[RFC] Adjusting Delegate Incentivization Program

Introduction

Lido DAO’s new delegate program, incentivizing select public delegates, is set to launch soon. It follows the first delegate rally, which is ending.

While we acknowledge this has been great progress for Lido DAO, where around 12M LDO is being delegated to public delegates on-chain, we see a lot of room to improve to make Lido governance smooth and robust.

Here, we outlined a proposal draft to improve this incentive program. We’d love to present the idea to adjust the first incentive program if we see good feedback and support from other delegates/contributors in the DAO.

TL;DR

  • The current program doesn’t fully meet the original objectives.

  • We propose a new 30-point scoring system for selecting incentivized delegates to meet the updated objectives below.

    • increase active voting participation

    • improve the quality of discussions and feedback

  • We propose to remove the objective of “allow the community to unite and increase protocol safety by activating new token-holders in governance via Delegation.” from the delegate program at this stage because we believe this requires different approaches in addition to financially incentivizing delegates.

  • Scoring criteria: 10 points each for voting participation, forum engagement, and authoring a proposal that passes voting.

Objectives

As written in the “Motivation” section of the original proposal, this is the original objective for the program.

  • increase active voting participation,

  • improve the quality of discussions and feedback,

  • allow the community to unite and increase protocol safety by activating new tokenholders in governance via Delegation.

We propose the objective below, removing “allow the community to unite and increase protocol safety by activating new token-holders in governance via Delegation” for the updated incentive program as this is an objective that needs to be handled with different approaches. The details will follow in the issues section.

  • increase active voting participation,

  • improve the quality of discussions and feedback

Current Situation

While Lido DAO has been making huge progress with the current program, it doesn’t seem to meet the objectives provided.

Here is the evaluation of the progress on each objective.

  • increase active voting participation

    ⇨NOT SO GOOD. We can speculate that a larger amount of LDO tokens will be utilized in the upcoming voting process due to the recent delegation activities. However, in terms of the number of governance contributors, it gained only three parties that are directly incentivized to vote.

  • improve the quality of discussions and feedback

    ⇨ BAD. With a few exceptions, activity in the forum has barely increased. Most of the delegates just published their profiles and haven’t updated since. While receiving rewards might prompt some to start participating in the governance, this program has not functioned effectively as an incentive for delegates to participate actively in the forum discussion.

  • allows the community to unite and increase protocol safety by activating new tokenholders in governance via Delegation

    ⇨ NOT SO GOOD. We have around 12M LDO delegated on-chain, and some of them will be utilized for voting in the next quarter. However, it’s possible that rather than public delegation, the majority of cases may be closer to self-delegation, while the exact details are not fully understood.

Issues

Unmatched criteria

As seen above, the three objectives and the criteria for incentives are unmatched. The current requirement of having a 2M LDO delegation didn’t incentivize public delegates to actively participate in voting or giving meaningful comments/proposals on the forum.

Especially for the first two objectives, they require their own criteria.

Lack of motivation for delegation from potential delegators

Despite various efforts to encourage delegation, as mentioned above, we believe the current situation has not yielded the desired results. Enabling an onchain delegation supports Lido’s smooth and robust governance, but it seems it is not understood properly by large LDO holders or the community. It doesn’t have any direct economic incentives for delegators, either. Thus, we believe the objective of “allows the community to unite and increase protocol safety by activating new tokenholders in governance via Delegation” needs to be handled in different approaches, but not with this delegate incentive program.

Case Studies in other DAOs

The cases shared below include token delegation programs while Lido’s scope is the delegate incentive program.

However, we believe they are very insightful as they have the same aims that Lido DAO’s delegation incentive program has; choosing the right delegates that make contributions to DAOs.

In summary, both of these programs incorporate these 3 key evaluation aspects.

  • Voting Participation
  • Making Proposals
  • Other Activities (Call attendance or so)

Thus, we decided to utilize these aspects except for “Other Activities” as any activity such as delegate calls in Lido DAO is yet to be established.

Compound Delegate Race

This Compound Delegate Race is to choose delegates who receive COMP token delegations rather than to introduce a delegate incentivization program.

