[READY TO VOTE] Incentivize and increase governance participation

Governance Fund Missions šŸ¹
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Delegate Mission Request Summary

Overview:
This request aims to increase governance participation on the Optimism network by employing Velodromeā€™s govNFTs. These govNFTs will enable participants to vote or delegate their granted OP without the ability to transfer or use it economically for a year, thereby encouraging more focused and long-term governance engagement. The intention is not necessarily to generate economic activity; rather, the goal here is for projects to employ this primitive to encourage commitment to and activity on Optimism as a governance community.

S5 Intent 19: Intent 4: Governance

Proposing Delegate: Jack Anorak

Proposal Tier 16: Fledging Tier

Baseline grant amount: Total budget at 75k; baseline grants at 5-40k OP, depending on the likely scale and reach of projects. Iā€™m envisioning a per-user amount of 50 OP but this could be tuned.

Should this Foundation Mission be fulfilled by one or multiple applicants: Unlimited up to budget

Submit by: To be set by Grants Council

Selection by: To be set by Grants Council

Start date: If applicable

Completion date: August 1, 2024

Specification

How will this Delegate Mission Request help accomplish the above Intent?

*Simply put, there is no more direct way, other than airdrops, to broaden and encourage governance activity other than to distribute OP. Because of the nature of grant distribution, all non-growth grants are distributed in locked OP. Therefore, the only grants that immediately allow governance participation to date have been growth grants, which are generally used for the purpose of encouraging economic activity.

Velodromeā€™s govNFTs, implemented pursuant to an earlier Mission, turn this formula on its head by allowing grantees to immediately use the governance functions of granted OP without being able to perform any economic activities. They can vote or delegate with this OP, but they canā€™t transfer it for a year. This is a powerful tool for any governance initiative looking to encourage new participation.

We could see not just defi protocols dropping these but (perhaps preferably) classrooms, hackathons, conferences, and so on.

The hope here is for teams to think creatively about how to get more governance participation - this would be a direct tool, quickly showing whether certain initiatives do in fact lead to more activity.

A clarifying piece: Velodrome does not stand to benefit in any way from the use of govNFTs. It does not collect fees on these or interact with them. It simply created the primitive, which can be freely used. There are no competing standards of govNFTs, which makes sense because they have no real commercial function.

What is required to execute this Delegate Mission Request?

  • Selection of well-scoped programs with a credible hypothesis for why the distribution of govNFTs under these programs will result in more governance participation.
  • Unlike with other grants, pivoting here (with coordination with the Grant Council) could be encouragetd as projects look to continue experiments.

How should the Token House measure progress towards this Mission?

  • We should see pretty immediate results from distribution to onchain governance activity. Programs will be expected to provide periodic updates on their performance.

How should badgeholders measure impact upon completion of this Mission?

  • Onchain voting and delegation activity among granted wallets
  • Share of granted wallets new to governance functions
  • Share of granted wallets new to Optimism
  • To the extent that attribution is possible, entrance of new deleates or governance participants directly resulting from one of these distribution programs.

Have you engaged a Grant-as-a-service provider for this Mission Request?
No.
Has anyone other than the Proposing Delegate contributed to this Mission Request? If so, who, and what parts of this application did they contribute to?
No.

14 Likes
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Hey @jackanorak, how are the OP tokens locked in so they can not vote on OP governance? I believe some platforms allow locked tokens to be delegated for governance purposes.

Will these govNFTs be distributed only to non-growth grantees?

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The current state of things is that theyā€™re held in an escrow wallet by the Foundation, so the grantee is unable to perform any governance actions.

Correct.

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Iā€™m a bit confused what the deliverable is here for a team applying to this. If the deliverable is a deployed software project that utilizes the govNFT primitive in a system that gives grant recipients non-economic voting power for their locked grants, would that not require Foundation cooperation to be implemented? Also, would that also not require a clarification/change in the lock-up policy (Iā€™m unsure if it explicitly allows for builder grant recipients to have voting power from their locked tokens)?

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5

no intervention from the Foundation or rules change is needed because Velodrome already cleared permission when getting the grant to develop this tech in the first place

builder grant recipients cannot transfer or perform any defi activity with granted governance tokens for a year - this does not cover governance actions, which the Foundation has sid is fine (correct me if iā€™m wrong @lavande). the point is that this is impossible to do with the OP token as is, so wrapping it in a veNFT satisfies this capability.

