Here are some thoughts on this (I do respect the desire to protect, and goal of protecting, people - and where we can, we should - however, here are some personal concerns regarding whether this methodology would actually meet the stated goal though):
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As I stated here (regarding proposal 6082) that:
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while I believe that stopping phishing attempts and scammers is a noble goal (and one we should do as long as what we do will actually discourage scammers while protecting the process of governance so it is not detrimental to governance),
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raising the proposal fee from 345K Luna V1 to 1M Luna V1 would, I believed, hurt governance and peoples ability to participate in it (and therefore would hurt the blockchain - at the dollar price it was at the time), would present an issue with the price fluctuation of Luna V1 having the ability to put creating legitimate proposals out of reach, and also mentioned that attempting to stop phishing and scamming at the cost of governance was not helpful (pointing out that at the time Terra V2 had the same issue with scam/phishing proposals even though at the time it cost ~$1,254 to put in a proposal on that chain - it was clearly a cost of doing business for these particular scammers as a form of marketing for their hook).
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To be fair, the documentation does state that part of the reason for the minimum deposit before a proposal goes to voting is to prevent abuse. However, I did point out that while this may be true, we already had a case study that showed (via Terra v2) that it would not stop this/these particular scammers/phishing campaigns, and to just raise the price to the 1M level at that time would then do more harm to governance participation than to slowing the scammers down (although where we can, I do think that we should - just not at the cost of governance).
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I decided to do some research into this topic - here is what I found:
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Proposal 6082 passed on 10/25/2022 (opened on 10/18/2022), in which the rate of scam proposal on Terra v1 actually increased during the month of October after proposal 6082 was put in. In Sept there were ~10 phishing/scam proposals. When proposal 6082 was introduced, the number of proposals doubled for that month. Before proposal 6082 was put in, there were ~3 proposals that could be considered in this scam/phishing category for Oct., afterwards there were ~18 proposals for the remainder of the month.
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Proposal 7101 passed on 11/01/2022 (this dealt with stopping scam proposals as well - but focused on a different methodology). On 11/6/2022 there was a pull request made to Terra Station that put into place the current restriction to only show clickable links that are from classic-agora (otherwise a person much click passed a warning to show external links). The author of the pull request stated that he adjusted the pull request as a result of proposal 7101. After the pull request was merged on 11/6/2022, there were ~6 further proposals that could fit the profile of scam/phishing proposals. The number of proposals from that time forward has been ~10 each for Nov and Dec.
- However, the code makes it very clear to a person using Terra Station (and any other wallet based on this code) that if they want to proceed they are doing it at their own risk, and only the classic-agora link is shown as clickable. It is true a non-clickable addresses can be shown without the protocol/scheme, but the person would have to manually enter that address into the web browser.
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Note: For the research, I wrote a program to collect any proposal that shows “Airdrop” in the proposal title, or has external links in the title or in the description (where the link[s] are not to classic-agora, or are in addition to the classic-agora site). I did this for both Terra v1 and Terra v2. You will notice that Deposit proposals only are returned for 14 days (if they do not move to active voting, they are not considered failed - they are no longer reported back). It should be understood the the proposals returned by the program should be considered potential scam/phishing proposals (not that they are in fact - nor have I check each of them). In regards to the Deposit proposals that are awaiting the minimum deposit to be met, which also would meet the criteria above for potential scam/phishing attempts - they would be fairly similar in number of proposals per month since Sept. (and most likely since before that as well - although that is more on casual observation when I happened to click the deposit tab rather than upon actual data).
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You will also notice that Terra V2 does not have as many scam/phishing attempts. This is most likely because their community is not as engaged (and therefore not as lucrative for scammers). I gather this since the Deposit proposals are also lower in number, even though a person can open a proposal in the Deposit category under the same conditions on both Terra V1 and Terra V2 (and the research data shows the dollar value of the proposals in the Deposit status was mostly the same between both chains).
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If you would like to verify the data (recognizing that these are potential proposals that may fit the category of scam/phishing, and the program used the criteria above, and the data may include legitimate proposals), then I will list the data below for a few weeks (DO NOT GOTO ANY WEBSITE IN THE TITLE OR DESCRIPTION COLUMNS, AND DO NOT CONNECT YOUR WALLET TO ANY SITE THAT YOU HAVE NOT RESEARCHED - TO MAKE SURE IT IS A TRUSTWORTHY SITE).
- Terra V1 Potential Spam Proposal Data
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Terra V2 Potential Spam Proposal Data
- The proposal number is a link that will take you to a text based version of the proposal.
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Conclusion (TL;DR):
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Although the data and comments above are for actual proposals that move to Voting status, for the most part, I again believe that much of it also applies to the Deposit status proposals (those that have not yet met the total minimum deposit - as multiple people consider the proposal to contribute to the minimum deposit to open the proposal for voting if it meets the minimum in 14 days). While there may be merit in having a minimum amount as a requirement to open a proposal in Deposit status, the amount suggested in the discussion description is too high in my estimation, and while it will provide some discouragement, it will most likely, given the data above, be more hurtful to governance than to this/these particular scammers.
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I do not say that to discourage finding solutions that will help further prevent beyond what Terra Station pull request 122 has done (along with proposal 7101), I do think if we can protect people that we should. I just want to make sure, at least personally, that if we do something to prevent scams/phishing that it will actually meet that goal of protecting people, and if it actually does meet that goal to do that while not being harmful to governance.