Very cool to see this information and thought process shared publicly! Random technical question: do you manage your delegations by simply splitting your GTC across accounts and setting the delegate for each account?
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yes, that is right. thats the only way we could figure out how to do it.
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This is great!
I would like you to think about:
@DisruptionJoe: Can bring in expertise from multiple angles
@sidcode: Can bring in the insights from the broader web3 world to boost overall gitcoinDAO
@tjayrush: Can bring in technical depth to a greater extent in the decision-making process
based on some minimal interaction, I think they can prove to be helpful in streamlining and alignment to essential intent required while voting (I am not aware if they are stewards or not yet)
@brent
@emudoteth
@lthrift
Thoughts: To increase passport utility, you (any steward who wants to delegate) can base another small percentage on passport scores. There are a few more I would like to add to the list, but cannot due to less interaction, or they being new to gitcoin. I was thinking if a very small percentage, can be allocated to a combined set of such individuals somehow for deeper discussions, so you get to have data next time you are deciding this, but next time for now.
Maybe moonshot can whip up something! 
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I am glad Kish mentioned small allocations. If decentralization and distributed power is important shouldnāt the goal be wide not deep? I wonder if delegating to folks that are already big GTC holders aligns with our stated decentralization goal.
That said, I also support Disruption Joe, Lindsay and Kevin O. gaining delegations. Iād prefer to see active folks in the dao getting delegations than industry superstars that might not have the time to participate in, or understand Gitcoin Dao activity.
I wonder why folks donāt delegate smaller amounts to more people? I understand there are a few manual steps involved. Maybe it is a hassle. Iād love to see a bunch of 1% delegations used to further decentralize the power base. Afaik the delegation can be reversed at any time. Maybe those seeking to delegate could get some recommendations from workstream leadās and these folks get 1% or even 0.1%.
Without this understanding, we risk delegations going to a small group people, probably those with the strongest ties to the original Gitcoin company or product. But we gotta start somewhere. There are so many factors that might make a Steward important.
Will any memeapalooza champions get delegations? What about using steward health cards in your evaluations? What about those folks that travelled to live events and worked the booth? What about those folks with the most CVs (like software Eng?) Or the most time on Gitcoin.co? Or using the leaderboard to evaluate grant participation? Or overall txs on Gitcoin.co? So many possibilities!
Overall it is wonderful to see delegations happening! Huge gratitude goes out to anyone taking the time to evaluate and delegate to another. Do a few small ones please! I was stuck without any GTC for a long time as a Steward which meant I wasnāt able to vote in the early days of the Dao. Purchased GTC didnāt count. So Iāve been trying to accumulate delegations for many months (thanks Kris for the guidance!).
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FWIW i put forward my criteria for how ill be updating my delegations here in the OP.
To further update that & extend my thinking:
Iām primarily focused on seeing Grants 2.0 shipped + reaching product market fit (so we can move the platform from centralized to decentralized + take advantage of the modular/forkable nature of Grants 2.0). This means delegating to people who are performing as A players and are making G2.0 happen (as well as those who are helping people in the wrong roles evolve forward to find a new fit. After that, and as the bottom is in on the bear market vibes I plan to majorly change my delegations to decentralize as much power as possible in a broad way (a good target for this = no one has over 10% of my delegated GTC).
here is the latest grants 2.0 roadmap timeline that im aware of, which should give you a sense of how this will evolve over time
That said, I am starting to broaden the delegations already but weāve got to build that muscle. Iāve actually only gotten 6 suggestions from the community about who to spread delegations to so far. Iād appreciate more suggestions via this form!
there is a larger question/discussion about the tradeoff space here. i posted some twitter threads about the tradeoff space between action + decentralization here as well.
Iām open to feedback on the above thinking. This post is intended for transparency purposes + is the start of a convo not the end.
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Frankly Iām stunned by the low submissions. It is (maybe) unfortunate but politics is part of dao life. If folks ignore this our governance efforts may be hindered and biased. If someone cares about this Dao I implore you to speak up and make some recommendations via the form. If someone really cares about the Dao recommend yourself too though I suggest adding a little proof 
āā¦the tyranny of structurelessness.ā
Wowā¦any dao-person can appreciate the powerful accuracy of this condition, I bet. Like a deer frozen in the headlights a dao can be paralyzed by fundamentalists. There is an alternative future in which we ālose the good in pursuit of the perfectāā¦but Iām confident we can avoid this. A small centralization debt is probably acceptable to me, in the right ways. (Eg Stewards vote to hire a professional reputable business coach and consider implementing their suggestions).
Really glad to know small delegations may be forthcoming, or, are at least recognized as important. 
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Hey @owocki - are you interested in revising this again? 