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I believe the question is whether locked, builders grants can be delegated / used in governance? If so, the answer is: yes, they can. The Foundation began facilitating this process at the start of Season 5, but it is quite operational intensive for the Foundation to execute.

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7

It seems like this would remove some operational complexities for teams that get grants to participate in governance.

@jackanorak can you confirm the ease of integration with these govNFTs? I googled for it and only really found this blog post but it didnā€™t have any details about how they can be used right now.

Will agora some how need to do anything for this?

Is there a user interface already for delegating?

Are there any links to docs or anything?

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Also, I was missing this before cause itā€™s missing the season 5 tag

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So the grantees will be given veNFTs equivalent to the grant they received correct? And then the veNFT will have to be revoked after the lock-up period is over?

Also curious about this, adding an NFT strategy to snapshot is not out of the realm of possibility, but will they play nice with Agora too?

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200k is a pretty massive amount, what is the OP that grant recipients received actually used for?

Maybe it would be helpful to lay out a sample request, who is applying, what do they apply for, and what to they use the OP for in the end?

Edit: It seems like this mission request boils down to ā€œgive everyone who applies free OP, but lock it for a year to make them participate in governanceā€. Am I reading this completely wrong?

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Itā€™d be seamless integration, just like if you had liquid OP. Delegation would happen on our UI but is accomplishable onchain. Agora wouldnā€™t have to be asked to do anything.

Still being built and going through audit but will have more expansive docs and specs on release. Iā€™ll share an example of our UI once i can find it.

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The OP would have to be claimed from the govNFT, correct.

Once the delegation occurs on our UI, all voting is as usual. Agora doesnā€™t need to be adapted for anything.

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Hey @jackanorak ā€“ just wanted to flag this as a proposal that still needs delegate approvals in order to move to a vote. If you are no longer interested in pursuing this proposal ā€“ please disregard this message. In order to see the delegates assigned to your proposal those can be found here. The deadline to provide feedback and approvals for Mission Requests is February 7th at 19:00

Cheers!

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The idea is that currently we donā€™t issue govNFTs for locked grants so thereā€™s limited design space in missions related to governance. This would expand it considerably.

A clear example I can envision is: thereā€™s a governance-oriented hackathon that gives out grants as rewards. These donā€™t qualify as user grants because these arenā€™t really incentives to do something. Year-locked tokens donā€™t really get these people involved in governance today except at considerable time cost to the Foundation. govNFTs make this possible.

Hereā€™s an example of the UI:

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But where is the OP going for this specific grant?

I agree its great tech and should definitely be used for all grants.

You mention a hackathon making use of these. Would they apply to a hackathon mission request as well as this one? Or is this mission request for the management of the program?

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The hackathon would apply for this one vs a hackathon-specific mission request, i suppose, if they wanted governance capability. Iā€™m also just imagining people will come up with proposals that arenā€™t covered under missions currently. The Grant Council would prioritize projects that are explicitly focused on generating more governance participation.

Yeah ideally weā€™d just use this for all grants though the idea here is more to use this as a large-scale trial before asking for a governance-level reconfiguration.

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Got it! Thanks for filling in my understanding. :+1:

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Hey @jackanorak I read the entire thread and your back and forth with Michael but I still canā€™t understand the scope of this mission request.

What is the deliverables? What do applicants need to do to qualify? Where will the 200k OP go?

I kind of understood that someone should airdrop some govNFTs that are wrapped OP Tokens only for governance but not selling.

But thatā€™s all I got. Something seems to be missing or my understanding skipped some chapters.

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19

This is kind of similar to the liquidity one:

Applicants make mission proposals that depend explicitly on this particular piece of tech to be effective. Thatā€™s where the example of that hackathon comes in.

But the potential scope is way too wide to define concretely here - itā€™s more like this is authorizing the use of this particular type of grant to satisfy the broader intent objective which is to increase governance participation

by far the largest increases in participation have come from airdrops. Most of the other mission requests for this intent will be granted with locked OP ā€“ that is, they often wonā€™t actually grow gov participation immediately. The govNFT is pound for pound the single best means of doing this sooner, and thatā€™s what Iā€™m trying to unlock here

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20

Definitely a worthwhile exploration for that amount of money.

Iā€™m an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal should move to a vote.

3 Likes