I struggle with the delegation concept. In an ideal world, if whales lock away tokens with a commitment not to use them for governance, you automatically elevate the impact of every minnow vote. Efficiently and without bias.
But. I understand the argument that the activation of whale tokens adds security to the network and reduces the risk of a successful attack.
I see the downsides of delegation as:
- Delegation is not ownership. Minnow owners (who are not delegees) have less of voice because of delegation.
- Subjective delegation is not autonomous. It has strings attached, be those strings real, implied, or just imagined.
- Delegation is a black hole. And here I am talking about the delegees. The greater influence granted to a delegee, the greater the risk of nefarious activity. Example: “hey you have ton of ABC protocol, how about if I give you 20K of my new bribelicious token to support my project with your vote”. Even if supporting that proposal is detrimental to ABC protocol, the delegee is not an owner… and that 20K of bribelicious token can be worth a fortune someday.
Possible solutions:
- Replace (some - not all) token voting with contributor voting. These votes could be limited to “how the DAO delivers EIs” and leave the “what EIs the DAO delivers” to token voting. Leave the DAO - lose your voice. This reduces the number of decisions made via token voting and gives voice to those closest to the details - the contributors - many of whom are minnows.
- Codify delegation - remove meatsack bias and influence and delegate based on data. Whoever dreamt up daostewards.xyz was on to something - with some work, it could become a standard tool for unbiased whale delegation. Just build in an incremental sliding delegation driven by the algorithm (which is approved by voters).
- Ask for more transparency from delegates, and compensate them accordingly. IRL businesses involved in “investor stewardship” 1) list their stewardship principles 2) publicly report their voting activities and 3) declare rational when they vote counter to a proposal. Here is an example. Asking for such a report from individuals is too much, but a vote clearing house (like boardroom.io) has, combined delegates principles (kind of like we do for Gitcoin) but with the ability to comment on why they voted the way they did (like this) would at allow delegators the ability to draw a line between principles, votes, and exceptions. Viola! The trifecta of delegate transparency! Btw - delegate transparency will become more important as the power of metagovernance and leveraged metagovernance becomes better understood. And misused.
Those three steps 1) improves unbiased decentralization, 2) empowers contributor minnows, and 3) starts to address delegate information dissymmetry.
But - that is a ton of influence to give up. Not sure I could do it. Especially since I have not even gotten Snapshot to recognize my puny pile of GTC yet.