Proposal Summary:
I propose the removal of the “Trending Delegates” selection from the Arbitrum DAO site or altering the way that it works to make it fairer. Instead, we should encourage users to explore different delegates based on performance, and region, or by having delegates write a small post that would be displayed on tally.xyz. This will promote healthy competition among delegates and help users make a more informed decision about who to delegate to, while also maintaining a diverse and decentralized network that is not controlled by a single entity.
Background
The current “Trending Delegates” feature may seem useful for identifying popular and successful delegates, but it can actually lead to centralization of power by suggesting to delegate to only a select few individuals. By promoting only the trending delegates, we are limiting the diversity of options available to users and potentially discouraging them from exploring other options. It could reinforce their position as a trending delegate and lead to a never-ending cycle of trending, leaving smaller delegates never to be seen.
Furthermore, the fact that the trending delegates section updates every time the page is refreshed does not address the concern as the same few delegates continue to appear in the trending section, and users may still be incentivized to delegate to them.
If users consistently choose to delegate to a trending delegate, it could create a situation where a small group of delegates have a disproportionate amount of power within the network. Therefore, it is crucial to promote diversity and decentralization to prevent a situation where only a few large delegates have a significant amount of power and influence in the network, while smaller delegates are marginalized and unable to make a meaningful impact.
In summary, by removing the “Trending Delegates” feature or altering it to be more fair and diverse, we can encourage healthy competition among delegates and promote a decentralized network that is not controlled by a single entity.
Please refer to this thread for more context: Remove "Trending Delegates" but discuss the proposal in this thread.
Hello! @CryptoNick, thanks for the feedback! Dennison, CEO and Co-Founder of Tally.xyz here.
This is very good feedback, the Trending Delegates feature is currently random, although we do have caching in the cloud which is region based which might mean they ‘stick’ for a short amount of time before refreshing.
In general though we share your concern. For most DAO tools the “top Delegates” IE: biggest holders rise to the top…and stay there…which promotes exactly the negative feedback cycle you’re bringing up.
I would be really excited to talk about what sort of evaluation criteria we could use to help make this component more dynamic, random, or simply vastly improved. We are actively working on improving this component and the Delegate explorer page to make it easier to navigate, and to surface a wider range of participants on a regularly basis.
We started this discussion in another thread, and it was suggested to move it over to the proposals thread. One idea we had, was basing trending delegates on some sort of metrics from the forum. Potentially, delegates could become trending based on how active they are in governance discussions, etc.
Should we continue the discussion here or in the other thread?
The idea of using the forum is good, but we’ve looked at the quality of forum posts, and you might notice, there is a lot of blatant airdrop mining from bots in the posts. We’ve experimented with using AI to identity quality content, but again, we haven’t found yet what we think is the best solution yet. Especially since it’s not always reliable the link between a delegate and a forum post.
Hi there, it’s great to see your active participation in the forum and discussion. This thread should be fine.
I do however question your statement that the trending delegates feature is currently random. I have noticed that the same delegates have been trending for a while.
To address this issue, some suggestions could be:
Implement a randomized algorithm that selects trending delegates on a rotating basis. I.e. let the DAO decide how randomized this should be, i.e. recommend trending delegates, but also delegates that live in the same region (i.e. Nordic countries, EU and so on).
Limit the amount of time a delegate can trend in a certain period to give others a chance to be recognized
Consider weighting the trending algorithm based on factors such as recent activity, proposal success rate, and community engagement - this could be forum activity, posts, and so on. However, this could be easily faked or botted.
Additionally, enabling username searching under “Trending delegates” would be good since the only way people can find me on the Tally site, is by looking up my address, which isn’t that… public.
Also allowing for more customization of profiles (especially the text field and formatting).
In terms of using AI to identify high-quality posts, it sounds like a great idea in theory. However, for it to work effectively, it would require multiple parameters and active moderation to weed out low-quality posts. If all these parameters wouldn’t be present, I believe it’s going to be hard to get a proper high-quality AI. Convincing all DAOs to use a specific forum platform made by Tally solely for this purpose could be challenging. I found it challenging to develop an AI that recognizes handwriting, and it required a considerable number of parameters. Thus, the amount of parameters needed to identify high-quality posts would be overwhelming compared to the potential reward, in my opinion.
I have a few ideas more but I feel like this isn’t really related to Arbitrum and more a general note. Not sure if this goes bit off-topic in terms of the propose for this thread, but I would be happy to continue on discord or something like that if you like.
I largely agree with @dennison here that it’s not perfect but it’s helpful; worth discussing improvements none the less
I think tying in work contributions for DAO (publishing proposals, completing RFPs, creating trending discussions in the forum, etc.) are cool factors to drive a trending algo. My two cents tho are that we can adjust the trending algo, but as with SEO/social algos, the bots will figure out a way to game the system no matter what the system is
It could be interesting to explore a system of helping connect delegators with the delegate best representing their interests (a particular product sector in Arbitrum like defi, a specific project like treasureDAO, a specific DAO operational flow like marketers or risk managers, etc.)
I agree that random selection or token holding or delegated should not be the only criteria but weightage to active forum discussions, proposals made should also be considered.
I think that’s a great idea but I’ve never seen anything like this implemented before in crypto so I’m not sure how it would work for the metrics being analyzed and weighted per delegate. Usually, I look for an easy-to-find history of how the delegates voted. I use cosmos on ping.hub and the voting history of delegates and individuals are all there and are pretty easy to see.
Ideally, I would like each active delegate to give a reason for why they chose to vote yes/no/abstain/no with veto/etc. for each proposal. I always delegate to groups that do this because it’s dialogue I can engage with and digest. Thank you so much for this comment.
Very good proposition from @CryptoNick, the most active people on the forum could gain places in the delegate ranking on tally. Is it possible to link forum activities to Tally activities via an API?