I was planning to post my opinion to the proposal thread of DIP 2.0 when it was live as I felt the expectations for DIP changed over its lifetime, but unfortunately didn’t have time back then to properly consolidate my thoughts and put together a structured response. I know the proposal has already been accepted and I am not lobbying against it, but after talking with some people, I still felt it was relevant to share my opinion and start a discussion around it - so we make it clear what is the expected outcome for this program that the DAO is paying for.
Now that DIP 2.0 is moving forward as a standing governance mechanism, I think it makes sense to ensure the expected outcome is still the same we had when we originally started it. The original goal of creating a public delegate platform and a framework to incentivize delegates’ work was to increase active voting participation, improve the quality of discussions and feedback, and activate new tokenholders in governance via delegation. Those are - in my opinion - still the right goals, but I believe only the first of the three is currently actively fulfilled.
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Active voting participation should be measured clearly
There has certainly been growth in delegated stake since the program started, and delegates do play a useful role in governance stability. Votes have more consistently passed since we have the program. At the same time, I think we should be careful about how this is measured and communicated. The ~25M LDO figure cited in the 2025 extension referred to LDO delegated to public delegates, while the 31M LDO figure in the 2.0 proposal refers to LDO delegated on Aragon overall, only part of which is delegated to public delegates. Those are not the same metric, and we should only use the number (and its delta) of LDO delegated to public delegators to evaluate the success of this program.
So going forward, I would like to see much cleaner reporting on delegation growth: how much LDO is delegated to public delegates specifically, how much of that is net new, how many new meaningful delegators were added, and whether this growth is broad-based or concentrated around a few large holders.
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Discussion quality needs to be visible, not assumed
The original program did not just aim to improve voting participation. It also aimed to improve the quality of discussions and feedback before a vote happened. On that point, I do think it is important to point out that there are public delegates who have visibly contributed to governance discussions and shown what the role can look like when done well. Looking at the public record, delegates such as PolLanski, Leuts, and Polar have provided visible contributions that show the model can produce governance value. The DAO should be able to expect that level of visible contribution more consistently across the program.
If delegates are being funded on an ongoing basis, tokenholders should be able to point to public examples where delegates materially improved proposals, challenged assumptions, surfaced risks, or raised the level of discussion in a meaningful way. Simply posting voting rationales after the fact is not contributing to discussions. I would expect recurring contributions that improve governance signal quality before decisions are made. If these contributions are not made in public, tokenholders do not have a strong basis to evaluate whether the program is delivering what it was meant to deliver.
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Outreach beyond the forum
The program should also be judged by whether it reaches tokenholders outside the usual forum bubble. I would assume there are plenty of meaningful LDO holders who do not spend their time on the forum every day or already engage in governance voting.
If the original goals of the program still hold true, I would like to see much stronger outreach and reporting of how new delegators are activated as well. What has been done to reach tokenholders outside the forum? On which channels? How many new meaningful delegators came in through that effort? I personally have not seen evidence that any communication or outreach is done on other channels like e.g on X. The passed proposal emphasizes delegate participation, outreach, and governance support, but the case for new tokenholder activation would benefit from much more concrete reporting.
To emphasize this again as I am sure this is an unpopular opinion: I am not opposed to public delegates in general and still believe it is a valuable program. I also am very happy about the increased voting stability as I was part of many votes that were on the brink of not reaching treshold in time. But a standing, paid mechanism should be judged by more than quorum support alone. It should demonstrate that it is improving participation, raising the quality of governance discussions, and expanding governance beyond the existing forum audience. If DIP 2.0 is going to continue as a durable DAO mechanism, I would like to see clearer KPIs, cleaner reporting, stronger public accountability, and explicit expectations around delegate growth, visible contribution, and external outreach. If people see this differently or do think expectations of DIP have changed, I would love to hear arguments why.