Tané
This is the revised version of the original Snapshot with a few changes below:
You can check the details and ratinoale of them in our latest comment.
The DAO started the first treasury delegations as a program called "Delegation of UNI to Active but Underrepresented Delegates" in December, 2023. According to our analytics we shared in the original round 2 ideas thread, this program has been essential to keep the governance healthy and retain the active and capable delegates. At the same time, the originally promised time period has already passed, but the delegation has been kept as they didn't have their expirations. In addition, there have been discussions to consider how we proceed with the treasury delegation going forward. Through the process, we have decided to implement an important feature, expirations of the delegations to the Franchiser contract and create a robust system to keep the delegations enabled for the appropriate delegates.
We propose allocating up to 15 million UNI of total amount as the treasury delegation, distributing into selected delegates.
We select qualified delegates based on the objective criteria and metrics (the Delegate Reward Program Cycle 3 criteria/scoring + VP cut-off) after the application phase. We then introduce an election to choose the "distinguished" delegates from them.
Once we conclude the program details and delegates with each delegation amount, we will have an onchain vote to ratify the program, apply the delegations with expirations provided by the new implementation by ScopeLift team, and withdraw the original delegations as promised.
Details can be reviewed in the discussion forum
Based on the discussions in each thread and feedback from the delegates, we propose a balanced and feasible proposal for the next iterations of the treasury delegations. This framework focuses on increasing allocation, setting the delegation period, establishing sustainable evaluation methods, and building the operation for continuity of the program. At the same time, we view this treasury delegation is a temporary solution, rather than the permanent solution to the voting quorum challenge, but believe we have made critical improvements to the program for the DAO to consider the optimal solution to the problem.
First, we need an option to vote on for whether the DAO supports the improvements to the treasury delegation program.
Allocate up to 15 million UNI, distributing a certain amount of UNI to the two sets of delegates. This will provide sufficient voting power to the currently active 12 delegates, allowing them to reflect their opinions in votes and put up proposals for the Uniswap DAO.
First, we need a thread for delegates to apply for this round. As before, we need to conduct applications and select delegates from there with the objective criteria that were used for the Delegate Reward Program Cycle 3 and VIP cut-off.
Qualified delegates based on the above criteria and metrics will receive 1M VP delegations (1.5M in total as delegation hard limit).
We then conduct a Snapshot election to select 6 "distinguished" delegates from the candidates who are qualified delegates based on the objective criteria and scoring. The distinguished delegates will receive additional 500k VP delegations (2M in total as the hard limit).
Erin and we have worked with the ScopeLift team to introduce the expiration of each delegation at the contract level, so that we are sure that delegation period is set onchain. The factory contract has been deployed on https://etherscan.io/address/0x807d62f954a2c3fb00ef32f064032228000b9899.
With the new implementation, we are able to set the expiration of delegations for each delegate. This proposal will utilize the new features to assign 12 months as the expiration time for delegations.
Each delegate elected by the DAO, who will receive the treasury delegation should maintain the following requirements:
To continue the program effectively and secure the Uniswap governance, we will work with the Uniswap Accountability Committee to smoothly operate the program including actions like below:
Every 3 months, we will publish a report in a dedicated thread on the forum detailing the proposals from the past three months, including a list of the delegates who met the participation requirements and those who did not, following a similar format used on the delegate rewards program.
Delegates who fail to meet the minimum participation requirements will have their delegations revoked via an onchain voting. (NOTE: the new implementation hasn't supported early terminations based on the off-chain conditions yet.) They will be eligible to reapply during the following cycle. We will create a proposal to revoke their delegations.
We will also re-evaluate the whole program in early 2026 (after 9 months of the program start) or earlier if the new initiative like Unistaker is introduced to change the landscape of the delegations in the Uniswap DAO.
The next actions required to take forward this proposal are as follows.
After selecting the qualified 12 delegates, we create a Snapshot vote for the tokenholders to approve 6 distinguished delegates.
Create an onchain proposal to ratify the changes voted on Proposal 1 and 2, and execute transactions to delegate the appropriate amount of voting powers from the treasury to elected delegates with the expiration set and withdraw the delegations done in the original program.
We (Tané) are willing to apply for the proposed treasury delegation as a recipient if no critical objection as we believe our further involvement is beneficial to the DAO while we are the author of the program proposal. We will abstain from voting on the first Snapshot, but would vote on the ratification onchain proposal.
Tané
This is the revised version of the original Snapshot with a few changes below:
You can check the details and ratinoale of them in our latest comment.
The DAO started the first treasury delegations as a program called "Delegation of UNI to Active but Underrepresented Delegates" in December, 2023. According to our analytics we shared in the original round 2 ideas thread, this program has been essential to keep the governance healthy and retain the active and capable delegates. At the same time, the originally promised time period has already passed, but the delegation has been kept as they didn't have their expirations. In addition, there have been discussions to consider how we proceed with the treasury delegation going forward. Through the process, we have decided to implement an important feature, expirations of the delegations to the Franchiser contract and create a robust system to keep the delegations enabled for the appropriate delegates.
We propose allocating up to 15 million UNI of total amount as the treasury delegation, distributing into selected delegates.
We select qualified delegates based on the objective criteria and metrics (the Delegate Reward Program Cycle 3 criteria/scoring + VP cut-off) after the application phase. We then introduce an election to choose the "distinguished" delegates from them.
Once we conclude the program details and delegates with each delegation amount, we will have an onchain vote to ratify the program, apply the delegations with expirations provided by the new implementation by ScopeLift team, and withdraw the original delegations as promised.
Details can be reviewed in the discussion forum
Based on the discussions in each thread and feedback from the delegates, we propose a balanced and feasible proposal for the next iterations of the treasury delegations. This framework focuses on increasing allocation, setting the delegation period, establishing sustainable evaluation methods, and building the operation for continuity of the program. At the same time, we view this treasury delegation is a temporary solution, rather than the permanent solution to the voting quorum challenge, but believe we have made critical improvements to the program for the DAO to consider the optimal solution to the problem.
First, we need an option to vote on for whether the DAO supports the improvements to the treasury delegation program.
Allocate up to 15 million UNI, distributing a certain amount of UNI to the two sets of delegates. This will provide sufficient voting power to the currently active 12 delegates, allowing them to reflect their opinions in votes and put up proposals for the Uniswap DAO.
First, we need a thread for delegates to apply for this round. As before, we need to conduct applications and select delegates from there with the objective criteria that were used for the Delegate Reward Program Cycle 3 and VIP cut-off.
Qualified delegates based on the above criteria and metrics will receive 1M VP delegations (1.5M in total as delegation hard limit).
We then conduct a Snapshot election to select 6 "distinguished" delegates from the candidates who are qualified delegates based on the objective criteria and scoring. The distinguished delegates will receive additional 500k VP delegations (2M in total as the hard limit).
Erin and we have worked with the ScopeLift team to introduce the expiration of each delegation at the contract level, so that we are sure that delegation period is set onchain. The factory contract has been deployed on https://etherscan.io/address/0x807d62f954a2c3fb00ef32f064032228000b9899.
With the new implementation, we are able to set the expiration of delegations for each delegate. This proposal will utilize the new features to assign 12 months as the expiration time for delegations.
Each delegate elected by the DAO, who will receive the treasury delegation should maintain the following requirements:
To continue the program effectively and secure the Uniswap governance, we will work with the Uniswap Accountability Committee to smoothly operate the program including actions like below:
Every 3 months, we will publish a report in a dedicated thread on the forum detailing the proposals from the past three months, including a list of the delegates who met the participation requirements and those who did not, following a similar format used on the delegate rewards program.
Delegates who fail to meet the minimum participation requirements will have their delegations revoked via an onchain voting. (NOTE: the new implementation hasn't supported early terminations based on the off-chain conditions yet.) They will be eligible to reapply during the following cycle. We will create a proposal to revoke their delegations.
We will also re-evaluate the whole program in early 2026 (after 9 months of the program start) or earlier if the new initiative like Unistaker is introduced to change the landscape of the delegations in the Uniswap DAO.
The next actions required to take forward this proposal are as follows.
After selecting the qualified 12 delegates, we create a Snapshot vote for the tokenholders to approve 6 distinguished delegates.
Create an onchain proposal to ratify the changes voted on Proposal 1 and 2, and execute transactions to delegate the appropriate amount of voting powers from the treasury to elected delegates with the expiration set and withdraw the delegations done in the original program.
We (Tané) are willing to apply for the proposed treasury delegation as a recipient if no critical objection as we believe our further involvement is beneficial to the DAO while we are the author of the program proposal. We will abstain from voting on the first Snapshot, but would vote on the ratification onchain proposal.
https://gov.uniswap.org/t/rfc-treasury-delegation-round-2/25355/42
https://gov.uniswap.org/t/rfc-treasury-delegation-round-2/25355/42
https://gov.uniswap.org/t/she256-delegate-platform/25204/4?u=she256
https://gov.uniswap.org/t/rfc-treasury-delegation-round-2/25355/29
https://gov.uniswap.org/t/she256-delegate-platform/25204/4?u=she256
https://gov.uniswap.org/t/rfc-treasury-delegation-round-2/25355/29
We're voting FOR this proposal
We're voting FOR this proposal
we don’t think the main role of a delegate should be to create proposals. Is it a nice-to-have?
we don’t think the main role of a delegate should be to create proposals. Is it a nice-to-have?
It's not philosophical musing but goes to the core of what governance model you want. Giving delegates the power to submit (or pre-vet) proposals is:
Essentially the question to ask is what is the behaviour you want to incentivise. Broadly speaking (as independent with no horse in race)
a) archetype (voter = UNI holder) ... does the process foster representative of the stakeholders in the ecosystem - initially identified as coders (ex-UniLabs), investors (concentrated holdings), LPs and community (60% drawdown to 40% after 5 years) with a tiny sliver to experts/advisors (hopefully grown by now). Apathy is the biggest risk here b) activity - what this proposal is trying to fine-tune ... there's a spectrum of delegates from professional multi-DAO governance specialists, to service providers down to independents. There are >50 names in the delegates channel but as noted only a dozen-plus active (as measured objectively). Points raised (policing delegates vs compensating for cognitive load) are valid concerns. c) aliignnment - how well do decisions taken (both direct and delegated voting) can be linked to desired long-term goals/objectives? This is an open question.
I'd just note that economic incentives are not the only carrot/stick in the toolbox. For example, operation of Unichain might be given as "bragging rights" to whoever delegate/policy is considered MVP for 1 year to promote as they see fit (in return for a harberger tithe).
we don’t think the main role of a delegate should be to create proposals. Is it a nice-to-have?
we don’t think the main role of a delegate should be to create proposals. Is it a nice-to-have?
It's not philosophical musing but goes to the core of what governance model you want. Giving delegates the power to submit (or pre-vet) proposals is:
Essentially the question to ask is what is the behaviour you want to incentivise. Broadly speaking (as independent with no horse in race)
a) archetype (voter = UNI holder) ... does the process foster representative of the stakeholders in the ecosystem - initially identified as coders (ex-UniLabs), investors (concentrated holdings), LPs and community (60% drawdown to 40% after 5 years) with a tiny sliver to experts/advisors (hopefully grown by now). Apathy is the biggest risk here b) activity - what this proposal is trying to fine-tune ... there's a spectrum of delegates from professional multi-DAO governance specialists, to service providers down to independents. There are >50 names in the delegates channel but as noted only a dozen-plus active (as measured objectively). Points raised (policing delegates vs compensating for cognitive load) are valid concerns. c) aliignnment - how well do decisions taken (both direct and delegated voting) can be linked to desired long-term goals/objectives? This is an open question.
I'd just note that economic incentives are not the only carrot/stick in the toolbox. For example, operation of Unichain might be given as "bragging rights" to whoever delegate/policy is considered MVP for 1 year to promote as they see fit (in return for a harberger tithe).
Hey all - writing here in my capacity as governance lead at the UF. We’ve been working with Takeshi and the other folks involved in this proposal and paid for the updated franchiser contracts and the accompanying audit. Happy to see all the conversation around treasury delegation, and the recognition that it’s not a long-term solution. We're supportive of the way the proposal is currently structured and think sets the program up nicely for periodic reviews - hopefully we’ll be able to phase it out in the future!
Hi everyone, thanks for your continuous feedback and waiting on the update on the proposal. We have modified the proposal as below and are planning to put up another Snapshot to make sure if the original proposal with those changes are good enough to move forward with the delegate application process and its onchain voting.
Before explaining a few changes made to the proposal, like most of the delegates, we view this treasury delegation is a temporary solution, rather than the permanent solution to the voting quorum challenge. At the same time, we should acknowledge the fact that we have already been reliant on this program to move the DAO forward with important initiatives as the data described in the original post shows. This proposal is to improve the original program with a few changes including an introduction to the expiration of the delegations, which is considered a commitment to re-examining the program in a regular cadence.
