[Non-Constitutional] DePolis, collective sensemaking for Arbitrum DAO

[DePolis]

Thanks for your feedback and questions!

@kuiclub

Am I correct in understanding that the goal of DePolis is to enable the average user to express ideas, participate in discussions, and ultimately improve the efficiency of Arbitrum governance?

The short answer is yes, you’re correct. Two minor corrections:

• “participation in discussions” for an average user in the context of DePolis in most cases means upvoting/downvoting others’ statements (but not coming to the forum);
• “improving the efficiency of Arbitrum governance” mostly stems from the ability of governance participants (delegates, Foundation, large stakeholders) to understand the community sentiments from DePolis reports.

There are some other ideas on how DePolis could be integrated into governance processes (for example, it could be used by delegates and forum participants; check “5. Specifications. I. How Polis for DAOs should look” in the proposal), but the logic here is: “let’s start from the most straightforward and practically useful use case and see if it works out”.

@kuiclub

1, whether it can really be used:
This tool can’t just be a round of discussion in the DAO on the end, it has to become part of the governance process, for example, before each important proposal, you must use DePolis to collect community opinions, the final report and consensus directly into the voting reference, so that the tool can have a real value, rather than form and function.

In my opinion, for DePolis to be a working tool, we’ll need:

• some informational support from Arbitrum voices in the form of invitation to conversations in tweets/posts/etc.;
• a more or less stable framework of “when and how to use DePolis” — this is a topic for a separate discussion. If DePolis shows its usefulness (that users will come and vote, and that reports will provide some insights) after our test conversations, we’ll likely have this discussion.

I’d say the best initial use case for DePolis is to “check the temperature” on spicy discussions. Who and when should start the conversation, and where should the incentives come from - I don’t think we can answer these questions right now. Not because they’re too complicated but because imho the best approach here is to look at how the test conversations went, articulate possible options, and discuss them all together.

Regarding “becoming part of the governance process” - I think DePolis and its reports would be useful even without deep integration into governance processes. If we have a big enough conversation conducted through DePolis, delegates would likely use these results in forum debates (hence, community opinions will be taken into account, and Arbitrum governance will already be a little bit better and more effective). Then, if we’re at this stage, it’s time to think about deeper integrations into the governance framework.

@kuiclub

2, user participation threshold:
Currently DAO user participation is limited, many people are just spectators, DePolis should consider lowering the threshold of participation, such as with a simple voting + praise mechanism, with clear rules of reward, so that users feel that participation is valuable, rather than a waste of time. But if it involves rewards here there will be a big unclear mechanism,

DePolis is supposed to have the lowest possible participation threshold — users can either provide their opinion in the form of a short statement or upvote/downvote others’ short statements. Afaik in the original Polis the average ratio of statement providers to voters is around 1:10, so we can expect that the default option for most users will be simple voting.

@kuiclub

3 the incentive mechanism needs to be clear and simple, and the amount of incentive should be dynamically distributed and adjusted according to the influence and importance of the discussion. How to realize this I feel is difficult. How do you think about it.

Agree, the incentive mechanism is one of the most complicated and nuanced questions. I think setting up a proper incentivization framework for DePolis is an iterative process, where we start from the most intuitive solution - determine the size of incentives in advance and incentivize two categories of statement authors:

• those whose statements received the highest number of upvotes (participants who helped identify points of consensus);
• those whose statements received the most upvotes within their opinion groups (participants who helped identify points of disagreement).

This logic provides a clear and simple mechanism (both categories of statements and authors are visible in the DePolis report).

If initial conversations show DePolis’ usefulness and DePolis is further integrated into governance processes, we can imagine various approaches to the question of incentivization (the choice of a specific approach depends on many factors, including those mentioned in question 1 above), for example:

• if the need to launch a DePolis conversation is determined/proposed by the Foundation or the proposal author, the Foundation or the proposal author could define the size and logic of reward distribution at their discretion;
• if a DePolis conversation is launched automatically and includes something like an incentivization fund, the total size of incentives could dynamically increase depending on the number of participants in the conversation (which would serve as an indirect indicator of the discussion’s importance);
• DePolis could work alongside AI tools like x23.app and adjust the size of incentives based on the level of importance of the discussion as determined by such tools.

@kuiclub

4, on the long term question, how do you aid in integrating DePolis with existing governance forums and voting systems, such as mandatory DePolis reports attached to each proposal, formal voting, etc. How about all the links articulated?

Imho the question of DePolis integration into governance forums and voting systems is a matter of a fairly distant future and will only become relevant after:

• DePolis has a battle-tested product and has demonstrated its usefulness in numerous discussions;
• at least a few DAOs are frequently using it.

I do have some thoughts regarding long-term possibilities for DePolis, for example:

• DePolis could be integrated into forums/Snapshot/Tally so that delegates could easily access reports - however, it’s not clear whether these integrations should be done at the DAO level (e.g., attaching reports as part of a proposal standard form) or at the level of the governance venue;
• it’s not clear where DePolis will show its usefulness - only in large-scale, highly contentious discussions, or as an auxiliary tool for many proposals;
• there’s a chance that DePolis will change direction - for example, by adding AI features, which would change its value proposition (for more info on the Polis/AI intersection check out this paper) or by being integrated into info finance tools;
• DePolis could converge with other deliberation tools (some of them were mentioned by @danielo).

The bottom line here is that yes, DePolis has many positive long-term development possibilities (the most obvious being closer integration with existing governance platforms), but there are also many unknowns. Therefore, an iterative approach to DePolis development, starting with the parameters and goals described in the proposal, seems logical.