This proposal has been updated based on feedback from delegates provided in this thread during the two calls we organized, as well as through discussions in the delegates' Telegram group and private contributions from several delegates. We would like to thank the entire ArbitrumDAO community for their valuable input.
Expand the program by introducing a new and improved version, to be implemented over the course of a year.
We propose a total budget of USD 4.2 million (in a year) in delegate incentives, with a maximum monthly compensation of 7000 USD or 16,500 ARB per month per delegate.
Creating Delegates' compensation tiers:
Tier 3: TP ≥ 65 and < 70. Compensation range: $3,000 to $3,250. ARB cap: 8,000.
Tier 2: TP ≥ 70% and < 85%. Compensation range: $4,200 to $5,100. ARB cap: 12,000.
Tier 1: TP ≥ 85%. Compensation range: $5,950 to $7,000. ARB cap: 16,500.
Elimination of the special multisig, the DIP adheres to the MSS
The DAO can cancel the program or modify parameters, such as the scoring methodology, through a Snapshot vote.
Min threshold requirement change: Participation Rate (Karma) ≥ 75% participation in on-chain votes in the last 90 days. Previously, the requirement was 25% of total historical votes.
Soft enforcement for DAO’s social agreements: Each delegate must adhere to and comply with all social agreements reached through Snapshot in order to receive incentives.
Adding the possibility of revoking DIP Ban via Snapshot vote and also creating the DIP Suspension.
Delegates' Feedback Update: The DAO has opted for v1.5 of the DIP, so a new rubric will be applied to evaluate the feedback given by the delegates in the diverse discussions. Due to the experimental nature of this new scoring system, it will be in a testing phase, and we, as Administrators, commit to submitting it to the DAO for consultation after three months of running the program.
Note that everything related to DIP 1.0 that has not been mentioned as modifications in this new proposal will remain in effect in v1.5.
Scoring Weight Changes:
Participation Rate (PR): Previously weighted at 20% and based on historical participation rates in Tally. Now, it is reduced to 15%, calculated based on the participation rate of the last 90 days in on-chain votes (as calculated by Karma).
Snapshot Voting (SV): The weight of this parameter has increased from 15% to 20%.
Communicating Rationale (CR): The weight of this parameter has decreased from 25% to 10%.
Delegates’ Feedback (DF): The weight of this parameter has increased from 15% to 30%.
Total Participation (TP): The requirement for total participation has increased from +60% to +65%.
Bonus points update: Adding Bonus Points for delegates who attends to the “Arbitrum Governance Report Call” (monthly) and the “Open Discussion of Proposal(s) - Bi-weekly Governance Call.”
For the monthly call, 2,5% BP will be awarded for attendance.
For the bi-weekly calls, 2.5% BP will be awarded for attending each call.
We propose renewing the ArbitrumDAO Delegate Incentive Program (DIP) for one year. This renewal will include adjustments to the parameters, requirements, budget, and incentives awarded to delegates.
We've reached the fifth month of the current version of the incentive program, which ends on August 31.
As outlined in the mid-term report, the program has positively impacted ArbitrumDAO during the first three months.
However, simply renewing the program will not generate enough value. Therefore, we propose adjustments to improve the program and increase its impact on ArbitrumDAO.
These changes are based on our experience as administrators, the reports we've conducted, and feedback from delegates, the Karma team, and key community members.
Note: SEEDGov delivered the end-term report, you can check it here.
As we mentioned in the report, it is crucial to keep delegated voting power active within ArbitrumDAO. We believe the Incentive Program should focus on the professionalization of delegates.
By professionalization, delegates should dedicate a significant amount of time to staying informed about developments in ArbitrumDAO, gaining knowledge of Arbitrum's technology, and making meaningful contributions to the DAO. This includes active participation in most DAO activities like providing feedback on proposals, attending to Governance Calls, maintaining high voting participation on Snapshot and Tally, and providing a rationale for such votes.
To achieve this, we also need to establish transparent and predictable incentives. Delegates should be confident that if they align with the DAO and improve their contributions over time—essentially if they professionalize—they will receive better incentives. These incentives should be transparent and attractive without being subject to manipulation or arbitrary changes in their amount. Delegates should focus on their role and DAO activities, not on understanding complex economic mechanisms to receive compensation.
We want delegates to be motivated to participate actively in ArbitrumDAO. In order to do this, incentives must be attractive enough for them to either participate directly or hire competent individuals to represent their interests, those of their community, or their protocol.
It's important to note that while managing the incentive program, we realized that it doesn't address all the challenges faced by the DAO, such as vote distribution, attracting new contributors, and other aspects. Expecting a single strategy to tackle all issues overlooks the diversity of factors involved. However, we're pleased to see initiatives like ARB Staking, (Re)delegation Week, and the Public Good Citizen Enfranchisement Pool are underway to address these challenges. As each initiative matures, we can align them to achieve a more significant collective impact.
The proposed changes below are based on the experience we've gained while managing the program, the delegates' feedback during the discussion on this thread, and both reports we made for the DIP 1.0 (mid-term report and final report).
If you want to view the parameters of the previous program, click here.
The program's first phase lasted six months, as it was designed as an experimental foundation. For this iteration, extending the duration to twelve months is appropriate, providing greater predictability and flexibility for implementing future changes.
ArbitrumDAO may cancel the program or modify parameters, such as scoring methodology, through an instantaneous vote.
The requirements to participate in the program are as follows:
Each delegate must adhere to all social agreements reached through Snapshot, including those outlined in proposals such as ‘Improving Predictability in Arbitrum DAO's Operations,’ ‘Should the DAO Create COI & Self Voting Policies?,’ ‘Incentives Detox Proposal,’ and any other proposals or codes of conduct that may be approved in the future.
Voting Power: >50K ARB, corresponding to 176 delegates. (Source: Arbitrum Delegates and Voting Power - Dune Analytics).
Change: This parameter will remain unchanged.
Motivation: Currently, only 30% of delegates meeting this requirement are part of the program. One of our goals for this renewal is to increase the number of participating delegates.
Participation Rate (Karma): ≥75% participation in on-chain votes in the last 90 days.
Change: Previously, the requirement was 25% of total historical votes.
Motivation: As the number of proposals grows, the impact of each individual vote decreases, making it challenging to meet the historical 25% PR. This change aims to lower the barrier for new participants, ensuring that all delegates, regardless of when they joined Arbitrum, are recognized for their consistency and active participation in the DAO. In this way, the program’s approach encourages the active participation of delegates, ensuring a more accurate and up-to-date representation.
A new delegate, without prior participation history, can join the program starting in the third month after casting his first on-chain vote, as long as he meets the specified requirements (>50k voting power and ≥75% participation in on-chain votes) during that third month.
Delegates who meet the requirements must confirm their participation in the DIP via the DIP Application Thread. Delegates can join the program anytime within 12 months, provided they meet the specified criteria. To minimize the potential for manipulation, delegates who sign up before the third day of the month will be included in the incentive calculations for that month. The delegates who have registered for v1.0 will not have to go through this procedure again
It is important to mention that it won't be necessary for the delegates already registered to complete the KYC again. They will only need to sign updated agreements with the Arbitrum Foundation.
Forum Username (Link):
Twitter Profile (Link):
Snapshot Profile (Link):
Participation Rate 90 days - Karma (Link):
Note: Any delegate who chooses to withdraw from the program can indicate their intention to opt out by posting a message in the forum.
We will maintain this parameter at 50 delegates.
Budget Allocation: MAX 4,200,000 USD (up to 7.000 USD per delegate per month).
In the initial iteration of the DIP, costs were denominated solely in ARB, which led to challenges due to the token's volatility.
When the program launched in March, the token was valued at approximately USD 1.70, allowing a delegate with 100% Total Participation (TP) to earn around USD 8,500 per month. However, now, in the fifth month of the program, the token is valued at USD 0.55, reducing a delegate's maximum monthly compensation to about USD 2,750—a decrease of over 60% for the same amount of work. This significant reduction could disincentivize delegate participation.
The same issue applies to operational, development, and maintenance costs, which have become increasingly misaligned.
To avoid this situation, we propose that payments be denominated in USD and made in ARB tokens. Again, the delegates’ incentives should be transparent and attractive without being subject to manipulation or arbitrary changes in their amount.
If we want to professionalize DAO operations as much as possible and stay aligned we should aim for delegates to have a certain seniority and dedication to Bringing Value to Arbitrum DAO. Thus, delegates who meet the requirements at the end of the month and achieve a TP of at least 65% will be eligible to receive up to 7,000 USD in ARB tokens as compensation.
Now, as program administrators, our goal is to create the necessary incentives to elevate the overall quality of contributions. During the first iteration of the DIP, we observed that the compensation for top delegates did not significantly differ from those with lower Total Participation (TP) scores. To address this, we propose the introduction of three compensation tiers based on the Total Participation Rate achieved by each delegate.
Tier 3: TP ≥ 65 and < 70. Compensation range: $3,000 to $3,250. ARB cap: 8,000.
Tier 2: TP ≥ 70% and < 85%. Compensation range: $4,200 to $5,100. ARB cap: 12,000.
Tier 1: TP ≥ 85% and < 100%. Compensation range: $5,950 to $7,000. ARB cap: 16,500.
This approach makes the program more cost-effective per USD spent because as the quality of contributions increases, more resources are allocated to higher-performing delegates (those in tiers 1 and 2). Conversely, if delegate performance is suboptimal, fewer resources are allocated, with more delegates falling into tiers 2 and 3.
We considered the volatility of the ARB token by suggesting an ARB cap for each Tier. In this way, while delegates' compensation could still be affected after a drastic price drop, we would at the same time protect the DAO's interests by limiting its “loss” somewhat. It also act as a mechanism to align delegates with Arbitrum DAO.
Note: ARB Cap for each Tier includes a 30% buffer and will be recalculated on the basis of the ARB price at the time of submitting the proposal for voting in Tally.
We’ll provide a simulation of what the payout would look like in 3 different scenarios:
Note: We will use the Coingecko rate at the time of payment to determine the value of ARB each month.
As seen in the images, an increase in ARB's price would significantly reduce the spending in ARB, allowing the DAO to benefit from the rise. In the other hand, if the price falls to $0.35, the token expenditure of the program is limited to mitigate the DAO’s potential “loss.” This approach also better aligns the program's USD spending with the DAO's new economic and financial reality.
Additionally, the use of tiers in this manner allows for a significant boost in incentives when efforts are increased, acting as a catalyst for delegate activity. The first tier serves as a ‘minimum payment’ for delegates who, for example, fulfill their primary duties: participating in every vote and providing some input in the forum.
Tiers 1 and 2 represent the leap in quality, requiring greater effort to obtain 70-100% of the TP, but offering a higher reward in return. A delegate who provides a high degree of dedication and high quality input can DOUBLE the incentives of the lowest tier.
Payments to delegates are expected to be processed in ARB from the MSS between the 15th and 16th of each month.
If delegates disagree with the results presented by the Karma Dashboard at the beginning of each month, they have a four-day period to contest them.
To raise a dispute, delegates must post a message in the forum using the following template:
Title: Dispute
Username
Reason for Dispute (provide details)
The DIP administrator will address the issue promptly, with a resolution expected within a maximum of 4 days.
The program administrator will have the right to expel a delegate if they attempt to game or exploit the program or if the delegate does not meet any of the aforementioned requirements to be considered eligible. This decision is at the discretion of the program administrator. In all cases the ban is permanent.
The affected delegate may request a Snapshot vote to ratify, change (for suspension), or revoke the Administrator's decision. This serves as a one-time appeal, and the decision made by the DAO will be final.
The program administrator will have the right to suspend a delegate if he/she/they commits a fault that in the administrator's judgment is insufficient cause for expulsion. The decision and duration of the suspension are at the discretion of the program administrator (duration can’t exceed the program's current iteration).
The affected delegate may request a Snapshot vote to ratify, change, or revoke the Administrator's decision. This serves as a one-time appeal, and the decision made by the DAO will be final.
To determine which delegates will receive monthly payments, we will continue using the dashboard developed by Karma.
Note: The program manager may adjust the compensation parameters, provided they inform the DAO of the reasons for the changes.
We’ve listened to the concerns raised by some delegates regarding the changes in the Delegates’ Feedback section.
So, we propose changing the way we collect feedback from a quantitative to a qualitative way.
Instead of counting comments on proposals that reach Snapshot, we propose implementing a monthly analysis of the feedback provided by delegates, regardless of whether the proposal/discussion has reached Snapshot.
In this way, the Program Administrator would be responsible for creating a rubric that evaluates the value and timeliness of the feedback provided by delegates. The goal of this system is to:
Incentivize quality over quantity of feedback.
Extend the analysis across all contributions made by a delegate in the forum (instead of only considering those that reach Snapshot).
Avoid unnecessary or spam comments made solely to achieve a higher score.
Allow delegates to focus on contributing to proposals or discussions related to their areas of expertise.
Under this system, a delegate could achieve the same score with (for example) one big significant contribution or by making several smaller contributions. It also discourages actors who might try to take advantage of the program.
This rubric assesses the overall feedback provided by the delegate throughout the month (from day 1 at 00:00 UTC to the last day of the month at 23:59:59 UTC), based on a summary of their participation in various proposals and discussions. The aim is to measure the consistency, quality, and overall impact of their contributions. We expect delegates to comment on and/or provide feedback on proposals and discussions both before and during the voting process. This feedback should aim to foster debate, improve the proposal, or clarify issues not explicitly addressed within it.
We trust the goodwill of the delegates to avoid meaningless/spam comments and ensure that all contributions are sensible.
The parameter “Proposal Feedback” should be renamed to "Delegate’s Feedback” in this case since we’re analyzing the overall feedback provided by the delegate (not just proposals on snapshot) and will maintain a maximum weight of 30%, the score will be awarded based on the following rubric:
Here is a breakdown of each criterion included in the rubric:
Relevance: Analyzes whether the delegate’s feedback throughout the month is relevant to the discussion.
Depth of Analysis: It evaluates the depth of analysis provided by the delegate concerning the proposals or discussions. This serves as a metric to assess whether the delegate takes the time to thoroughly meditate on the discussion and demonstrates attention to the details. Key elements include solid arguments, relevant questions, and thorough reasoning.
Timing: Considers when the delegate provides feedback, rewarding those who provide feedback earlier, as long as they meet the above criteria. Note that feedback will be considered as provided before on-chain/off-chain voting if it was published before the day voting starts at 00:00 UTC.
Clarity and Communication: this is a review of the clarity, structured communication, and overall readability of the delegate’s feedback. Clear and well-written feedback is rewarded.
Impact on Decision-Making: While the proposer ultimately decides whether to incorporate feedback, high-quality feedback from a delegate often influences the final proposal that goes to vote. This criterion evaluates whether the delegate’s feedback tends to drive changes in proposals/discussions.
Presence in Discussions: This is a more quantitative analysis, intended to reflect the effort of delegates who participate in most discussions. This parameter serves as a multiplier to the score obtained across the previous five criteria. Note that the percentage of participation in monthly discussions could be not linear across all DAO’s discussions. Some proposals may carry more weight in the overall discussions (special cases such as LTIPP/STIP, gaming, treasury, etc.).
1. Data Collection: At the end of the month, the complete set of contributions by each delegate across all discussions on the forum is reviewed.
2. Overall Evaluation: The rubric is used to assess the delegate’s overall performance on each criterion, based on a holistic view of their participation.
3. Score Assignment: A level of 1 to 4 is assigned to each criterion, based on the consistency and quality of the delegate’s contributions over the month. Each level has an assigned score, from 1 to 4.
4. Monthly Report: A qualitative and quantitative report summarizing the delegate’s performance over the month is then produced.
Each rubric criterion has levels with an assigned score, from 1 to 4, depending on the level achieved.
The initial score is obtained by adding the first five criteria, while the final score results from applying the “Presence in Discussions” multiplier to the initial average score. The maximum Initial Score is 20 points and 30 points for the Final Score.
For illustrative purposes, here’s an example:
Relevance: Level 3 - Scoring achieved = 3
Depth of Analysis: Level 2 - Scoring achieved = 2
Timing: Level 4 - Scoring achieved = 4
Clarity and Communication: Level 2 - Scoring achieved = 2
Impact on Decision-Making: Level 3 - Scoring achieved = 3
Initial Score/Average: 70% or 14/20 or 2.8/4
Final Score: 70% x 1.1 = 77% or 23.1/30 Delegates’ Feedback points.
We are aware that this proposed solution introduces trust assumptions regarding the Program Administrator’s criteria for evaluating feedback. We view this layer of subjectivity as inevitable until we can implement automated tools, such as the AI that Karma is developing, to assess the quality of delegate feedback. It is important to note that, as Program Administrators, after analyzing proposals and feedback for the last six months, we have gained experience that (we believe) will help us correctly identify constructive feedback.
At SEEDGov, we are committed to being as transparent as possible, as we have been thus far. Therefore, the rubric and the monthly report will always be publicly accessible to all interested parties. During this phase, feedback from Arbitrum DAO will also be crucial in helping us refine our evaluation criteria.
During the first iteration of this delegate program, we have been closely monitoring forum activity, particularly during the feedback stage of various proposals. As this phase was a trial, we primarily focused on observing certain dynamics within the forum to better understand them and make adjustments for the next iteration.
One of the issues we identified is the use of AI to comment on proposals. While the use of AI for tasks such as translating text or correcting grammatical errors is understandable, we have seen instances where it has been employed to generate feedback based on other users' comments. This has not been a widespread or alarming issue but, in the next iteration, we plan to take a more reactive approach.
Another issue we have encountered is regarding users who post "Reserved for later comment." We want to clarify that we do not recommend or encourage such practices, which should preferably be avoided.
In this iteration, we will try to provide feedback to delegates on this type of situation.
Due to the experimental nature of this new scoring system, it will be in a testing phase, and we, as Administrators, commit to submitting it to the DAO for consultation after three months of running the program.
After observing delegate behavior and some internal discussions, we believe it is necessary to adjust specific parameters of the program:
Participation Rate (PR)
Change: Previously weighted at 20% and based on historical participation rates in Tally. Now, it is reduced to 15%, calculated based on the participation rate of the last 90 days in on-chain votes (as calculated by Karma).
Motivation: The 90-day participation rate is a requirement for delegates to register in the program. Unlike the historical rate, this parameter is more accessible, so we have decided to lower its weight.
Snapshot Voting (SV)
Change: The weight of this parameter has increased from 15% to 20%.
Motivation: Snapshot voting is a crucial part of the governance process. It is essential to give it more weight to encourage delegates to vote in snapshots.
Communicating Rationale (CR)
Change: The weight of this parameter has decreased from 25% to 10%.
Motivation: While providing a rationale for votes is important, we consider the feedback period even more crucial. Therefore, we have reduced the weight of Communicating Rationale and increased the weight of Delegates’ Feedback.
Delegates’ Feedback (DF)
Change: The weight of this parameter has increased from 15% to 30%.
Motivation: Providing feedback on forum proposals is fundamental. We have raised this parameter's weight above others and introduced a rubric to evaluate the feedback qualitatively. These changes are detailed further above.
Total Participation (TP)
Change: The requirement for total participation has increased from +60% to +65%.
Motivation: After analyzing the program's results, we observed that some delegates with high historical participation in Tally could meet the +60% requirement by voting on 100% of monthly proposals. We have decided to raise the TP requirement to +65% for compensation to encourage more contributions in the forum.
Bonus Point (BP)
Change: Adding Bonus Points for delegates who attend the “Arbitrum Governance Report Call” (monthly) and the “Open Discussion of Proposal(s) - Bi-weekly Governance Call.”
For the monthly call, 2.5% BP will be awarded for attendance.
For the bi-weekly calls, 2.5% BP will be awarded for attending each call.
Motivation: We have received several questions about delegate participation in calls or working groups. While there is a trend to compensate work within specific WGs (and we want to avoid potential double spending by the DAO), we find it interesting to experiment with the idea of awarding Bonus Points to delegates who participate in both the “Arbitrum Governance Report Call” (monthly) and the “Open Discussion of Proposal(s) - Bi-weekly Governance Call”. We will continue to manage this parameter as in the previous program. Although it was a topic of discussion, we have yet to receive complaints about how these points were awarded. We welcome any feedback from the DAO.
Activity Weight (%): Represents the weight assigned to each key activity to be measured in delegates.
Participation Rate - 90 days (PR90) - Weight 15: Percentage of the total participation of the member in votes in the last 90 days. This parameter will be calculated at the end of each month.
Snapshot Voting (SV) - Weight 20: Percentage of delegate participation in snapshot voting. This parameter is reset at the beginning of each month.
Tn: Number of total proposals sent to snapshots for monthly voting.
Rn: Number of proposals the delegate voted on in the month.
SV% formula: (SV(Rn) / SV(Tn)) * 20
Tally Voting (TV) - Weight 25: Percentage of delegate participation in on-chain voting in Tally. This parameter will reset at the beginning of each month.
Tn: Number of total proposals sent to Tally for monthly voting.
Rn: Number of proposals the delegate voted on-chain in the month.
TV% formula: (TV(Rn) / TV(Tn)) * 25
Communicating Rationale (CR) - Weight 10: Percentage of communication threads with the justification of the delegate's vote on the proposals sent to snapshots and Tally (if necessary if the vote does not change). This parameter is reset at the beginning of each month.
Tn: Total number of proposals that were submitted to a vote.
Rn: Number of honest communication rational threads where the delegate communicated and justified their decision.
CR% formula: (CR(Rn) / CR(Tn)) * 10
Delegates’ Feedback (DF) - Weight 30: This is the score given by the program administrator regarding the feedback provided by the delegate during the month. This new iteration (v1.5) will use a rubric with a scoring system detailed above.
(Σ qualitative criteria) / 20 * 100 * Presence in discussions multiplier * 30 (DF weight) = DF score
Bonus Point (BP) - Extra +30,0% TP: This parameter is extra. If the delegate makes a significant contribution to the DAO, it’s automatically granted +30% extra TP. This extra is at the discretion of the program administrator.
Total Participation (TP): Sum of the results of activities performed by the delegate. A TP% of 100 indicates full participation.
Payment USD (PUSD): The final amount of USD that the delegate will receive is based on his TP% and his Tier.
Payment ARB (PARB): The final amount of ARB that the delegate will receive is based on his PUSD, the ARB Price and the ARB payment cap of the corresponding tier.
Note: Here is the framework template for delegates to review the parameters.
Activity Weight (%):
Participation Rate 90 (PR90) - Weight 15%
Snapshot Voting (SV) - Weight 20%
Tally Voting (TV) - Weight 25%
Communicating Rationale (CR) - Weight 10%
Delegates’ Feedback (DF) - Weight 30%
Bonus Point (BP) - Extra +30%
Total Participation (TP):
TP = PR% + SV% + TV% + CR% + %PF + BP
We have updated the operational costs for administering this new program. This payment will be distributed over 12 months and sent regularly along with the payments to the delegates.
2 Program Administrators (2 Full-time): $157,000 over 12 months.
1 Data Analyst (Part-Time): $35,000 over 12 months.
Total: $192,000 ($16,000 per month)
Source: Salaries are approximate and based on U.S. standards. We extracted data from this website.
Although the proposed administrative budget is sufficient in both versions, we understand that if there is a considerable increase in registrations, the workload would increase significantly. That is why we will incorporate a clause where if the program exceeds 65 registered delegates (which is the number that we believe we could cover with the budget requested) we will reopen discussions in the forum on the budget, also considering the possibility of increasing the number of delegates incentivized.
USD 4,200,000 in Incentives. Delegates' compensations are capped at 16,500 ARB per delegate per month (Tier 1), which means the maximum spending on incentives would be 9,900,000 ARB per year (16,500 ARB x 50 delegates x 12 months). This amount represents 0.31% of the DAO's treasury. The ARB cap already includes a 30% buffer and it will be recalculated before Tally.
USD 87,000 +30% ARB buffer for Dashboard maintenance and upgrade
USD 192,000 +30% ARB buffer for Operational Costs/Program Administration.
Total: USD 4,479,000
Here is a summary of the budget, buffers, and final amounts to be requested (see notes):
USD costs are fixed, meaning that if the price of ARB increases, the USD costs will remain the same. At the end of the program, any remaining ARB tokens from the program will be returned to the treasury.
Any remaining funds from the experimental incentive program multisig will sent back to the treasury.*
Final amounts in ARB will be recalculated on the basis of the ARB price at the time of submitting the proposal for voting in Tally.
The funds will be sent to the recently approved MSS.
The SEEDGov team and Karma will continue to collaborate to maintain and manage this new version of the DIP.
Over the past six months, our team has successfully built and maintained the DAO's compensation dashboard. Based on this experience, we anticipate the following work for the upcoming year:
Infrastructure Maintenance and Expenses: We will continue to ensure that the dashboard operates smoothly, with real-time data updates for most metrics and daily overall calculations. This includes regular software maintenance, such as updating libraries and other necessary tasks to keep the system secure and efficient.
Ongoing Collaboration with SEEDGov: Regular calls with the SEEDGov team over the past six months have been instrumental in maintaining the program’s smooth operation. These meetings have allowed us to address bugs, resolve data discrepancies, and implement enhancements based on administrative needs. We will continue these calls to ensure ongoing improvements in operational efficiency.
Compensation Calculation Logic Updates: As outlined in the new proposal, we will implement necessary changes to the compensation calculation logic. This includes introducing a tier system, adjusting weights and metrics, and incorporating a 90-day calculation period.
Automation of Voting Statistics: Our current system fully automates voting statistics, streamlining the process for admins to determine compensation. Collecting data on Communication Rationale and Proposal Feedback has historically been time-consuming. A few months ago, we introduced an MVP that automates this process using LLM tools. We plan to continue enhancing this feature to further assist administrators.
Verification of Statistics: All statistics need to be verified for accuracy in a timely manner, specifically by the first of each month. We will continue to ensure that this verification process is completed on schedule to maintain the reliability of the data.
In the first iteration of the DIP, we encountered additional tasks that were not anticipated when drafting the proposal, which required extra effort to meet the program's requirements. Therefore, in this new version, we have updated the responsibilities of the program administrator:
Check corresponding data to see delegates' eligibility.
Collaborate with Arbitrum Foundation to ensure delegates complete the KYC/KYB process and perform the necessary follow-up.
Constantly monitor delegates' activity.
Support delegates with any questions or concerns related to the incentive program through Telegram, forum, or Discord.
Collect feedback from delegates and the community to improve the program.
Review delegate comments in the forum and filter out spam messages.
Communicate any changes in the incentive program to the delegates
Publish monthly results in the forum.
Publish monthly program costs in the forum.
Solve disputes
Determine which delegates receive Bonus Points.
Collaborate with MSS to ensure payments to delegates are processed each month.
Periodic review of the information uploaded to the Karma dashboard.
Have weekly meetings with Karma to fix bugs and enhance the dashboard.
Prepare periodic reports.
Prepare a rubric and a monthly report about each delegate's feedback performance.
Monitor the participation of the delegates in the governance calls mentioned for the bonus points.
We commit to delivering:
Monthly results of the DIP.
Public cost reports to allow for audits by any interested party.
Mid-term and final evaluation reports of the program.
Hold meetings with delegates to gather feedback on the program and provide them with updates.
Constantly work on improvements to the program.
We are committed to reaching out to each of the delegates who meet the requirements to be part of the program but are not yet enrolled. Our goal is to encourage everyone to join, helping to maintain and increase the diversity of voices in Arbitrum DAO.
In this new iteration of the DIP, we aim to establish the following KPIs:
Achieve that 50 delegates receive incentives.
Engage 100 delegates in the program.
Achieve an average Total Participation (TP) of 80% among participants in the program within six months.
Introduce improvements to the program after six months.
We know that this program still has room for improvement. While this new program version moves away from its experimental nature to become a more developed one, a delegate incentive program must continuously receive feedback from its participants.
The SEEDGov team and Karma are committed to gathering feedback, obtaining more information, and implementing the necessary changes to optimize performance. Considering the new duration of the program, the Program Administrator reserves the right to make changes in the scoring methodology by giving public notice in the forum.
Note that everything related to DIP 1.0 that has not been mentioned as modifications in this new proposal will remain in effect in v1.5.
Snapshot vote: September 19th, 2024 (ready)
The options were sent to vote in Snapshot as follows:
FOR, DIP V1.5 (chosen option)
FOR, DIP V1.1
ABSTAIN
AGAINST
Tally vote: Starting on Thursday 10th October, 2024.
This proposal has been updated based on feedback from delegates provided in this thread during the two calls we organized, as well as through discussions in the delegates' Telegram group and private contributions from several delegates. We would like to thank the entire ArbitrumDAO community for their valuable input.
Expand the program by introducing a new and improved version, to be implemented over the course of a year.
We propose a total budget of USD 4.2 million (in a year) in delegate incentives, with a maximum monthly compensation of 7000 USD or 16,500 ARB per month per delegate.
Creating Delegates' compensation tiers:
Tier 3: TP ≥ 65 and < 70. Compensation range: $3,000 to $3,250. ARB cap: 8,000.
Tier 2: TP ≥ 70% and < 85%. Compensation range: $4,200 to $5,100. ARB cap: 12,000.
Tier 1: TP ≥ 85%. Compensation range: $5,950 to $7,000. ARB cap: 16,500.
Elimination of the special multisig, the DIP adheres to the MSS
The DAO can cancel the program or modify parameters, such as the scoring methodology, through a Snapshot vote.
Min threshold requirement change: Participation Rate (Karma) ≥ 75% participation in on-chain votes in the last 90 days. Previously, the requirement was 25% of total historical votes.
Soft enforcement for DAO’s social agreements: Each delegate must adhere to and comply with all social agreements reached through Snapshot in order to receive incentives.
Adding the possibility of revoking DIP Ban via Snapshot vote and also creating the DIP Suspension.
Delegates' Feedback Update: The DAO has opted for v1.5 of the DIP, so a new rubric will be applied to evaluate the feedback given by the delegates in the diverse discussions. Due to the experimental nature of this new scoring system, it will be in a testing phase, and we, as Administrators, commit to submitting it to the DAO for consultation after three months of running the program.
Note that everything related to DIP 1.0 that has not been mentioned as modifications in this new proposal will remain in effect in v1.5.
Scoring Weight Changes:
Participation Rate (PR): Previously weighted at 20% and based on historical participation rates in Tally. Now, it is reduced to 15%, calculated based on the participation rate of the last 90 days in on-chain votes (as calculated by Karma).
Snapshot Voting (SV): The weight of this parameter has increased from 15% to 20%.
Communicating Rationale (CR): The weight of this parameter has decreased from 25% to 10%.
Delegates’ Feedback (DF): The weight of this parameter has increased from 15% to 30%.
Total Participation (TP): The requirement for total participation has increased from +60% to +65%.
Bonus points update: Adding Bonus Points for delegates who attends to the “Arbitrum Governance Report Call” (monthly) and the “Open Discussion of Proposal(s) - Bi-weekly Governance Call.”
For the monthly call, 2,5% BP will be awarded for attendance.
For the bi-weekly calls, 2.5% BP will be awarded for attending each call.
We propose renewing the ArbitrumDAO Delegate Incentive Program (DIP) for one year. This renewal will include adjustments to the parameters, requirements, budget, and incentives awarded to delegates.
We've reached the fifth month of the current version of the incentive program, which ends on August 31.
As outlined in the mid-term report, the program has positively impacted ArbitrumDAO during the first three months.
However, simply renewing the program will not generate enough value. Therefore, we propose adjustments to improve the program and increase its impact on ArbitrumDAO.
These changes are based on our experience as administrators, the reports we've conducted, and feedback from delegates, the Karma team, and key community members.
Note: SEEDGov delivered the end-term report, you can check it here.
As we mentioned in the report, it is crucial to keep delegated voting power active within ArbitrumDAO. We believe the Incentive Program should focus on the professionalization of delegates.
By professionalization, delegates should dedicate a significant amount of time to staying informed about developments in ArbitrumDAO, gaining knowledge of Arbitrum's technology, and making meaningful contributions to the DAO. This includes active participation in most DAO activities like providing feedback on proposals, attending to Governance Calls, maintaining high voting participation on Snapshot and Tally, and providing a rationale for such votes.
To achieve this, we also need to establish transparent and predictable incentives. Delegates should be confident that if they align with the DAO and improve their contributions over time—essentially if they professionalize—they will receive better incentives. These incentives should be transparent and attractive without being subject to manipulation or arbitrary changes in their amount. Delegates should focus on their role and DAO activities, not on understanding complex economic mechanisms to receive compensation.
We want delegates to be motivated to participate actively in ArbitrumDAO. In order to do this, incentives must be attractive enough for them to either participate directly or hire competent individuals to represent their interests, those of their community, or their protocol.
It's important to note that while managing the incentive program, we realized that it doesn't address all the challenges faced by the DAO, such as vote distribution, attracting new contributors, and other aspects. Expecting a single strategy to tackle all issues overlooks the diversity of factors involved. However, we're pleased to see initiatives like ARB Staking, (Re)delegation Week, and the Public Good Citizen Enfranchisement Pool are underway to address these challenges. As each initiative matures, we can align them to achieve a more significant collective impact.
The proposed changes below are based on the experience we've gained while managing the program, the delegates' feedback during the discussion on this thread, and both reports we made for the DIP 1.0 (mid-term report and final report).
If you want to view the parameters of the previous program, click here.
The program's first phase lasted six months, as it was designed as an experimental foundation. For this iteration, extending the duration to twelve months is appropriate, providing greater predictability and flexibility for implementing future changes.
ArbitrumDAO may cancel the program or modify parameters, such as scoring methodology, through an instantaneous vote.
The requirements to participate in the program are as follows:
Each delegate must adhere to all social agreements reached through Snapshot, including those outlined in proposals such as ‘Improving Predictability in Arbitrum DAO's Operations,’ ‘Should the DAO Create COI & Self Voting Policies?,’ ‘Incentives Detox Proposal,’ and any other proposals or codes of conduct that may be approved in the future.
Voting Power: >50K ARB, corresponding to 176 delegates. (Source: Arbitrum Delegates and Voting Power - Dune Analytics).
Change: This parameter will remain unchanged.
Motivation: Currently, only 30% of delegates meeting this requirement are part of the program. One of our goals for this renewal is to increase the number of participating delegates.
Participation Rate (Karma): ≥75% participation in on-chain votes in the last 90 days.
Change: Previously, the requirement was 25% of total historical votes.
Motivation: As the number of proposals grows, the impact of each individual vote decreases, making it challenging to meet the historical 25% PR. This change aims to lower the barrier for new participants, ensuring that all delegates, regardless of when they joined Arbitrum, are recognized for their consistency and active participation in the DAO. In this way, the program’s approach encourages the active participation of delegates, ensuring a more accurate and up-to-date representation.
A new delegate, without prior participation history, can join the program starting in the third month after casting his first on-chain vote, as long as he meets the specified requirements (>50k voting power and ≥75% participation in on-chain votes) during that third month.
Delegates who meet the requirements must confirm their participation in the DIP via the DIP Application Thread. Delegates can join the program anytime within 12 months, provided they meet the specified criteria. To minimize the potential for manipulation, delegates who sign up before the third day of the month will be included in the incentive calculations for that month. The delegates who have registered for v1.0 will not have to go through this procedure again
It is important to mention that it won't be necessary for the delegates already registered to complete the KYC again. They will only need to sign updated agreements with the Arbitrum Foundation.
Forum Username (Link):
Twitter Profile (Link):
Snapshot Profile (Link):
Participation Rate 90 days - Karma (Link):
Note: Any delegate who chooses to withdraw from the program can indicate their intention to opt out by posting a message in the forum.
We will maintain this parameter at 50 delegates.
Budget Allocation: MAX 4,200,000 USD (up to 7.000 USD per delegate per month).
In the initial iteration of the DIP, costs were denominated solely in ARB, which led to challenges due to the token's volatility.
When the program launched in March, the token was valued at approximately USD 1.70, allowing a delegate with 100% Total Participation (TP) to earn around USD 8,500 per month. However, now, in the fifth month of the program, the token is valued at USD 0.55, reducing a delegate's maximum monthly compensation to about USD 2,750—a decrease of over 60% for the same amount of work. This significant reduction could disincentivize delegate participation.
The same issue applies to operational, development, and maintenance costs, which have become increasingly misaligned.
To avoid this situation, we propose that payments be denominated in USD and made in ARB tokens. Again, the delegates’ incentives should be transparent and attractive without being subject to manipulation or arbitrary changes in their amount.
If we want to professionalize DAO operations as much as possible and stay aligned we should aim for delegates to have a certain seniority and dedication to Bringing Value to Arbitrum DAO. Thus, delegates who meet the requirements at the end of the month and achieve a TP of at least 65% will be eligible to receive up to 7,000 USD in ARB tokens as compensation.
Now, as program administrators, our goal is to create the necessary incentives to elevate the overall quality of contributions. During the first iteration of the DIP, we observed that the compensation for top delegates did not significantly differ from those with lower Total Participation (TP) scores. To address this, we propose the introduction of three compensation tiers based on the Total Participation Rate achieved by each delegate.
Tier 3: TP ≥ 65 and < 70. Compensation range: $3,000 to $3,250. ARB cap: 8,000.
Tier 2: TP ≥ 70% and < 85%. Compensation range: $4,200 to $5,100. ARB cap: 12,000.
Tier 1: TP ≥ 85% and < 100%. Compensation range: $5,950 to $7,000. ARB cap: 16,500.
This approach makes the program more cost-effective per USD spent because as the quality of contributions increases, more resources are allocated to higher-performing delegates (those in tiers 1 and 2). Conversely, if delegate performance is suboptimal, fewer resources are allocated, with more delegates falling into tiers 2 and 3.
We considered the volatility of the ARB token by suggesting an ARB cap for each Tier. In this way, while delegates' compensation could still be affected after a drastic price drop, we would at the same time protect the DAO's interests by limiting its “loss” somewhat. It also act as a mechanism to align delegates with Arbitrum DAO.
Note: ARB Cap for each Tier includes a 30% buffer and will be recalculated on the basis of the ARB price at the time of submitting the proposal for voting in Tally.
We’ll provide a simulation of what the payout would look like in 3 different scenarios:
Note: We will use the Coingecko rate at the time of payment to determine the value of ARB each month.
As seen in the images, an increase in ARB's price would significantly reduce the spending in ARB, allowing the DAO to benefit from the rise. In the other hand, if the price falls to $0.35, the token expenditure of the program is limited to mitigate the DAO’s potential “loss.” This approach also better aligns the program's USD spending with the DAO's new economic and financial reality.
Additionally, the use of tiers in this manner allows for a significant boost in incentives when efforts are increased, acting as a catalyst for delegate activity. The first tier serves as a ‘minimum payment’ for delegates who, for example, fulfill their primary duties: participating in every vote and providing some input in the forum.
Tiers 1 and 2 represent the leap in quality, requiring greater effort to obtain 70-100% of the TP, but offering a higher reward in return. A delegate who provides a high degree of dedication and high quality input can DOUBLE the incentives of the lowest tier.
Payments to delegates are expected to be processed in ARB from the MSS between the 15th and 16th of each month.
If delegates disagree with the results presented by the Karma Dashboard at the beginning of each month, they have a four-day period to contest them.
To raise a dispute, delegates must post a message in the forum using the following template:
Title: Dispute
Username
Reason for Dispute (provide details)
The DIP administrator will address the issue promptly, with a resolution expected within a maximum of 4 days.
The program administrator will have the right to expel a delegate if they attempt to game or exploit the program or if the delegate does not meet any of the aforementioned requirements to be considered eligible. This decision is at the discretion of the program administrator. In all cases the ban is permanent.
The affected delegate may request a Snapshot vote to ratify, change (for suspension), or revoke the Administrator's decision. This serves as a one-time appeal, and the decision made by the DAO will be final.
The program administrator will have the right to suspend a delegate if he/she/they commits a fault that in the administrator's judgment is insufficient cause for expulsion. The decision and duration of the suspension are at the discretion of the program administrator (duration can’t exceed the program's current iteration).
The affected delegate may request a Snapshot vote to ratify, change, or revoke the Administrator's decision. This serves as a one-time appeal, and the decision made by the DAO will be final.
To determine which delegates will receive monthly payments, we will continue using the dashboard developed by Karma.
Note: The program manager may adjust the compensation parameters, provided they inform the DAO of the reasons for the changes.
We’ve listened to the concerns raised by some delegates regarding the changes in the Delegates’ Feedback section.
So, we propose changing the way we collect feedback from a quantitative to a qualitative way.
Instead of counting comments on proposals that reach Snapshot, we propose implementing a monthly analysis of the feedback provided by delegates, regardless of whether the proposal/discussion has reached Snapshot.
In this way, the Program Administrator would be responsible for creating a rubric that evaluates the value and timeliness of the feedback provided by delegates. The goal of this system is to:
Incentivize quality over quantity of feedback.
Extend the analysis across all contributions made by a delegate in the forum (instead of only considering those that reach Snapshot).
Avoid unnecessary or spam comments made solely to achieve a higher score.
Allow delegates to focus on contributing to proposals or discussions related to their areas of expertise.
Under this system, a delegate could achieve the same score with (for example) one big significant contribution or by making several smaller contributions. It also discourages actors who might try to take advantage of the program.
This rubric assesses the overall feedback provided by the delegate throughout the month (from day 1 at 00:00 UTC to the last day of the month at 23:59:59 UTC), based on a summary of their participation in various proposals and discussions. The aim is to measure the consistency, quality, and overall impact of their contributions. We expect delegates to comment on and/or provide feedback on proposals and discussions both before and during the voting process. This feedback should aim to foster debate, improve the proposal, or clarify issues not explicitly addressed within it.
We trust the goodwill of the delegates to avoid meaningless/spam comments and ensure that all contributions are sensible.
The parameter “Proposal Feedback” should be renamed to "Delegate’s Feedback” in this case since we’re analyzing the overall feedback provided by the delegate (not just proposals on snapshot) and will maintain a maximum weight of 30%, the score will be awarded based on the following rubric:
Here is a breakdown of each criterion included in the rubric:
Relevance: Analyzes whether the delegate’s feedback throughout the month is relevant to the discussion.
Depth of Analysis: It evaluates the depth of analysis provided by the delegate concerning the proposals or discussions. This serves as a metric to assess whether the delegate takes the time to thoroughly meditate on the discussion and demonstrates attention to the details. Key elements include solid arguments, relevant questions, and thorough reasoning.
Timing: Considers when the delegate provides feedback, rewarding those who provide feedback earlier, as long as they meet the above criteria. Note that feedback will be considered as provided before on-chain/off-chain voting if it was published before the day voting starts at 00:00 UTC.
Clarity and Communication: this is a review of the clarity, structured communication, and overall readability of the delegate’s feedback. Clear and well-written feedback is rewarded.
Impact on Decision-Making: While the proposer ultimately decides whether to incorporate feedback, high-quality feedback from a delegate often influences the final proposal that goes to vote. This criterion evaluates whether the delegate’s feedback tends to drive changes in proposals/discussions.
Presence in Discussions: This is a more quantitative analysis, intended to reflect the effort of delegates who participate in most discussions. This parameter serves as a multiplier to the score obtained across the previous five criteria. Note that the percentage of participation in monthly discussions could be not linear across all DAO’s discussions. Some proposals may carry more weight in the overall discussions (special cases such as LTIPP/STIP, gaming, treasury, etc.).
1. Data Collection: At the end of the month, the complete set of contributions by each delegate across all discussions on the forum is reviewed.
2. Overall Evaluation: The rubric is used to assess the delegate’s overall performance on each criterion, based on a holistic view of their participation.
3. Score Assignment: A level of 1 to 4 is assigned to each criterion, based on the consistency and quality of the delegate’s contributions over the month. Each level has an assigned score, from 1 to 4.
4. Monthly Report: A qualitative and quantitative report summarizing the delegate’s performance over the month is then produced.
Each rubric criterion has levels with an assigned score, from 1 to 4, depending on the level achieved.
The initial score is obtained by adding the first five criteria, while the final score results from applying the “Presence in Discussions” multiplier to the initial average score. The maximum Initial Score is 20 points and 30 points for the Final Score.
For illustrative purposes, here’s an example:
Relevance: Level 3 - Scoring achieved = 3
Depth of Analysis: Level 2 - Scoring achieved = 2
Timing: Level 4 - Scoring achieved = 4
Clarity and Communication: Level 2 - Scoring achieved = 2
Impact on Decision-Making: Level 3 - Scoring achieved = 3
Initial Score/Average: 70% or 14/20 or 2.8/4
Final Score: 70% x 1.1 = 77% or 23.1/30 Delegates’ Feedback points.
We are aware that this proposed solution introduces trust assumptions regarding the Program Administrator’s criteria for evaluating feedback. We view this layer of subjectivity as inevitable until we can implement automated tools, such as the AI that Karma is developing, to assess the quality of delegate feedback. It is important to note that, as Program Administrators, after analyzing proposals and feedback for the last six months, we have gained experience that (we believe) will help us correctly identify constructive feedback.
At SEEDGov, we are committed to being as transparent as possible, as we have been thus far. Therefore, the rubric and the monthly report will always be publicly accessible to all interested parties. During this phase, feedback from Arbitrum DAO will also be crucial in helping us refine our evaluation criteria.
During the first iteration of this delegate program, we have been closely monitoring forum activity, particularly during the feedback stage of various proposals. As this phase was a trial, we primarily focused on observing certain dynamics within the forum to better understand them and make adjustments for the next iteration.
One of the issues we identified is the use of AI to comment on proposals. While the use of AI for tasks such as translating text or correcting grammatical errors is understandable, we have seen instances where it has been employed to generate feedback based on other users' comments. This has not been a widespread or alarming issue but, in the next iteration, we plan to take a more reactive approach.
Another issue we have encountered is regarding users who post "Reserved for later comment." We want to clarify that we do not recommend or encourage such practices, which should preferably be avoided.
In this iteration, we will try to provide feedback to delegates on this type of situation.
Due to the experimental nature of this new scoring system, it will be in a testing phase, and we, as Administrators, commit to submitting it to the DAO for consultation after three months of running the program.
After observing delegate behavior and some internal discussions, we believe it is necessary to adjust specific parameters of the program:
Participation Rate (PR)
Change: Previously weighted at 20% and based on historical participation rates in Tally. Now, it is reduced to 15%, calculated based on the participation rate of the last 90 days in on-chain votes (as calculated by Karma).
Motivation: The 90-day participation rate is a requirement for delegates to register in the program. Unlike the historical rate, this parameter is more accessible, so we have decided to lower its weight.
Snapshot Voting (SV)
Change: The weight of this parameter has increased from 15% to 20%.
Motivation: Snapshot voting is a crucial part of the governance process. It is essential to give it more weight to encourage delegates to vote in snapshots.
Communicating Rationale (CR)
Change: The weight of this parameter has decreased from 25% to 10%.
Motivation: While providing a rationale for votes is important, we consider the feedback period even more crucial. Therefore, we have reduced the weight of Communicating Rationale and increased the weight of Delegates’ Feedback.
Delegates’ Feedback (DF)
Change: The weight of this parameter has increased from 15% to 30%.
Motivation: Providing feedback on forum proposals is fundamental. We have raised this parameter's weight above others and introduced a rubric to evaluate the feedback qualitatively. These changes are detailed further above.
Total Participation (TP)
Change: The requirement for total participation has increased from +60% to +65%.
Motivation: After analyzing the program's results, we observed that some delegates with high historical participation in Tally could meet the +60% requirement by voting on 100% of monthly proposals. We have decided to raise the TP requirement to +65% for compensation to encourage more contributions in the forum.
Bonus Point (BP)
Change: Adding Bonus Points for delegates who attend the “Arbitrum Governance Report Call” (monthly) and the “Open Discussion of Proposal(s) - Bi-weekly Governance Call.”
For the monthly call, 2.5% BP will be awarded for attendance.