Hi everyone, thanks for your continuous feedback and waiting on the update on the proposal. We have modified the proposal as below and are planning to put up another Snapshot to make sure if the original proposal with those changes are good enough to move forward with the delegate application process and its onchain voting.
Before explaining a few changes made to the proposal, like most of the delegates, we view this treasury delegation is a temporary solution, rather than the permanent solution to the voting quorum challenge. At the same time, we should acknowledge the fact that we have already been reliant on this program to move the DAO forward with important initiatives as the data described in the original post shows. This proposal is to improve the original program with a few changes including an introduction to the expiration of the delegations, which is considered a commitment to re-examining the program in a regular cadence.
Here are the revisions to the original proposal that passed its Snapshot, based on the feedback from the delegates and key stakeholders.
Specification: we will set 12 months' expirations to the delegations. After 9 months, we will re-evaluate the program.
Diff to the Snapshot ver: the expiration term 18 months -> 12 months, the re-evaluation term 12 months -> 9 months.
Rationale: as the original program covered 2024, and has been extended for about 3-4 months in 2025, we think it's reasonable to assume this program to continue until the year end and re-evaluate the program in early 2026. However, we are aware of the Unistaker initiative to be shaped up and ready for discussions and its potential ratification in this year. We will be committed to working to make this program and the changes to be introduced by the Unistaker and other initiatives in delegations cohesively exist together and make sure that the DAO independently functions without the treasury delegations in the future. As the original proposal promised, we will publish the report of the program every 3 months after the start and evaluate the qualified delegates based on their requirements/responsibilities for the program.
Specification: conduct a Snapshot election to select the "distinguished" (renamed from "Tier 1") delegates from the candidates who are qualified delegates based on the objective criteria and scoring.
Diff to the Snapshot ver: the name of the selected delegates from "tier 1" to "distinguished" for clarity. Selection logic: using the criteria and scoring -> Snapshot election.
Rationale: we still believe that, in addition to recognizing the need to empower under-represented (e.g. low VP), but active delegates who are willing to contribute more to the DAO governance, we should acknowledge and empower the delegates that are approved by the DAO based on their continuous activities to the DAO and impact made for the DAO in various ways that are not possible to be recorded in observable metrics, but can be evaluated by the token holders. While acknowledging the risk of being a "popularity contest", we believe this is the best way to achieve the representative selection.
Specification: 12 delegates will be qualified based on the objective criteria and scoring from the Delegate Reward Program Cycle 3 and receive 1M UNI delegations (hard capped to 1.5M VP in total). The distinguished delegates chosen via the Snapshot election will receive additional 500k UNI delegations (hard capped to 2M VP in total). (compared to the Snapshot ver: 1M delegations to the qualified delegates, another 1M delegations to the selected delegates)
| Type | # of Delegates | Total Amount of Delegations |
|---|---|---|
| Distinguished | 6 | 1.5M (capped at 2M in total) |
| Other Qualified | 6 | 1M (capped at 1.5M in total) |
Diff to the Snapshot ver: the amount of additional delegations to the distinguished delegates 1M -> 500k
Rationale: still an increase in the number of qualified delegates (7 -> 12) and total amount of the delegations (10M -> 15M) to effectively operate and achieve the quorum, but to minimize the reliance from the treasury compared to the originally proposed amount, up to 18M.
Lower quorum is a more permanent alteration with the potential for more dire consequences caused by malicious and anonymous external parties.
We are voting For the RFC: Treasury Delegation Round 2 proposal. We support the continuation of treasury delegation as a key mechanism to sustain DAO voting power participation. This program plays a critical role in the security and resilience of the DAO.
We also support the idea of expiration dates for delegations. Enforcing term limits through on-chain contracts is a meaningful step toward stronger accountability. While the proposed 18-month delegation period is slightly longer than what we’d prefer, the inclusion of an annual re-selection process provides a reasonable check-in point.
We are voting For the RFC: Treasury Delegation Round 2 proposal. We support the continuation of treasury delegation as a key mechanism to sustain DAO voting power participation. This program plays a critical role in the security and resilience of the DAO.
We also support the idea of expiration dates for delegations. Enforcing term limits through on-chain contracts is a meaningful step toward stronger accountability. While the proposed 18-month delegation period is slightly longer than what we’d prefer, the inclusion of an annual re-selection process provides a reasonable check-in point.
We would appreciate a clarification regarding the selected delegates’ responsibilities - 80% justification rate requirement - specifically, whether there is a defined timeframe for rationale submissions following each vote? For reference, the Uniswap Delegate Reward Initiative - Cycle 3 provided a 7-day window
We also agree with AbdullahUmar’s point that this program has distinct goals compared to the Delegate Reward Initiative. Given that, we believe it would make sense for this program to have its own scoring system aligned with its own objectives. Reusing the previous scoring framework could unintentionally favor delegates with a long history of activity and reduce diversity in participation.
We’d love to see a scoring approach that creates space for newer or smaller delegates - those bringing fresh perspectives and showing strong engagement. A thoughtful balance between recognizing historical contributions and supporting emerging voices would lead to a healthier, more inclusive governance landscape.
We think the original proposal was better than the updated version. The updated one uses a scoring system from a recent proposal where the delegate rankings are already known, and on top of that, the number of spots was changed arbitrarily. It feels like picking which delegates to include in the program based on a ranking you already have.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @kaereste, @Sinkas, and @Manugotsuka, and it’s based on their combined research, fact-checking, and ideation.
We are voting AGAINST the proposal.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @kaereste, @Sinkas, and @Manugotsuka, and it’s based on their combined research, fact-checking, and ideation.
We are voting AGAINST the proposal.
We are generally opposed to delegating tokens from the treasury, especially if that voting power is given to already active delegates solely to avoid difficulties in reaching a quorum. While we understand the frustration of needing to rally multiple stakeholders to achieve quorum, this reality in DAOs is a feature, not a bug.
There are multiple reasons why we are against the idea of treasury delegation:
All in all, we understand the challenges associated with meeting quorum, but we are opposed to using treasury delegation as a means to mitigate them. Ideally, the difficulty is reduced by attracting more and more actively involved delegates. Given that it’s a longer-term solution, we’re open to discussing ideas for how we could address a high quorum without having to use the treasury to increase the voting power of current delegates.
For example, a solution we can consider is creating a setup inspired by Optimism’s Anti-Capture Commission (ACC), where we would delegate voting power to a multisig controlled by a few active delegates. That multisig would only be mobilised to vote on proposals that are not contentious, but are not reaching quorum easily. The exact details can be discussed and refined, but we view this as a more suitable solution to the problem at hand.
We do not share the sentiment outlined that the proposal has no consensus, that the negative vote was almost null, and that abstentions, although valid, do not mean being against the proposal.
We would like to share some thoughts on what has been discussed in the last few posts, especially @AbdullahUmar's post:
I'm a bit late to the party here and drinking from the fire hose, so forgive me if anything is misguided.
Conducting a regular vote on this type of program is pretty messy. Operationally it would add unnecessary overhead for the DAO, which imo would outweigh potential benefits around adding new delegates.
I'm a bit late to the party here and drinking from the fire hose, so forgive me if anything is misguided.
Conducting a regular vote on this type of program is pretty messy. Operationally it would add unnecessary overhead for the DAO, which imo would outweigh potential benefits around adding new delegates.
I agree that the effort to run these initiatives is extensive, and to do so regularly is that much more so. I also agree that 18 month time cycles for new delegations is prohibitive to encouraging new entrants. I would support expanding the program's pool such that it adds new seats at regularized intervals.
For example, an initial 12 seats are selected, with 6 additional seats left unallocated. Every 6 months, the next two highest ranked delegates by the KPIs set are included. If the requirements look back is less than 6 months (perhaps 3), this gives incentive for even newer delegates to participate more. I just fear that if the incentive is as far as 18 months away, the reward for participating becomes a bit abstact.
My prediction is that UNI token holders, for the most part, will nonchalantly delegate their tokens to well-known names—granted their voting % is high enough (in case Staker rewards are based on a delegate’s voting rate).
Has there been any discussion on either directly capping or soft pointing users in a way to set max delegations from Unistaker? This would force a more diverse distribution. Albeit, overly-constraining caps could exhaust available, reputable delegation recipients more quickly and could force distributions to less qualified ones.
To Abdullah’s comments on outstanding structure mentioned on today’s call:
If the intent is to increase votable supply and reward qualified delegates, why put a cap on seats and a set delegation amount per seat vs choose the votable supply increase desired and then establish a threshold set of metrics? All delegates who meet the criteria equally share the VP to be allocated? Eg anyone with over X points qualifies, no tie breakers
To Abdullah’s comments on outstanding structure mentioned on today’s call:
If the intent is to increase votable supply and reward qualified delegates, why put a cap on seats and a set delegation amount per seat vs choose the votable supply increase desired and then establish a threshold set of metrics? All delegates who meet the criteria equally share the VP to be allocated? Eg anyone with over X points qualifies, no tie breakers
Net effect: desired votes increase is achieved and maximal qualified delegates are added?
Current approach trades off maximally including qualified delegates / contributors just to arbitrarily set a per seat delegation amount. And from a dollar value perspective the delegation per seat is actually quite high leaving room to reasonably spread it a bit wider.
Alternatively to respect the tier structure tier 1 could be capped seats for the power delegates, tier 2 could be open ended.
Looks like the vote is in a contentious place at the moment. A couple of thoughts:
Looks like the vote is in a contentious place at the moment. A couple of thoughts:
we haven’t seen evidence to suggest significant progress towards aligning long term incentives, which is why we do not feel the continuation of this experiment is in the best interest of the DAO.
It becomes inconvenient for active delegates to put up proposals when they have to rely on others to sponsor posts...speaking from experience.
Plus, increasing the cohort at the present time to 12 total candidates addresses the need of qualifying new delegates. There likely won't be too many new entrants into the DAO who would even qualify for treasury delegation off the bat. It usually takes a handful of months to cultivate some sort of persona with a DAO, at which point, the 12-18 month period will have passed, allowing the new delegates to partake in the next cycle of treasury delegation. So to address @Gauntlet's point, the feedback loop between assessing new delegates for treasury delegation requires at least a year and certainly more than 6 months.
I don't fully agree with using the metrics from the Delegate Reward Initiative for this proposal, aligning with @jengajojo's main concern, albeit for different reasons. Adding a voting component like the first iteration of the program makes more sense than having a second set of eligibility criteria. Here's why—
Elections better mimic token holder delegation:
Voting for treasury delegation candidates better mimics the elective process that UNI token holders go through when determining who should have more weight in the system. It provides a direct mechanism for the community to choose trusted delegates based on a preference-based evaluation, reflecting the essence of representative selection. But the Delegate Reward Program prioritizes activity over community preference, which is a characteristic that probably shouldn't fully translate to treasury delegation. Treasury delegation via voting and not fully based on "objective criteria" stands as the truer embodiment of the elective process, ensuring that influence is granted to those the community deems most worthy, not just the most active.
Popularity contests of course are a resulting issue. So a hybrid is probably best:
This way, the same people who get paid via the reward program are not necessarily the ones with more voting power—even though this will predominantly be the case anyways.
But even if we agreed that we need to do something to make meeting quorum easier, we’d suggest simply lowering the quorum and not artificially empowering delegates with more voting power from the treasury.
Would not suggest lowering quorum—lower quorum means that governance attacks become easier. One can argue that treasury delegation is in effect a governance attack from within, where delegates themselves just subvert token holders to control the DAO.
But Scopelift's work on implementing expiring delegation is a very neat addition to control for this issue. If at a future date the influence of delegates via treasury-sourced UNI isn't up to snuff, then those votes are recalled. In that sense, "delegate takeover" has an inherent termination date.
Lower quorum is a more permanent alteration with the potential for more dire consequences caused by malicious and anonymous external parties. At least with delegates there is a degree of transparency and communal responsibility where folks are in part kept in line for their reputation's sake. Plus, there's the incorporation of the "DAO Principles" in this proposal.
I would suggest that he DAO take advantage of Scopelift's work and utilize the expiring Franchisers.
The best time to run a delegation campaign is upon launch of a governance token. The second best time is when there's an economic incentive attached to the delegation. Most protocols with high delegation % today ensured that TGE aligned with a congruent delegation campaign. L2s are pretty good at this, and tools like Tally have helped with the process. Unfortunately, this setup wasn't common at UNI TGE, so there's latent voting power that never considered delegating.
Running a delegation campaign is notoriously difficult...because people just don't care. From the below numbers, it seems like the UF's delegate race had good success. We could run one of these again, but the amount of token holders willing to partake in such a race quickly taps out.
During the Delegate Race, 115 distinct addresses delegated just over 8.34m UNI and 12 delegates each gained at least 100k UNI in voting power.
Although I am unsure how active the voting power from this race is since most of it went to new, smaller delegates.
