Should the DAO set a norm of reimbursing delegates for onchain votes? Using BigQuery, I’ve calculated the total gas cost and vote count of all onchain proposals so far:
Row
title
tx_cost
votes
1
[EP2] Retrospective Airdrop
0.61667792701054491
57
2
# Execute EP5
0.50583214376075736
51
3
# Execute EP8, EP9 and EP10
0.18769267268367357
63
4
# Execute EP7
0.21472296000850347
88
5
# Execute EP8 and EP10
0.19356647601072158
94
6
# Execute EP9
0.84922882020864521
353
7
# Execute EP11
0.71126284031569176
264
8
# [EP13] [Executable] Fund the Protocol Guild pilot with 200,000 $ENS
0.2576213415658945
64
9
# [EP14][Executable] Funding True Names Ltd
0.21940347945486374
151
This excludes voters whose vote weights were less than 1 ENS token; we’ve had a lot of people voting in hopes of a future airdrop, and I don’t think it’s worth reimbursing votes with very small or zero weight.
The total here is only 3.75 ETH and 1185 votes (from 619 distinct voters). We could reasonably expect to spend another 0.5 ETH in gas fees for the reimbursements.
We should also consider the second-order consequences of doing this, though - knowing that reimbursements will be issued may encourage more small voters to vote, increasing the cost. Personally I think this is worth it, at least on a trial basis.
I think there might be potential downsides, but since this has the ability of increasing engagement in the DAO and possibly lowering obstacles to voting (especially when gas is high) I definitely think we should trial this, and implement it if the trial works out well
Will this only be for delegates though? It’s usually users who don’t delegate who can’t afford gas costs to vote when gas is high.
That makes sense. I was a little bit confused since technically all votes are delegated and all voters delegates, but delegate is also a specific role on the forum. I’m all for it.
I like the potential secondary effect you noted, more people getting involved with the DAO, self-delegating and voting seems like a win.
It’s even more cost, and the Reimbursement is the priority, but the DAO treasury/WGs do have Tokens, maybe there is room to experiment with giving some s to voters too, like a “I voted sticker.”
Also worth noting we could reduce the cost, if this is successful, by setting up a voting proxy that batches vote signatures instead of forwarding transactions. Easier to do reimbursements to start, but there’s optimizations to be had if this ends up being popular / a good idea.
Or the DAO could build an ENS-specific interface for gas-less voting! People can still vote on Tally or any other interface, but if they use the alternate one it’s free.
Interesting idea. Let’s treat these as 2 separate ideas:
Reimburse ETH gas fees to ENS DAO governance participants. Define minimum gas expenditure qualifying for reimbursement. Perhaps in anticipation of the second-order consequence concern we could pair a gas reimbursement proposal with an ENS token airdrop to governance participants announcement.
Consider an additional airdrop of ENS tokens, this time to all ENS DAO governance participants. Quadratic structure to reduce Sybil exploit risk. Reward & encourage those with small vote weight who incurred expense & invested time to participate in ENS DAO community governance (while defending against Sybil vulnerability with meaningful, but limited value distribution). Gas optimization at scale is likely the key consideration.
Reimbursement is the priority, but the DAO treasury/WGs do have 
Tokens, maybe there is room to experiment with giving some