
How does voting work?
Voting takes place here, or if you don’t trust me (which you shouldn’t trust anyone in crypto), go to the official Discord here, and click the link posted to the election. You will need to connect your wallet, which will determine your number of staked ILV and assign you a number of vILV or voting ILV that you can cast on your preferred candidate.
While five members are elected to the council, each wallet is permitted to vote for ONLY ONE candidate. You must select a single candidate out of the nominees.
Nominations end December 2, with voting from December 5 until December 7 (12 AM UTC).
What is this quadratic voting thing?
Your number of staked ILV determines your number of votes, though to aid decentralization and prevent whales from dominating the election, geometric voting is used. In short, rather than receiving one vote for each ILV, you receive the square root of your number of staked ILV.
See the below table for the number of votes per staked ILV.
For example, it would take about 700 people staking the most common number of ILV (just 1 ILV), to have the same voting power as the largest wallet that participated in the September election. While it’s a large number of individuals, the value of their share of the DAO represents only 0.14% of the ownership as the largest wallet. Due to this voting structure, wallets owning a little over $1 million in ILV vote with the same power as someone with $785 million.
I’m in the Sushi Liquidity Pool, how many votes do I have?
If you’re in the SLP, you do receive credit for the number of ILV within your SLP token. As of right now, (during the Illuvium ATH on November 24), each SLP token would be worth a little over 1.7 ILV. If you have been claiming ILV rewards, you are in both staked yield farming pools. For example, if you have 1.64 SLP (the median of the pool), and have claimed 10 ILV, your vote is worth 3.58 vILV.
vILV = SQRT(1.64 SLP x 1.72 + 10 ILV) = 3.58 vILV
sILV is not staked, and does not count towards vILV, nor does ILV not staked and just present in your wallet.
What does voting cost?
NOTHING! ZERO! NADA! Voting is completely free. I know people are scared to conduct any Ethereum transactions right now due to high gas fees, but please take advantage of this freebie. You will need to connect your wallet to the election website, but conducting the voting transaction will be completely free.
How did the last elections go?
Here’s the results from the past three elections, and here's my deeper analysis of the September election. By period, the February election had 439 wallets vote, the May election saw only 118 votes, and the September election had 611 votes. As of right now, there are nearly 20,000 wallets holding ILV, and between 13k-14k wallets staked in the yield farming pools, neglecting those with seed or team tokens.
Note: Kain* resigned mid epoch and was replaced by Santiago in the May-September period. Anton Bukov* recently resigned from the council, but has not been replaced with the upcoming election so close.
Who are the incumbents?
Your incumbent candidates are Santiago, Rahlord, jeff, and Stormi. At the time I’m writing this, Stormi has announced his candidacy for reelection, though nominations last through December 2.
Who are the candidates?
Candidates can be nominated or self-nominated in the Discord. To nominate yourself or someone else, you must complete the Google form here. There is a discussion channel for candidate bios, as well as a separate channel for candidate discussion. Please check out the Discord for more details.
Summary
This is your chance. If you’re staked with Illuvium, this is one of the primary reasons to own the ILV governance token. Help shape the organization by selecting your preferred candidate. In my opinion, 611 votes in September was a very poor turn out from the community. To achieve real decentralization, we need to hear from everyone’s voice. This is your one opportunity every three months to directly impact the governance of a hugely promising crypto project. Regardless of who you vote for, please consider participating, check out the candidates, and select who you want to represent you in the upcoming epoch which will likely see the initial land auction and further guide us towards the launch of the main title.
We’re all counting on you!
Are you planning to vote? Who are your preferred candidates and what are you looking for in your council representation? Feel free to leave comments below.
Thanks for reading, thank you for supporting my work at Patreon, and consider checking out these couple candidates (Vetemor) running for Illuvinati council.
