Governance thresholds for minimum participation and voting approval rates are determined and adjusted based on your DAO's specific needs. This is some extra context for the Nouns Builder flow.

Proposal Threshold, which can also be referred to as a quorum outside of Nouns Build, is the minimum total supply or level of participation required for a proposal to be valid. 

For example, imagine a Proposal Threshold requires 0.5% of the total voting power to participate. If there are 1000 total NFTs minted, then 5 NFTs need to approve the proposal for it to be put to a vote.

Reiterating, even if there’s a proposal where 100% of people who participated in that specific proposal voted For (yes) but only 2% of people in the entire DAO voted, the proposal would not be valid. 

Proposals cannot pass until they are recognized by a minimum percentage of people involved in the community or organization.

The higher the Proposal Threshold, the harder it is for votes to pass. The more tokens and members in the ecosystem, the more approval you will need to get a proposal to clear.

Quorum Threshold refer to the percent of total For (yes) votes required for a proposal to pass. This can also be communicated as the voting approval rate. Abstaining to vote counts as a participation toward the Proposal Threshold, so this value is an equalizer.

Bottom line: You have to have at least a certain amount of people participating and a minimum % amount of people to say yes for a proposal to make changes to the protocol or treasury because that is a big deal.

When setting values, you may want to consider:

• How much of your community are active voters? You’ll want to set values below this.

• Avoid getting trapped under your thresholds. If you set a proposal threshold that can’t be reached by your community in practice, then you would not be able to pass a vote to change the threshold.

• Running a few offchain decisions without quorum to gather voting information to determine your DAO's threshold. 

• Are there whales in your community that could pass the vote alone? If using token “1 token = 1 vote” you may want to set a proposal threshold above the level where a whale could easily pass a vote on their own.

Voting Period is how long the vote is active. There is no magic number for how long your vote should last. Anything between 3-14 days is typical.

The primary considerations for setting your voting period are:

• Speed:

  If your DAO needs quick judgments, a short voting period may work. If you're constructing an NFT-collecting DAO, you may have to make swift auction bid choices.

• Participation:

  Your community's participation may dictate a longer voting time. If your voting period is two days, many contributors may not have time to read and vote.

• Safety:

  In the event of a malicious proposal, a short voting period may put the DAO at danger. Start by testing what works in your context with low-to-no stakes.

• Community Activity: 

  Focus on community governance engagement. Prop thresholds and quorum thresholds should not be set after early votes because participation is usually high at first and then lowers. In low activity, decrease thresholds.

  You can also consider “review period” proposals to assess the state of your community and proactive change values through votes.

  Activity is often affected by the topics listed below.

  • Delegated voting: 

    Can community members delegate votes? Since people can delegate voting to a trusted delegate, more votes will be cast.

  • Token distribution: 

    Does everyone have the same quantity of tokens, or do a few "whales" have a lot? People may feel more empowered to participate in even distributions.

  • Role of members:

    Are community members mostly investors or product users, admirers, players, or contributors? The latter may govern more.

  • Size of community:

    Large communities engage less than tiny ones.

  • Safety:

    High-risk DAOs with big treasuries may prefer higher thresholds and post-vote time restrictions.

  ---Ⓟ