Agora Liquid Delegator

Overview

Alligator allows token holders to delegate and subdelegate their voting power to voters according to a set of rules. Any voter can further sub-delegate their voting power to others, optionally adding even more rules.

For example, a token holder 0xAAA delegates their votes to 0xBBB, but only allows 0xBBB use the tokens on proposals that move less than 100 ETH from the treasury. 0xBBB sub-delegates their votes to 0xCCC, but only allows voting in the last 12 hours before the vote closes. 0xCCC can now use 0xAAA's voting power to cast a vote, but only on small proposals and only in the last 12 hours.

This logic is achieved through the use of proxy contracts designed to hold the voting power of their respective owner, and forward execution of governor's operations after subdelegation rules are validated by Alligator.

Features

1. Create proxy contracts for an address
2. Sub-delegate to any number of voters
3. Add rules to sub-delegation:
   • Permissions: create proposal, vote, sign (via EIP-1271)
   • Limit number of re-delegations
   • Set timestamp range when sub-delegation is active
   • Limit voting to a number of blocks before vote closes
   • Custom rules (calls external contract to validate)
4. Casting votes, creating new proposals and voting on Prop House
5. Batch operations
6. Gas refund

How it works

Alligator is designed to work without holding user's tokens.

1. Alligator deploys a proxy contract for every token holder who wants to use the system. The proxy's address is deterministic and the proxy can be deployed by anyone. The proxy only allows commands from Alligator itself.
2. The user who wants to delegate their voting power via Alligator's system must first delegate (not transfer!) the original tokens (ERC20s or ERC721s) to the corresponding Alligator's proxy.
3. The user can now configure sub-delegations. They can sub-delegate to any number of other users and can limit the sub-delegation to a set of specific rules.
4. The user who is delegated to can now vote by calling the corresponding function on Alligator. The user must include one or more delegation chains that they want to exercise.
5. The rules engine checks if the subdelegations are allowed, and forwards the request to vote to a proxy. The proxy casts a vote on Governor contract.

                        [2] VotingToken
      ┌ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ .delegateTo ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─
                        (0xAAA's proxy)                  │
      │
╔══════════╗                                             │
║User 0xAAA║      ┌──────────────────┐                   ▼
╚══════════╝      │    Alligator     │         ┌──────────────────┐
      │           ├──────────────────┤   ┌────▶│  0xAAA's proxy   │───┐
[3] Alligator     │- Sub-delegations │   │     └──────────────────┘   │
.subDelegate─────▶│- Signatures      │   │     ┌──────────────────┐   │   ┌──────────────────┐
(0xBBB, {rules})  ├──────────────────┤ vote    │       ...        │ vote  │                  │
                  │┌────────────────┐│   │     └──────────────────┘   └──▶│     Governor     │
                  ││                ││   │     [1] Alligator              │                  │
[4] Alligator     ││     RULES      ││   │     deploys a proxy for        └──────────────────┘
.vote([0xAAA])────▶│     ENGINE     │├───┘     each user to a
      │           ││                ││         deterministic
      │           │└────────────────┘│         address via CREATE2
╔══════════╗      └──────────────────┘
║User 0xBBB║      [5] Check 0xAAA subdelegated
╚══════════╝      to 0xBBB and validate rules

Authority chains

When a user votes via Alligator, they need to construct an authority chain off-chain and send it with their request (similar to Uniswap routing). This way Alligator can only store the essential information and pushes the complexity of finding the most beneficial chain.

The authority chain can be constructed by listening to on-chain subdelegation events and reconstructing graphs. It's possible there will be a few authority chains available to the same user with different constraints.

 SubDelegations:                       Authority Chains:
┌────────┬────────┬───────────────┐
│  FROM  │   TO   │     RULES     │    ┌───────┐   ┌───────┐   ┌───────┐
├────────┼────────┼───────────────┤    │ 0xAAA │──▶│ 0xBBB │──▶│ 0xCCC │
│ 0xAAA  │ 0xBBB  │   < 100 ETH   │    └───────┘   └───────┘   └───────┘
├────────┼────────┼───────────────┤
│ 0xBBB  │ 0xCCC  │   Last 12h    │    ┌───────┐   ┌───────┐
├────────┼────────┼───────────────┤    │ 0xFFF │──▶│ 0xCCC │
│ 0xFFF  │ 0xCCC  │Expires on 2023│    └───────┘   └───────┘
└────────┴────────┴───────────────┘

In the example above, the user 0xCCC can use 0xAAA's and 0xFFF's voting power by calling:

Alligator.castVotesWithReasonBatched([[0xAAA, 0xBBB, 0xCCC], [0xFFF, 0xCCC]], 1, 1, "");

From the Governor's perspective, it looks like users 0xAAA's proxy and 0xFFF's proxy are casting their votes.