Compound solely focuses on-chain voting, and rarely utilizes off-chain voting, so off-chain voting is excluded from the evaluation criteria.

This scoring method has 10 points at maximum and here is the breakdown;

  1. On-chain Voting: 6 points

    Voting participation is crucial to ensure quorums are met and malicious proposals are prevented. Compound tries to attract delegates by encouraging delegates to diligently participate in voting.

    • Greater than or equal to 90%: 6
    • 80% to 90%: 5
    • 70% to 80%: 4
    • 60% to 70%: 3
    • 50% to 60%: 2
    • greater than 0% to 50%: 1
    • 0% : 0
  2. Proposal Authorship: 2 points

    Writing proposals will help DAO, but at the same time, low-quality or malicious ones need to be excluded from scoring. Thus, only passed proposals are counted.

    As Compound DAO requires 25,000 COMP to initiate the on-chain voting, initiation/sponsoring of proposals is also counted in a different method.

    Therefore, there are two options to get points in this section.

    • Posted an RFC that passed an on-chain vote before (only the sole author or co-authors explicitly mentioned on the proposal who posted on the forum will get this point)
      - Yes: 2 points
      - No: 0 points

      or

    • Initiated/Sponsored an on-chain vote that passed on-chain vote before
      - 3+ Votes: 2 points
      - 1-2 Votes: 0 points

  3. Other Governance Participation: 2 points

    Joined Compound Dev Call Before?

    • Yes and presented: 2 points
    • Yes: 1 point
    • No: 0 points
  4. Tie Breaker

    Ties will be decided by the date of the first on-chain vote these applicants cast in order to reward those delegates that have been contributing to Compound governance for an extended period.

Uniswap Delegate Reward Initiative

Uniswap Delegate Reward Initiative is an initiative to reward delegates who contribute to Uniswap governance.

Uniswap has both on-chain and off-chain voting, so both of them are included in the scoring method, while on-chain has a larger weight.

(Co)authoring a proposal is also included in this method. A proposal that passed an on-chain vote gives more points than the one that passed an off-chain vote.

Here is the breakdown of the scoring metrics, with the highest points being 10 points.

  1. Voting Participation: 6 points

    Voting participation is crucial to ensure quorums are met and malicious proposals are prevented. Uniswap also tries to attract delegates by encouraging delegates to diligently participate in voting.

    • Offchain Voting (Snapshot)

      • 80% and above: 2
      • 70% till 80%: 1.5
      • 60% till 70%: 1
      • 50% or below but above 0%: 0.5
      • 0% : 0
    • Onchain Voting

      • 80% and above : 3
      • 70% till 80%: 2.25
      • 60% till 70%: 1.5
      • 50% or below but above 0%: 0.75
      • 0% : 0
    • The date of the first on-chain vote is 3 months or more (this is to counterbalance very new applicants who have few votes and are able to get full points on the voting)

      • Yes: 1
      • No: 0
  2. Proposal Authorship

    Writing proposals will help DAO, but at the same time, low-quality or malicious ones need to be excluded from scoring. Thus, only passed proposals are counted.

    In the case of non-binary proposals, if the choice equivalent to “No” was present, and the end voting result was another choice than “No”, then it would be considered as valid for below.

    • Authored or Co-authored a proposal that passed off-chain (snapshot) vote before.
      • Yes, 2 or more: 1
      • Yes, 1: 0.5
      • No: 0
    • Authored or Co-authored a proposal that passed on-chain vote before
      • Yes, 2 or more: 2
      • Yes, 1: 1
      • No: 0
  3. Other Governance Participation

    The full point for this category is 1. This category is to recognize other ways one could contribute to the discussion regarding Uniswap Governance. This can be achieved by either

    • Joined Uniswap Gov Workshop Before
    1. Yes: 1
    2. No: 0

    Or

    • Joined Uniswap Community Call Before
    1. Yes: 1
    2. No: 0
  4. Tie Breaker

    Ties will be decided by the date of the first on-chain vote these applicants cast in order to reward those delegates that have been contributing to Uniswap governance for an extended period.

