[Request for feedback] Building a Farcaster frame as a governance tool to facilitate matchmaking between OP holders and delegates

Delegates 🏛
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GM Optimists!

TL;DR: We are building a Farcaster frame to help OP token holders seamlessly find an ideal match to delegate their OP.

We are a small team supported by Raid Guild to build this MVP for Optimism to help increase the delegated supply of OP to active delegates and foster deeper alignment between delegates and delegators. We also want to bring Raid Guild closer to the Optimism ecosystem.

We are taking inspiration from Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) to create a Delegate Match Application (DMA) for Optimism. Voting Advice Applications are online tools designed to help voters identify which political parties or candidates most closely align with their personal views and preferences. Users answer a series of questions about key issues, and the VAA matches their responses with the positions of various political parties or candidates. The outcome is usually a percentage score or a list showing which parties or candidates the user aligns with most closely, thus aiding in making informed voting decisions.

VAAs have been widely used across Europe. By providing voters with tools to easily compare their own policy preferences to those of various parties, VAAs have significantly improved electoral participation and the quality of democratic governance.

We aim to adapt this model and build this application for the Optimism community in the open to make a more user-centric MVP. For that, we invite you to participate in the process. Please share your thoughts about these questions or any other insights in the comments and fill out the poll.

For Delegates:

  1. What are the key aspects or values you believe are crucial for OP holders to understand about your governance philosophy?
  2. How do you prefer to communicate your decisions and actions to the community?

For OP Holders:

  1. What factors do you consider most important when choosing a delegate?
  2. What information do you find most valuable in making your delegation decisions?
  3. How many questions would be ideal to find a good fit, but not discourage you from finishing?

For anyone:

  1. What other contentious or non-contentious topics could better align OP holders with a specific delegate?

Topics for Matchmaking:

We are considering various topics to facilitate effective matchmaking between OP holders and delegates. Which of these do you find relevant? select all that apply.

  • Commitment vs. Curriculum: Should the focus in choosing council and board members be on their commitment to Optimism, experience in Optimism, or professional background, even if they are new to the collective?
  • Grants and RPGF Ideology: Would you prefer funding a few well-established projects with high potential for impact or supporting several emerging projects showing initial impact?
  • Decentralization Pace: Should we accelerate towards a fully decentralized collective, or advocate for a steady transition from the foundation to the collective?
  • Funding OSS vs VC Ventures: How should we balance funding between VC-backed ventures and open-source initiatives?
  • Delegate Engagement: How important is it for a delegate to have active communication channels detailing their voting decisions and rationale?
  • Demographic Matching: Do you see value in delegators being able to filter matches based on demographic factors like gender, region, or language?
0 voters

This post will serve as a living document, updated based on feedback and the project’s evolution.

We will also conduct some interviews with delegates, delegators, govnerds, members of the OP foundation, OP labs, and other stakeholders. Please feel free to DM @cotabe here or on TG (same handle everywhere) if you want to participate in a short interview or support this effort.

Please share your thoughts about the matchmaking topics, other topics that we might have missed. Thank you for your engagement and support.

Stay Optimistic!

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Hello, Optimism Community!

I’m thrilled to be part of this team as we build a Delegate Match Application (DMA) for OP token holders! Your input is invaluable to us, so please join us in this collaborative process by sharing your thoughts and participating in our poll. Let’s make delegation easy and effective together!

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Disclaimer: I work for the Optimism Foundation but my views are my own

I find this a really interesting area to explore and am curious how you plan to build the actual matching algorithm

  • what data will the matching algorithm use about delegates? Just their answers to survey questions or will you also use data on their past voting patterns, social graph, onchain activity…?
  • how will you build the matching algorithm and measure its accuracy?

Excited to see how this project develops!

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Hi @optimistic_emily,

Thanks for the questions and interest. Here is what we are thinking about both of your questions:

Q1. For MVP, the algorithm will compare survey answers from token holders and delegates. We will have it ready in two weeks. After we have launched the MVP on Farcaster, gained adoption, and received feedback, We plan to integrate delegate voting activity and voting patterns. We must find the best way to integrate on-chain voting patterns while mitigating biases.