Objectively, the event that brought in the most delegates so far has been the Delegate Reward Program...for obvious reasons. But most of the new delegates don't have much voting power. And likely, the catalyst for increasing the other side of the equation, the number of delegators, will be launching Unistaker.
An even better approach would be to explore the re-engagement of active UNI holders post-DUNA and Fee Switch, including the potential for UNI staking and governance alignment that motivates UNI holders to be more directly engaged in delegation and DAO governance.
My prediction is that UNI token holders, for the most part, will nonchalantly delegate their tokens to well-known names—granted their voting % is high enough (in case Staker rewards are based on a delegate's voting rate). This will crowd out active delegates with smaller brands. Hence, one way the DAO can signal trust in certain entities is by delegating to them on its own. Right now, if you sort the top delegates by VP on Tally or Agora, you really don't want folks to just delegate to those top entities. It should be a mix. Sadly, token holders don't know delegates well. They just know brands from crypto in general.
As a final point, if the DAO ever wants to capitalize on fees itself to attain operating revenue, it must delegate its treasury tokens. This proposal would be a step in that direction. Although out of the scope of this discussion, we should be very careful about using the DAO's tokens as revenue generating assets, which may warrant blacklisting the Franchisers from earning Unistaker fees.
While we do hope @Tane 's version proceed. But in case if it fails to pass the onchain vote, we can also propose alternative version that tries to balance some of requests as currently Abstain vote is too high proportion
We appreciate the efforts made by @Tane in the seeking of the necessary consensus. While we found the previous proposal to be appropriate, this new updated version seems to us to be a good and solid middle ground, which we believe will be able to satisfy all or at least most of the delegates and active members of the DAO, as it addresses all the concerns discussed and synthesises them into a reasonable proposal. We will therefore support this new proposal.
Hey all - writing here in my capacity as governance lead at the UF. We’ve been working with Takeshi and the other folks involved in this proposal and paid for the updated franchiser contracts and the accompanying audit. Happy to see all the conversation around treasury delegation, and the recognition that it’s not a long-term solution. We're supportive of the way the proposal is currently structured and think sets the program up nicely for periodic reviews - hopefully we’ll be able to phase it out in the future!
Hi everyone, thanks for your continuous feedback and waiting on the update on the proposal. We have modified the proposal as below and are planning to put up another Snapshot to make sure if the original proposal with those changes are good enough to move forward with the delegate application process and its onchain voting.
Before explaining a few changes made to the proposal, like most of the delegates, we view this treasury delegation is a temporary solution, rather than the permanent solution to the voting quorum challenge. At the same time, we should acknowledge the fact that we have already been reliant on this program to move the DAO forward with important initiatives as the data described in the original post shows. This proposal is to improve the original program with a few changes including an introduction to the expiration of the delegations, which is considered a commitment to re-examining the program in a regular cadence.
Hi everyone, thanks for your continuous feedback and waiting on the update on the proposal. We have modified the proposal as below and are planning to put up another Snapshot to make sure if the original proposal with those changes are good enough to move forward with the delegate application process and its onchain voting.
Before explaining a few changes made to the proposal, like most of the delegates, we view this treasury delegation is a temporary solution, rather than the permanent solution to the voting quorum challenge. At the same time, we should acknowledge the fact that we have already been reliant on this program to move the DAO forward with important initiatives as the data described in the original post shows. This proposal is to improve the original program with a few changes including an introduction to the expiration of the delegations, which is considered a commitment to re-examining the program in a regular cadence.
Here are the revisions to the original proposal that passed its Snapshot, based on the feedback from the delegates and key stakeholders.
Specification: we will set 12 months' expirations to the delegations. After 9 months, we will re-evaluate the program.
Diff to the Snapshot ver: the expiration term 18 months -> 12 months, the re-evaluation term 12 months -> 9 months.
Rationale: as the original program covered 2024, and has been extended for about 3-4 months in 2025, we think it's reasonable to assume this program to continue until the year end and re-evaluate the program in early 2026. However, we are aware of the Unistaker initiative to be shaped up and ready for discussions and its potential ratification in this year. We will be committed to working to make this program and the changes to be introduced by the Unistaker and other initiatives in delegations cohesively exist together and make sure that the DAO independently functions without the treasury delegations in the future. As the original proposal promised, we will publish the report of the program every 3 months after the start and evaluate the qualified delegates based on their requirements/responsibilities for the program.
Specification: conduct a Snapshot election to select the "distinguished" (renamed from "Tier 1") delegates from the candidates who are qualified delegates based on the objective criteria and scoring.
Diff to the Snapshot ver: the name of the selected delegates from "tier 1" to "distinguished" for clarity. Selection logic: using the criteria and scoring -> Snapshot election.
Rationale: we still believe that, in addition to recognizing the need to empower under-represented (e.g. low VP), but active delegates who are willing to contribute more to the DAO governance, we should acknowledge and empower the delegates that are approved by the DAO based on their continuous activities to the DAO and impact made for the DAO in various ways that are not possible to be recorded in observable metrics, but can be evaluated by the token holders. While acknowledging the risk of being a "popularity contest", we believe this is the best way to achieve the representative selection.
Specification: 12 delegates will be qualified based on the objective criteria and scoring from the Delegate Reward Program Cycle 3 and receive 1M UNI delegations (hard capped to 1.5M VP in total). The distinguished delegates chosen via the Snapshot election will receive additional 500k UNI delegations (hard capped to 2M VP in total). (compared to the Snapshot ver: 1M delegations to the qualified delegates, another 1M delegations to the selected delegates)
| Type | # of Delegates | Total Amount of Delegations |
|---|---|---|
| Distinguished | 6 | 1.5M (capped at 2M in total) |
| Other Qualified | 6 | 1M (capped at 1.5M in total) |
Diff to the Snapshot ver: the amount of additional delegations to the distinguished delegates 1M -> 500k
Rationale: still an increase in the number of qualified delegates (7 -> 12) and total amount of the delegations (10M -> 15M) to effectively operate and achieve the quorum, but to minimize the reliance from the treasury compared to the originally proposed amount, up to 18M.
Lower quorum is a more permanent alteration with the potential for more dire consequences caused by malicious and anonymous external parties.
We are voting For the RFC: Treasury Delegation Round 2 proposal. We support the continuation of treasury delegation as a key mechanism to sustain DAO voting power participation. This program plays a critical role in the security and resilience of the DAO.
We also support the idea of expiration dates for delegations. Enforcing term limits through on-chain contracts is a meaningful step toward stronger accountability. While the proposed 18-month delegation period is slightly longer than what we’d prefer, the inclusion of an annual re-selection process provides a reasonable check-in point.
We are voting For the RFC: Treasury Delegation Round 2 proposal. We support the continuation of treasury delegation as a key mechanism to sustain DAO voting power participation. This program plays a critical role in the security and resilience of the DAO.
We also support the idea of expiration dates for delegations. Enforcing term limits through on-chain contracts is a meaningful step toward stronger accountability. While the proposed 18-month delegation period is slightly longer than what we’d prefer, the inclusion of an annual re-selection process provides a reasonable check-in point.
We would appreciate a clarification regarding the selected delegates’ responsibilities - 80% justification rate requirement - specifically, whether there is a defined timeframe for rationale submissions following each vote? For reference, the Uniswap Delegate Reward Initiative - Cycle 3 provided a 7-day window
We also agree with AbdullahUmar’s point that this program has distinct goals compared to the Delegate Reward Initiative. Given that, we believe it would make sense for this program to have its own scoring system aligned with its own objectives. Reusing the previous scoring framework could unintentionally favor delegates with a long history of activity and reduce diversity in participation.
We’d love to see a scoring approach that creates space for newer or smaller delegates - those bringing fresh perspectives and showing strong engagement. A thoughtful balance between recognizing historical contributions and supporting emerging voices would lead to a healthier, more inclusive governance landscape.
We think the original proposal was better than the updated version. The updated one uses a scoring system from a recent proposal where the delegate rankings are already known, and on top of that, the number of spots was changed arbitrarily. It feels like picking which delegates to include in the program based on a ranking you already have.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @kaereste, @Sinkas, and @Manugotsuka, and it’s based on their combined research, fact-checking, and ideation.
We are voting AGAINST the proposal.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @kaereste, @Sinkas, and @Manugotsuka, and it’s based on their combined research, fact-checking, and ideation.
We are voting AGAINST the proposal.
We are generally opposed to delegating tokens from the treasury, especially if that voting power is given to already active delegates solely to avoid difficulties in reaching a quorum. While we understand the frustration of needing to rally multiple stakeholders to achieve quorum, this reality in DAOs is a feature, not a bug.
There are multiple reasons why we are against the idea of treasury delegation:
All in all, we understand the challenges associated with meeting quorum, but we are opposed to using treasury delegation as a means to mitigate them. Ideally, the difficulty is reduced by attracting more and more actively involved delegates. Given that it’s a longer-term solution, we’re open to discussing ideas for how we could address a high quorum without having to use the treasury to increase the voting power of current delegates.
For example, a solution we can consider is creating a setup inspired by Optimism’s Anti-Capture Commission (ACC), where we would delegate voting power to a multisig controlled by a few active delegates. That multisig would only be mobilised to vote on proposals that are not contentious, but are not reaching quorum easily. The exact details can be discussed and refined, but we view this as a more suitable solution to the problem at hand.
We do not share the sentiment outlined that the proposal has no consensus, that the negative vote was almost null, and that abstentions, although valid, do not mean being against the proposal.
We would like to share some thoughts on what has been discussed in the last few posts, especially @AbdullahUmar's post:
I'm a bit late to the party here and drinking from the fire hose, so forgive me if anything is misguided.
Conducting a regular vote on this type of program is pretty messy. Operationally it would add unnecessary overhead for the DAO, which imo would outweigh potential benefits around adding new delegates.
I'm a bit late to the party here and drinking from the fire hose, so forgive me if anything is misguided.
Conducting a regular vote on this type of program is pretty messy. Operationally it would add unnecessary overhead for the DAO, which imo would outweigh potential benefits around adding new delegates.
I agree that the effort to run these initiatives is extensive, and to do so regularly is that much more so. I also agree that 18 month time cycles for new delegations is prohibitive to encouraging new entrants. I would support expanding the program's pool such that it adds new seats at regularized intervals.
For example, an initial 12 seats are selected, with 6 additional seats left unallocated. Every 6 months, the next two highest ranked delegates by the KPIs set are included. If the requirements look back is less than 6 months (perhaps 3), this gives incentive for even newer delegates to participate more. I just fear that if the incentive is as far as 18 months away, the reward for participating becomes a bit abstact.
My prediction is that UNI token holders, for the most part, will nonchalantly delegate their tokens to well-known names—granted their voting % is high enough (in case Staker rewards are based on a delegate’s voting rate).
Has there been any discussion on either directly capping or soft pointing users in a way to set max delegations from Unistaker? This would force a more diverse distribution. Albeit, overly-constraining caps could exhaust available, reputable delegation recipients more quickly and could force distributions to less qualified ones.
To Abdullah’s comments on outstanding structure mentioned on today’s call:
If the intent is to increase votable supply and reward qualified delegates, why put a cap on seats and a set delegation amount per seat vs choose the votable supply increase desired and then establish a threshold set of metrics? All delegates who meet the criteria equally share the VP to be allocated? Eg anyone with over X points qualifies, no tie breakers
To Abdullah’s comments on outstanding structure mentioned on today’s call:
If the intent is to increase votable supply and reward qualified delegates, why put a cap on seats and a set delegation amount per seat vs choose the votable supply increase desired and then establish a threshold set of metrics? All delegates who meet the criteria equally share the VP to be allocated? Eg anyone with over X points qualifies, no tie breakers
Net effect: desired votes increase is achieved and maximal qualified delegates are added?
Current approach trades off maximally including qualified delegates / contributors just to arbitrarily set a per seat delegation amount. And from a dollar value perspective the delegation per seat is actually quite high leaving room to reasonably spread it a bit wider.
Alternatively to respect the tier structure tier 1 could be capped seats for the power delegates, tier 2 could be open ended.
Looks like the vote is in a contentious place at the moment. A couple of thoughts:
Looks like the vote is in a contentious place at the moment. A couple of thoughts:
we haven’t seen evidence to suggest significant progress towards aligning long term incentives, which is why we do not feel the continuation of this experiment is in the best interest of the DAO.
It becomes inconvenient for active delegates to put up proposals when they have to rely on others to sponsor posts...speaking from experience.
Plus, increasing the cohort at the present time to 12 total candidates addresses the need of qualifying new delegates. There likely won't be too many new entrants into the DAO who would even qualify for treasury delegation off the bat. It usually takes a handful of months to cultivate some sort of persona with a DAO, at which point, the 12-18 month period will have passed, allowing the new delegates to partake in the next cycle of treasury delegation. So to address @Gauntlet's point, the feedback loop between assessing new delegates for treasury delegation requires at least a year and certainly more than 6 months.