╔══════════╗              ┌──────────────────┐         ┌──────────────────┐
║User 0xAAA║─ delegated ─▶│  0xAAA's proxy   │──vote──▶│                  │
╚══════════╝              └──────────────────┘         │     Governor     │
╔══════════╗              ┌──────────────────┐         │                  │
║User 0xFFF║─ delegated ─▶│  0xFFF's proxy   │──vote──▶│                  │
╚══════════╝              └──────────────────┘         └──────────────────┘

Other design considerations

1. Should the rules be scoped to proxy or delegator? The initial prototype of Alligator used per-proxy rules, but we don't think in real life users want different sets of rules for different lots, and it's not how the original Governor works. E.g. if 0xAAA subdelegates to 0xBBB, we assume A trusts B (within the set rules) so if 0xCCC delegates to 0xAAA, 0xBBB should be able to use these votes. It's also less on-chain storage and better scaling.

2. Should we support exclusive delegation? I.e. if 0xAAA delegates to 0xBBB, should 0xAAA still be able to use that voting power? Supporting this would increase the complexity and raise many questions (e.g. if 0xCCC delegates to 0xAAA, can 0xAAA still vote?). It could also easily be tricked by 0xAAA via un-delegating, voting, and re-delegating back to 0xBBB. So unless we introduce snapshots, adding exclusive delegation support doesn't give us much.

3. Is it possible to subdelegate a fraction of the tokens? According to our research, it's not possible unless we either hold users' tokens or change how the base token voting snapshots work. Alligator could theoretically used with something like Franchiser (but we haven't tested this).

4. We are trying to make the contract as ergonomic as possible for the end users. Any friction will result in less actions taken, and we want more government participation. So ideally it should take the minimum number of transactions to set things up and use. For the setup, we need proxy deployment, delegate the original tokens and configure the rules. The proxy deployment is permissionless and can be done beforehand for big users. We can't get around the original token delegation transaction. Configuring the rules should be batched too. For voting, we want to have batched versions of castVote, offering a user to use different chains of authority to vote on a single proposal. We also offer a refund, if funds for it are available.

5. To limit EIP-1271 signatures to Prop House only, we are planning to do EIP-712 hashing on the contract side and check if the domain corresponds to the Prop House.

6. Should the base implementation of Alligator be upgradeable? Not sure, it adds marginal gas cost and security considerations. If we work on extending the feature set of Alligator, we can ask the users who want the extra features to re-delegate to Alligator v2, v3, etc.

Running tests:

1. Install foundry
2. forge test

Deploying to testnet:

1. Configure .env
2. Run forge script script/Deploy.s.sol -f goerli --broadcast --verify

Attack surface

Alligator does not hold user's tokens, so it's not possible to steal the tokens using a potential bug in the contract. However, it controls voting power which can be abused to vote on malicious proposals (e.g. transfer all the treasury tokens to evil.eth).

In such cases the contract owner holds the power to disable main operations (propose, vote, sign) via OZ:Pausable while a new version of Alligator is deployed. Users can then migrate to the new contracts.

Alligator V2

Overview

AlligatorV2 has the same functionality of V1, with the addition of delegators being able to add their voting power into proxies owned by others, turning them effectively into voting pools.

This architecture is designed to prevent gas costs to grow uncontrollably in systems where the number of delegators to a single voter is significant. This is the case for most ecosystems using governors based on ERC20 tokens.

Differences

Proxy

• In V1 each delegator had its own, single proxy. In V2 each address (voter) can be the owner / controller of multiple pools
• In V1 delegators used to DELEGATE voting power to their own proxy, then SUBDELEGATE the proxy’s to others. In V2 delegators will mainly DELEGATE to pools owned by other voters
  • As a result delegators will be giving away their voting power to the chosen voter. They cannot use that voting power until they undelegate.
• Each proxy is now linked to a set of base proxy rules.
  • A voter owning a proxy cannot use the voting power held in the proxy unless the base rules are respected.
  • Anyone can create a proxy with rules for someone else. However incentives in this new system makes it so that delegators are incentivised to DELEGATE their voting power to existing pools instead of creating new ones.
  • In V2, the behaviour of a V1 proxy can be obtained with one having full permissions and no restrictions as rules, owned by delegator (instead of another voter)
• {Voter’s address} AND {Proxy base rules} are used to determine the address of a proxy.
  • There cannot be two pools owned by a voter with the same set of rules.

Subdelegations

• In V1 delegators could only have 1 proxy, thus subdelegations were both address-specific (delegator→voter) and proxy-specific (delegator’s proxy→voter). In V2 a voter may own multiple pools, so there is a distinction between the two. V2 allows both kinds of subdelegations:
  • Address-specific: SUBDELEGATE voting power of all pools owned by a voter to an address. This is also valid for pools yet to be created.
  • Proxy-specific: SUBDELEGATE voting power of a single proxy owned by a voter to an address
  • Proxy-specific subdelegation rules override address-specific ones.
• In V1 the delegator was the one who SUBDELEGATED voting power to others (retaining ability to vote). In V2 it’s the voters who SUBDELEGATE.
  • Voters are the proxy owners, and the first address in the authority chains when a governor operation is executed
• When a voter SUBDELEGATE to another voter, subdelegation rules stack on top of the original proxy’s base rules.

Validation

• Whenever a governor operation is executed (propose/vote/sign), the validation process first checks validity of base proxy rules and then additional subdelegation rules (based on the authority chain)