The Future of Proposal Submission: Context-Aware Interfaces

Proposers must hold native gas tokens and specific governance tokens, often across multiple chains. Manual bridging introduces cost, delay, and security risk.

• Intent-Based Execution: Users specify what (e.g., "Vote YES on AIP-123"), not how. The interface aggregates liquidity from Across, LayerZero, and CEXs to source assets.
• Cost Abstraction: Sponsors or the protocol itself can pay gas fees, removing the final UX hurdle for participation.

Voters make decisions with incomplete data. Static proposal pages lack live on-chain metrics, delegate stances, or simulation results.

• Context-Aggregated Feeds: Interfaces pull real-time data from Dune Analytics, Tally, and on-chain governance contracts to display delegate voting power, treasury health, and historical patterns.
• Simulation & Preview: Before signing, users see a simulated outcome of their vote and its projected impact on TVL or token price, powered by tools like Gauntlet.

Submitting a proposal is a single, high-stakes transaction. Failed transactions due to gas or slippage waste time and funds, discouraging participation.

• MEV-Resistant Routing: Proposal submission bundles are routed through private mempools or intent-based systems like UniswapX and CowSwap to guarantee execution and minimize cost.
• Conditional & Batched Logic: Support for "vote-if" conditions (e.g., only if quorum >20%) and batched multi-action proposals in a single signature, reducing on-chain footprint and gas costs by ~40%.

Submitting a proposal requires deep protocol knowledge, creating a high barrier to entry and a high rate of invalid submissions. Users must manually format parameters, calculate timelocks, and understand treasury constraints.

• ~40% of proposals fail or require amendment due to formatting or parameter errors.
• Forces contributors to be part-time solidity devs, limiting participation.
• Creates administrative overhead for core teams to triage and correct submissions.

Interfaces that read on-chain state (treasury balance, delegate voting power, pending upgrades) to generate compliant proposal templates and validate inputs in real-time. Inspired by Safe{Wallet} transaction builders and Uniswap's route optimization.

• Dynamic parameter suggestions based on treasury health and historical data.
• Real-time simulation to preview proposal effects before submission.
• Automated formatting to DAO-specific standards (e.g., Compound, Aave).

Tally is building a unified interface that aggregates governance activity across Compound, Uniswap, and Gitcoin, treating each DAO as a node in a graph. This creates a cross-protocol context layer.

• Proposal templates auto-populate with data from related proposals (e.g., similar treasury grants).
• Delegate context shows a user's voting history and alignment before they sponsor.
• Fork detection warns if a proposal conflicts with a pending upgrade on a forked codebase.

The logical conclusion is AI agents that monitor protocol metrics and auto-draft optimization proposals. Think OpenAI agents reading Dune Analytics dashboards and submitting via Safe modules. Early patterns seen in Maker's spellcraft and keeper networks.

• Continuous parameter tuning for vault stability fees or grant program rates.
• Automated bug bounty proposals upon exploit disclosure.
• Gas-optimized bundling of multiple administrative actions into a single proposal.

Users sign proposals without knowing if they will succeed, wasting gas and causing governance spam. This is a primary failure mode for DAOs like Uniswap and Compound.\n- Wasted Gas: ~$1M+ annually across major DAOs on failed proposals\n- Proposal Spam: Clogs governance with doomed votes\n- Voter Fatigue: Reduces participation in legitimate initiatives

Interfaces like Tally and Boardroom will integrate fork-and-simulate tooling (e.g., Tenderly, Foundry) to validate proposals before submission.\n- State-Aware Checks: Verifies quorum, timelocks, and treasury balances in real-time\n- Cost Transparency: Shows exact gas cost and success probability\n- Integration Path: Native hooks for Safe{Wallet} and Rabby Wallet for enterprise DAOs

A delegate and a novice see the same proposal interface, leading to errors and suboptimal execution. This ignores the $20B+ in delegated voting power.\n- Delegate Blind Spots: Cannot easily assess voter sentiment or delegate alignment\n- Novice Overload: Complex parameter tuning (e.g., Aave interest rate models) causes mistakes\n- Missing Context: No integration with discourse forums like Commonwealth or Snapshot

Future UIs will detect user role (delegate, token-whale, novice) and surface relevant data. Think Nansen dashboards baked into the submission flow.\n- Delegate View: Shows voting bloc analysis and delegate contract health\n- Builder View: Pre-populates parameters via templates from OpenZeppelin Governor\n- Context Injection: Automatically attaches relevant forum discussions and Chainlink data feeds

Proposal tools assume a safe signing environment, ignoring wallet compromises and MEV extraction risks. This has led to $100M+ in governance exploits.\n- Signing Blindness: No warning for malicious calldata or unexpected state changes\n- MEV Vulnerabilities: Proposal transactions are frontrun for value extraction\n- Key Management: No integration with MPC or multi-sig escalation workflows

Interfaces will shift from transaction signing to intent declaration, leveraging projects like UniswapX and CowSwap. Security becomes a property of the path, not the payload.\n- Intent Signing: User approves an outcome (e.g., "Increase borrowing limit"), not raw calldata\n- Secure Fulfillment: Uses SUAVE-like solvers or Across secure oracles for execution\n- Post-Execution Proofs: Provides zk-proofs or attestations via EigenLayer AVS for verification