I don't fully agree with using the metrics from the Delegate Reward Initiative for this proposal, aligning with @jengajojo's main concern, albeit for different reasons. Adding a voting component like the first iteration of the program makes more sense than having a second set of eligibility criteria. Here's why—
Elections better mimic token holder delegation:
Voting for treasury delegation candidates better mimics the elective process that UNI token holders go through when determining who should have more weight in the system. It provides a direct mechanism for the community to choose trusted delegates based on a preference-based evaluation, reflecting the essence of representative selection. But the Delegate Reward Program prioritizes activity over community preference, which is a characteristic that probably shouldn't fully translate to treasury delegation. Treasury delegation via voting and not fully based on "objective criteria" stands as the truer embodiment of the elective process, ensuring that influence is granted to those the community deems most worthy, not just the most active.
Popularity contests of course are a resulting issue. So a hybrid is probably best:
This way, the same people who get paid via the reward program are not necessarily the ones with more voting power—even though this will predominantly be the case anyways.
But even if we agreed that we need to do something to make meeting quorum easier, we’d suggest simply lowering the quorum and not artificially empowering delegates with more voting power from the treasury.
Would not suggest lowering quorum—lower quorum means that governance attacks become easier. One can argue that treasury delegation is in effect a governance attack from within, where delegates themselves just subvert token holders to control the DAO.
But Scopelift's work on implementing expiring delegation is a very neat addition to control for this issue. If at a future date the influence of delegates via treasury-sourced UNI isn't up to snuff, then those votes are recalled. In that sense, "delegate takeover" has an inherent termination date.
Lower quorum is a more permanent alteration with the potential for more dire consequences caused by malicious and anonymous external parties. At least with delegates there is a degree of transparency and communal responsibility where folks are in part kept in line for their reputation's sake. Plus, there's the incorporation of the "DAO Principles" in this proposal.
I would suggest that he DAO take advantage of Scopelift's work and utilize the expiring Franchisers.
The best time to run a delegation campaign is upon launch of a governance token. The second best time is when there's an economic incentive attached to the delegation. Most protocols with high delegation % today ensured that TGE aligned with a congruent delegation campaign. L2s are pretty good at this, and tools like Tally have helped with the process. Unfortunately, this setup wasn't common at UNI TGE, so there's latent voting power that never considered delegating.
Running a delegation campaign is notoriously difficult...because people just don't care. From the below numbers, it seems like the UF's delegate race had good success. We could run one of these again, but the amount of token holders willing to partake in such a race quickly taps out.
During the Delegate Race, 115 distinct addresses delegated just over 8.34m UNI and 12 delegates each gained at least 100k UNI in voting power.
Although I am unsure how active the voting power from this race is since most of it went to new, smaller delegates.
Objectively, the event that brought in the most delegates so far has been the Delegate Reward Program...for obvious reasons. But most of the new delegates don't have much voting power. And likely, the catalyst for increasing the other side of the equation, the number of delegators, will be launching Unistaker.
An even better approach would be to explore the re-engagement of active UNI holders post-DUNA and Fee Switch, including the potential for UNI staking and governance alignment that motivates UNI holders to be more directly engaged in delegation and DAO governance.
My prediction is that UNI token holders, for the most part, will nonchalantly delegate their tokens to well-known names—granted their voting % is high enough (in case Staker rewards are based on a delegate's voting rate). This will crowd out active delegates with smaller brands. Hence, one way the DAO can signal trust in certain entities is by delegating to them on its own. Right now, if you sort the top delegates by VP on Tally or Agora, you really don't want folks to just delegate to those top entities. It should be a mix. Sadly, token holders don't know delegates well. They just know brands from crypto in general.
As a final point, if the DAO ever wants to capitalize on fees itself to attain operating revenue, it must delegate its treasury tokens. This proposal would be a step in that direction. Although out of the scope of this discussion, we should be very careful about using the DAO's tokens as revenue generating assets, which may warrant blacklisting the Franchisers from earning Unistaker fees.
While we do hope @Tane 's version proceed. But in case if it fails to pass the onchain vote, we can also propose alternative version that tries to balance some of requests as currently Abstain vote is too high proportion
We appreciate the efforts made by @Tane in the seeking of the necessary consensus. While we found the previous proposal to be appropriate, this new updated version seems to us to be a good and solid middle ground, which we believe will be able to satisfy all or at least most of the delegates and active members of the DAO, as it addresses all the concerns discussed and synthesises them into a reasonable proposal. We will therefore support this new proposal.
Lower quorum is a more permanent alteration with the potential for more dire consequences caused by malicious and anonymous external parties.
We agree that lowering the quorum is not a viable solution. Maintaining a higher quorum threshold ensures greater security for the DAO, a critical consideration for DAOs with substantial treasuries, such as Uniswap.
Regarding treasury delegation, we share other delegates' perspectives that it might not be the optimal long-term strategy. However, longer-term solutions naturally require extended periods to develop and implement. In the meantime, we see this program as an effective interim measure until more sustainable and robust initiatives become feasible—such as the full deployment of Unistaker, increased token-holder re-engagement following the DUNA initiative, and improvements in the regulatory landscape.
To ensure effectiveness in the interim, it is crucial to incorporate objective metrics for evaluating applicants.
My prediction is that UNI token holders, for the most part, will nonchalantly delegate their tokens to well-known names—granted their voting % is high enough (in case Staker rewards are based on a delegate’s voting rate). This will crowd out active delegates with smaller brands.
We concur with this assessment, particularly in a purely electoral context lacking objective criteria. Delegates with significant voting power and established reputations are likely to dominate purely political or brand-driven elections. While many of these delegates indeed merit such delegation, incorporating objective evaluation metrics would better support delegates who demonstrably contribute meaningful value to the DAO.
Ultimately, for this specific program, we advocate prioritizing delegates who provide tangible value to the DAO over those relying solely on established brands, though these attributes need not be mutually exclusive.
We do not share the sentiment outlined that the proposal has no consensus, that the negative vote was almost null, and that abstentions, although valid, do not mean being against the proposal.
We would like to share some thoughts on what has been discussed in the last few posts, especially @AbdullahUmar's post:
Of course the ideal would be that the quorum is reached with genuine participation of the tokenholders and not existing it, as it is the case, could be achieved with a delegation campaign, but even successful takes time to polanificación, implementation and waiting for results. This, although ideal, is not real according to the current circumstances of the DAO and the near future, even with a successful delegation campaign.
So, this proposal, although not ideal, is necessary because the real situation today is that it is very difficult to get a quorum for onchain proposals, and even more so when the VP of the previous cycle is de-delegated. We would like to warn of the real and concrete risk of paralysis of the DAO if this proposal is not approved.
Lowering the quorum is an even more dangerous and risky scenario, we do not recommend following this path which could put the DAO at risk of a governance attack, the quorum is a line of defense to make an attack costly, so we need to increase participation, not lower the quorum.
We do not see the 18 month term (with re-selection at 1 year) as a problem as it proposes to revoke the delegation if a delegate does not maintain the participation requirements, so that only active delegates will enter and remain in the program, delegates without good participation metrics will lose their assigned VP.
Likewise, we do not agree that this proposal limits that within the 18 month period it can be extended for more delegates to be included if the DAO deems it necessary. There is nothing to impede this being proposed, voted on and implemented.
The method of selection by the delegate reward program scoring, while not ideal, we believe is objective and fair as it allows active delegates with good participation parameters to be eligible. The method of total or partial/hybrid selection by election means selection by popularity contest and, even worse, it implies the real risk of incentivizing a carterization agreement of delegates to vote among a group, which would be undesirable and not in line with good governance practices and violates the Uniswap DAO Principles ('Delegates must prevent the formation of cartels and ensure that the protocol is protected from any proposals driven by personal motives that do not align with the protocol’s best interests'), as this selection system may favour popular delegates or delegates who reach agreements without necessarily being active, which goes against the objective of this proposal to increase UNI's participation in voting.
We support this proposal without changes and are willing to support it in the on chain vote.
I do think one crucial aspect that the delegates might not understand fully is that for this round, the delegation automatically expire. Which means having it in the short term like 6 months is going to result in a case that it becomes extremely difficult to meet quorum as all the delegation expire. And not much time to prepare
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @kaereste, @Sinkas, and @Manugotsuka, and it’s based on their combined research, fact-checking, and ideation.
We’re voting AGAINST the proposal.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @kaereste, @Sinkas, and @Manugotsuka, and it’s based on their combined research, fact-checking, and ideation.
We’re voting AGAINST the proposal.
While we understand the proposal's premise, delegating tokens from the treasury is not the right way to address the issues cited in the original proposal, mainly the difficulty in achieving quorum.
Having difficulty achieving quorum is a feature, not a bug. Although it makes governance a bit trickier and time-consuming, it protects against malicious proposals passing simply because of delegate apathy or token holder indifference.
But even if we agreed that we need to do something to make meeting quorum easier, we’d suggest simply lowering the quorum and not artificially empowering delegates with more voting power from the treasury.
We have voted to abstain from this temperature check, citing below our issues with the proposal's current iterations alongside our previously communicated concerns. To confidently support this proposal, we would request the following change:
We have voted to abstain from this temperature check, citing below our issues with the proposal's current iterations alongside our previously communicated concerns. To confidently support this proposal, we would request the following change:
We also do not fully agree with the rationale or criteria for the top 6 delegates receiving greater VP delegation. The scoring criteria do not reflect delegate quality, only participation, and the benefits of supporting certain delegates above others based on slim participation margins are unclear.
Thank you everyone for taking part in the forum poll. We have modified the proposal to exclude an election Snapshot and put out a temp-check Snapshot: https://snapshot.box/#/s:uniswapgovernance.eth/proposal/0x04af1fcb7538cf5458c5c17baa50fe410952d48e98d451a6ca5f7b94fea87ee8!
We thank @Tane for this proposal and for taking the feedback from us and other delegates and incorporating it into a improved proposal.
We thank @Tane for this proposal and for taking the feedback from us and other delegates and incorporating it into a improved proposal.
Top 6 delegates (“Tier 1 delegates”) will be chosen by voting or only by the objective criteria
The forum poll is used to help get the consensus from the community, but in order to counter unlikely but possible case of new accounts created and spamming to sway the poll, only accounts that were created 24 hours before this poll would be counted. The poll will last till March 21st 10am EST.
Tier 1 Delegates should be chosen by scores
Tier 1 Delegates should be chosen by voting
Regarding this vote, and despite the fact that we in SEEDGov do not benefit from it, we voted for tier 1 to be decided by scoring, because if it is decided by voting, there is a risk of carterisation or agreement between delegates to support each other, which would not be a healthy practice. On the contrary, deciding the order by scoring based on the parameters of the delegate incentive program is an objective way of deciding the order based on delegate participation.
Anyone who is able to cross that baseline should included into the cohorot.
Anyone who is able to cross that baseline should included into the cohorot.
This is not advisable as there's finite amount of UNI that can be delegated. And the proposal wants to at least have several to be able to make proposals onchain. Moreover, there's a balance between having too few delegates with too much power and too many delegates with too little power. Both have pros and cons, but in practice, the community would have to choose the top certain number to be eligible.
At the end of the day, how do you define “delegates who are highly motivated, skilled, and aligned with the DAO’s values”?
At the end of the day, how do you define “delegates who are highly motivated, skilled, and aligned with the DAO’s values”?
The aim with going with a non-ranking approach is to agree on a baseline for the type of delegate we want. In order to get the delegates we want we need to agree on the minimum performance standard which can be set via quantiative metrics identified in this proposal as well as the delegate incentive proposal. Anyone who is able to cross that baseline should included into the cohorot. This encourages everyone to strive to meet these minimum requirements as opposed to competing with each other to be on a ranking list. Over time this baseline can be increased thus, increasing the caliber of delegates who participate in such programs.
We are not certain how this proposal addresses the issue you raised. With the voting option for Tier 1 delegates, we are basically introducing two mechanisms to select delegates for the delegations.
The two tier model makes sense to me because we can create two baselines, higher and lower. Naturally more delegates will qualify for the latter than the prior and thus the larger cohort will receive less UNI per delegate as opposed to the cohort with stricter requirements.
This allows the DAO to
Hi everyone, in coordination with @Tane as well as other members, here's forum poll to select how Tier 1 Delegates will be selected. For context:
Top 6 delegates (“Tier 1 delegates”) will be chosen by voting or only by the objective criteria
Hi everyone, in coordination with @Tane as well as other members, here's forum poll to select how Tier 1 Delegates will be selected. For context:
Top 6 delegates (“Tier 1 delegates”) will be chosen by voting or only by the objective criteria
The forum poll is used to help get the consensus from the community, but in order to counter unlikely but possible case of new accounts created and spamming to sway the poll, only accounts that were created 24 hours before this poll would be counted. The poll will last till March 21st 10am EST.
