Initiative to increase voting participation and delegation (Govcheck by PYOR)

Community Grants / Initiatives
1

About PYOR

PYOR (Power Your Own Research) is a cutting-edge blockchain analytics firm established in 2022. The company specializes in providing deep analytical insights and research on blockchain technologies, focusing on enhancing the understanding and strategic use of these technologies in various applications. PYOR is committed to empowering the blockchain ecosystem by delivering actionable intelligence to drive informed decision-making and strategic growth.

Executive Summary

GovCheck is a weekly video series designed to bridge the gap between the governance activities of the Lido DAO and social media discussions, particularly on Twitter. Currently, only 8% of LDO token holders actively participate in voting, leaving the majority of voting power underutilized. Many token holders are unaware of key governance proposals and discussions, resulting in missed opportunities to participate in governance.

GovCheck will address this issue by curating and summarizing governance discussions, proposals, and comments within the Lido DAO. Our team will transform this information into short, engaging video content aimed at informing and motivating LDO token holders to actively participate in governance. Through this initiative, we aim to increase voter turnout, improve community engagement, and ensure more meaningful contributions from LDO token holders.

Problem Statement

There is a significant information gap between the governance activities within the Lido DAO and the discussions on social media platforms. This gap results in LDO token holders being unaware of important governance decisions, leading to underutilized voting power. Many token holders, especially those on Twitter, miss out on critical opportunities to contribute to governance because they are not informed about the discussions and proposals taking place within the DAO. As a result, only a small fraction of LDO holders actively engage in the governance process, leaving much of the voting power untapped.

Target Audience

  1. LDO Token Holders: Individuals who hold LDO tokens but are not actively participating in governance due to a lack of awareness or understanding of ongoing proposals and discussions.
  2. Delegators: LDO holders who delegate their voting power but want to stay informed about the decisions made on their behalf, ensuring their delegation aligns with their values and interests.
  3. Active Participants in DeFi: Users involved in the broader DeFi ecosystem who are interested in governance participation but may not be fully engaged with Lido DAO’s processes and updates.
  4. Crypto Enthusiasts and Influencers: People active on platforms like Twitter, Telegram, and Discord who can amplify governance discussions and help spread awareness about key proposals and decisions.
  5. Governance Stewards: Individuals and teams deeply involved in DAOs and governance processes, seeking accessible, high-quality content to stay updated and influence decision-making within the Lido ecosystem.
  6. Educational Platforms and Analysts: Blockchain educators, content creators, and analysts who provide insights to their audiences on governance-related topics and Lido’s ecosystem developments.

Solution

We are governance crawlers who meticulously review discussions, proposals, and comments within the Lido DAO. We delve into the intricate details of discussions and debates that precede the voting process. GovCheck will transform these discussions into digestible and engaging video content, providing clear summaries and insights into the ongoing governance activities. By presenting this information in an accessible format, GovCheck aims to bridge the gap between Lido DAO’s governance processes and the broader community, ensuring that LDO token holders are well-informed and motivated to actively participate in governance decisions.

Content strategy
Our proposed series of 48 GovCheck videos will be strategically divided into three key categories to deliver a well-rounded and engaging content experience:

  1. Governance Updates (24 videos):
  • Purpose: Provide concise summaries of recent governance activities, important decisions, and developments within the Lido DAO.
  • Goal: Ensure the community stays informed about crucial governance events and proposals, promoting transparency and awareness.
  1. Delegate Spotlight (12 videos):
  • Purpose: Highlight profiles of LDO token delegates, showcasing their contributions, viewpoints, and roles within the Lido DAO.
  • Goal: Foster a stronger connection between delegates and token holders by showcasing the individuals who play a key role in governance.
  1. Lido How-To (12 videos):
  • Purpose: Offer clear, step-by-step guides to help new LDO token holders understand and engage with the governance processes of the DAO.
  • Goal: Simplify the governance procedures, making it easier for token holders to actively participate and make informed decisions.