For the bi-weekly calls, 2.5% BP will be awarded for attending each call.
Motivation: We have received several questions about delegate participation in calls or working groups. While there is a trend to compensate work within specific WGs (and we want to avoid potential double spending by the DAO), we find it interesting to experiment with the idea of awarding Bonus Points to delegates who participate in both the “Arbitrum Governance Report Call” (monthly) and the “Open Discussion of Proposal(s) - Bi-weekly Governance Call”. We will continue to manage this parameter as in the previous program. Although it was a topic of discussion, we have yet to receive complaints about how these points were awarded. We welcome any feedback from the DAO.
Activity Weight (%): Represents the weight assigned to each key activity to be measured in delegates.
Participation Rate - 90 days (PR90) - Weight 15: Percentage of the total participation of the member in votes in the last 90 days. This parameter will be calculated at the end of each month.
Snapshot Voting (SV) - Weight 20: Percentage of delegate participation in snapshot voting. This parameter is reset at the beginning of each month.
Tn: Number of total proposals sent to snapshots for monthly voting.
Rn: Number of proposals the delegate voted on in the month.
SV% formula: (SV(Rn) / SV(Tn)) * 20
Tally Voting (TV) - Weight 25: Percentage of delegate participation in on-chain voting in Tally. This parameter will reset at the beginning of each month.
Tn: Number of total proposals sent to Tally for monthly voting.
Rn: Number of proposals the delegate voted on-chain in the month.
TV% formula: (TV(Rn) / TV(Tn)) * 25
Communicating Rationale (CR) - Weight 10: Percentage of communication threads with the justification of the delegate's vote on the proposals sent to snapshots and Tally (if necessary if the vote does not change). This parameter is reset at the beginning of each month.
Tn: Total number of proposals that were submitted to a vote.
Rn: Number of honest communication rational threads where the delegate communicated and justified their decision.
CR% formula: (CR(Rn) / CR(Tn)) * 10
Delegates’ Feedback (DF) - Weight 30: This is the score given by the program administrator regarding the feedback provided by the delegate during the month. This new iteration (v1.5) will use a rubric with a scoring system detailed above.
(Σ qualitative criteria) / 20 * 100 * Presence in discussions multiplier * 30 (DF weight) = DF score
Bonus Point (BP) - Extra +30,0% TP: This parameter is extra. If the delegate makes a significant contribution to the DAO, it’s automatically granted +30% extra TP. This extra is at the discretion of the program administrator.
Total Participation (TP): Sum of the results of activities performed by the delegate. A TP% of 100 indicates full participation.
Payment USD (PUSD): The final amount of USD that the delegate will receive is based on his TP% and his Tier.
Payment ARB (PARB): The final amount of ARB that the delegate will receive is based on his PUSD, the ARB Price and the ARB payment cap of the corresponding tier.
Note: Here is the framework template for delegates to review the parameters.
Activity Weight (%):
Participation Rate 90 (PR90) - Weight 15%
Snapshot Voting (SV) - Weight 20%
Tally Voting (TV) - Weight 25%
Communicating Rationale (CR) - Weight 10%
Delegates’ Feedback (DF) - Weight 30%
Bonus Point (BP) - Extra +30%
Total Participation (TP):
TP = PR% + SV% + TV% + CR% + %PF + BP
We have updated the operational costs for administering this new program. This payment will be distributed over 12 months and sent regularly along with the payments to the delegates.
2 Program Administrators (2 Full-time): $157,000 over 12 months.
1 Data Analyst (Part-Time): $35,000 over 12 months.
Total: $192,000 ($16,000 per month)
Source: Salaries are approximate and based on U.S. standards. We extracted data from this website.
Although the proposed administrative budget is sufficient in both versions, we understand that if there is a considerable increase in registrations, the workload would increase significantly. That is why we will incorporate a clause where if the program exceeds 65 registered delegates (which is the number that we believe we could cover with the budget requested) we will reopen discussions in the forum on the budget, also considering the possibility of increasing the number of delegates incentivized.
USD 4,200,000 in Incentives. Delegates' compensations are capped at 16,500 ARB per delegate per month (Tier 1), which means the maximum spending on incentives would be 9,900,000 ARB per year (16,500 ARB x 50 delegates x 12 months). This amount represents 0.31% of the DAO's treasury. The ARB cap already includes a 30% buffer and it will be recalculated before Tally.
USD 87,000 +30% ARB buffer for Dashboard maintenance and upgrade
USD 192,000 +30% ARB buffer for Operational Costs/Program Administration.
Total: USD 4,479,000
Here is a summary of the budget, buffers, and final amounts to be requested (see notes):
USD costs are fixed, meaning that if the price of ARB increases, the USD costs will remain the same. At the end of the program, any remaining ARB tokens from the program will be returned to the treasury.
Any remaining funds from the experimental incentive program multisig will sent back to the treasury.*
Final amounts in ARB will be recalculated on the basis of the ARB price at the time of submitting the proposal for voting in Tally.
The funds will be sent to the recently approved MSS.
The SEEDGov team and Karma will continue to collaborate to maintain and manage this new version of the DIP.
Over the past six months, our team has successfully built and maintained the DAO's compensation dashboard. Based on this experience, we anticipate the following work for the upcoming year:
Infrastructure Maintenance and Expenses: We will continue to ensure that the dashboard operates smoothly, with real-time data updates for most metrics and daily overall calculations. This includes regular software maintenance, such as updating libraries and other necessary tasks to keep the system secure and efficient.
Ongoing Collaboration with SEEDGov: Regular calls with the SEEDGov team over the past six months have been instrumental in maintaining the program’s smooth operation. These meetings have allowed us to address bugs, resolve data discrepancies, and implement enhancements based on administrative needs. We will continue these calls to ensure ongoing improvements in operational efficiency.
Compensation Calculation Logic Updates: As outlined in the new proposal, we will implement necessary changes to the compensation calculation logic. This includes introducing a tier system, adjusting weights and metrics, and incorporating a 90-day calculation period.
Automation of Voting Statistics: Our current system fully automates voting statistics, streamlining the process for admins to determine compensation. Collecting data on Communication Rationale and Proposal Feedback has historically been time-consuming. A few months ago, we introduced an MVP that automates this process using LLM tools. We plan to continue enhancing this feature to further assist administrators.
Verification of Statistics: All statistics need to be verified for accuracy in a timely manner, specifically by the first of each month. We will continue to ensure that this verification process is completed on schedule to maintain the reliability of the data.
In the first iteration of the DIP, we encountered additional tasks that were not anticipated when drafting the proposal, which required extra effort to meet the program's requirements. Therefore, in this new version, we have updated the responsibilities of the program administrator:
Check corresponding data to see delegates' eligibility.
Collaborate with Arbitrum Foundation to ensure delegates complete the KYC/KYB process and perform the necessary follow-up.
Constantly monitor delegates' activity.
Support delegates with any questions or concerns related to the incentive program through Telegram, forum, or Discord.
Collect feedback from delegates and the community to improve the program.
Review delegate comments in the forum and filter out spam messages.
Communicate any changes in the incentive program to the delegates
Publish monthly results in the forum.
Publish monthly program costs in the forum.
Solve disputes
Determine which delegates receive Bonus Points.
Collaborate with MSS to ensure payments to delegates are processed each month.
Periodic review of the information uploaded to the Karma dashboard.
Have weekly meetings with Karma to fix bugs and enhance the dashboard.
Prepare periodic reports.
Prepare a rubric and a monthly report about each delegate's feedback performance.
Monitor the participation of the delegates in the governance calls mentioned for the bonus points.
We commit to delivering:
Monthly results of the DIP.
Public cost reports to allow for audits by any interested party.
Mid-term and final evaluation reports of the program.
Hold meetings with delegates to gather feedback on the program and provide them with updates.
Constantly work on improvements to the program.
We are committed to reaching out to each of the delegates who meet the requirements to be part of the program but are not yet enrolled. Our goal is to encourage everyone to join, helping to maintain and increase the diversity of voices in Arbitrum DAO.
In this new iteration of the DIP, we aim to establish the following KPIs:
Achieve that 50 delegates receive incentives.
Engage 100 delegates in the program.
Achieve an average Total Participation (TP) of 80% among participants in the program within six months.
Introduce improvements to the program after six months.
We know that this program still has room for improvement. While this new program version moves away from its experimental nature to become a more developed one, a delegate incentive program must continuously receive feedback from its participants.
The SEEDGov team and Karma are committed to gathering feedback, obtaining more information, and implementing the necessary changes to optimize performance. Considering the new duration of the program, the Program Administrator reserves the right to make changes in the scoring methodology by giving public notice in the forum.
Note that everything related to DIP 1.0 that has not been mentioned as modifications in this new proposal will remain in effect in v1.5.
Snapshot vote: September 19th, 2024 (ready)
The options were sent to vote in Snapshot as follows:
FOR, DIP V1.5 (chosen option)
FOR, DIP V1.1
ABSTAIN
AGAINST
Tally vote: Starting on Thursday 10th October, 2024.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/144?u=winverse
Democratising lobbyism, on-chain. Check out lobbyfi.xyz
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/144?u=winverse
Democratising lobbyism, on-chain. Check out lobbyfi.xyz
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/143
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/142?u=tane
The Event Horizon Community Voted to Support this Proposal ehARB-46: EventHorizon.vote/vote/arbitrum/ehARB-46
The Event Horizon Community Voted to Support this Proposal ehARB-46: EventHorizon.vote/vote/arbitrum/ehARB-46
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/139?u=euphoria
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/138?u=maxlomu
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/griff-green-delegate-communication-thread/25040/39?u=griff
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/137?u=tekr0x.eth
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/136?u=mcfly
this is one of the most experimental and innovative delegate incentive programs I’ve seen. And I think it’s worth trying it out for 12 months. https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/135?u=paulofonseca
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/96?u=castlecapital
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/19?u=kuiclub
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/13?u=duokongcrypto I support this proposal. It improves the Delegate Incentive Program, creates more reasonable incentives and tiers, and can drive participation and contributions from delegates. Suggestions: 1. long-term sustainability: it is recommended that at the end of the one-year period, the effectiveness of the incentives be periodically evaluated to ensure that the program is delivering continued value to DAOs. 2. Increase transparency: Ensure that monthly reports and data are publicly available so that the community has a clear understanding of what the representatives are doing and how effective they are. 3. Expanding Participation: Promotion efforts can be increased to attract more influential representatives to participate, further increasing DAO's activity. Promote the governance and development of DAO, we continue to work together to build it. Meanwhile, thanks for the work of SEED
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/88
Hard to believe there is a huge number of delegates vote "Abstain". The new Incentive Program is definitely a win-win step.
This program is important for maintaining an active, vibrant community of delegates. Renewal of it is reasonable and necessary.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/132?u=todayindefi
same as snapshot - https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/bobbay-delegate-communication-thread/20997/32?u=bobbay
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/129?u=ezr3al
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/128?u=0xtalvo.eth_mty
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/127?u=0x_ultra
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/126?u=0xdonpepe
I’m all for these changes: - Raising the threshold to 75%: I have no idea to raising the threshold to 75% over the last 90 days cause I will follow what helps the DAO develop. It is not too hard to achieve. - Increasing Delegates’ Feedback (DF) to 30%: I think It will hold delegates responsible for their participation :), pushing them to check the forum regularly to give qualitative feedback on time. If they don’t, they’ll miss out on important discussions. - Total Participation (TP) to 65%: Agree that many delegates can easily hit the 60% mark with their tally voting, so this is a reasonable step.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/larva-delegate-communication-thread/24476/73?u=larva
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/125?u=ocandocrypto
Because the first program went so well
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/99
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/gfx-labs-delegate-communication-thread/13794
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/105?u=blockworksresearch
Democratising lobbyism, on-chain. Check out lobbyfi.xyz
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/seed-latam-delegate-communication-thread/13895/47?u=seedgov
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/103
v1.5 would be more beneficial to the DAO and proposals on the Forum
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/101?u=ocandocrypto
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/100?u=tane
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/99
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/96?u=castlecapital
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/93?u=mcfly
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/griff-green-delegate-communication-thread/25040/39?u=griff
I like adding the qualitative as a safe to try experiment to solve specific issues of the first iteration
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/govhack-devcon-in-bangkok-hack-humanity/26634/53?u=euphoria
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/89?u=0x_ultra
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/88
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/87?u=tekr0x.eth
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/11?u=ezr3al
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/85?u=duokongcrypto
It's a well considered proposal and they have addressed our concerns
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/18?u=bruce
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/82?u=todayindefi
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/81?u=larva
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/79?u=0xdonpepe
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/77?u=jojo
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/143
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/142?u=tane
The Event Horizon Community Voted to Support this Proposal ehARB-46: EventHorizon.vote/vote/arbitrum/ehARB-46
The Event Horizon Community Voted to Support this Proposal ehARB-46: EventHorizon.vote/vote/arbitrum/ehARB-46
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/139?u=euphoria
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/138?u=maxlomu
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/griff-green-delegate-communication-thread/25040/39?u=griff
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/137?u=tekr0x.eth
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/136?u=mcfly
this is one of the most experimental and innovative delegate incentive programs I’ve seen. And I think it’s worth trying it out for 12 months. https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/135?u=paulofonseca
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/96?u=castlecapital
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/19?u=kuiclub
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/13?u=duokongcrypto I support this proposal. It improves the Delegate Incentive Program, creates more reasonable incentives and tiers, and can drive participation and contributions from delegates. Suggestions: 1. long-term sustainability: it is recommended that at the end of the one-year period, the effectiveness of the incentives be periodically evaluated to ensure that the program is delivering continued value to DAOs. 2. Increase transparency: Ensure that monthly reports and data are publicly available so that the community has a clear understanding of what the representatives are doing and how effective they are. 3. Expanding Participation: Promotion efforts can be increased to attract more influential representatives to participate, further increasing DAO's activity. Promote the governance and development of DAO, we continue to work together to build it. Meanwhile, thanks for the work of SEED
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/88
Hard to believe there is a huge number of delegates vote "Abstain". The new Incentive Program is definitely a win-win step.
This program is important for maintaining an active, vibrant community of delegates. Renewal of it is reasonable and necessary.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/132?u=todayindefi
same as snapshot - https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/bobbay-delegate-communication-thread/20997/32?u=bobbay
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/129?u=ezr3al
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/128?u=0xtalvo.eth_mty
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/127?u=0x_ultra
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/126?u=0xdonpepe
I’m all for these changes: - Raising the threshold to 75%: I have no idea to raising the threshold to 75% over the last 90 days cause I will follow what helps the DAO develop. It is not too hard to achieve. - Increasing Delegates’ Feedback (DF) to 30%: I think It will hold delegates responsible for their participation :), pushing them to check the forum regularly to give qualitative feedback on time. If they don’t, they’ll miss out on important discussions. - Total Participation (TP) to 65%: Agree that many delegates can easily hit the 60% mark with their tally voting, so this is a reasonable step.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/larva-delegate-communication-thread/24476/73?u=larva
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/125?u=ocandocrypto
Because the first program went so well
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/99
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/gfx-labs-delegate-communication-thread/13794
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/105?u=blockworksresearch
Democratising lobbyism, on-chain. Check out lobbyfi.xyz
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/seed-latam-delegate-communication-thread/13895/47?u=seedgov
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/103
v1.5 would be more beneficial to the DAO and proposals on the Forum
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/101?u=ocandocrypto
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/100?u=tane
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/99
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/96?u=castlecapital
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/93?u=mcfly
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/griff-green-delegate-communication-thread/25040/39?u=griff
I like adding the qualitative as a safe to try experiment to solve specific issues of the first iteration
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/govhack-devcon-in-bangkok-hack-humanity/26634/53?u=euphoria
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/89?u=0x_ultra
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/88
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/87?u=tekr0x.eth
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/11?u=ezr3al
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/85?u=duokongcrypto
It's a well considered proposal and they have addressed our concerns
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/18?u=bruce
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/82?u=todayindefi
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/81?u=larva
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/79?u=0xdonpepe
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/77?u=jojo
If someone wants to delegate me 100k arb I would join DIP, I also know a handful of others who would be interested but don't know how to get delegation - more importantly don't know how to campaign/network with folks who might be interested in pushing governance.
I would love to do it but don't have the arb to do so.
If someone wants to delegate me 100k arb I would join DIP, I also know a handful of others who would be interested but don't know how to get delegation - more importantly don't know how to campaign/network with folks who might be interested in pushing governance.
I would love to do it but don't have the arb to do so.
What are thoughts around some of the larger delegates distributing their vote to smaller more interested delegates and DIP would be a way for them to get paid for the services instead of using internal/company funds if it's only for a short term basis
The LevelK Delegation has cast its onchain vote FOR this proposal. Here is our reasoning: The Level K Delegation supports their being professional governance. The work involved should be compensated to support fair governance. Thank you to those who spent time drafting and submitting this proposal.
If someone wants to delegate me 100k arb I would join DIP, I also know a handful of others who would be interested but don't know how to get delegation - more importantly don't know how to campaign/network with folks who might be interested in pushing governance.
I would love to do it but don't have the arb to do so.
If someone wants to delegate me 100k arb I would join DIP, I also know a handful of others who would be interested but don't know how to get delegation - more importantly don't know how to campaign/network with folks who might be interested in pushing governance.
I would love to do it but don't have the arb to do so.
What are thoughts around some of the larger delegates distributing their vote to smaller more interested delegates and DIP would be a way for them to get paid for the services instead of using internal/company funds if it's only for a short term basis
The LevelK Delegation has cast its onchain vote FOR this proposal. Here is our reasoning: The Level K Delegation supports their being professional governance. The work involved should be compensated to support fair governance. Thank you to those who spent time drafting and submitting this proposal.
Thank you for this comprehensive proposal to renew the Delegate Incentive Program. The changes address many issues and we appreciate the effort to improve the quality of delegate participation. However, I have concerns about the feasibility of option v1.5. While we agree that a qualitative assessment could potentially lead to better outcomes, the proposed implementation seems extremely labor-intensive:
Thank you for this comprehensive proposal to renew the Delegate Incentive Program. The changes address many issues and we appreciate the effort to improve the quality of delegate participation. However, I have concerns about the feasibility of option v1.5. While we agree that a qualitative assessment could potentially lead to better outcomes, the proposed implementation seems extremely labor-intensive:
This approach raises several issues:
While the increased administrative budget for v1.5 acknowledges the additional work, I'm skeptical it's sufficient for such a time-consuming process. The mention of eventually developing AI tools for assessment is promising, but seems speculative at this stage.
Thank you for this comprehensive proposal to renew the Delegate Incentive Program. The changes address many issues and we appreciate the effort to improve the quality of delegate participation. However, I have concerns about the feasibility of option v1.5. While we agree that a qualitative assessment could potentially lead to better outcomes, the proposed implementation seems extremely labor-intensive:
Thank you for this comprehensive proposal to renew the Delegate Incentive Program. The changes address many issues and we appreciate the effort to improve the quality of delegate participation. However, I have concerns about the feasibility of option v1.5. While we agree that a qualitative assessment could potentially lead to better outcomes, the proposed implementation seems extremely labor-intensive:
This approach raises several issues:
While the increased administrative budget for v1.5 acknowledges the additional work, I'm skeptical it's sufficient for such a time-consuming process. The mention of eventually developing AI tools for assessment is promising, but seems speculative at this stage.
If I could, I would demonstrate the efficacy of my qualitative grading methodology by grading and publishing the quality of feedbacks on this discussion thread - it's only 67 of them and only one proposal 🙂
I liked the detailed approach to explain the delegate incentive program. Including multiple criteria gives dimension.
This is a catch 22 situation for small token holders.
If I could, I would demonstrate the efficacy of my qualitative grading methodology by grading and publishing the quality of feedbacks on this discussion thread - it's only 67 of them and only one proposal 🙂
I liked the detailed approach to explain the delegate incentive program. Including multiple criteria gives dimension.
This is a catch 22 situation for small token holders.
I totally agree with these points clearly made. Arbitrum needs more community participation which is at a very slow pace today.
We are for sure in support of the path that quality over quantity. But we do see a couple of areas that may improve:
as some delegates have pointed out, I have concerns regarding encouraging early over late replies. Since we already go for the quality path, whenever posted, quality matters. Actually, if there is a "late" reply with good quality, that one should be more valuable since it raises some points that others overlooked.
Regarding inventive distribution among 3 tiers, do we have a general expectation regarding that - maybe 20% / 40% / 30% and others may not be qualified? the administrator will have a pre-determined ratio among those 3 tiers since it's subjective calls.
We are for sure in support of the path that quality over quantity. But we do see a couple of areas that may improve:
as some delegates have pointed out, I have concerns regarding encouraging early over late replies. Since we already go for the quality path, whenever posted, quality matters. Actually, if there is a "late" reply with good quality, that one should be more valuable since it raises some points that others overlooked.
Regarding inventive distribution among 3 tiers, do we have a general expectation regarding that - maybe 20% / 40% / 30% and others may not be qualified? the administrator will have a pre-determined ratio among those 3 tiers since it's subjective calls.
But overall, we appreciate @SEEDGov for spearheading the initiative of quality over quantity. We believe this is the right path to go.
I totally agree with these points clearly made. Arbitrum needs more community participation which is at a very slow pace today.
We are for sure in support of the path that quality over quantity. But we do see a couple of areas that may improve:
as some delegates have pointed out, I have concerns regarding encouraging early over late replies. Since we already go for the quality path, whenever posted, quality matters. Actually, if there is a "late" reply with good quality, that one should be more valuable since it raises some points that others overlooked.
Regarding inventive distribution among 3 tiers, do we have a general expectation regarding that - maybe 20% / 40% / 30% and others may not be qualified? the administrator will have a pre-determined ratio among those 3 tiers since it's subjective calls.
We are for sure in support of the path that quality over quantity. But we do see a couple of areas that may improve:
as some delegates have pointed out, I have concerns regarding encouraging early over late replies. Since we already go for the quality path, whenever posted, quality matters. Actually, if there is a "late" reply with good quality, that one should be more valuable since it raises some points that others overlooked.
Regarding inventive distribution among 3 tiers, do we have a general expectation regarding that - maybe 20% / 40% / 30% and others may not be qualified? the administrator will have a pre-determined ratio among those 3 tiers since it's subjective calls.
But overall, we appreciate @SEEDGov for spearheading the initiative of quality over quantity. We believe this is the right path to go.
We support this proposal, and seeing the success of the first iteration of the incentive program we believe the extension presents a good opportunity for the DAO to nurture a growing community of delegates.
Depending on the outcome of this season of delegate incentives, we would be happy to continue support of these programs in the future.
We support this proposal, and seeing the success of the first iteration of the incentive program we believe the extension presents a good opportunity for the DAO to nurture a growing community of delegates.
Depending on the outcome of this season of delegate incentives, we would be happy to continue support of these programs in the future.
The results are in for the [Non-Constitutional] Arbitrum DAO Delegate Incentive Program on-chain proposal.
See how the community voted and more Arbitrum stats: https://dhive.io/proposal/1403
Voting has ended!
===============
[[Non-Constitutional] Arbitrum DAO Delegate Incentive Program](https://www.tally.xyz/gov/eip155:42161:0x789fC99093B09aD01C34DC7251D0C89ce743e5a4/proposal/2433597000864761163)
### Final Votes
| **Category** | **Result** | **Details** |
|----------------------|------------------|-----------------------------|
| **Quorum reached** | ✅ | 166.75M of 119.31M |
| **Majority Support** | ✅ | |
| **For** | | 148.93M (89.2%) |
| **Against** | | 179.74k (0.1%) |
| **Abstain** | | 17.82M (10.7%) |
* * *
I am a bot. Questions? Contact [email protected]
Onchain voting for this proposal is ending within 24 hours:
[Vote on Tally: [Non-Constitutional] Arbitrum DAO Delegate Incentive Program](https://www.tally.xyz/gov/eip155:42161:0x789fC99093B09aD01C34DC7251D0C89ce743e5a4/proposal/2433597000864761163)
* * *
I am a bot. Questions? Contact [email protected]
The results are in for the [Non-Constitutional] Arbitrum DAO Delegate Incentive Program on-chain proposal.
See how the community voted and more Arbitrum stats: https://dhive.io/proposal/1403
Voting has ended!
===============
[[Non-Constitutional] Arbitrum DAO Delegate Incentive Program](https://www.tally.xyz/gov/eip155:42161:0x789fC99093B09aD01C34DC7251D0C89ce743e5a4/proposal/2433597000864761163)
### Final Votes
| **Category** | **Result** | **Details** |
|----------------------|------------------|-----------------------------|
| **Quorum reached** | ✅ | 166.75M of 119.31M |
| **Majority Support** | ✅ | |
| **For** | | 148.93M (89.2%) |
| **Against** | | 179.74k (0.1%) |
| **Abstain** | | 17.82M (10.7%) |
* * *
I am a bot. Questions? Contact [email protected]
Onchain voting for this proposal is ending within 24 hours:
[Vote on Tally: [Non-Constitutional] Arbitrum DAO Delegate Incentive Program](https://www.tally.xyz/gov/eip155:42161:0x789fC99093B09aD01C34DC7251D0C89ce743e5a4/proposal/2433597000864761163)
* * *
I am a bot. Questions? Contact [email protected]
Voting has started for this proposal! Vote on Tally: [Non-Constitutional] Arbitrum DAO Delegate Incentive Program
I am a bot. Questions? Contact [email protected]
Hi @SEEDGov
To confirm, delegates already enrolled in the first iteration will NOT need to complete the KYC again if v1.5 is approved. They will only need to sign updated agreements with the AF.
Thanks
Thank you for your input.
As communicated to you previously, there is no additional KYC process involved for the extension of the DIP, only amendments for those that qualify for October and November.
In general, the compliance process has to be robust as possible and and a little tedious, because otherwise it creates room for human error, as seen in the past with certain incentive programs :eyes:
Thank you for your input.
As communicated to you previously, there is no additional KYC process involved for the extension of the DIP, only amendments for those that qualify for October and November.
In general, the compliance process has to be robust as possible and and a little tedious, because otherwise it creates room for human error, as seen in the past with certain incentive programs :eyes:
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/arbitrumdao-multi-sig-best-practices/26712
Voting has started for this proposal! Vote on Tally: [Non-Constitutional] Arbitrum DAO Delegate Incentive Program
I am a bot. Questions? Contact [email protected]
Hi @SEEDGov
To confirm, delegates already enrolled in the first iteration will NOT need to complete the KYC again if v1.5 is approved. They will only need to sign updated agreements with the AF.
Thanks
Thank you for your input.
As communicated to you previously, there is no additional KYC process involved for the extension of the DIP, only amendments for those that qualify for October and November.
In general, the compliance process has to be robust as possible and and a little tedious, because otherwise it creates room for human error, as seen in the past with certain incentive programs :eyes:
Thank you for your input.
As communicated to you previously, there is no additional KYC process involved for the extension of the DIP, only amendments for those that qualify for October and November.
In general, the compliance process has to be robust as possible and and a little tedious, because otherwise it creates room for human error, as seen in the past with certain incentive programs :eyes:
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/arbitrumdao-multi-sig-best-practices/26712
Gm, gm :sparkles:
The results are in for the [Non-Constitutional] Arbitrum DAO Delegate Incentive Program off-chain proposal.
See how the community voted and more Arbitrum stats: https://dhive.io/proposal/1383
Gm, gm :sparkles:
The results are in for the [Non-Constitutional] Arbitrum DAO Delegate Incentive Program off-chain proposal.
See how the community voted and more Arbitrum stats: https://dhive.io/proposal/1383
Today the program is paying a maximum of $2,750 for 100% TP, which we believe is a relatively low amount for the volume of assignments currently at ArbitrumDAO. The idea of offering predictable incentives is that delegates will devote more time to ArbitrumDAO, professionalize to increase quality, have assurances that their efforts will be properly compensated, and continue to choose ArbitrumDAO over other attractive alternatives that will eventually appear.
Today the program is paying a maximum of $2,750 for 100% TP, which we believe is a relatively low amount for the volume of assignments currently at ArbitrumDAO. The idea of offering predictable incentives is that delegates will devote more time to ArbitrumDAO, professionalize to increase quality, have assurances that their efforts will be properly compensated, and continue to choose ArbitrumDAO over other attractive alternatives that will eventually appear.
Support
I also believe contrary to some comments, that the proposed amount is adequate, as we still need to be competitive compared to other big DAOs and L1s (namely: Optimism, Zksync, Uniswap, Maker, Aave... all of them offer more compensation still than the proposed amount). I think lowering the amount to $3,000-5,000 as counter-proposed would be detrimental.
Today the program is paying a maximum of $2,750 for 100% TP, which we believe is a relatively low amount for the volume of assignments currently at ArbitrumDAO. The idea of offering predictable incentives is that delegates will devote more time to ArbitrumDAO, professionalize to increase quality, have assurances that their efforts will be properly compensated, and continue to choose ArbitrumDAO over other attractive alternatives that will eventually appear.
Today the program is paying a maximum of $2,750 for 100% TP, which we believe is a relatively low amount for the volume of assignments currently at ArbitrumDAO. The idea of offering predictable incentives is that delegates will devote more time to ArbitrumDAO, professionalize to increase quality, have assurances that their efforts will be properly compensated, and continue to choose ArbitrumDAO over other attractive alternatives that will eventually appear.
Support
I also believe contrary to some comments, that the proposed amount is adequate, as we still need to be competitive compared to other big DAOs and L1s (namely: Optimism, Zksync, Uniswap, Maker, Aave... all of them offer more compensation still than the proposed amount). I think lowering the amount to $3,000-5,000 as counter-proposed would be detrimental.
Hey @SEEDGov - FYI the Governance Calendar isn't gated, so calls can be added by anyone who proposes to host :slight_smile:
Would you want an extra slot to be added to the Open Discussion of Proposal(s) - Bi-weekly Governance Call or the Arbitrum Reporting Governance Call? And are you suggesting that this extra slot should be a repetition or that alternating sessions should be hosted at different times?
Hey @SEEDGov - FYI the Governance Calendar isn't gated, so calls can be added by anyone who proposes to host :slight_smile:
Would you want an extra slot to be added to the Open Discussion of Proposal(s) - Bi-weekly Governance Call or the Arbitrum Reporting Governance Call? And are you suggesting that this extra slot should be a repetition or that alternating sessions should be hosted at different times?
It is also important to note that the monthly 'Arbitrum Open Governance Call' is now referred to as 'Arbitrum Reporting Governance Call' - see governance calendar here: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/embed?src=c_4157985d2452dfd8a91b6a36bccab37deb9bffe9053a4b9bcc4e9fff9ef02924@group.calendar.google.com&ctz=Europe/Warsaw
Perhaps this proposal can also get sentiment on what times best suit delegates.
Hey @SEEDGov - FYI the Governance Calendar isn't gated, so calls can be added by anyone who proposes to host :slight_smile:
Would you want an extra slot to be added to the Open Discussion of Proposal(s) - Bi-weekly Governance Call or the Arbitrum Reporting Governance Call? And are you suggesting that this extra slot should be a repetition or that alternating sessions should be hosted at different times?
Hey @SEEDGov - FYI the Governance Calendar isn't gated, so calls can be added by anyone who proposes to host :slight_smile:
Would you want an extra slot to be added to the Open Discussion of Proposal(s) - Bi-weekly Governance Call or the Arbitrum Reporting Governance Call? And are you suggesting that this extra slot should be a repetition or that alternating sessions should be hosted at different times?
It is also important to note that the monthly 'Arbitrum Open Governance Call' is now referred to as 'Arbitrum Reporting Governance Call' - see governance calendar here: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/embed?src=c_4157985d2452dfd8a91b6a36bccab37deb9bffe9053a4b9bcc4e9fff9ef02924@group.calendar.google.com&ctz=Europe/Warsaw
Perhaps this proposal can also get sentiment on what times best suit delegates.
By adjusting incentives and requirements, the proposal efficiently professionalizes the role of delegates, encouraging them to dedicate more time and effort to Arbitrum's governance. This shift towards more informed decision-making and higher quality contributions should lead to better outcomes for the entire ecosystem.
The proposal also greatly improves predictability and fairness in delegate compensation. The new tiered structure, denominated in USD, provides stability for delegates while maintaining alignment with ARB token performance. This approach appears well-balanced and should attract proactive and committed participants while preserving the DAO's interests.
By adjusting incentives and requirements, the proposal efficiently professionalizes the role of delegates, encouraging them to dedicate more time and effort to Arbitrum's governance. This shift towards more informed decision-making and higher quality contributions should lead to better outcomes for the entire ecosystem.
The proposal also greatly improves predictability and fairness in delegate compensation. The new tiered structure, denominated in USD, provides stability for delegates while maintaining alignment with ARB token performance. This approach appears well-balanced and should attract proactive and committed participants while preserving the DAO's interests.
The proposal is also efficiently embedding built-in flexibility and commitment to continuous improvement. By allowing for ongoing adjustments to program parameters and actively seeking feedback, the DIP can evolve with the needs of the DAO, ensuring its long-term effectiveness. We believe that the inclusion of such adaptability mechanism is often underestimated, yet it is very important.
The transparency that the proposal encourages is arguably its most meaninful component. By encouraging more public discussions and feedback in the forum, the program fosters an environment of default and inherent openness that is essential for building and cultivating trust and collective understanding of the rationales, thinking and mentality of others.
The only aspect in regards to which we have reservations pertains to the eligibility thresholds. The 50k+ ARB voting power and 60% onchain voting participation over 90 days may be overly restrictive and discouraging towards potential, new delegates. We believe it is worth revisiting these criteria to ensure a diverse and inclusive delegate pool.
Other than that, Deelabs is in support of the proposal.
By adjusting incentives and requirements, the proposal efficiently professionalizes the role of delegates, encouraging them to dedicate more time and effort to Arbitrum's governance. This shift towards more informed decision-making and higher quality contributions should lead to better outcomes for the entire ecosystem.
The proposal also greatly improves predictability and fairness in delegate compensation. The new tiered structure, denominated in USD, provides stability for delegates while maintaining alignment with ARB token performance. This approach appears well-balanced and should attract proactive and committed participants while preserving the DAO's interests.
By adjusting incentives and requirements, the proposal efficiently professionalizes the role of delegates, encouraging them to dedicate more time and effort to Arbitrum's governance. This shift towards more informed decision-making and higher quality contributions should lead to better outcomes for the entire ecosystem.
The proposal also greatly improves predictability and fairness in delegate compensation. The new tiered structure, denominated in USD, provides stability for delegates while maintaining alignment with ARB token performance. This approach appears well-balanced and should attract proactive and committed participants while preserving the DAO's interests.
The proposal is also efficiently embedding built-in flexibility and commitment to continuous improvement. By allowing for ongoing adjustments to program parameters and actively seeking feedback, the DIP can evolve with the needs of the DAO, ensuring its long-term effectiveness. We believe that the inclusion of such adaptability mechanism is often underestimated, yet it is very important.
The transparency that the proposal encourages is arguably its most meaninful component. By encouraging more public discussions and feedback in the forum, the program fosters an environment of default and inherent openness that is essential for building and cultivating trust and collective understanding of the rationales, thinking and mentality of others.
The only aspect in regards to which we have reservations pertains to the eligibility thresholds. The 50k+ ARB voting power and 60% onchain voting participation over 90 days may be overly restrictive and discouraging towards potential, new delegates. We believe it is worth revisiting these criteria to ensure a diverse and inclusive delegate pool.
Other than that, Deelabs is in support of the proposal.
Suggested Optimization:
Hey @cp0x !
Thanks for your thoughtful message and for taking the time to walk through each of the stated goals. Let us address each of the points raised, one by one.
Hey @cp0x !
Thanks for your thoughtful message and for taking the time to walk through each of the stated goals. Let us address each of the points raised, one by one.
When this proposal was approved, it was under the assumption that the DAO would continue growing in both delegates’ participation and responsibilities. The target of “50 delegates” was meant in the context of having 100+ contributors competing for those spots.
With the DAO's shifting priorities and reduced operational burden for delegates, we believe this original goal may no longer be fully aligned with the current context. It’s important to note that this proposal was approved nearly 9 months ago, and naturally, in a fast-moving environment like crypto, some expectations become outdated.
Also, SEEDGov does not control delegate activity nor the overall level of engagement in the DAO. Therefore, in months with less activity, a smaller number of incentivized delegates is not only expected — it’s also reasonable. Otherwise, we’d be distributing funds just for the sake of it.
Regarding the numbers: as shown in the May report, 78 delegates applied to the program — up from 61 in October. That’s a 27.86% increase in registered participants over the first 7 months of the program.
While not all delegates are actively contributing, engagement — measured by participation in the program — has indeed increased. Many delegates may be passive or less active due to uncertainty in rewards, which is something we’re actively addressing. But in terms of total applicants, the program is growing.
This might be a misunderstanding: the Average TP Rate is calculated only among rewarded delegates, not all applicants. Including all applicants would be misleading, especially since many towards the bottom of the ranking are no longer active in the Arbitrum DAO.
Between November and May, the average TP rate among rewarded delegates was 79.23%, with 19,411.62 points awarded across 245 rewards. So this KPI can be reasonably considered met.
That said, we agree the DIP needs new KPIs that better reflect the DAO’s evolving context, and we plan to introduce updated metrics in future iterations.
This has been formally met. And based on the rationale provided and the data in our midterm report, we believe the changes achieved their intended goals. Naturally, we welcome feedback to continue refining them.
Let us provide context on some of the delays:
A few additional considerations:
We aim to address all disputes within four days, collectively. Most of the examples cited fall within that range or are slightly beyond it.
As for follow-ups, we often choose not to engage in extended back-and-forth after providing a final decision, especially when the dispute involves subjective parameters. Once a judgment has been made and communicated clearly, the conversation has, by definition, concluded.
Again, I share all of this in the spirit of transparency and constructive feedback — not as criticism for its own sake, but to help the program succeed in the long term. Thank you to everyone involved for the ongoing work
We truly appreciate the feedback and the spirit in which it was delivered. We also welcome any additional questions or clarifications in private — especially related to metrics — as we believe it’s important to avoid the spread of inaccurate data.
Thanks again for the engagement and commitment to improving the program.
Warm regards,
SEEDGov
I believe that such an attitude toward delegates is unacceptable — specifically, the disregard for their comments on your work and on how you evaluate their performance
I believe that such an attitude toward delegates is unacceptable — specifically, the disregard for their comments on your work and on how you evaluate their performance
The very fact that you’re referring to subjective criteria shows that there’s a problem that no one is addressing. I find it inappropriate to treat delegates in a way where your opinion is presented as final and unquestionable. In this program, you act as legislator, executor, and judge all at once — meaning that no matter what others say, you can proceed however you want. This undermines trust in the system, where a delegate has no real way to defend their position, simply because you think differently and have framed everything around subjective parameters that you defined yourself.
That’s why it’s necessary to move toward objective delegate evaluations
Over time, delegates with less than 100K should be advocating in the community or elsewhere to gain more ARB delegation. However, they have made no progress. I believe they must be eliminated as they are gradually becoming parasites.
I fully recognize that running a program like this is a complex and important effort. Naturally, there are growing pains and unexpected challenges, especially in the early stages. Some degree of flexibility is understandable. However, enough time has passed to reflect on the overall progress and evaluate how well the goals outlined in the original proposal are being met.
While I understand there’s a dedicated thread for feedback, I’d like to briefly share some key observations here, as they speak directly to the alignment (or misalignment) between stated goals and actual outcomes:
I fully recognize that running a program like this is a complex and important effort. Naturally, there are growing pains and unexpected challenges, especially in the early stages. Some degree of flexibility is understandable. However, enough time has passed to reflect on the overall progress and evaluate how well the goals outlined in the original proposal are being met.
While I understand there’s a dedicated thread for feedback, I’d like to briefly share some key observations here, as they speak directly to the alignment (or misalignment) between stated goals and actual outcomes:
A few words on operational execution: “Payments to delegates are expected to be processed in ARB from the MSS between the 15th and 16th of each month” Unfortunately, this timeline hasn’t been consistently met:
“The DIP administrator will address the issue promptly, with a resolution expected within 4 days.” This expectation has also been difficult to uphold:
Given that addressing disputes is a core function of the role, I believe it’s worth revisiting how communication and responsiveness could be improved moving forward.
Again, I share all of this in the spirit of transparency and constructive feedback — not as criticism for its own sake, but to help the program succeed in the long term. Thank you to everyone involved for the ongoing work
Some of the top delegates have millions of delegated tokens, but are not holders themselves.
It seems to me that the program's goal is not to encourage the purchase of tokens (there is no goal to increase the value of ARB), but on the contrary, only to increase delegations.
Voted FOR: Arbitrum DAO Delegate Incentive Program
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/alex-lumley-savvy-dao-delegate-communication-thread/26147/41
After consideration, the @SEEDgov delegation has decided to “ABSTAIN” on this proposal at the Tally vote.
Considering that we are the proposers and have economic interests involved, we believe it is ethically correct to abstain from this vote.
HI, I have a suggestion: the ARB token threshold should be increased to 100K for delegates to receive rewards. As the value of ARB tokens declines, the rules should be revised—for example, requiring delegates to hold more than $50,000USD worth of ARB tokens. Otherwise, delegates may simply sell off their rewards immediately or create new accounts under their spouse’s or family members’ names to rejoin the incentive program.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We’re voting FOR the proposal.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We’re voting FOR the proposal.
We previously supported the proposal during temp-check and we voted in favor of version 1.5 as it introduced some additional qualitative criteria that we think is the right approach. The questions and points we raised with our comment when we voted during temp-check have been addressed, and we are now comfortable voting in favor of the proposal onchain.
We’d like to stress once more that we’ll rely on SEEDGov to monitor the program and communicate its progress, especially with the addition of the qualitative criteria. We expect them to attend all the monthly oversight calls to provide updates and, most importantly, highlight anything that might not work as expected or intended.
With SEEDGov having more control and discretion over the program, they also have more responsibility. We expect that they will communicate with delegates proactively and we’ll be holding them accountable for the proper administration of the program. Specifically, and as noted in our previous comment, we’d like to know whether it makes sense continuing with v1.5, or if it’s more sensible to fallback to the previous version.
DAOplomats is voting FOR this proposal on Tally.
We voted in favor of v1.5 during the temp check, and we are maintaining our stance during this onchain vote.
We vote FOR the proposal on Tally.
We maintain our decision made on Snapshot as below and continue to support the effort done by the SEED Gov team.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/100?u=tane
For Tally: I am supportive of such a proposal to attract and keep talent (this can already be seen in the Incentive Program Delegate Application forum post) and for the same reasons stated below. Voted Abstain.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/97?u=olimpio
Delegate apathy exists and I don't see a solution other than staking. Only financial incentive will force holders to delegate their tokens, without this only the most active ones do it
Many of today's good and active delegates who take part in the program have less than 100,000 tokens. They actively take part every day in voting and criticizing proposals. These delegates have proven their integrity and usefulness through continued participation in the DAO. Increasing the threshold to 100k ARB would mean that it would be impossible for active participants of the DAO to further participate, which would lead to a decrease in the effectiveness of the DAO.
So I don't think it's a good idea
Many of today's good and active delegates who take part in the program have less than 100,000 tokens. They actively take part every day in voting and criticizing proposals. These delegates have proven their integrity and usefulness through continued participation in the DAO. Increasing the threshold to 100k ARB would mean that it would be impossible for active participants of the DAO to further participate, which would lead to a decrease in the effectiveness of the DAO.
So I don't think it's a good idea
Otherwise, delegates may simply sell off their rewards immediately or create new accounts under their spouse’s or family members’ names to rejoin the incentive program.
On the other hand, @newze you mention above, that a drop in the price of a token can lead to the emergence of dishonest schemes, which can also harm the DAO. In this case, it would be nice to make a threshold of 100k ARB or 50k $ only for new participants in the DIP 1.5 to prevent abuses as described above.
Suggested Optimization:
Hey @cp0x !
Thanks for your thoughtful message and for taking the time to walk through each of the stated goals. Let us address each of the points raised, one by one.
Hey @cp0x !
Thanks for your thoughtful message and for taking the time to walk through each of the stated goals. Let us address each of the points raised, one by one.
When this proposal was approved, it was under the assumption that the DAO would continue growing in both delegates’ participation and responsibilities. The target of “50 delegates” was meant in the context of having 100+ contributors competing for those spots.
With the DAO's shifting priorities and reduced operational burden for delegates, we believe this original goal may no longer be fully aligned with the current context. It’s important to note that this proposal was approved nearly 9 months ago, and naturally, in a fast-moving environment like crypto, some expectations become outdated.
Also, SEEDGov does not control delegate activity nor the overall level of engagement in the DAO. Therefore, in months with less activity, a smaller number of incentivized delegates is not only expected — it’s also reasonable. Otherwise, we’d be distributing funds just for the sake of it.
Regarding the numbers: as shown in the May report, 78 delegates applied to the program — up from 61 in October. That’s a 27.86% increase in registered participants over the first 7 months of the program.
While not all delegates are actively contributing, engagement — measured by participation in the program — has indeed increased. Many delegates may be passive or less active due to uncertainty in rewards, which is something we’re actively addressing. But in terms of total applicants, the program is growing.
This might be a misunderstanding: the Average TP Rate is calculated only among rewarded delegates, not all applicants. Including all applicants would be misleading, especially since many towards the bottom of the ranking are no longer active in the Arbitrum DAO.
Between November and May, the average TP rate among rewarded delegates was 79.23%, with 19,411.62 points awarded across 245 rewards. So this KPI can be reasonably considered met.
That said, we agree the DIP needs new KPIs that better reflect the DAO’s evolving context, and we plan to introduce updated metrics in future iterations.
This has been formally met. And based on the rationale provided and the data in our midterm report, we believe the changes achieved their intended goals. Naturally, we welcome feedback to continue refining them.
Let us provide context on some of the delays:
A few additional considerations:
We aim to address all disputes within four days, collectively. Most of the examples cited fall within that range or are slightly beyond it.
As for follow-ups, we often choose not to engage in extended back-and-forth after providing a final decision, especially when the dispute involves subjective parameters. Once a judgment has been made and communicated clearly, the conversation has, by definition, concluded.
Again, I share all of this in the spirit of transparency and constructive feedback — not as criticism for its own sake, but to help the program succeed in the long term. Thank you to everyone involved for the ongoing work
We truly appreciate the feedback and the spirit in which it was delivered. We also welcome any additional questions or clarifications in private — especially related to metrics — as we believe it’s important to avoid the spread of inaccurate data.
Thanks again for the engagement and commitment to improving the program.
Warm regards,
SEEDGov
I believe that such an attitude toward delegates is unacceptable — specifically, the disregard for their comments on your work and on how you evaluate their performance
I believe that such an attitude toward delegates is unacceptable — specifically, the disregard for their comments on your work and on how you evaluate their performance
The very fact that you’re referring to subjective criteria shows that there’s a problem that no one is addressing. I find it inappropriate to treat delegates in a way where your opinion is presented as final and unquestionable. In this program, you act as legislator, executor, and judge all at once — meaning that no matter what others say, you can proceed however you want. This undermines trust in the system, where a delegate has no real way to defend their position, simply because you think differently and have framed everything around subjective parameters that you defined yourself.
That’s why it’s necessary to move toward objective delegate evaluations
Over time, delegates with less than 100K should be advocating in the community or elsewhere to gain more ARB delegation. However, they have made no progress. I believe they must be eliminated as they are gradually becoming parasites.
I fully recognize that running a program like this is a complex and important effort. Naturally, there are growing pains and unexpected challenges, especially in the early stages. Some degree of flexibility is understandable. However, enough time has passed to reflect on the overall progress and evaluate how well the goals outlined in the original proposal are being met.
While I understand there’s a dedicated thread for feedback, I’d like to briefly share some key observations here, as they speak directly to the alignment (or misalignment) between stated goals and actual outcomes:
I fully recognize that running a program like this is a complex and important effort. Naturally, there are growing pains and unexpected challenges, especially in the early stages. Some degree of flexibility is understandable. However, enough time has passed to reflect on the overall progress and evaluate how well the goals outlined in the original proposal are being met.