[poll type=regular results=always public=true chartType=bar]
Thanks for your comments/feedback @Juanbug @Argonaut @Doo_StableLab @drllau_LexDAO @jengajojo @kpk @Boardroom @Avantgarde.
After our careful examinations of the feedback from the delegates and extensive discussions especially with the UAC members, we have revised the proposal with changes outlined below. We hope most of the critical feedback are addressed.
We thank @Tane for all the effort put into this. We had a great conversation at the Uniswap workshop in Denver about the proposal, and are happy to see it has made its way to the forum.
Generally speaking, we're for the idea of broadening the delegate set. Ideally, we should try to do more than simply extend it, but add specific expertise we believe the DAO is either lacking or could strengthen.
We thank @Tane for all the effort put into this. We had a great conversation at the Uniswap workshop in Denver about the proposal, and are happy to see it has made its way to the forum.
Generally speaking, we're for the idea of broadening the delegate set. Ideally, we should try to do more than simply extend it, but add specific expertise we believe the DAO is either lacking or could strengthen.
For example, how is "underrepresented" being defined here? Is it just the fact that these delegates hold a too small amount of voting power to be deemed influential in governance? Obviously if we need to increase delegations because we think we have quorum issues, that's fine and we get that. But we believe it would be more useful to categorise areas of expertise that the DAO could benefit from having/adding, and tie this "underrepresentation" to that and add delegates accordingly. We think permissionless tech and ethos is great in many ways, but we also think that DAOs should try to incorporate more meritocratic principles. At some point, and we are probably not there yet, just adding additional "proposal reviewers" may not bring much more value to a DAO.
We also agree with @Juanbug on the significance of proposal making. If anything, proposals at least provide some form of proxy for "real" contributions. Circling back to "underrepresentation", there seem to be this notion of "fairness" floating around where supposedly anyone should be able to join the paid delegate set as long as they show up for every vote and community call. While participation rates are clearly important, the fact is that anyone can do that. Getting a proposal through governance not only requires effort, but usually also a deeper understanding of Uniswap in one way or another. Having said that, it does become tricky in situations where delegates are pushing proposals as part of another committee or working group gig they are already getting paid for, and by extension of merely doing that job, they get to secure their place in the rewards program.
We would also like to see a cap on the final voting power that these newly selected delegates can gain as a result of this program. As we understand it, participation in the program will be filtered by setting a maximum amount of VP that anyone interested in applying cannot exceed. Selected delegates will then receive a fixed amount depending on which tier they’re selected for, and as we understand, this number may be as much as 2M VP. This means that if we have an initial max VP threshold of 1-1.5M VP, said delegates could end up with 3-3.5M VP via the program (these VP numbers are examples, but you get the point). We think this would be discouraging to many of the delegates that have been involved with Uniswap for years who are currently sitting at around 2.5M VP (including us), and don’t think it makes sense to fast-track new delegates to the same level of influence unless they bring unique knowledge and capacity that the DAO can benefit from. Instead, better to structure the program so that selected delegates can be topped up to a set bar of say 2m total VP, which would only require some minor Excel calculations to figure out. Maybe a time-centred variable could also be included to allow smaller delegates with a significant participation history in Uniswap to apply.
Just some of our thoughts at this point - thanks again @Tane and looking forward to see how the program develops!
Thanks for this post @Tane. We agree with your point that developer delegation is important, but it should be pushed as a separate initiative. @Juanbug made some good points, but we also agree with some of @Argonaut’s feedback. Delegates who spend several months as an active delegate before creating a proposal shouldn’t be excluded from being eligible. It shouldn’t be a limiting factor in getting selected here.
create a objective criteria which includes points for proposal writing as well as other stated metrics and proportionally allocate to all delegates based on their score, only excluding those who are proven sybills or have demonstrated other behaviours which conflict with Code of Conduct of the DAO
Thank you, @Tane, for structuring such a strong and valuable proposal—we really appreciate your work on this.
While we agree with most of the recommended approaches, we have some concerns regarding the selection of delegates who will receive the delegation.
Thank you, @Tane, for structuring such a strong and valuable proposal—we really appreciate your work on this.
While we agree with most of the recommended approaches, we have some concerns regarding the selection of delegates who will receive the delegation.
The election process for something like this could get tricky real quick if we don’t use more objective metrics or qualifications in my opinion (quickly becomes game of delegate politicing).
On this point, we agree with @Juanbug: applying objective metrics is essential to avoid political bias. The current weighted Snapshot vote tends to favour candidates with larger voting power (e.g. 1.4M vs 5k), as well as those with strong brands or connections. Basing the evaluation on more objective criteria would ensure a fairer distribution.
Regarding the UNI amount to include in the program, we believe that 15M represents a good balance. A 1M delegation per delegate meets the threshold for posting proposals on-chain. Hence, it empowers each selected delegate to perform their role effectively.
Thanks for the work put in to create this proposal @Tane. I agree with your approach of splitting the delegation into two cohorts.
I strongly support having an objective metrics based criteria in order to avoid the gameability associated with elections. However, having a cutoff and equal delegation does not seem fair to the delegates who have scored non-zero points as well as to the delegates who scored higher than others.
Thanks for the work put in to create this proposal @Tane. I agree with your approach of splitting the delegation into two cohorts.
I strongly support having an objective metrics based criteria in order to avoid the gameability associated with elections. However, having a cutoff and equal delegation does not seem fair to the delegates who have scored non-zero points as well as to the delegates who scored higher than others.
The proposal metric is an interesting challange, since delegates can form a 'cabal' of sorts and put each others' names in the proposal as authors. Then these same delegates can propose an incentive campaign based on metrics such as proposal writing to qualify themselves for such a campaign. We have seen this behaviour in the recent incentives cycle. On the other hand we do want delegates to come up with interesting proposals that move the DAO forward.
A good solution would be to proportionally allocate to all delegates who participate (and can prove they are not sybills). I.e. create a objective criteria which includes points for proposal writing as well as other stated metrics and proportionally allocate to all delegates based on their score, only excluding those who are proven sybills or have demonstrated other behaviours which conflict with Code of Conduct of the DAO.
Thanks for your feedback, @Argonaut @jengajojo @Gauntlet!
What is the issue with the number being higher than the original program? If they are active delegates who stay up to date with the ecosystem, vote, and participate in the forum, we don’t see a large number of delegates as a problem.
Rationale: 16 is too many compared to 7 in the original program. There are delegates that don’t need VP, and fewer delegates should be qualified for the treasury delegations. We believe 12 is a good middle-ground number.
Understanding that Gauntlet is a large delegate, we aim to communicate our concerns with the program below.
Firstly, treasury delegation aims to solve a real problem. Unfortunately, it complicates measuring eligibility since DIP participation doesn’t necessarily indicate value or competence and increases vulnerability to governance attacks while reducing accountability to UNI holders beyond the DAO.
Understanding that Gauntlet is a large delegate, we aim to communicate our concerns with the program below.
Firstly, treasury delegation aims to solve a real problem. Unfortunately, it complicates measuring eligibility since DIP participation doesn’t necessarily indicate value or competence and increases vulnerability to governance attacks while reducing accountability to UNI holders beyond the DAO.
More critically, this approach deviates from the original intent of delegation, where token holders empower representatives who mirror their interests. Treasury delegation effectively transfers influence from UNI holders to delegates themselves, who may have a misaligned incentive to preserve power. Therefore, it is a requirement that any delegated treasury UNI has a programmable and automated end-period for delegation.
This broader issue is compounded by two dynamics: widespread apathy among UNI holders toward Uniswap governance and a misalignment between UNI holders' interests and those of the DAO.
Have we analyzed organic delegation data from active delegates in round 1 to fix these dynamics? Perhaps a "matching program"—pairing organic delegation with treasury UNI—might better align UNI holders’ interests, bolster delegation, and resolve the quorum issue.
An even better approach would be to explore the re-engagement of active UNI holders post-DUNA and Fee Switch, including the potential for UNI staking and governance alignment that motivates UNI holders to be more directly engaged in delegation and DAO governance.
To summarize, we view treasury delegation as a band-aid solution to a much larger problem, but one that may be necessary to ensure smooth operations in the short-medium term.
Of course, we appreciate all the hard work by @Tane and others to bring this proposal to its current state.
Thanks for posting an update on this @Tane
While selecting the top 'x' delegates based on scores is an improvement over simply electing the top 'x' delegates, this approach still raises some concerns:
Thanks for posting an update on this @Tane
While selecting the top 'x' delegates based on scores is an improvement over simply electing the top 'x' delegates, this approach still raises some concerns:
The number 'x' seems to be LARPed without a clear rationale
Instead of setting a clear, pre-agreed standard for what makes a delegate "good enough," this method ranks delegates and includes those who may not meet the desired quality. The threshold for inclusion is determined by the last delegate who makes the cut, which means the standard is flexible and potentially too low. By focusing on the top 'x' delegates "we can get" rather than the top delegates "we want," we risk settling for less-than-ideal candidates. This approach doesn’t encourage us to aim higher or attract better delegates who might be out there.
Ranking creates a zero sum dynamic with winners and loosers which demotivates delegates who are highly motivated, skilled, and aligned with the DAO’s values.
Instead, why don't we create two tiers of eligibility criteria and equally divide between delegates who simply fulfill the criteria in each tier instead of ranking them?
This is more of a philosophical debate, but to be honest, we don’t think the main role of a delegate should be to create proposals. Is it a nice-to-have? If they’re good at it, then yes. But the primary responsibility of a delegate should be to carefully assess whether a proposal benefits the DAO and doesn’t pose any risks, while also ensuring the DAO isn’t exploited by other delegates for personal gain.
To do this effectively, a delegate needs to spend hours reviewing proposals and staying up to date with developments in the ecosystem, which is difficult without some form of compensation to cover the costs. A bot would never be useful for this task, or at least, it wouldn’t be a good idea to rely solely on bots for monitoring.
Lower quorum is a more permanent alteration with the potential for more dire consequences caused by malicious and anonymous external parties.
We agree that lowering the quorum is not a viable solution. Maintaining a higher quorum threshold ensures greater security for the DAO, a critical consideration for DAOs with substantial treasuries, such as Uniswap.
Regarding treasury delegation, we share other delegates' perspectives that it might not be the optimal long-term strategy. However, longer-term solutions naturally require extended periods to develop and implement. In the meantime, we see this program as an effective interim measure until more sustainable and robust initiatives become feasible—such as the full deployment of Unistaker, increased token-holder re-engagement following the DUNA initiative, and improvements in the regulatory landscape.
To ensure effectiveness in the interim, it is crucial to incorporate objective metrics for evaluating applicants.
My prediction is that UNI token holders, for the most part, will nonchalantly delegate their tokens to well-known names—granted their voting % is high enough (in case Staker rewards are based on a delegate’s voting rate). This will crowd out active delegates with smaller brands.
We concur with this assessment, particularly in a purely electoral context lacking objective criteria. Delegates with significant voting power and established reputations are likely to dominate purely political or brand-driven elections. While many of these delegates indeed merit such delegation, incorporating objective evaluation metrics would better support delegates who demonstrably contribute meaningful value to the DAO.
Ultimately, for this specific program, we advocate prioritizing delegates who provide tangible value to the DAO over those relying solely on established brands, though these attributes need not be mutually exclusive.
We do not share the sentiment outlined that the proposal has no consensus, that the negative vote was almost null, and that abstentions, although valid, do not mean being against the proposal.
We would like to share some thoughts on what has been discussed in the last few posts, especially @AbdullahUmar's post:
Of course the ideal would be that the quorum is reached with genuine participation of the tokenholders and not existing it, as it is the case, could be achieved with a delegation campaign, but even successful takes time to polanificación, implementation and waiting for results. This, although ideal, is not real according to the current circumstances of the DAO and the near future, even with a successful delegation campaign.
So, this proposal, although not ideal, is necessary because the real situation today is that it is very difficult to get a quorum for onchain proposals, and even more so when the VP of the previous cycle is de-delegated. We would like to warn of the real and concrete risk of paralysis of the DAO if this proposal is not approved.
Lowering the quorum is an even more dangerous and risky scenario, we do not recommend following this path which could put the DAO at risk of a governance attack, the quorum is a line of defense to make an attack costly, so we need to increase participation, not lower the quorum.
We do not see the 18 month term (with re-selection at 1 year) as a problem as it proposes to revoke the delegation if a delegate does not maintain the participation requirements, so that only active delegates will enter and remain in the program, delegates without good participation metrics will lose their assigned VP.
Likewise, we do not agree that this proposal limits that within the 18 month period it can be extended for more delegates to be included if the DAO deems it necessary. There is nothing to impede this being proposed, voted on and implemented.