Proposing Solution

After researching similar cases in other DAOs such as those listed above, we propose updated criteria for choosing incentivized delegates.

This is a scoring system with 30 points being the possible highest score.

We allocated 10 points to each of the area

  • Active Voting Participation: 10 points
  • Rationale Clarification: 10 points
  • Making a Proposal: 10 points

While the above two examples don’t include rationale clarification in the main scoring criteria, we see the need for this aspect as this is also one of the key responsibilities of public delegates.

Eventually, we could add scoring criteria such as Other Governance Participation, similar to what we have seen in other DAOs’ cases shared above. This could be discussed when we start to have routine calls around Lido governance for instance.

This evaluation will assess the efforts made during the past three months when determining the delegate. We anticipate that the exact dates of the target period will be established upon the announcement of the incentivized delegate selection.

We are considering choosing top X delegates as incentivized delegates.

This X will be determined based on the budget and the desired amount of incentive for each delegate, which is currently $5000 per month.

Here are the detailed criteria.

  1. Active Voting Participation: max 10 points

    1. on-chain vote: 6 points
      1. above 90%: 4 points
      2. 80% - 90%: 3 points
      3. 60% - 80%: 2 points
      4. 40% - 60%: 1 point
      5. below 40%: 0 point
    2. off-chain vote: 4 points
      1. above 90%: 3 points
      2. 70% - 90%: 2 points
      3. 50% - 70%: 1 points
      4. below 50%: 0 point
  2. Rationale Clarification: 10 points

    The amount of votes with rationale shared in the delegate thread. This will be calculated on a monthly basis.

    Every first week of a month, the rationale shared in the forum in the previous month counted for every vote made.

    1. above 90%: 10 points
    2. 80% - 90%: 8 points
    3. 70%- 80%: 6 points
    4. 60% - 70%: 4 points
    5. 50% - 60%: 2 points
    6. below 50%: 0 point
  3. Making a proposal: max 10 points

    1. proposal passed off-chain (Snapshot): 5 points
    2. proposal passed on-chain: 5 points

Conclusion

The proposed adjustments to the Lido Delegate Incentivization Program introduce a comprehensive 30-point scoring system aligned with the objectives. By rewarding active participation and quality contributions, this new system aims to enhance Lido’s governance structure. If implemented, it has the potential to foster more engaged and productive governance participation, ultimately benefiting the Lido protocol and its community.

Let us know if you have any feedback or comments. Alongside other active delegates and contributors, we are looking forward to improving the Lido governance further and providing more inclusive structures where delegates can engage with the governance.

6 Likes

ok - so you couldnt get 2M LDO delegated to you and you are trying to pull some word salad out to try to get some incentives?

Not on my watch. I will NOT let anything like this get away. Is it PERSONAL? hell yes. that’s why im here.

@degentradingLSD, hello! In your Delegate Thread you stated:

Besides other, this Code of Conduct includes the following:
• Review each proposal professionally and unbiasedly before voting.
• Provide constructive, well-researched feedback without personal attacks.
• Respect differing opinions.

This allows to be the forum a safe space where anyone (community, delegates, contributors etc.) can come with ideas / suggestions, and other will review them in a manner that benefit Lido DAO’s. “word salad” does not sound constructive and you clearly stated this is personal:


@Jenya_K, hope this will get your attention.

Whether I agree or not with this proposal, I do respect the work @Tane do for this community. Their recent Optimizing Lido On-chain Voting Timelines for Inclusive Governance proposal is a great example how they are working towards more effective governance process, as well as their delegate thread is one of the most transparent across Delegates.

NB: This is decision made by DAO, if this proposal get to the voting. Currently, you have no majority voting power to make such kind of statements.

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i do not see allowing “professional forum lobbist delegates” raiding the DAO to be beneficial.

Sorry, I can’t get whether this “professional forum lobbist” label is towards me, but I do not want to be labeled as INSECTS, PARASITES and other based on my professional origin and get attacked by your community just because I do not agree with you or my ideas, comments or vision for the proposal / voting differs from yours.

image
X / Twitter post link

I believe we are a bit early to review the Delegate Program Incentive. As well as it may be too early to exercise in evaluation of the progress on each objective of the program itself. Since the delegation started, it has been only one month.

