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)
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.
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
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hey @owocki
Thanks for the chance to connect last Friday and earlier today. It is always good to talk face to face (virtually) for sticky issues.
We agree decentralization in the DAO is the ideal state and we should work for that. There are many layers of decentralization (token holder governance, workstream governance, computation, development, economics) However the most pressing need is ensuring work streams are delivering as expected and that we find a way to combat monolithic inertia. This could look like budget process changes, org adjustments, or clarity on milestones. But that is one of the larger issues to tackle vs. decentralization.
We also agreed to continue the dialogue and that it was a solid learning experience on both sides. Thanks for that : )
How are these scores calculated? I am surprised to see Shawn (someone who joined 6mos ago) with a higher score than a number of folks who have been working FT in the DAO for a yearā¦
A) itās a six month view
B) itās a stewards report card not a DAO contributor report card; as such it is about engagement w governance via the forums and voting afaik and not for example bugs opened or closed
C) your comment sort of says a lot - if folks donāt know about this effort to somehow judge stewardship and how it is calculated, thatās probably why it doesnāt seem to be correlated with delegations
maybe itās worth adding an info popover or modal explaining how they are calculated? ive seen that question asked/answered a few times on the forum. having it right in the product would help pre-empt the question maybe?.
@epowell101 if you want id be happy to do a product interview with whomever built daostewards and talk through āwhat would have to be true for me to use it in my āquarterly delegation reshuffle flowā?ā since iām an outsider and someone who is managing GTC delegations, i make a good crash test dummy. email me kevin@supermodular.xyz if you want to take me up on it!
Hey Kyle,
Good question, and thanks for asking. The more eyes on the health cards the better. The algorithm was define here Introducing Steward Health Cards 2.0. The case you describe is caused by two variables. 1) the voting participation and 2) the forum participation.
If you compare, both āforum scoresā are pretty close, but the real inequity is caused by the voting percentage. Any new person who successfully participates in a one snapshot vote after declaring stewardship can receive an artificially higher score given their vote participation is 100% as compared to someone who may have participated in many votes, but missed a few. Given we do not have many votes, it can take a long time for this metric to normalize.
We just launched this new site on Tuesday of last week. The new site is hosted by karmahq which reduces Gitcoin maintenance of json files, eliminates Gitcoin database hosting, and allows us to take advantage of improvements Karma rolls our across their user base. We decided to minimize any algorithmic changes in the upgrade to keep it simple, but we did experiment with score appreciation / depreciation over time to try to address that issue. It worked in some cases, but not with others.
The S17 plan for DAO ops has a line item specifically for this issue where I would like to bring Gitcoin in line with other DAOs using this ranking system.
Yes! this is one of our first enhancements we are asking for from our friends at Karmahq.xyz in addition to revising the algorithm. You can see issues 17 & 18 in our tracking sheet here from S16, but any of the undone work will be migrated to the S17 tracker once we get that work under way. In about a day.
Thanks for the questions about Daostewards.xyz. The early work that Gitcoin & karmahq.xyz did pioneered delegate visibility and performance across web3. I am looking forward to continuing to develop this resource.
Thanks. Seems like you were responding as I was responding - and your response is comprehensive so I deleted my short shout-out / redirect to you.
I guess one question back to @owocki would be do you agree with the premise that more active participants in the metagovernance of Gitcoin are likely good people to delegate to? Or is the premise of the project wrong?
Ha - I wondered when we rolled this out - the new UI seemed pretty recent as I just shared this link with another person 1.5 weeks ago
Thanks for the details on the scoring, it certainly helps.
I may offer my thoughts on this one ^^ I definitely agree that people who are active in meta governance are good people to governance people. They are not the only people to delegate too, and those building the DAO likely are also good candidates. The same way we need a plurality or stamps in passport, we need a plurality of voices helping us govern.
Activity is one of the criteria I look at but not the only criteria. Activity is necessary but not sufficient IMO. Definitely top 5. (But Iām just one voice. Other ppl might have different criteria)
I posted a bit more on the criteria I look at on in this post from last week:
I dont have a super formalized list of criteria mapped out. Which is why I think maybe sounding it out on a product-design call might be fruitful.
One more point: Looks like draft budgets for this season are being put up now. And Iām the only GTC holder whoās posted their delegations. Iām happy to be held to a high transparency standard, but Iām not even the largest token holder. If yāall are going to hold me up to a standard of transparency (and progressive decentralization) itād be nice if other GTC holders (especially large ones) were held to those standards too.