The method of selection by the delegate reward program scoring, while not ideal, we believe is objective and fair as it allows active delegates with good participation parameters to be eligible. The method of total or partial/hybrid selection by election means selection by popularity contest and, even worse, it implies the real risk of incentivizing a carterization agreement of delegates to vote among a group, which would be undesirable and not in line with good governance practices and violates the Uniswap DAO Principles ('Delegates must prevent the formation of cartels and ensure that the protocol is protected from any proposals driven by personal motives that do not align with the protocol’s best interests'), as this selection system may favour popular delegates or delegates who reach agreements without necessarily being active, which goes against the objective of this proposal to increase UNI's participation in voting.
We support this proposal without changes and are willing to support it in the on chain vote.
I do think one crucial aspect that the delegates might not understand fully is that for this round, the delegation automatically expire. Which means having it in the short term like 6 months is going to result in a case that it becomes extremely difficult to meet quorum as all the delegation expire. And not much time to prepare
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @kaereste, @Sinkas, and @Manugotsuka, and it’s based on their combined research, fact-checking, and ideation.
We’re voting AGAINST the proposal.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @kaereste, @Sinkas, and @Manugotsuka, and it’s based on their combined research, fact-checking, and ideation.
We’re voting AGAINST the proposal.
While we understand the proposal's premise, delegating tokens from the treasury is not the right way to address the issues cited in the original proposal, mainly the difficulty in achieving quorum.
Having difficulty achieving quorum is a feature, not a bug. Although it makes governance a bit trickier and time-consuming, it protects against malicious proposals passing simply because of delegate apathy or token holder indifference.
But even if we agreed that we need to do something to make meeting quorum easier, we’d suggest simply lowering the quorum and not artificially empowering delegates with more voting power from the treasury.
We have voted to abstain from this temperature check, citing below our issues with the proposal's current iterations alongside our previously communicated concerns. To confidently support this proposal, we would request the following change:
We have voted to abstain from this temperature check, citing below our issues with the proposal's current iterations alongside our previously communicated concerns. To confidently support this proposal, we would request the following change:
We also do not fully agree with the rationale or criteria for the top 6 delegates receiving greater VP delegation. The scoring criteria do not reflect delegate quality, only participation, and the benefits of supporting certain delegates above others based on slim participation margins are unclear.
Thank you everyone for taking part in the forum poll. We have modified the proposal to exclude an election Snapshot and put out a temp-check Snapshot: https://snapshot.box/#/s:uniswapgovernance.eth/proposal/0x04af1fcb7538cf5458c5c17baa50fe410952d48e98d451a6ca5f7b94fea87ee8!
We thank @Tane for this proposal and for taking the feedback from us and other delegates and incorporating it into a improved proposal.
We thank @Tane for this proposal and for taking the feedback from us and other delegates and incorporating it into a improved proposal.
Top 6 delegates (“Tier 1 delegates”) will be chosen by voting or only by the objective criteria
The forum poll is used to help get the consensus from the community, but in order to counter unlikely but possible case of new accounts created and spamming to sway the poll, only accounts that were created 24 hours before this poll would be counted. The poll will last till March 21st 10am EST.
Tier 1 Delegates should be chosen by scores
Tier 1 Delegates should be chosen by voting
Regarding this vote, and despite the fact that we in SEEDGov do not benefit from it, we voted for tier 1 to be decided by scoring, because if it is decided by voting, there is a risk of carterisation or agreement between delegates to support each other, which would not be a healthy practice. On the contrary, deciding the order by scoring based on the parameters of the delegate incentive program is an objective way of deciding the order based on delegate participation.
Anyone who is able to cross that baseline should included into the cohorot.
Anyone who is able to cross that baseline should included into the cohorot.
This is not advisable as there's finite amount of UNI that can be delegated. And the proposal wants to at least have several to be able to make proposals onchain. Moreover, there's a balance between having too few delegates with too much power and too many delegates with too little power. Both have pros and cons, but in practice, the community would have to choose the top certain number to be eligible.
At the end of the day, how do you define “delegates who are highly motivated, skilled, and aligned with the DAO’s values”?
At the end of the day, how do you define “delegates who are highly motivated, skilled, and aligned with the DAO’s values”?
The aim with going with a non-ranking approach is to agree on a baseline for the type of delegate we want. In order to get the delegates we want we need to agree on the minimum performance standard which can be set via quantiative metrics identified in this proposal as well as the delegate incentive proposal. Anyone who is able to cross that baseline should included into the cohorot. This encourages everyone to strive to meet these minimum requirements as opposed to competing with each other to be on a ranking list. Over time this baseline can be increased thus, increasing the caliber of delegates who participate in such programs.
We are not certain how this proposal addresses the issue you raised. With the voting option for Tier 1 delegates, we are basically introducing two mechanisms to select delegates for the delegations.
The two tier model makes sense to me because we can create two baselines, higher and lower. Naturally more delegates will qualify for the latter than the prior and thus the larger cohort will receive less UNI per delegate as opposed to the cohort with stricter requirements.
This allows the DAO to
Hi everyone, in coordination with @Tane as well as other members, here's forum poll to select how Tier 1 Delegates will be selected. For context:
Top 6 delegates (“Tier 1 delegates”) will be chosen by voting or only by the objective criteria
Hi everyone, in coordination with @Tane as well as other members, here's forum poll to select how Tier 1 Delegates will be selected. For context:
Top 6 delegates (“Tier 1 delegates”) will be chosen by voting or only by the objective criteria
The forum poll is used to help get the consensus from the community, but in order to counter unlikely but possible case of new accounts created and spamming to sway the poll, only accounts that were created 24 hours before this poll would be counted. The poll will last till March 21st 10am EST.
[poll type=regular results=always public=true chartType=bar]
Thanks for your comments/feedback @Juanbug @Argonaut @Doo_StableLab @drllau_LexDAO @jengajojo @kpk @Boardroom @Avantgarde.
After our careful examinations of the feedback from the delegates and extensive discussions especially with the UAC members, we have revised the proposal with changes outlined below. We hope most of the critical feedback are addressed.
We thank @Tane for all the effort put into this. We had a great conversation at the Uniswap workshop in Denver about the proposal, and are happy to see it has made its way to the forum.
Generally speaking, we're for the idea of broadening the delegate set. Ideally, we should try to do more than simply extend it, but add specific expertise we believe the DAO is either lacking or could strengthen.
We thank @Tane for all the effort put into this. We had a great conversation at the Uniswap workshop in Denver about the proposal, and are happy to see it has made its way to the forum.
Generally speaking, we're for the idea of broadening the delegate set. Ideally, we should try to do more than simply extend it, but add specific expertise we believe the DAO is either lacking or could strengthen.
For example, how is "underrepresented" being defined here? Is it just the fact that these delegates hold a too small amount of voting power to be deemed influential in governance? Obviously if we need to increase delegations because we think we have quorum issues, that's fine and we get that. But we believe it would be more useful to categorise areas of expertise that the DAO could benefit from having/adding, and tie this "underrepresentation" to that and add delegates accordingly. We think permissionless tech and ethos is great in many ways, but we also think that DAOs should try to incorporate more meritocratic principles. At some point, and we are probably not there yet, just adding additional "proposal reviewers" may not bring much more value to a DAO.
We also agree with @Juanbug on the significance of proposal making. If anything, proposals at least provide some form of proxy for "real" contributions. Circling back to "underrepresentation", there seem to be this notion of "fairness" floating around where supposedly anyone should be able to join the paid delegate set as long as they show up for every vote and community call. While participation rates are clearly important, the fact is that anyone can do that. Getting a proposal through governance not only requires effort, but usually also a deeper understanding of Uniswap in one way or another. Having said that, it does become tricky in situations where delegates are pushing proposals as part of another committee or working group gig they are already getting paid for, and by extension of merely doing that job, they get to secure their place in the rewards program.
We would also like to see a cap on the final voting power that these newly selected delegates can gain as a result of this program. As we understand it, participation in the program will be filtered by setting a maximum amount of VP that anyone interested in applying cannot exceed. Selected delegates will then receive a fixed amount depending on which tier they’re selected for, and as we understand, this number may be as much as 2M VP. This means that if we have an initial max VP threshold of 1-1.5M VP, said delegates could end up with 3-3.5M VP via the program (these VP numbers are examples, but you get the point). We think this would be discouraging to many of the delegates that have been involved with Uniswap for years who are currently sitting at around 2.5M VP (including us), and don’t think it makes sense to fast-track new delegates to the same level of influence unless they bring unique knowledge and capacity that the DAO can benefit from. Instead, better to structure the program so that selected delegates can be topped up to a set bar of say 2m total VP, which would only require some minor Excel calculations to figure out. Maybe a time-centred variable could also be included to allow smaller delegates with a significant participation history in Uniswap to apply.
Just some of our thoughts at this point - thanks again @Tane and looking forward to see how the program develops!
Thanks for this post @Tane. We agree with your point that developer delegation is important, but it should be pushed as a separate initiative. @Juanbug made some good points, but we also agree with some of @Argonaut’s feedback. Delegates who spend several months as an active delegate before creating a proposal shouldn’t be excluded from being eligible. It shouldn’t be a limiting factor in getting selected here.
create a objective criteria which includes points for proposal writing as well as other stated metrics and proportionally allocate to all delegates based on their score, only excluding those who are proven sybills or have demonstrated other behaviours which conflict with Code of Conduct of the DAO
Thank you, @Tane, for structuring such a strong and valuable proposal—we really appreciate your work on this.
While we agree with most of the recommended approaches, we have some concerns regarding the selection of delegates who will receive the delegation.
Thank you, @Tane, for structuring such a strong and valuable proposal—we really appreciate your work on this.
While we agree with most of the recommended approaches, we have some concerns regarding the selection of delegates who will receive the delegation.
The election process for something like this could get tricky real quick if we don’t use more objective metrics or qualifications in my opinion (quickly becomes game of delegate politicing).
On this point, we agree with @Juanbug: applying objective metrics is essential to avoid political bias. The current weighted Snapshot vote tends to favour candidates with larger voting power (e.g. 1.4M vs 5k), as well as those with strong brands or connections. Basing the evaluation on more objective criteria would ensure a fairer distribution.
Regarding the UNI amount to include in the program, we believe that 15M represents a good balance. A 1M delegation per delegate meets the threshold for posting proposals on-chain. Hence, it empowers each selected delegate to perform their role effectively.
Thanks for the work put in to create this proposal @Tane. I agree with your approach of splitting the delegation into two cohorts.
I strongly support having an objective metrics based criteria in order to avoid the gameability associated with elections. However, having a cutoff and equal delegation does not seem fair to the delegates who have scored non-zero points as well as to the delegates who scored higher than others.
Thanks for the work put in to create this proposal @Tane. I agree with your approach of splitting the delegation into two cohorts.
I strongly support having an objective metrics based criteria in order to avoid the gameability associated with elections. However, having a cutoff and equal delegation does not seem fair to the delegates who have scored non-zero points as well as to the delegates who scored higher than others.
The proposal metric is an interesting challange, since delegates can form a 'cabal' of sorts and put each others' names in the proposal as authors. Then these same delegates can propose an incentive campaign based on metrics such as proposal writing to qualify themselves for such a campaign. We have seen this behaviour in the recent incentives cycle. On the other hand we do want delegates to come up with interesting proposals that move the DAO forward.
A good solution would be to proportionally allocate to all delegates who participate (and can prove they are not sybills). I.e. create a objective criteria which includes points for proposal writing as well as other stated metrics and proportionally allocate to all delegates based on their score, only excluding those who are proven sybills or have demonstrated other behaviours which conflict with Code of Conduct of the DAO.
Thanks for your feedback, @Argonaut @jengajojo @Gauntlet!
What is the issue with the number being higher than the original program? If they are active delegates who stay up to date with the ecosystem, vote, and participate in the forum, we don’t see a large number of delegates as a problem.
Rationale: 16 is too many compared to 7 in the original program. There are delegates that don’t need VP, and fewer delegates should be qualified for the treasury delegations. We believe 12 is a good middle-ground number.
Understanding that Gauntlet is a large delegate, we aim to communicate our concerns with the program below.
Firstly, treasury delegation aims to solve a real problem. Unfortunately, it complicates measuring eligibility since DIP participation doesn’t necessarily indicate value or competence and increases vulnerability to governance attacks while reducing accountability to UNI holders beyond the DAO.
Understanding that Gauntlet is a large delegate, we aim to communicate our concerns with the program below.
Firstly, treasury delegation aims to solve a real problem. Unfortunately, it complicates measuring eligibility since DIP participation doesn’t necessarily indicate value or competence and increases vulnerability to governance attacks while reducing accountability to UNI holders beyond the DAO.
More critically, this approach deviates from the original intent of delegation, where token holders empower representatives who mirror their interests. Treasury delegation effectively transfers influence from UNI holders to delegates themselves, who may have a misaligned incentive to preserve power. Therefore, it is a requirement that any delegated treasury UNI has a programmable and automated end-period for delegation.