While I understand there’s a dedicated thread for feedback, I’d like to briefly share some key observations here, as they speak directly to the alignment (or misalignment) between stated goals and actual outcomes:
A few words on operational execution: “Payments to delegates are expected to be processed in ARB from the MSS between the 15th and 16th of each month” Unfortunately, this timeline hasn’t been consistently met:
“The DIP administrator will address the issue promptly, with a resolution expected within 4 days.” This expectation has also been difficult to uphold:
Given that addressing disputes is a core function of the role, I believe it’s worth revisiting how communication and responsiveness could be improved moving forward.
Again, I share all of this in the spirit of transparency and constructive feedback — not as criticism for its own sake, but to help the program succeed in the long term. Thank you to everyone involved for the ongoing work
Some of the top delegates have millions of delegated tokens, but are not holders themselves.
It seems to me that the program's goal is not to encourage the purchase of tokens (there is no goal to increase the value of ARB), but on the contrary, only to increase delegations.
Voted FOR: Arbitrum DAO Delegate Incentive Program
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/alex-lumley-savvy-dao-delegate-communication-thread/26147/41
After consideration, the @SEEDgov delegation has decided to “ABSTAIN” on this proposal at the Tally vote.
Considering that we are the proposers and have economic interests involved, we believe it is ethically correct to abstain from this vote.
HI, I have a suggestion: the ARB token threshold should be increased to 100K for delegates to receive rewards. As the value of ARB tokens declines, the rules should be revised—for example, requiring delegates to hold more than $50,000USD worth of ARB tokens. Otherwise, delegates may simply sell off their rewards immediately or create new accounts under their spouse’s or family members’ names to rejoin the incentive program.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We’re voting FOR the proposal.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We’re voting FOR the proposal.
We previously supported the proposal during temp-check and we voted in favor of version 1.5 as it introduced some additional qualitative criteria that we think is the right approach. The questions and points we raised with our comment when we voted during temp-check have been addressed, and we are now comfortable voting in favor of the proposal onchain.
We’d like to stress once more that we’ll rely on SEEDGov to monitor the program and communicate its progress, especially with the addition of the qualitative criteria. We expect them to attend all the monthly oversight calls to provide updates and, most importantly, highlight anything that might not work as expected or intended.
With SEEDGov having more control and discretion over the program, they also have more responsibility. We expect that they will communicate with delegates proactively and we’ll be holding them accountable for the proper administration of the program. Specifically, and as noted in our previous comment, we’d like to know whether it makes sense continuing with v1.5, or if it’s more sensible to fallback to the previous version.
DAOplomats is voting FOR this proposal on Tally.
We voted in favor of v1.5 during the temp check, and we are maintaining our stance during this onchain vote.
We vote FOR the proposal on Tally.
We maintain our decision made on Snapshot as below and continue to support the effort done by the SEED Gov team.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/100?u=tane
For Tally: I am supportive of such a proposal to attract and keep talent (this can already be seen in the Incentive Program Delegate Application forum post) and for the same reasons stated below. Voted Abstain.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/97?u=olimpio
Delegate apathy exists and I don't see a solution other than staking. Only financial incentive will force holders to delegate their tokens, without this only the most active ones do it
Many of today's good and active delegates who take part in the program have less than 100,000 tokens. They actively take part every day in voting and criticizing proposals. These delegates have proven their integrity and usefulness through continued participation in the DAO. Increasing the threshold to 100k ARB would mean that it would be impossible for active participants of the DAO to further participate, which would lead to a decrease in the effectiveness of the DAO.
So I don't think it's a good idea
Many of today's good and active delegates who take part in the program have less than 100,000 tokens. They actively take part every day in voting and criticizing proposals. These delegates have proven their integrity and usefulness through continued participation in the DAO. Increasing the threshold to 100k ARB would mean that it would be impossible for active participants of the DAO to further participate, which would lead to a decrease in the effectiveness of the DAO.
So I don't think it's a good idea
Otherwise, delegates may simply sell off their rewards immediately or create new accounts under their spouse’s or family members’ names to rejoin the incentive program.
On the other hand, @newze you mention above, that a drop in the price of a token can lead to the emergence of dishonest schemes, which can also harm the DAO. In this case, it would be nice to make a threshold of 100k ARB or 50k $ only for new participants in the DIP 1.5 to prevent abuses as described above.
Voted FOR: Arbitrum DAO Delegate Incentive Program
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/alex-lumley-savvy-dao-delegate-communication-thread/26147/41
See Commenting Rationale for Snapshot: https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/114?u=alexlumley
=== COMMENTARY RATIONALE ===
After consideration, the @SEEDgov delegation has decided to “ABSTAIN” on this proposal at the Tally vote.
Considering that we are the proposers and have economic interests involved, we believe it is ethically correct to abstain from this vote.
We also want to thank all the Arbitrum DAO delegates for their overwhelming support of the proposal! Throughout this process, we have received an immense amount of valuable feedback that has allowed us to build a more robust proposal, reaffirming the critical role of delegates in fostering pluralistic and intelligent governance.
The Tally vote was approved with 89.21% of the votes and the Delegate Incentive Program v1.5 will start in November as planned.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros Labs DAO governance team, composed of @Blueweb, @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting FOR this proposal on Tally.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros Labs DAO governance team, composed of @Blueweb, @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting FOR this proposal on Tally.
We believe that these improvements will encourage deeper and more consistent participation from delegates in governance, helping to ensure a more engaged and effective Arbitrum DAO.
Rest our overall thoughts remain the same as expressed in our rationale during the Snapshot voting.
We are voting FOR DIP V1.5 for this proposal.
We want to mention that our feedback from this comment was heard and implemented, which we appreciate.
The minor changes from v1.1 to v1.5 are welcomed especially the new rubric-based system. This seems well-suited to address the diverse feedback across the DAO and will likely encourage deeper and more consistent participation from delegates in governance.
We would love to see how the upper cap of 50 delegates could be lifted if the $7,000 per delegate budget is not exhausted, and the 51st delegate qualifies for the last tier allowing more delegates to qualify for incentives.
Lastly, we hope that the subjective scoring will become more objective as the program progresses.
gm, voted FOR on Tally.
I think the new system is an improvement vs the previous program. Curious to see how this "professionalization" of the delegates will look like.
I would suggest to keep adjusting the KPIs as the program goes on:
gm, voted FOR on Tally.
I think the new system is an improvement vs the previous program. Curious to see how this "professionalization" of the delegates will look like.
I would suggest to keep adjusting the KPIs as the program goes on:
We ultimately need to measure and focus on the delegates' impact. The risk with the current metrics is that 100 people could blindly sign and comment with chat-GPT without making any real contribution.
We're voting FOR this proposal on Tally for the reasons outlined at the Snapshot stage.
I voted FOR in Tally. The enhancements will create a stronger delegates cohort.
voting For the current onchain proposal because this is one of the most experimental and innovative delegate incentive programs I’ve seen. And I think it’s worth trying it out for 12 months.
I am voting FOR this proposal on Tally, for the same reasons outlined when the Snapshot vote took place:
I am voting FOR this proposal on Tally, for the same reasons outlined when the Snapshot vote took place:
In version 1.5, I see significant progress towards encouraging valuable participation. I encourage @SEEDGov team to experiment as much as possible and be creative in detecting and assigning participation points. Despite the rubric, many situations will arise that don’t fit into the pre-designed structures, and I trust the team’s judgment and fairness in managing the system. I also hope this version’s approval represents a vote of confidence from all delegates in the criteria they choose, accepting that there is a high degree of subjectivity in this iteration. I don’t see a better way to experiment with something like this.
We Voted for the proposal on Tally
Rationale
-Rationale remains mostly the same as Snapshot as the updates are supplementing the previous proposal instead of amending it. -Lifting min threshold of onchain voting participation from 60% to 75% can better filter out the active delegate candidates
I voted FOR this proposal on Tally for the reasons outlined below.
I voted FOR - DIP 1.5. The SeedGov team has done an admirable job of administering the delegate incentive program. I’m comfortable with the 1.5 approach which gives reviewers the ability to make a more qualitative assessment of delegate contribution based on public forum comments. The reality is that simply commenting on a forum post does not necessarily create value for the DAO. As a proposal creator/owner, I’ve observed significant differences in the quality of delegate contribution to the proposal process and agree compensation should be adjusted accordingly.
I voted FOR this proposal on Tally for the reasons outlined below.
I voted FOR - DIP 1.5. The SeedGov team has done an admirable job of administering the delegate incentive program. I’m comfortable with the 1.5 approach which gives reviewers the ability to make a more qualitative assessment of delegate contribution based on public forum comments. The reality is that simply commenting on a forum post does not necessarily create value for the DAO. As a proposal creator/owner, I’ve observed significant differences in the quality of delegate contribution to the proposal process and agree compensation should be adjusted accordingly.
I’m all for these changes and will try to achieve them in this program:
Raising the threshold to 75%: I have no idea to raising the threshold to 75% cause I will follow what helps the DAO develop. This change will increase delegate participation and is not too hard to achieve :)
Increasing Delegates’ Feedback to 30%: I think It will hold delegates responsible for their participation :), pushing them to check the forum regularly to give qualitative feedback on time. If they don’t, they’ll miss out on important discussions.
Total Participation to 65%: I agree that many delegates can easily hit the 60% with their tally voting, I think this is a reasonable step.
I voted in favour especially for v1.5. A proper DIP is important to keep a DAO alive and secure against governance attacks. Although this isn't the case currently, its better to be safe than sorry. Thanks to @seedlatam for tackling this proposal and reading through many comments from different user.
Voted FOR: Incentive programs showed that you can get very active and engaging governance in your DAO with programs like this. As a DAO you want the best kind of people making decisions, giving feedback on proposals, attending weekly calls, etc. It takes a lot of time to be active in the governance so incentives like this help bring smart, experienced, and talented people to your DAO. I love to see that my suggestion was accepted. Now delegates will get bonus points (BP) if they attend Report Calls and Open Discussion proposals calls.
I vote in favor of this new program. I believe that the parameters proposed in the "Delegates Feedback" rubric are fair and will result in helpful feedback, which will ultimately add value to ARB. As a participant in the program, I hope the new phase starts with patience and have good results.
Voting in favor as I already did in previous discussions. This program proved to have a positive impact and I'm sure that this new version will bring even more positive outcomes. You can find my previous rationale here: https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/89
Just voting FOR here, as I’ve explained my reasoning before and I’m sticking with it.
Also, thank you Raam for confirming that those of us involved since the first iteration won’t have to go through the KYC process again.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/101?u=ocandocrypto
We've posted the proposal on Tally and voting will begin this Thursday.
We would like to thank those who continued providing feedback to ensure the best possible iteration of this proposal.
Also, we want to thank @raam, and based on his confirmation, we have amended our proposal to reflect that
How do we increase overall ARB holder participation to delegate and redelegate based on the actions of delegates?
First, it's important to clarify that the Arbitrum Foundation carries out the KYC process and is not the program administrator's responsibility. We act as intermediaries between the delegates and the AF by trying to make the workflow as simple as possible. The process for KYC is something like this:
1- A delegate qualifies to receive incentives.
First, it's important to clarify that the Arbitrum Foundation carries out the KYC process and is not the program administrator's responsibility. We act as intermediaries between the delegates and the AF by trying to make the workflow as simple as possible. The process for KYC is something like this:
1- A delegate qualifies to receive incentives.
2- The Program Administrator sends a forum message to the delegate to ensure they start conversations with AF's Compliance Team.
3- The delegate completes KYC process with AF.
4- The Program Administrator receives an email from AF telling them that X delegate has completed KYC.
5- The Program Administrator sends a forum message to the delegate to double-check if the KYCed address is correct.
6- The Program Administrator asks MSS (previously the Program's Multisig) to execute the payment.
7- Payments are published in our Payment Distribution Thread.
We know that the KYC process can be a bit tedious for delegates who qualify for compensation, and sometimes even for the program administrator, as there are sometimes some problems:
Coordination issues between Compliance and Delegates.
Delegates do not entirely understand the necessary steps to do KYC.
Long wait periods until delegates can receive payments.
Delayed payments mean angry delegates.
Delayed KYCs also mean that the Program Administrator must critically monitor payment flow to avoid a mistake, which can be critical for DIP. You can see payment flow in our Payment Distribution Thread
is it possible those who have a history of meeting the thresholds can apply early to avoid some of the possible delays this go around?
Since KYC's amendments must be done again for DIP Temporary Extension, we started conversations with the AF team to accelerate the process. We tried to start the KYC process early for those delegates who received incentives during the six months of the original program (your delegation included). Still, unfortunately, we weren't allowed to proceed until we had the monthly results.
We know that the KYC process is critical and that some points can be improved to make it less tedious for delegates. We are happy to look for solutions for this process.
@cliffton.eth @raam, how do you guys think we can smooth the process and improve the experience for all the parties involved?
Existing delegates in the program will be required to renew their KYC, though they will not need to re-register for the program.
We have voted FOR the DIP V1.5 option.
We believe that as DAO members, it is our responsibility to continuously generate new ideas for the DAO and the future of Arbitrum. These ideas should be thoroughly discussed to ensure the most beneficial course of action is taken in the most efficient manner. DIP V1.1 falls short in identifying which delegates contribute the most significantly to the DAO. In contrast, DIP V1.5, with its additional criteria, represents a significant improvement and fosters a dynamic environment of ongoing discussion.
I am very glad to see the Delegate Incentive Program being renewed and for it to be implemented over the course of a year. The budget seems reasonable, and the increase in monthly compensation for delegates is totally justified, given that the price of ARB has dropped over 65% YTD. Adding bonus points for participating in governance calls is something I was eager to see in this new version because I’m sure this will encourage active engagement that will translate into better-informed voting. Overall, I am very happy with the proposal and will, of course, be supporting it.
Voted FOR: Arbitrum DAO Delegate Incentive Program
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/alex-lumley-savvy-dao-delegate-communication-thread/26147/41
See Commenting Rationale for Snapshot: https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/114?u=alexlumley
=== COMMENTARY RATIONALE ===
After consideration, the @SEEDgov delegation has decided to “ABSTAIN” on this proposal at the Tally vote.
Considering that we are the proposers and have economic interests involved, we believe it is ethically correct to abstain from this vote.
We also want to thank all the Arbitrum DAO delegates for their overwhelming support of the proposal! Throughout this process, we have received an immense amount of valuable feedback that has allowed us to build a more robust proposal, reaffirming the critical role of delegates in fostering pluralistic and intelligent governance.
The Tally vote was approved with 89.21% of the votes and the Delegate Incentive Program v1.5 will start in November as planned.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros Labs DAO governance team, composed of @Blueweb, @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting FOR this proposal on Tally.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros Labs DAO governance team, composed of @Blueweb, @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting FOR this proposal on Tally.
We believe that these improvements will encourage deeper and more consistent participation from delegates in governance, helping to ensure a more engaged and effective Arbitrum DAO.
Rest our overall thoughts remain the same as expressed in our rationale during the Snapshot voting.
We are voting FOR DIP V1.5 for this proposal.
We want to mention that our feedback from this comment was heard and implemented, which we appreciate.
The minor changes from v1.1 to v1.5 are welcomed especially the new rubric-based system. This seems well-suited to address the diverse feedback across the DAO and will likely encourage deeper and more consistent participation from delegates in governance.
We would love to see how the upper cap of 50 delegates could be lifted if the $7,000 per delegate budget is not exhausted, and the 51st delegate qualifies for the last tier allowing more delegates to qualify for incentives.
Lastly, we hope that the subjective scoring will become more objective as the program progresses.
gm, voted FOR on Tally.
I think the new system is an improvement vs the previous program. Curious to see how this "professionalization" of the delegates will look like.
I would suggest to keep adjusting the KPIs as the program goes on:
gm, voted FOR on Tally.
I think the new system is an improvement vs the previous program. Curious to see how this "professionalization" of the delegates will look like.
I would suggest to keep adjusting the KPIs as the program goes on:
We ultimately need to measure and focus on the delegates' impact. The risk with the current metrics is that 100 people could blindly sign and comment with chat-GPT without making any real contribution.
We're voting FOR this proposal on Tally for the reasons outlined at the Snapshot stage.
I voted FOR in Tally. The enhancements will create a stronger delegates cohort.
voting For the current onchain proposal because this is one of the most experimental and innovative delegate incentive programs I’ve seen. And I think it’s worth trying it out for 12 months.
I am voting FOR this proposal on Tally, for the same reasons outlined when the Snapshot vote took place:
I am voting FOR this proposal on Tally, for the same reasons outlined when the Snapshot vote took place:
In version 1.5, I see significant progress towards encouraging valuable participation. I encourage @SEEDGov team to experiment as much as possible and be creative in detecting and assigning participation points. Despite the rubric, many situations will arise that don’t fit into the pre-designed structures, and I trust the team’s judgment and fairness in managing the system. I also hope this version’s approval represents a vote of confidence from all delegates in the criteria they choose, accepting that there is a high degree of subjectivity in this iteration. I don’t see a better way to experiment with something like this.
We Voted for the proposal on Tally
Rationale
-Rationale remains mostly the same as Snapshot as the updates are supplementing the previous proposal instead of amending it. -Lifting min threshold of onchain voting participation from 60% to 75% can better filter out the active delegate candidates
I voted FOR this proposal on Tally for the reasons outlined below.
I voted FOR - DIP 1.5. The SeedGov team has done an admirable job of administering the delegate incentive program. I’m comfortable with the 1.5 approach which gives reviewers the ability to make a more qualitative assessment of delegate contribution based on public forum comments. The reality is that simply commenting on a forum post does not necessarily create value for the DAO. As a proposal creator/owner, I’ve observed significant differences in the quality of delegate contribution to the proposal process and agree compensation should be adjusted accordingly.
I voted FOR this proposal on Tally for the reasons outlined below.
I voted FOR - DIP 1.5. The SeedGov team has done an admirable job of administering the delegate incentive program. I’m comfortable with the 1.5 approach which gives reviewers the ability to make a more qualitative assessment of delegate contribution based on public forum comments. The reality is that simply commenting on a forum post does not necessarily create value for the DAO. As a proposal creator/owner, I’ve observed significant differences in the quality of delegate contribution to the proposal process and agree compensation should be adjusted accordingly.
I’m all for these changes and will try to achieve them in this program:
Raising the threshold to 75%: I have no idea to raising the threshold to 75% cause I will follow what helps the DAO develop. This change will increase delegate participation and is not too hard to achieve :)
Increasing Delegates’ Feedback to 30%: I think It will hold delegates responsible for their participation :), pushing them to check the forum regularly to give qualitative feedback on time. If they don’t, they’ll miss out on important discussions.
Total Participation to 65%: I agree that many delegates can easily hit the 60% with their tally voting, I think this is a reasonable step.
I voted in favour especially for v1.5. A proper DIP is important to keep a DAO alive and secure against governance attacks. Although this isn't the case currently, its better to be safe than sorry. Thanks to @seedlatam for tackling this proposal and reading through many comments from different user.
Voted FOR: Incentive programs showed that you can get very active and engaging governance in your DAO with programs like this. As a DAO you want the best kind of people making decisions, giving feedback on proposals, attending weekly calls, etc. It takes a lot of time to be active in the governance so incentives like this help bring smart, experienced, and talented people to your DAO. I love to see that my suggestion was accepted. Now delegates will get bonus points (BP) if they attend Report Calls and Open Discussion proposals calls.
I vote in favor of this new program. I believe that the parameters proposed in the "Delegates Feedback" rubric are fair and will result in helpful feedback, which will ultimately add value to ARB. As a participant in the program, I hope the new phase starts with patience and have good results.
Voting in favor as I already did in previous discussions. This program proved to have a positive impact and I'm sure that this new version will bring even more positive outcomes. You can find my previous rationale here: https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/89
Just voting FOR here, as I’ve explained my reasoning before and I’m sticking with it.
Also, thank you Raam for confirming that those of us involved since the first iteration won’t have to go through the KYC process again.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/101?u=ocandocrypto
We've posted the proposal on Tally and voting will begin this Thursday.
We would like to thank those who continued providing feedback to ensure the best possible iteration of this proposal.
Also, we want to thank @raam, and based on his confirmation, we have amended our proposal to reflect that
How do we increase overall ARB holder participation to delegate and redelegate based on the actions of delegates?
First, it's important to clarify that the Arbitrum Foundation carries out the KYC process and is not the program administrator's responsibility. We act as intermediaries between the delegates and the AF by trying to make the workflow as simple as possible. The process for KYC is something like this:
1- A delegate qualifies to receive incentives.
First, it's important to clarify that the Arbitrum Foundation carries out the KYC process and is not the program administrator's responsibility. We act as intermediaries between the delegates and the AF by trying to make the workflow as simple as possible. The process for KYC is something like this:
1- A delegate qualifies to receive incentives.
2- The Program Administrator sends a forum message to the delegate to ensure they start conversations with AF's Compliance Team.
3- The delegate completes KYC process with AF.
4- The Program Administrator receives an email from AF telling them that X delegate has completed KYC.
5- The Program Administrator sends a forum message to the delegate to double-check if the KYCed address is correct.
6- The Program Administrator asks MSS (previously the Program's Multisig) to execute the payment.
7- Payments are published in our Payment Distribution Thread.
We know that the KYC process can be a bit tedious for delegates who qualify for compensation, and sometimes even for the program administrator, as there are sometimes some problems:
Coordination issues between Compliance and Delegates.
Delegates do not entirely understand the necessary steps to do KYC.
Long wait periods until delegates can receive payments.
Delayed payments mean angry delegates.
Delayed KYCs also mean that the Program Administrator must critically monitor payment flow to avoid a mistake, which can be critical for DIP. You can see payment flow in our Payment Distribution Thread
is it possible those who have a history of meeting the thresholds can apply early to avoid some of the possible delays this go around?
Since KYC's amendments must be done again for DIP Temporary Extension, we started conversations with the AF team to accelerate the process. We tried to start the KYC process early for those delegates who received incentives during the six months of the original program (your delegation included). Still, unfortunately, we weren't allowed to proceed until we had the monthly results.
We know that the KYC process is critical and that some points can be improved to make it less tedious for delegates. We are happy to look for solutions for this process.
@cliffton.eth @raam, how do you guys think we can smooth the process and improve the experience for all the parties involved?
Existing delegates in the program will be required to renew their KYC, though they will not need to re-register for the program.
We have voted FOR the DIP V1.5 option.
We believe that as DAO members, it is our responsibility to continuously generate new ideas for the DAO and the future of Arbitrum. These ideas should be thoroughly discussed to ensure the most beneficial course of action is taken in the most efficient manner. DIP V1.1 falls short in identifying which delegates contribute the most significantly to the DAO. In contrast, DIP V1.5, with its additional criteria, represents a significant improvement and fosters a dynamic environment of ongoing discussion.
I am very glad to see the Delegate Incentive Program being renewed and for it to be implemented over the course of a year. The budget seems reasonable, and the increase in monthly compensation for delegates is totally justified, given that the price of ARB has dropped over 65% YTD. Adding bonus points for participating in governance calls is something I was eager to see in this new version because I’m sure this will encourage active engagement that will translate into better-informed voting. Overall, I am very happy with the proposal and will, of course, be supporting it.
Just voting FOR here, as I’ve explained my reasoning before and I’m sticking with it.
Also, thank you Raam for confirming that those of us involved since the first iteration won’t have to go through the KYC process again.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/101?u=ocandocrypto
Excited for what’s ahead and for the challenges it brings, but also grateful that, based on the feedback, these changes are happening to strengthen long-term participation in the DAO and improve governance.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/115?u=ocandocrypto
We've posted the proposal on Tally and voting will begin this Thursday.
We would like to thank those who continued providing feedback to ensure the best possible iteration of this proposal.
Also, we want to thank @raam, and based on his confirmation, we have amended our proposal to reflect that
Delegates already enrolled in the first interaction will NOT need to complete the KYC again if v1.5 is approved. They will only need to sign updated agreements with the Arbitrum Foundation.
How do we increase overall ARB holder participation to delegate and redelegate based on the actions of delegates?
DIP as a program has no scope over the decisions of holders on how to delegate their tokens. We believe this should be discussed within the Delegation Working Group of the Staking proposal.
How can we make sure that we encourage new delegates to step up and start their journey?
Some of the adjustments we've implemented were designed to attract new delegates, such as modifying the participation rate required to apply for the program.
Additionally, as Program Administrators, we will be reaching out to delegates who are eligible to participate in the program but have yet to do so:
We are committed to reaching out to each of the delegates who meet the requirements to be part of the program but are not yet enrolled. Our goal is to encourage everyone to join, helping to maintain and increase the diversity of voices in Arbitrum DAO.
Thank you for your input.
As communicated to you previously, there is no additional KYC process involved for the extension of the DIP, only amendments for those that qualify for October and November.
In general, the compliance process has to be robust as possible and and a little tedious, because otherwise it creates room for human error, as seen in the past with certain incentive programs
Hi raam! Thanks for the clarification.
Apparently there has been a miscommunication on our side regarding the extension of DIP v1.0. However, we would like to take this opportunity to ask you if the delegates already enrolled in the first iteration will need to complete the KYC again if v1.5 is approved.
Existing delegates in the program will be required to renew their KYC, though they will not need to re-register for the program.
During the initial 6 month trial DIP period, KYC was a little messy as the ask was to not do KYC until people were confirmed receiving funds. While I understand from an administrative standpoint, something I wanted to ask is if for the KYC renew for the next DIP iteration... is it possible those who have a history of meeting the thresholds can apply early to avoid some of the possible delays this go around?
Just a thought to improve the end experience for both the delegates and SEEDGov as the admins. Even if it's as strict as "had to have gotten ARB payouts all 6 periods" that may help.
I am very glad to see the Delegate Incentive Program being renewed and for it to be implemented over the course of a year. The budget seems reasonable, and the increase in monthly compensation for delegates is totally justified, given that the price of ARB has dropped over 65% YTD. Adding bonus points for participating in governance calls is something I was eager to see in this new version because I’m sure this will encourage active engagement that will translate into better-informed voting. Overall, I am very happy with the proposal and will, of course, be supporting it.
I just voted FOR on Tally, largely for the reasons already mentioned. While I recognize my perspective might be somewhat biased since I’m currently part of this program, I’ve seen firsthand how effective it is at encouraging delegates to engage more actively in DAO discussions. I’m confident this is the right direction and look forward to seeing the program grow with even more participants.
A new delegate, without prior participation history, can join the program starting in the third month after casting his first on-chain vote, as long as he meets the specified requirements (>50k voting power and ≥75% participation in on-chain votes) during that third month.
Thanks again everyone for the feedback! We are open to further input or questions in the coming days.
Voted For - the approach is working in the right direction, although I do think that more analysis and structuring of incentives are necessary to really get great feedback and participation from delegates.
Some key topics:
Voted For - the approach is working in the right direction, although I do think that more analysis and structuring of incentives are necessary to really get great feedback and participation from delegates.
Some key topics:
Vote: FOR v1.5
Type and Proposal Link: Snapshot –> Non-Constitutional: Arbitrum DAO Delegate Incentive Program V1.5
Voting Rationale Link: https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/alex-lumley-savvy-dao-delegate-communication-thread/26147/26
=== COMMENTS ON PROPOSAL: ===
Vote: FOR v1.5
Type and Proposal Link: Snapshot –> Non-Constitutional: Arbitrum DAO Delegate Incentive Program V1.5
Voting Rationale Link: https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/alex-lumley-savvy-dao-delegate-communication-thread/26147/26
=== COMMENTS ON PROPOSAL: ===
I voted FOR DIP V1.5 because it emphasizes high-quality contributions from delegates, a necessary shift in incentivizing thoughtful participation within the Arbitrum DAO. The proposed rubric-based evaluation system offers a more nuanced approach to reward those who provide timely and impactful feedback. While I recognize concerns regarding the subjectivity of this new structure, I believe it is worth experimenting with, given that it encourages meaningful engagement early in the proposal process.
The SEEDGov team has done a commendable job administering the program so far, and I trust their ability to manage this iteration effectively. That said, I will monitor how the rubric is applied and whether it can be refined further if any issues arise. Overall, DIP V1.5 represents a positive step forward in increasing the depth and quality of participation within the DAO.
DAOplomats voted in favor of implementing v1.5 of DIP.
The initial iteration of the program has been good but there were some loopholes to game it. Introducing v1.5, although subjective, addresses these and provides a platform for a more intentional commitment from delegates.
DAOplomats voted in favor of implementing v1.5 of DIP.
The initial iteration of the program has been good but there were some loopholes to game it. Introducing v1.5, although subjective, addresses these and provides a platform for a more intentional commitment from delegates.
We are also generally satisfied with your answers to our initial questions regarding the bonus criteria, DIP bans, and the implementation of expert coalition, and we would love to see how this program evolves in the future. Thank you SEEDGov for all the work put into this.
Below are the opinions of the UADP:
Due to the increased participation in voting and engagement on forums as a result of the delegate incentive program, we are directionally in favor of this proposal. V1.5 makes more sense to incorporate over v1.1 since 1.5 attempts to encourage more proactive and natural conversation than 1.1. The old model, to an extent, can feel forced. Our team has sometimes felt this way as well. It is also more valuable for proposers to attain feedback early on before going to a vote. Delegates also change their behavior on forums with the 1.5 setup since they are now actively perusing through open discussions as opposed to solely justifying votes.
Camelot has voted FOR 1.1.
While we appreciate that the proposer is attempting to shift towards what is perceived as a more qualitative approach with 1.5, we believe the previous iteration of the program was the right path forward. In our view, the program should not only be easy to implement and execute but should also incorporate mechanics that are as objective as possible, without increasing bureaucracy.
Camelot has voted FOR 1.1.
While we appreciate that the proposer is attempting to shift towards what is perceived as a more qualitative approach with 1.5, we believe the previous iteration of the program was the right path forward. In our view, the program should not only be easy to implement and execute but should also incorporate mechanics that are as objective as possible, without increasing bureaucracy.
We have already seen an evaluation of impactful versus non-impactful comments, and expanding this into a full-fledged evaluation of all discussions within the DAO could introduce too much subjectivity and friction, particularly because this task is centralized within the organizers. We think 1.1. is good enough, and should be maintained as it is now.
Hey everyone!
First, we would like to thank all community members who participated in the discussion, contributed to the development, and supported the recently approved temp-check regarding the Delegates Incentive Program.
We’re pleased to see that nearly 81% of votes favored keeping the program, with only 0.86% voting to deprecate it.
Hey everyone!
First, we would like to thank all community members who participated in the discussion, contributed to the development, and supported the recently approved temp-check regarding the Delegates Incentive Program.
We’re pleased to see that nearly 81% of votes favored keeping the program, with only 0.86% voting to deprecate it.
Additionally, the v1.5 has been overwhelmingly supported, and we are deeply grateful for this demonstration of trust.
That said, we know the work is not yet complete:
We’ll deprecate all the information from v1.1 and add some valuable feedback we received in the last few days.
We would love to see how the upper cap of 50 delegates could be lifted if the $7,000 per delegate budget is not exhausted, and the 51st delegate qualifies for the last tier allowing more delegates to qualify for incentives.
We believe 50 compensated delegates is a fair number (at least by now), as there’s still room for 16 more delegates compared to v1.0. Also, it’s worth noting that a limit on the number of delegates who will receive incentives levels up the quality of the contributions.
We’ve taken into consideration both feedbacks and added this clause regarding this topic:
Although the proposed administrative budget is sufficient in both versions, we understand that if there is a considerable increase in registrations, the workload would increase significantly. That is why we will incorporate a clause where if the program exceeds 65 participants (which is the number that we believe we could cover with the budget requested) we will reopen discussions in the forum on the budget, also considering the possibility of increasing the number of delegates incentivized.
However, we’d like to suggest that if things do not work out as expected and there are complications with using subjective criteria, the program must be flexible and should revert to v1.1. We want SEEDGov to be responsible for deciding whether or not the program should revert to v1.1 based on feedback from delegates and doing so at their discretion.
We’ve also thought about this. V1.5 will be reevaluated after three months:
Regarding the methodology’s testing, if v1.5 is chosen, this scoring system will be in a testing phase, and we, as Administrators, commit to submitting it to the DAO for consultation after three months of running the program.
Based on this feedback and after consideration, we will increase the threshold to ≥75%.
This is an interesting idea. We’ve been debating it internally and with some delegates about Working Groups. Our approach is to take it one step at a time. Since we are already introducing many experimental changes with v1.5, we would like to test that first and then iterate it before introducing new modifications.
But in the above setup, if a delegate is exactly at 85% participation, would they get $5,100 or $5,950? We don’t understand why, in %, a tier begins where the previous tier ended, but in $ terms, a tier starts at a gap from the previous tier’s end ($950 from Tier 3 to 2, $850 from Tier 2 to 1).
First of all and since we’ve been asked a lot about tiers, we would like to clarify it:
Tier 3: TP ≥ 65 < 70
Tier 2: TP ≥ 70 < 85
Tier 1: TP ≥ 85
In v1.0, we noted that, from how it was stated, there was not much difference between being in the top 5 or top 30. We introduced the gap in compensations to have a mechanism that allows the delegate to feel the difference between a good and a great delegate, working as an incentive to keep improving their work.
We’re in favor of this proposal and will vote for its approval on Snapshot.
We support experimental approaches and believe that this is a step in the right direction; however, as others have noted, due to the qualitative and subjective nature of this new system we would like to see a failsafe included in case delegate feedback becomes too negative.
We’re in favor of this proposal and will vote for its approval on Snapshot.
We support experimental approaches and believe that this is a step in the right direction; however, as others have noted, due to the qualitative and subjective nature of this new system we would like to see a failsafe included in case delegate feedback becomes too negative.
We do think that certain activities within the DAO are dynamic. While delegate responsibilities can go beyond the forum, there are plenty of meetings that do not necessarily acquiesce into DAO action, thus we would advise caution in including too many calendar calls or alternate actions.
After consideration Treasure’s Arbitrum Representative Council (ARC) would like to share the following feedback on the proposal
We voted FOR the v1.5 of this proposal.
The Delegate Incentive Program has significantly increased delegate engagement, marking a pioneering effort to enhance participation within the DAO and thus improve the overall decision-making processes.
After consideration Treasure’s Arbitrum Representative Council (ARC) would like to share the following feedback on the proposal
We voted FOR the v1.5 of this proposal.
The Delegate Incentive Program has significantly increased delegate engagement, marking a pioneering effort to enhance participation within the DAO and thus improve the overall decision-making processes.
While the V1 program was perfect, it never could be, and we felt the program was managed well by the team and led to strong outcomes. We fully support the introduction of DIP v1.5 as a trial to better capture the complexities of delegate engagement. Additionally, we appreciate @krst’s excellent suggestions for further refinements, particularly the proposal to include a bonus for active contributions to whitelisted initiatives.
We also want to highlight that, following the Treasure Community's approval of TIP-44: Launching Treasure L2 on ZKsync, our involvement in Arbitrum Governance will conclude. As such, this proposal represents one of our final contribution in a delegate capacity within Arbitrum.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We’re voting FOR the proposal and opting for v1.5.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We’re voting FOR the proposal and opting for v1.5.
Introducing qualitative criteria is a step in the right direction. Even though the assessment will be subjective, we still believe it’s better than relying merely on quantitative criteria, especially given the increased number of rewards delegates can receive.
However, we’d like to suggest that if things do not work out as expected and there are complications with using subjective criteria, the program must be flexible and should revert to v1.1. We want SEEDGov to be responsible for deciding whether or not the program should revert to v1.1 based on feedback from delegates and doing so at their discretion.
We also want to raise some points that we want to see addressed before the proposal moves to an onchain vote:
We find that being eligible by having a Participation Rate (Karma) >60% is too low of a standard when thinking of the considerable amount of money a delegate can get through the program. We’d suggest increasing the threshold even further (e.g., 80%) and allowing program managers the discretion for exceptions in case a delegate falls below that for important reasons (e.g., being in the hospital and missing a vote).
As far as the bonus % points for attending the monthly governance calls and the biweekly proposal discussion calls go, we want to suggest extending the idea to other DAO initiatives with a small twist; instead of having to attend ALL calls, delegates should be able to get a bonus percentage (maybe another 2.5% trimmed from elsewhere) for attending and contributing to an initiative they choose from a list of eligible initiatives that the program managers maintain. For example, the ‘Incentives Detox’ proposal introduced an Incentives Working Group that delegates could choose to attend.
DAO activities are outlined as
…feedback on proposals, attending to Governance Calls, maintaining high voting participation on Snapshot and Tally, and providing a rationale for such votes..
We want to point out that the responsibilities of delegates go beyond that. It’s difficult to define or measure it clearly, and that’s why we won’t suggest doing so at this point, but it’s worth keeping in mind that the above activities are, in our mind, a small portion of the overall activities a delegate should be involved in.
There are three TP tiers proposed:
But in the above setup, if a delegate is exactly at 85% participation, would they get $5,100 or $5,950? We don’t understand why, in %, a tier begins where the previous tier ended, but in $ terms, a tier starts at a gap from the previous tier’s end ($950 from Tier 3 to 2, $850 from Tier 2 to 1).
Overall, we’re happy to see SEED iterating on the previous program based on learnings and feedback and attempting to provide options that introduce qualitative criteria. We’d be happy to work with them to address the aforementioned points before the proposal can go to an onchain vote.
We voted for DIP v1.5 and believe it would be a good idea to experiment with a more qualitative approach. We all want genuine, quality, self-driven participation in the DAO, and we think this new program would help steer delegates toward that direction. Thank you to the @SEEDGov Team.
When I first read the proposal, I had some concerns about how subjective the scoring system seemed. However, after reviewing the comments and feedback from contributors like 404 DAO, I’ve come to appreciate the maturity behind how this program is being executed.
I’ve been involved in the DAO for the past 9 months, participating in the program for about 6 months and receiving incentives for 4 of those.
When I first read the proposal, I had some concerns about how subjective the scoring system seemed. However, after reviewing the comments and feedback from contributors like 404 DAO, I’ve come to appreciate the maturity behind how this program is being executed.
I’ve been involved in the DAO for the past 9 months, participating in the program for about 6 months and receiving incentives for 4 of those.
Engaging in discussions, offering honest and transparent feedback, and connecting with other delegates even with lower voting power isn’t just time consuming. It also demands a lot of commitment and research to provide meaningful input and feedback that can genuinely improve the processes. (I’ll admit I spend a lot of time reading the forum, but sometimes I hold back on commenting as much as I could due to shyness.)
That said, the professionalism and maturity in how SEED has handled this program are clear. The proposals for improvement, gathering feedback, and the detailed rubric leave little room for error. Plus, the willingness to test and make adjustments based on feedback shows how these types of initiatives should be approached. It tackles a key issue: the lack of participation in governance, which isn’t just an Arbitrum problem, but something affecting most DAOs. Even Optimism, for example, currently only sees around 5% active participation in terms of voting power, according to Agora.
This new iteration is definitely more ambitious. It pushes for more professional involvement, with the potential to use available funds to bring on extra contributors. This way, we can continue developing and refining initiatives to reach the future outcomes we want to see in the DAO.
I voted FOR this proposal.
Voting "For 1.5".
First, I think continuing the incentive program will be a benefit to the DAO. We've seen over the last 6+ months a solid group of contributors who are actively voting and commenting on proposals that likely otherwise may not have or would have contributed in a far less impactful capacity. So as a broad response I think this is worth continuing
Voting "For 1.5".
First, I think continuing the incentive program will be a benefit to the DAO. We've seen over the last 6+ months a solid group of contributors who are actively voting and commenting on proposals that likely otherwise may not have or would have contributed in a far less impactful capacity. So as a broad response I think this is worth continuing
Second, as for 1.1 v 1.5, I'd prefer to go with the 1.5 route as it 1) learns from and fixes some of the difficulties learned in the initial trail period 2) focuses on getting quality feedback and rewards feedback prior to voting and 3) does a good job of factoring in concerns and feedback form delegates.
Finally, I believe the SEEDGov team hads gone a really good job of administering the program so far. As well as has put a lot of thought and consideration on how to improve it. So continuing to use them for the next 12 months is an easy 'yes' from me.
Edit: My opinion has not changed since the snapshot vote, will be voting "For" on tally for the reasons noted above
Hi everyone, we present the completion report of the first phase of the Experimental program, covering the first 6 months (March to August). Any feedback will be welcome
I voted FOR - DIP 1.5. The SeedGov team has done an admirable job of administering the delegate incentive program. I'm comfortable with the 1.5 approach which gives reviewers the ability to make a more qualitative assessment of delegate contribution based on public forum comments. The reality is that simply commenting on a forum post does not necessarily create value for the DAO. As a proposal creator/owner, I've observed significant differences in the quality of delegate contribution to the proposal process and agree compensation should be adjusted accordingly.
I am in favour of implementing a delegate incentive programme:
I’m in favour of extending the delegate incentive system. It has had a positive impact in participation and its quality (which was the main objective). Time is limited, and this is a way of attracting delegate talent and staying competitive in governance in favour of other DAOs that also do have a delegate incentive programme. Good experience so far. Voted abstain.
can we have a run down of the last formula and parameters and ranges that will be used pls?
I voted for the v1.5 as it has a set of parameters that focus on an enhancement on the quality of delegate's engagement.
We are strongly in favor of the Delegate Incentive Program (DIP) v1.5. This proposal represents a significant improvement in how delegate contributions are evaluated and rewarded, aligning incentives more closely with the quality and impact of participation rather than merely the volume of comments.
We are strongly in favor of the Delegate Incentive Program (DIP) v1.5. This proposal represents a significant improvement in how delegate contributions are evaluated and rewarded, aligning incentives more closely with the quality and impact of participation rather than merely the volume of comments.
While we recognize concerns about the subjectivity introduced by the rubric, we believe that the overall benefits—particularly the focus on quality and strategic contributions—make v1.5 the right choice for the DAO's future and that @SEEDGov is well-placed to be its leader.
@SEEDGov can you reshare here the link to the delegate Telegram group please?
Just voting FOR here, as I’ve explained my reasoning before and I’m sticking with it.
Also, thank you Raam for confirming that those of us involved since the first iteration won’t have to go through the KYC process again.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/101?u=ocandocrypto
Excited for what’s ahead and for the challenges it brings, but also grateful that, based on the feedback, these changes are happening to strengthen long-term participation in the DAO and improve governance.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-delegate-incentive-program-dip/26496/115?u=ocandocrypto
We've posted the proposal on Tally and voting will begin this Thursday.
We would like to thank those who continued providing feedback to ensure the best possible iteration of this proposal.
Also, we want to thank @raam, and based on his confirmation, we have amended our proposal to reflect that
Delegates already enrolled in the first interaction will NOT need to complete the KYC again if v1.5 is approved. They will only need to sign updated agreements with the Arbitrum Foundation.
How do we increase overall ARB holder participation to delegate and redelegate based on the actions of delegates?
DIP as a program has no scope over the decisions of holders on how to delegate their tokens. We believe this should be discussed within the Delegation Working Group of the Staking proposal.
How can we make sure that we encourage new delegates to step up and start their journey?
Some of the adjustments we've implemented were designed to attract new delegates, such as modifying the participation rate required to apply for the program.
Additionally, as Program Administrators, we will be reaching out to delegates who are eligible to participate in the program but have yet to do so:
We are committed to reaching out to each of the delegates who meet the requirements to be part of the program but are not yet enrolled. Our goal is to encourage everyone to join, helping to maintain and increase the diversity of voices in Arbitrum DAO.
Thank you for your input.
As communicated to you previously, there is no additional KYC process involved for the extension of the DIP, only amendments for those that qualify for October and November.
In general, the compliance process has to be robust as possible and and a little tedious, because otherwise it creates room for human error, as seen in the past with certain incentive programs
Hi raam! Thanks for the clarification.
Apparently there has been a miscommunication on our side regarding the extension of DIP v1.0. However, we would like to take this opportunity to ask you if the delegates already enrolled in the first iteration will need to complete the KYC again if v1.5 is approved.
Existing delegates in the program will be required to renew their KYC, though they will not need to re-register for the program.
During the initial 6 month trial DIP period, KYC was a little messy as the ask was to not do KYC until people were confirmed receiving funds. While I understand from an administrative standpoint, something I wanted to ask is if for the KYC renew for the next DIP iteration... is it possible those who have a history of meeting the thresholds can apply early to avoid some of the possible delays this go around?
Just a thought to improve the end experience for both the delegates and SEEDGov as the admins. Even if it's as strict as "had to have gotten ARB payouts all 6 periods" that may help.
I am very glad to see the Delegate Incentive Program being renewed and for it to be implemented over the course of a year. The budget seems reasonable, and the increase in monthly compensation for delegates is totally justified, given that the price of ARB has dropped over 65% YTD. Adding bonus points for participating in governance calls is something I was eager to see in this new version because I’m sure this will encourage active engagement that will translate into better-informed voting. Overall, I am very happy with the proposal and will, of course, be supporting it.
I just voted FOR on Tally, largely for the reasons already mentioned. While I recognize my perspective might be somewhat biased since I’m currently part of this program, I’ve seen firsthand how effective it is at encouraging delegates to engage more actively in DAO discussions. I’m confident this is the right direction and look forward to seeing the program grow with even more participants.
A new delegate, without prior participation history, can join the program starting in the third month after casting his first on-chain vote, as long as he meets the specified requirements (>50k voting power and ≥75% participation in on-chain votes) during that third month.
Thanks again everyone for the feedback! We are open to further input or questions in the coming days.
Voted For - the approach is working in the right direction, although I do think that more analysis and structuring of incentives are necessary to really get great feedback and participation from delegates.
Some key topics:
Voted For - the approach is working in the right direction, although I do think that more analysis and structuring of incentives are necessary to really get great feedback and participation from delegates.
Some key topics:
Vote: FOR v1.5
Type and Proposal Link: Snapshot –> Non-Constitutional: Arbitrum DAO Delegate Incentive Program V1.5
Voting Rationale Link: https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/alex-lumley-savvy-dao-delegate-communication-thread/26147/26
=== COMMENTS ON PROPOSAL: ===
Vote: FOR v1.5
Type and Proposal Link: Snapshot –> Non-Constitutional: Arbitrum DAO Delegate Incentive Program V1.5
Voting Rationale Link: https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/alex-lumley-savvy-dao-delegate-communication-thread/26147/26
=== COMMENTS ON PROPOSAL: ===
I voted FOR DIP V1.5 because it emphasizes high-quality contributions from delegates, a necessary shift in incentivizing thoughtful participation within the Arbitrum DAO. The proposed rubric-based evaluation system offers a more nuanced approach to reward those who provide timely and impactful feedback. While I recognize concerns regarding the subjectivity of this new structure, I believe it is worth experimenting with, given that it encourages meaningful engagement early in the proposal process.
The SEEDGov team has done a commendable job administering the program so far, and I trust their ability to manage this iteration effectively. That said, I will monitor how the rubric is applied and whether it can be refined further if any issues arise. Overall, DIP V1.5 represents a positive step forward in increasing the depth and quality of participation within the DAO.
DAOplomats voted in favor of implementing v1.5 of DIP.
The initial iteration of the program has been good but there were some loopholes to game it. Introducing v1.5, although subjective, addresses these and provides a platform for a more intentional commitment from delegates.
DAOplomats voted in favor of implementing v1.5 of DIP.
The initial iteration of the program has been good but there were some loopholes to game it. Introducing v1.5, although subjective, addresses these and provides a platform for a more intentional commitment from delegates.
We are also generally satisfied with your answers to our initial questions regarding the bonus criteria, DIP bans, and the implementation of expert coalition, and we would love to see how this program evolves in the future. Thank you SEEDGov for all the work put into this.
