The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Manugotsuka, and it’s based on our combined research, fact-checking, and ideation.
We are voting AGAINST this proposal in its current form.
First, we’d like to thank Paulo for the time and effort he put into developing this proposal. Whether one agrees with it or not, it’s a well-thought-out initiative with a coherent structure and mechanism - something we haven’t seen here in quite a while.
Let us first list things that we like in this proposal:
- We like the split between voting rewards and contributions
- We value the peer-review element of contributions. It not only decentralizes the assessment process but also encourages rewarded contributors to provide constructive feedback on others’ initiatives and comments. This has the potential to strengthen the community and foster both responsibility and autonomy.
- At the same time, the design is pretty simple and straightforward, with results derived from collective assessment rather than a single individual’s judgment. While this doesn’t guarantee ideal outcomes or full capture resistance, it does help eliminate bottlenecks and single points of failure. It also helps address the issues of personal animosities between individuals as in this design they will be dissolved, while bad behavior can still be penalized through coordinated effort.
- Overall, this design empowers the DAO to manage its own incentive program and has the potential to create a self-perpetuating mechanism that brings more valuable contributions - something we are missing much today. The DAO, as it stands, is a shadow of what it was two years ago.
However, there are also things we don’t like in this proposal:
- Most importantly, the proposal still doesn’t address the most critical question: What kinds of contributions are we actually looking for? While we understand the intention to leave this open to the community, experience shows that this approach tends to be ineffective.
- While we understand that the goal of the proposal was for it to be self-maintained without the need for a direct facilitator, we don’t think it’s the right approach. The proposal could benefit from introducing a PM role as a facilitator to help drive and support the program. SEED has been doing this with the DIP lately, and we find it net valuable. However, the facilitator should only advise and inform the DAO, not single-handedly assess contributions; this could remain the other contributors’ responsibility, as in this program. That way, the facilitator would have much less pressure and could focus on ensuring there are more valuable contributions.
- Furthermore, while we appreciate the amount of work Paulo put in that proposal, it’s clear he wasn’t able to build broader consensus and acceptance for it in the DAO. At the end, governance is not about who has the best idea, but who can coordinate with others to build support for it. This proposal clearly lacks this component.
To sum it up, while we like the overall approach, we feel it still doesn’t answer the fundamental question of what exactly we want delegates/contributors to do in the DAO. Two years ago, leaving this undefined may have been acceptable. Today, with our collective experience, it’s time to answer that question before designing mechanisms that distribute rewards simply for participation’s sake.
For this reason, we will also be voting against the other proposal currently on the forum, as it suffers from the same issue.
Ultimately, we’d like to point out that we have two separate proposals addressing the same issue, competing with each other and not working together. We find this to be a complete failure of the DAO governance process and us, as people behind it. I totally understand that there are differences between people in any community, especially one as decentralized as this one. Yet the fact that we cannot put our differences aside and seek value in the ideas shared here means that we’re doing something really wrong. This represents a missed opportunity to align efforts and create impact and it’s a waste of time, effort, and potential.
This DAO once thrived because we could debate - passionately, even heatedly - while still adding value to the ecosystem. Sadly, that spirit of collaboration and constructive dialogue feels lost. And that’s a loss for all of us.