This broader issue is compounded by two dynamics: widespread apathy among UNI holders toward Uniswap governance and a misalignment between UNI holders' interests and those of the DAO.
Have we analyzed organic delegation data from active delegates in round 1 to fix these dynamics? Perhaps a "matching program"—pairing organic delegation with treasury UNI—might better align UNI holders’ interests, bolster delegation, and resolve the quorum issue.
An even better approach would be to explore the re-engagement of active UNI holders post-DUNA and Fee Switch, including the potential for UNI staking and governance alignment that motivates UNI holders to be more directly engaged in delegation and DAO governance.
To summarize, we view treasury delegation as a band-aid solution to a much larger problem, but one that may be necessary to ensure smooth operations in the short-medium term.
Of course, we appreciate all the hard work by @Tane and others to bring this proposal to its current state.
Thanks for posting an update on this @Tane
While selecting the top 'x' delegates based on scores is an improvement over simply electing the top 'x' delegates, this approach still raises some concerns:
Thanks for posting an update on this @Tane
While selecting the top 'x' delegates based on scores is an improvement over simply electing the top 'x' delegates, this approach still raises some concerns:
The number 'x' seems to be LARPed without a clear rationale
Instead of setting a clear, pre-agreed standard for what makes a delegate "good enough," this method ranks delegates and includes those who may not meet the desired quality. The threshold for inclusion is determined by the last delegate who makes the cut, which means the standard is flexible and potentially too low. By focusing on the top 'x' delegates "we can get" rather than the top delegates "we want," we risk settling for less-than-ideal candidates. This approach doesn’t encourage us to aim higher or attract better delegates who might be out there.
Ranking creates a zero sum dynamic with winners and loosers which demotivates delegates who are highly motivated, skilled, and aligned with the DAO’s values.
Instead, why don't we create two tiers of eligibility criteria and equally divide between delegates who simply fulfill the criteria in each tier instead of ranking them?
This is more of a philosophical debate, but to be honest, we don’t think the main role of a delegate should be to create proposals. Is it a nice-to-have? If they’re good at it, then yes. But the primary responsibility of a delegate should be to carefully assess whether a proposal benefits the DAO and doesn’t pose any risks, while also ensuring the DAO isn’t exploited by other delegates for personal gain.
To do this effectively, a delegate needs to spend hours reviewing proposals and staying up to date with developments in the ecosystem, which is difficult without some form of compensation to cover the costs. A bot would never be useful for this task, or at least, it wouldn’t be a good idea to rely solely on bots for monitoring.
Thanks for your comments/feedback @Juanbug @Argonaut @Doo_StableLab @drllau_LexDAO @jengajojo @kpk @Boardroom @Avantgarde.
After our careful examinations of the feedback from the delegates and extensive discussions especially with the UAC members, we have revised the proposal with changes outlined below. We hope most of the critical feedback are addressed.
We are planning to make final adjustments based on the poll and submit the first Snapshot proposal early next week.
Adding proposal requirements would prevent new delegates from participating or force them to submit low-quality proposals just to meet the criteria. We believe strong proposals like this one from Tane require time and effort, making it challenging for new delegates to fulfill this requirement.
We still believe that making proposals is a critical contribution to the DAO and qualified activities for the delegates who are worth receiving the incentives and treasury delegations. Permissionless-ness is a virtue that we promote and admire and any delegates (new or OG) can make proposals and valuable contributions to the DAO.
we believe it would be more useful to categorise areas of expertise that the DAO could benefit from having/adding, and tie this “underrepresentation” to that and add delegates accordingly.
This is a very interesting point and something the DAO should consider to design the future delegate related programs!
Thanks for this post @Tane. We agree with your point that developer delegation is important, but it should be pushed as a separate initiative. @Juanbug made some good points, but we also agree with some of @Argonaut’s feedback. Delegates who spend several months as an active delegate before creating a proposal shouldn’t be excluded from being eligible. It shouldn’t be a limiting factor in getting selected here.
create a objective criteria which includes points for proposal writing as well as other stated metrics and proportionally allocate to all delegates based on their score, only excluding those who are proven sybills or have demonstrated other behaviours which conflict with Code of Conduct of the DAO
Completely agree, this seems like a good middle-ground.
The “popularity contest” problem is a difficult one to solve. It might best be addressed by simply reminding delegates not to discriminate based on whether or not the delegate votes in favor of or against certain proposals - encourage objectivity.
Thanks for your feedback, @Argonaut @jengajojo @Gauntlet!
What is the issue with the number being higher than the original program? If they are active delegates who stay up to date with the ecosystem, vote, and participate in the forum, we don’t see a large number of delegates as a problem.
The number of to-be-selected delegates is actually higher (almost double) and as said, we believe 12 is a good middle-ground number at this point. It's reasonable not to be in hurry to increase the number of delegates to be trusted with the treasury delegations too much.
We agree with this view, but still, we would end up setting an arbitrary number for delegates anyway. As discussed with Avantgarde, we would like to continue to discuss how we attract delegates that we "want" through the programs with you and other delegates in the future.
Instead, why don’t we create two tiers of eligibility criteria and equally divide between delegates who simply fulfill the criteria in each tier instead of ranking them?
We are not certain how this proposal addresses the issue you raised. With the voting option for Tier 1 delegates, we are basically introducing two mechanisms to select delegates for the delegations.
Have we analyzed organic delegation data from active delegates in round 1 to fix these dynamics? Perhaps a “matching program”—pairing organic delegation with treasury UNI—might better align UNI holders’ interests, bolster delegation, and resolve the quorum issue.
We haven't looked into these data, but it would be interesting to do so. A matching program is also an interesting idea too. However, as we have seen struggles to activate (re)delegations in various DAOs (example cases like the one with Arbitrum), it would be challenging to do so in the Uniswap governance too. As you mentioned, the governance staking will change the situations around this and we are very much looking forward to seeing how the dynamics change.
To summarize, we view treasury delegation as a band-aid solution to a much larger problem, but one that may be necessary to ensure smooth operations in the short-medium term.
We are completely in agreement with this view, and we promise that we will revisit how to approach the treasury delegations in a year.
Rationale: 16 is too many compared to 7 in the original program. There are delegates that don’t need VP, and fewer delegates should be qualified for the treasury delegations. We believe 12 is a good middle-ground number.
What is the issue with the number being higher than the original program? If they are active delegates who stay up to date with the ecosystem, vote, and participate in the forum, we don’t see a large number of delegates as a problem. On the contrary, we believe it would be highly valuable for the DAO, more participants dedicated to adding value to Uniswap.
This is more of a philosophical debate, but to be honest, we don’t think the main role of a delegate should be to create proposals. Is it a nice-to-have? If they’re good at it, then yes. But the primary responsibility of a delegate should be to carefully assess whether a proposal benefits the DAO and doesn’t pose any risks, while also ensuring the DAO isn’t exploited by other delegates for personal gain.
To do this effectively, a delegate needs to spend hours reviewing proposals and staying up to date with developments in the ecosystem, which is difficult without some form of compensation to cover the costs. A bot would never be useful for this task, or at least, it wouldn’t be a good idea to rely solely on bots for monitoring.
An active delegate with low voting power can still play a crucial role by flagging issues in proposals and applying pressure on other delegates to act and push for modifications.
The challenge here is that you can’t always determine whether a delegate who voted for a proposal truly analyzed it thoroughly or possesses the necessary knowledge of the crypto ecosystem to make an informed decision. We believe this is what you were referring to when comparing active delegates with low voting power to bots.
Perhaps, in some programs, the DAO should require delegates to hold UNI, not just delegated UNI, but their own acquired UNI. This would ensure they have skin in the game while also acting as a deterrent against Sybil attacks.
We don’t see a better way to distinguish bots from genuinely engaged delegates without introducing subjective elements, as seen in the Arbitrum delegate program, where the program administrator rates delegate comments.
Thanks Tane and the team for proposal. It's a good overview of ongoing discussions and several parts will need to be clarified before the next stage.
Each method has a trade off but do agree that objective method is ideal. We did have election process during the initial phase to decide top delegates who receive delegation till they have enough voting power to submit proposals. And other remaining amount was split among others. However, this was subjective even though the program was successful.
Thanks Tane and the team for proposal. It's a good overview of ongoing discussions and several parts will need to be clarified before the next stage.
Each method has a trade off but do agree that objective method is ideal. We did have election process during the initial phase to decide top delegates who receive delegation till they have enough voting power to submit proposals. And other remaining amount was split among others. However, this was subjective even though the program was successful.
Do want to note that delegation doesn't necessarily have to be equal. And for those who receive less can still coordinate with those who have enough voting power to put the proposals to Offchain and eventually onchain vote.
Instead, the number of proposals could be used as a way to boost delegate rewards or, in the case of this proposal, to receive more UNI tokens for delegation
Agreed
Instead, the number of proposals could be used as a way to boost delegate rewards or, in the case of this proposal, to receive more UNI tokens for delegation
Agreed
We agree that voting alone can’t be the only factor, as bots could exploit the system. However, after reviewing the results from the current Delegate Reward Initiative (Cycle 3), did you find any bot that submitted an application?
We agree that delegates that are compensated should add value to the DAO and put in time and effort. Tane spent several months as a delegate before creating this proposal, and it’s their first one. Our point was that adding these restrictions in a way that completely blocks participation prevents new delegates from even having a chance. Instead, the number of proposals could be used as a way to boost delegate rewards or, in the case of this proposal, to receive more UNI tokens for delegation, but not as a key factor that prevents delegates without proposals to participate.
We agree that voting alone can’t be the only factor, as bots could exploit the system. However, after reviewing the results from the current Delegate Reward Initiative (Cycle 3), did you find any bot that submitted an application? We think it’s a valid concern to raise, but it’s also worth considering whether this restriction unintentionally prevents new, active voting delegates from participating rather than solely targeting bots.
The number of proposals used as a metric in delegate evaluations makes it very difficult for new delegates to even have a chance to participate. This was evident in the Delegate Reward Initiative (Cycle 3), where a delegate with perfect on-chain and off-chain voting participation over the last six months, along with perfect attendance at community calls, did not qualify for the program simply because they had no points in the proposal section.
The number of proposals used as a metric in delegate evaluations makes it very difficult for new delegates to even have a chance to participate. This was evident in the Delegate Reward Initiative (Cycle 3), where a delegate with perfect on-chain and off-chain voting participation over the last six months, along with perfect attendance at community calls, did not qualify for the program simply because they had no points in the proposal section.
Just voting yes or no doesn't warrant more delegation in my opinion. There's probably hundreds of bots that do that already.
Adding proposal requirements would prevent new delegates from participating or force them to submit low-quality proposals just to meet the criteria. We believe strong proposals like this one from Tane require time and effort, making it challenging for new delegates to fulfill this requirement.
That's the whole point, well thought out proposals should let you have a greater chance of deserving delegation/rewards. I don't understand how requiring "time and effort" to get delegation is a negative.
We believe this proposal is of very high quality and well thought out, and we want to thank Tane for drafting it. We agree with most of @juanbug’s feedback, except for the part about considering proposals. The number of proposals used as a metric in delegate evaluations makes it very difficult for new delegates to even have a chance to participate. This was evident in the Delegate Reward Initiative (Cycle 3), where a delegate with perfect on-chain and off-chain voting participation over the last six months, along with perfect attendance at community calls, did not qualify for the program simply because they had no points in the proposal section.
Adding proposal requirements would prevent new delegates from participating or force them to submit low-quality proposals just to meet the criteria. We believe strong proposals like this one from Tane require time and effort, making it challenging for new delegates to fulfill this requirement.
We believe this proposal is of very high quality and well thought out, and we want to thank Tane for drafting it. We agree with most of @juanbug’s feedback, except for the part about considering proposals. The number of proposals used as a metric in delegate evaluations makes it very difficult for new delegates to even have a chance to participate. This was evident in the Delegate Reward Initiative (Cycle 3), where a delegate with perfect on-chain and off-chain voting participation over the last six months, along with perfect attendance at community calls, did not qualify for the program simply because they had no points in the proposal section.
Adding proposal requirements would prevent new delegates from participating or force them to submit low-quality proposals just to meet the criteria. We believe strong proposals like this one from Tane require time and effort, making it challenging for new delegates to fulfill this requirement.
Regarding our feedback on the proposal, we’ve been thinking about a potential issue in the delegate selection process, but to be honest, we haven’t found a clear solution yet. To be among the top eight delegates, one must be voted in by their peers, which presents a problem. This system puts delegates who frequently flag issues in proposals and vote against certain initiatives in a difficult position. We’ve seen a new delegate consistently raise concerns about multiple proposals, and we believe their work is valuable for the DAO. However, the current proposal favors delegates who can attend physical meetings, network with others, and vote in favor of their peers’ proposals.
