Choosing Governance Parameters

The governance step of the launch wizard asks for six numbers. Get them right and your DAO runs smoothly; get them wrong and you'll find proposals can't pass, or anyone can drain the treasury. This guide explains each parameter, shows five battle-tested templates, and walks you past the one mistake almost everyone makes the first time.

What each parameter does

• votingPeriod — how long voting stays open, in seconds. Short for fast teams (a day), long for high-stakes funds (a week).
• gracePeriod — seconds after a vote where members can ragequit before the action executes. This is the exit window for anyone who disagrees with a passing decision.
• quorumPercent — minimum share of voting power that must participate, in basis points. Too high and nothing passes; too low and a tiny faction controls the DAO.
• sponsorThreshold — minimum Shares a member needs to push a proposal onto the ballot. Higher thresholds reduce ballot spam but concentrate agenda-setting power.
• minRetentionPercent — minority protection, in basis points. It blocks a proposal if too much of the supply has exited, preventing a treasury drain via mass ragequit.
• proposalOffering — an anti-spam deposit in QUAI required to submit a proposal. Zero is fine for small trusted groups; raise it as your DAO opens up.

For the conceptual background on quorum, grace, and retention, see Quorum, Grace & Retention.

Five templates

Pick the row that best matches your DAO and start from there. Values come from the DAO Ships configuration playbook.

A few notes on the extremes:

• Startup uses a high 5000 quorum because a small trusted group should reach majority easily.
• Protocol drops quorum to 1000 because hitting 10% participation across hundreds of holders is already ambitious — delegation becomes essential.
• Investment sets the strongest minority protection (7500) because economic exit rights are the whole point of the DAO.
• Agent compresses everything to minutes for programmatic voting and sets minRetentionPercent to 0 because agents don't ragequit.

Choosing your values

1. Start from the closest template above by member count and treasury size.
2. Adjust votingPeriod and gracePeriod to your team's pace. Faster isn't always better — a longer grace gives dissenters a real chance to exit.
3. Set quorumPercent to what you can realistically reach. If only 30% of your members ever vote, a 50% quorum guarantees gridlock.
4. Tune sponsorThreshold so legitimate members can propose but drive-by spam can't.
5. Keep minRetentionPercent high for treasury-heavy DAOs and low for fast-moving ones.
6. Convert every percentage to basis points before you type it in. Multiply by 100.

Can I change these later?

Yes. Governance parameters are set at launch but can be changed afterward through a Governance Config proposal — meaning the DAO has to vote to change its own rules. Choose carefully up front, but know you're not locked in. See Create Your First Proposal.