Great points brought up by @Oxytocin, and @lavande thanks for addressing.
If the electorate is not called upon with regularity, participation drops. There is a sweet spot between too much, and not enough, thank you for continuing to try to find it.
I view this as an experiment in progress and I am looking forward to seeing if the retroactive rewards are enough to increase / sustain participation.
Although I have some reservations, I am voting for the renewal given it demonstrates a willingness to find the right solution.
Reading this thread I am not really impressed with how the program did since the last season and with the way the protocols engaged. So I am voting against this proposal.
I appreciate the efforts made by those contributing to this initiative, and Iām grateful to everyone in this thread who has added further context and collected feedback from protocol participants.
From my perspective, the ālikely suspectsā in this program were those who successfully participated in governance and the results regarding the activation of new protocol delegates were quite disappointing, with an overall disqualification rate of 56%.
It seems plausible to me that any protocol on this list, if it were to seek delegation, could likely achieve it individually. There is an existing pathway for them to pursue this. From my perspective the data is clear in action (maybe not in response) that for those protocols not already active in governance, thereās little desire to be.
I will be voting against this proposal as a result.
L2BEAT is voting FOR this proposal. Although we agree with the concerns that the Protocol Delegation Program has not worked as we as a Collective had hoped. We believe that the overall goal of the Protocol Delegation Program - to allow the most important protocols in our ecosystem to have a voice in shaping the future of Optimism - has not changed. We need to find ways to get protocol delegates more involved in all governance processes (not just voting, but the whole decision-making process, including public debates), and thatās only possible by experimenting with new approaches.
Season 4, with its expanded structure, will likely provide more opportunities for Protocols to get involved and make their voices heard. We look forward to giving the Protocol Delegation Program another chance to show its value.
Hey Iām Max! Iām one of the ambassadors from Hop along with Franco. I fully agree with @GFXlabs that a lot that went into being ready for us to get to this point (creating an ambassador program and running elections), that we likely would not be involved in this capacity without this program, and that the cost of continuing this program is minimal.
Iām disappointed to see we have been disqualified for not having been able to participate sooner and hope that thereās a possibility for an exception so that we can continue being eligible. Regardless, Franco and I are excited to get more involved with Optimism and look for ways to enable Hop and Optimism to work more closely together moving forward.
Following the discussions had in this thread, I have decided to end up voting FOR the proposal.
Just to be fully clear, the comments I made above were less personal opinions, and more theories on why we mightāve had such a high dropout rate from other protocol delegates. I am hoping that the new changes happening this season for delegates help prospective users be able to be more actively involved, and look forward to seeing in what ways we can iterate the process to increase the representation of the builders that make this space so great.
Hey just wanted to post a response from the Uniswap delegation side:
There were 2 votes during our voting season: Bedrock and Fractal Vision (banning the community members).
For Bedrock, we voted on chain and clearly communicated our rationale.
For fractal vision, we internally agreed that we would abstain from voting because it was a sensitive issue that we didnāt think the Uniswap community should particularly get involved in.
However, it seems like we didnāt vote āabstainā on chain, putting our participation rate at 50% (1/2), while the required participation rate for renewal is 70%.
With that, I think itās okay if we do not vote for the proposal that is currently live as we are technically not supposed to have delegation for this upcoming cycle.
However, going forward weāll actually put in the abstain votes to meet the 70% requirement.
@lavande I would also love to discuss how we could reinterpret or appeal the disqualification for Hop given we only recently completed our governance process appointing ambassadors and just finished setting up the multisig today. We are similarly excited about continuing to participate and would be very disappointed to have this opportunity to participate cut short.
Vote FOR and agree with @Oxytocin rational. Lack of engagement from protocol was concerning but I do believe with proactive communication we can overcome this challenge.
Post was updated to reflect that while Balancer/Beethoven and Odos re-qualified based on participation rate they did not re-qualify based on gas fees generated during Season 3. LiFi and Galxe have been added to the list in their place, based on gas fees generated during Season 3. Stargate has been taken off the list given their relation to LayerZero (which did not requalify for Season 4 delegation) and Sonne has been added as the next eligible protocol based on Season 3 gas fees generated.
I would like to discuss Multichainās participation as part of the protocol delegation program given recent events, which, in addition to the complete halt of its operations, is involved in a series of unclarified events and I personally qualified as shady, in which the users have been exposed to several risks. Main tweet here.
I believe the governance should reconsider the status of Multichain as delegate, even though to my knowledge, there is no clear step for it using the governance administrative documents (constitution, code of conduct, etc).
Open to discuss the pros and cons of advancing in this case and having extra policies to address similar potential issues like this.
Feedback from Season 4 protocols, based on 7/16 responses
Please note that a telegram group chat with participating protocols from Season 3 and Season 4 was created in an attempt to improve participation relative to Season 3. Announcements about opportunities to provide delegate approvals, provide feedback on drafts, and voting cycles were provided in this chat throughout Season 4.
In Season 4:
75% of participating protocols met the requirement of =>70% voting participation (up from 39% in Season 3)
57% of respondents had participated in Optimism governance in some capacity before the program
100% of respondents plan to remain active (up from 67% in Season 3), with 71% of respondents indicating they are more likely to participate in governance after participating in the program (up from 58% in Season 3.)
Reasons given for not participating more:
Need better onboarding, there was a barrier to understanding the system that required some ramp up time
Time constraints given demands of operating their own protocols
The Protocol Delegation Program was an experiment run throughout Season 3 and Season 4 and will not continue in the future. Similar programs, that draw on the learnings from this experiment, may be introduced in future Seasons.