How to Propose

How to submit a proposal to the Alien Base DAO

A practical guide for ALB holders who want to submit a proposal.

Last updated: July 6, 2026.

Before you start

You need:

• At least 100,000 ALB of voting power, in esALB form (or supported esLP variants), at the snapshot block.

• An EVM wallet that owns those tokens.

• A clear thesis. Vague proposals lose votes regardless of how good the underlying idea is.

If you don't have the threshold yourself, it's normal to co-author with a larger holder: draft your idea, get feedback in Discord, and either persuade a delegate to submit it on your behalf, or aggregate small holders into a delegation pattern. The DAO is small enough that this is a manual conversation, not a formal process — start in Discord governance channels.

Step 1 — Draft

Every Alien Base proposal has three sections:

1. Motivation. Why we're doing this. What problem the proposal solves. Data, on-chain references, or links to discussion threads.

2. Description. What concretely happens if the proposal passes. This is where you specify on-chain actions: contract calls (function name, parameters), ALB amounts to disburse, addresses involved. The clearer this section, the easier the DAO Multisig's job.

3. Result. How the proposal achieves its goal. Side effects, drawbacks, mitigations. If it changes tokenomics, model the impact.

Keep proposals single-purpose when possible. Combined proposals (e.g., "approve a budget and change emissions and deploy a new contract") tend to invite "yes to A, no to B" splits that are hard to interpret.

Step 2 — Discuss

• Post the draft in Discord first, in #governance (or the active equivalent).

• Iterate for at least a few days. Most strong proposals go through 2–3 revisions.

• If the proposal is large or strategic, post a long-form version on Medium so non-Discord users see it.

• A proposal that hasn't been pre-discussed is significantly less likely to pass — even if its content is good.

Step 3 — Submit on Snapshot

1. Go to the Alien Base Snapshot space.

2. Click New proposal.

3. Title: short, descriptive, prefixed with AIP-N: if it's a major change. (Day-to-day operational asks can skip the AIP prefix.)

4. Body: paste your Motivation / Description / Result sections.

5. Choose the voting type:

   • Single choice: the default. Two options: Yes and No.

   • Approval / weighted: for proposals offering several mutually exclusive paths (AIP-4 used "Prioritize DAO" vs. "Prioritize holders").

6. Voting period: 3 days is standard. Use 5–7 only for very high-impact proposals.

7. Voting strategy: leave the default — Snapshot is configured to use the alienbase-dex.eth strategies which weigh ALB, esALB, and selected esLP holdings.

8. Snapshot block: typically the current block. If you want to exclude very recent acquirers (e.g., to discourage vote-buying), choose a block from a few days back, but say so explicitly in the proposal.

9. Submit. The 100,000 ALB voting-power check is enforced at submission.

Step 4 — Communicate while voting is open

• Pin the proposal in Discord.

• Cross-post on X (the Alien Base account will normally amplify well-formed proposals).

• Hold AMA / "office hours" if the topic is technical. AIP-2, AIP-4, and AIP-5 all had multiple Discord discussion sessions during the voting period.

• Be available to answer voter questions. Silence is a yellow flag.

Step 5 — After it passes

If the proposal includes on-chain actions:

• The DAO Multisig signers (or, increasingly, the Alien Foundation) queue the actions in the Safe.

• Time-locked actions (emission changes, ALB minting) wait out the timelock before execution.

• Track execution on the Safe's Basescan page — every executed transaction is public.

If the proposal includes off-chain actions (operating budget, marketing, partnerships):

• Alien Labs (under the Foundation) executes within the approved budget.

• Status updates land in Discord and the next quarterly retrospective.

Step 6 — If it doesn't pass

• Read the comments. Most rejected proposals have a fixable flaw — wrong scope, missing data, ambiguity.

• Iterate and re-submit. There's no cooldown.

• Don't take it personally. The DAO has rejected proposals from the founders too.

Things that get proposals killed

• Numbers that don't add up. Run the math twice.

• Insufficient on-chain detail in the Description. "Pay the team" is not actionable; "transfer 1,000,000 ALB from the DAO Multisig to 0x… over the next 6 months" is.

• Sneaking sub-items past voters by burying them in long sections.

• Conflicts of interest the proposer hasn't disclosed.

• Proposals that materially benefit a small group at the expense of the broader esALB base.

Templates

We don't ship a heavyweight template. Read the existing AIPs (linked from the AIP Index) and match their structure. AIP-2, AIP-3, ADIP-01, and AIP-5 are particularly good models for, respectively: emission tweaks, halving-cycle budgets, operating-budget proposals, and tokenomics overhauls.