I would love to see some of the new Stewards who were elected to our council receive more delegation.
I am also going to be revising my delegations and I can post those soon too
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I originally started doing these threads before passing the torch because I felt like being involved in CSDO/DAO leadership from May 2021 - Summer 2022 it was important to be transparent. And I wanted to invite a convo about decentralizing delegations.
When I started composing these threads, I had hoped:
- that other token holders would follow my lead and begin posting their delegations, and that has not happened (with the exception of you once or twice @kyle ) .
- that I would have more engagement in the cause of decentralizing my delegations via submissions to this form or an essential intent around decentralization, but that has also not happened (again with a few small exceptions).
Now that Iām (1) not involved in CSDO or DAO leadership as of summer 2022, (2) there was limited engagement on my invitation to help me decentralize my delegations, (3) no decentralization essential intent was ever introduced, and (4) other GTC holders have not followed suit, I was not planning on continuing these threads. Would it be different this time? Will I be met half way this time? Open to changing my course of action - especially if my effort is met by efforts of othersā¦
Another path forward might be to have a dune dashboard that just shows how everyone is delegating.
How is the stewards council going? Last update Iāve seen was from about 2-3 months ago on this thread.
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I am a 1/2 time contributor who has been at Gitcoin since August. But I think a lot about governance and here are my observations:
- Gitcoin voting is centralized. Four, 5 or 6 of the largest stewards deliver >50% of any given vote.
- Gitcoin token governance is limited to budget proposals four times per year. On occasion, there are other proposals made, but they are limited to about 1 or 2 per quarter.
- We recruit, onboard, and inform stewards what is happening, but we donāt ask our stewards to help make decisions. And when we do, their vote is - provocatively stated - kind of meaningless.
- For example, I am a steward. I have bought or earned each of my 21K tokens I vote with, and my tokens earn me 0.01% of share of voice when compared to just one of the largest delegates. Why do I bother voting?
Is any of this viewed as a problem for Gitcoin? I do not know. @owocki, to your point there was little pull on your ādecentralizationā prompt back in August, and my efforts to nudge us towards decentralization have had little traction. Might be that everyone is comfortable with the patina of decentralization, maybe no one realizes how centralized Gitcoin voting is, or might be we are so heads down-focused that itās just not a priority.
I find it kind of sad. But curious to see what others think. There are several low lift solutions to this issue - my question is - does anyone care?
We are moving - too early to tell if we are going to make an impact but here are the notes from meeting #2.
Agenda & Pre Reading: [link]
Meeting notes: (link)
Recording of the meeting: (link)
Meeting Feedback & Action steps: (link)
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I posted extensively about this here:
and a quarter later here
My view is that the lack of protocol/market fit + lack of sustainability of Gitcoin are larger and more imminent threats. There are already essential intents covering those problems, but Iām unsure what progress has been made against them.
As someone who has been outside the DAO for about 6 months now, itās really really hard to see the progress being made/roadmap for making progress from the outside. And even if I could understand the progress, the workstreams are relatively ungovernable because they are large, centralized, monolithic, and there is no alternative to each workstreams governance proposal each quarter. This kind of reminds me how the old product was unmaintainable because it was so large, centralized, and monolithic and there was no alternative to it. Because of this, most of my delegates are insiders who can understand the nuances of each proposal. I think Iāve seen some action towards more decentralized thin workstreams or pods, maybe that will create some change.
If people think steward centralization or workstream centralization is problem above other problems, then check out this post suggesting a decentralization essential intent.
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I will summarize the key points as I see them, focusing on the centralization question.
- Our current state of centralization is by your design.
- The DAO has not engaged, pushed, or prioritized using your GTC to continue decentralization further, so decentralization has stalled.
- Adjusting the current state is not a priority at this time.
- Interesting, this could be solved by moving to a PMO (project management office) design where budgets are approved (by voters) by project+milestones vs. by function+period. Without an org. redesign.
- Helpful, we can use this when challenged on the forum about insiders making decisions.
So - letās get a temp check: lets assume >15 responses is significant.
Readers, please let us know in this anonymous poll - what do you think about decentralizing our current DAO Governance.
-
- Decentralization is not a priority for Season 17
-
- I am unsure or undecided or have no opinion
-
- Decentralization is a priority, and should be worked in Season 17
0
voters
Yes, there is. I like this line of thought.
lol
What if we were to give every core contributor in the DAO a vote in a Quadratic Vote for who should have delegations? Just an ideaā¦
nope.
- my GTC is a single digit percentage of the circulating supply. so i have no ability to centralize governance.
- iāve done more than any other GTC holder to decentralize my delegations and havenāt been met halfway in my efforts at all.
- the DAO has people employed to design & manage the governance experience.