I believe we should give more time to allow the program to get to its maximum from the perspective of different sides: token holders are fully aware and understand the benefits from delegation; delegates prove themselves as reliable participants of governance (I think it’s
hastily to evaluate individual delegate contribution now, as most are excited with a new opportunity to involve and be heard at the DAO – let’s see who are here for a long run in a couple of months); participation on the forum and voting has increases etc.

As we are marching towards a new GOOSE cycle we can revisit one of the initial goals “Lido has effective and decentralized governance” (see Hasu’s post) with an updated vision towards the governance evolution, taking into account dual governance implementation, Public Delegate platform and other key components.

3 Likes

@degentradingLSD
You’ve been one of the key voices highlighting the need for more actors in governance and diverse perspectives, which I fully agree with. It’s great to see that diversity coming through—whether in Tane’s viewpoint on the program or your disagreement with the proposal. However, I just want to remind everyone that it’s important to keep the discussion respectful. I agree with Irina and ask for respectful communication with all actors, I am sure that discussion and arguments are only productive with mutual respect.

Your desire for the best for Lido DAO and your right to oppose this proposal are not being challenged.

3 Likes

Dear Tane,

Thank you for your thoughtful and comprehensive proposal to improve the Lido Delegate Incentivization Program. Your analysis of the current situation and the proposed scoring system offer valuable insights into how we can enhance governance participation and the quality of contributions within the Lido DAO. I’m inspired to offer some of my thoughts and feedback on your proposal, drawing from my policy experience in Asia.

Expanding the Governance Framework

The governance scorecard approach, implemented in other ecosystems like Compound and Uniswap, is also found in well-established governance ranking systems such as the ASEAN Corporate Governance Scorecard (ACGS). The ACGS has been instrumental in benchmarking corporate governance practices across a diverse region of over 600 million people, driving consensus around economic, political, and social stability. By adapting these underlying principles, we can develop a governance framework for Lido DAO that evaluates delegate performance across multiple dimensions over time.

The core idea is to create a transparent and consistent evaluation method that suits decentralized ecosystems. This governance scorecard would not only assess voting participation and proposal authorship but also measure long-term commitment, strategic contributions, and collaborative efforts among delegates.

Incorporating Global Best Practices

Furthermore, incorporating best practices from global governance models, such as the OECD’s Framework for Anticipatory Governance of Emerging Technologies, can enhance our approach. Key aspects to consider include:

  • Strategic Intelligence: Identifying (current and future) key pain points of coordination, for the informed development of governance strategies among different stakeholders within the DAO. I am currently orientating myself with the forum threads which has provided very rich discussions and the various subcommittees established, such as LEGO, Treasury Committee and the Community LifeGuard Subcommittee. If there is anything I’ve missed, would appreciate a secretariat function in the DAO to help consolidate. I saw @Boardroom’s updates and perhaps this could be a start!

  • Inclusive Participation: Encouraging diverse voices in the governance process by fostering non-adversarial forums where delegates, community members, and other stakeholders can collaborate and share insights. This inclusivity can lead to more robust and well-rounded governance outcomes. Based on the GOOSE yearly cadence of proposals, I hope to present an APAC-based proposal with more regional specificity (given this is where WPRC is based), based on the timelines shared by @Jenya_K here: The Guided Open Objective Setting Exercise (“GOOSE”) proposal; A genesis step to jump-start a DAO-wide goal setting exercise and cadence - #9 by Jenya_K

  • Stakeholder Engagement: Recognizing the importance of engaging with various stakeholders, including node operators, stakers, and developers, to ensure that governance decisions align with the broader interests of the ecosystem. By integrating regional perspectives from Asia and adhering to a structured timeline over sustained engagement and workshop dialogues, we can enhance inclusive participation and ensure that governance processes are informed by a wide array of insights and experiences.

