Raise Governance Expedited Threshold to 80%

This proposal raises the threshold required for an Expedited proposal to pass from 67% to 80% of votes cast.

Details

Osmosis governance recently passed Proposal 1024, an Expedited proposal, over a weekend with a turnout of approximately 27% of staked OSMO. This prompted a review of the Expedited path, which confirmed that an Expedited proposal is subject to the standard 30% quorum and a higher 67% approval threshold of votes cast, rather than requiring a higher turnout. This proposal raises the Expedited threshold to better protect the chain on the accelerated path during low-engagement periods without impeding legitimate governance.

Expedited Threshold: 67% to 80% The Expedited threshold was originally set at 67% to reflect hard-fork consensus levels. However, because Expedited proposals only require the standard quorum, at a typical turnout this threshold can be satisfied by a relatively small share of total stake. Even at the highest turnout observed in the last six months (65%), a 67% threshold represents a decision made by approximately 43.5% of staked OSMO. Raising the Expedited threshold to 80% increases this to approximately 52% of stake at the same turnout, providing a meaningful additional safeguard on the accelerated path. Historically, Expedited proposals have passed with approval well above 90%, so this change is not expected to impede legitimate Expedited proposals.

This change affects only the accelerated Expedited path. The quorum (30%), standard proposal threshold (50%), veto threshold (33.4%), voting periods, and deposit requirements are unchanged.

The tradeoff to this is that a minority of stake (20%) can block an expedited proposal from executing. In the event of a malicious block, the fallback would be a manual chain upgrade that uses the baked-in 67% consensus threshold to effect the change.

Forum Post: https://forum.osmosis.zone/t/raise-governance-expedited-threshold-to-80/4069