As one of the top external delegates for the past year or so, I am inclined to vote NO on this proposal.
tl;dr -
Stewards should be missionaries; I worry this proposal may attract the mercenaries.
Here’s my thinking…
Do I want to see delegates take their job seriously? Yes.
Do I think delegates should have more skin in the game? Yes.
Do I want delegates to be accountable to making smart, principled, independent decisions? Yes.
Do I think delegates should put in the necessary time to actually add value? Yes.
Do I think there’s an opportunity cost to that time, especially for serious people? Yes.
All “yes”…
However, I am worried that paying delegates will attract first and foremost people who want compensation, as opposed to what’s best for Gitcoin / GTC. The important question to me is how to attract the right people to get involved in stewarding. If compensation is a big blocker to this, we should resolve it and offer compensation. But I’m not convinced it is…
When I first joined as a steward, there was a larger group of external stewards who received some monthly compensation. Most if not all were airdrop recipients with significant GTC holdings. There was also some automated reporting using DAOStewards … it felt much more professional. @MathildaDV describes this above.
But over time, those stewards moved on and the pool became shallower. Why will this be different?
Coincidentally, I came across this excellent post which @deltajuliet shared in a different group chat:
I think we need something similar for rebooting governance, eventually getting to a pool of super-contributors as stewards, and motivating them accordingly.