Monthly Content Cycle:

  • Week 1: Governance Updates
  • Week 2: Delegate Spotlight
  • Week 3: Governance Updates
  • Week 4: Lido How-To

Promotional Content: To maximize reach, each video will be complemented with smaller promotional materials across social media platforms:

  1. 3 Clips (30 seconds each): Highlight key takeaways for easy sharing on platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Farcaster.
  2. 3 Posts: Text-based summaries or quotes to spark interest in the full video or encourage delegation.
  3. 1 Infographic: Simplify governance topics for a broader audience.
  4. 1 Carousel: Step-by-step breakdown of important topics to encourage further engagement.

Team Members

  • Krishna Hegde (Co-Founder):

Krishna, a BITS Pilani graduate and MBA holder from The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, is also a CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst). With over two decades of experience in banking, he served as Managing Director and Head of Asia Credit Research at Barclays Singapore. Transitioning to fintech, he joined Paytm as Senior Vice President - Business, where he established the lending, wealth management, and insurance sectors. Krishna ventured into crypto in 2017 as a retail investor and in 2021, joined CoinSwitch, India’s largest crypto exchange, to lead a new business
vertical. At CoinSwitch, he created CRE8, the first-ever Crypto Rupee Index for India, tracking the local crypto market.
Twitter: PositiveGramma

  • Sarmad Nazki (Co-Founder):

Sarmad, a trained Chartered Accountant, spent over 8 years at EY and KPMG in transaction advisory services before transitioning to the startup world. He served as the Head of Finance at OLA and was a founding employee of OLA Electric. Later, he joined CoinSwitch as CFO, where he helped raise $260 million with participation from a16z, marking their first investment in India. Additionally, Sarmad established CoinSwitch Ventures, the VC arm focused on investing in Indian blockchain technology founders.
Twitter: snazki

  • Sharan Nair (Co-Founder):

Sharan has over a decade of experience in the crypto industry, with a deep understanding of the Indian crypto market and its regulatory landscape. He began his crypto journey in 2014 with Unocoin, one of India’s first crypto companies, where he played a key role in raising awareness about crypto. He later joined CoinSwitch, India’s largest crypto exchange with over 20 million users, as one of its first employees and served as Chief Business Officer. At CoinSwitch, Sharan was instrumental in bridging the gap between regulators and the Indian crypto industry.
Twitter: NairSharan

  • Yadunandan Batchu (Co-Founder):

Yadunandan has over a decade of experience with crypto, beginning with his interest sparked by the Bitcoin white paper. His first formal role was at Unocoin, where he developed a proof of concept for implementing blockchain technology in the insurance industry. He later joined CoinSwitch, where he leads the Blockchain team and established the end-to-end blockchain node infrastructure
Twitter: nandubatchu

  • Aakash Athawasya (Content Creator, Educator)

He has been a content creator in the crypto space for the last 4+ years. He handles end to end content production across platforms, writing, video and audio. Prior to this, he worked with crypto product companies in research & content roles.

Twitter: AakashAtha

  • Nihar Thummar (Researcher, Content Creator)

Nihar, a crypto research analyst, is passionate about delving into intricate subjects within the cryptocurrency space. He writes in-depth technical articles about various aspects of crypto. With over one year of experience, he previously worked with Instadapp and Yirifi.ai
Twitter: Nihar_Thummar

  • Sriram Natraj (Educator, Content Creator)

Sriram has a deep passion for demystifying cryptocurrency and web3 technologies for non-technical audiences. With a background at BrownRice Capital, where he facilitated investment opportunities in crypto for ultra-wealthy Indians, he has honed his skills in making complex financial concepts accessible. His experience and enthusiasm for simplifying these emerging technologies reflect his commitment to broadening their understanding and adoption across diverse user groups.

Twitter: sriramHQ

Success Potential

Our project is well-positioned for success due to:

  1. Real Need: There is a distinct need for accessible and engaging content related to Lido DAO’s governance processes. By making governance discussions more visible on social media, we can effectively activate token holders and encourage greater participation in the DAO’s decision-making.
  2. Experienced Team: Our team brings substantial expertise in the crypto sector and content creation.m The founding team also includes executives from CoinSwitch Kuber, offering deep knowledge in crypto and governance.
  3. Strong Distribution Engine: Leveraging our well-established distribution channels, including social media platforms, a mailing list of prominent crypto VCs, and connections with protocol governance leads, we are equipped to effectively reach and educate LDO token holders.

