Governance plays a crucial role in the decision-making and success of the Mirror Protocol, but users were not sufficiently incentivized to actively participate. As a result, the quorums were often not reached as users were disincentivized by the fact that their staked MIR tokens were locked until the end of the poll. This was further exacerbated by the fact that MIR deposits were mandatory to create new polls, so poll creators had a relatively high chance to lose their MIR due to lack of poll participation.
In Mirror Protocol v2, active voters will be eligible for additional voting rewards in addition to existing governance staking rewards. An ABSTAIN vote option is also added for users who want to participate actively in governance but feel that they do not adequately understand the proposal. In addition, a snapshot of the quorum will be saved once it reaches a Snapshot Period to ensure that additional MIR staked in the governance contract does not affect the minimum amount of MIR needed to reach quorum.
These changes will drive governance participation upwards by reducing risks related to poll creators’ deposits and incentivizing active participation.