Below are the opinions of the UADP:
Due to the increased participation in voting and engagement on forums as a result of the delegate incentive program, we are directionally in favor of this proposal. V1.5 makes more sense to incorporate over v1.1 since 1.5 attempts to encourage more proactive and natural conversation than 1.1. The old model, to an extent, can feel forced. Our team has sometimes felt this way as well. It is also more valuable for proposers to attain feedback early on before going to a vote. Delegates also change their behavior on forums with the 1.5 setup since they are now actively perusing through open discussions as opposed to solely justifying votes.
Camelot has voted FOR 1.1.
While we appreciate that the proposer is attempting to shift towards what is perceived as a more qualitative approach with 1.5, we believe the previous iteration of the program was the right path forward. In our view, the program should not only be easy to implement and execute but should also incorporate mechanics that are as objective as possible, without increasing bureaucracy.
Camelot has voted FOR 1.1.
While we appreciate that the proposer is attempting to shift towards what is perceived as a more qualitative approach with 1.5, we believe the previous iteration of the program was the right path forward. In our view, the program should not only be easy to implement and execute but should also incorporate mechanics that are as objective as possible, without increasing bureaucracy.
We have already seen an evaluation of impactful versus non-impactful comments, and expanding this into a full-fledged evaluation of all discussions within the DAO could introduce too much subjectivity and friction, particularly because this task is centralized within the organizers. We think 1.1. is good enough, and should be maintained as it is now.
Hey everyone!
First, we would like to thank all community members who participated in the discussion, contributed to the development, and supported the recently approved temp-check regarding the Delegates Incentive Program.
We’re pleased to see that nearly 81% of votes favored keeping the program, with only 0.86% voting to deprecate it.
Hey everyone!
First, we would like to thank all community members who participated in the discussion, contributed to the development, and supported the recently approved temp-check regarding the Delegates Incentive Program.
We’re pleased to see that nearly 81% of votes favored keeping the program, with only 0.86% voting to deprecate it.
Additionally, the v1.5 has been overwhelmingly supported, and we are deeply grateful for this demonstration of trust.
That said, we know the work is not yet complete:
We’ll deprecate all the information from v1.1 and add some valuable feedback we received in the last few days.
We would love to see how the upper cap of 50 delegates could be lifted if the $7,000 per delegate budget is not exhausted, and the 51st delegate qualifies for the last tier allowing more delegates to qualify for incentives.
We believe 50 compensated delegates is a fair number (at least by now), as there’s still room for 16 more delegates compared to v1.0. Also, it’s worth noting that a limit on the number of delegates who will receive incentives levels up the quality of the contributions.
We’ve taken into consideration both feedbacks and added this clause regarding this topic:
Although the proposed administrative budget is sufficient in both versions, we understand that if there is a considerable increase in registrations, the workload would increase significantly. That is why we will incorporate a clause where if the program exceeds 65 participants (which is the number that we believe we could cover with the budget requested) we will reopen discussions in the forum on the budget, also considering the possibility of increasing the number of delegates incentivized.
However, we’d like to suggest that if things do not work out as expected and there are complications with using subjective criteria, the program must be flexible and should revert to v1.1. We want SEEDGov to be responsible for deciding whether or not the program should revert to v1.1 based on feedback from delegates and doing so at their discretion.
We’ve also thought about this. V1.5 will be reevaluated after three months:
Regarding the methodology’s testing, if v1.5 is chosen, this scoring system will be in a testing phase, and we, as Administrators, commit to submitting it to the DAO for consultation after three months of running the program.
Based on this feedback and after consideration, we will increase the threshold to ≥75%.
This is an interesting idea. We’ve been debating it internally and with some delegates about Working Groups. Our approach is to take it one step at a time. Since we are already introducing many experimental changes with v1.5, we would like to test that first and then iterate it before introducing new modifications.
But in the above setup, if a delegate is exactly at 85% participation, would they get $5,100 or $5,950? We don’t understand why, in %, a tier begins where the previous tier ended, but in $ terms, a tier starts at a gap from the previous tier’s end ($950 from Tier 3 to 2, $850 from Tier 2 to 1).
First of all and since we’ve been asked a lot about tiers, we would like to clarify it:
Tier 3: TP ≥ 65 < 70
Tier 2: TP ≥ 70 < 85
Tier 1: TP ≥ 85
In v1.0, we noted that, from how it was stated, there was not much difference between being in the top 5 or top 30. We introduced the gap in compensations to have a mechanism that allows the delegate to feel the difference between a good and a great delegate, working as an incentive to keep improving their work.
We’re in favor of this proposal and will vote for its approval on Snapshot.
We support experimental approaches and believe that this is a step in the right direction; however, as others have noted, due to the qualitative and subjective nature of this new system we would like to see a failsafe included in case delegate feedback becomes too negative.
We’re in favor of this proposal and will vote for its approval on Snapshot.
We support experimental approaches and believe that this is a step in the right direction; however, as others have noted, due to the qualitative and subjective nature of this new system we would like to see a failsafe included in case delegate feedback becomes too negative.
We do think that certain activities within the DAO are dynamic. While delegate responsibilities can go beyond the forum, there are plenty of meetings that do not necessarily acquiesce into DAO action, thus we would advise caution in including too many calendar calls or alternate actions.
After consideration Treasure’s Arbitrum Representative Council (ARC) would like to share the following feedback on the proposal
We voted FOR the v1.5 of this proposal.
The Delegate Incentive Program has significantly increased delegate engagement, marking a pioneering effort to enhance participation within the DAO and thus improve the overall decision-making processes.
After consideration Treasure’s Arbitrum Representative Council (ARC) would like to share the following feedback on the proposal
We voted FOR the v1.5 of this proposal.
The Delegate Incentive Program has significantly increased delegate engagement, marking a pioneering effort to enhance participation within the DAO and thus improve the overall decision-making processes.
While the V1 program was perfect, it never could be, and we felt the program was managed well by the team and led to strong outcomes. We fully support the introduction of DIP v1.5 as a trial to better capture the complexities of delegate engagement. Additionally, we appreciate @krst’s excellent suggestions for further refinements, particularly the proposal to include a bonus for active contributions to whitelisted initiatives.
We also want to highlight that, following the Treasure Community's approval of TIP-44: Launching Treasure L2 on ZKsync, our involvement in Arbitrum Governance will conclude. As such, this proposal represents one of our final contribution in a delegate capacity within Arbitrum.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We’re voting FOR the proposal and opting for v1.5.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We’re voting FOR the proposal and opting for v1.5.
Introducing qualitative criteria is a step in the right direction. Even though the assessment will be subjective, we still believe it’s better than relying merely on quantitative criteria, especially given the increased number of rewards delegates can receive.
However, we’d like to suggest that if things do not work out as expected and there are complications with using subjective criteria, the program must be flexible and should revert to v1.1. We want SEEDGov to be responsible for deciding whether or not the program should revert to v1.1 based on feedback from delegates and doing so at their discretion.
We also want to raise some points that we want to see addressed before the proposal moves to an onchain vote:
We find that being eligible by having a Participation Rate (Karma) >60% is too low of a standard when thinking of the considerable amount of money a delegate can get through the program. We’d suggest increasing the threshold even further (e.g., 80%) and allowing program managers the discretion for exceptions in case a delegate falls below that for important reasons (e.g., being in the hospital and missing a vote).
As far as the bonus % points for attending the monthly governance calls and the biweekly proposal discussion calls go, we want to suggest extending the idea to other DAO initiatives with a small twist; instead of having to attend ALL calls, delegates should be able to get a bonus percentage (maybe another 2.5% trimmed from elsewhere) for attending and contributing to an initiative they choose from a list of eligible initiatives that the program managers maintain. For example, the ‘Incentives Detox’ proposal introduced an Incentives Working Group that delegates could choose to attend.
DAO activities are outlined as
…feedback on proposals, attending to Governance Calls, maintaining high voting participation on Snapshot and Tally, and providing a rationale for such votes..
We want to point out that the responsibilities of delegates go beyond that. It’s difficult to define or measure it clearly, and that’s why we won’t suggest doing so at this point, but it’s worth keeping in mind that the above activities are, in our mind, a small portion of the overall activities a delegate should be involved in.
There are three TP tiers proposed:
But in the above setup, if a delegate is exactly at 85% participation, would they get $5,100 or $5,950? We don’t understand why, in %, a tier begins where the previous tier ended, but in $ terms, a tier starts at a gap from the previous tier’s end ($950 from Tier 3 to 2, $850 from Tier 2 to 1).
Overall, we’re happy to see SEED iterating on the previous program based on learnings and feedback and attempting to provide options that introduce qualitative criteria. We’d be happy to work with them to address the aforementioned points before the proposal can go to an onchain vote.
We voted for DIP v1.5 and believe it would be a good idea to experiment with a more qualitative approach. We all want genuine, quality, self-driven participation in the DAO, and we think this new program would help steer delegates toward that direction. Thank you to the @SEEDGov Team.
When I first read the proposal, I had some concerns about how subjective the scoring system seemed. However, after reviewing the comments and feedback from contributors like 404 DAO, I’ve come to appreciate the maturity behind how this program is being executed.
I’ve been involved in the DAO for the past 9 months, participating in the program for about 6 months and receiving incentives for 4 of those.
When I first read the proposal, I had some concerns about how subjective the scoring system seemed. However, after reviewing the comments and feedback from contributors like 404 DAO, I’ve come to appreciate the maturity behind how this program is being executed.
I’ve been involved in the DAO for the past 9 months, participating in the program for about 6 months and receiving incentives for 4 of those.
Engaging in discussions, offering honest and transparent feedback, and connecting with other delegates even with lower voting power isn’t just time consuming. It also demands a lot of commitment and research to provide meaningful input and feedback that can genuinely improve the processes. (I’ll admit I spend a lot of time reading the forum, but sometimes I hold back on commenting as much as I could due to shyness.)
That said, the professionalism and maturity in how SEED has handled this program are clear. The proposals for improvement, gathering feedback, and the detailed rubric leave little room for error. Plus, the willingness to test and make adjustments based on feedback shows how these types of initiatives should be approached. It tackles a key issue: the lack of participation in governance, which isn’t just an Arbitrum problem, but something affecting most DAOs. Even Optimism, for example, currently only sees around 5% active participation in terms of voting power, according to Agora.
This new iteration is definitely more ambitious. It pushes for more professional involvement, with the potential to use available funds to bring on extra contributors. This way, we can continue developing and refining initiatives to reach the future outcomes we want to see in the DAO.
I voted FOR this proposal.
Voting "For 1.5".
First, I think continuing the incentive program will be a benefit to the DAO. We've seen over the last 6+ months a solid group of contributors who are actively voting and commenting on proposals that likely otherwise may not have or would have contributed in a far less impactful capacity. So as a broad response I think this is worth continuing
Voting "For 1.5".
First, I think continuing the incentive program will be a benefit to the DAO. We've seen over the last 6+ months a solid group of contributors who are actively voting and commenting on proposals that likely otherwise may not have or would have contributed in a far less impactful capacity. So as a broad response I think this is worth continuing
Second, as for 1.1 v 1.5, I'd prefer to go with the 1.5 route as it 1) learns from and fixes some of the difficulties learned in the initial trail period 2) focuses on getting quality feedback and rewards feedback prior to voting and 3) does a good job of factoring in concerns and feedback form delegates.
Finally, I believe the SEEDGov team hads gone a really good job of administering the program so far. As well as has put a lot of thought and consideration on how to improve it. So continuing to use them for the next 12 months is an easy 'yes' from me.
Edit: My opinion has not changed since the snapshot vote, will be voting "For" on tally for the reasons noted above
Hi everyone, we present the completion report of the first phase of the Experimental program, covering the first 6 months (March to August). Any feedback will be welcome
I voted FOR - DIP 1.5. The SeedGov team has done an admirable job of administering the delegate incentive program. I'm comfortable with the 1.5 approach which gives reviewers the ability to make a more qualitative assessment of delegate contribution based on public forum comments. The reality is that simply commenting on a forum post does not necessarily create value for the DAO. As a proposal creator/owner, I've observed significant differences in the quality of delegate contribution to the proposal process and agree compensation should be adjusted accordingly.
I am in favour of implementing a delegate incentive programme:
I’m in favour of extending the delegate incentive system. It has had a positive impact in participation and its quality (which was the main objective). Time is limited, and this is a way of attracting delegate talent and staying competitive in governance in favour of other DAOs that also do have a delegate incentive programme. Good experience so far. Voted abstain.
can we have a run down of the last formula and parameters and ranges that will be used pls?
I voted for the v1.5 as it has a set of parameters that focus on an enhancement on the quality of delegate's engagement.
We are strongly in favor of the Delegate Incentive Program (DIP) v1.5. This proposal represents a significant improvement in how delegate contributions are evaluated and rewarded, aligning incentives more closely with the quality and impact of participation rather than merely the volume of comments.
We are strongly in favor of the Delegate Incentive Program (DIP) v1.5. This proposal represents a significant improvement in how delegate contributions are evaluated and rewarded, aligning incentives more closely with the quality and impact of participation rather than merely the volume of comments.
While we recognize concerns about the subjectivity introduced by the rubric, we believe that the overall benefits—particularly the focus on quality and strategic contributions—make v1.5 the right choice for the DAO's future and that @SEEDGov is well-placed to be its leader.
@SEEDGov can you reshare here the link to the delegate Telegram group please?
I am in favour of implementing a delegate incentive programme:
I’m in favour of extending the delegate incentive system. It has had a positive impact in participation and its quality (which was the main objective). Time is limited, and this is a way of attracting delegate talent and staying competitive in governance in favour of other DAOs that also do have a delegate incentive programme. Good experience so far. Voted abstain.
Regarding the changes proposed, moving PR from all-time to last 90 days seems a good idea to lower the entry barrier. As to 1.1 or 1.5, the latter seems to both require more work from the administrators (in regards to the rubric) but also stimulate high quality feedback and also in a timely manner, by putting more weight to comments made before proposals reach the voting stage. I would have suggested to set CR to 15% instead of lowering it o 10% in v1.5, and DF from 30% to 25%. I like the idea of the rubric and the comp tiers. Good work so far by @SEEDGov.
We're voting FOR DIP V1.5. The qualitative assessment tackles spam comments while recognizing valuable off-chain contributions. Tiered compensation creates stronger motivation for high-quality participation. While subjectivity in evaluation is a concern, transparency measures and the 3-month review mitigate this risk. We'd oppose any further inclusion of off-chain metrics like social activities mentioned in some comments - it's nonsensical, privacy-invasive, and opens the door to even more subjective evaluation. The increased admin budget seems justified given the expanded analysis scope.
Saw the changes, 404dao's proposal categorization is very constructive and informative, thanks!
We vote for DIP V1.5 on Snapshot.
We appreciate all the work so far and effort to improve the program even further with a new system and established structure that apparently works for the objective. While there is an increase in spending from the DAO perspective, we believe the new V1.5 system has been designed well and ready to be experimented with administration support from the SEED team. The program lasts for 12 months but we like the fact that the details of the program can be modified based on the results that we will see.
Voted FOR - DIP V1.5: Incentive programs showed that with programs like this, you can get very active and engaging governance in your DAO. As a DAO you want the best kind of people making decisions, giving feedback on proposals, attending weekly calls, etc. It takes a lot of time to be active in the governance so incentives like this help bring smart, experienced, and talented people to your DAO. I fully support the DIP 1.5 program run by Seed Latam
The following reflects the views of the Lampros Labs DAO governance team, composed of @Blueweb, @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting FOR DIP V1.5 for this proposal.
We want to mention that our feedback from this comment was heard and implemented, which we appreciate.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros Labs DAO governance team, composed of @Blueweb, @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting FOR DIP V1.5 for this proposal.
We want to mention that our feedback from this comment was heard and implemented, which we appreciate.
The minor changes from v1.1 to v1.5 are welcomed especially the new rubric-based system. This seems well-suited to address the diverse feedback across the DAO and will likely encourage deeper and more consistent participation from delegates in governance.
We would love to see how the upper cap of 50 delegates could be lifted if the $7,000 per delegate budget is not exhausted, and the 51st delegate qualifies for the last tier allowing more delegates to qualify for incentives.
Lastly, we hope that the subjective scoring will become more objective as the program progresses.
Strongly agree with the proposal and I support DIP 1.5. Rationale: This issue is more three-dimensional than the last update, more transparent overall, a lot of quantitative becomes qualitative, effective analysis in response to feedback, and an exciting change from quantitative to qualitative in terms of the overall programme's guiding design. The proposal emphasises the encouragement of professionalisation and sustained participation of delegates in DAO governance through transparent and predictable incentives. Reinforcing the professionalisation and long-term contribution of representatives.
Strongly agree with the proposal and I support DIP 1.5. Rationale: This issue is more three-dimensional than the last update, more transparent overall, a lot of quantitative becomes qualitative, effective analysis in response to feedback, and an exciting change from quantitative to qualitative in terms of the overall programme's guiding design. The proposal emphasises the encouragement of professionalisation and sustained participation of delegates in DAO governance through transparent and predictable incentives. Reinforcing the professionalisation and long-term contribution of representatives.
The overall quality of the programme is excellent, thanks to the work done by seed. At the same time, I think there are a few comments under the previous feedback. 1, the professionalism of the feedback is important, but in fact many users need to represent objective and fair and in line with the long-term value, so advocate arb's high quality values is the first element, objective and fair. 2, in addition to the feedback in the forum, I decided that we also need to consider or increase the representative of the influence of other places and community work, such as the influence of Twitter tweets support, discord community advocacy and feedback, offline activities, etc. should be, for example, a detailed plan. Twitter, in particular, is especially important. 3, in the combination of v1.1 and v1.5, in which the number of voting rights and the number of delegates are not highlighted, this indicator does not take into account the influence of the representative, see the feedback of the salary, I think the minimum of 3000 for a reasonable range, the maximum of 5000 U.S. dollars for the threshold. Not advocating that people work for money. arb's community values would be seriously distorted if they worked to get higher rewards.
I will vote FOR v 1.5 of this proposal during the temp check.
The first iteration of the DIP served as a starting point to consolidate the base of high-quality delegates who now contribute their views to the discussions. It’s important to keep the level of these discussions to achieve great long-term results.
I will vote FOR v 1.5 of this proposal during the temp check.
The first iteration of the DIP served as a starting point to consolidate the base of high-quality delegates who now contribute their views to the discussions. It’s important to keep the level of these discussions to achieve great long-term results.
In version 1.5, I see significant progress towards encouraging valuable participation. I encourage @SEEDGov team to experiment as much as possible and be creative in detecting and assigning participation points. Despite the rubric, many situations will arise that don’t fit into the pre-designed structures, and I trust the team’s judgment and fairness in managing the system. I also hope this version's approval represents a vote of confidence from all delegates in the criteria they choose, accepting that there is a high degree of subjectivity in this iteration. I don't see a better way to experiment with something like this.
Finally, I will maintain my comments and reservations regarding the points raised (here and here), although I don't believe they are blockers for this great step and iteration of the program.
I think that in order to chose the better option in general terms we have to keep smth in mind: what's the goal of the program? Pushing for active participation, professionalization of delegates and providing useful feedback to the different proposal. Having this in mind, I believe that the DIP can really have a positive waterfall effect by improving proposals and the quality of initiatives in the ecosystem. In order to do so, it's important to push for qualitative feedback, and not only quantitative. This is why I'm voting for DIP v1.5. Many concerns were raised about the way of evaluating this same feedback, which risk to be too subjective or that make delegates' reward more unpredictable. I agree with these observations but I also think that we can try this new version out and make adjustment if any problem arise. This new version of the proposal was shaped after many feedback, calls and discussions, and it's always difficult to come up with something that perfectly aligns with every single aspect. I believe that v1.5 is really close to reaching these different goals. We can give it a try and see how it goes.
I've read, analyzed, and joined the call for the discussion, and I think V1.5 is the best way to move forward. There will, of course, still be some subjectivity in the evaluation, but I believe with each version, the incentive program will become more fair.
The proposal is now live in Snapshot!
The past six months of the Delegate Incentive Program have demonstrated that it is indeed an effective governance plan, even though I personally have not received rewards every month. Nevertheless, the program has successfully motivated most delegates. Although the incentives are not large, they serve as recognition of the delegates' work. No one wants their efforts to go unnoticed or unappreciated, and excellent work deserves positive feedback. So I fully support this proposal.
I voted FOR - DIP V1.5 because this is one of the most experimental and innovative delegate incentive programs I've seen. And I think it's worth trying it out.
We support the Delegate Incentive Program proposal v1.5 and and want to give a big thanks to the Seedlatam team for putting it together. It's honestly one of the most comprehensive and impactful delegate incentive experiments out there in the DAO space. Huge props to Seedlatam and everyone involved—the proposal is clear and well-structured. Since the program leans on Seedlatam to evaluate delegate comment quality, we're confident they'll keep things neutral throughout. Additionally, Curia has received a Questbook grant to build a governance analytics dashboard that also monitors delegate activities. As part of this grant, we'll be providing monthly reports on delegate activities, participation, and engagement metrics to keep everything transparent and help the community verify the information. Our goal is to enable the community to track how effective the incentive program is, monitor these contributions, and help it succeed in the long run.
After all the, feedbacks here, feedbacks in the call and private feedbacks, voting "For" on DIP 1.5.
Is gonna be a mess, seed is gonna have the hardest time of their life, and I am pretty sure a lot of folks will initially complain about having that 0.75 points more in this or that category.
After all the, feedbacks here, feedbacks in the call and private feedbacks, voting "For" on DIP 1.5.
Is gonna be a mess, seed is gonna have the hardest time of their life, and I am pretty sure a lot of folks will initially complain about having that 0.75 points more in this or that category.
But often times than not the hardest path is also the path that leads to the biggest growth, and I think evaluating not only the votes, but a big part of the arbitrum governance life, is what we need. We literally need to put all delegates in the position of interacting, and interact in a meaningful way.
A few things here
Yes, in all of this I am saying that seed should be able to ask more and enroll in the program, thus incresing overall cost. While aware of this, I also understand the enormous amount of workload this program will bring to their shoulders, being a cow that reads all the posts and comments in the forum: if i imagine myself not only reading all, but also evaluating all, and knowing how much this program will probably be relevant for the arbi staking proposal, I really want for seed to have all the ability to do the best job possible here. And here it means being able to onboard all the people they think are needed to have a consistent evaluation over the next 12 months.
Here is the Parameter Summary. Your quote is from tl;dr and only includes changes (parameters like Tally Voting didn't change).
Activity Weight (%):
I am very much in favour of the proposal, especially the DIP 1.5 version. The updated plan is more three-dimensional and transparent than before, and the shift from quantitative assessment to qualitative analysis is particularly impressive, especially the in-depth analysis of feedback. The proposal promotes professionalisation and long-term engagement of delegates through transparent and predictable incentives.
A few suggestions: 1. maintenance of long-term values: in addition to professionalism, delegates should always be objective and impartial, and promote decisions that are in line with the long-term values of the Arbitrum community. 2. Consideration of community influence: It is recommended that the influence of the representative on other platforms (e.g., Twitter, Discord) as well as offline activities be taken into account to fully assess the representative's contribution. 3. Salary setting and community values: It is recommended that the salary range be set at $3,000-$5,000 to avoid over-incentivising and compromising the purity and values of the community.
Based on the feedback received from several delegates (@paulofonseca @JoJo @BlockworksResearch @KlausBrave @WintermuteGovernance @cp0x @maxlomu and others who attended the calls) regarding the administrative budget and also about the suggestions made by @404DAO, we are incorporating some changes before sending the vote to Snapshot:
Although the proposed administrative budget is sufficient in both versions, we understand that if there is a considerable increase in registrations, the workload would increase significantly. That is why we will incorporate a clause where if the program exceeds 65 participants (which is the number that we believe we could cover with the budget requested) we will reopen discussions in the forum on the budget, also considering the possibility of increasing the number of delegates incentivized.
Regarding the rubric, the changes proposed by @404DAO are incorporated almost in their entirety, leaving the scoring system as follows:
I believe that denominating payments in USD for governance participants creates a disincentive to protect the value of ARB, since the value received by those benefiting from the programs will remain the same regardless of whether the decisions made benefit the DAO and its long-term sustainability.
Voted FOR DIP v1.5
Broadens Participation
Voted FOR DIP v1.5
Broadens Participation
Rewards Performance
I am in favour of implementing a delegate incentive programme:
I’m in favour of extending the delegate incentive system. It has had a positive impact in participation and its quality (which was the main objective). Time is limited, and this is a way of attracting delegate talent and staying competitive in governance in favour of other DAOs that also do have a delegate incentive programme. Good experience so far. Voted abstain.
Regarding the changes proposed, moving PR from all-time to last 90 days seems a good idea to lower the entry barrier. As to 1.1 or 1.5, the latter seems to both require more work from the administrators (in regards to the rubric) but also stimulate high quality feedback and also in a timely manner, by putting more weight to comments made before proposals reach the voting stage. I would have suggested to set CR to 15% instead of lowering it o 10% in v1.5, and DF from 30% to 25%. I like the idea of the rubric and the comp tiers. Good work so far by @SEEDGov.
We're voting FOR DIP V1.5. The qualitative assessment tackles spam comments while recognizing valuable off-chain contributions. Tiered compensation creates stronger motivation for high-quality participation. While subjectivity in evaluation is a concern, transparency measures and the 3-month review mitigate this risk. We'd oppose any further inclusion of off-chain metrics like social activities mentioned in some comments - it's nonsensical, privacy-invasive, and opens the door to even more subjective evaluation. The increased admin budget seems justified given the expanded analysis scope.
Saw the changes, 404dao's proposal categorization is very constructive and informative, thanks!
We vote for DIP V1.5 on Snapshot.
We appreciate all the work so far and effort to improve the program even further with a new system and established structure that apparently works for the objective. While there is an increase in spending from the DAO perspective, we believe the new V1.5 system has been designed well and ready to be experimented with administration support from the SEED team. The program lasts for 12 months but we like the fact that the details of the program can be modified based on the results that we will see.
Voted FOR - DIP V1.5: Incentive programs showed that with programs like this, you can get very active and engaging governance in your DAO. As a DAO you want the best kind of people making decisions, giving feedback on proposals, attending weekly calls, etc. It takes a lot of time to be active in the governance so incentives like this help bring smart, experienced, and talented people to your DAO. I fully support the DIP 1.5 program run by Seed Latam
The following reflects the views of the Lampros Labs DAO governance team, composed of @Blueweb, @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting FOR DIP V1.5 for this proposal.
We want to mention that our feedback from this comment was heard and implemented, which we appreciate.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros Labs DAO governance team, composed of @Blueweb, @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting FOR DIP V1.5 for this proposal.
We want to mention that our feedback from this comment was heard and implemented, which we appreciate.
The minor changes from v1.1 to v1.5 are welcomed especially the new rubric-based system. This seems well-suited to address the diverse feedback across the DAO and will likely encourage deeper and more consistent participation from delegates in governance.
We would love to see how the upper cap of 50 delegates could be lifted if the $7,000 per delegate budget is not exhausted, and the 51st delegate qualifies for the last tier allowing more delegates to qualify for incentives.
Lastly, we hope that the subjective scoring will become more objective as the program progresses.
Strongly agree with the proposal and I support DIP 1.5. Rationale: This issue is more three-dimensional than the last update, more transparent overall, a lot of quantitative becomes qualitative, effective analysis in response to feedback, and an exciting change from quantitative to qualitative in terms of the overall programme's guiding design. The proposal emphasises the encouragement of professionalisation and sustained participation of delegates in DAO governance through transparent and predictable incentives. Reinforcing the professionalisation and long-term contribution of representatives.
Strongly agree with the proposal and I support DIP 1.5. Rationale: This issue is more three-dimensional than the last update, more transparent overall, a lot of quantitative becomes qualitative, effective analysis in response to feedback, and an exciting change from quantitative to qualitative in terms of the overall programme's guiding design. The proposal emphasises the encouragement of professionalisation and sustained participation of delegates in DAO governance through transparent and predictable incentives. Reinforcing the professionalisation and long-term contribution of representatives.
The overall quality of the programme is excellent, thanks to the work done by seed. At the same time, I think there are a few comments under the previous feedback. 1, the professionalism of the feedback is important, but in fact many users need to represent objective and fair and in line with the long-term value, so advocate arb's high quality values is the first element, objective and fair. 2, in addition to the feedback in the forum, I decided that we also need to consider or increase the representative of the influence of other places and community work, such as the influence of Twitter tweets support, discord community advocacy and feedback, offline activities, etc. should be, for example, a detailed plan. Twitter, in particular, is especially important. 3, in the combination of v1.1 and v1.5, in which the number of voting rights and the number of delegates are not highlighted, this indicator does not take into account the influence of the representative, see the feedback of the salary, I think the minimum of 3000 for a reasonable range, the maximum of 5000 U.S. dollars for the threshold. Not advocating that people work for money. arb's community values would be seriously distorted if they worked to get higher rewards.
I will vote FOR v 1.5 of this proposal during the temp check.
The first iteration of the DIP served as a starting point to consolidate the base of high-quality delegates who now contribute their views to the discussions. It’s important to keep the level of these discussions to achieve great long-term results.
I will vote FOR v 1.5 of this proposal during the temp check.
The first iteration of the DIP served as a starting point to consolidate the base of high-quality delegates who now contribute their views to the discussions. It’s important to keep the level of these discussions to achieve great long-term results.
In version 1.5, I see significant progress towards encouraging valuable participation. I encourage @SEEDGov team to experiment as much as possible and be creative in detecting and assigning participation points. Despite the rubric, many situations will arise that don’t fit into the pre-designed structures, and I trust the team’s judgment and fairness in managing the system. I also hope this version's approval represents a vote of confidence from all delegates in the criteria they choose, accepting that there is a high degree of subjectivity in this iteration. I don't see a better way to experiment with something like this.
Finally, I will maintain my comments and reservations regarding the points raised (here and here), although I don't believe they are blockers for this great step and iteration of the program.
I think that in order to chose the better option in general terms we have to keep smth in mind: what's the goal of the program? Pushing for active participation, professionalization of delegates and providing useful feedback to the different proposal. Having this in mind, I believe that the DIP can really have a positive waterfall effect by improving proposals and the quality of initiatives in the ecosystem. In order to do so, it's important to push for qualitative feedback, and not only quantitative. This is why I'm voting for DIP v1.5. Many concerns were raised about the way of evaluating this same feedback, which risk to be too subjective or that make delegates' reward more unpredictable. I agree with these observations but I also think that we can try this new version out and make adjustment if any problem arise. This new version of the proposal was shaped after many feedback, calls and discussions, and it's always difficult to come up with something that perfectly aligns with every single aspect. I believe that v1.5 is really close to reaching these different goals. We can give it a try and see how it goes.
I've read, analyzed, and joined the call for the discussion, and I think V1.5 is the best way to move forward. There will, of course, still be some subjectivity in the evaluation, but I believe with each version, the incentive program will become more fair.
The proposal is now live in Snapshot!
The past six months of the Delegate Incentive Program have demonstrated that it is indeed an effective governance plan, even though I personally have not received rewards every month. Nevertheless, the program has successfully motivated most delegates. Although the incentives are not large, they serve as recognition of the delegates' work. No one wants their efforts to go unnoticed or unappreciated, and excellent work deserves positive feedback. So I fully support this proposal.
I voted FOR - DIP V1.5 because this is one of the most experimental and innovative delegate incentive programs I've seen. And I think it's worth trying it out.
We support the Delegate Incentive Program proposal v1.5 and and want to give a big thanks to the Seedlatam team for putting it together. It's honestly one of the most comprehensive and impactful delegate incentive experiments out there in the DAO space. Huge props to Seedlatam and everyone involved—the proposal is clear and well-structured. Since the program leans on Seedlatam to evaluate delegate comment quality, we're confident they'll keep things neutral throughout. Additionally, Curia has received a Questbook grant to build a governance analytics dashboard that also monitors delegate activities. As part of this grant, we'll be providing monthly reports on delegate activities, participation, and engagement metrics to keep everything transparent and help the community verify the information. Our goal is to enable the community to track how effective the incentive program is, monitor these contributions, and help it succeed in the long run.
After all the, feedbacks here, feedbacks in the call and private feedbacks, voting "For" on DIP 1.5.
Is gonna be a mess, seed is gonna have the hardest time of their life, and I am pretty sure a lot of folks will initially complain about having that 0.75 points more in this or that category.
After all the, feedbacks here, feedbacks in the call and private feedbacks, voting "For" on DIP 1.5.
Is gonna be a mess, seed is gonna have the hardest time of their life, and I am pretty sure a lot of folks will initially complain about having that 0.75 points more in this or that category.
But often times than not the hardest path is also the path that leads to the biggest growth, and I think evaluating not only the votes, but a big part of the arbitrum governance life, is what we need. We literally need to put all delegates in the position of interacting, and interact in a meaningful way.
A few things here
Yes, in all of this I am saying that seed should be able to ask more and enroll in the program, thus incresing overall cost. While aware of this, I also understand the enormous amount of workload this program will bring to their shoulders, being a cow that reads all the posts and comments in the forum: if i imagine myself not only reading all, but also evaluating all, and knowing how much this program will probably be relevant for the arbi staking proposal, I really want for seed to have all the ability to do the best job possible here. And here it means being able to onboard all the people they think are needed to have a consistent evaluation over the next 12 months.
Here is the Parameter Summary. Your quote is from tl;dr and only includes changes (parameters like Tally Voting didn't change).
Activity Weight (%):
I am very much in favour of the proposal, especially the DIP 1.5 version. The updated plan is more three-dimensional and transparent than before, and the shift from quantitative assessment to qualitative analysis is particularly impressive, especially the in-depth analysis of feedback. The proposal promotes professionalisation and long-term engagement of delegates through transparent and predictable incentives.
A few suggestions: 1. maintenance of long-term values: in addition to professionalism, delegates should always be objective and impartial, and promote decisions that are in line with the long-term values of the Arbitrum community. 2. Consideration of community influence: It is recommended that the influence of the representative on other platforms (e.g., Twitter, Discord) as well as offline activities be taken into account to fully assess the representative's contribution. 3. Salary setting and community values: It is recommended that the salary range be set at $3,000-$5,000 to avoid over-incentivising and compromising the purity and values of the community.
Based on the feedback received from several delegates (@paulofonseca @JoJo @BlockworksResearch @KlausBrave @WintermuteGovernance @cp0x @maxlomu and others who attended the calls) regarding the administrative budget and also about the suggestions made by @404DAO, we are incorporating some changes before sending the vote to Snapshot:
Although the proposed administrative budget is sufficient in both versions, we understand that if there is a considerable increase in registrations, the workload would increase significantly. That is why we will incorporate a clause where if the program exceeds 65 participants (which is the number that we believe we could cover with the budget requested) we will reopen discussions in the forum on the budget, also considering the possibility of increasing the number of delegates incentivized.
Regarding the rubric, the changes proposed by @404DAO are incorporated almost in their entirety, leaving the scoring system as follows:
I believe that denominating payments in USD for governance participants creates a disincentive to protect the value of ARB, since the value received by those benefiting from the programs will remain the same regardless of whether the decisions made benefit the DAO and its long-term sustainability.
Voted FOR DIP v1.5
Broadens Participation
Voted FOR DIP v1.5
Broadens Participation
Rewards Performance
Here is the Parameter Summary. Your quote is from tl;dr and only includes changes (parameters like Tally Voting didn't change).
Activity Weight (%):
Participation Rate 90 (PR90) - Weight 15%
Snapshot Voting (SV) - Weight 20%
Tally Voting (TV) - Weight 25%
Communicating Rationale (CR) - Weight 10 or 15%
Proposal Feedback (PF) - Weight 25 or 30%
Bonus Point (BP) - Extra +30%
Total Participation (TP):
TP = PR% + SV% + TV% + CR% + %PF + BP
So if we attend both bi weekly calls, is it 5% BP or 2.5% for attending BOTH (both or nothing)?
It's 2.5% for each call. If you attend to all calls (three in total, two from bi-weekly calls and one for the monthly) you get 7.5% BP.
I am very much in favour of the proposal, especially the DIP 1.5 version. The updated plan is more three-dimensional and transparent than before, and the shift from quantitative assessment to qualitative analysis is particularly impressive, especially the in-depth analysis of feedback. The proposal promotes professionalisation and long-term engagement of delegates through transparent and predictable incentives.
A few suggestions: 1. maintenance of long-term values: in addition to professionalism, delegates should always be objective and impartial, and promote decisions that are in line with the long-term values of the Arbitrum community. 2. Consideration of community influence: It is recommended that the influence of the representative on other platforms (e.g., Twitter, Discord) as well as offline activities be taken into account to fully assess the representative's contribution. 3. Salary setting and community values: It is recommended that the salary range be set at $3,000-$5,000 to avoid over-incentivising and compromising the purity and values of the community.
These recommendations help to ensure that incentives are more comprehensive and fair, and help to maintain the core values of the community.
Thanks to the SEED team for their excellent work.
This only adds up to 70% TP, where is the other 30% coming from? What are we missing?
So if we attend both bi weekly calls, is it 5% BP or 2.5% for attending BOTH (both or nothing)?
Thanks for the update! Overall, we are happy to see all of the new updates and are in favor of version 1.5 more than 1.1. This main option we are in favor of is the changes to how communication is recorded, mainly how it will be holistic instead of a more "gameable" system.
Based on the feedback received from several delegates (@paulofonseca @JoJo @BlockworksResearch @KlausBrave @WintermuteGovernance @cp0x @maxlomu and others who attended the calls) regarding the administrative budget and also about the suggestions made by @404DAO, we are incorporating some changes before sending the vote to Snapshot:
Although the proposed administrative budget is sufficient in both versions, we understand that if there is a considerable increase in registrations, the workload would increase significantly. That is why we will incorporate a clause where if the program exceeds 65 participants (which is the number that we believe we could cover with the budget requested) we will reopen discussions in the forum on the budget, also considering the possibility of increasing the number of delegates incentivized.
Regarding the rubric, the changes proposed by @404DAO are incorporated almost in their entirety, leaving the scoring system as follows:
1. Data Collection: At the end of the month, the complete set of contributions by each delegate across all discussions on the forum is reviewed.
2. Overall Evaluation: The rubric is used to assess the delegate’s overall performance on each criterion, based on a holistic view of their participation.
3. Score Assignment: A level of 1 to 4 is assigned to each criterion, based on the consistency and quality of the delegate’s contributions over the month. Each level has an assigned score, from 1 to 4.
4. Monthly Report: A qualitative and quantitative report summarizing the delegate’s performance over the month is then produced.
Each rubric criterion has levels with an assigned score, from 1 to 4, depending on the level achieved.
The initial score is obtained by adding the first five criteria, while the final score results from applying the “Presence in Discussions” multiplier to the initial average score. The maximum Initial Score is 20 points and 30 points for the Final Score.
For illustrative purposes, here’s an example:
Relevance: Level 3 - Scoring achieved = 3
Depth of Analysis: Level 2 - Scoring achieved = 2
Timing: Level 4 - Scoring achieved = 4
Clarity and Communication: Level 2 - Scoring achieved = 2
Impact on Decision-Making: Level 3 - Scoring achieved = 3
Initial Score/Average: 70% or 14/20 or 2.8/4
Final Score: 70% x 1.1 = 77% or 23.1/30 Delegates’ Feedback points.
Also if v1.5 is chosen, this scoring system will be in a testing phase, and we, as Administrators, commit to submitting it to the DAO for consultation after three months of running the program.
We would like to thank the more than 30 delegates who attended both calls. Your input has been significant and we have noted a strong interest in the incentive program.
I believe that denominating payments in USD for governance participants creates a disincentive to protect the value of ARB, since the value received by those benefiting from the programs will remain the same regardless of whether the decisions made benefit the DAO and its long-term sustainability.
We note that sometimes it is assumed that fixing payments in ARB guarantees that the decisions are the best around sustainability and taking care of the value of ARB. Still, the price went from 1.75 to 0.55 in the last six months, even with delegates being incentivized in ARB. The price of ARB depends on a mix of issues (which include DAO decisions) but there are also other factors outside the DAO itself, such as ARB unlocks, market liquidity, or even macroeconomic decisions in various countries (such as a rate cut or rate hike).
That said, it is incorrect to deny any alignment in our proposal. There is a cap in ARB for each tier, and that implies that delegates must be interested in sustainability and value generation; otherwise, their compensation could be affected sooner or later.
denominating payments in ARB reinforces active participation in governance
Today the program is paying a maximum of $2,750 for 100% TP, which we believe is a relatively low amount for the volume of assignments currently at ArbitrumDAO. The idea of offering predictable incentives is that delegates will devote more time to ArbitrumDAO, professionalize to increase quality, have assurances that their efforts will be properly compensated, and continue to choose ArbitrumDAO over other attractive alternatives that will eventually appear.
Currently, there are some inactive delegates with significant VP. This may be due to many factors; however, several delegates have expressed that they are unable to dedicate time to the DAO because they are busy with other work. This is alright, but how can we get these delegates to devote time to the DAO? How can we get them reactivated? These may be the questions we need to ask.
Here, we leave a series of tweets linked to the point we are trying to explain:
Specifically, the delegate incentives program creates an economic incentive that stems directly from the dollar valuation of the reward. Today, I can acquire the ARB needed to participate in the program for around 27K USD, while the program offers up to 7K USD per month in rewards for 12 months (or 9, if you require 3 extra months for qualifying). Do the math. The fact that these 7K USD per month are guaranteed by the program results in a clear economic incentive to meet only the minimum requirements to qualify for the payments, which undermines the program’s intended purpose of professionalizing delegates.
There is no such guarantee of getting 7k per month. Having the 50k ARB does not guarantee compensation, even voting in all proposals. Even if they managed to obtain even the minimum score by voting and justifying their votes, we would be talking about 3K per month for nine months, resulting in the same 27K you mention, considering the risk of ARB volatility + the fact that the scoring methodology could change (making this kind of speculations less predictable) makes the scenario you mention somewhat unfeasible.
Although it’s debatable whether the DAO is currently in a position to guarantee such payments (it still doesn’t generate—will it ever?—enough USD-denominated revenue, and there hasn’t been a debate on what to do with the $ETH accumulated from chain revenue), I believe it could be justified for certain external service providers.
However, what is less clear to me is the justification for other programs, which I would categorize as governance and operations management of the DAO by its own governance participants.
Your argument could be reversed here: Why cover the service providers and not the delegates who are so important to the DAO? From a DIP POV, we believe that delegates are the most important SPs as they are the ones who have the VP that secures ArbitrumDAO and its ecosystem.
On the other hand, if the token goes up, isn't it in the DAO's best interest that we save ARB instead of continuing to pay the same amount?
I think most of the arguments against fixing in USD are geared towards scenarios where ARB goes down, but there is no mention of the inefficiency in fixing values in ARB for cases where it goes up. I'll give you an example, assuming we set cap at 16,500 ARB today, would you think it fair/viable to keep paying the same amount in 6 months if the token did x3?
Proposed multiplier change:
Less than 25% presence in discussions: 0.9x multiplier
25-50% presence in discussions: 1x multiplier
50-75% presence in discussions: 1.1x
75%+ presence in discussions: 1.2x
To visualize (using the same example provided but with the revised scoring):
Relevance: Level 3 - Scoring achieved = 3
Depth of Analysis: Level 2 - Scoring achieved = 2
Timing: Level 4 - Scoring achieved = 4
Clarity and Communication: Level 2 - Scoring achieved = 2
Impact on Decision-Making: Level 3 - Scoring achieved = 3
Initial Score/Average: 70% or 14/20 or 2.8/4
Final Score: 70% x 1.1 = 77% or 23.1/30 Delegates’ Feedback points.
Lastly, it would be helpful to demonstrate how the current system would assess three delegates using the rubric and scoring methodology. This would provide delegates with a clearer understanding of the expected level of participation and effort under the new system.
Thank you for this feedback. We have been discussing this internally, and we think you are right, so we will introduce the proposed changes prior to the Snapshot vote, with one caveat.
The Presence in discussions parameter will look like this:
Less than 25% presence in discussions: 1.0x multiplier
25-50% presence in discussions: 1.05x multiplier
50-75% presence in discussions: 1.1x multiplier
75%+ presence in discussions: 1.2x multiplier
While we agree that this is an important criteria and that a high level of presence is healthy, we prefer to avoid penalizing delegates who are not present in more than 25% of the discussions with a 0.9x.
Regarding the methodology's testing, if v1.5 is chosen, this scoring system will be in a testing phase, and we, as Administrators, commit to submitting it to the DAO for consultation after three months of running the program.
It looks to me that requiring only 60% of vote participation for onchain votes is not high enough. For example, in the past 90 days there were only 10 onchain proposals in Arbitrum DAO. So asking these delegates to vote 10 times in 3 months is totally reasonable and allowing them to miss 40% of the votes is too benevolent in my opinion. I think the 60% of vote participation criteria should be much higher, maybe even 100%. And also, if delegates are worried about missing a vote, they can just subscribe to nice proposal reminders in proposals.app and they will get a wonderful email whenever they need to vote on an Arbitrum proposal, for both onchain, and offchain votes. And it’s free ninety nine! =)
It looks to me that requiring only 60% of vote participation for onchain votes is not high enough. For example, in the past 90 days there were only 10 onchain proposals in Arbitrum DAO. So asking these delegates to vote 10 times in 3 months is totally reasonable and allowing them to miss 40% of the votes is too benevolent in my opinion. I think the 60% of vote participation criteria should be much higher, maybe even 100%. And also, if delegates are worried about missing a vote, they can just subscribe to nice proposal reminders in proposals.app and they will get a wonderful email whenever they need to vote on an Arbitrum proposal, for both onchain, and offchain votes. And it’s free ninety nine! =)
Looking at the data we collected during the first 3 months of the program (March, April, and May), the delegates registered in the program contributed 65.64% of the VP of voting in Tally during the 3 months.
With the cumulative VP and the participation rate, we can calculate the actual VP contributed by the delegates and the percentage they represent of the average VP each month.
You can also see in the following table the high level of delegate participation in the first 3 months. We hope that the metrics will still be promising given that in order to be eligible for compensation it will be necessary to obtain 65% or more of TP. Considering that the voting parameters cover 60% of the score (between PR, Snapshot, and Tally) it isn't easy to receive compensation if you are not a consistent voter.
We calculated the participation rate of registered delegates each month in Snapshot and Tally votes using the following formula:
%Snapshot: (SV(Rn) / SV(Tn))
%Tally: (TV(Rn) / TV(Tn))
in the 1.5 option, for a delegate that has their monthly compensation slashed because their comments on the forum were graded on the rubric as lower quality then expected, that delegate will for sure demand knowing which were the specific comments and in which rubric they were scored lower. So the dashboard would need to be able to show that information, for every single comment, so that delegates get a fair grading and understand why their monthly compensation diminished from what their expectation was. Also, I think this will inevitably create a risky dynamic where the program managers would be policing the actual discourse on this discourse forum, by grading higher certain types of comments and grading lower another types of comments, since their own biases will always be at play. I personally wouldn’t like to be this type of police nor to be policed like this, in this forum.
As we discussed on the Monday call, initially the rubric and report will be publicly available on the Karma dashboard, although the analysis will be provided in a general way. We expect to be able to go into more detail in the short/medium term with the help of the tools that Karma will provide. It should be noted that this version (if approved) will be treated on an experimental basis initially.
I’m not sure how this program will interface with the ARB staking program but it wouldn’t shock me if this program would morph into being the DIP for the delegates that have between 50k and 500k ARB, and bigger delegates would get their compensation only from the staking mechanism. This upper 500k ARB limit is just a number chosen at random, but if we’re gonna have staking rewards for those with the most ARB, maybe the DIP would become the program that compensates the smaller delegates that wouldn’t be able to professionalize otherwise. Since honestly, the bigger delegates are already kinda professionalized.
