Absolutely a valid concern that needs serious consideration.
I’d go as far as to push for everything this team does to be public such that delegates can track the process, and contribute as appropriate. I am very averse to black boxes.
I agree. We need to respect the time investment of delegates, and maintain the integrity of votes.
I think that this is the important bit. I believe that everyone’s intentions with the program is to efficiently allocate funds. There are certainly a number of people who do not agree that it will. Given the binary nature of the process a competent team with some great ideas might lose out completely because of the inflexibility of the program. I do not think that this is in keeping with the spirit of the program.
In my opinion there is at least one team that has great ideas that I would like to see supported but have not in my opinion delivered in Year 1. I discussed with them the reasons why, and based on that conversation would like to give them the opportunity to try again for one year.
Well, no… but the DAO could very easily hire parties external to the process to build this tooling to avoid the issue completely.
I accept that if we have incubated talent in a certain area within the DAO we should utilise that. We should reward consistency. A technical committee could for example reach out to governance providers supported by the DAO and manage the process of having them build necessary tooling.
I believe that this is relevant noting the program structure, and has conflict of interest considerations. I appreciate the detailed response and transparency - it adds a lot of context.
Whilst there is obviously no obligation to, I do think that this should have been communicated more clearly to the DAO/ecosystem because it does have significant implications for things like this, the Service Provider Program.
I can see from the data that delegation was trending generally down, and I accept the potential issues associated with a lower delegation rate. That said, my opinion is that a statement like “community members who have shown themselves to act with the interests of ENS and the DAO at heart” is incredibly subjective.
Of course, you have every right to use your tokens as you see fit but my point is that without clear communication of intent, external viewers don’t know what your intentions are with the remainder of your tokens. If you were to allocate all of your tokens that would be a danger to the democratic integrity of the DAO because that vote block would dwarf the totality of all other blocks.
Tokenomics are complex. While the FireEyes delegation is significant, it’s not so large that it nullifies the impact of other delegates.
Obviously contributions, and trust are personal and subjective - my opinion in that regard does not matter in this context.
That said, two of those entities are Service Provider applicants.
You previously stated:
This puts both @slobo.eth and @ethlimo.eth in a tough spot because these delegations are now co-mingled with their other delegations and/or their own token holdings. I don’t think delegations received in this manner should be usable to vote for oneself in a funding program.
This is a fair statement but the opposite also applies. Noting the above, if I were a competitor to the eth.limo service or Namestone I would be put off from applying for the program noting that they essentially have a 50k vote headstart.
I don’t have all the answers - this is an incredibly unique problem. I do think that having an open conversation about this would be incredibly valuable.
Generally, I believe it’s the DAO’s responsibility to delegate more of its tokens to active participants in the ecosystem, based on a well-defined ruleset. Of course, this comes with its own nuances and warrants thoughtful consideration.
I think that the tokens that you and other core contributors hold are instruments of structural influence. I think the way you use them, and communicate their use is hugely powerful for the integrity of the DAO. Holding them, not delegating them, and communicating that publicly is an incredibly powerful message to potential contributors that the ENS DAO is a democratic institution that people can participate in meaningfully.
Agreed. I wanted to post this in advance of the program noting that my views on this are independent of my own outcomes as an applicant. It sets the scene…
Having thought on this further I think it needs to be its own separate entity. I don’t think that this is in any way a part time role, and it has unique associated constraints. For example, I think an individual on this team should not be able to receive any other funding from the DAO and as such the compensation for the role should be commensurate with the opportunity cost (and the technical skillset required).
Closing Thoughts
Over the past 36 hours, I’ve learned a great deal. The MetaGov call and the discussion here have provided valuable insight, and I’m appreciative of those who reached out privately to offer additional context.
Despite having spent over 30 hours reviewing applications in depth, I’ve realised there were still important details in some of the applications that I missed. I will update my analysis accordingly when I get a moment.
I think this, in itself, highlights the core challenge that we face. I am looking forward to continued discussions on this over the coming weeks/months such that we can continue to improve DAO funding mechanisms 