[RFC] Empowering Underrepresented Delegates

Proposals
1

Empowering Underrepresented Delegates

Non Constitutional

Proposal Writers:
Event Horizon
404DAO
Matt Fiebach
Jengajojo (DAOplomats)
This proposal has taken influence from a proposal created by Stable Lab in Uniswap DAO and we thank them for their inspiration.

TL;DR

This proposal seeks to increase participation in the DAO by empowering underrepresented delegates who, despite active participation in governance, do not have sufficient voting power to have their ideas seriously considered. Since greater voting power often correlates with heightened attention by the DAOā€™s key stakeholders, we propose creating a DAO-controlled Franchiser contract and distributing 1M in ARB each of up to 10 delegates who 1) currently have between 50,000 and 1,000,000 in voting power, 2) have shown an onchain voting participation rate >80% in the last 3 months and 3) have been chosen as the top 10 delegates of these candidates by the DAO voted on in a Snapshot poll.

Abstract

We ask the DAO to run a 1-year trial program that delegates $ARB to Active Delegates who are underrepresented in governance. If this proposal passes, the foundation will create a Franchiser contract to technically allow for this process. The DAO will maintain control of all $ARB allocated to the program, and have the ability to clawback delegations through an onchain proposal at any time. The contract is owned by the DAO and the tokens are delegated, not granted, but never leave the contract or DAO treasury in practice. Rather, they are stored in a new DAO-owned address.

By allocating 1M $ARB each to up to 10 delegates with between 50k-1m $ARB who have voted on >80% of onchain proposals in the last 3 months, the DAO will empower more meaningful voices in its proposals. A quarterly Active Delegate refresh is encouraged to maintain accountability of those who have been allocated delegation and give newly qualified delegates a chance to participate. The proposal will also give more delegates the ability to propose Snapshot votes and further diversify the makeup of the DAO. Snapshots have a threshold of 500K ARB and onchain proposals 1M to propose.

Motivation

During Arbitrumā€™s GovHack hackathon, the challenge statement of ā€œDelegation proportionate to participationā€ emerged as a key challenge for the DAO. Furthermore, the community has sought creative ways to leverage delegation, rather than grants, to boost voter participation and encourage meaningful contributions (see this, this, and this).

Currently, there are a group of delegates who have demonstrated a commitment to governance through consistent participation in on-chain governance. However, despite their active involvement, they are significantly marginalized in terms of voting power. Since greater voting power often correlates with heightened attention from delegates and the community, we believe that boosting the voting power of these delegates will enable them to have their ideas seriously considered, creating a more robust idea generation and iteration pipeline. Within the DAO, a higher allocation of voting power not only empowers individuals to propose initiatives but also garners increased attention from active delegates and community members.

Many of Arbitrumā€™s key delegates holding substantial voting rights participate in fewer votes than smaller delegate counterparts. This is evidenced by the observation that many recipients of sizable delegations have shown minimal participation in governance activities. In an effective DAO, engaged delegates play a critical role by exercising their substantial voting rights. Giving smaller delegates who have shown rigor in their activity a more meaningful voice and voting power in the DAO will help toward this overarching goal.

Eligibility

Active delegate voters with the following qualifications can be considered for the program:

  • 80% participation over the last 3 months on Tally
  • 50,000 to 1,000,000 $ARB voting power

Data

Over the last 3 months there have been 6 onchain proposals that count and a delegate must have voted on at least 5 in order to qualify. 25 addresses currently qualify.