We are interested in aligning both proposals, but the staking is at a preliminary stage and we believe it is a discussion that can happen later. However, there is a working group already created by @Frisson that you can join if you want to deepen the discussion.
We would like to thank @SEEDGov for their efforts on this initiative. We recognize the significant challenges involved in designing a system that accommodates various complexities and stakeholders. While both proposed systems have their trade-offs, we believe each is an improvement over the current one. However, we believe that further iterations are still necessary to enhance their effectiveness.
We believe that v1.1 falls short of achieving the goal of driving quality contributions compared to v1.5. Our primary concern with v1.5 is the subjectivity in scoring. For instance, if someone receives a Level 2 (acceptable) score for clarity, what differentiates a score of 35% from 45%? This ambiguity can lead to discrepancies in individual grading. We recommend implementing a more objective scoring system to reduce variability. Instead of using percentage grades, we suggest assigning 1 point for each level, with a max of 4 points for each criteria and a maximum of 20 points total for the first 5 criteria (initial score).
We would like to thank @SEEDGov for their efforts on this initiative. We recognize the significant challenges involved in designing a system that accommodates various complexities and stakeholders. While both proposed systems have their trade-offs, we believe each is an improvement over the current one. However, we believe that further iterations are still necessary to enhance their effectiveness.
We believe that v1.1 falls short of achieving the goal of driving quality contributions compared to v1.5. Our primary concern with v1.5 is the subjectivity in scoring. For instance, if someone receives a Level 2 (acceptable) score for clarity, what differentiates a score of 35% from 45%? This ambiguity can lead to discrepancies in individual grading. We recommend implementing a more objective scoring system to reduce variability. Instead of using percentage grades, we suggest assigning 1 point for each level, with a max of 4 points for each criteria and a maximum of 20 points total for the first 5 criteria (initial score).
Additionally, we believe that the criteria for Presence in discussions should carry more weight in evaluating contributions. We need to consider what constitutes a healthy level of presence in discussions. We would argue that a target closer to 50% is more appropriate, therefore anything less than that should be a reducing factor.
Here’s an example of our proposed changes to the scoring to demonstrate what we mean.
Proposed multiplier change: Less than 25% presence in discussions: 0.9x multiplier
25-50% presence in discussions: 1x multiplier
50-75% presence in discussions: 1.1x
75%+ presence in discussions: 1.2x
To visualize (using the same example provided but with the revised scoring):
Initial Score/Average: 70% or 14/20 or 2.8/4
Final Score: 70% x 1.1 = 77% or 23.1/30 Delegates’ Feedback points.
Lastly, it would be helpful to demonstrate how the current system would assess three delegates using the rubric and scoring methodology. This would provide delegates with a clearer understanding of the expected level of participation and effort under the new system.
We would like to announce that we will be hosting two special calls to explain details about the proposal and answer questions prior to publishing this proposal on Snapshot.
The first call will be on Monday, September 16, 2024 - 16:00 UTC
Link to the call: https://meet.google.com/sai-nbcx-iki
The second call will be on Wednesday, September 18, 2024 - 22:00 UTC
We would like to announce that we will be hosting two special calls to explain details about the proposal and answer questions prior to publishing this proposal on Snapshot.
The first call will be on Monday, September 16, 2024 - 16:00 UTC
Link to the call: https://meet.google.com/sai-nbcx-iki
The second call will be on Wednesday, September 18, 2024 - 22:00 UTC
Link to the call: https://meet.google.com/otu-phpy-iyb
Both calls were added to the ArbitrumDAO Governance Calendar
After these calls, the proposal is expected to be sent to a Snapshot vote on September 19, 2024.
We are in full support of the Delegate Incentive Program v1.1. This proposal represents a meaningful step towards improving delegate engagement and participation within the Arbitrum DAO. By introducing a well-structured incentive program, it encourages delegates to remain active and committed, which in turn strengthens governance and ensures more thoughtful decision-making.
As a non-funded delegate group, Castle Capital dedicates several hours each week across multiple contributors to stay informed, perform research, reach consensus, and actively participate in the governance process. We meet regularly to review proposals, discuss them in detail, and vote responsibly with our community multisigs. This program acknowledges the effort and time invested by delegates like us, ensuring that those who contribute meaningfully to the ecosystem are fairly compensated for their work.
We are in full support of the Delegate Incentive Program v1.1. This proposal represents a meaningful step towards improving delegate engagement and participation within the Arbitrum DAO. By introducing a well-structured incentive program, it encourages delegates to remain active and committed, which in turn strengthens governance and ensures more thoughtful decision-making.
As a non-funded delegate group, Castle Capital dedicates several hours each week across multiple contributors to stay informed, perform research, reach consensus, and actively participate in the governance process. We meet regularly to review proposals, discuss them in detail, and vote responsibly with our community multisigs. This program acknowledges the effort and time invested by delegates like us, ensuring that those who contribute meaningfully to the ecosystem are fairly compensated for their work.
Key elements, such as the use of the Karma Score to track delegate contributions and the tiered reward structure based on performance, provide a fair and transparent method for recognizing valuable participation. The minimum delegation requirement of 50,000 ARB tokens strikes an appropriate balance between inclusivity and ensuring that delegates have a significant stake in governance.
We believe this program will help foster long-term commitment from delegates, create accountability, and enhance the overall health of the DAO. While we understand concerns around sustainability, we trust that this incentive program has been carefully designed to align with the DAO’s goals and resources.
We look forward to seeing the positive impact of this initiative on Arbitrum’s governance and encourage further community feedback to refine the proposal before a formal vote.
gmgm
I would like to provide some final feedback, as I understand the proposal will go to Snapshot today. I’m beginning to feel concerned about the trend where absolutely all DAO proposals are denominated in USD rather than ARB.
gmgm
I would like to provide some final feedback, as I understand the proposal will go to Snapshot today. I’m beginning to feel concerned about the trend where absolutely all DAO proposals are denominated in USD rather than ARB.
I understand that the main reason for this shift is to ensure payment to various external service providers who are not immediately connected to the DAO, so they can be properly compensated for their services.
Although it’s debatable whether the DAO is currently in a position to guarantee such payments (it still doesn’t generate—will it ever?—enough USD-denominated revenue, and there hasn’t been a debate on what to do with the $ETH accumulated from chain revenue), I believe it could be justified for certain external service providers.
However, what is less clear to me is the justification for other programs, which I would categorize as governance and operations management of the DAO by its own governance participants.
In the initial token distribution, the DAO was allocated approximately 35% of the supply, which represents both an opportunity to significantly increase the circulating supply to cover DAO expenses, and a significant responsibility to maintain the token’s value, first for security and second for the interests of users and investors.
I believe that denominating payments in USD for governance participants creates a disincentive to protect the value of ARB, since the value received by those benefiting from the programs will remain the same regardless of whether the decisions made benefit the DAO and its long-term sustainability.
I understand that a significant part of ARB’s price action since the TGE is related to the token unlocks. (ty @karpatkey for the awesome report which I continue checking. when v2 btw):
However, at this point, we are all fully aware of this situation, and no one should be surprised by this distribution scheme or the strong likelihood that those with unlocked tokens may decide to profit from it.
As a DAO, rather than shielding ourselves from a situation we already know exists and guaranteeing short-term benefits for participants, I believe we should focus on aligning incentives to strengthen the token and, in turn, the DAO’s security.
I think that denominating payments in USD works against that goal, as it misaligns incentives. On the other hand, denominating payments in ARB reinforces active participation in governance and the long-term stability of the token, as recipients are economically incentivized to ensure this happens.
Specifically, the delegate incentives program creates an economic incentive that stems directly from the dollar valuation of the reward. Today, I can acquire the ARB needed to participate in the program for around 27K USD, while the program offers up to 7K USD per month in rewards for 12 months (or 9, if you require 3 extra months for qualifying). Do the math. The fact that these 7K USD per month are guaranteed by the program results in a clear economic incentive to meet only the minimum requirements to qualify for the payments, which undermines the program’s intended purpose of professionalizing delegates.
This misalignment encourages delegates to meet the minimum thresholds necessary to receive payments, rather than striving for high-quality contributions that truly benefit the DAO in the long run. If the goal is to professionalize delegates, the incentive structure should promote excellence. USD-denominated payments undermine that goal.
One of the guiding principles of the Arbitrum DAO is sustainability:
Denominating payments in ARB rather than USD would better align with the DAO’s core principle of sustainability. By doing so, we can ensure that both governance participants and the broader ecosystem work towards the long-term health and value appreciation of the ARB token, which is crucial for the DAO’s future security and success.
I am very much in favor of this proposal. I only ask that the denomination of payments in USD be reconsidered.
for the 1.5 option, I believe the reviewers of the delegate feedback should be selected/elected in the open and have a term limit… probably a quite short term limit, 3 months, maybe even 1 month max.
for the 1.5 option, I believe the reviewers of the delegate feedback should be selected/elected in the open and have a term limit… probably a quite short term limit, 3 months, maybe even 1 month max.
As we have already discussed in the telegram group:
Decentralizing reviews sounds interesting although we have some concerns about this:
It is difficult to maintain unified criteria even with a rubric and pre-established parameters.
The most qualified reviewers are likely to be delegates already participating in the program (this creates possible COIs) and if we create a committee especially dedicated to this that is renewed monthly, it could create friction in the participation of the delegates in the program, since by fulfilling a role as evaluators they could not participate in the program as delegates or vice versa.
The frequent rotation of reviewers will cause bureaucratic problems and increase the difficulty as mentioned earlier of maintaining consistent criteria between each month/iteration.
While we have mentioned that decentralizing the program somewhat can help both scale the program and mitigate the risks associated with having a single administrator, we are trying to take the program one step at a time. We feel that we should first test v1.5 and make sure that there is consensus in the DAO about the rubric and the criteria for scoring (this is something that is confirmed only in practice). We would say that in the first instance it will be very important to get feedback from the community to improve this aspect prior to any attempt to decentralize the administration of the program.
The new participation requirements modify the historical rate of voting to participation within the last 90 days. This shows that the program aims to incentivize new delegate participation.
In this regard, the program already has an established base of delegates, with incentives provided to between 30 and 35 delegates.
Additionally, the August results show that although 34 delegates were compensated, 48 meet the voting requirements to qualify. Therefore, there’s little room for new incentivized delegates to enter if those already participating reactivate under this new proposal.
While 48 delegates met the minimum requirements to participate in August, it is also true that only 34 received compensation, indicating that the remaining 14 did not meet the requirements to be eligible for compensation. Additionally, according to our metrics, over these six months, there were an average of 31 delegates per month eligible for compensation, this indicates that there is room for new participants to join the program considering that in the original proposal there are 50 delegates that can be compensated per month.
However, if these registered delegates who do not meet the minimum TP are reactivated and we have new delegates competing for the remaining seats to be compensated, the DAO could evaluate increasing the number of incentivized delegates.
From the same August results, I notice that a large portion of the delegates who currently or potentially qualify for program incentives are also receiving income from the DAO for other roles. Many hold positions on various committees, provide direct services, hold roles in the multiple exiting multisigs, or somehow earn from the DAO.
This situation raises a valid concern: are DAO roles chosen based on popularity contests, or are the most qualified candidates objectively selected for each position? In a system where service providers are selected by vote, this is entirely possible.
Now, is it possible to mitigate this risk?
We believe so by limiting compensation for their role as delegates for those who are already paid by the DAO for other services.
I understand this is delicate because fulfilling the role of delegate takes time. And in reality, they are working and being paid for different things. That’s why I’m not proposing a complete exclusion of payment, but rather a partial reduction (tbd if supported).
To be honest, we don't agree that we should somehow limit compensation for the role of delegates. We understand that in several situations there are delegates (who devote time as you rightly say) to fulfill that role and who are also devoting extra time to specific initiatives so we don't see why anyone should receive less compensation for (ultimately) dedicating more of their time and effort to the DAO. At the same time, we would create a disincentive to participate in the program or apply for other initiatives since the delegate would have to evaluate what is best for him/her.
A good example of this is how @BlockworksResearch offered to collaborate with a paid working group, but without receiving additional income for that role. There are more examples of people waiving payment.
We believe that it should be up to each delegate to decide whether they receive additional compensation or not, and this is an example of that. In any case, the DAO may also evaluate if it wishes to select a particular role or position for a delegate already receiving remuneration for the DIP.
@WintermuteGovernance I just want to add that L2beat received 5000 in ARB, not in $. Given the token rate, the $7000 will probably never be real.
We propose changing the way we collect feedback from a quantitative to a qualitative way.
We propose changing the way we collect feedback from a quantitative to a qualitative way.
Thank you very much for the new proposal. I’m surprised by the rubric. I think the work it demands is phenomenal, but it would be a great experiment to see how the evaluation of contributions turns out.
On the other hand, I’ve been thinking a bit about the new incentives scheme proposed and the program's objective.
The new participation requirements modify the historical rate of voting to participation within the last 90 days. This shows that the program aims to incentivize new delegate participation.
In this regard, the program already has an established base of delegates, with incentives provided to between 30 and 35 delegates.
Additionally, the August results show that although 34 delegates were compensated, 48 meet the voting requirements to qualify. Therefore, there’s little room for new incentivized delegates to enter if those already participating reactivate under this new proposal.
I understand that what follows might generate different perspectives, and I’d love to hear the opinions of other delegates to enrich the debate. This is an RFC (which could eventually evolve into an RFC or a separate proposal), and I’d like to hear feedback.
From the same August results, I notice that a large portion of the delegates who currently or potentially qualify for program incentives are also receiving income from the DAO for other roles. Many hold positions on various committees, provide direct services, hold roles in the multiple exiting multisigs, or somehow earn from the DAO.
This situation raises a valid concern: are DAO roles chosen based on popularity contests, or are the most qualified candidates objectively selected for each position? In a system where service providers are selected by vote, this is entirely possible.
Now, is it possible to mitigate this risk?
I believe so: by limiting compensation for their role as delegates for those who are already paid by the DAO for other services.
I understand this is delicate because fulfilling the role of delegate takes time. And in reality, they are working and being paid for different things. That’s why I’m not proposing a complete exclusion of payment, but rather a partial reduction (tbd if supported).
The accumulation of roles in the DAO by certain actors with greater voting power presents a systemic risk, as it could lead to implicit or explicit collusion. Reducing payments for those already receiving income from the DAO is a preventive measure that reduces the incentive to concentrate power in a few hands.
I believe that by limiting payments to those who already benefit from the DAO, several advantages can be achieved:
A good example of this is how @BlockworksResearch offered to collaborate with a paid working group, but without receiving additional income for that role. There are more examples of people waiving payment.
At the same time, the funds retained from this could expand the number of incentivized delegates from 50 without additional costs to the DAO. This would create incentives for new delegates to participate and stay active. @SEEDGov could even experiment with allocating resources to small delegates who have completed specific tasks and contributed value
By expanding the number of incentivized delegates, the DAO not only diversifies its voices but also reduces dependency on a few key actors, promoting more pluralistic governance and making it less susceptible to capture by influential parties.
To be clear: I recognize the great work of the current delegates and their commitment to the DAO. My proposal is not intended to question their contributions but to ensure that the incentive system is more inclusive and sustainable in the long run.
This "RFC" seeks to strengthen the DAO in the long term, preventing incentivized payments from concentrating in the hands of a few and ensuring greater diversity among delegates.
just to summarize here the feedback that I gave on the call that just happened so that this comment can be highly scored in a potential future DIP =)
just to summarize here the feedback that I gave on the call that just happened so that this comment can be highly scored in a potential future DIP =)
and also another suggestion/idea: I’m not sure how this program will interface with the ARB staking program but it wouldn’t shock me if this program would morph into being the DIP for the delegates that have between 50k and 500k ARB, and bigger delegates would get their compensation only from the staking mechanism. This upper 500k ARB limit is just a number chosen at random, but if we’re gonna have staking rewards for those with the most ARB, maybe the DIP would become the program that compensates the smaller delegates that wouldn’t be able to professionalize otherwise. Since honestly, the bigger delegates are already kinda professionalized.
for the 1.5 option, I believe the reviewers of the delegate feedback should be selected/elected in the open and have a term limit... probably a quite short term limit, 3 months, maybe even 1 month max.
as some delegates have pointed out, I have concerns regarding encouraging early over late replies. Since we already go for the quality path, whenever posted, quality matters. Actually, if there is a “late” reply with good quality, that one should be more valuable since it raises some points that others overlooked.
knowing that dip will potentially be a foundation of arb staking and so have an ecosystem weight way higher than it is now, would you think seed could be able to scale 1.5 in a situation in which we have x10 the amount of activity we have today?
I want to express my idea once again.
Let's spend a couple of months reporting on both proposals and understand how objectively we can evaluate the delegate's contribution, and also understand how difficult it is to monitor this and how much time it takes.
Thus, based on the results of the test period, a decision will need to be made.
i think @SEEDGov can provide us some numbers here. While the $7k is the ceiling it is, indeed, the ceiling. Skimming into the payment for each month (i am on the multisig currently) quite rarely we have someone reaching the cap, and the current month has this outlier (5k to l2beat) due to their proposal.
I ran quickly numbers in excel, for august average is around 3.5k arb and median is around 3.7k arb, so 26 to 30% below the ceiling.
well actually that makes me think of a great idea!
what about the SeedGov team would run the qualitative process of option 1.5, for the last month or the last 3 months, and would publish the amounts the delegates would have received if option 1.5 would be already live? this can be prototyped in some spreadsheets and we would have real data to inform if 1.5 is a better, fairer system than 1.1
The updated proposal is more multi-dimensional and visually intuitive, although it looks more complex. However, I’m pleased to see that representatives are expected to provide feedback on the quality, feasibility, practicality, and referenceability of the proposal, as these are considered highly important metrics.
Thanks @SEEDGov for the proposal and it’s great to see all the feedback thus far!
We are in favour of incentivising delegates and fully understand that it’s a rather difficult task that has yet to find a standard that is optimal for delegates and the DAO. In saying this, we believe that there is a current mismatch between the proposed budget (rewards for delegates), delegate requirements, and subsequent benefit to the DAO.
I find this a bit controversial.
We should explicitly incentivize delegates to add value to the DAO and measure their impact, instead of purely evaluating their output. All a delegate needs to do today is vote and justify that vote, and bring home a considerable amount of money.
This feels like a significant improvement and I support it. That being said, I'm starting to observe some pervasive incentives at play with certain comments being clearly AI generated. This has often been an issue in other communities that reward participation and we've been working on a solution that's not perfect but can help. Let me know if you want to discuss :slight_smile:
Here is the Parameter Summary. Your quote is from tl;dr and only includes changes (parameters like Tally Voting didn't change).
Activity Weight (%):
Participation Rate 90 (PR90) - Weight 15%
Snapshot Voting (SV) - Weight 20%
Tally Voting (TV) - Weight 25%
Communicating Rationale (CR) - Weight 10 or 15%
Proposal Feedback (PF) - Weight 25 or 30%
Bonus Point (BP) - Extra +30%
Total Participation (TP):
TP = PR% + SV% + TV% + CR% + %PF + BP
So if we attend both bi weekly calls, is it 5% BP or 2.5% for attending BOTH (both or nothing)?
It's 2.5% for each call. If you attend to all calls (three in total, two from bi-weekly calls and one for the monthly) you get 7.5% BP.
I am very much in favour of the proposal, especially the DIP 1.5 version. The updated plan is more three-dimensional and transparent than before, and the shift from quantitative assessment to qualitative analysis is particularly impressive, especially the in-depth analysis of feedback. The proposal promotes professionalisation and long-term engagement of delegates through transparent and predictable incentives.
A few suggestions: 1. maintenance of long-term values: in addition to professionalism, delegates should always be objective and impartial, and promote decisions that are in line with the long-term values of the Arbitrum community. 2. Consideration of community influence: It is recommended that the influence of the representative on other platforms (e.g., Twitter, Discord) as well as offline activities be taken into account to fully assess the representative's contribution. 3. Salary setting and community values: It is recommended that the salary range be set at $3,000-$5,000 to avoid over-incentivising and compromising the purity and values of the community.
These recommendations help to ensure that incentives are more comprehensive and fair, and help to maintain the core values of the community.
Thanks to the SEED team for their excellent work.
This only adds up to 70% TP, where is the other 30% coming from? What are we missing?
So if we attend both bi weekly calls, is it 5% BP or 2.5% for attending BOTH (both or nothing)?
Thanks for the update! Overall, we are happy to see all of the new updates and are in favor of version 1.5 more than 1.1. This main option we are in favor of is the changes to how communication is recorded, mainly how it will be holistic instead of a more "gameable" system.
Based on the feedback received from several delegates (@paulofonseca @JoJo @BlockworksResearch @KlausBrave @WintermuteGovernance @cp0x @maxlomu and others who attended the calls) regarding the administrative budget and also about the suggestions made by @404DAO, we are incorporating some changes before sending the vote to Snapshot:
Although the proposed administrative budget is sufficient in both versions, we understand that if there is a considerable increase in registrations, the workload would increase significantly. That is why we will incorporate a clause where if the program exceeds 65 participants (which is the number that we believe we could cover with the budget requested) we will reopen discussions in the forum on the budget, also considering the possibility of increasing the number of delegates incentivized.
Regarding the rubric, the changes proposed by @404DAO are incorporated almost in their entirety, leaving the scoring system as follows:
1. Data Collection: At the end of the month, the complete set of contributions by each delegate across all discussions on the forum is reviewed.
2. Overall Evaluation: The rubric is used to assess the delegate’s overall performance on each criterion, based on a holistic view of their participation.
3. Score Assignment: A level of 1 to 4 is assigned to each criterion, based on the consistency and quality of the delegate’s contributions over the month. Each level has an assigned score, from 1 to 4.
4. Monthly Report: A qualitative and quantitative report summarizing the delegate’s performance over the month is then produced.
Each rubric criterion has levels with an assigned score, from 1 to 4, depending on the level achieved.
The initial score is obtained by adding the first five criteria, while the final score results from applying the “Presence in Discussions” multiplier to the initial average score. The maximum Initial Score is 20 points and 30 points for the Final Score.
For illustrative purposes, here’s an example:
Relevance: Level 3 - Scoring achieved = 3
Depth of Analysis: Level 2 - Scoring achieved = 2
Timing: Level 4 - Scoring achieved = 4
Clarity and Communication: Level 2 - Scoring achieved = 2
Impact on Decision-Making: Level 3 - Scoring achieved = 3
Initial Score/Average: 70% or 14/20 or 2.8/4
Final Score: 70% x 1.1 = 77% or 23.1/30 Delegates’ Feedback points.
Also if v1.5 is chosen, this scoring system will be in a testing phase, and we, as Administrators, commit to submitting it to the DAO for consultation after three months of running the program.
We would like to thank the more than 30 delegates who attended both calls. Your input has been significant and we have noted a strong interest in the incentive program.
I believe that denominating payments in USD for governance participants creates a disincentive to protect the value of ARB, since the value received by those benefiting from the programs will remain the same regardless of whether the decisions made benefit the DAO and its long-term sustainability.
We note that sometimes it is assumed that fixing payments in ARB guarantees that the decisions are the best around sustainability and taking care of the value of ARB. Still, the price went from 1.75 to 0.55 in the last six months, even with delegates being incentivized in ARB. The price of ARB depends on a mix of issues (which include DAO decisions) but there are also other factors outside the DAO itself, such as ARB unlocks, market liquidity, or even macroeconomic decisions in various countries (such as a rate cut or rate hike).
That said, it is incorrect to deny any alignment in our proposal. There is a cap in ARB for each tier, and that implies that delegates must be interested in sustainability and value generation; otherwise, their compensation could be affected sooner or later.
denominating payments in ARB reinforces active participation in governance
Today the program is paying a maximum of $2,750 for 100% TP, which we believe is a relatively low amount for the volume of assignments currently at ArbitrumDAO. The idea of offering predictable incentives is that delegates will devote more time to ArbitrumDAO, professionalize to increase quality, have assurances that their efforts will be properly compensated, and continue to choose ArbitrumDAO over other attractive alternatives that will eventually appear.
Currently, there are some inactive delegates with significant VP. This may be due to many factors; however, several delegates have expressed that they are unable to dedicate time to the DAO because they are busy with other work. This is alright, but how can we get these delegates to devote time to the DAO? How can we get them reactivated? These may be the questions we need to ask.
Here, we leave a series of tweets linked to the point we are trying to explain:
Specifically, the delegate incentives program creates an economic incentive that stems directly from the dollar valuation of the reward. Today, I can acquire the ARB needed to participate in the program for around 27K USD, while the program offers up to 7K USD per month in rewards for 12 months (or 9, if you require 3 extra months for qualifying). Do the math. The fact that these 7K USD per month are guaranteed by the program results in a clear economic incentive to meet only the minimum requirements to qualify for the payments, which undermines the program’s intended purpose of professionalizing delegates.
There is no such guarantee of getting 7k per month. Having the 50k ARB does not guarantee compensation, even voting in all proposals. Even if they managed to obtain even the minimum score by voting and justifying their votes, we would be talking about 3K per month for nine months, resulting in the same 27K you mention, considering the risk of ARB volatility + the fact that the scoring methodology could change (making this kind of speculations less predictable) makes the scenario you mention somewhat unfeasible.
Although it’s debatable whether the DAO is currently in a position to guarantee such payments (it still doesn’t generate—will it ever?—enough USD-denominated revenue, and there hasn’t been a debate on what to do with the $ETH accumulated from chain revenue), I believe it could be justified for certain external service providers.
However, what is less clear to me is the justification for other programs, which I would categorize as governance and operations management of the DAO by its own governance participants.
Your argument could be reversed here: Why cover the service providers and not the delegates who are so important to the DAO? From a DIP POV, we believe that delegates are the most important SPs as they are the ones who have the VP that secures ArbitrumDAO and its ecosystem.
On the other hand, if the token goes up, isn't it in the DAO's best interest that we save ARB instead of continuing to pay the same amount?
I think most of the arguments against fixing in USD are geared towards scenarios where ARB goes down, but there is no mention of the inefficiency in fixing values in ARB for cases where it goes up. I'll give you an example, assuming we set cap at 16,500 ARB today, would you think it fair/viable to keep paying the same amount in 6 months if the token did x3?
Proposed multiplier change:
Less than 25% presence in discussions: 0.9x multiplier
25-50% presence in discussions: 1x multiplier
50-75% presence in discussions: 1.1x
75%+ presence in discussions: 1.2x
To visualize (using the same example provided but with the revised scoring):
Relevance: Level 3 - Scoring achieved = 3
Depth of Analysis: Level 2 - Scoring achieved = 2
Timing: Level 4 - Scoring achieved = 4
Clarity and Communication: Level 2 - Scoring achieved = 2
Impact on Decision-Making: Level 3 - Scoring achieved = 3
Initial Score/Average: 70% or 14/20 or 2.8/4
Final Score: 70% x 1.1 = 77% or 23.1/30 Delegates’ Feedback points.
Lastly, it would be helpful to demonstrate how the current system would assess three delegates using the rubric and scoring methodology. This would provide delegates with a clearer understanding of the expected level of participation and effort under the new system.
Thank you for this feedback. We have been discussing this internally, and we think you are right, so we will introduce the proposed changes prior to the Snapshot vote, with one caveat.
The Presence in discussions parameter will look like this:
Less than 25% presence in discussions: 1.0x multiplier
25-50% presence in discussions: 1.05x multiplier
50-75% presence in discussions: 1.1x multiplier
75%+ presence in discussions: 1.2x multiplier
While we agree that this is an important criteria and that a high level of presence is healthy, we prefer to avoid penalizing delegates who are not present in more than 25% of the discussions with a 0.9x.
Regarding the methodology's testing, if v1.5 is chosen, this scoring system will be in a testing phase, and we, as Administrators, commit to submitting it to the DAO for consultation after three months of running the program.
It looks to me that requiring only 60% of vote participation for onchain votes is not high enough. For example, in the past 90 days there were only 10 onchain proposals in Arbitrum DAO. So asking these delegates to vote 10 times in 3 months is totally reasonable and allowing them to miss 40% of the votes is too benevolent in my opinion. I think the 60% of vote participation criteria should be much higher, maybe even 100%. And also, if delegates are worried about missing a vote, they can just subscribe to nice proposal reminders in proposals.app and they will get a wonderful email whenever they need to vote on an Arbitrum proposal, for both onchain, and offchain votes. And it’s free ninety nine! =)
It looks to me that requiring only 60% of vote participation for onchain votes is not high enough. For example, in the past 90 days there were only 10 onchain proposals in Arbitrum DAO. So asking these delegates to vote 10 times in 3 months is totally reasonable and allowing them to miss 40% of the votes is too benevolent in my opinion. I think the 60% of vote participation criteria should be much higher, maybe even 100%. And also, if delegates are worried about missing a vote, they can just subscribe to nice proposal reminders in proposals.app and they will get a wonderful email whenever they need to vote on an Arbitrum proposal, for both onchain, and offchain votes. And it’s free ninety nine! =)
Looking at the data we collected during the first 3 months of the program (March, April, and May), the delegates registered in the program contributed 65.64% of the VP of voting in Tally during the 3 months.
With the cumulative VP and the participation rate, we can calculate the actual VP contributed by the delegates and the percentage they represent of the average VP each month.
You can also see in the following table the high level of delegate participation in the first 3 months. We hope that the metrics will still be promising given that in order to be eligible for compensation it will be necessary to obtain 65% or more of TP. Considering that the voting parameters cover 60% of the score (between PR, Snapshot, and Tally) it isn't easy to receive compensation if you are not a consistent voter.
We calculated the participation rate of registered delegates each month in Snapshot and Tally votes using the following formula:
%Snapshot: (SV(Rn) / SV(Tn))
%Tally: (TV(Rn) / TV(Tn))
in the 1.5 option, for a delegate that has their monthly compensation slashed because their comments on the forum were graded on the rubric as lower quality then expected, that delegate will for sure demand knowing which were the specific comments and in which rubric they were scored lower. So the dashboard would need to be able to show that information, for every single comment, so that delegates get a fair grading and understand why their monthly compensation diminished from what their expectation was. Also, I think this will inevitably create a risky dynamic where the program managers would be policing the actual discourse on this discourse forum, by grading higher certain types of comments and grading lower another types of comments, since their own biases will always be at play. I personally wouldn’t like to be this type of police nor to be policed like this, in this forum.
As we discussed on the Monday call, initially the rubric and report will be publicly available on the Karma dashboard, although the analysis will be provided in a general way. We expect to be able to go into more detail in the short/medium term with the help of the tools that Karma will provide. It should be noted that this version (if approved) will be treated on an experimental basis initially.
I’m not sure how this program will interface with the ARB staking program but it wouldn’t shock me if this program would morph into being the DIP for the delegates that have between 50k and 500k ARB, and bigger delegates would get their compensation only from the staking mechanism. This upper 500k ARB limit is just a number chosen at random, but if we’re gonna have staking rewards for those with the most ARB, maybe the DIP would become the program that compensates the smaller delegates that wouldn’t be able to professionalize otherwise. Since honestly, the bigger delegates are already kinda professionalized.
We are interested in aligning both proposals, but the staking is at a preliminary stage and we believe it is a discussion that can happen later. However, there is a working group already created by @Frisson that you can join if you want to deepen the discussion.
We would like to thank @SEEDGov for their efforts on this initiative. We recognize the significant challenges involved in designing a system that accommodates various complexities and stakeholders. While both proposed systems have their trade-offs, we believe each is an improvement over the current one. However, we believe that further iterations are still necessary to enhance their effectiveness.
We believe that v1.1 falls short of achieving the goal of driving quality contributions compared to v1.5. Our primary concern with v1.5 is the subjectivity in scoring. For instance, if someone receives a Level 2 (acceptable) score for clarity, what differentiates a score of 35% from 45%? This ambiguity can lead to discrepancies in individual grading. We recommend implementing a more objective scoring system to reduce variability. Instead of using percentage grades, we suggest assigning 1 point for each level, with a max of 4 points for each criteria and a maximum of 20 points total for the first 5 criteria (initial score).
We would like to thank @SEEDGov for their efforts on this initiative. We recognize the significant challenges involved in designing a system that accommodates various complexities and stakeholders. While both proposed systems have their trade-offs, we believe each is an improvement over the current one. However, we believe that further iterations are still necessary to enhance their effectiveness.
We believe that v1.1 falls short of achieving the goal of driving quality contributions compared to v1.5. Our primary concern with v1.5 is the subjectivity in scoring. For instance, if someone receives a Level 2 (acceptable) score for clarity, what differentiates a score of 35% from 45%? This ambiguity can lead to discrepancies in individual grading. We recommend implementing a more objective scoring system to reduce variability. Instead of using percentage grades, we suggest assigning 1 point for each level, with a max of 4 points for each criteria and a maximum of 20 points total for the first 5 criteria (initial score).
Additionally, we believe that the criteria for Presence in discussions should carry more weight in evaluating contributions. We need to consider what constitutes a healthy level of presence in discussions. We would argue that a target closer to 50% is more appropriate, therefore anything less than that should be a reducing factor.
Here’s an example of our proposed changes to the scoring to demonstrate what we mean.
Proposed multiplier change: Less than 25% presence in discussions: 0.9x multiplier
25-50% presence in discussions: 1x multiplier
50-75% presence in discussions: 1.1x
75%+ presence in discussions: 1.2x
To visualize (using the same example provided but with the revised scoring):
Initial Score/Average: 70% or 14/20 or 2.8/4
Final Score: 70% x 1.1 = 77% or 23.1/30 Delegates’ Feedback points.
Lastly, it would be helpful to demonstrate how the current system would assess three delegates using the rubric and scoring methodology. This would provide delegates with a clearer understanding of the expected level of participation and effort under the new system.
We would like to announce that we will be hosting two special calls to explain details about the proposal and answer questions prior to publishing this proposal on Snapshot.
The first call will be on Monday, September 16, 2024 - 16:00 UTC
Link to the call: https://meet.google.com/sai-nbcx-iki
The second call will be on Wednesday, September 18, 2024 - 22:00 UTC
We would like to announce that we will be hosting two special calls to explain details about the proposal and answer questions prior to publishing this proposal on Snapshot.
The first call will be on Monday, September 16, 2024 - 16:00 UTC
Link to the call: https://meet.google.com/sai-nbcx-iki
The second call will be on Wednesday, September 18, 2024 - 22:00 UTC
Link to the call: https://meet.google.com/otu-phpy-iyb
Both calls were added to the ArbitrumDAO Governance Calendar
After these calls, the proposal is expected to be sent to a Snapshot vote on September 19, 2024.
We are in full support of the Delegate Incentive Program v1.1. This proposal represents a meaningful step towards improving delegate engagement and participation within the Arbitrum DAO. By introducing a well-structured incentive program, it encourages delegates to remain active and committed, which in turn strengthens governance and ensures more thoughtful decision-making.
As a non-funded delegate group, Castle Capital dedicates several hours each week across multiple contributors to stay informed, perform research, reach consensus, and actively participate in the governance process. We meet regularly to review proposals, discuss them in detail, and vote responsibly with our community multisigs. This program acknowledges the effort and time invested by delegates like us, ensuring that those who contribute meaningfully to the ecosystem are fairly compensated for their work.
We are in full support of the Delegate Incentive Program v1.1. This proposal represents a meaningful step towards improving delegate engagement and participation within the Arbitrum DAO. By introducing a well-structured incentive program, it encourages delegates to remain active and committed, which in turn strengthens governance and ensures more thoughtful decision-making.
As a non-funded delegate group, Castle Capital dedicates several hours each week across multiple contributors to stay informed, perform research, reach consensus, and actively participate in the governance process. We meet regularly to review proposals, discuss them in detail, and vote responsibly with our community multisigs. This program acknowledges the effort and time invested by delegates like us, ensuring that those who contribute meaningfully to the ecosystem are fairly compensated for their work.
Key elements, such as the use of the Karma Score to track delegate contributions and the tiered reward structure based on performance, provide a fair and transparent method for recognizing valuable participation. The minimum delegation requirement of 50,000 ARB tokens strikes an appropriate balance between inclusivity and ensuring that delegates have a significant stake in governance.
We believe this program will help foster long-term commitment from delegates, create accountability, and enhance the overall health of the DAO. While we understand concerns around sustainability, we trust that this incentive program has been carefully designed to align with the DAO’s goals and resources.
We look forward to seeing the positive impact of this initiative on Arbitrum’s governance and encourage further community feedback to refine the proposal before a formal vote.
gmgm
I would like to provide some final feedback, as I understand the proposal will go to Snapshot today. I’m beginning to feel concerned about the trend where absolutely all DAO proposals are denominated in USD rather than ARB.
gmgm
I would like to provide some final feedback, as I understand the proposal will go to Snapshot today. I’m beginning to feel concerned about the trend where absolutely all DAO proposals are denominated in USD rather than ARB.
I understand that the main reason for this shift is to ensure payment to various external service providers who are not immediately connected to the DAO, so they can be properly compensated for their services.
Although it’s debatable whether the DAO is currently in a position to guarantee such payments (it still doesn’t generate—will it ever?—enough USD-denominated revenue, and there hasn’t been a debate on what to do with the $ETH accumulated from chain revenue), I believe it could be justified for certain external service providers.
However, what is less clear to me is the justification for other programs, which I would categorize as governance and operations management of the DAO by its own governance participants.
In the initial token distribution, the DAO was allocated approximately 35% of the supply, which represents both an opportunity to significantly increase the circulating supply to cover DAO expenses, and a significant responsibility to maintain the token’s value, first for security and second for the interests of users and investors.
I believe that denominating payments in USD for governance participants creates a disincentive to protect the value of ARB, since the value received by those benefiting from the programs will remain the same regardless of whether the decisions made benefit the DAO and its long-term sustainability.
I understand that a significant part of ARB’s price action since the TGE is related to the token unlocks. (ty @karpatkey for the awesome report which I continue checking. when v2 btw):
However, at this point, we are all fully aware of this situation, and no one should be surprised by this distribution scheme or the strong likelihood that those with unlocked tokens may decide to profit from it.
As a DAO, rather than shielding ourselves from a situation we already know exists and guaranteeing short-term benefits for participants, I believe we should focus on aligning incentives to strengthen the token and, in turn, the DAO’s security.
I think that denominating payments in USD works against that goal, as it misaligns incentives. On the other hand, denominating payments in ARB reinforces active participation in governance and the long-term stability of the token, as recipients are economically incentivized to ensure this happens.
Specifically, the delegate incentives program creates an economic incentive that stems directly from the dollar valuation of the reward. Today, I can acquire the ARB needed to participate in the program for around 27K USD, while the program offers up to 7K USD per month in rewards for 12 months (or 9, if you require 3 extra months for qualifying). Do the math. The fact that these 7K USD per month are guaranteed by the program results in a clear economic incentive to meet only the minimum requirements to qualify for the payments, which undermines the program’s intended purpose of professionalizing delegates.
This misalignment encourages delegates to meet the minimum thresholds necessary to receive payments, rather than striving for high-quality contributions that truly benefit the DAO in the long run. If the goal is to professionalize delegates, the incentive structure should promote excellence. USD-denominated payments undermine that goal.
One of the guiding principles of the Arbitrum DAO is sustainability:
Denominating payments in ARB rather than USD would better align with the DAO’s core principle of sustainability. By doing so, we can ensure that both governance participants and the broader ecosystem work towards the long-term health and value appreciation of the ARB token, which is crucial for the DAO’s future security and success.
I am very much in favor of this proposal. I only ask that the denomination of payments in USD be reconsidered.
for the 1.5 option, I believe the reviewers of the delegate feedback should be selected/elected in the open and have a term limit… probably a quite short term limit, 3 months, maybe even 1 month max.
for the 1.5 option, I believe the reviewers of the delegate feedback should be selected/elected in the open and have a term limit… probably a quite short term limit, 3 months, maybe even 1 month max.
As we have already discussed in the telegram group:
Decentralizing reviews sounds interesting although we have some concerns about this:
It is difficult to maintain unified criteria even with a rubric and pre-established parameters.
The most qualified reviewers are likely to be delegates already participating in the program (this creates possible COIs) and if we create a committee especially dedicated to this that is renewed monthly, it could create friction in the participation of the delegates in the program, since by fulfilling a role as evaluators they could not participate in the program as delegates or vice versa.
The frequent rotation of reviewers will cause bureaucratic problems and increase the difficulty as mentioned earlier of maintaining consistent criteria between each month/iteration.
While we have mentioned that decentralizing the program somewhat can help both scale the program and mitigate the risks associated with having a single administrator, we are trying to take the program one step at a time. We feel that we should first test v1.5 and make sure that there is consensus in the DAO about the rubric and the criteria for scoring (this is something that is confirmed only in practice). We would say that in the first instance it will be very important to get feedback from the community to improve this aspect prior to any attempt to decentralize the administration of the program.
The new participation requirements modify the historical rate of voting to participation within the last 90 days. This shows that the program aims to incentivize new delegate participation.
In this regard, the program already has an established base of delegates, with incentives provided to between 30 and 35 delegates.
Additionally, the August results show that although 34 delegates were compensated, 48 meet the voting requirements to qualify. Therefore, there’s little room for new incentivized delegates to enter if those already participating reactivate under this new proposal.
While 48 delegates met the minimum requirements to participate in August, it is also true that only 34 received compensation, indicating that the remaining 14 did not meet the requirements to be eligible for compensation. Additionally, according to our metrics, over these six months, there were an average of 31 delegates per month eligible for compensation, this indicates that there is room for new participants to join the program considering that in the original proposal there are 50 delegates that can be compensated per month.
However, if these registered delegates who do not meet the minimum TP are reactivated and we have new delegates competing for the remaining seats to be compensated, the DAO could evaluate increasing the number of incentivized delegates.
From the same August results, I notice that a large portion of the delegates who currently or potentially qualify for program incentives are also receiving income from the DAO for other roles. Many hold positions on various committees, provide direct services, hold roles in the multiple exiting multisigs, or somehow earn from the DAO.
This situation raises a valid concern: are DAO roles chosen based on popularity contests, or are the most qualified candidates objectively selected for each position? In a system where service providers are selected by vote, this is entirely possible.
Now, is it possible to mitigate this risk?
We believe so by limiting compensation for their role as delegates for those who are already paid by the DAO for other services.
I understand this is delicate because fulfilling the role of delegate takes time. And in reality, they are working and being paid for different things. That’s why I’m not proposing a complete exclusion of payment, but rather a partial reduction (tbd if supported).
To be honest, we don't agree that we should somehow limit compensation for the role of delegates. We understand that in several situations there are delegates (who devote time as you rightly say) to fulfill that role and who are also devoting extra time to specific initiatives so we don't see why anyone should receive less compensation for (ultimately) dedicating more of their time and effort to the DAO. At the same time, we would create a disincentive to participate in the program or apply for other initiatives since the delegate would have to evaluate what is best for him/her.
A good example of this is how @BlockworksResearch offered to collaborate with a paid working group, but without receiving additional income for that role. There are more examples of people waiving payment.
We believe that it should be up to each delegate to decide whether they receive additional compensation or not, and this is an example of that. In any case, the DAO may also evaluate if it wishes to select a particular role or position for a delegate already receiving remuneration for the DIP.
@WintermuteGovernance I just want to add that L2beat received 5000 in ARB, not in $. Given the token rate, the $7000 will probably never be real.
We propose changing the way we collect feedback from a quantitative to a qualitative way.
We propose changing the way we collect feedback from a quantitative to a qualitative way.
Thank you very much for the new proposal. I’m surprised by the rubric. I think the work it demands is phenomenal, but it would be a great experiment to see how the evaluation of contributions turns out.
On the other hand, I’ve been thinking a bit about the new incentives scheme proposed and the program's objective.
The new participation requirements modify the historical rate of voting to participation within the last 90 days. This shows that the program aims to incentivize new delegate participation.
In this regard, the program already has an established base of delegates, with incentives provided to between 30 and 35 delegates.
Additionally, the August results show that although 34 delegates were compensated, 48 meet the voting requirements to qualify. Therefore, there’s little room for new incentivized delegates to enter if those already participating reactivate under this new proposal.
I understand that what follows might generate different perspectives, and I’d love to hear the opinions of other delegates to enrich the debate. This is an RFC (which could eventually evolve into an RFC or a separate proposal), and I’d like to hear feedback.
From the same August results, I notice that a large portion of the delegates who currently or potentially qualify for program incentives are also receiving income from the DAO for other roles. Many hold positions on various committees, provide direct services, hold roles in the multiple exiting multisigs, or somehow earn from the DAO.
This situation raises a valid concern: are DAO roles chosen based on popularity contests, or are the most qualified candidates objectively selected for each position? In a system where service providers are selected by vote, this is entirely possible.
Now, is it possible to mitigate this risk?
I believe so: by limiting compensation for their role as delegates for those who are already paid by the DAO for other services.
I understand this is delicate because fulfilling the role of delegate takes time. And in reality, they are working and being paid for different things. That’s why I’m not proposing a complete exclusion of payment, but rather a partial reduction (tbd if supported).
The accumulation of roles in the DAO by certain actors with greater voting power presents a systemic risk, as it could lead to implicit or explicit collusion. Reducing payments for those already receiving income from the DAO is a preventive measure that reduces the incentive to concentrate power in a few hands.
I believe that by limiting payments to those who already benefit from the DAO, several advantages can be achieved:
A good example of this is how @BlockworksResearch offered to collaborate with a paid working group, but without receiving additional income for that role. There are more examples of people waiving payment.
At the same time, the funds retained from this could expand the number of incentivized delegates from 50 without additional costs to the DAO. This would create incentives for new delegates to participate and stay active. @SEEDGov could even experiment with allocating resources to small delegates who have completed specific tasks and contributed value
By expanding the number of incentivized delegates, the DAO not only diversifies its voices but also reduces dependency on a few key actors, promoting more pluralistic governance and making it less susceptible to capture by influential parties.
To be clear: I recognize the great work of the current delegates and their commitment to the DAO. My proposal is not intended to question their contributions but to ensure that the incentive system is more inclusive and sustainable in the long run.
This "RFC" seeks to strengthen the DAO in the long term, preventing incentivized payments from concentrating in the hands of a few and ensuring greater diversity among delegates.
just to summarize here the feedback that I gave on the call that just happened so that this comment can be highly scored in a potential future DIP =)
just to summarize here the feedback that I gave on the call that just happened so that this comment can be highly scored in a potential future DIP =)
and also another suggestion/idea: I’m not sure how this program will interface with the ARB staking program but it wouldn’t shock me if this program would morph into being the DIP for the delegates that have between 50k and 500k ARB, and bigger delegates would get their compensation only from the staking mechanism. This upper 500k ARB limit is just a number chosen at random, but if we’re gonna have staking rewards for those with the most ARB, maybe the DIP would become the program that compensates the smaller delegates that wouldn’t be able to professionalize otherwise. Since honestly, the bigger delegates are already kinda professionalized.
for the 1.5 option, I believe the reviewers of the delegate feedback should be selected/elected in the open and have a term limit... probably a quite short term limit, 3 months, maybe even 1 month max.
as some delegates have pointed out, I have concerns regarding encouraging early over late replies. Since we already go for the quality path, whenever posted, quality matters. Actually, if there is a “late” reply with good quality, that one should be more valuable since it raises some points that others overlooked.
knowing that dip will potentially be a foundation of arb staking and so have an ecosystem weight way higher than it is now, would you think seed could be able to scale 1.5 in a situation in which we have x10 the amount of activity we have today?
I want to express my idea once again.
Let's spend a couple of months reporting on both proposals and understand how objectively we can evaluate the delegate's contribution, and also understand how difficult it is to monitor this and how much time it takes.
Thus, based on the results of the test period, a decision will need to be made.
i think @SEEDGov can provide us some numbers here. While the $7k is the ceiling it is, indeed, the ceiling. Skimming into the payment for each month (i am on the multisig currently) quite rarely we have someone reaching the cap, and the current month has this outlier (5k to l2beat) due to their proposal.