Addressing the 2 Million LDO Delegation Threshold

One area to consider is the current requirement for delegates to secure a 2 million LDO delegation to qualify for incentives (to my understanding). While this threshold aims to ensure that delegates have substantial governance power, it may inadvertently exclude valuable contributors who are committed to the long-term success of Lido DAO but find it challenging to amass such a delegation within a set timeframe or onboard and orientate more Web3 governance enthusiasts new to the Lido community. This difficulty is particularly pronounced for new entrants and smaller stakeholders who may lack the networks or resources to quickly gather such substantial support. Although this threshold does not preclude delegates from participating in governance discussions, it does impact their eligibility for economic incentives. As a result, dedicated individuals who are actively contributing may feel undervalued or demotivated due to the lack of recognition and support.

In the recent Network State Conference, Singapore, along with Crecimiento and Dubai, were heralded as model cities to draw inspiration for network states. Drawing inspiration from Singapore’s transformation under the leadership of Lee Kuan Yew, one of the key policies that propelled Singapore from a modest village in the 1970s to the thriving metropolis it is today was the emphasis on home ownership. Families were encouraged to own their homes, which instilled a deep sense of commitment to their communities and the nation’s future. This tangible stake motivated citizens to actively participate in civic processes, trusting their local leaders to advocate for their best interests. The result was a strong, cohesive society invested in long-term growth and prosperity.

Applying this analogy to Lido DAO, we have digital stakes in the form of LDO tokens that can be freely delegated and veto signaling power for stETH holders as a dual governance mechanism. Economic incentives should be aligned not just with the amount of governance power held but also with the quality and consistency of a delegate’s contributions.

While the current threshold doesn’t prevent delegates from participating in governance discussions, it does impact their access to economic incentives. By recognizing and rewarding effort, we ensure that all active contributors feel valued and are motivated to continue their engagement. Overall, a hybrid model—one that combines a long-term, strategic approach to informed governance power with collaborative stakeholder alignment—can lead to more effective decision-making, enhanced inclusivity, and sustainable growth within the Lido DAO ecosystem with:

  • Inclusivity for New Entrants: Recognizing that new delegates need time to acclimate and build relationships within the community, an effort-based system lowers barriers to entry. It encourages fresh perspectives and fosters diversity among delegates.
  • Alignment with Long-Term Goals: By rewarding sustained engagement and proactive contributions, we promote a culture of long-term thinking and strategic planning, which is essential for the ecosystem’s growth.
  • Balanced Governance Power: This approach acknowledges that governance influence should stem not just from the quantity of tokens delegated but also from the delegate’s dedication and value added to the DAO.

I hope this helps contribute to the discussion!

1 Like

Hi! First and foremost we hope the forum remains a place where respectful exchange can be made in order to get the best out of each one willing to participate. The DAO and their units have been open and accessible, so let’s honor that by having constructive conversations.

Regarding the RFC and the DIP, we believe scoring systems are indeed the best way to capture delegates contributions to the best of their capacity. This allows for a proper ranking of contributions which then translates to meeting - or not - the required threshold for being part of the program while recognizing contributions of all sizes. The fine tuning of the score will come out of iterations and experimentation, which was the original spirit of the proposal.

On a first run, the 70% participation rate seems reasonable for the amount of activity although recognizing performance above that should be incorporated and naturally welcomed. This is naturally tied to the sharing of rationales. On a recently passed proposal, the ARB DIP gave more weight to the quality of rationales/feedback based parameters such as relevance, timing, etc. This could be explored on further iterations of Lido’s DIP when the participation rate is consolidated.

Certainly it’s too soon to jump into conclusions, but some early thoughts of the recent rally come to the fact that the 2M required threshold might have been too high. The ∼12M delegated LDO are most likely to fall short to meet the VP objective set on LIP-21 but for a first round it sure is worthy. Of course it’s not only about the VP so re-working the threshold and leveraging the efforts made so far into an improved DIP are what we consider next steps.

Thanks and happy to further discuss this!

5 Likes

Interesting post @Tane

I personally wouldn’t have expected people to have already started to post more simply because they were in the running. I expect most, like myself, would have seen the situation as if I am incentivised then I’ll become active. But, that aside, the Rally has really not moved the needle enough. And while I have no position on the selected delegates - who will be judged by their actions - my sense is we all imagined having more of us and therefore a more eclectic bunch. Therefore there is scope to discuss what to do.