Delegate Name Address Voting %
Coinruay.eth 0x054becf10c79afa4e60f75b187837be9fb83867d 100.00%
powerkee.eth 0x400e3ab48b2ccd2420ec04ba0ee9c94bb54a0b1c 100.00%
bristolblockchain 0x43d3938ebd74106e2d177f9a304c1e9f914f2b52 100.00%
zkmehdi.eth 0x5f367bf126fda56d88ba88a8978d5496c66b3569 100.00%
Larvandweb3.eth 0x5f38bb373dccb91ad9fd3727c2b9baf6df9332d3 100.00%
Cp0x 0x6f9bb7e454f5b3eb2310343f0e99269dc2bb8a1d 100.00%
Bruce1 0x88bd639d6b029596b029c61490f29f57b0bf4a3f 100.00%
ermia.eth 0x8e22a4c2901da99777d76f80f29640fc81ae96bb 100.00%
tosdis.eth 0xaafdd78af4f90ab649b94e5ef8430d27174a084c 100.00%
0xmcfly.eth 0xafd5f60aa8eb4f488eaa0ef98c1c5b0645d9a0a0 100.00%
ruslaslinko.eth 0xc3e8ac233f02d13c1e299e47ae230c205e0177ed 100.00%
basve.eth 0xc560d89d663b31110e164354c6377d8845ed4db3 100.00%
cryptospb.eth 0xde96e75c7160d70a447a72afdb75ddfa1455c808 100.00%
404 DAO 0xe93d59cc0bcecfd4ac204827ef67c5266079e2b5 100.00%
lucky-s.eth 0xf0ea58b65c82c48ce69f0abd68d178e7764c4ba2 100.00%
kuiquan.eth 0xf3fe8c6c75be4afb2f8200fc77339abe4d7cff33 100.00%
penn blockchain 0x070341aa5ed571f0fb2c4a5641409b1a46b4961b 83.33%
hiringdevs.eth 0x22aa1f4173b826451763ebfce22cf54a0603163c 83.33%
alpha insiders 0x3d1846ea60001a3bc21438d76f3958422fe89adb 83.33%
ocandcrypto.eth 0xa19a11cb5928bf07b5b6aba256f63142343a59bc 83.33%
Limes 0xa7860e99e3ce0752d1ac53b974e309fff80277c6 83.33%
Djinn 0xbf122ac9ee2cdd537fe404ade218159051ba9455 83.33%
DAOplomats 0xd4879f876ee383067f80acadbe283b93141908e9 83.33%
stablelab 0xea172676e4105e92cc52dbf45fd93b274ec96676 83.33%
Nathanvdh.eth 0xf9551c66995ed3ff9bb05c9fd7ff148bd75dc99a 83.33%

Qualified applicants must self nominate themselves to be considered.

Next Steps

  • We encourage the community to leave comments and feedback on this forum post
  • Project managers will create a snapshot vote so that the DAO can signal approval or disapproval for the program.
  • Start working on deployment of Franchiser Contract
  • Upon successful Snapshot #1, program managers will create a forum post for nominations
  • Qualified delegates to nominate themselves on post within 7-days.
  • Project managers post this proposal to a Snapshot vote for 7 days during which time delegates will vote on the top 10 applicants to be included in the program. Encrypted weighted voting.
  • After the Snapshot vote ends, we will post the proposal to Tally for an on-chain vote and delegation executable.

Following self-nomination to receive delegation, a Snapshot vote will go live so that the DAO may decide which delegates (up to 10) should be included in the program.

Technical Implementation

In order to implement this proposal, it is required that we create a Franchiser contract. The contract would allow the DAO the power to delegate and undelegate tokens that it sends from the treasury to the Franchiser. We suggest that the Foundation aids in the creation of this contract in order to create an official and safe implementation, though we can likely fork the Trail of Bits audited Uniswap Labs implementation [github] of the same concept. If this proposal passes Snapshot, we request that the Foundation take the time to fork the contract and hire an auditor to check the implementation.

The contract has simple functions:

-Fund: allows the DAO to send tokens to contract and delegate to a single address

-FundMany: allows the DAO to send tokens to contract and delegate any amount to multiple addresses

-Recall: allows DAO to pull back funds from Franchiser effectively undelegating and returning tokens to treasury from a single delegate.

-RecallMany: allows DAO to pull back funds from franchiser effectively undelegating and returning tokens to treasury from multiple delegates.

It is worth noting that all tokens sent to the Franchiser will remain a part of the DAOā€™s balance sheet as it has full-control over the tokens and ability to pull them back at any time. No other entity has control of these tokens. The delegated tokens never leave the DAOā€™s ownership.

Timeline

  • Forum feedback 1 week
  • (optional) Repost on forum incase there are major changes requested: 1 week
  • Snapshot vote 1 week
  • Work with foundation to deploy contracts: ~1 month
  • Onchain vote: 3 weeks
  • First quarterly report: 3 months
  • Second quarterly report: 3 months
  • Third quarterly report: 3 months
  • Final quarterly report: 3 months

Program Administration

This working group will project admin this program. The specific deliverables include:

  1. Work with the foundation for contract creation and deployment
  2. Create quarterly reports on delegate performance so that the DAO may have a resource to hold delegates accountable
  3. In the event that a chosen delegate falls below 80%, communicate with the DAO and put up a vote to revoke their delegation

Note: This is not a position of power, just a project management work which is limited to the above executables

We will create a 3 of 4 multi-sig governed by the proposers if the proposal passes Snapshot voting.

