Proposal: Revert the Delegate Incentive Program (DIP) to Version 1.5

[paulofonseca]

Hey Patrick!

Thank you for sharing your perspective on the state of the DIP!

@stonecoldpat

It is easy to point the finger at badly designed KPIs and then say the program has failed because they were not met. That is an issue with a waterfall model of governance and not necessarily with the program. We should be adjusting KPIs as the program is running and new information becomes available, especially for something as experimental as the DIP. This is something SeedGov has attempted to do with the different KPIs that emerged in the temperature check votes.

It’s honestly a bit jarring to see the main spokesperson and the most recognizable and long-standing employee of the @Arbitrum Foundation publicly excusing a DAO program (that defined its own KPIs which were approved onchain) from not meeting those KPIs, after 9 months.

As I shared in my analysis above:

@paulofonseca

the changes introduced, retroactively, with DIP 1.6 in February 2025, clearly led to all the self-imposed performance metrics starting to trend down

It’s almost as if, somewhere in January/February, @SEEDGov decided to change the program in a dramatic way that would lead them to not reach their self-defined KPIs. Because honestly, before February, the data shows that they were actually on track to reach those KPIs. Again, nobody in the community asked them to introduce a Voting Power Multiplier (that is actually a penalty) with version 1.6. And there’s really no stated reason as to why those changes were made. And again, these dramatic changes in February were made retroactively, and without a temperature check.

So no, it wasn’t really a matter of “badly designed KPIs” or “an issue with a waterfall model of governance” or anything of the sorts. It was a deliberate and drastic change by the program managers which led them to not reach their KPIs.

We can speculate why that happened, but I don’t think that’s useful right now.

I think we should focus our energy on designing a next DIP program that is created from real community input, not designed by a self-serving service provider, behind close doors, and alongside the Foundation, as you said here:

@stonecoldpat

the AF has been working with SeedGov on V2 to help overcome some of the issues identified and hopefully lead to a more effective DIP

I believe the next DIP can and should be designed by the community of delegates, especially those that have offered immense feedback about the program, feedback that was not taken onboard at all, as this very proposal, and the comments of several delegates in here, is proof of.

So, I took the initiative to make the data analysis above, and also an anonymous feedback survey for delegates to share their true feelings about the DIP and what the design goals of the next DIP should be.

I’ll be running some calls next week to go over the survey results and workshop with the community the design goals for the next Arbitrum DIP.