In the last Community Call the Impact Attestations experiment was introduced for Retro Funding round 6 to collect data on the impact of different governance contributions in the “Governance Infrastructure & Tooling” category. Share your insights about the topic in this thread.
Questions to answer:
This round we are using Impact Garden for top delegates and badgeholders to provide attestations to projects. What do you think are the pros and cons of this approach?
Do you think it is better for attestations like these to be anonymous or public?
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Evaluation: Impact Garden provides a framework for assessing projects, which can lead to more consistent and objective evaluations.
Expertise: Involving top delegates and badge holders, who are likely experienced and knowledgeable, can enhance the credibility and quality of the attestations.
Community Trust: Engaging well-known community members may boost confidence in the evaluation process, as their endorsements can lend weight to the projects being assessed.
Insights: The platform focuses on data-driven metrics, which can help in making informed decisions about funding and support for projects.
Cons:
Potential Bias: There may be a tendency for bias if the same individuals provide attestations frequently, potentially limiting the diversity of perspectives.
Exclusivity: Relying on top delegates and badge holders might exclude valuable insights from smaller community members or those less recognized.
Accessibility: The evaluation process may be complex, which could deter participation from smaller or newer projects that may lack the resources to engage effectively.
Anonymous Attestations:
Pros:
Encourages honest and candid feedback, as attestors may feel safer expressing their true opinions.
Reduces the influence of personal relationships on evaluations.
Cons :
Lack of accountability may result in less thoughtful or reliable feedback.
Difficult to assess the credibility of the feedback without knowing who provided it.
Public Attestations:
Pros:
Promotes transparency and allows the community to see who is providing feedback, fostering trust in the process.
Encourages more responsible and well-considered evaluations due to public visibility.
Cons:
Attestors might hold back honest opinions to avoid potential backlash, leading to less candid feedback.
Personal biases may influence evaluations more strongly when the identities of the attestors are known.
Conclusion:
Both approaches have their merits and drawbacks. A balanced approach could work best—allowing some anonymous feedback for honesty while also having public attestations for transparency. This way, you can encourage open discussions while still holding people accountable.
A: Using Impact Garden to provide project certificates for top representatives and badge holders has the advantage that this method can intuitively display the qualifications and strength of the project party, and after official certification, users are more trusting, which increases the exposure rate of the project party, brings traffic and users to the project, and at the same time, the project party has a stronger sense of identity and pride, is more friendly to the ecosystem, and is conducive to the development of the project and the ecosystem.
B: All transactions and data on the blockchain are open to everyone, which increases the transparency and credibility of the system. This openness helps prevent data tampering, but at the same time, personal information needs to be protected through anonymity. For the project party, appropriate openness is necessary, which can generate more supervision and constraints on the project, rather than a black box-like mechanism. Therefore, I think it is better for such certificates to be public.
In terms of Impact Garden I see a number of pros and cons as follows:
Pro’s
Good to look to try and standardise qualitative feedback - and capture it in a central, auditable place. All too often this word of mouth type of stuff either never gets said in the first place (which of coiurse is still a risk here) or if it does it never gets recorded.
Helps to build some sort of baseline to look back over rounds / years in terms of performance - subject of course to the inherent subjectivities.
Provides two way evidence both for the OP Foundation in terms of ‘public goods supported’ but also for the initiatives themselves in terms of recognition.
Cons
One concern - as always - is the extent to which this is all ‘gameable’. Multiple identities are common place in crypto - with large swathes of users not using their real or full names. In this kind of environment I’m always nervous about second hand qualitative feedback.
Complexity - is this just adding another layer of complexity? With a new provider and new processes? Appreciating that this is an experiment we shouldn’t lose sight of appropriate quantitative measures such as USD for financials; number of wallets for reach; views / likes for engagement; hours saved for governance etc etc
Does it really solve the problem? This is the old ‘if a tree falls down in a wood with nobody there’ type debate - people still need to say stuff and record it. History tends to show that they often don’t bother.
Should Attestations be Public or Anonymous?
As positioned above there aren’t that many people in crypto (perhaps the OP Foundation is an exception) who are fully doxxed anyway. So I don’t think that Attestations can ever be fully public - but what we do need to try and aim for is to make them ‘as public as possible’. Hopefully this isn’t coming across as semantics - ultimately this is a spectrum and Impact Garden needs to aim to move this as far as it can in the direction of being public. Being anonymous would - in my view - descend into the realm of fake Amazon / TripAdvisor reviews adding very little of value.
Calls are run by myself, a community member, are are for discussions about governance, not Airdrops. The relevant decision makers won’t even be on the call, it’s not the correct place to bring up airdrop complaints.
By involving top delegates and badgeholders, the attestations carry more weight. These individuals are likely to have experience and expertise in the ecosystem, lending credibility to the evaluations of projects. Having trusted and reputable individuals provide feedback can act as a filter for quality, helping stakeholders focus on projects that have received high-impact endorsements.
I think it is better for attestations like these to be public. Public attestations create a transparent process where badgeholders and top delegates are accountable for their endorsements. This can build trust within the community as stakeholders can see who supports which projects and why.
Hi @Michael
it was interesting presentation about Impact Garden. This system will help in making better funding decisions by creating new data.
I would segregate delegates and badgeholders for “web3 experts” and “end users” as these 2 groups can have different point of view. Often some technologies are grate and can be appreciated by experts but luck practical applications for end users.
I personally value privacy in web3 and try to stay Anonymous as much as possible. Public vote may compromise personal information or opposite it can use popularity of the reviewer to influence votes. Anonymous feedback could be more valuable for voters and no need to worry about fake reviews or sybil attacks as delegates and badgeholders are preselected.
All participants need the GovNFT Races NFT granted by the Velodrome team in order to participate in the program. Creating your own GovNFT does not count 