I ran quickly numbers in excel, for august average is around 3.5k arb and median is around 3.7k arb, so 26 to 30% below the ceiling.
well actually that makes me think of a great idea!
what about the SeedGov team would run the qualitative process of option 1.5, for the last month or the last 3 months, and would publish the amounts the delegates would have received if option 1.5 would be already live? this can be prototyped in some spreadsheets and we would have real data to inform if 1.5 is a better, fairer system than 1.1
The updated proposal is more multi-dimensional and visually intuitive, although it looks more complex. However, I’m pleased to see that representatives are expected to provide feedback on the quality, feasibility, practicality, and referenceability of the proposal, as these are considered highly important metrics.
Thanks @SEEDGov for the proposal and it’s great to see all the feedback thus far!
We are in favour of incentivising delegates and fully understand that it’s a rather difficult task that has yet to find a standard that is optimal for delegates and the DAO. In saying this, we believe that there is a current mismatch between the proposed budget (rewards for delegates), delegate requirements, and subsequent benefit to the DAO.
I find this a bit controversial.
We should explicitly incentivize delegates to add value to the DAO and measure their impact, instead of purely evaluating their output. All a delegate needs to do today is vote and justify that vote, and bring home a considerable amount of money.
This feels like a significant improvement and I support it. That being said, I'm starting to observe some pervasive incentives at play with certain comments being clearly AI generated. This has often been an issue in other communities that reward participation and we've been working on a solution that's not perfect but can help. Let me know if you want to discuss :slight_smile:
as some delegates have pointed out, I have concerns regarding encouraging early over late replies. Since we already go for the quality path, whenever posted, quality matters. Actually, if there is a “late” reply with good quality, that one should be more valuable since it raises some points that others overlooked.
We agree on this, that's why we proposed V1.5 to evaluate comments where the response time is one more criterion, this way we can better evaluate the value contributions. You can see an example here:
Each rubric criterion has levels with an assigned percentage range, from 0 to 100%, depending on the level achieved.
The initial score is obtained by averaging the first five criteria, while the final score results from applying the “Presence in Discussions” multiplier to the initial average score.
For illustrative purposes, here’s an example:
Initial Score/Average: 61%
Final Score: 70.15% or 21.05/30 Delegates’ Feedback points.
Regarding inventive distribution among 3 tiers, do we have a general expectation regarding that - maybe 20% / 40% / 30% and others may not be qualified? the administrator will have a pre-determined ratio among those 3 tiers since it’s subjective calls.
We do not understand this question. Do you mean what expectations of participation do we expect?
knowing that dip will potentially be a foundation of arb staking and so have an ecosystem weight way higher than it is now, would you think seed could be able to scale 1.5 in a situation in which we have x10 the amount of activity we have today?
We believe that by automating certain tasks and in the future the possibility of decentralizing the administration of the program could allow the program to scale up in the event of a significant increase in DAO activity.
Quality Control - V1.1 has no quality control over voting rationale and feedback (which v1.5 attempts to solve) so someone who provides significant contributions to a proposal via feedback is valued the same as someone who simply agrees with the proposal or provides little feedback.
This is what we want to solve as the program evolves and as you said, that is why we are proposing version 1.5. If this rubric works as expected we can use the same criteria to evaluate voting rationale.
Lack of VP Recognition - The program currently fails to account for delegates with larger VP and therefore, the added security they bring to the DAO and ecosystem from their voting participation. By not incorporating some sort of scale based on VP, delegates are not incentivized to seek out delegations, something that is fundamental to the security of the DAO.
So with a $4.2M/yr budget, the DAO is paying for voting participation which does not take into account a delegate’s VP and thus, the economic security they bring; as well as feedback and rationale that is equal regardless of its impact.
We would like to make two clarifications in this regard. First, although the maximum budget is $4.2M/year, our metrics from the end-of-program report we are currently working on show that, on average, during these six months, the delegates who were part of the program and received compensation earned an average Total Participation of 79.65. Considering the proposed cap of $7,000, this equates to an average monthly compensation per delegate of $5,575.50.
In addition, it is important to consider the amount paid in delegate programs of other DAOs, which in a way, function as competition:
On the other hand, in our mid-term report there are some metrics on voting participation of delegates who have been part of DPI 1.0.
Delegate VP and Participation
Accumulated Voting Power of delegates with +60% Total Participation per month:
We calculated the participation rate of registered delegates each month in Snapshot and Tally votes using the following formula:
%Snapshot: (SV(Rn) / SV(Tn))
%Tally: (TV(Rn) / TV(Tn))
With the cumulative VP and the participation rate, we can calculate the actual VP contributed by the delegates and the percentage they represent of the average VP each month.
We can observe that the Participation Rate of delegates participating in the program has increased by 12% on Snapshots and 13% on Tally during the three months the program has been active, compared to the three months prior.
As can be seen in the information above, during the first 3 months of the program, delegates participating in the program contributed an average of 65.64% of the votes in Tally. This indicates that while there is no criterion that directly incentivizes delegates with higher VP, the program has been able to incentivize large amounts of VP. However, we would be interested to hear feedback on how we can incorporate this metric into the framework in the future as we have proposed something similar in the past and there was not much consensus in the DAO on this.
Thanks for the update on the proposal. Regarding the options, I believe 1.5 is the natural evolution to the program, so I don’t think it should be 1.1 OR 1.5, but rather 1.1 AND 1.5, but with a few changes.
In the current program, no delegate got the full value on the comment on proposals. That happens for a series of reasons that I won’t touch here, but I believe that a good path is to give a bigger weight to it (1.1) AND incentivize (1.5) deeper contributions after some time.
I would like to suggest the following options:
Only 1.1
1.1 AND 1.5 activation after 4 (or other reasonable amount of time) months
Thanks for your feedback, the reality is that the activation of version 1.5 during the development of the program can be inconvenient at the administrative level and also in terms of the need to adapt the Karma dashboard. We believe that, as you rightly say, version 1.5 is the natural evolution of the program and that if necessary, we can always go back to version 1.1 (which would be easier than implementing v1.5 with the program running).
Hey @SEEDGov - FYI the Governance Calendar isn’t gated, so calls can be added by anyone who proposes to host :slight_smile:
Would you want an extra slot to be added to the Open Discussion of Proposal(s) - Bi-weekly Governance Call or the Arbitrum Reporting Governance Call? And are you suggesting that this extra slot should be a repetition or that alternating sessions should be hosted at different times?
It is also important to note that the monthly ‘Arbitrum Open Governance Call’ is now referred to as ‘Arbitrum Reporting Governance Call’ - see governance calendar here: ArbitrumDAO Governance Community Calendar
Perhaps this proposal can also get sentiment on what times best suit delegates.
Although we understand that the governance calendar is open, in this first experimentation we only seek to encourage those calls that are hosted by the Arbitrum Foundation or those that are not related to any incentivized working group, so one idea would be to add an extra slot to the “Open Discussion of Proposal(s) - Bi-weekly Governance Call” and “Arbitrum Reporting Governance Call” as a “repetition” to give delegates from other timezones the possibility to participate. Do you think it can be coordinated? @entropy @raam @tane @KlausBrave @Englandzz_Curia
This feels like a significant improvement and I support it. That being said, I’m starting to observe some pervasive incentives at play with certain comments being clearly AI generated.
This has often been an issue in other communities that reward participation and we’ve been working on a solution that’s not perfect but can help. Let me know if you want to discuss :slight_smile:
We have contemplated this situation you mentioned, in both v1.1 and v1.5 we intend to take a more proactive approach to AI generated comments:
During the experimental phase of this delegate program, we have been closely monitoring forum activity, particularly during the feedback stage of various proposals. As this phase was a trial, we primarily focused on observing certain dynamics within the forum to better understand them and make adjustments for the next iteration.
One of the issues we identified is the use of AI to comment on proposals. While the use of AI for tasks such as translating text or correcting grammatical errors is understandable, we have seen instances where it has been employed to generate feedback based on other users’ comments. This has not been a widespread or alarming issue but, in the next iteration, we plan to take a more reactive approach.
i think @SEEDGov can provide us some numbers here. While the $7k is the ceiling it is, indeed, the ceiling. Skimming into the payment for each month (i am on the multisig currently) quite rarely we have someone reaching the cap, and the current month has this outlier (5k to l2beat) due to their proposal.
I ran quickly numbers in excel, for august average is around 3.5k arb and median is around 3.7k arb, so 26 to 30% below the ceiling.
On a $7K ceiling, if we think about distribution of events being similar (won't likely be but not that much) it means bulk of delegates will fall between $4.9K to $5.1K per month.
Just throwing the numbers there, could be interesting to run median and avg of all comp of the program to get a better idea, but sense checking says we rarely see a big amount of delegates getting more than 70-75% of the top comp here.
Thanks @SEEDGov for the proposal and it’s great to see all the feedback thus far!
We are in favour of incentivising delegates and fully understand that it’s a rather difficult task that has yet to find a standard that is optimal for delegates and the DAO. In saying this, we believe that there is a current mismatch between the proposed budget (rewards for delegates), delegate requirements, and subsequent benefit to the DAO.
Specifically,
So with a $4.2M/yr budget, the DAO is paying for voting participation which does not take into account a delegate’s VP and thus, the economic security they bring; as well as feedback and rationale that is equal regardless of its impact.
For delegates to reach the top tier of $7k USD/month, this is certainly attainable and not too hard over a 1 year period. Which we think is a fine, however, given the proposed requirements for reaching the top tier, $6k - $7k USD / month is far too generous. $84k USD/yr is a significant amount of money and higher than most avg. salaries worldwide. By no means are we trying to discredit the effort and time delegates put into the ARB DAO, we just struggle to see justification in the cost vs. requirements as it stands.
Overall, we would love to see a combination of v1.1 and v1.5 where voting participation is still counted and feedback + rationale is graded. We would also like to see a metric that takes into account a delegate’s VP, and, lastly, we would like to see the monthly compensation revised down. With added quality control, participation metrics, and VP accounted for, a max monthly compensation of $5k USD ($60k/yr) seems more reasonable.
I find this a bit controversial.
We should explicitly incentivize delegates to add value to the DAO and measure their impact, instead of purely evaluating their output. All a delegate needs to do today is vote and justify that vote, and bring home a considerable amount of money.
We should strengthen the incentives for proactivity
We should reduce the rewards for basic activities.
Example 1: If a delegate is demonstrably reviewing on-chain code that will be executed during a Tally vote, they should be rewarded.
Example 2: the program should formalize and reward delegates that push forward new initiatives
We agree on this. Today the program incentivizes proactivity or the generation of new initiatives through bonus points, although we are open to suggestions on how to work better on this point.
As for reducing rewards for basic activities, we believe that the proposed change in weighting to CR and PF is a measure that considers this scenario.
Additionally, it is worth mentioning, as we already stated in our mid-term report:
It’s really important to start paying attention to the quorum. Since a large number of tokens have been put into circulation since the DAO began, the required quorum has been increasing significantly. However, the growth of ARBs in voting has not increased at the same rate.
Compensate on-chain activity is necessary, as there has been a decrease in the amount of VP voting while the quorum needed is becoming larger and larger. Compensating on-chain activity can help mitigate possible governance attacks.
Delegate compensation should be a mix of dollar value and ARB tokens.
Reason: Delegates should be incentivized to drive value into the ecosystem, which should be reflected in ARB’s value. If there is no connection between compensation and the value of ARB, this focus will be lost.
I suggest starting with an 80/20 split (80% fixed USD value, 20% in ARB).
We believe that there is an alignment between the interests of the DAO and those of the delegates when applying an ARB Cap to each Tier.
Exclusivity: Similar to Entropy’s proposal, a delegate or organization should receive a bonus if it is not working with competing DAOs.
This motivated in part the introduction of the tiers, since a delegate who wishes to reach the highest tier will probably have to dedicate a greater amount of time to the DAO. In this way, we are not directly demanding or incentivizing exclusivity but giving a fair compensation for the dedication of those delegates who obtain the highest tier.
However, I would like to express my concern that the duration of the program should be reduced to six months instead of one year. This change would allow us to evaluate the program’s effectiveness and seek further improvements. I agree with @maxlomu’s statement on this matter; we should assess and compensate for the effectiveness and impact of the delegates.
We believe that maintaining the duration for six months, when the program is no longer experimental, would undermine the stability and planning of the delegates in the DAO. On the other hand, there is a clause that allows the DAO to make changes in the Scoring methodology during the program, so after the mid-term report, the DAO could easily review the program's performance and push for changes.
Regarding this, how long does it usually take for MSS to pay the delegates?
This will depend exclusively on how long it takes the MSS to create the transaction and get the signatures for it to be executed. Considering that it is a brand new organism, we do not have estimates of how long this could take, however there is an "expectation" already expressed in the MSS proposal:
Transactions are expected to be promptly (within 24 hours) reviewed by all signers, and if approved through the process outlined above, signed. While we realise that there will be times when a signer may not have internet access or some other deterrent to signing, these are expected to be few and far between. If there are more than 3 lapses in expectations over the course of a 2 month period, chairs are expected to communicate that to the DAO and potentially remove the signer.
As some delegates may not be able to communicate effectively and may remain quiet during the calls, will this still count towards their bonus points? Or must they actively participate in the discussions?
In the beginning, it will reach the mere attendance, although as it is a new parameter, we will be watching the evolution of the same during the program.
We agree with @Englandzz_Curia and @KlausBrave that it’s important not to discourage participation from diverse delegates. We believe that some kind of asynchronous participation should be considered for those delegates who can’t attend the calls. An idea is to consider proactive comments and discussions on the call notes as “participations”.
We agree, although we have seen that in most occasions the call notes are not a commonly published file in the forum. Anyway, we support the idea of having calls in multiple timezones as a solution to this situation. @cliffton.eth @raam Is it possible to add an extra time slot to the calls?
Mirroring the comments brought by @PGov, we prefer the current methodology for tracking commenting on proposals is better than the one presented in this v1.1 program. Reducing the weight of comments after the Snapshot is live will likely lead to increased spam comments. Often, important questions and concerns are discussed while the Snapshot vote is live, especially on topics where one party has the responsibility/knowledge to respond or require members to gather data.
Considering that several delegates have expressed concerns with this scoring methodology, we have proposed alternatives in the following post, we invite you to review it.
We’ve listened to the concerns raised by some delegates (@Jojo, @BlockworksResearch, @pedrob, @Bobbay, @KlausBrave, @Bob-Rossi) regarding the weightings and the changes in the Proposal Feedback section, and we would like to share our perspective.
The current system, tested over the past six months, quantitatively focuses on analyzing delegates' contributions. At the time, we believed this was the best way for delegates to verify their monthly scoring while also avoiding the introduction of subjectivity in the analysis of delegate participation. However, we understand that this might not be the optimal way to evaluate the feedback provided by delegates, as we have observed some drawbacks under this scheme:
We’ve listened to the concerns raised by some delegates (@Jojo, @BlockworksResearch, @pedrob, @Bobbay, @KlausBrave, @Bob-Rossi) regarding the weightings and the changes in the Proposal Feedback section, and we would like to share our perspective.
The current system, tested over the past six months, quantitatively focuses on analyzing delegates' contributions. At the time, we believed this was the best way for delegates to verify their monthly scoring while also avoiding the introduction of subjectivity in the analysis of delegate participation. However, we understand that this might not be the optimal way to evaluate the feedback provided by delegates, as we have observed some drawbacks under this scheme:
Delegates are incentivized to provide comments (forcefully) to avoid being penalized by the scoring system. This is problematic because not all proposals lend themselves to lengthy discussions, and we must also consider that delegates may have expertise in some areas while knowing little about others. Forcing their participation in such cases could result in inconsequential or repetitive feedback.
Additionally, as @pedrob has pointed out, the current system only weights proposals or discussions that have reached Snapshot, overlooking the rest of the discussions within Arbitrum DAO. This opens the door to speculation and uncertainty about which RFC might go to a vote and which might not.
We are aware that setting metrics for everything happening off-chain in governance is a significant challenge. However, we believe it is worth addressing as many of these issues as possible, as they form the foundation for maintaining incentivized governance. With this in mind, we propose two potential paths forward:
We propose changing the way we collect feedback from a quantitative to a qualitative way. Instead of counting comments on proposals that reach Snapshot, we propose implementing a monthly analysis of the feedback provided by delegates, regardless of whether the proposal/discussion has reached Snapshot.
In this way, the Program Administrator would be responsible for creating a rubric that evaluates the value and timeliness of the feedback provided by delegates. The goal of this system is to:
Under this system, a delegate could achieve the same score with (for example) one big significant contribution or by making several smaller contributions. It also discourages actors who might try to take advantage of the program.
This rubric assesses the overall feedback provided by the delegate throughout the month (from day 1 at 00:00 UTC to the last day of the month at 23:59:59 UTC), based on a summary of their participation in various proposals and discussions. The aim is to measure the consistency, quality, and overall impact of their contributions. We expect delegates to comment on and/or provide feedback on proposals and discussions both before and during the voting process. This feedback should aim to foster debate, improve the proposal, or clarify issues not explicitly addressed within it.
We trust the goodwill of the delegates to avoid meaningless/spam comments and ensure that all contributions are sensible.
The parameter “Proposal Feedback” should be renamed to "Delegate’s Feedback” in this case since we’re analyzing the overall feedback provided by the delegate (not just proposals on snapshot) and will maintain a maximum weight of 30%, the score will be awarded based on the following rubric:
1. Data Collection: At the end of the month, the complete set of contributions by each delegate across all discussions on the forum is reviewed. 2. Overall Evaluation: The rubric is used to assess the delegate’s overall performance on each criterion, based on a holistic view of their participation. 3. Score Assignment: A level of 1 to 4 is assigned to each criterion, based on the consistency and quality of the delegate’s contributions over the month. Each level has its percentage range that will act as the final score of each criterion. 4. Monthly Report: A qualitative and quantitative report summarizing the delegate’s performance over the month is then produced.
Each rubric criterion has levels with an assigned percentage range, from 0 to 100%, depending on the level achieved.
The initial score is obtained by averaging the first five criteria, while the final score results from applying the “Presence in Discussions” multiplier to the initial average score.
For illustrative purposes, here’s an example:
Relevance: Level 3 - Scoring achieved = 65%
Depth of Analysis: Level 2 - Scoring achieved = 45%
Timing: Level 4 - Scoring achieved = 95%
Clarity and Communication: Level 2 - Scoring achieved = 40%
Impact on Decision-Making: Level 3 - Scoring achieved = 60%
Initial Score/Average: 61%
Final Score: 70.15% or 21.05/30 Delegates' Feedback points.
We are aware that this proposed option introduces trust assumptions regarding the Program Administrator’s criteria for evaluating feedback. We view this layer of subjectivity as inevitable until we can implement automated tools, such as the AI that Karma is developing, to assess the quality of delegate feedback. It is important to note that, as Program Administrators, after analyzing proposals and feedback for the last six months, we have gained experience that (we believe) will help us correctly identify constructive feedback.
At SEEDGov, we are committed to being as transparent as possible, as we have been thus far. Therefore, the rubric and the monthly report will always be publicly accessible to all interested parties. During this phase, feedback from Arbitrum DAO will also be crucial in helping us refine our evaluation criteria.
This option also introduces modifications to the responsibilities and budget of the Program Administrators. Expanding the scope of the Delegate’s Feedback analysis will require more human resources to meet the objectives. More time and resources will need to be allocated to developing and training the AI that will eventually automate this process.
Additionally, Karma Dashboard will require to development of new tools and overall a new section for calculating and showing qualitative delegates' contributions.
New budget details:
Source: Salaries are approximate and based on U.S. standards. We extracted data from this website.
In this option, some of the feedback initially raised in this post is still considered, reducing the weight of Proposal Feedback and narrowing the gap between early and late comments. The Communicating Rationale parameter would also be slightly revalued, resulting in more gradual changes in weights.
We also suggest the following changes in PF stages:
In this scenario, by maintaining a quantitative system tied only to discussions that reach Snapshot, we may still encounter some of the drawbacks raised at the beginning of this post. However, risks are partially mitigated by modifying certain parameters.
Additionally, the need for trust assumptions or subjectivity will be less than with the rubric, which has its own pros and cons. While in one scheme, the administrator's role will be more prominent than in the other, it is also true that Option 2 lacks qualitative assessments to some extent. This makes the program somewhat more vulnerable to malicious actors or those contributing minimal value.
We look forward to receiving feedback from the DAO on this matter, as we believe it is essential to take the next step in the incentive program and professionalize the DAO to ensure alignment with ArbitrumDAO's values.
We intend to present both options when the proposal goes to Snapshot, allowing us to gauge the DAO's preferences. Note that both options could be treated as “experimental” during the first few months of the program, with the possibility of making adjustments as needed.
More pings for visibility: @Pgov @Blueweb @PennBlockchain @cp0x
Mirroring the comments brought by @PGov, we prefer the current methodology for tracking commenting on proposals is better than the one presented in this v1.1 program. Reducing the weight of comments after the Snapshot is live will likely lead to increased spam comments. Often, important questions and concerns are discussed while the Snapshot vote is live, especially on topics where one party has the responsibility/knowledge to respond or require members to gather data.
Other than that change to the program, we support this updated Delegate Incentive Program.
Thank you @SEEDGov for the great update in the DIP! We also like to express our gratitude to the continuous effort to operating the DIP and attitude to addressing feedback from delegates for a better program.
Adding Bonus Points for delegates who attends to the “Arbitrum Open Governance Call” (monthly) and the “Open Discussion of Proposal(s) - Bi-weekly Governance Call.”
Thank you @SEEDGov for the great update in the DIP! We also like to express our gratitude to the continuous effort to operating the DIP and attitude to addressing feedback from delegates for a better program.
Adding Bonus Points for delegates who attends to the “Arbitrum Open Governance Call” (monthly) and the “Open Discussion of Proposal(s) - Bi-weekly Governance Call.”
We agree with @Englandzz_Curia and @KlausBrave that it's important not to discourage participation from diverse delegates. We believe that some kind of asynchronous participation should be considered for those delegates who can't attend the calls. An idea is to consider proactive comments and discussions on the call notes as "participations".
We think it's important to pilot the scoring criteria and then make changes if the quality of comments drops significantly. We support the current scoring system as it is.
We look forward to seeing this updated DIP goes into effect in the near future!
Thank you, @SEEDGov, for the well-thought-out proposal.
What I appreciate about this improved version of the program is the reduction in pure voting scoring and its justification, as well as the increase in meaningful participation scoring in the forum and during calls.
Thank you, @SEEDGov, for the well-thought-out proposal.
What I appreciate about this improved version of the program is the reduction in pure voting scoring and its justification, as well as the increase in meaningful participation scoring in the forum and during calls.
However, I would like to express my concern that the duration of the program should be reduced to six months instead of one year. This change would allow us to evaluate the program's effectiveness and seek further improvements. I agree with @maxlomu's statement on this matter; we should assess and compensate for the effectiveness and impact of the delegates.
As someone who just became eligible for compensation this month, I find it time-consuming to follow various topics, including approved proposals, new proposals, and their impacts, in order to cast an informed vote and justify it. This has become almost a full-time job for me. If we aim to measure their impact purely, it will make it even more challenging for new delegates to join the DAO.
I find the current proposal to be somewhat balanced; however, I suggest that we revise the criteria in the next six months and increase the weighting percentage of their impact on the DAO, as @maxlomu expressed.
We should explicitly incentivize delegates to add value to the DAO and measure their impact, instead of purely evaluating their output. All a delegate needs to do today is vote and justify that vote, and bring home a considerable amount of money.
Regarding this, how long does it usually take for MSS to pay the delegates?
To address this, we propose publishing the initial spreadsheet with the payment amounts (as we currently do) in USD. After the dispute period has concluded, we will submit the payment report to the MSS in ARB, based on the price at that time, and publish the corresponding report in the forum. This approach aims to minimize potential price fluctuations.
As some delegates may not be able to communicate effectively and may remain quiet during the calls, will this still count towards their bonus points? Or must they actively participate in the discussions?
By the way, I strongly support this idea for the next version of the program.
Thanks for the update on the proposal. Regarding the options, I believe 1.5 is the natural evolution to the program, so I don't think it should be 1.1 OR 1.5, but rather 1.1 AND 1.5, but with a few changes.
In the current program, no delegate got the full value on the comment on proposals. That happens for a series of reasons that I won't touch here, but I believe that a good path is to give a bigger weight to it (1.1) AND incentivize (1.5) deeper contributions after some time.
Thanks for the update on the proposal. Regarding the options, I believe 1.5 is the natural evolution to the program, so I don't think it should be 1.1 OR 1.5, but rather 1.1 AND 1.5, but with a few changes.
In the current program, no delegate got the full value on the comment on proposals. That happens for a series of reasons that I won't touch here, but I believe that a good path is to give a bigger weight to it (1.1) AND incentivize (1.5) deeper contributions after some time.
I would like to suggest the following options:
gm all, and thanks to @seedlatam for all the work you have been doing on this.
Here are some thoughts from my side, some of which I have already expressed through private feedback:
The program should incentivize the professionalization of delegates, but not their bureaucratization.
gm all, and thanks to @seedlatam for all the work you have been doing on this.
Here are some thoughts from my side, some of which I have already expressed through private feedback:
The program should incentivize the professionalization of delegates, but not their bureaucratization.
We should explicitly incentivize delegates to add value to the DAO and measure their impact, instead of purely evaluating their output. All a delegate needs to do today is vote and justify that vote, and bring home a considerable amount of money.
We should strengthen the incentives for proactivity
We should reduce the rewards for basic activities.
Delegate compensation should be a mix of dollar value and ARB tokens.
Exclusivity: Similar to Entropy's proposal, a delegate or organization should receive a bonus if it is not working with competing DAOs.
Thanks for considering my feedback!
Good job! I agree that delegates' feedback and comments should be timely for active discussion of the proposal.
It is difficult to know how subjective this approach will be, so I suggest, as last time before implementing this proposal, to try a test month or two - how difficult it will be to evaluate the new criteria for delegates.
Good job! I agree that delegates' feedback and comments should be timely for active discussion of the proposal.
It is difficult to know how subjective this approach will be, so I suggest, as last time before implementing this proposal, to try a test month or two - how difficult it will be to evaluate the new criteria for delegates.
And based on the results of the test, delegates will understand more clearly how necessary it is to be involved in the discussions and what difficulties this may pose.
Hey, here are some answers to the questions that we received:
Hey, here are some answers to the questions that we received:
@jojo and @BlockworksResearch , I think something to remember is that proposals are supposed to go on the forums at a minimum 1 week prior to going to Snapshot (and often will go longer). So there should be ample time for an active delegate to participate in discussion prior to a vote. I don’t want to dismiss the concern, but ultimately I think pre-voting discussion can provide a lot of value and if we can incentivize it that is a good thing.
We are in agreement on this matter and trust in the goodwill of proposers to ensure that delegates have a reasonable amount of time to discuss proposals before they advance to Snapshot
Personally, I think best solution may be starting at 50% with openness to adjust after 3 months of results. This may just end up being a situation that rarely applies in the end. I think even in the stated scenario most votes wouldn’t need more than a few days to get out an opinion. Although I’m speaking thru the lens of a single voter versus some delegates who maybe have teams and may have longer processes to their commentary / voting.
That sounds reasonable. We can proceed with this approach on a trial basis, especially given that in the Continuous Upgrades segment, we have already considered the possibility of adjusting the Scoring methodology throughout the program.
We know that this program still has room for improvement. While this new program version moves away from its experimental nature to become a more developed one, a delegate incentive program must continuously receive feedback from its participants.
The SEEDGov team and Karma are committed to gathering feedback, obtaining more information, and implementing the necessary changes to optimize performance. Considering the new duration of the program, the Program Administrator reserves the right to make changes in the scoring methodology by giving public notice in the forum.
The threshold of 60% in the last 90 days shall attract more delegates in v1.1 than the previous DIP, but will also have higher chances of Sybil and delegates with less context about what happened in the DAO previously. I am sure we cannot have a Delegate screening. Still, without the context of history, there is less chance of high-value participation and there the Proposal Feedback’s subjectivity will play a crucial role. I suppose SEEDGov’s team efforts in refining those will be way more than currently estimated, and provisions shall be made for that by capping the number of proposals that the current resources mentioned in the proposal can handle.
This was discussed internally, and the proposed changes are primarily focused on reactivating inactive delegates with a significant amount of VP. As mentioned previously, the information gathered over the past few months has enabled us to implement anti-sybil mechanisms—such as the 50k VP requirement—that, for the time being, have been functioning as expected.
Also, the clarity on the date on which this price shall be considered? The delay between publishing the monthly report and sending the ARB would create a different $ARB sent than what will be in the sheet. So, will the sheet be published after sending the ARB to respective delegates or have a cut-off date as the 15th Feb price will be for January month pay and on 15-16th Feb the ARB will be sent?
That’s a good question. To address this, we propose publishing the initial spreadsheet with the payment amounts (as we currently do) in USD. After the dispute period has concluded, we will submit the payment report to the MSS in ARB, based on the price at that time, and publish the corresponding report in the forum. This approach aims to minimize potential price fluctuations.
While I understand where you are coming from when it comes to DIP Bans or Suspensions, the current rationale behind it is rather subjective and lacks objective clarity. I suggest points based rubric for evaluation which would necessitate such drastic actions as well as a forum post explaining exactly why and how any delegate is banned.
There is a hard limit on the VP required to post on snapshot, hence a delegate without sufficient VP may not even be able to put their appeal up. I suggest the program admin takes up the responsibility to put up appeals if requested on the forum by the appealing delegate.
These are valid and understandable concerns. For the time being, we aim to keep this section as simple as possible until the DAO develops more sophisticated anti-fraud mechanisms (as we believe this is a general issue within the DAO and not unique to the program). However, we can assure you that SEEDGov will maintain the necessary transparency and openness to address situations like this. Any decisions will, of course, be communicated through prior publication in the forum, and it seems reasonable to us that any appeal be posted by the Program Administrator.
Looking ahead, we would like to implement anti-fraud policies to guide program administrators in DAOs on how to proceed and what guidelines to follow. In that sense, we agree with @DisruptionJoe comment.
Entropy received the accusation message and decided it would be best to default to full transparency. This seems reasonable.
Ramses would have liked a dm prior to posting because a message like this could severely hurt their business - even if just an accusation.
There is no policy for how we handle accusations of fraud. There isn’t an official community flagging function or dropbox with a standard process. Entropy received this information because there was a vaccuum where a responsible party should be. They defaulted to the option most well-meaning DAO contributors would - they opted to post for transparency.
We should have a consistent policy on how these accusations are approached. Just because you’re a delegate and he could dm doesn’t mean that it is the fair and equal approach (it likely is tho).
I’ve offered to facilitate a workshop to design a policy for community detection, reporting, and transparency with the parties involved. So far we have not set a time - update hopefully coming soon. Comment if you would like to join.
In the future, the policy should be what we argue about - NOT the decisions of well meaning actors.
Thank you for the recommendation. We are aware of the issue and believe this is where the DAO should evolve in the future. However, this should also be addressed at the governance level, particularly with different types of proposals and voting methods. Agora has been working on this for some time in Optimism, although we are unsure if there are similar plans in Arbitrum. Having different types of voting, where each delegate registers as an 'expert' in a specific voting category, would make it easier for us to track activity and adjust incentives accordingly.
To implement this, we also need to define, as a DAO, the most important verticals for ArbitrumDAO so that delegates are aligned. Fortunately, @Entropy has already initiated the first discussions in this area.
Thanks for sharing an updated proposal and glad to see many learnings from the previous iterations being implemented here.
I support the bonus criteria for attending calls and I'd like to suggest considering similar weight i.e. 2.5% to other calls in which delegates participate. This can be considered part of the bonus points but if a delegate participates in all calls this does not mean they will automatically earn all 40%.
While I understand where you are coming from when it comes to DIP Bans or Suspensions, the current rationale behind it is rather subjective and lacks objective clarity. I suggest points based rubric for evaluation which would necessitate such drastic actions as well as a forum post explaining exactly why and how any delegate is banned.
There is a hard limit on the VP required to post on snapshot, hence a delegate without sufficient VP may not even be able to put their appeal up. I suggest the program admin takes up the responsibility to put up appeals if requested on the forum by the appealing delegate.
I also recommend investigating the implementation of 'Expert Coalitions' ie coalition of delegates who are experts in one or more particular area such as treasury or tokenomics etc. It would be great to have a pool of delegates in each of these Expert Coalitions that the DAO requires to grow as opposed to a large cohort being incentivised for writing the same set of comments in different words. This way we can identify a more streamlined budget for this program with a max. number of delegate set for each 'Area of Expertise'
knowing that dip will potentially be a foundation of arb staking and so have an ecosystem weight way higher than it is now, would you think seed could be able to scale 1.5 in a situation in which we have x10 the amount of activity we have today?
Happy to see Arbitrum expanding the delegate program and taking DAO diversification seriously.
The 50k minimum delegation amount is a bit high in my opinion but a serious delegate can do reach it with enough effort.
Also, perhaps the number of delegates set to 50 is too low and could be expanded in the future as the DAO growths.
In any case, I will be working to meet the requirements and join ASAP!
Thank you for the considered and comprehensive reply! I appreciate you sharing the history, logic, and process you have undertaken to structure this program. It makes sense.
Regarding timezones, there is 4 meetings a month 2.5% bonus each so 10% total available that's significant. One way to solve for regional timezone accessibility would be for each alternating meeting to be at a different timezone that's more friendly for different regions ensuring net net over each month there is a fair opportunity for anyone from anywhere to access these meetings live.
Agree with the timezone challenges for Asia and Oceania. This program effectively disincentives participation from delegates in these regions.
Optimising the timezones for global participation needs consideration.
Also consider a way delegates can watch the recordings and provide async after that fact comments to qualify as engaged in these meetings.
I think this could be difficult for delegates from the Asia region to participate in since these calls are often scheduled in US or European time zones. Do you have any thoughts on how to address this?
I appreciate the efforts to refine the previous DIP and agree with what's presented to the DAO.
I want to amplify what @KlausBrave & @Englandzz_Curia mentioned about being inclusive of the global time & not keeping delegates from specific regions at a disadvantage.
I appreciate the efforts to refine the previous DIP and agree with what's presented to the DAO.
I want to amplify what @KlausBrave & @Englandzz_Curia mentioned about being inclusive of the global time & not keeping delegates from specific regions at a disadvantage.
The KPI of reaching more delegates who are incentivized will cross the 50 delegate benchmark and this proposal shall have provisions to address in case of the higher number of delegates scoring a TP of 65%, as pointed out by @0xDonPepe
The threshold of 60% in the last 90 days shall attract more delegates in v1.1 than the previous DIP, but will also have higher chances of Sybil and delegates with less context about what happened in the DAO previously. I am sure we cannot have a Delegate screening. Still, without the context of history, there is less chance of high-value participation and there the Proposal Feedback's subjectivity will play a crucial role. I suppose SEEDGov's team efforts in refining those will be way more than currently estimated, and provisions shall be made for that by capping the number of proposals that the current resources mentioned in the proposal can handle.
To achieve this, we also need to establish transparent and predictable incentives. Delegates should be confident that if they align with the DAO and improve their contributions over time—essentially if they professionalize—they will receive better incentives.
As one of the aims is stated above, providing clarity will be helpful though the different price scenarios clear it to an extent, but the gap between publishing monthly results and transferring can cause difference. Just highlighting that.
Example 1 has a scenario where the proposal was published in the forum and there are just 5 days to read and be in ESF, this can put those delegates who did not participate in the feedback of the proposal at a disadvantage.
To mitigate this a proposal that takes less than 2 weeks on the forum for discussion shall not have ESF & LSF classification. It should have the same wait irrespective of when the delegate participated in the discussion.
A fair amount of the time, people write enough comments and discuss a proposal in-depth so I don’t see the need to write a comment. Not all cases, but most of the time, I have all the info I need.
I would also share the same concerns as @Bobbay, in such a scenario just adding a comment is going to be redundant and increase the comments that the next delegate will have to read to get the context.
Overall, I favour this proposal and believe it pioneers the effort to make delegates more professional. This is a real opportunity at Arbitrum DAO. Thank you once again for creating it.
@jojo and @BlockworksResearch , I think something to remember is that proposals are supposed to go on the forums at a minimum 1 week prior to going to Snapshot (and often will go longer). So there should be ample time for an active delegate to participate in discussion prior to a vote. I don't want to dismiss the concern, but ultimately I think pre-voting discussion can provide a lot of value and if we can incentivize it that is a good thing.
I've fallen into that trap before of waiting until voting so I see the (and like) the motivation behind the change. IMO it's a welcomed changed, although I had not thought of this issue so don't want to handwaive it. Openly brainstorming as I type... but a the few solutions I can really think of are either 1) reducing the penalty at the cost of being able to effectively enforce it or 2) the penalty only kicks in if you have >x% (10%?, 3 or more?) of your comments after it already went to vote. 3) Maybe the penalty is put into two tiers. If a pre-vote comment period is only 7 days, the penalty is 75%. If the comment period goes 7+ days then it triggers the 50% type thing (or whatever threshold of days makes sense, maybe its 10 or something. of course 2 and 3 come at the cost of creating more complexities... which I'm not a huge fan of.
After reading through all of the comments a few points we want to make:
We’re a big fan of the change to just having 3 months of voting history applied and should allow for more delegates to come into the system and easily over time.
After reading through all of the comments a few points we want to make:
We’re a big fan of the change to just having 3 months of voting history applied and should allow for more delegates to come into the system and easily over time.
Our biggest concern and one we share with most is the huge underweighting of comments after the snapshot which we think shouldn’t be. This setup would create incentives for people to game proposals and also increases the amount of “spam” comments purely for credit prior to a vote coming to snapshot. Keeping the same status quo of comments at or around the snapshot time would be best in our opinion; it seemed like that system worked quite well.
Thanks for putting this proposal together. I really love the overall concept, but I do have a few concerns about the criteria. As other delegates have pointed out, the early-stage comments might be challenging to keep effective since some people could post content that doesn't really add value to the discussion.
Additionally, regarding the Bonus Points update:
Thanks for putting this proposal together. I really love the overall concept, but I do have a few concerns about the criteria. As other delegates have pointed out, the early-stage comments might be challenging to keep effective since some people could post content that doesn't really add value to the discussion.
Additionally, regarding the Bonus Points update:
Bonus points update: Adding Bonus Points for delegates who attend the “Arbitrum Open Governance Call” (monthly) and the “Open Discussion of Proposal(s) - Bi-weekly Governance Call.”
- For the monthly call, 2.5% BP will be awarded for attendance.
- For the bi-weekly calls, 2.5% BP will be awarded for attending each call.
I think this could be difficult for delegates from the Asia region to participate in since these calls are often scheduled in US or European time zones. Do you have any thoughts on how to address this?
I liked this new approach, extending the delegates commitment to the governance calls as well, and the incentives to engage in the conversation from the start, as that improves the feedback to the author and make the proposals better tuned when going to snapshot.
as some delegates have pointed out, I have concerns regarding encouraging early over late replies. Since we already go for the quality path, whenever posted, quality matters. Actually, if there is a “late” reply with good quality, that one should be more valuable since it raises some points that others overlooked.
We agree on this, that's why we proposed V1.5 to evaluate comments where the response time is one more criterion, this way we can better evaluate the value contributions. You can see an example here:
Each rubric criterion has levels with an assigned percentage range, from 0 to 100%, depending on the level achieved.
The initial score is obtained by averaging the first five criteria, while the final score results from applying the “Presence in Discussions” multiplier to the initial average score.
For illustrative purposes, here’s an example:
Initial Score/Average: 61%
Final Score: 70.15% or 21.05/30 Delegates’ Feedback points.
Regarding inventive distribution among 3 tiers, do we have a general expectation regarding that - maybe 20% / 40% / 30% and others may not be qualified? the administrator will have a pre-determined ratio among those 3 tiers since it’s subjective calls.
We do not understand this question. Do you mean what expectations of participation do we expect?
knowing that dip will potentially be a foundation of arb staking and so have an ecosystem weight way higher than it is now, would you think seed could be able to scale 1.5 in a situation in which we have x10 the amount of activity we have today?
We believe that by automating certain tasks and in the future the possibility of decentralizing the administration of the program could allow the program to scale up in the event of a significant increase in DAO activity.
Quality Control - V1.1 has no quality control over voting rationale and feedback (which v1.5 attempts to solve) so someone who provides significant contributions to a proposal via feedback is valued the same as someone who simply agrees with the proposal or provides little feedback.
This is what we want to solve as the program evolves and as you said, that is why we are proposing version 1.5. If this rubric works as expected we can use the same criteria to evaluate voting rationale.
Lack of VP Recognition - The program currently fails to account for delegates with larger VP and therefore, the added security they bring to the DAO and ecosystem from their voting participation. By not incorporating some sort of scale based on VP, delegates are not incentivized to seek out delegations, something that is fundamental to the security of the DAO.
So with a $4.2M/yr budget, the DAO is paying for voting participation which does not take into account a delegate’s VP and thus, the economic security they bring; as well as feedback and rationale that is equal regardless of its impact.
We would like to make two clarifications in this regard. First, although the maximum budget is $4.2M/year, our metrics from the end-of-program report we are currently working on show that, on average, during these six months, the delegates who were part of the program and received compensation earned an average Total Participation of 79.65. Considering the proposed cap of $7,000, this equates to an average monthly compensation per delegate of $5,575.50.
In addition, it is important to consider the amount paid in delegate programs of other DAOs, which in a way, function as competition:
On the other hand, in our mid-term report there are some metrics on voting participation of delegates who have been part of DPI 1.0.
Delegate VP and Participation
Accumulated Voting Power of delegates with +60% Total Participation per month:
We calculated the participation rate of registered delegates each month in Snapshot and Tally votes using the following formula:
%Snapshot: (SV(Rn) / SV(Tn))
%Tally: (TV(Rn) / TV(Tn))
With the cumulative VP and the participation rate, we can calculate the actual VP contributed by the delegates and the percentage they represent of the average VP each month.
We can observe that the Participation Rate of delegates participating in the program has increased by 12% on Snapshots and 13% on Tally during the three months the program has been active, compared to the three months prior.
As can be seen in the information above, during the first 3 months of the program, delegates participating in the program contributed an average of 65.64% of the votes in Tally. This indicates that while there is no criterion that directly incentivizes delegates with higher VP, the program has been able to incentivize large amounts of VP. However, we would be interested to hear feedback on how we can incorporate this metric into the framework in the future as we have proposed something similar in the past and there was not much consensus in the DAO on this.
Thanks for the update on the proposal. Regarding the options, I believe 1.5 is the natural evolution to the program, so I don’t think it should be 1.1 OR 1.5, but rather 1.1 AND 1.5, but with a few changes.
In the current program, no delegate got the full value on the comment on proposals. That happens for a series of reasons that I won’t touch here, but I believe that a good path is to give a bigger weight to it (1.1) AND incentivize (1.5) deeper contributions after some time.
I would like to suggest the following options:
Only 1.1
1.1 AND 1.5 activation after 4 (or other reasonable amount of time) months
Thanks for your feedback, the reality is that the activation of version 1.5 during the development of the program can be inconvenient at the administrative level and also in terms of the need to adapt the Karma dashboard. We believe that, as you rightly say, version 1.5 is the natural evolution of the program and that if necessary, we can always go back to version 1.1 (which would be easier than implementing v1.5 with the program running).
Hey @SEEDGov - FYI the Governance Calendar isn’t gated, so calls can be added by anyone who proposes to host :slight_smile:
Would you want an extra slot to be added to the Open Discussion of Proposal(s) - Bi-weekly Governance Call or the Arbitrum Reporting Governance Call? And are you suggesting that this extra slot should be a repetition or that alternating sessions should be hosted at different times?
It is also important to note that the monthly ‘Arbitrum Open Governance Call’ is now referred to as ‘Arbitrum Reporting Governance Call’ - see governance calendar here: ArbitrumDAO Governance Community Calendar
Perhaps this proposal can also get sentiment on what times best suit delegates.
Although we understand that the governance calendar is open, in this first experimentation we only seek to encourage those calls that are hosted by the Arbitrum Foundation or those that are not related to any incentivized working group, so one idea would be to add an extra slot to the “Open Discussion of Proposal(s) - Bi-weekly Governance Call” and “Arbitrum Reporting Governance Call” as a “repetition” to give delegates from other timezones the possibility to participate. Do you think it can be coordinated? @entropy @raam @tane @KlausBrave @Englandzz_Curia
This feels like a significant improvement and I support it. That being said, I’m starting to observe some pervasive incentives at play with certain comments being clearly AI generated.
This has often been an issue in other communities that reward participation and we’ve been working on a solution that’s not perfect but can help. Let me know if you want to discuss :slight_smile:
We have contemplated this situation you mentioned, in both v1.1 and v1.5 we intend to take a more proactive approach to AI generated comments:
During the experimental phase of this delegate program, we have been closely monitoring forum activity, particularly during the feedback stage of various proposals. As this phase was a trial, we primarily focused on observing certain dynamics within the forum to better understand them and make adjustments for the next iteration.
One of the issues we identified is the use of AI to comment on proposals. While the use of AI for tasks such as translating text or correcting grammatical errors is understandable, we have seen instances where it has been employed to generate feedback based on other users’ comments. This has not been a widespread or alarming issue but, in the next iteration, we plan to take a more reactive approach.
i think @SEEDGov can provide us some numbers here. While the $7k is the ceiling it is, indeed, the ceiling. Skimming into the payment for each month (i am on the multisig currently) quite rarely we have someone reaching the cap, and the current month has this outlier (5k to l2beat) due to their proposal.
I ran quickly numbers in excel, for august average is around 3.5k arb and median is around 3.7k arb, so 26 to 30% below the ceiling.
On a $7K ceiling, if we think about distribution of events being similar (won't likely be but not that much) it means bulk of delegates will fall between $4.9K to $5.1K per month.
Just throwing the numbers there, could be interesting to run median and avg of all comp of the program to get a better idea, but sense checking says we rarely see a big amount of delegates getting more than 70-75% of the top comp here.
Thanks @SEEDGov for the proposal and it’s great to see all the feedback thus far!
We are in favour of incentivising delegates and fully understand that it’s a rather difficult task that has yet to find a standard that is optimal for delegates and the DAO. In saying this, we believe that there is a current mismatch between the proposed budget (rewards for delegates), delegate requirements, and subsequent benefit to the DAO.
Specifically,
So with a $4.2M/yr budget, the DAO is paying for voting participation which does not take into account a delegate’s VP and thus, the economic security they bring; as well as feedback and rationale that is equal regardless of its impact.
For delegates to reach the top tier of $7k USD/month, this is certainly attainable and not too hard over a 1 year period. Which we think is a fine, however, given the proposed requirements for reaching the top tier, $6k - $7k USD / month is far too generous. $84k USD/yr is a significant amount of money and higher than most avg. salaries worldwide. By no means are we trying to discredit the effort and time delegates put into the ARB DAO, we just struggle to see justification in the cost vs. requirements as it stands.
Overall, we would love to see a combination of v1.1 and v1.5 where voting participation is still counted and feedback + rationale is graded. We would also like to see a metric that takes into account a delegate’s VP, and, lastly, we would like to see the monthly compensation revised down. With added quality control, participation metrics, and VP accounted for, a max monthly compensation of $5k USD ($60k/yr) seems more reasonable.
I find this a bit controversial.
We should explicitly incentivize delegates to add value to the DAO and measure their impact, instead of purely evaluating their output. All a delegate needs to do today is vote and justify that vote, and bring home a considerable amount of money.
We should strengthen the incentives for proactivity
We should reduce the rewards for basic activities.
Example 1: If a delegate is demonstrably reviewing on-chain code that will be executed during a Tally vote, they should be rewarded.