It would be great to find a way to ensure that delegates who are less popular among their peers due to their critical stance on proposals are still considered. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to come up with a viable way to incorporate this into the proposal, it may be an impossible challenge to address.
Thanks for the proposal @Tane!
Thanks for the proposal @Tane!
A couple of other points:
Have we analyzed organic delegation data from active delegates in round 1 to fix these dynamics?
Have we analyzed organic delegation data from active delegates in round 1 to fix these dynamics?
There's genuine no significant increase in delegation for active delegates. And this is especially pressing as many delegates as well as other stakeholders have been in conversation to trying to encourage more holders to delegate. But both due to legal and logistics aspect, there's no interest in delegating nor re delegating. This was why the program was created in the first place and as time goes, DAO governance, not just Uniswap, but across other DAOs is seeing even less delegation and re delegation.
An even better approach would be to explore the re-engagement of active UNI holders post-DUNA and Fee Switch, including the potential for UNI staking and governance alignment that motivates UNI holders to be more directly engaged in delegation and DAO governance.
Therefore, it is a requirement that any delegated treasury UNI has a programmable and automated end-period for delegation.
Ranking creates a zero sum dynamic with winners and loosers which demotivates delegates who are highly motivated, skilled, and aligned with the DAO’s values.
Thanks for your comments/feedback @Juanbug @Argonaut @Doo_StableLab @drllau_LexDAO @jengajojo @kpk @Boardroom @Avantgarde.
After our careful examinations of the feedback from the delegates and extensive discussions especially with the UAC members, we have revised the proposal with changes outlined below. We hope most of the critical feedback are addressed.
We are planning to make final adjustments based on the poll and submit the first Snapshot proposal early next week.
Adding proposal requirements would prevent new delegates from participating or force them to submit low-quality proposals just to meet the criteria. We believe strong proposals like this one from Tane require time and effort, making it challenging for new delegates to fulfill this requirement.
We still believe that making proposals is a critical contribution to the DAO and qualified activities for the delegates who are worth receiving the incentives and treasury delegations. Permissionless-ness is a virtue that we promote and admire and any delegates (new or OG) can make proposals and valuable contributions to the DAO.
we believe it would be more useful to categorise areas of expertise that the DAO could benefit from having/adding, and tie this “underrepresentation” to that and add delegates accordingly.
This is a very interesting point and something the DAO should consider to design the future delegate related programs!
Thanks for this post @Tane. We agree with your point that developer delegation is important, but it should be pushed as a separate initiative. @Juanbug made some good points, but we also agree with some of @Argonaut’s feedback. Delegates who spend several months as an active delegate before creating a proposal shouldn’t be excluded from being eligible. It shouldn’t be a limiting factor in getting selected here.
create a objective criteria which includes points for proposal writing as well as other stated metrics and proportionally allocate to all delegates based on their score, only excluding those who are proven sybills or have demonstrated other behaviours which conflict with Code of Conduct of the DAO
Completely agree, this seems like a good middle-ground.
The “popularity contest” problem is a difficult one to solve. It might best be addressed by simply reminding delegates not to discriminate based on whether or not the delegate votes in favor of or against certain proposals - encourage objectivity.
Thanks for your feedback, @Argonaut @jengajojo @Gauntlet!
What is the issue with the number being higher than the original program? If they are active delegates who stay up to date with the ecosystem, vote, and participate in the forum, we don’t see a large number of delegates as a problem.
The number of to-be-selected delegates is actually higher (almost double) and as said, we believe 12 is a good middle-ground number at this point. It's reasonable not to be in hurry to increase the number of delegates to be trusted with the treasury delegations too much.
We agree with this view, but still, we would end up setting an arbitrary number for delegates anyway. As discussed with Avantgarde, we would like to continue to discuss how we attract delegates that we "want" through the programs with you and other delegates in the future.
Instead, why don’t we create two tiers of eligibility criteria and equally divide between delegates who simply fulfill the criteria in each tier instead of ranking them?
We are not certain how this proposal addresses the issue you raised. With the voting option for Tier 1 delegates, we are basically introducing two mechanisms to select delegates for the delegations.
Have we analyzed organic delegation data from active delegates in round 1 to fix these dynamics? Perhaps a “matching program”—pairing organic delegation with treasury UNI—might better align UNI holders’ interests, bolster delegation, and resolve the quorum issue.
We haven't looked into these data, but it would be interesting to do so. A matching program is also an interesting idea too. However, as we have seen struggles to activate (re)delegations in various DAOs (example cases like the one with Arbitrum), it would be challenging to do so in the Uniswap governance too. As you mentioned, the governance staking will change the situations around this and we are very much looking forward to seeing how the dynamics change.
To summarize, we view treasury delegation as a band-aid solution to a much larger problem, but one that may be necessary to ensure smooth operations in the short-medium term.
We are completely in agreement with this view, and we promise that we will revisit how to approach the treasury delegations in a year.
Rationale: 16 is too many compared to 7 in the original program. There are delegates that don’t need VP, and fewer delegates should be qualified for the treasury delegations. We believe 12 is a good middle-ground number.
What is the issue with the number being higher than the original program? If they are active delegates who stay up to date with the ecosystem, vote, and participate in the forum, we don’t see a large number of delegates as a problem. On the contrary, we believe it would be highly valuable for the DAO, more participants dedicated to adding value to Uniswap.
This is more of a philosophical debate, but to be honest, we don’t think the main role of a delegate should be to create proposals. Is it a nice-to-have? If they’re good at it, then yes. But the primary responsibility of a delegate should be to carefully assess whether a proposal benefits the DAO and doesn’t pose any risks, while also ensuring the DAO isn’t exploited by other delegates for personal gain.
To do this effectively, a delegate needs to spend hours reviewing proposals and staying up to date with developments in the ecosystem, which is difficult without some form of compensation to cover the costs. A bot would never be useful for this task, or at least, it wouldn’t be a good idea to rely solely on bots for monitoring.
An active delegate with low voting power can still play a crucial role by flagging issues in proposals and applying pressure on other delegates to act and push for modifications.
The challenge here is that you can’t always determine whether a delegate who voted for a proposal truly analyzed it thoroughly or possesses the necessary knowledge of the crypto ecosystem to make an informed decision. We believe this is what you were referring to when comparing active delegates with low voting power to bots.
Perhaps, in some programs, the DAO should require delegates to hold UNI, not just delegated UNI, but their own acquired UNI. This would ensure they have skin in the game while also acting as a deterrent against Sybil attacks.
We don’t see a better way to distinguish bots from genuinely engaged delegates without introducing subjective elements, as seen in the Arbitrum delegate program, where the program administrator rates delegate comments.
Thanks Tane and the team for proposal. It's a good overview of ongoing discussions and several parts will need to be clarified before the next stage.
Each method has a trade off but do agree that objective method is ideal. We did have election process during the initial phase to decide top delegates who receive delegation till they have enough voting power to submit proposals. And other remaining amount was split among others. However, this was subjective even though the program was successful.
Thanks Tane and the team for proposal. It's a good overview of ongoing discussions and several parts will need to be clarified before the next stage.
Each method has a trade off but do agree that objective method is ideal. We did have election process during the initial phase to decide top delegates who receive delegation till they have enough voting power to submit proposals. And other remaining amount was split among others. However, this was subjective even though the program was successful.
Do want to note that delegation doesn't necessarily have to be equal. And for those who receive less can still coordinate with those who have enough voting power to put the proposals to Offchain and eventually onchain vote.
Instead, the number of proposals could be used as a way to boost delegate rewards or, in the case of this proposal, to receive more UNI tokens for delegation
Agreed
Instead, the number of proposals could be used as a way to boost delegate rewards or, in the case of this proposal, to receive more UNI tokens for delegation
Agreed
We agree that voting alone can’t be the only factor, as bots could exploit the system. However, after reviewing the results from the current Delegate Reward Initiative (Cycle 3), did you find any bot that submitted an application?
We agree that delegates that are compensated should add value to the DAO and put in time and effort. Tane spent several months as a delegate before creating this proposal, and it’s their first one. Our point was that adding these restrictions in a way that completely blocks participation prevents new delegates from even having a chance. Instead, the number of proposals could be used as a way to boost delegate rewards or, in the case of this proposal, to receive more UNI tokens for delegation, but not as a key factor that prevents delegates without proposals to participate.
We agree that voting alone can’t be the only factor, as bots could exploit the system. However, after reviewing the results from the current Delegate Reward Initiative (Cycle 3), did you find any bot that submitted an application? We think it’s a valid concern to raise, but it’s also worth considering whether this restriction unintentionally prevents new, active voting delegates from participating rather than solely targeting bots.
The number of proposals used as a metric in delegate evaluations makes it very difficult for new delegates to even have a chance to participate. This was evident in the Delegate Reward Initiative (Cycle 3), where a delegate with perfect on-chain and off-chain voting participation over the last six months, along with perfect attendance at community calls, did not qualify for the program simply because they had no points in the proposal section.
The number of proposals used as a metric in delegate evaluations makes it very difficult for new delegates to even have a chance to participate. This was evident in the Delegate Reward Initiative (Cycle 3), where a delegate with perfect on-chain and off-chain voting participation over the last six months, along with perfect attendance at community calls, did not qualify for the program simply because they had no points in the proposal section.
Just voting yes or no doesn't warrant more delegation in my opinion. There's probably hundreds of bots that do that already.
Adding proposal requirements would prevent new delegates from participating or force them to submit low-quality proposals just to meet the criteria. We believe strong proposals like this one from Tane require time and effort, making it challenging for new delegates to fulfill this requirement.
That's the whole point, well thought out proposals should let you have a greater chance of deserving delegation/rewards. I don't understand how requiring "time and effort" to get delegation is a negative.
We believe this proposal is of very high quality and well thought out, and we want to thank Tane for drafting it. We agree with most of @juanbug’s feedback, except for the part about considering proposals. The number of proposals used as a metric in delegate evaluations makes it very difficult for new delegates to even have a chance to participate. This was evident in the Delegate Reward Initiative (Cycle 3), where a delegate with perfect on-chain and off-chain voting participation over the last six months, along with perfect attendance at community calls, did not qualify for the program simply because they had no points in the proposal section.
Adding proposal requirements would prevent new delegates from participating or force them to submit low-quality proposals just to meet the criteria. We believe strong proposals like this one from Tane require time and effort, making it challenging for new delegates to fulfill this requirement.
We believe this proposal is of very high quality and well thought out, and we want to thank Tane for drafting it. We agree with most of @juanbug’s feedback, except for the part about considering proposals. The number of proposals used as a metric in delegate evaluations makes it very difficult for new delegates to even have a chance to participate. This was evident in the Delegate Reward Initiative (Cycle 3), where a delegate with perfect on-chain and off-chain voting participation over the last six months, along with perfect attendance at community calls, did not qualify for the program simply because they had no points in the proposal section.
Adding proposal requirements would prevent new delegates from participating or force them to submit low-quality proposals just to meet the criteria. We believe strong proposals like this one from Tane require time and effort, making it challenging for new delegates to fulfill this requirement.
Regarding our feedback on the proposal, we’ve been thinking about a potential issue in the delegate selection process, but to be honest, we haven’t found a clear solution yet. To be among the top eight delegates, one must be voted in by their peers, which presents a problem. This system puts delegates who frequently flag issues in proposals and vote against certain initiatives in a difficult position. We’ve seen a new delegate consistently raise concerns about multiple proposals, and we believe their work is valuable for the DAO. However, the current proposal favors delegates who can attend physical meetings, network with others, and vote in favor of their peers’ proposals.
It would be great to find a way to ensure that delegates who are less popular among their peers due to their critical stance on proposals are still considered. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to come up with a viable way to incorporate this into the proposal, it may be an impossible challenge to address.
Thanks for the proposal @Tane!
Thanks for the proposal @Tane!
A couple of other points:
Have we analyzed organic delegation data from active delegates in round 1 to fix these dynamics?
Have we analyzed organic delegation data from active delegates in round 1 to fix these dynamics?
There's genuine no significant increase in delegation for active delegates. And this is especially pressing as many delegates as well as other stakeholders have been in conversation to trying to encourage more holders to delegate. But both due to legal and logistics aspect, there's no interest in delegating nor re delegating. This was why the program was created in the first place and as time goes, DAO governance, not just Uniswap, but across other DAOs is seeing even less delegation and re delegation.
An even better approach would be to explore the re-engagement of active UNI holders post-DUNA and Fee Switch, including the potential for UNI staking and governance alignment that motivates UNI holders to be more directly engaged in delegation and DAO governance.
Therefore, it is a requirement that any delegated treasury UNI has a programmable and automated end-period for delegation.
Ranking creates a zero sum dynamic with winners and loosers which demotivates delegates who are highly motivated, skilled, and aligned with the DAO’s values.