Grant’s Impact

Steps to Increase User Interaction:

  1. Engaging Content: Produce visually appealing and educational videos that are both entertaining and informative to capture and retain viewers’ interest.
  2. Consistent Posting: Maintain a weekly publishing schedule to build anticipation and ensure regular viewership.
  3. Community Feedback: Collect and integrate feedback from the community through midpoint analysis of video views and qualitative feedback to continuously improve content relevance and engagement.
  4. Collaborations and Guest Appearances: Partner with influential figures within the Lido ecosystem or other related crypto projects to enhance visibility and credibility.
  5. Educational Campaigns: Conduct educational campaigns to help users grasp the importance of participating in governance and understand how their involvement can positively impact the Lido DAO ecosystem.

Budget Breakdown

Category Budget per video Total Budget (48 Videos)
Research and Script Writing $100 $4,800
Recording + Equipment $75 $3,600
Editing, VFX, Sound, Subtitling, etc $250 $12,000
Project Management + Quality Check $75 $3,600
Publishing, Promotions, and Distribution $125 $6,000
Total $625 $30,000

Feedback and Comments

We highly value the insights, suggestions, and feedback from the LIDO team, their delegates, and all participants in the ecosystem. Your input plays a crucial role in refining our approach and ensuring the effectiveness of our content.

Please feel free to share any comments or thoughts on how we can enhance our work. We are committed to reviewing and addressing all feedback with careful consideration. By incorporating your suggestions, we aim to make meaningful improvements that align with our shared goals and contribute to the continued success of the LIDO community.

2

Thank you for your proposal. I have a few questions, but the first and most important is:

Do you already have success stories where content creation helped increase participation in governance? Could you share them?

3 Likes
3

I agree with @Jenya_K here, having a proof of concept or track record with other DAOs would be meaningful in making a decision like this.

An undertaking like this is quite a serious one from A DAO’s perspective. We must consider a couple things such as:

  • Public framing of this relationship
    - Is this a show commenting about the DAO or is this a show representing the DAO
  • Given the framing of this relationship, how would we plan to manage oversight around verifying what gets published
  • How does a public marketing initiative continue after this engagement ends

We recommend carefully considering questions like these to help with creating a public marketing framework that the DAO can follow with a dedicated service provider or committee that oversees revolving service providers.

4

Hey @Jenya_K & @FranklinDAO , thank you for your questions.

We realized we have not shared ennough information about the team and our work before. Please find them below:

About PYOR:

At PYOR, we enhance blockchain protocols, DAOs, and dApps with targeted research and analytics. Our services cover capital efficiency, technical analysis, and governance strategies, helping projects like Arbitrum, Cosmos, and Compound refine their operations. We’re backed by industry leaders including Castle Island Ventures and Coinbase Ventures, etc.

PYOR is an official delegate for Wormhole and zkSync, committed to contributing to the success of both DAOs.

You can view our proof of work in this notion document

Here are our responses to your queries:

The problem we’ve identified is:

There is an information gap between Lido’s governance activity and the discussions on social media platforms (particularly Twitter). This information gap results in people on Twitter – not knowing what is happening, and hence they are missing out on voting or delegating their LDO tokens. This leads to idle voting power that would otherwise be beneficial in the governance of the Lido DAO. We aim to address this information gap.

The solution we’ve curated:
We are governance crawlers. We spend time on the Lido’s governance forum going through discussions, and proposals, and reading the fine print, which is in the comments from members. This is where the real discussions happen before they’re put to vote.
Our solution is to take these discussions and showcase them to LDO token holders and potential voters through video.

GovCheck is a weekly video series that:

  • Summarises all that is happening within the Lido Governance forum
  • Deep dives into one crucial discussion/proposal

This video series will be – informative, entertaining, and ultimately persuade the viewer to – check out the community, and use their tokens to vote.

