I would like to add my two cents on this subject here after our conversation in spaces today.
The badge holder process that optimism has for their governance is definitely an experiment as the rest of the governance has been in the early stages.
The recent addition of badge holders has also been a part of some controversial discussions within the forums to say the very least over the past 6 months.
Forum posts regarding conflict of interest & undisclosed financial interest arose from the governance. I searched for the term “Badge Holder” and this is what appears to stand out the most.
So this is something that is very important to be aware of when thinking 
of a similar concept within the process of decentralization for Gitcoin.
”Badge Holder” Search 
Results
With the recent incident a security council is also being discussed here.
There are some things that can be learned from a committee of badge holders especially with the current gitcoin citizens program.
Many members of the ecosystem have already aligned their values with these grant opportunities.
Here’s what a badge holder election might look like.
- A nomination process for the election of badge holders of existing members in the governance who hold “X” amount of GTC could then be put into a proposal forum here.
Usually this is a certain percent of the total supply of tokens for governance.
Recommendations could also be made through a separate forum post from the community each with their own template.
Example:
(A) - Delegate nomination
(B) - Community nomination
- A Citizen would then need to opt-in to the role of a “DAO Guardian” which would become a significant commitment to the time spent working on the following tasks per week.
- Review transfers for budget decisions.
- Assist in Grant stack round management.
- Vote
on proposals in governance. - Volunteer for governance calls on spaces.
- Active participation in discord conversations.
- Create media related to GTC & Public Goods.
- Each season a new round of Badge Holders are nominated.
Existing badge holders have the ability to distribute a badge to (1) one 
new member who is an existing Gitcoin citizen in each round.
Every round of badge holders that are nominated then become elected by a final vote from the gitcoin community. To ensure that the best interests for the entire ecosystem are up to the standards of what these highly dedicated individuals are willing to accomplish.
- Some other details may be needed such as a UI dashboard to highlight the badge holders after individuals opt-in as well as a budget for the “DAO Guardians” from season to season.
This budget could also be distributed in a retroactive manner to ensure that any impact is made for the collective prior to any compensation being distributed. Utilizing the UI dashboard to link 
& update all contributions to Gitcoin along the way.
@Jimi I hope this gives you a good idea of what could be accomplished in order to make the process fair. As we have seen from the OP Gov experimentation as a case study. 
The idea of badge holders may need to come with a certain prerequisite to be an existing member of the community that has added value prior to taking the role of a badge holder.
The scalable solution that this provides season to season has a very strong growth pattern for tackling more complex issues & maintaining the different gears 
of governance that sometimes need a thorough analysis to understand how we can increase our productivity and retention rate of active delegates.
At the same time the lines of communication between each team whether it is the Gitcoin foundation members, developers, council review members, round managers, delegates, grantees, donors and community members all need to remain as open and streamlined with transparency as possible. This type of coordination effort will help to facilitate decentralized governance.
For these two things I recommend the delegates dashboard that is coming soon for all of the GTC grantees out there built by Karma HQ which we have helped to Beta test with.
As well as Curia dashboard for tracking of delegates participation within the Gitcoin ecosystem.
I hope this all helps and has added some value to the conversation here for the upcoming seasons and future of Gitcoin.
I am very excited to see how we all grow together! 