Hey!
I’ve linked your discussion in the retro reward thread for governance participation , as I found it to be very important food for thought for future rewards.
I think an even more dangerous consequence of this lack of delegate participation is the low re-delegation momentum that seems to form after a delegate becomes inactive. Unfortunately, due to the nature of re-delegation I don’t think it’s possible to make expiring rewards onchain, so this is an issue that will become more and more important as time goes on, as we’re seeing a voting supply ’ burn’ the more delegates become inactive.
While it’s useful information, this is frontend specific, and I’m not sure will fix much. Curia already does both, and even for linda’s resigned position there is still a significant amount of voting power: Delegate | Optimism Governance Dashboard by curiaLab.
While nice, would this not increase the bar for participation, leading to potentially lower activity? It’s also worth noting that many delegates don’t report openly, but rather to specific groups, eg. other DAOs or projects, so this standard could punish them despite still particpating in governance.
I agree with @0xDonPepe 's of milestone and increased participation rewards (up to a certain limit), though I believe that forum contributions should not be actively rewarded, as based on what other delegate systems I’ve seen this lowers the discussion bar significantly.
I don’t have a silver bullet to solve this issue, but on very broad terms, I feel the collective should be providing longer-term participants with enough participation incentives to ensure they do not want to drop out anytime soon, especially considering much of the VP is lost when they become inactive. Delegates that have been around for 1+ years carry all the experience of previous seasons with them, and can detect discussions that have been brought up before.
I will try reaching out to some of the inactive delegates I know and ask why they are not engaging anymore. I feel they will provide the greatest insights of whether it’s a matter of workload, feeling outdated, or simply burnout.