Example 2: the program should formalize and reward delegates that push forward new initiatives
We agree on this. Today the program incentivizes proactivity or the generation of new initiatives through bonus points, although we are open to suggestions on how to work better on this point.
As for reducing rewards for basic activities, we believe that the proposed change in weighting to CR and PF is a measure that considers this scenario.
Additionally, it is worth mentioning, as we already stated in our mid-term report:
It’s really important to start paying attention to the quorum. Since a large number of tokens have been put into circulation since the DAO began, the required quorum has been increasing significantly. However, the growth of ARBs in voting has not increased at the same rate.
Compensate on-chain activity is necessary, as there has been a decrease in the amount of VP voting while the quorum needed is becoming larger and larger. Compensating on-chain activity can help mitigate possible governance attacks.
Delegate compensation should be a mix of dollar value and ARB tokens.
Reason: Delegates should be incentivized to drive value into the ecosystem, which should be reflected in ARB’s value. If there is no connection between compensation and the value of ARB, this focus will be lost.
I suggest starting with an 80/20 split (80% fixed USD value, 20% in ARB).
We believe that there is an alignment between the interests of the DAO and those of the delegates when applying an ARB Cap to each Tier.
Exclusivity: Similar to Entropy’s proposal, a delegate or organization should receive a bonus if it is not working with competing DAOs.
This motivated in part the introduction of the tiers, since a delegate who wishes to reach the highest tier will probably have to dedicate a greater amount of time to the DAO. In this way, we are not directly demanding or incentivizing exclusivity but giving a fair compensation for the dedication of those delegates who obtain the highest tier.
However, I would like to express my concern that the duration of the program should be reduced to six months instead of one year. This change would allow us to evaluate the program’s effectiveness and seek further improvements. I agree with @maxlomu’s statement on this matter; we should assess and compensate for the effectiveness and impact of the delegates.
We believe that maintaining the duration for six months, when the program is no longer experimental, would undermine the stability and planning of the delegates in the DAO. On the other hand, there is a clause that allows the DAO to make changes in the Scoring methodology during the program, so after the mid-term report, the DAO could easily review the program's performance and push for changes.
Regarding this, how long does it usually take for MSS to pay the delegates?
This will depend exclusively on how long it takes the MSS to create the transaction and get the signatures for it to be executed. Considering that it is a brand new organism, we do not have estimates of how long this could take, however there is an "expectation" already expressed in the MSS proposal:
Transactions are expected to be promptly (within 24 hours) reviewed by all signers, and if approved through the process outlined above, signed. While we realise that there will be times when a signer may not have internet access or some other deterrent to signing, these are expected to be few and far between. If there are more than 3 lapses in expectations over the course of a 2 month period, chairs are expected to communicate that to the DAO and potentially remove the signer.
As some delegates may not be able to communicate effectively and may remain quiet during the calls, will this still count towards their bonus points? Or must they actively participate in the discussions?
In the beginning, it will reach the mere attendance, although as it is a new parameter, we will be watching the evolution of the same during the program.
We agree with @Englandzz_Curia and @KlausBrave that it’s important not to discourage participation from diverse delegates. We believe that some kind of asynchronous participation should be considered for those delegates who can’t attend the calls. An idea is to consider proactive comments and discussions on the call notes as “participations”.
We agree, although we have seen that in most occasions the call notes are not a commonly published file in the forum. Anyway, we support the idea of having calls in multiple timezones as a solution to this situation. @cliffton.eth @raam Is it possible to add an extra time slot to the calls?
Mirroring the comments brought by @PGov, we prefer the current methodology for tracking commenting on proposals is better than the one presented in this v1.1 program. Reducing the weight of comments after the Snapshot is live will likely lead to increased spam comments. Often, important questions and concerns are discussed while the Snapshot vote is live, especially on topics where one party has the responsibility/knowledge to respond or require members to gather data.
Considering that several delegates have expressed concerns with this scoring methodology, we have proposed alternatives in the following post, we invite you to review it.
We’ve listened to the concerns raised by some delegates (@Jojo, @BlockworksResearch, @pedrob, @Bobbay, @KlausBrave, @Bob-Rossi) regarding the weightings and the changes in the Proposal Feedback section, and we would like to share our perspective.
The current system, tested over the past six months, quantitatively focuses on analyzing delegates' contributions. At the time, we believed this was the best way for delegates to verify their monthly scoring while also avoiding the introduction of subjectivity in the analysis of delegate participation. However, we understand that this might not be the optimal way to evaluate the feedback provided by delegates, as we have observed some drawbacks under this scheme:
We’ve listened to the concerns raised by some delegates (@Jojo, @BlockworksResearch, @pedrob, @Bobbay, @KlausBrave, @Bob-Rossi) regarding the weightings and the changes in the Proposal Feedback section, and we would like to share our perspective.
The current system, tested over the past six months, quantitatively focuses on analyzing delegates' contributions. At the time, we believed this was the best way for delegates to verify their monthly scoring while also avoiding the introduction of subjectivity in the analysis of delegate participation. However, we understand that this might not be the optimal way to evaluate the feedback provided by delegates, as we have observed some drawbacks under this scheme:
Delegates are incentivized to provide comments (forcefully) to avoid being penalized by the scoring system. This is problematic because not all proposals lend themselves to lengthy discussions, and we must also consider that delegates may have expertise in some areas while knowing little about others. Forcing their participation in such cases could result in inconsequential or repetitive feedback.
Additionally, as @pedrob has pointed out, the current system only weights proposals or discussions that have reached Snapshot, overlooking the rest of the discussions within Arbitrum DAO. This opens the door to speculation and uncertainty about which RFC might go to a vote and which might not.
We are aware that setting metrics for everything happening off-chain in governance is a significant challenge. However, we believe it is worth addressing as many of these issues as possible, as they form the foundation for maintaining incentivized governance. With this in mind, we propose two potential paths forward:
We propose changing the way we collect feedback from a quantitative to a qualitative way. Instead of counting comments on proposals that reach Snapshot, we propose implementing a monthly analysis of the feedback provided by delegates, regardless of whether the proposal/discussion has reached Snapshot.
In this way, the Program Administrator would be responsible for creating a rubric that evaluates the value and timeliness of the feedback provided by delegates. The goal of this system is to:
Under this system, a delegate could achieve the same score with (for example) one big significant contribution or by making several smaller contributions. It also discourages actors who might try to take advantage of the program.
This rubric assesses the overall feedback provided by the delegate throughout the month (from day 1 at 00:00 UTC to the last day of the month at 23:59:59 UTC), based on a summary of their participation in various proposals and discussions. The aim is to measure the consistency, quality, and overall impact of their contributions. We expect delegates to comment on and/or provide feedback on proposals and discussions both before and during the voting process. This feedback should aim to foster debate, improve the proposal, or clarify issues not explicitly addressed within it.
We trust the goodwill of the delegates to avoid meaningless/spam comments and ensure that all contributions are sensible.
The parameter “Proposal Feedback” should be renamed to "Delegate’s Feedback” in this case since we’re analyzing the overall feedback provided by the delegate (not just proposals on snapshot) and will maintain a maximum weight of 30%, the score will be awarded based on the following rubric:
1. Data Collection: At the end of the month, the complete set of contributions by each delegate across all discussions on the forum is reviewed. 2. Overall Evaluation: The rubric is used to assess the delegate’s overall performance on each criterion, based on a holistic view of their participation. 3. Score Assignment: A level of 1 to 4 is assigned to each criterion, based on the consistency and quality of the delegate’s contributions over the month. Each level has its percentage range that will act as the final score of each criterion. 4. Monthly Report: A qualitative and quantitative report summarizing the delegate’s performance over the month is then produced.
Each rubric criterion has levels with an assigned percentage range, from 0 to 100%, depending on the level achieved.
The initial score is obtained by averaging the first five criteria, while the final score results from applying the “Presence in Discussions” multiplier to the initial average score.
For illustrative purposes, here’s an example:
Relevance: Level 3 - Scoring achieved = 65%
Depth of Analysis: Level 2 - Scoring achieved = 45%
Timing: Level 4 - Scoring achieved = 95%
Clarity and Communication: Level 2 - Scoring achieved = 40%
Impact on Decision-Making: Level 3 - Scoring achieved = 60%
Initial Score/Average: 61%
Final Score: 70.15% or 21.05/30 Delegates' Feedback points.
We are aware that this proposed option introduces trust assumptions regarding the Program Administrator’s criteria for evaluating feedback. We view this layer of subjectivity as inevitable until we can implement automated tools, such as the AI that Karma is developing, to assess the quality of delegate feedback. It is important to note that, as Program Administrators, after analyzing proposals and feedback for the last six months, we have gained experience that (we believe) will help us correctly identify constructive feedback.
At SEEDGov, we are committed to being as transparent as possible, as we have been thus far. Therefore, the rubric and the monthly report will always be publicly accessible to all interested parties. During this phase, feedback from Arbitrum DAO will also be crucial in helping us refine our evaluation criteria.
This option also introduces modifications to the responsibilities and budget of the Program Administrators. Expanding the scope of the Delegate’s Feedback analysis will require more human resources to meet the objectives. More time and resources will need to be allocated to developing and training the AI that will eventually automate this process.
Additionally, Karma Dashboard will require to development of new tools and overall a new section for calculating and showing qualitative delegates' contributions.
New budget details:
Source: Salaries are approximate and based on U.S. standards. We extracted data from this website.
In this option, some of the feedback initially raised in this post is still considered, reducing the weight of Proposal Feedback and narrowing the gap between early and late comments. The Communicating Rationale parameter would also be slightly revalued, resulting in more gradual changes in weights.
We also suggest the following changes in PF stages:
In this scenario, by maintaining a quantitative system tied only to discussions that reach Snapshot, we may still encounter some of the drawbacks raised at the beginning of this post. However, risks are partially mitigated by modifying certain parameters.
Additionally, the need for trust assumptions or subjectivity will be less than with the rubric, which has its own pros and cons. While in one scheme, the administrator's role will be more prominent than in the other, it is also true that Option 2 lacks qualitative assessments to some extent. This makes the program somewhat more vulnerable to malicious actors or those contributing minimal value.
We look forward to receiving feedback from the DAO on this matter, as we believe it is essential to take the next step in the incentive program and professionalize the DAO to ensure alignment with ArbitrumDAO's values.
We intend to present both options when the proposal goes to Snapshot, allowing us to gauge the DAO's preferences. Note that both options could be treated as “experimental” during the first few months of the program, with the possibility of making adjustments as needed.
More pings for visibility: @Pgov @Blueweb @PennBlockchain @cp0x
Mirroring the comments brought by @PGov, we prefer the current methodology for tracking commenting on proposals is better than the one presented in this v1.1 program. Reducing the weight of comments after the Snapshot is live will likely lead to increased spam comments. Often, important questions and concerns are discussed while the Snapshot vote is live, especially on topics where one party has the responsibility/knowledge to respond or require members to gather data.
Other than that change to the program, we support this updated Delegate Incentive Program.
Thank you @SEEDGov for the great update in the DIP! We also like to express our gratitude to the continuous effort to operating the DIP and attitude to addressing feedback from delegates for a better program.
Adding Bonus Points for delegates who attends to the “Arbitrum Open Governance Call” (monthly) and the “Open Discussion of Proposal(s) - Bi-weekly Governance Call.”
Thank you @SEEDGov for the great update in the DIP! We also like to express our gratitude to the continuous effort to operating the DIP and attitude to addressing feedback from delegates for a better program.
Adding Bonus Points for delegates who attends to the “Arbitrum Open Governance Call” (monthly) and the “Open Discussion of Proposal(s) - Bi-weekly Governance Call.”
We agree with @Englandzz_Curia and @KlausBrave that it's important not to discourage participation from diverse delegates. We believe that some kind of asynchronous participation should be considered for those delegates who can't attend the calls. An idea is to consider proactive comments and discussions on the call notes as "participations".
We think it's important to pilot the scoring criteria and then make changes if the quality of comments drops significantly. We support the current scoring system as it is.
We look forward to seeing this updated DIP goes into effect in the near future!
Thank you, @SEEDGov, for the well-thought-out proposal.
What I appreciate about this improved version of the program is the reduction in pure voting scoring and its justification, as well as the increase in meaningful participation scoring in the forum and during calls.
Thank you, @SEEDGov, for the well-thought-out proposal.
What I appreciate about this improved version of the program is the reduction in pure voting scoring and its justification, as well as the increase in meaningful participation scoring in the forum and during calls.
However, I would like to express my concern that the duration of the program should be reduced to six months instead of one year. This change would allow us to evaluate the program's effectiveness and seek further improvements. I agree with @maxlomu's statement on this matter; we should assess and compensate for the effectiveness and impact of the delegates.
As someone who just became eligible for compensation this month, I find it time-consuming to follow various topics, including approved proposals, new proposals, and their impacts, in order to cast an informed vote and justify it. This has become almost a full-time job for me. If we aim to measure their impact purely, it will make it even more challenging for new delegates to join the DAO.
I find the current proposal to be somewhat balanced; however, I suggest that we revise the criteria in the next six months and increase the weighting percentage of their impact on the DAO, as @maxlomu expressed.
We should explicitly incentivize delegates to add value to the DAO and measure their impact, instead of purely evaluating their output. All a delegate needs to do today is vote and justify that vote, and bring home a considerable amount of money.
Regarding this, how long does it usually take for MSS to pay the delegates?
To address this, we propose publishing the initial spreadsheet with the payment amounts (as we currently do) in USD. After the dispute period has concluded, we will submit the payment report to the MSS in ARB, based on the price at that time, and publish the corresponding report in the forum. This approach aims to minimize potential price fluctuations.
As some delegates may not be able to communicate effectively and may remain quiet during the calls, will this still count towards their bonus points? Or must they actively participate in the discussions?
By the way, I strongly support this idea for the next version of the program.
Thanks for the update on the proposal. Regarding the options, I believe 1.5 is the natural evolution to the program, so I don't think it should be 1.1 OR 1.5, but rather 1.1 AND 1.5, but with a few changes.
In the current program, no delegate got the full value on the comment on proposals. That happens for a series of reasons that I won't touch here, but I believe that a good path is to give a bigger weight to it (1.1) AND incentivize (1.5) deeper contributions after some time.
Thanks for the update on the proposal. Regarding the options, I believe 1.5 is the natural evolution to the program, so I don't think it should be 1.1 OR 1.5, but rather 1.1 AND 1.5, but with a few changes.
In the current program, no delegate got the full value on the comment on proposals. That happens for a series of reasons that I won't touch here, but I believe that a good path is to give a bigger weight to it (1.1) AND incentivize (1.5) deeper contributions after some time.
I would like to suggest the following options:
gm all, and thanks to @seedlatam for all the work you have been doing on this.
Here are some thoughts from my side, some of which I have already expressed through private feedback:
The program should incentivize the professionalization of delegates, but not their bureaucratization.
gm all, and thanks to @seedlatam for all the work you have been doing on this.
Here are some thoughts from my side, some of which I have already expressed through private feedback:
The program should incentivize the professionalization of delegates, but not their bureaucratization.
We should explicitly incentivize delegates to add value to the DAO and measure their impact, instead of purely evaluating their output. All a delegate needs to do today is vote and justify that vote, and bring home a considerable amount of money.
We should strengthen the incentives for proactivity
We should reduce the rewards for basic activities.
Delegate compensation should be a mix of dollar value and ARB tokens.
Exclusivity: Similar to Entropy's proposal, a delegate or organization should receive a bonus if it is not working with competing DAOs.
Thanks for considering my feedback!
Good job! I agree that delegates' feedback and comments should be timely for active discussion of the proposal.
It is difficult to know how subjective this approach will be, so I suggest, as last time before implementing this proposal, to try a test month or two - how difficult it will be to evaluate the new criteria for delegates.
Good job! I agree that delegates' feedback and comments should be timely for active discussion of the proposal.
It is difficult to know how subjective this approach will be, so I suggest, as last time before implementing this proposal, to try a test month or two - how difficult it will be to evaluate the new criteria for delegates.
And based on the results of the test, delegates will understand more clearly how necessary it is to be involved in the discussions and what difficulties this may pose.
Hey, here are some answers to the questions that we received:
Hey, here are some answers to the questions that we received:
@jojo and @BlockworksResearch , I think something to remember is that proposals are supposed to go on the forums at a minimum 1 week prior to going to Snapshot (and often will go longer). So there should be ample time for an active delegate to participate in discussion prior to a vote. I don’t want to dismiss the concern, but ultimately I think pre-voting discussion can provide a lot of value and if we can incentivize it that is a good thing.
We are in agreement on this matter and trust in the goodwill of proposers to ensure that delegates have a reasonable amount of time to discuss proposals before they advance to Snapshot
Personally, I think best solution may be starting at 50% with openness to adjust after 3 months of results. This may just end up being a situation that rarely applies in the end. I think even in the stated scenario most votes wouldn’t need more than a few days to get out an opinion. Although I’m speaking thru the lens of a single voter versus some delegates who maybe have teams and may have longer processes to their commentary / voting.
That sounds reasonable. We can proceed with this approach on a trial basis, especially given that in the Continuous Upgrades segment, we have already considered the possibility of adjusting the Scoring methodology throughout the program.
We know that this program still has room for improvement. While this new program version moves away from its experimental nature to become a more developed one, a delegate incentive program must continuously receive feedback from its participants.
The SEEDGov team and Karma are committed to gathering feedback, obtaining more information, and implementing the necessary changes to optimize performance. Considering the new duration of the program, the Program Administrator reserves the right to make changes in the scoring methodology by giving public notice in the forum.
The threshold of 60% in the last 90 days shall attract more delegates in v1.1 than the previous DIP, but will also have higher chances of Sybil and delegates with less context about what happened in the DAO previously. I am sure we cannot have a Delegate screening. Still, without the context of history, there is less chance of high-value participation and there the Proposal Feedback’s subjectivity will play a crucial role. I suppose SEEDGov’s team efforts in refining those will be way more than currently estimated, and provisions shall be made for that by capping the number of proposals that the current resources mentioned in the proposal can handle.
This was discussed internally, and the proposed changes are primarily focused on reactivating inactive delegates with a significant amount of VP. As mentioned previously, the information gathered over the past few months has enabled us to implement anti-sybil mechanisms—such as the 50k VP requirement—that, for the time being, have been functioning as expected.
Also, the clarity on the date on which this price shall be considered? The delay between publishing the monthly report and sending the ARB would create a different $ARB sent than what will be in the sheet. So, will the sheet be published after sending the ARB to respective delegates or have a cut-off date as the 15th Feb price will be for January month pay and on 15-16th Feb the ARB will be sent?
That’s a good question. To address this, we propose publishing the initial spreadsheet with the payment amounts (as we currently do) in USD. After the dispute period has concluded, we will submit the payment report to the MSS in ARB, based on the price at that time, and publish the corresponding report in the forum. This approach aims to minimize potential price fluctuations.
While I understand where you are coming from when it comes to DIP Bans or Suspensions, the current rationale behind it is rather subjective and lacks objective clarity. I suggest points based rubric for evaluation which would necessitate such drastic actions as well as a forum post explaining exactly why and how any delegate is banned.
There is a hard limit on the VP required to post on snapshot, hence a delegate without sufficient VP may not even be able to put their appeal up. I suggest the program admin takes up the responsibility to put up appeals if requested on the forum by the appealing delegate.
These are valid and understandable concerns. For the time being, we aim to keep this section as simple as possible until the DAO develops more sophisticated anti-fraud mechanisms (as we believe this is a general issue within the DAO and not unique to the program). However, we can assure you that SEEDGov will maintain the necessary transparency and openness to address situations like this. Any decisions will, of course, be communicated through prior publication in the forum, and it seems reasonable to us that any appeal be posted by the Program Administrator.
Looking ahead, we would like to implement anti-fraud policies to guide program administrators in DAOs on how to proceed and what guidelines to follow. In that sense, we agree with @DisruptionJoe comment.
Entropy received the accusation message and decided it would be best to default to full transparency. This seems reasonable.
Ramses would have liked a dm prior to posting because a message like this could severely hurt their business - even if just an accusation.
There is no policy for how we handle accusations of fraud. There isn’t an official community flagging function or dropbox with a standard process. Entropy received this information because there was a vaccuum where a responsible party should be. They defaulted to the option most well-meaning DAO contributors would - they opted to post for transparency.
We should have a consistent policy on how these accusations are approached. Just because you’re a delegate and he could dm doesn’t mean that it is the fair and equal approach (it likely is tho).
I’ve offered to facilitate a workshop to design a policy for community detection, reporting, and transparency with the parties involved. So far we have not set a time - update hopefully coming soon. Comment if you would like to join.
In the future, the policy should be what we argue about - NOT the decisions of well meaning actors.
Thank you for the recommendation. We are aware of the issue and believe this is where the DAO should evolve in the future. However, this should also be addressed at the governance level, particularly with different types of proposals and voting methods. Agora has been working on this for some time in Optimism, although we are unsure if there are similar plans in Arbitrum. Having different types of voting, where each delegate registers as an 'expert' in a specific voting category, would make it easier for us to track activity and adjust incentives accordingly.
To implement this, we also need to define, as a DAO, the most important verticals for ArbitrumDAO so that delegates are aligned. Fortunately, @Entropy has already initiated the first discussions in this area.
Thanks for sharing an updated proposal and glad to see many learnings from the previous iterations being implemented here.
I support the bonus criteria for attending calls and I'd like to suggest considering similar weight i.e. 2.5% to other calls in which delegates participate. This can be considered part of the bonus points but if a delegate participates in all calls this does not mean they will automatically earn all 40%.
While I understand where you are coming from when it comes to DIP Bans or Suspensions, the current rationale behind it is rather subjective and lacks objective clarity. I suggest points based rubric for evaluation which would necessitate such drastic actions as well as a forum post explaining exactly why and how any delegate is banned.
There is a hard limit on the VP required to post on snapshot, hence a delegate without sufficient VP may not even be able to put their appeal up. I suggest the program admin takes up the responsibility to put up appeals if requested on the forum by the appealing delegate.
I also recommend investigating the implementation of 'Expert Coalitions' ie coalition of delegates who are experts in one or more particular area such as treasury or tokenomics etc. It would be great to have a pool of delegates in each of these Expert Coalitions that the DAO requires to grow as opposed to a large cohort being incentivised for writing the same set of comments in different words. This way we can identify a more streamlined budget for this program with a max. number of delegate set for each 'Area of Expertise'
knowing that dip will potentially be a foundation of arb staking and so have an ecosystem weight way higher than it is now, would you think seed could be able to scale 1.5 in a situation in which we have x10 the amount of activity we have today?
Happy to see Arbitrum expanding the delegate program and taking DAO diversification seriously.
The 50k minimum delegation amount is a bit high in my opinion but a serious delegate can do reach it with enough effort.
Also, perhaps the number of delegates set to 50 is too low and could be expanded in the future as the DAO growths.
In any case, I will be working to meet the requirements and join ASAP!
Thank you for the considered and comprehensive reply! I appreciate you sharing the history, logic, and process you have undertaken to structure this program. It makes sense.
Regarding timezones, there is 4 meetings a month 2.5% bonus each so 10% total available that's significant. One way to solve for regional timezone accessibility would be for each alternating meeting to be at a different timezone that's more friendly for different regions ensuring net net over each month there is a fair opportunity for anyone from anywhere to access these meetings live.
Agree with the timezone challenges for Asia and Oceania. This program effectively disincentives participation from delegates in these regions.
Optimising the timezones for global participation needs consideration.
Also consider a way delegates can watch the recordings and provide async after that fact comments to qualify as engaged in these meetings.
I think this could be difficult for delegates from the Asia region to participate in since these calls are often scheduled in US or European time zones. Do you have any thoughts on how to address this?
I appreciate the efforts to refine the previous DIP and agree with what's presented to the DAO.
I want to amplify what @KlausBrave & @Englandzz_Curia mentioned about being inclusive of the global time & not keeping delegates from specific regions at a disadvantage.
I appreciate the efforts to refine the previous DIP and agree with what's presented to the DAO.
I want to amplify what @KlausBrave & @Englandzz_Curia mentioned about being inclusive of the global time & not keeping delegates from specific regions at a disadvantage.
The KPI of reaching more delegates who are incentivized will cross the 50 delegate benchmark and this proposal shall have provisions to address in case of the higher number of delegates scoring a TP of 65%, as pointed out by @0xDonPepe
The threshold of 60% in the last 90 days shall attract more delegates in v1.1 than the previous DIP, but will also have higher chances of Sybil and delegates with less context about what happened in the DAO previously. I am sure we cannot have a Delegate screening. Still, without the context of history, there is less chance of high-value participation and there the Proposal Feedback's subjectivity will play a crucial role. I suppose SEEDGov's team efforts in refining those will be way more than currently estimated, and provisions shall be made for that by capping the number of proposals that the current resources mentioned in the proposal can handle.
To achieve this, we also need to establish transparent and predictable incentives. Delegates should be confident that if they align with the DAO and improve their contributions over time—essentially if they professionalize—they will receive better incentives.
As one of the aims is stated above, providing clarity will be helpful though the different price scenarios clear it to an extent, but the gap between publishing monthly results and transferring can cause difference. Just highlighting that.
Example 1 has a scenario where the proposal was published in the forum and there are just 5 days to read and be in ESF, this can put those delegates who did not participate in the feedback of the proposal at a disadvantage.
To mitigate this a proposal that takes less than 2 weeks on the forum for discussion shall not have ESF & LSF classification. It should have the same wait irrespective of when the delegate participated in the discussion.
A fair amount of the time, people write enough comments and discuss a proposal in-depth so I don’t see the need to write a comment. Not all cases, but most of the time, I have all the info I need.
I would also share the same concerns as @Bobbay, in such a scenario just adding a comment is going to be redundant and increase the comments that the next delegate will have to read to get the context.
Overall, I favour this proposal and believe it pioneers the effort to make delegates more professional. This is a real opportunity at Arbitrum DAO. Thank you once again for creating it.
@jojo and @BlockworksResearch , I think something to remember is that proposals are supposed to go on the forums at a minimum 1 week prior to going to Snapshot (and often will go longer). So there should be ample time for an active delegate to participate in discussion prior to a vote. I don't want to dismiss the concern, but ultimately I think pre-voting discussion can provide a lot of value and if we can incentivize it that is a good thing.
I've fallen into that trap before of waiting until voting so I see the (and like) the motivation behind the change. IMO it's a welcomed changed, although I had not thought of this issue so don't want to handwaive it. Openly brainstorming as I type... but a the few solutions I can really think of are either 1) reducing the penalty at the cost of being able to effectively enforce it or 2) the penalty only kicks in if you have >x% (10%?, 3 or more?) of your comments after it already went to vote. 3) Maybe the penalty is put into two tiers. If a pre-vote comment period is only 7 days, the penalty is 75%. If the comment period goes 7+ days then it triggers the 50% type thing (or whatever threshold of days makes sense, maybe its 10 or something. of course 2 and 3 come at the cost of creating more complexities... which I'm not a huge fan of.
After reading through all of the comments a few points we want to make:
We’re a big fan of the change to just having 3 months of voting history applied and should allow for more delegates to come into the system and easily over time.
After reading through all of the comments a few points we want to make:
We’re a big fan of the change to just having 3 months of voting history applied and should allow for more delegates to come into the system and easily over time.
Our biggest concern and one we share with most is the huge underweighting of comments after the snapshot which we think shouldn’t be. This setup would create incentives for people to game proposals and also increases the amount of “spam” comments purely for credit prior to a vote coming to snapshot. Keeping the same status quo of comments at or around the snapshot time would be best in our opinion; it seemed like that system worked quite well.
Thanks for putting this proposal together. I really love the overall concept, but I do have a few concerns about the criteria. As other delegates have pointed out, the early-stage comments might be challenging to keep effective since some people could post content that doesn't really add value to the discussion.
Additionally, regarding the Bonus Points update:
Thanks for putting this proposal together. I really love the overall concept, but I do have a few concerns about the criteria. As other delegates have pointed out, the early-stage comments might be challenging to keep effective since some people could post content that doesn't really add value to the discussion.
Additionally, regarding the Bonus Points update:
Bonus points update: Adding Bonus Points for delegates who attend the “Arbitrum Open Governance Call” (monthly) and the “Open Discussion of Proposal(s) - Bi-weekly Governance Call.”
- For the monthly call, 2.5% BP will be awarded for attendance.
- For the bi-weekly calls, 2.5% BP will be awarded for attending each call.
I think this could be difficult for delegates from the Asia region to participate in since these calls are often scheduled in US or European time zones. Do you have any thoughts on how to address this?
I liked this new approach, extending the delegates commitment to the governance calls as well, and the incentives to engage in the conversation from the start, as that improves the feedback to the author and make the proposals better tuned when going to snapshot.
Thank you for the considered and comprehensive reply! I appreciate you sharing the history, logic, and process you have undertaken to structure this program. It makes sense.
Regarding timezones, there is 4 meetings a month 2.5% bonus each so 10% total available that's significant. One way to solve for regional timezone accessibility would be for each alternating meeting to be at a different timezone that's more friendly for different regions ensuring net net over each month there is a fair opportunity for anyone from anywhere to access these meetings live.
Regarding proof of watching the recordings, there could be a code word verbally mentioned that people could then supply to some form etc, there is probably other better ways to solve this.
I think this could be difficult for delegates from the Asia region to participate in since these calls are often scheduled in US or European time zones. Do you have any thoughts on how to address this?
We understand that it may be an inconvenient time for some delegates who are not in the time zone, so these are additional Bonus Points and do not form part of the main program scoring. We have raised this time zone issue in previous programs (which even affects us as well), but we believe it is worth promoting to more delegates to attend the governance calls.
Agree with the timezone challenges for Asia and Oceania. This program effectively disincentives participation from delegates in these regions.
Optimising the timezones for global participation needs consideration.
Also consider a way delegates can watch the recordings and provide async after that fact comments to qualify as engaged in these meetings.
We agreed with this, in fact we have mentioned this problem in the past, but we believe this is more of a structural problem of how DAO activities are managed. Maybe the Foundation should add a meeting within the time slot that covers the area of these delegates?
In fact, for example the Onboarding group, had this problem and solved it by organizing calls in different time zones.
As for the delegates viewing the async recordings, how do we verify that they have actually viewed the recording? Is there a reliable mechanism? This is a good problem to solve, we are open to suggestions on this aspect.
Anyway, we understand these problems and how difficult it can be to solve. But this is why we don't think we should remove these BPs as they are used to incentivize delegates who can or make the effort to attend the calls.
I’m not sure how this would affect the budget, but I’d suggest raising the cap above 50 delegates, especially since the program is set to run for the next 12 months. We’re already over the limit with the number of delegates currently enrolled. Even though not all are eligible for incentives yet, I think we’ll reach that ceiling soon.
Thank you for bringing this point up, we have discussed it a lot internally. So far approximately 34 delegates are managing to qualify for incentives and we hope to achieve in this iteration to reach 50 as stated in the KPI.
In this new iteration of the DIP, we aim to establish the following KPIs:
Achieve that 50 delegates receive incentives.
Engage 100 delegates in the program.
Achieve an average Total Participation (TP) of 80% among participants in the program within six months.
Introduce improvements to the program after six months.
We believe that, if we manage to complete this goal quickly and the DAO sees good results and participation, we will be able to request by vote to expand this number and, if necessary, a larger budget. Our philosophy is to move forward step by step, demonstrate results and take care of ArbitrumDAO's treasury.
@SEEDGov - how was the 50k ARB threshold set? how do we determine if it’s appropriate and how do we change it? Would you consider 10k, 20k and why not? what’s the logic behind this specific threshold.
I ask this as for a newcomer delegate like myself this represents a significant hurdle to get going, attracting attention to be re-delegated to is very hard, in the absence of that working I notice when analysing newer smaller delegates many are buying their way in, spending 50k ARB (approx $26500 USDC atm) to just clear this threshold.
The number is set in part by the amount and by the number of delegates in that range, currently 176. We also set that amount to avoid sybil attack, we prefer to scale the program a little at a time as we believe that a possible sybil damages the program.
We also have to be realistic with numbers that are manageable for the administrators. Behind the scenes we did a lot of administrative (KYC), communication and delegate support work. If it was decided to lower the number to 10k ARB we are talking about a number of 485 delegates that can apply, this could become unmanageable for the administrators and we could also receive several sybil attack.
We also take into account this number based on the report we made in the middle of the program.
Tally Votes are the most important as they are binding or execute protocol updates.
For this analysis, we divided voters into ranges based on their %VP:
0 - 1
1 - 1K
1K - 50K
Over 50K
The following graph shows the percentage of voters according to the VP range in each vote:
We can observe that the majority of voters fall within the 0-1 (red) and 1-1K ranges (blue). This pattern is consistent across all votes. However, despite the number of voters, these participants do not determine the outcomes. Approximately 97% of the total VP in each vote is concentrated among voters in the Over 50K range (green), followed by 1.5% from voters in the 1K-50K range (yellow).
As we can see, delegates with over 50K ARB VP are essentially responsible for the effective functioning of the DAO. They play a crucial role in ensuring the quorum is met and good practices are implemented. This is why we ultimately decided against lowering the threshold from 50K to 25K. Currently, Arbitrum DAO relies on these approximately 60 addresses that hold the majority of the Voting Power, determining the direction and decisions within the DAO. Expanding the incentive program could increase participation from smaller delegates. While adding new voices is always positive, it’s essential to support, incentivize, and continue creating tools for the ongoing professionalization of those delegates who significantly contribute to the quorum.
In the study we conducted and in our research work, we realized that delegates with more than 50k of VP play a vital role in the DAO's decision making process, as this is where the highest delegate/VP ratio is concentrated. However, despite all this, there are still a large number of delegates with more than 50k of VP who are not active in the DAO, so we want to work to reactivate these delegates who we believe can contribute positively to the DAO. This is important because as more ARBs become unlocked and enter circulation, it becomes more difficult to reach quorum, something that is extremely important to pass proposals in Tally, as our research shows:
It’s really important to start paying attention to the quorum. Since a large number of tokens have been put into circulation since the DAO began, the required quorum has been increasing significantly. However, the growth of ARBs in voting has not increased at the same rate. This can be seen in the following graph:
I assert there is much potential new delegate talent that has time and skill to be high context in Arbitrum and contribute meaningful intellectual capital to advance proposals yet lacks either
the social capital to attract re-delegation
or the financial capital to float themselves, and
the track record of Snapshot and Tally voting to onboard and become a new delegate.
Number 3 anyone can get started with, I’m doing that myself now with voting history the last 6 weeks with minimal ARB VP.
I appreciate this program, and this is a good conversation to have.
How might we design the full Delegate Development Life Cycle to ensure fresh recombination of talent has a means and the path is accessible and realistically achievable to become a delegate?
On this we agree 100%, we know that there are many delegates with little VP. Even what surprised us during the previous iteration is that some have sought on their own who delegated VP (and also bought ARB token) to participate in the program and really made a great contribution to the DAO.
But as mentioned here:
It’s important to note that while managing the incentive program, we realized that it doesn’t address all the challenges faced by the DAO, such as vote distribution, attracting new contributors, and other aspects. Expecting a single strategy to tackle all issues overlooks the diversity of factors involved. However, we’re pleased to see initiatives like ARB Staking, (Re)delegation Week , and the Public Good Citizen Enfranchisement Pool are underway to address these challenges. As each initiative matures, we can align them to achieve a more significant collective impact.
We understand that the program cannot cover all the problems that exist in the DAOs. Even if we wanted to do so, we would need a large amount of human resources and budget, which we believe would be inefficient, not only because of the costs, but also because we are trying to solve everything at the same time (DAOs are plutocratic, there should be changes in the governance system). So we think it is healthy for the DAO to have several incentive programs that focus on different problems and are administered by different entities and, among all the programs, collaborate to make the ArbitrumDAO broad and diverse.
@jojo and @BlockworksResearch , I think something to remember is that proposals are supposed to go on the forums at a minimum 1 week prior to going to Snapshot (and often will go longer). So there should be ample time for an active delegate to participate in discussion prior to a vote. I don't want to dismiss the concern, but ultimately I think pre-voting discussion can provide a lot of value and if we can incentivize it that is a good thing.
I've fallen into that trap before of waiting until voting so I see the (and like) the motivation behind the change. IMO it's a welcomed changed, although I had not thought of this issue so don't want to handwaive it. Openly brainstorming as I type... but a the few solutions I can really think of are either 1) reducing the penalty at the cost of being able to effectively enforce it or 2) the penalty only kicks in if you have >x% (10%?, 3 or more?) of your comments after it already went to vote. 3) Maybe the penalty is put into two tiers. If a pre-vote comment period is only 7 days, the penalty is 75%. If the comment period goes 7+ days then it triggers the 50% type thing (or whatever threshold of days makes sense, maybe its 10 or something. of course 2 and 3 come at the cost of creating more complexities... which I'm not a huge fan of.
Personally, I think best solution may be starting at 50% with openness to adjust after 3 months of results. This may just end up being a situation that rarely applies in the end. I think even in the stated scenario most votes wouldn't need more than a few days to get out an opinion. Although I'm speaking thru the lens of a single voter versus some delegates who maybe have teams and may have longer processes to their commentary / voting.
We will maintain this parameter at 50 delegates. As of the date of this RFC, 53 delegates are enrolled in the program, with an average of 34 receiving incentives. We hope that during the next phase of the program, both the number of enrolled delegates and those receiving compensation for their contributions will continue to grow.
I'm not sure how this would affect the budget, but I'd suggest raising the cap above 50 delegates, especially since the program is set to run for the next 12 months. We're already over the limit with the number of delegates currently enrolled. Even though not all are eligible for incentives yet, I think we'll reach that ceiling soon.
The objective of the program is the one mentioned in the proposal.
The objective of the program is the one mentioned in the proposal.
As we mentioned in the report, it is crucial to keep delegated voting power active within ArbitrumDAO. We believe the Incentive Program should focus on the professionalization of delegates.
By professionalization, delegates should dedicate a significant amount of time to staying informed about developments in ArbitrumDAO, gaining knowledge of Arbitrum’s technology, and making meaningful contributions to the DAO. This includes active participation in most DAO activities like providing feedback on proposals, attending to Governance Calls, maintaining high voting participation on Snapshot and Tally, and providing a rationale for such votes.
To achieve this, we also need to establish transparent and predictable incentives. Delegates should be confident that if they align with the DAO and improve their contributions over time—essentially if they professionalize—they will receive better incentives. These incentives should be transparent and attractive without being subject to manipulation or arbitrary changes in their amount. Delegates should focus on their role and DAO activities, not on understanding complex economic mechanisms to receive compensation.
We want delegates to be motivated to participate actively in ArbitrumDAO. In order to do this, incentives must be attractive enough for them to either participate directly or hire competent individuals to represent their interests, those of their community, or their protocol.
It’s important to note that while managing the incentive program, we realized that it doesn’t address all the challenges faced by the DAO, such as vote distribution, attracting new contributors, and other aspects. Expecting a single strategy to tackle all issues overlooks the diversity of factors involved. However, we’re pleased to see initiatives like ARB Staking, (Re)delegation Week , and the Public Good Citizen Enfranchisement Pool are underway to address these challenges. As each initiative matures, we can align them to achieve a more significant collective impact.
We will try to implement changes to add participants as we get metrics, this will help us determine what is the right way to route the incentives.
On the other hand, there are currently around 123 delegates with more that 50k of VP that are not part of the program, we will keep working in order to motivate them to participate on it.
We understand this situation, but the reason we are doing this is to reduce the gameability of the program. We also agree that this should change in the future to be a little more inclusive, but we want to scale the program gradually.
So, the program is really to maintain current delegates incentiviced???
Hello Thank you for your comments, here are the answers:
Hello Thank you for your comments, here are the answers:
I think this desincetivates new delegates and perpetuates the current. A 50k voting power for 3 months is almost imposible to achieve for people that are not whales.
We understand this situation, but the reason we are doing this is to reduce the gameability of the program. We also agree that this should change in the future to be a little more inclusive, but we want to scale the program gradually.
Okay so >60% participation within 90 days. But what does that mean for me for example? I started voting in May. Will I be reset and basically have to start from scratch? Because I am now somewhere between 40-50%. So I could reach 60% probably next month.
Your score will not be reset every month, when the program starts (obviously with the DAO's authorization), we will take the historical tally participation of the last 90 days.
This means that if for example the program starts on October 1st, the delegate's tally history will be determined by his/her participation in the voting in the months of July, August and September.
1、Bonus Point (BP) "If the delegate makes a significant contribution to the DAO, it’s automatically granted +30% extra TP. This extra is at the discretion of the program administrator.” The reward for BP is quite substantial. It would be helpful to provide specific details or requirements, or examples of past rewards for special contributions to serve as a reference for other delegates.
2. Promotion of the Forum This new incentive program frequently mentions the activity of forum users and the discussions that shape proposals on the forum. However, in reality, many users may simply vote online or offline and might not even know about the existence of the forum, thereby missing the opportunity to truly participate in the proposal formation process. As the official statement mentioned, “Currently, only 30% of delegates meeting this requirement are part of the program.” If the participation rate among users holding large amounts of tokens is this low, the likelihood of more regular users participating is even lower. The official channels could increase the forum’s visibility on social platforms.
Thank you for asking this question, in the previous program results, for example April, you can get a breakdown of the rubric and the criteria selected for assigning Bonus Points.
Our idea is to continue in this way, evaluating significant proposals month by month in order to determine the allocation of bonus points. It is important to clarify that the rules will remain the same to this, bonus points will only be assigned to proposals that do NOT request funds from the proposal creator.
As mentioned here:
How can I earn Bonus Points (BP)?
As outlined in the proposal, at the end of each month, delegates who have submitted proposals of significant impact to the DAO (such as L2BEAT with its proposal on security council changes) will have the opportunity to earn bonus points (up to a maximum of 30%) which will be added to their final score for the month.
It’s crucial to emphasize that this bonus will only be awarded to proposals that do not have funds allocated to the creator, aiming to prevent double funding within the DAO.
Also, with respect to promotion of the forum and the program in general, for this iteration, we will be reaching out to inactive delegates to explore the possibility of how to motivate them to participate in the program.
(>50k voting power and >60% participation in onchain votes) for a period of 3 months to be eligible for the program.
I think this desincetivates new delegates and perpetuates the current. A 50k voting power for 3 months is almost imposible to achieve for people that are not whales.
@SEEDGov - how was the 50k ARB threshold set? how do we determine if it's appropriate and how do we change it? Would you consider 10k, 20k and why not? what's the logic behind this specific threshold.
I ask this as for a newcomer delegate like myself this represents a significant hurdle to get going, attracting attention to be re-delegated to is very hard, in the absence of that working I notice when analysing newer smaller delegates many are buying their way in, spending 50k ARB (approx $26500 USDC atm) to just clear this threshold.
@SEEDGov - how was the 50k ARB threshold set? how do we determine if it's appropriate and how do we change it? Would you consider 10k, 20k and why not? what's the logic behind this specific threshold.
I ask this as for a newcomer delegate like myself this represents a significant hurdle to get going, attracting attention to be re-delegated to is very hard, in the absence of that working I notice when analysing newer smaller delegates many are buying their way in, spending 50k ARB (approx $26500 USDC atm) to just clear this threshold.
I assert there is much potential new delegate talent that has time and skill to be high context in Arbitrum and contribute meaningful intellectual capital to advance proposals yet lacks either
Number 3 anyone can get started with, I'm doing that myself now with voting history the last 6 weeks with minimal ARB VP.
I appreciate this program, and this is a good conversation to have. How might we design the full Delegate Development Life Cycle to ensure fresh recombination of talent has a means and the path is accessible and realistically achievable to become a delegate?
Overall, I believe this new one-year program is more refined and will be more effective than the previous experimental program. Still, two piece of advice as follows:
1、Bonus Point (BP) "If the delegate makes a significant contribution to the DAO, it’s automatically granted +30% extra TP. This extra is at the discretion of the program administrator.” The reward for BP is quite substantial. It would be helpful to provide specific details or requirements, or examples of past rewards for special contributions to serve as a reference for other delegates.
Overall, I believe this new one-year program is more refined and will be more effective than the previous experimental program. Still, two piece of advice as follows:
1、Bonus Point (BP) "If the delegate makes a significant contribution to the DAO, it’s automatically granted +30% extra TP. This extra is at the discretion of the program administrator.” The reward for BP is quite substantial. It would be helpful to provide specific details or requirements, or examples of past rewards for special contributions to serve as a reference for other delegates.
2. Promotion of the Forum This new incentive program frequently mentions the activity of forum users and the discussions that shape proposals on the forum. However, in reality, many users may simply vote online or offline and might not even know about the existence of the forum, thereby missing the opportunity to truly participate in the proposal formation process. As the official statement mentioned, "Currently, only 30% of delegates meeting this requirement are part of the program." If the participation rate among users holding large amounts of tokens is this low, the likelihood of more regular users participating is even lower. The official channels could increase the forum’s visibility on social platforms.
This continuity ensures that delegates can maintain long-term engagement, which is crucial for the sustained health of decentralized governance. The proposed budget appears well-calculated, and the increase in monthly compensation for delegates is not only justified but necessary, particularly in light of the significant 65% year-to-date decline in the value of ARB.
The introduction of bonus points for participating in governance calls is a particularly commendable enhancement. Active participation in these calls often leads to deeper discussions and more nuanced understanding of proposals, which in turn fosters more informed and thoughtful voting.
This continuity ensures that delegates can maintain long-term engagement, which is crucial for the sustained health of decentralized governance. The proposed budget appears well-calculated, and the increase in monthly compensation for delegates is not only justified but necessary, particularly in light of the significant 65% year-to-date decline in the value of ARB.
The introduction of bonus points for participating in governance calls is a particularly commendable enhancement. Active participation in these calls often leads to deeper discussions and more nuanced understanding of proposals, which in turn fosters more informed and thoughtful voting.
I am highly supportive of this proposal, as it reflects a thoughtful approach to maintaining and enhancing the incentives for active, informed participation in governance, which is essential for the success and resilience of the ecosystem.
@SEEDGov It would be great if delegates could meet in a XSpaces (Twitter) session to discuss the most relevant aspects of the ARB ecosystem and generate more proposals, not just in writing.
I like:
Did I understand correctly that regardless of the cost of the ARB token, the delegate has a threshold above which he cannot receive, even if his range is lower than what is specified in the proposal?
So is it correct that the >60% participation in on-chain votes in the last 90 days only applies for those delegates that never casted a vote before those 90 days, right? If I’ve been active before and suddenly decide to come back, I don’t need to be active for 90 days before being eligible.
So is it correct that the >60% participation in on-chain votes in the last 90 days only applies for those delegates that never casted a vote before those 90 days, right? If I’ve been active before and suddenly decide to come back, I don’t need to be active for 90 days before being eligible.
Yes, if you suddenly decide to come back you still need to get >60% participation in on-chain votes in the last 90 days but if you achieve it before that term you will be eligible.
This can be tricky because, as a delegate, you can’t be sure that a proposal will go to Snapshot once it’s published. So, if I have limited time, which one should I respond to? All of them? How do I know it won’t be abandoned? Maybe we should establish a minimum content criterion for a proposal to go to Snapshot or to deserve feedback from the delegates.
This is already the case with the current version of the program; the scoring system currently includes only proposals that have reached Snapshot with their respective comments or CR. The introduction of tiers and the proposed changes to delegate compensation are specifically aimed at ensuring that delegates dedicate as much time as possible to the DAO.
Regarding the criteria you mention, we believe it is a valid approach that goes beyond the scope of this proposal. Proposals can reach Snapshot anytime, whether in a few days or several months. We believe this issue could be handled as a soft consensus, similar to the Improving Predictability in Arbitrum DAO’s Operations.
It’s also not a bad thing for proposers to seek feedback before going to the forum (in fact, it’s good for them to talk with delegates and attend calls before publishing, so they can get some feedback from people with context). A potential downside is that encouraging feedback on the forum might make delegates less inclined to respond to DMs, possibly leading to fewer or even lower-quality proposals reaching the forum.