We are focusing on raising primary awareness. Most token holders stay informed through X, followed by Discord, with the most engaged members participating in the forums. Our goal is to move the first two groups to register on the forums, delegate their tokens, or vote.

While having an active community is crucial for any project, there is often little innovation or effort put into addressing this need. We believe this could be due to the following reasons:

  1. Many crypto users don’t engage deeply with the ecosystem.
  2. Projects often need partners with expertise to drive governance initiatives.

Across the industry, there are excellent examples showing how engaging initiatives can increase token holder participation in governance:

Jupiter Uplink: Jupiter Uplink’s initiative, which created a series of educational videos and dynamic content, significantly boosted community engagement. By producing tutorials, updates, and explainer videos, and sharing interactive content like infographics and summaries, they made complex governance processes more accessible. Recently, they were granted over 2.5M JUP (~$552K) to continue their community initiatives. Link

Wintermute DeFi Governance Digest: Wintermute Research produces a weekly governance digest covering key proposals, decisions, and commentary for major DeFi protocols. This helps the community stay informed on governance developments.
Wintermute Governance Digest

User-Generated Content: Small creators and KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) produce governance-related content to educate their followers.

Examples:

How Are We Different?

Consistency – Our plan is to produce content once a week for 48 weeks to maintain a long-term perspective from the start.

Governance Focused – Many community initiatives lose focus on governance. GovCheck’s sole mission is to simplify governance for token holders.

Video-First – While most content has moved to video, governance-related content has not caught up. GovCheck is is creating dynamic, actionable content that keeps the community informed without fluff.

Well-Researched Videos – GovCheck won’t just summarize forum updates. We take the extra step to research and break down complex topics covered in proposals, explaining them with animations.

Here are sample videos showing how GovCheck episodes might look:

Over 54 weeks, GovCheck will produce:

  • Total Episodes: 48
  • Governance Updates: 24 videos
  • Delegate Spotlights: 12 videos
  • Optimism How-To: 12 videos
  • Promotional Content:
    • 3 clips (30 seconds each) = Total 144 clips
    • 48 Twitter threads
    • 48 infographics/carousels

Public Framing of the Relationship:

Is GovCheck a show commenting on the DAO, or is it representing the DAO?

Answer: GovCheck will act as a partner to the DAO, offering clear, objective summaries of governance discussions and proposals aligned with the DAO’s objectives. Our episodes will not influence token holders to vote for or against any proposal. Instead, our goal is to provide accurate coverage, explain what the proposal means for the community, and summarize the discussions.

By delivering accurate, engaging content about the DAO’s governance processes, GovCheck will enhance transparency and encourage active participation from token holders.

How Will We Manage Oversight on Published Content?

Answer: We propose finalizing a standard operating procedure (SOP) and guidelines for all episodes before launch. The team will use this SOP as the single source of truth to produce GovCheck content. Additionally, we suggest quarterly meetings with the working group committee to gather feedback and discuss improvements. We are committed to transparency and are willing to share minutes of meetings (MOMs) with the community.

Continuation of the Initiative Post-Engagement

Answer: We are proposing a year-long governance initiative, demonstrating our commitment to supporting the Lido DAO’s growth. Upon successfully completing the initiative, we aim to secure follow-up funding or sponsorships to continue the effort.

5

Thank you for sharing the additional materials, it really helped clarify things. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any examples that show how content specifically influences voting participation. If there are cases that I missed, please point me to where I can view them.

I really liked the video format you shared for reviewing proposals, and I think it could be a good addition to the current mostly text format. However, starting with a large contract might be a bit ambitious for the beginning. It seems more practical to start smaller. Would you consider doing a trial project instead? Perhaps covering one voting slot (usually 4–7 proposals), distributing the videos, and gathering feedback on reach and engagement before deciding on a larger scope.

2 Likes
6

Thank you for your feedback. We will review it with the larger team. Additionally, would it be possible to schedule a quick call to discuss how this proposal could take shape? Your insights and feedback would greatly help us craft a proposal that benefits the entire community.

Please let us know the best way to set up this call at a convenient time for you.

1 Like