Signers:

-Jengajojo (DAOStewards)
-404 DAO
-Event Horizon
-Matt Fiebach

Overall Cost

  • Up to 10M ARB to be transferred into the Franchiser contract, still owned by the DAO (no cost)
  • $15,000 in ARB for program management and reporting for 1 year

Considerations:

  • We want to encourage members of the DAO to review the program and consider removal or addition of delegates to the program quarterly
  • If this program goes well, the DAO should consider iterating on the active delegate criteria, number of votes to be delegated and interval in which the delegation is refreshed.
  • The Franchiser contract will enable use cases beyond just this program. For example, the foundation may opt to temporarily delegate tokens so that any entity can make a snapshot/onchain proposal. It may be used in further programs to give delegations from the Treasury. It will allow one address to delegate its token across many delegates (partial delegation).
11 Likes
2

Thanks @MattOnChain and all parties involved in this proposal. Weā€™ve seen the preliminary proposal in the GovHack and expressed full support for the initiative as a whole.

As given in the original post, we have feedback on the qualification of the delegateā€™s current voting power.

We already told some members in your team, but we believe that lowering the minimum voting power to be qualified for the program would suit the purpose of the proposal: ā€œempowering under-represented delegatesā€ since the delegates with over 50k VP will be incentivized by the new program led by SEED Latam team. This program should also work as a bridge for active and serious delegates without enough voting power to be incentivized to make more impacts to the DAO governance as important actors.

3

Hi, I have some comments on the proposal.

Instead of giving 1M tokens to the top 10, I think it is better to put a VP cap, so that everyone has the same VP. To avoid giving more VP to the one who has more. For example, everyone on the list should have 1M VP and based on that distribute the 10M.

Secondly, when it comes to assigning VP to each one and given that they have to have a minimum activity, which coincides with the delegate incentive program, I think that in order not to duplicate expenses in the reports, the metrics of the delegate program could be used. For example if delegates do not reach +60% TP they could lose the assigned VP. This would not require additional reporting as they would be sent by the delegate incentive program and all the information would be in one place.

Finally, I think there should be some mechanisms to prevent possible micromanagement of delegates, i.e. over 10M vp.

Note: I am not saying that admins want to micromanage, but I think it is a point to consider.

4 Likes
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Thanks for taking the initiative, I like this idea, it has a positive impact to promote the idea of decentralized governance. I think we should consider this proposal.

1 Like
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I have my doubts about the effectiveness of this initiative.
On the one hand, as an interested party I should be in favor of this proposal, but letā€™s consider the pros and cons

Minuses

  1. The top 50 delegates incentive program has just begun. It may give us such results that we will need to come up with other solutions. I think this initiative is a little premature.
  2. Letā€™s honestly say that a delegate who has 1,000,000 delegated tokens will not be very happy if another gets 950,000 votes for free. Previously, he had more weight and also actively took part in voting.

Pros

  1. Active delegates will be able to influence decisions more.
  2. Active delegates will be able to put forward proposals themselves in both Snapshot and Tully.

In addition, I would like to say that I have put forward a proposal that may partially overlap with this in terms of adjusting the delegation contract.
Check it out

2 Likes
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Hi @MattOnChain , Iā€™m also working on a similar proposal and was wondering if we could chat on Telegram. Iā€™d like to discuss how we might collaborate to refine and improve this proposal.

4 Likes
7

A really interesting proposal!

8

Thank you very much for the proposal.

I agree with its spirit, understanding that the goal is desirable, and I appreciate the introduction of mechanisms to encourage participation and decentralization.

That said, I have reservations about the proposed execution.

I raise some points/concerns for which I donā€™t have answers. Perhaps you do, and they can be addressed:

  • The $ARB in the DAOā€™s treasury is not issued. Although it is technically available, implementing this proposal would mean increasing the supply without enhancing liquidity. Even though itā€™s not a significant amount on the total circulating supply, this would dilute the price and lock up ARB which might be needed for other purposes in the future.

  • What is the fair limit? Why allocate 10M to the top 10 delegates between 50K and 1M? Iā€™m not saying itā€™s wrong, but itā€™s difficult to establish an objective criterion given it has to be arbitrary.

  • The voting power currently held by delegates depends on the ARB holders. They are the ones who have decided whom to benefit with their voting power (VP), whether due to trust, their contributions, or simply because they like them. These are the rules of the game. A proposal like this does not respect that decision and arbitrarily dilutes the decision of the holders by taking away a percentage of VP from the current delegates.

With this in mind, I believe mechanisms should be sought to encourage as many ARB holders as possible to delegate their voting power or actively participate in the DAO. Currently (and this will increase shortly), 1.5 billion ARB tokens are circulating, with only 356 million (about 20%) delegated. The power lies with the holders, and we must go after it.

