Incentivizing DAO participation: Ideas and Strategies

[nick.eth]

@AvsA

First of all: do we NEED to incentivize participation? In the latest two votes over 8% of the total liquid delegation power voted on proposals. I’m used to seeing DAO participation as less than 1% of all tokens. I think this is the result of a successful campaign to have people delegate votes during claim and the fact that the top delegates are quite active.

I worry that we do. From our ENS dashboard:

Without some incentive to delegate - or at the very least, reduced friction/costs - we should expect this trend to continue downwards.

@AvsA

I believe delegates should NOT be paid for just voting. I would prefer to have a system that incentivizes contribution, not just voting, so people are paid for the value they bring to the ecossystem, not based purely on their votes or delegated power.

Definitely agree on this, and I think people are exploring various mechanisms to reward useful participation in the DAO. I think that’s a better approach to take for delegates or other participants than just paying them for existing.

I do think there’s room to consider incentivising delegating your votes, though, if we can do it in a way that remains impartial as to who you delegate them to.

@AvsA

• Can someone build a website that highlights delegate participation? Maybe a “wall of shame” of delegates with large amount of power with the least amount of participation?

Tally, Boardroom, Sybil, all attempt to do this, but don’t come close to capturing everything. I hope one of the WGs will see fit to help fund efforts along this direction.

@AvsA

• Can we subsidize gas costs for redelegating, so if a user is unsatisfied with their current delegate they can start a campaign to delegate to someone else?

See this thread.