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for the avoidance of doubt, the only way to decentralize delegations with the GTC Governor contract is to have multiple walletsā¦ that is why i have to manage multiple wallets.
i donāt think itās fair or a good faith argument to imply this is a sybil attack as there is no marginal return to making new wallets (governance is not quadratic). and the whole thread is about decentralizing delegations (which requires multiple wallets).
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Forgive me as I seek to understand, but it sounds like you are saying the current delegation to the largest voters are coming from another source? If that is the case, I guess it is interesting, but does not change the reality.
Yes, this is an assumption on my part. My assumption is that the bulk of delegation to the 4-5-6 active voters who regularly make up the >50% of GTC votes is from you.
Yep, seems to be the case. And I am surfacing up the question again in clear language. Is the DAO ok with this current state of centralization or is this a priority to change?
I am ok to change it and I think it should be changed, but I have zero interest in pushing something the DAO is not supportive of.
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Forgive me as I seek to understand, but it sounds like you are saying the current delegation to the largest voters are coming from another source? If that is the case, I guess it is interesting, but does not change the reality.
Iām saying that I have less than 10% of the GTC circulating supply - and I delegate all of it!
The reality is there is a great deal of room for improvement in terms of other stakeholders participating in governance. I obviously care about Gitcoin and its mission, having built it from scratch nearly 6(!) years ago and now focused on Supermodular and Greenpill and other regenerative projects with similar north stars - thatās exactly why Iāll continue to be transparent in my delegations. At the end of the day, I am just one node on the network (albeit an og one) - there is another ~90% of GTC out there by circulating supply (~95% by total supply) whose delegations could be updated.
my GTC is a single digit percentage of the circulating supply. so i have no ability to centralize governance.
Yes, this is an assumption on my part. My assumption is that the bulk of delegation to the 4-5-6 active voters who regularly make up the >50% of GTC votes is from you.
Iām not sure who the ā4-5-6 active voters who regularly make up the >50% of GTC votesā are. According to Tally, the top 5 delegates have ~ 6.9m GTC in voting power from ~900 different addresses. (I donāt even delegate to all 5 of them though) Those 5 delegates, at ~6.9 GTC represent 900 addresses and about 10% of the circulating supply of GTC. And about ~30% of the voting supply.
If you want to see who I am delegating to or do the math on your own, I just posted my Q1 2023 delegations here.
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I agree with the assessment youāve made. For context (for owocki), Iām a new steward particularly interested in governance and decentralized organizing, and it seems that thereās a lack of priority of decentralizing token-delegation (or even the holding of tokens). From my perspective so far, it seems like decentralization as an organization is a vision of Gitcoinās and Gitcoin contributors, but there does not seem to be much urgency or energy in making it happen. For example:
- Token governance is understood by many to be highly susceptible to centralized capture, but thereās relatively little conversation about eventually switching from this model
- Token delegations (and perhaps token ownership) are heavily concentrated in a few people, but calls to try and improve this (like transparent posts such owockiās quarterly āchange my delegationā) get few responses
Some guesses as to why this might be:
- No clear future vision of decentralization to buy into. As opposed to an org like Optimism, which explicitly formed with the intent to experiment and iterate on decentralized governance, GitcoinDAO perhaps has some uncertainty as to what decentralization should look like for us and why
- Perhaps token decentralization seems less important than the decentralization of influence and process. As in, we should focus on how the DAO is actually organized first (stewards, workstreams, CSDO, etc.), then figure out how we should formally govern it later
- People just assume someone else will handle it, and/or donāt feel like they have the expertise to contribute. Decentralization is a TASK right now. Choosing who to delegate to, or trying to provide input on who large token holders should delegate to, requires thoughtful research into Stewardsā activity within the DAO.
Despite this, I do think decentralization is extremely worthwhile, especially since we are explicitly aiming for ubiquity for the our products (passport and grants). The goal for the passport protocol is to have 90% of marketshare for DID web3 solutions. That kind of ubiquity is dangerous without proper community governance in my opinion.
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To clarify, I thought it was obvious that this move is actually decentralizing as well as transparent and therefore is NOT a sybil attack (ā¦and ok to poke fun). It is ironic that you have to split to different wallets to do this with the governor contract as is.
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Maybe use something like this to delegate your GTC @owocki @kyle ?
Iām in a similar boat to @shawn16400 - lots of effort (not as much as him to be clear) - obsessing about the DAO in most waking hours (and the ODC as well these days) - PLUS was voted recently to be a Steward council member and yet ā very small delegation if any.
I probably need to campaign for it and/or earn it over time. All fair.
In any case, currently, one could argue that we have a bit of governance theater. The contrast between the variety of voices and perspectives and the concentration of decision-making power is fairly stark.
https://www.daostewards.xyz/
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