The questions that would come to mind for me here are:
(1) Is it fair to introduce a new incentive scheme when there has already been an attempt at one, i.e. does your proposal in some way undermine the Rally we just had?
(2) A more meta-question is why did the LDO token holders not really participate? Since they are, ultimately, the voters how did we end up with just three delegates at 2m?
(3) Are there solutions that keep the current model but ease the threshold (note: I am a likely beneficiary of this)
(4) Does your proposal lead to increased activity, but a lot of ‘noise’? That is, do we know from the DAOs you discussed whether people sort of feign a lot of activity to hit the points schema?

Anyway, those are my quick thoughts.

3 Likes

Firstly, we appreciate all the constructive feedback, comments and opinions from members including @irina_everstake, @SEEDOrg, @polar,@katashesolutions, @Jenya_K. We also believe the forum should be the place where we have discussions in a respectful and constructive manner. With our proposal, it would be great to improve the programs that contribute to the effective and decentralized governance that Lido DAO is aiming to achieve.

We’ll pick up some points from the comments provided and provide our thoughts.

The timing of decision: Is this too early to discuss?

We believe we already saw the limitation of the current program, and thus it should be the right time at least for ideas and discussions. It’s necessary to change approaches when a program is still at its early stages and the desired outcomes are not being achieved.

As @polar mentioned, many of us might feel that if we are incentivized, we’ll become more active. However, given the small number of delegates currently selected, it would be hard to see the improvements that the program originally intended to provide.

That being said, we’re not in a rush to reach a conclusion, and that’s the reason we proposed this RFC for discussions with delegates/contributors within the DAO. We don’t dismiss the possibility that the situation might improve to some extent once incentives are in place. However, it’s our view that we need to consider the adjustment at this stage.

Criteria: Shouldn’t we keep the current voting-power-based criteria?

We are open to discussing solutions with VP-based criteria, but we conclude the objective of gathering delegation should be addressed separately. When compared to other DAOs, there has been little noticeable delegation, which indicates a need to thoroughly understand the underlying issues. This is not something that can be resolved solely by incentivizing delegates. Instead, based on our reflections, this is a challenge that the entire Lido DAO must confront and address collectively. Thus, we believe further research and deep considerations are needed to answer these questions.

New criteria may introduce unintended consequences?

The designed criteria should increase activity but not the noise. In some cases, metrics like the number of comments were used as evaluation criteria, which might lead to a flood of meaningless comments. This is precisely why we intentionally excluded forum comments as a metric in this proposal. (We acknowledge that @SEEDOrg has been proposing an excellent service for Arbitrum DAO’s DIP with comment quality evaluations in mind, but it’s not applicable at this stage to Lido DAO.)

While each of the cases we referenced had its challenges, the voting and forum activity were necessary activities, hard to be noisy (only one comment for their voting decision) and informative to delegators and other contributors/delegates.

This doesn’t guarantee the same results for Lido, but we have chosen examples from other DAOs that we believe have the highest relevance to our situation.

Other considerations in criteria

This is an interesting approach as a concept. Regarding its implementation, it would have challenges around how to introduce those values into objective criteria.

Again, we thank all comments from you and will appreciate other perspectives and critical feedback!

3 Likes

gm gm, just wanted to send my two cents. The purpose of the framework as it stands rn was to keep it as simple as possible. The amount and quality of applications is surprisingly high (I can’t be happier with folks looking to participate), and the thing mostly falling short of expected level is actual tokenholder participation for now.

In a spirit of “keep it simple” (the hill I’ll die on, honestly), there are two potential adjustments to be proposed: 1) lowering the 2m threshold (which happened to be very optimistic, but hindsight is 20/20) and 2) leaving some wiggle room for the committee to decide on “extra grants” depending on high-quality input during the DIP period (note: that could be pretty contentious, I can’t say I’ll be happy following this route, and by design it’s very much free-form decision of the committee — hard to pin down what exactly “high quality input” would mean).