Thank you for starting this discussion!

*This opinion is my own and does not reflect those of SEEDLatam

2 Likes
9

As mentioned, this proposal is inspired by Uniswap proposal. A similar proposal was posted by DAOplaomats on Aave that wasnā€™t received as well as Uniswaps version. I think its important to consider why Aave received this proposal in a different way and highlight some of these points:

  • Voting power is given to those who earn it, they shouldnā€™t just receive it from the DAO because of some criteria.
  • There is a difference between a passive and active delegate. Does a delegate just vote? Do they contribute to discourse and author proposals? Is the voting power representative of that?
  • Is the DAO not diverse enough that it warrants such a proposal?
  • Is the ask too large?

As of now, Iā€™m in the middle of whether this should move forward in its current stage since it is quite vague and doesnā€™t actually provide a data driven approach to distributing the voting power.

  1. Have the authors analysed the voter participation, token voting participation and delegation rate? It would be interesting to see how diverse voting is within Arbitrum DAO before we make a decision.
  2. From the 25 eligible addresses, can you also include how much voting power they each have as 50,000-1,000,000 is a wide range.
  3. As others have mentioned, why is the minimum 50,000 since the aim is to raise representation of underrepresented delegates. It feels unfair if someone has 30,000 VP and have been active in every single vote.
  4. What would these quarterly reports include? Each voting address and their voting participation rate? What else? This could just use karma really and scope it down.
  5. Is it when a delegate falls below 80% over the recent quarter right?
  6. Does this only include voting % rate? Or also communication rate too?
  7. Have you considered working with Tally @Frisson to run a delegation week event? DAO can sponsor this event so delegation is free too.

To be clear, I donā€™t think this is a considerable factor for delegation:

ā€œThe proposal will also give more delegates the ability to propose Snapshot votes and further diversify the makeup of the DAO. Snapshots have a threshold of 500K ARB and onchain proposals 1M to propose.ā€

There are enough delegates who reach that threshold and are reachable that are willing to help here. Regarding the onchain aspect, we could take inspiration from https://www.fish.vote/ if needed, but I donā€™t think there have been any issues regarding the proposal process.

3 Likes
10

To be honest, Iā€™m lukewarm on the idea. I do really strongly support creating an active and diverse delegate group, but I have to think on this oneā€¦ there are some drawbacks to something like this from an ā€˜ideologicalā€™ standpoint, a big one being if this skews the actual wishes of ARB holders. As, in theory, everyone who has delegates does so because their views align with their delegate. So how do we determine if people only have 50k delegated because of the stickiness of delegated tokens, or they have 50k delegated because their views are unpopular? Iā€™d imagine itā€™s more a stickiness issue, but its something to think about.

Also, I think the DAO voting is probably the best way to make this fair, Iā€™m just not sure if that is really a good thing to subject the DAO too? I donā€™t really have a good way to explain it, nor any alternativeā€¦ but it just feels off and subject to political drama in practice. As youā€™re going to have a couple dozen or so large delegates picking and choosing which 10 medium sized delegates can get a boosted closer to their level. Iā€™m not claiming anyone wouldā€¦ but it feels like a scenario ripe for ā€œIā€™ll vote for you, but you have to support my goals in the futureā€ type of thing.

That said, a few brain-stormy suggestions to make this more attractive:

  • Giving 10 delegates a flat 1M ARB creates a proportionality issue given the wide range of voting power. i.e., a 50,000 candidate now is 20x as powerful where as a 1M candidate is only 2x as powerful. There should be a more equitable solution to this IMO. (Do we target a number that gets all 10 candidates to the same voting power? Do we maybe find a formula that 50,000 candidates are only getting boosted, say, 4x instead of 20x?)
  • Somewhat related to this, Iā€™m not sure itā€™s fair someone who has maybe 1.1M ARB tokens delegated to them is now going to be jumped in line by 10 people due to a cutoff. I know thatā€™s sort of the nature of this - there has to be a number somewhere, but a flat 1M is going to create this scenario for a lot of people and a formula that takes this into account may alleviate some of that.
  • I think the 3 month window is a little lax, tbh. especially in the context of a 1 year window of this program running.
  • In line with the Delegate Incentive program, I think there should be expectation that these delegates are also commenting on the forums. Not just voting for the sake of voting.
  • I think falling below 80% should just be automatic revoke, if possible. Why add the extra layer of effort to have to vote on it (especially given itā€™s almost always going to be a ā€œYesā€ to revoke?). This is a decent amount of power being given to these people and the standards to stay in the program should be inline with that.