It's not that we are against obtaining feedback prior to publishing in the forum, but we believe that this process should be reflected within the forum itself. A good example is the comment made by @JoJo, where he publicly shares part of the feedback he had previously provided, helping the community to see who contributed to the drafting of the proposal. This transparency is important for maintaining openness and trust in the process.
Did I understand correctly that regardless of the cost of the ARB token, the delegate has a threshold above which he cannot receive, even if his range is lower than what is specified in the proposal?
Correct, if the ARB price drops low enough, the delegate can receive only up to the pre-set Cap in ARB for his tier. This is to take care of ArbitrumDAO's treasury.
There are so many rules and things to do and timings you need to take care of that it is hard to keep up with everything. So I would really like to see a graphic or dashboard that explains them in an easy manner.
Also as I understood the goal was to incentivize voting activity and more delegates joining the DAO. With the new threshold of over 60% I don’t see this goal being achieved. I’m rather saying less people will join from now on.
Being a full-time delegate isn’t something people do for free, but making it that hard to be eligible will probably stop most from being active at all.
Hello, thank you for your feedback. We kindly invite you to revisit the proposal, as the new threshold of 60% is based on votes within the last 90 days rather than a calculation of historical participation. This adjustment is specifically aimed at facilitating the onboarding of new delegates or those who were previously inactive. Additionally, the primary goal of the program is to encourage delegates to engage more professionally within ArbitrumDAO.
Also is the proposal feedback weight not just encouraging people to write spammy comments? How do you filter their value?
A fair amount of the time, people write enough comments and discuss a proposal in-depth so I don’t see the need to write a comment. Not all cases, but most of the time, I have all the info I need.
What you say makes sense, and throughout the process, we have consistently aimed to prevent potential abuse, such as spam or non-contributive comments. We also understand that many questions and concerns are often addressed through the feedback provided by other delegates, making it unnecessary to repeat the same inquiries. For now, we are manually assessing the comments, but Karma is working on a tool that will help automate this evaluation process.
Attending calls for additional weighting is quite tricky. A lot of delegates have other jobs.
This is exactly what we aim to achieve with these incentives—ensuring that, despite most delegates being involved in other DAOs and projects, they have enough motivation to dedicate a portion of their time to ArbitrumDAO.
Additionally, not attending the calls won't penalize the delegate, as participation is rewarded with Bonus Points. These points are optional extras, so it’s up to each delegate to decide if they want to earn them or not.
See the parameter adjustment changes here. Proposal Feedback (PF) here, seeing as the proposal really needs more visual commentary. Although I’m a representative of a non-English speaking region and rely mostly on translators to participate, I can see that the governance session would like more representatives to be involved in the overall proposal.
The Proposal Feedback segment already has some visual support:
Additionally, we will soon be organizing a special session with the delegates to thoroughly explain the proposal and address any questions that may arise.
In favour of the proposal, the proposal has been updated from the original, which I personally think will attract more voting delegates, and the overall focus is on the core principal of ‘Attract + Retain + Incentivise’. The whole proposal shows that seedgoc has spent a huge amount of effort and research, thank you for your work.
I don't think CR should be that low.
Also is the proposal feedback weight not just encouraging people to write spammy comments? How do you filter their value?
A fair amount of the time, people write enough comments and discuss a proposal in-depth so I don't see the need to write a comment. Not all cases, but most of the time, I have all the info I need.
I don't think CR should be that low.
Also is the proposal feedback weight not just encouraging people to write spammy comments? How do you filter their value?
A fair amount of the time, people write enough comments and discuss a proposal in-depth so I don't see the need to write a comment. Not all cases, but most of the time, I have all the info I need.
Attending calls for additional weighting is quite tricky. A lot of delegates have other jobs.
Hi, So I just recently (may) joined the DAO. And it feels like the DIP is getting more and more confusing. There are so many rules and things to do and timings you need to take care of that it is hard to keep up with everything. So I would really like to see a graphic or dashboard that explains them in an easy manner. Also as I understood the goal was to incentivize voting activity and more delegates joining the DAO. With the new threshold of over 60% I don't see this goal being achieved. I'm rather saying less people will join from now on. Being a full-time delegate isn't something people do for free, but making it that hard to be eligible will probably stop most from being active at all.
Now I know there will be delegates telling me it's not that hard to get 50k token. But that's not true. The biggest delegates here are somewhere known people, early birds or people with good connections to protocols, holder etc.
Okay so >60% participation within 90 days. But what does that mean for me for example? I started voting in May. Will I be reset and basically have to start from scratch? Because I am now somewhere between 40-50%. So I could reach 60% probably next month.
Thanks for the clarification
New delegates are considered as such starting from the month of their first vote (since the note indicates that a new delegate has no prior participation).
@BlockworksResearch @JoJo @Argonaut
We understand the concern raised in this case, and it’s somewhat ironic that this situation occurred with this particular proposal. The key point is that ideally, most discussions should take place on the forum, not just through drafts sent via direct messages, but also through conversations happening in private groups.
@BlockworksResearch @JoJo @Argonaut
We understand the concern raised in this case, and it’s somewhat ironic that this situation occurred with this particular proposal. The key point is that ideally, most discussions should take place on the forum, not just through drafts sent via direct messages, but also through conversations happening in private groups.
The goal here is to encourage delegates to provide direct feedback publicly on the forum, regardless of whether they have already given feedback through private channels. As for adjusting the weighting, we are concerned that it might diminish the impact of the change in criteria. However, we are open to hearing new suggestions that could help mitigate this situation.
Regarding Argonaut’s concern about the feedback criteria, for now, this modification is also aimed at improving response times on the forum so that proposals reach Snapshot with as much feedback as possible. As Program Administrators, we are already actively filtering comments, and Karma is working on AI tools that will further assist with processing feedback, as demonstrated in the following quoted section:
Automation of Voting Statistics: Our current system fully automates voting statistics, streamlining the process for admins to determine compensation. Collecting data on Communication Rationale and Proposal Feedback has historically been time-consuming. A few months ago, we introduced an MVP that automates this process using LLM tools. We plan to continue enhancing this feature to further assist administrators.
Hey @pedrob thanks for your question!
Note: A new delegate, without prior participation history, must meet the above requirements (>50k voting power and >60% participation in onchain votes) for a period of 3 months in order to be eligible for the program.
I have a question for clarity, because the rule seems clear:
Participation Rate (Karma): >60% participation in on-chain votes in the last 90 days.
but the Note + Chart imposes a condition that doesn’t arise from the rule, and perhaps the actual intention of the rule is that one.
Is the requirement for participation over 60% for 3 months starting from the delegate’s first vote, or is it participation over 60% within the last 3 months (90 days)? A delegate could join the program in a month following a period of low activity (e.g., December/January) and quickly achieve the 60% despite not being active during 3 months. For instance, if you have 3 on-chain proposals during January and February but then a delegate joins in March, where we have 7 on-chain votes, he would comply with “>60% participation in on-chain votes in the last 90 days”.
New delegates are considered as such starting from the month of their first vote (since the note indicates that a new delegate has no prior participation). In the scenario you’ve presented, if this delegate votes for the first time in March, he would need to wait an additional two months, even if he reached 60% due to low activity in January and February because he wasn’t a delegate during those two months. So, to clarify, if his first vote had taken place in January instead of March, he would indeed be eligible.
Moreover, this modification is not only aimed at incorporating new delegates but also at reactivating Voting Power (VP) that currently remains inactive. Achieving 25% historical participation is becoming increasingly difficult, and this has been a significant barrier. For reactivated delegates—those with a history but who haven't voted in the last 90 days—they will be eligible to register in the month following the one in which they meet the minimum requirements.
It is important to note that the minimum requirements are for eligibility, and after that, delegates must achieve at least 65% Total Participation (TP) to qualify for Tier 1. Simply voting is not enough to reach this threshold.
We agree with the proposals, however, we have some concerns regarding the Proposal Feedback. I understand the objective, and we think they are very good, but we are not sure that assigning a certain Weight in the equation is the fairest approach for all delegates, especially when adding a complication by introducing Early and Late Stage Feedback. By this, we mean that there isn't a clear criterion that determines whether a comment adds value to the proposal or not, which could result in a lottery for those who provide good comments on the proposals, regardless of whether they are Early or Late.
i was able to provide some feedback to the proposal before went live: and, at this point, i gotta agree with @BlockworksResearch about the potential gaming of early/late feedback like i am exactly doing in this very case. Since I had the pleasure to read it before going live, I am able to give a feedback right away.
Would it make sense for people who provided comments, like the one who are listed above, to have a "neutral" type of feedback? Meaning: same value if provided early or late? This would mean that anybody proposing something should add a small paragraph, at the very top or end, about people invoved in this, and it might be a bit too cumbersome to handle for the DIP managers.
Thank you for the considered and comprehensive reply! I appreciate you sharing the history, logic, and process you have undertaken to structure this program. It makes sense.
Regarding timezones, there is 4 meetings a month 2.5% bonus each so 10% total available that's significant. One way to solve for regional timezone accessibility would be for each alternating meeting to be at a different timezone that's more friendly for different regions ensuring net net over each month there is a fair opportunity for anyone from anywhere to access these meetings live.
Regarding proof of watching the recordings, there could be a code word verbally mentioned that people could then supply to some form etc, there is probably other better ways to solve this.
I think this could be difficult for delegates from the Asia region to participate in since these calls are often scheduled in US or European time zones. Do you have any thoughts on how to address this?
We understand that it may be an inconvenient time for some delegates who are not in the time zone, so these are additional Bonus Points and do not form part of the main program scoring. We have raised this time zone issue in previous programs (which even affects us as well), but we believe it is worth promoting to more delegates to attend the governance calls.
Agree with the timezone challenges for Asia and Oceania. This program effectively disincentives participation from delegates in these regions.
Optimising the timezones for global participation needs consideration.
Also consider a way delegates can watch the recordings and provide async after that fact comments to qualify as engaged in these meetings.
We agreed with this, in fact we have mentioned this problem in the past, but we believe this is more of a structural problem of how DAO activities are managed. Maybe the Foundation should add a meeting within the time slot that covers the area of these delegates?
In fact, for example the Onboarding group, had this problem and solved it by organizing calls in different time zones.
As for the delegates viewing the async recordings, how do we verify that they have actually viewed the recording? Is there a reliable mechanism? This is a good problem to solve, we are open to suggestions on this aspect.
Anyway, we understand these problems and how difficult it can be to solve. But this is why we don't think we should remove these BPs as they are used to incentivize delegates who can or make the effort to attend the calls.
I’m not sure how this would affect the budget, but I’d suggest raising the cap above 50 delegates, especially since the program is set to run for the next 12 months. We’re already over the limit with the number of delegates currently enrolled. Even though not all are eligible for incentives yet, I think we’ll reach that ceiling soon.
Thank you for bringing this point up, we have discussed it a lot internally. So far approximately 34 delegates are managing to qualify for incentives and we hope to achieve in this iteration to reach 50 as stated in the KPI.
In this new iteration of the DIP, we aim to establish the following KPIs:
Achieve that 50 delegates receive incentives.
Engage 100 delegates in the program.
Achieve an average Total Participation (TP) of 80% among participants in the program within six months.
Introduce improvements to the program after six months.
We believe that, if we manage to complete this goal quickly and the DAO sees good results and participation, we will be able to request by vote to expand this number and, if necessary, a larger budget. Our philosophy is to move forward step by step, demonstrate results and take care of ArbitrumDAO's treasury.
@SEEDGov - how was the 50k ARB threshold set? how do we determine if it’s appropriate and how do we change it? Would you consider 10k, 20k and why not? what’s the logic behind this specific threshold.
I ask this as for a newcomer delegate like myself this represents a significant hurdle to get going, attracting attention to be re-delegated to is very hard, in the absence of that working I notice when analysing newer smaller delegates many are buying their way in, spending 50k ARB (approx $26500 USDC atm) to just clear this threshold.
The number is set in part by the amount and by the number of delegates in that range, currently 176. We also set that amount to avoid sybil attack, we prefer to scale the program a little at a time as we believe that a possible sybil damages the program.
We also have to be realistic with numbers that are manageable for the administrators. Behind the scenes we did a lot of administrative (KYC), communication and delegate support work. If it was decided to lower the number to 10k ARB we are talking about a number of 485 delegates that can apply, this could become unmanageable for the administrators and we could also receive several sybil attack.
We also take into account this number based on the report we made in the middle of the program.
Tally Votes are the most important as they are binding or execute protocol updates.
For this analysis, we divided voters into ranges based on their %VP:
0 - 1
1 - 1K
1K - 50K
Over 50K
The following graph shows the percentage of voters according to the VP range in each vote:
We can observe that the majority of voters fall within the 0-1 (red) and 1-1K ranges (blue). This pattern is consistent across all votes. However, despite the number of voters, these participants do not determine the outcomes. Approximately 97% of the total VP in each vote is concentrated among voters in the Over 50K range (green), followed by 1.5% from voters in the 1K-50K range (yellow).
As we can see, delegates with over 50K ARB VP are essentially responsible for the effective functioning of the DAO. They play a crucial role in ensuring the quorum is met and good practices are implemented. This is why we ultimately decided against lowering the threshold from 50K to 25K. Currently, Arbitrum DAO relies on these approximately 60 addresses that hold the majority of the Voting Power, determining the direction and decisions within the DAO. Expanding the incentive program could increase participation from smaller delegates. While adding new voices is always positive, it’s essential to support, incentivize, and continue creating tools for the ongoing professionalization of those delegates who significantly contribute to the quorum.
In the study we conducted and in our research work, we realized that delegates with more than 50k of VP play a vital role in the DAO's decision making process, as this is where the highest delegate/VP ratio is concentrated. However, despite all this, there are still a large number of delegates with more than 50k of VP who are not active in the DAO, so we want to work to reactivate these delegates who we believe can contribute positively to the DAO. This is important because as more ARBs become unlocked and enter circulation, it becomes more difficult to reach quorum, something that is extremely important to pass proposals in Tally, as our research shows:
It’s really important to start paying attention to the quorum. Since a large number of tokens have been put into circulation since the DAO began, the required quorum has been increasing significantly. However, the growth of ARBs in voting has not increased at the same rate. This can be seen in the following graph:
I assert there is much potential new delegate talent that has time and skill to be high context in Arbitrum and contribute meaningful intellectual capital to advance proposals yet lacks either
the social capital to attract re-delegation
or the financial capital to float themselves, and
the track record of Snapshot and Tally voting to onboard and become a new delegate.
Number 3 anyone can get started with, I’m doing that myself now with voting history the last 6 weeks with minimal ARB VP.
I appreciate this program, and this is a good conversation to have.
How might we design the full Delegate Development Life Cycle to ensure fresh recombination of talent has a means and the path is accessible and realistically achievable to become a delegate?
On this we agree 100%, we know that there are many delegates with little VP. Even what surprised us during the previous iteration is that some have sought on their own who delegated VP (and also bought ARB token) to participate in the program and really made a great contribution to the DAO.
But as mentioned here:
It’s important to note that while managing the incentive program, we realized that it doesn’t address all the challenges faced by the DAO, such as vote distribution, attracting new contributors, and other aspects. Expecting a single strategy to tackle all issues overlooks the diversity of factors involved. However, we’re pleased to see initiatives like ARB Staking, (Re)delegation Week , and the Public Good Citizen Enfranchisement Pool are underway to address these challenges. As each initiative matures, we can align them to achieve a more significant collective impact.
We understand that the program cannot cover all the problems that exist in the DAOs. Even if we wanted to do so, we would need a large amount of human resources and budget, which we believe would be inefficient, not only because of the costs, but also because we are trying to solve everything at the same time (DAOs are plutocratic, there should be changes in the governance system). So we think it is healthy for the DAO to have several incentive programs that focus on different problems and are administered by different entities and, among all the programs, collaborate to make the ArbitrumDAO broad and diverse.
@jojo and @BlockworksResearch , I think something to remember is that proposals are supposed to go on the forums at a minimum 1 week prior to going to Snapshot (and often will go longer). So there should be ample time for an active delegate to participate in discussion prior to a vote. I don't want to dismiss the concern, but ultimately I think pre-voting discussion can provide a lot of value and if we can incentivize it that is a good thing.
I've fallen into that trap before of waiting until voting so I see the (and like) the motivation behind the change. IMO it's a welcomed changed, although I had not thought of this issue so don't want to handwaive it. Openly brainstorming as I type... but a the few solutions I can really think of are either 1) reducing the penalty at the cost of being able to effectively enforce it or 2) the penalty only kicks in if you have >x% (10%?, 3 or more?) of your comments after it already went to vote. 3) Maybe the penalty is put into two tiers. If a pre-vote comment period is only 7 days, the penalty is 75%. If the comment period goes 7+ days then it triggers the 50% type thing (or whatever threshold of days makes sense, maybe its 10 or something. of course 2 and 3 come at the cost of creating more complexities... which I'm not a huge fan of.
Personally, I think best solution may be starting at 50% with openness to adjust after 3 months of results. This may just end up being a situation that rarely applies in the end. I think even in the stated scenario most votes wouldn't need more than a few days to get out an opinion. Although I'm speaking thru the lens of a single voter versus some delegates who maybe have teams and may have longer processes to their commentary / voting.
We will maintain this parameter at 50 delegates. As of the date of this RFC, 53 delegates are enrolled in the program, with an average of 34 receiving incentives. We hope that during the next phase of the program, both the number of enrolled delegates and those receiving compensation for their contributions will continue to grow.
I'm not sure how this would affect the budget, but I'd suggest raising the cap above 50 delegates, especially since the program is set to run for the next 12 months. We're already over the limit with the number of delegates currently enrolled. Even though not all are eligible for incentives yet, I think we'll reach that ceiling soon.
The objective of the program is the one mentioned in the proposal.
The objective of the program is the one mentioned in the proposal.
As we mentioned in the report, it is crucial to keep delegated voting power active within ArbitrumDAO. We believe the Incentive Program should focus on the professionalization of delegates.
By professionalization, delegates should dedicate a significant amount of time to staying informed about developments in ArbitrumDAO, gaining knowledge of Arbitrum’s technology, and making meaningful contributions to the DAO. This includes active participation in most DAO activities like providing feedback on proposals, attending to Governance Calls, maintaining high voting participation on Snapshot and Tally, and providing a rationale for such votes.
To achieve this, we also need to establish transparent and predictable incentives. Delegates should be confident that if they align with the DAO and improve their contributions over time—essentially if they professionalize—they will receive better incentives. These incentives should be transparent and attractive without being subject to manipulation or arbitrary changes in their amount. Delegates should focus on their role and DAO activities, not on understanding complex economic mechanisms to receive compensation.
We want delegates to be motivated to participate actively in ArbitrumDAO. In order to do this, incentives must be attractive enough for them to either participate directly or hire competent individuals to represent their interests, those of their community, or their protocol.
It’s important to note that while managing the incentive program, we realized that it doesn’t address all the challenges faced by the DAO, such as vote distribution, attracting new contributors, and other aspects. Expecting a single strategy to tackle all issues overlooks the diversity of factors involved. However, we’re pleased to see initiatives like ARB Staking, (Re)delegation Week , and the Public Good Citizen Enfranchisement Pool are underway to address these challenges. As each initiative matures, we can align them to achieve a more significant collective impact.
We will try to implement changes to add participants as we get metrics, this will help us determine what is the right way to route the incentives.
On the other hand, there are currently around 123 delegates with more that 50k of VP that are not part of the program, we will keep working in order to motivate them to participate on it.
We understand this situation, but the reason we are doing this is to reduce the gameability of the program. We also agree that this should change in the future to be a little more inclusive, but we want to scale the program gradually.
So, the program is really to maintain current delegates incentiviced???
Hello Thank you for your comments, here are the answers:
Hello Thank you for your comments, here are the answers:
I think this desincetivates new delegates and perpetuates the current. A 50k voting power for 3 months is almost imposible to achieve for people that are not whales.
We understand this situation, but the reason we are doing this is to reduce the gameability of the program. We also agree that this should change in the future to be a little more inclusive, but we want to scale the program gradually.
Okay so >60% participation within 90 days. But what does that mean for me for example? I started voting in May. Will I be reset and basically have to start from scratch? Because I am now somewhere between 40-50%. So I could reach 60% probably next month.
Your score will not be reset every month, when the program starts (obviously with the DAO's authorization), we will take the historical tally participation of the last 90 days.
This means that if for example the program starts on October 1st, the delegate's tally history will be determined by his/her participation in the voting in the months of July, August and September.
1、Bonus Point (BP) "If the delegate makes a significant contribution to the DAO, it’s automatically granted +30% extra TP. This extra is at the discretion of the program administrator.” The reward for BP is quite substantial. It would be helpful to provide specific details or requirements, or examples of past rewards for special contributions to serve as a reference for other delegates.
2. Promotion of the Forum This new incentive program frequently mentions the activity of forum users and the discussions that shape proposals on the forum. However, in reality, many users may simply vote online or offline and might not even know about the existence of the forum, thereby missing the opportunity to truly participate in the proposal formation process. As the official statement mentioned, “Currently, only 30% of delegates meeting this requirement are part of the program.” If the participation rate among users holding large amounts of tokens is this low, the likelihood of more regular users participating is even lower. The official channels could increase the forum’s visibility on social platforms.
Thank you for asking this question, in the previous program results, for example April, you can get a breakdown of the rubric and the criteria selected for assigning Bonus Points.
Our idea is to continue in this way, evaluating significant proposals month by month in order to determine the allocation of bonus points. It is important to clarify that the rules will remain the same to this, bonus points will only be assigned to proposals that do NOT request funds from the proposal creator.
As mentioned here:
How can I earn Bonus Points (BP)?
As outlined in the proposal, at the end of each month, delegates who have submitted proposals of significant impact to the DAO (such as L2BEAT with its proposal on security council changes) will have the opportunity to earn bonus points (up to a maximum of 30%) which will be added to their final score for the month.
It’s crucial to emphasize that this bonus will only be awarded to proposals that do not have funds allocated to the creator, aiming to prevent double funding within the DAO.
Also, with respect to promotion of the forum and the program in general, for this iteration, we will be reaching out to inactive delegates to explore the possibility of how to motivate them to participate in the program.
(>50k voting power and >60% participation in onchain votes) for a period of 3 months to be eligible for the program.
I think this desincetivates new delegates and perpetuates the current. A 50k voting power for 3 months is almost imposible to achieve for people that are not whales.
@SEEDGov - how was the 50k ARB threshold set? how do we determine if it's appropriate and how do we change it? Would you consider 10k, 20k and why not? what's the logic behind this specific threshold.
I ask this as for a newcomer delegate like myself this represents a significant hurdle to get going, attracting attention to be re-delegated to is very hard, in the absence of that working I notice when analysing newer smaller delegates many are buying their way in, spending 50k ARB (approx $26500 USDC atm) to just clear this threshold.
@SEEDGov - how was the 50k ARB threshold set? how do we determine if it's appropriate and how do we change it? Would you consider 10k, 20k and why not? what's the logic behind this specific threshold.
I ask this as for a newcomer delegate like myself this represents a significant hurdle to get going, attracting attention to be re-delegated to is very hard, in the absence of that working I notice when analysing newer smaller delegates many are buying their way in, spending 50k ARB (approx $26500 USDC atm) to just clear this threshold.
I assert there is much potential new delegate talent that has time and skill to be high context in Arbitrum and contribute meaningful intellectual capital to advance proposals yet lacks either
Number 3 anyone can get started with, I'm doing that myself now with voting history the last 6 weeks with minimal ARB VP.
I appreciate this program, and this is a good conversation to have. How might we design the full Delegate Development Life Cycle to ensure fresh recombination of talent has a means and the path is accessible and realistically achievable to become a delegate?
Overall, I believe this new one-year program is more refined and will be more effective than the previous experimental program. Still, two piece of advice as follows:
1、Bonus Point (BP) "If the delegate makes a significant contribution to the DAO, it’s automatically granted +30% extra TP. This extra is at the discretion of the program administrator.” The reward for BP is quite substantial. It would be helpful to provide specific details or requirements, or examples of past rewards for special contributions to serve as a reference for other delegates.
Overall, I believe this new one-year program is more refined and will be more effective than the previous experimental program. Still, two piece of advice as follows:
1、Bonus Point (BP) "If the delegate makes a significant contribution to the DAO, it’s automatically granted +30% extra TP. This extra is at the discretion of the program administrator.” The reward for BP is quite substantial. It would be helpful to provide specific details or requirements, or examples of past rewards for special contributions to serve as a reference for other delegates.
2. Promotion of the Forum This new incentive program frequently mentions the activity of forum users and the discussions that shape proposals on the forum. However, in reality, many users may simply vote online or offline and might not even know about the existence of the forum, thereby missing the opportunity to truly participate in the proposal formation process. As the official statement mentioned, "Currently, only 30% of delegates meeting this requirement are part of the program." If the participation rate among users holding large amounts of tokens is this low, the likelihood of more regular users participating is even lower. The official channels could increase the forum’s visibility on social platforms.
This continuity ensures that delegates can maintain long-term engagement, which is crucial for the sustained health of decentralized governance. The proposed budget appears well-calculated, and the increase in monthly compensation for delegates is not only justified but necessary, particularly in light of the significant 65% year-to-date decline in the value of ARB.
The introduction of bonus points for participating in governance calls is a particularly commendable enhancement. Active participation in these calls often leads to deeper discussions and more nuanced understanding of proposals, which in turn fosters more informed and thoughtful voting.
This continuity ensures that delegates can maintain long-term engagement, which is crucial for the sustained health of decentralized governance. The proposed budget appears well-calculated, and the increase in monthly compensation for delegates is not only justified but necessary, particularly in light of the significant 65% year-to-date decline in the value of ARB.
The introduction of bonus points for participating in governance calls is a particularly commendable enhancement. Active participation in these calls often leads to deeper discussions and more nuanced understanding of proposals, which in turn fosters more informed and thoughtful voting.
I am highly supportive of this proposal, as it reflects a thoughtful approach to maintaining and enhancing the incentives for active, informed participation in governance, which is essential for the success and resilience of the ecosystem.
@SEEDGov It would be great if delegates could meet in a XSpaces (Twitter) session to discuss the most relevant aspects of the ARB ecosystem and generate more proposals, not just in writing.
I like:
Did I understand correctly that regardless of the cost of the ARB token, the delegate has a threshold above which he cannot receive, even if his range is lower than what is specified in the proposal?
So is it correct that the >60% participation in on-chain votes in the last 90 days only applies for those delegates that never casted a vote before those 90 days, right? If I’ve been active before and suddenly decide to come back, I don’t need to be active for 90 days before being eligible.
So is it correct that the >60% participation in on-chain votes in the last 90 days only applies for those delegates that never casted a vote before those 90 days, right? If I’ve been active before and suddenly decide to come back, I don’t need to be active for 90 days before being eligible.
Yes, if you suddenly decide to come back you still need to get >60% participation in on-chain votes in the last 90 days but if you achieve it before that term you will be eligible.
This can be tricky because, as a delegate, you can’t be sure that a proposal will go to Snapshot once it’s published. So, if I have limited time, which one should I respond to? All of them? How do I know it won’t be abandoned? Maybe we should establish a minimum content criterion for a proposal to go to Snapshot or to deserve feedback from the delegates.
This is already the case with the current version of the program; the scoring system currently includes only proposals that have reached Snapshot with their respective comments or CR. The introduction of tiers and the proposed changes to delegate compensation are specifically aimed at ensuring that delegates dedicate as much time as possible to the DAO.
Regarding the criteria you mention, we believe it is a valid approach that goes beyond the scope of this proposal. Proposals can reach Snapshot anytime, whether in a few days or several months. We believe this issue could be handled as a soft consensus, similar to the Improving Predictability in Arbitrum DAO’s Operations.
It’s also not a bad thing for proposers to seek feedback before going to the forum (in fact, it’s good for them to talk with delegates and attend calls before publishing, so they can get some feedback from people with context). A potential downside is that encouraging feedback on the forum might make delegates less inclined to respond to DMs, possibly leading to fewer or even lower-quality proposals reaching the forum.
It's not that we are against obtaining feedback prior to publishing in the forum, but we believe that this process should be reflected within the forum itself. A good example is the comment made by @JoJo, where he publicly shares part of the feedback he had previously provided, helping the community to see who contributed to the drafting of the proposal. This transparency is important for maintaining openness and trust in the process.
Did I understand correctly that regardless of the cost of the ARB token, the delegate has a threshold above which he cannot receive, even if his range is lower than what is specified in the proposal?
Correct, if the ARB price drops low enough, the delegate can receive only up to the pre-set Cap in ARB for his tier. This is to take care of ArbitrumDAO's treasury.
There are so many rules and things to do and timings you need to take care of that it is hard to keep up with everything. So I would really like to see a graphic or dashboard that explains them in an easy manner.
Also as I understood the goal was to incentivize voting activity and more delegates joining the DAO. With the new threshold of over 60% I don’t see this goal being achieved. I’m rather saying less people will join from now on.
Being a full-time delegate isn’t something people do for free, but making it that hard to be eligible will probably stop most from being active at all.
Hello, thank you for your feedback. We kindly invite you to revisit the proposal, as the new threshold of 60% is based on votes within the last 90 days rather than a calculation of historical participation. This adjustment is specifically aimed at facilitating the onboarding of new delegates or those who were previously inactive. Additionally, the primary goal of the program is to encourage delegates to engage more professionally within ArbitrumDAO.
Also is the proposal feedback weight not just encouraging people to write spammy comments? How do you filter their value?
A fair amount of the time, people write enough comments and discuss a proposal in-depth so I don’t see the need to write a comment. Not all cases, but most of the time, I have all the info I need.
What you say makes sense, and throughout the process, we have consistently aimed to prevent potential abuse, such as spam or non-contributive comments. We also understand that many questions and concerns are often addressed through the feedback provided by other delegates, making it unnecessary to repeat the same inquiries. For now, we are manually assessing the comments, but Karma is working on a tool that will help automate this evaluation process.
Attending calls for additional weighting is quite tricky. A lot of delegates have other jobs.
This is exactly what we aim to achieve with these incentives—ensuring that, despite most delegates being involved in other DAOs and projects, they have enough motivation to dedicate a portion of their time to ArbitrumDAO.
Additionally, not attending the calls won't penalize the delegate, as participation is rewarded with Bonus Points. These points are optional extras, so it’s up to each delegate to decide if they want to earn them or not.
See the parameter adjustment changes here. Proposal Feedback (PF) here, seeing as the proposal really needs more visual commentary. Although I’m a representative of a non-English speaking region and rely mostly on translators to participate, I can see that the governance session would like more representatives to be involved in the overall proposal.
The Proposal Feedback segment already has some visual support:
Additionally, we will soon be organizing a special session with the delegates to thoroughly explain the proposal and address any questions that may arise.
In favour of the proposal, the proposal has been updated from the original, which I personally think will attract more voting delegates, and the overall focus is on the core principal of ‘Attract + Retain + Incentivise’. The whole proposal shows that seedgoc has spent a huge amount of effort and research, thank you for your work.
I don't think CR should be that low.
Also is the proposal feedback weight not just encouraging people to write spammy comments? How do you filter their value?
A fair amount of the time, people write enough comments and discuss a proposal in-depth so I don't see the need to write a comment. Not all cases, but most of the time, I have all the info I need.
I don't think CR should be that low.
Also is the proposal feedback weight not just encouraging people to write spammy comments? How do you filter their value?
A fair amount of the time, people write enough comments and discuss a proposal in-depth so I don't see the need to write a comment. Not all cases, but most of the time, I have all the info I need.
Attending calls for additional weighting is quite tricky. A lot of delegates have other jobs.
Hi, So I just recently (may) joined the DAO. And it feels like the DIP is getting more and more confusing. There are so many rules and things to do and timings you need to take care of that it is hard to keep up with everything. So I would really like to see a graphic or dashboard that explains them in an easy manner. Also as I understood the goal was to incentivize voting activity and more delegates joining the DAO. With the new threshold of over 60% I don't see this goal being achieved. I'm rather saying less people will join from now on. Being a full-time delegate isn't something people do for free, but making it that hard to be eligible will probably stop most from being active at all.
Now I know there will be delegates telling me it's not that hard to get 50k token. But that's not true. The biggest delegates here are somewhere known people, early birds or people with good connections to protocols, holder etc.
Okay so >60% participation within 90 days. But what does that mean for me for example? I started voting in May. Will I be reset and basically have to start from scratch? Because I am now somewhere between 40-50%. So I could reach 60% probably next month.
Thanks for the clarification
New delegates are considered as such starting from the month of their first vote (since the note indicates that a new delegate has no prior participation).
@BlockworksResearch @JoJo @Argonaut
We understand the concern raised in this case, and it’s somewhat ironic that this situation occurred with this particular proposal. The key point is that ideally, most discussions should take place on the forum, not just through drafts sent via direct messages, but also through conversations happening in private groups.
@BlockworksResearch @JoJo @Argonaut
We understand the concern raised in this case, and it’s somewhat ironic that this situation occurred with this particular proposal. The key point is that ideally, most discussions should take place on the forum, not just through drafts sent via direct messages, but also through conversations happening in private groups.
The goal here is to encourage delegates to provide direct feedback publicly on the forum, regardless of whether they have already given feedback through private channels. As for adjusting the weighting, we are concerned that it might diminish the impact of the change in criteria. However, we are open to hearing new suggestions that could help mitigate this situation.
Regarding Argonaut’s concern about the feedback criteria, for now, this modification is also aimed at improving response times on the forum so that proposals reach Snapshot with as much feedback as possible. As Program Administrators, we are already actively filtering comments, and Karma is working on AI tools that will further assist with processing feedback, as demonstrated in the following quoted section:
Automation of Voting Statistics: Our current system fully automates voting statistics, streamlining the process for admins to determine compensation. Collecting data on Communication Rationale and Proposal Feedback has historically been time-consuming. A few months ago, we introduced an MVP that automates this process using LLM tools. We plan to continue enhancing this feature to further assist administrators.
Hey @pedrob thanks for your question!
Note: A new delegate, without prior participation history, must meet the above requirements (>50k voting power and >60% participation in onchain votes) for a period of 3 months in order to be eligible for the program.
I have a question for clarity, because the rule seems clear:
Participation Rate (Karma): >60% participation in on-chain votes in the last 90 days.
but the Note + Chart imposes a condition that doesn’t arise from the rule, and perhaps the actual intention of the rule is that one.
Is the requirement for participation over 60% for 3 months starting from the delegate’s first vote, or is it participation over 60% within the last 3 months (90 days)? A delegate could join the program in a month following a period of low activity (e.g., December/January) and quickly achieve the 60% despite not being active during 3 months. For instance, if you have 3 on-chain proposals during January and February but then a delegate joins in March, where we have 7 on-chain votes, he would comply with “>60% participation in on-chain votes in the last 90 days”.
New delegates are considered as such starting from the month of their first vote (since the note indicates that a new delegate has no prior participation). In the scenario you’ve presented, if this delegate votes for the first time in March, he would need to wait an additional two months, even if he reached 60% due to low activity in January and February because he wasn’t a delegate during those two months. So, to clarify, if his first vote had taken place in January instead of March, he would indeed be eligible.
Moreover, this modification is not only aimed at incorporating new delegates but also at reactivating Voting Power (VP) that currently remains inactive. Achieving 25% historical participation is becoming increasingly difficult, and this has been a significant barrier. For reactivated delegates—those with a history but who haven't voted in the last 90 days—they will be eligible to register in the month following the one in which they meet the minimum requirements.
It is important to note that the minimum requirements are for eligibility, and after that, delegates must achieve at least 65% Total Participation (TP) to qualify for Tier 1. Simply voting is not enough to reach this threshold.
We agree with the proposals, however, we have some concerns regarding the Proposal Feedback. I understand the objective, and we think they are very good, but we are not sure that assigning a certain Weight in the equation is the fairest approach for all delegates, especially when adding a complication by introducing Early and Late Stage Feedback. By this, we mean that there isn't a clear criterion that determines whether a comment adds value to the proposal or not, which could result in a lottery for those who provide good comments on the proposals, regardless of whether they are Early or Late.
i was able to provide some feedback to the proposal before went live: and, at this point, i gotta agree with @BlockworksResearch about the potential gaming of early/late feedback like i am exactly doing in this very case. Since I had the pleasure to read it before going live, I am able to give a feedback right away.
Would it make sense for people who provided comments, like the one who are listed above, to have a "neutral" type of feedback? Meaning: same value if provided early or late? This would mean that anybody proposing something should add a small paragraph, at the very top or end, about people invoved in this, and it might be a bit too cumbersome to handle for the DIP managers.
See the parameter adjustment changes here. Proposal Feedback (PF) here, seeing as the proposal really needs more visual commentary. Although I'm a representative of a non-English speaking region and rely mostly on translators to participate, I can see that the governance session would like more representatives to be involved in the overall proposal.
Hi, So I just recently (may) joined the DAO. And it feels like the DIP is getting more and more confusing. There are so many rules and things to do and timings you need to take care of that it is hard to keep up with everything. So I would really like to see a graphic or dashboard that explains them in an easy manner. Also as I understood the goal was to incentivize voting activity and more delegates joining the DAO. With the new threshold of over 60% I don't see this goal being achieved. I'm rather saying less people will join from now on. Being a full-time delegate isn't something people do for free, but making it that hard to be eligible will probably stop most from being active at all.
Now I know there will be delegates telling me it's not that hard to get 50k token. But that's not true. The biggest delegates here are somewhere known people, early birds or people with good connections to protocols, holder etc.
How should a normie get in touch with someone holding enough ARB?
I have a question for clarity, because the rule seems clear:
Participation Rate (Karma): >60% participation in on-chain votes in the last 90 days.
but the Note + Chart imposes a condition that doesn’t arise from the rule, and perhaps the actual intention of the rule is that one.
Is the requirement for participation over 60% for 3 months starting from the delegate’s first vote, or is it participation over 60% within the last 3 months (90 days)? A delegate could join the program in a month following a period of low activity (e.g., December/January) and quickly achieve the 60% despite not being active during 3 months. For instance, if you have 3 on-chain proposals during January and February but then a delegate joins in March, where we have 7 on-chain votes, he would comply with ">60% participation in on-chain votes in the last 90 days".
Thanks for the clarification
New delegates are considered as such starting from the month of their first vote (since the note indicates that a new delegate has no prior participation).
So is it correct that the >60% participation in on-chain votes in the last 90 days only applies for those delegates that never casted a vote before those 90 days, right? If I've been active before and suddenly decide to come back, I don't need to be active for 90 days before being eligible.
this modification is also aimed at improving response times on the forum so that proposals reach Snapshot with as much feedback as possible.
The key point is that ideally, most discussions should take place on the forum, not just through drafts sent via direct messages, but also through conversations happening in private groups.
It's also not a bad thing for proposers to seek feedback before going to the forum (in fact, it's good for them to talk with delegates and attend calls before publishing, so they can get some feedback from people with context). A potential downside is that encouraging feedback on the forum might make delegates less inclined to respond to DMs, possibly leading to fewer or even lower-quality proposals reaching the forum.
On the other hand, will these comments or feedback be taken into account if the proposal doesn't make it to Snapshot or gets rejected?
After reviewing proposals and feedback for six months, I imagine you have a good idea of what constructive comments look like and how they contribute to discussions. I'd agree with you arbitrarily managing some sort of 'rewards' or 'bonus points' for those who make such contributions until you develop (if it's even possible) a system that can efficiently measure these types of interactions
Something that occurred to me while rethinking this is that if the goal is to prevent proposals from arriving at the forum fully cooked and with enough support to pass without much or any public debate, the DIP could include a requirement for proposers to respond to constructive feedback. I'm not sure if it's the best tool since not many qualifying delegates are also proposers, but in some cases, it would give small delegates (like myself) the chance to have their questions answered when they are constructive
i was able to provide some feedback to the proposal before went live: and, at this point, i gotta agree with @BlockworksResearch about the potential gaming of early/late feedback like i am exactly doing in this very case. Since I had the pleasure to read it before going live, I am able to give a feedback right away.
Would it make sense for people who provided comments, like the one who are listed above, to have a "neutral" type of feedback? Meaning: same value if provided early or late? This would mean that anybody proposing something should add a small paragraph, at the very top or end, about people invoved in this, and it might be a bit too cumbersome to handle for the DIP managers.
For the rest: normalizing payments in usd terms i think is something we want to generally have across the board, and not only in this initiative. While everybody is happy when you have a crypto payment, and that crypto goes x2, the opposite can be a mood/commitment killer, and this is what we need to avoid.
The bonus for call to me is extremely interesting and echoed by others as far as i know, will be also interesting to see how it is effectively achieved (and my educated guess, without going back in a situation in which people need to type in chat their username like in college lessons during covid, is that the recording will be analyzed and marked or something similar). Might be worth thinking what calls should come in this list, and if there is a way for single delegates to have bonus point for participating to more specific calls for example, even tho I don't know how tracking could be done.
Finally, would like to praise the budget: is not really about the size per se, but the size compared to the amount of manual work that needs to be done to keep this initiative, now extremely important, live in our ecosystem.
Overall, we support this proposal, but we do have one question about the Early Stage Feedback and Late Stage Feedback. These are good inclusions, but is there anyway to reduce the weighting for these to some degree? These metrics can be gamed by prior collusion for proposals, allowing some parties to have an edge on providing feedback rationale on the forums. We think these metrics are important, but weighting should change just slightly so that they are less punitive/rewarding, but enough so that people are still incentivized to take action.
Happy to see that the delegate incentive program will be extended. I only have one comment. I believe it is essential for all delegates to attend monthly Arbitrum Open Governance Calls (online event).
It's a chance for all delegates to meet and discuss proposals and comment on ongoing debates. I think this could also be part of scoring. Rewarding the delegates who attend and are active during these calls.
I am very glad to see the Delegate Incentive Program being renewed and for it to be implemented over the course of a year. The budget seems reasonable, and the increase in monthly compensation for delegates is totally justified, given that the price of ARB has dropped over 65% YTD. Adding bonus points for participating in governance calls is something I was eager to see in this new version because I’m sure this will encourage active engagement that will translate into better-informed voting. Overall, I am very happy with the proposal and will, of course, be supporting it.
See the parameter adjustment changes here. Proposal Feedback (PF) here, seeing as the proposal really needs more visual commentary. Although I'm a representative of a non-English speaking region and rely mostly on translators to participate, I can see that the governance session would like more representatives to be involved in the overall proposal.
Hi, So I just recently (may) joined the DAO. And it feels like the DIP is getting more and more confusing. There are so many rules and things to do and timings you need to take care of that it is hard to keep up with everything. So I would really like to see a graphic or dashboard that explains them in an easy manner. Also as I understood the goal was to incentivize voting activity and more delegates joining the DAO. With the new threshold of over 60% I don't see this goal being achieved. I'm rather saying less people will join from now on. Being a full-time delegate isn't something people do for free, but making it that hard to be eligible will probably stop most from being active at all.
Now I know there will be delegates telling me it's not that hard to get 50k token. But that's not true. The biggest delegates here are somewhere known people, early birds or people with good connections to protocols, holder etc.
How should a normie get in touch with someone holding enough ARB?
I have a question for clarity, because the rule seems clear:
Participation Rate (Karma): >60% participation in on-chain votes in the last 90 days.
but the Note + Chart imposes a condition that doesn’t arise from the rule, and perhaps the actual intention of the rule is that one.
Is the requirement for participation over 60% for 3 months starting from the delegate’s first vote, or is it participation over 60% within the last 3 months (90 days)? A delegate could join the program in a month following a period of low activity (e.g., December/January) and quickly achieve the 60% despite not being active during 3 months. For instance, if you have 3 on-chain proposals during January and February but then a delegate joins in March, where we have 7 on-chain votes, he would comply with ">60% participation in on-chain votes in the last 90 days".
Thanks for the clarification
New delegates are considered as such starting from the month of their first vote (since the note indicates that a new delegate has no prior participation).
So is it correct that the >60% participation in on-chain votes in the last 90 days only applies for those delegates that never casted a vote before those 90 days, right? If I've been active before and suddenly decide to come back, I don't need to be active for 90 days before being eligible.
this modification is also aimed at improving response times on the forum so that proposals reach Snapshot with as much feedback as possible.
The key point is that ideally, most discussions should take place on the forum, not just through drafts sent via direct messages, but also through conversations happening in private groups.
It's also not a bad thing for proposers to seek feedback before going to the forum (in fact, it's good for them to talk with delegates and attend calls before publishing, so they can get some feedback from people with context). A potential downside is that encouraging feedback on the forum might make delegates less inclined to respond to DMs, possibly leading to fewer or even lower-quality proposals reaching the forum.
On the other hand, will these comments or feedback be taken into account if the proposal doesn't make it to Snapshot or gets rejected?
After reviewing proposals and feedback for six months, I imagine you have a good idea of what constructive comments look like and how they contribute to discussions. I'd agree with you arbitrarily managing some sort of 'rewards' or 'bonus points' for those who make such contributions until you develop (if it's even possible) a system that can efficiently measure these types of interactions
Something that occurred to me while rethinking this is that if the goal is to prevent proposals from arriving at the forum fully cooked and with enough support to pass without much or any public debate, the DIP could include a requirement for proposers to respond to constructive feedback. I'm not sure if it's the best tool since not many qualifying delegates are also proposers, but in some cases, it would give small delegates (like myself) the chance to have their questions answered when they are constructive
i was able to provide some feedback to the proposal before went live: and, at this point, i gotta agree with @BlockworksResearch about the potential gaming of early/late feedback like i am exactly doing in this very case. Since I had the pleasure to read it before going live, I am able to give a feedback right away.
Would it make sense for people who provided comments, like the one who are listed above, to have a "neutral" type of feedback? Meaning: same value if provided early or late? This would mean that anybody proposing something should add a small paragraph, at the very top or end, about people invoved in this, and it might be a bit too cumbersome to handle for the DIP managers.
For the rest: normalizing payments in usd terms i think is something we want to generally have across the board, and not only in this initiative. While everybody is happy when you have a crypto payment, and that crypto goes x2, the opposite can be a mood/commitment killer, and this is what we need to avoid.
The bonus for call to me is extremely interesting and echoed by others as far as i know, will be also interesting to see how it is effectively achieved (and my educated guess, without going back in a situation in which people need to type in chat their username like in college lessons during covid, is that the recording will be analyzed and marked or something similar). Might be worth thinking what calls should come in this list, and if there is a way for single delegates to have bonus point for participating to more specific calls for example, even tho I don't know how tracking could be done.
Finally, would like to praise the budget: is not really about the size per se, but the size compared to the amount of manual work that needs to be done to keep this initiative, now extremely important, live in our ecosystem.
Overall, we support this proposal, but we do have one question about the Early Stage Feedback and Late Stage Feedback. These are good inclusions, but is there anyway to reduce the weighting for these to some degree? These metrics can be gamed by prior collusion for proposals, allowing some parties to have an edge on providing feedback rationale on the forums. We think these metrics are important, but weighting should change just slightly so that they are less punitive/rewarding, but enough so that people are still incentivized to take action.
Happy to see that the delegate incentive program will be extended. I only have one comment. I believe it is essential for all delegates to attend monthly Arbitrum Open Governance Calls (online event).
It's a chance for all delegates to meet and discuss proposals and comment on ongoing debates. I think this could also be part of scoring. Rewarding the delegates who attend and are active during these calls.
I am very glad to see the Delegate Incentive Program being renewed and for it to be implemented over the course of a year. The budget seems reasonable, and the increase in monthly compensation for delegates is totally justified, given that the price of ARB has dropped over 65% YTD. Adding bonus points for participating in governance calls is something I was eager to see in this new version because I’m sure this will encourage active engagement that will translate into better-informed voting. Overall, I am very happy with the proposal and will, of course, be supporting it.