5 Likes

I am also an advocate of simplicity or minimalism. I’m always a little wary of too many metrics per Goodhart’s Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Not that I believe we’d necessarily fall into that, but where possible fewer metrics is better imo. I am always mindful of how in my own world of academia we are constantly aiming to meet these criteria and over time that’s what our activity has become.

6 Likes

I wanted to add my thoughts here:

It’s too early to assess the Delegate Incentivization Program based on the Delegate Rally results. The pilot runs until February 2025, and we should allow it to complete the two approved quarters before concluding. This will provide more meaningful data on delegate engagement and governance contributions.

I agree with @Tane’s observation that the program hasn’t sufficiently incentivized tokenholders. Activating more LDO in governance is crucial, and this lack of engagement is a significant challenge for Lido DAO. The proposed adjustments do not seem to resolve this issue unless they include a plan for allocating treasury tokens to high-scoring contributors.

The idea of incentivizing active governance contributors is interesting but should be a separate program or grant. Lowering the threshold for participation may be attractive but requires a DAO vote. The Delegate Incentivization Program was designed to reward delegates trusted by tokenholders to represent shared values and contribute expertise to governance. Incentivizing based on contribution quality, however, is complex, as @kadmil rightly noted—it’s hard to define “high-quality input.”

My concern is that delegates could focus on adapting governance to their needs instead of improving the core aspects of Lido DAO will be focused on more governance for the sake of governance.
Lido DAO’s long-term goal as I see it to minimize governance complexity and prioritize decentralization, security, and efficiency and it’s not aligned with building complex and tough-to-understand systems.

8 Likes

Thank you so much for the additional comments @kadmil, @polar, and @Jenya_K.

We have concluded that this adjustment is too early to be implemented while some of the points we made can be worth discussing in separate threads. We also acknowledge that the DAO prefers a simpler mechanism with less complexity, and would love to continue discussing what would be the best way for evaluations.

We will continue to follow the program and review the outcome created by it in the next few months.

We are addressing a couple of points from @Jenya_K and @kadmil below:

We still believe it’s critical to consider a system (program or grant) to incentivize active governance contributors. The current DIP was “designed to reward delegates trusted by tokenholders to represent shared values and contribute expertise to governance”, which makes sense while “improving the quality of discussions and feedback” is one of the important objectives defined in the original proposal and potentially challenging to be achieved only with the current DIP.

What do you think would be good ways to start working on this? @kadmil @Jenya_K

We also believe we should start taking a new approach to address the lack of engagement from tokenholders without waiting for the end of this pilot program.

If the DAO and Delegate Oversight Committee are willing to pursue a plan like above, we would love to contribute.

While it’s definitely not our intention to introduce “complex and tough-to-understand systems” for the sake of governance and we also firmly believe the end goal is to minimize governance, we should take “progressive” approach to decentralization in the short-mid term and it’s important to consider balanced systems to make the DAO on the path to an ideal state. We hope all delegates and contributors understand our intentions and continue to collaborate together.

7 Likes

We want to express our sincere gratitude to Tane and all other contributors who have provided input on potential improvements to the Delegate Incentivization Program. It’s truly encouraging to see the engagement and thoughtful discussion around ways to enhance Lido governance.

While we are concluding it’s too early to implement adjustments to the program, we think it’s important to revisit these discussions and ideas as we approach the conclusion of the Pilot program.

To that end, the Delegate Oversight Committee will organize a call at the end of the Pilot period. During this call, we will:

  1. Summarize the results of the Pilot
  2. Discuss potential improvements based on our collective experiences and the feedback received
  3. Explore ways to address the challenges and opportunities identified during the Pilot

We hope everyone who has contributed to this discussion will join us for this conversation. Of course, we will also continue these discussions in this Forum to ensure maximum participation and transparency.

Your ongoing engagement and willingness to share ideas are invaluable as we work together towards the long-term goal of minimizing governance complexity while increasing decentralization, security, and efficiency. We look forward to continuing this collaborative effort.

Thank you all for your dedication to Lido’s success.

Marcela and Jen on behalf of the Delegate Oversight Committee

4 Likes