Edit: A quick addā€¦ is there a reason itā€™s picking 10 out of the 25? Why not just all who get >50% approval? If truly deserving, Iā€™d rather just see all 25 people benefit then a select portion of them. That would be more in the spirit of this proposal and I think would resolve some of the issues I noted in my 1st two points above.

3 Likes
11

I agree with @Bob-Rossi and @Bobbay - Iā€™d like to see their questions answered before forming a final opinion.

Is there any specific case you can refer to?
It was my impression that as a DAO we have been so far open to new ideas, regardless on whether the proposer had any vote delegated. However, if there are some examples we can analyze better what didnā€™t work.

1 Like
12

Agree that more data on all parts would be very helpful. Particularly the data on currently delegation size for these entities. Bring that 1 million to 50k is such a wide range, feel like the fairest way to do this is delegate votes up to 1 million or else issues arise for those near the 1 million range as it incentivizes people to stop looking for natural delegation and therefore lose out on a million more through this program.

1 Like
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Thank you to everyone who took the time to write thoughtful responses to this RFC. We appreciate your patience as we have been synthesizing our replies. @Tane @axlvaz_SEEDLATAM.eth @ruslanklinkov @cp0x @pedrob @Bobbay @Bob-Rossi @maxlomu @juanbug

I will reply to each of your comments on behalf of the RFCā€™s authors.

We will continue to monitor this thread before posting a Snapshot vote.

3 Likes
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We already told some members in your team, but we believe that lowering the minimum voting power to be qualified for the program would suit the purpose of the proposal: ā€œempowering under-represented delegatesā€ since the delegates with over 50k VP will be incentivized by the new program led by SEED Latam team. This program should also work as a bridge for active and serious delegates without enough voting power to be incentivized to make more impacts to the DAO governance as important actors.

The new program, spearheaded by the SEED Latam team, focuses on compensating delegates monetarily, rather than amplifying delegatesā€™ voices. That being said, we are considering two options to enhance the accessibility of our proposed program: either reducing the minimum voting requirement to 10,000 ARB or eliminating it entirely. Originally, we implemented a lower bound to mitigate the risk of spam. However, we now believe that maintaining an 80% voter participation rate, combined with a DAO election process, will effectively address this concern.

1 Like
15

Instead of giving 1M tokens to the top 10, I think it is better to put a VP cap, so that everyone has the same VP. To avoid giving more VP to the one who has more. For example, everyone on the list should have 1M VP and based on that distribute the 10M.

After consideration, we agree with your suggestion on topping up VP to 1M rather than delegating 1M to each. We will add this revision to the draft.

Secondly, when it comes to assigning VP to each one and given that they have to have a minimum activity, which coincides with the delegate incentive program, I think that in order not to duplicate expenses in the reports, the metrics of the delegate program could be used. For example, if delegates do not reach +60% TP they could lose the assigned VP. This would not require additional reporting as they would be sent by the delegate incentive program and all the information would be in one place.

We agree that leveraging the ongoing delegate incentive program to the fullest extent possible is advisable. We are still finalizing KPIs but we intend to utilize the metrics of the delegate incentive program, such as delegate total participation (TP) requirements, to track the programā€™s success and hold program participants accountable. We also aim to provide transparent reporting to the DAO.

3 Likes
16

Continuing these responses on behalf of @RikaGoldberg

As mentioned above, we agree that leveraging the metrics from the delegate incentive program and its data will provide useful feedback. Given the valid concerns & questions brought up by several delegates, we anticipate a timeline where these things can be properly included in this proposal.

We acknowledge the raised concern. Certainly, a delegate with 1,000,000 delegated tokens might feel aggrieved if another delegate were to acquire 950,000 votes without any investment. However, our intention is not to detract from the larger delegateā€™s influence. Instead, we aim to assist smaller delegates in obtaining a stronger voice within the DAO. We believe that this enhanced accessibility will prove beneficial for all delegates and the DAO as a whole.

1 Like
17

When will this proposal approximately appear on Snapshot?

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Note that as the development of the program progresses we will propose lower VP and PR revenue parameters. In this first iteration we have set the parameters moderately high to avoid ā€œfarmingā€ or ā€œspammingā€ the program, but this does not mean that the parameters are unchangeable. As we receive feedback, we will be adjusting the program.

1 Like
19

@RikaGoldberg Do you plan to exclude program administrators from the list in the first instance?

1 Like
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Depending on feedback, probably in the next few weeks.

1 Like