Q2. For the MVP, the algorithm will directly compare survey answers from token holders and delegates. The same survey will be given to both; delegates will use a DeForm survey, while token holders will complete the survey in a Farcaster frame. The result will be the top delegates who answered the same or closest to the token holder. The specifics of the algorithm are still being fleshed out.

If you have any ideas on how to make this project more successful, we would be happy to hear them.

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I would love to see more efforts from the collective to push for (Re)delegation. Arbitrum is doing something similar right now in fact. I would love to see OP also push it in their own unique way.

I would love to see a little more effort on the outreach side included as part of the effort… I think there could be some cool ways to find farcaster linked addresses that have OP and tag them if they have not delegated. This sort of targeted approach would be

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Hi Optimistic Family, I would like to introduce myself as the lead dev on this effort!
Happy to chime in on technical and feasibility questions!

Our current effort is to get an MVP version out there to prove utility of the concept!

As mentioned by @Cotabe earlier for MVP we want to go simple with just matching responses from 2 types of stakeholders so far.

  1. survey responses by delegates via deform
  2. and responses via frame by token holders.

thanks @Griff this is a very nice idea, based on our dev work so far, this does seem viable. We will think more about how to execute this outreach effort!

Always open to more suggestions and feedback from the community!

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Hey @Cotabe you might also be able to apply for a Mission Request grant for this depending on which mission requests pass for Intent 1: Increase votable supply by 15% to 100M OP

You can track the voting here:

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Thanks for the suggestion and the link @Jrocki !

I will keep an eye on it.

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Hey @Cotabe

thanks for your thoughtful response! You could consider measuring the success of the match by running a survey that asks tokenholders how satisfied they are with the voting decisions made by their delegates (maybe after their delegate has been voting for 1 season…). You can compare the satisfaction rating of token holders who delegated using the matching service vs. those who selected their delegate in a different way

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Announcing the launch of The Delegate Match Farcaster Frame

The revolutionary governance tool in a Farcaster Frame designed to empower OP token holders in the Optimism ecosystem.

Our mission is simple: to bridge the gap between token holders and delegates, ensuring that voting power is aligned with shared values and a collective vision for the future of the network.

Too often, OP holders struggle to understand the governance philosophies and decision-making processes of potential delegates. Delegate Match changes that. By adapting the proven model of Voting Advice Applications, we’ve developed a Delegate Match Application that puts the power back in the hands of the community.

With a simple survey, OP holders can share their governance priorities and preferences. Our algorithm then matches these responses with the values of select OP delegates, providing a transparent compatibility score. This empowers token holders to make informed decisions about where to delegate their voting power.

Try Delegate Match today and ensure your vote counts toward a future you believe in!

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Use the frame to find your OP delegate matches:

Mint the Delegate Match Originals NFT; the link is provided after you use the Farcaster Frame to get your delegate matches - rewards are incoming for holders of this NFT. Airdropped to previous users.

Share and engage with Twitter:
https://x.com/delegate_match

Share and engage with
Farcaster:

Join our Telegram:

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GM! Where do you obtain the information you analyze with your algorithm?

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Congratulations on the launch! Where can I see the inner workings of the algorithm? is it open-sourced somewhere? It would be great if you would also publish an explainer of how it works and some ideas for future refinements

Disclaimer: I work for the Optimism Foundation but thoughts are my own

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GM! Thank you for your interest.

For this Proof of Concept (POC), we analyzed the delegate statements from Optimism Agora.
24 delegates were chosen based on their activity on the Optimism governance forum, onchain voting participation, and voting power.

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How the Delegate Ranking Algorithm Works

Goal:

The algorithm ranks delegates for users based on how well their survey answers match the answers from delegates (for this POC delegate answers are predicted from Optimism Agora delegate profile statements using ChatGBT-4o)

Process:

For each delegate:

  • Score Calculation:
    • The algorithm goes through each survey question and checks if the user’s response matches the delegate response.
    • If the delegate’s answer matches, they get 1 point.
    • The total score is then converted into a match percentage (out of 100) by comparing the delegate’s score to the total number of questions.
    • The percentage is rounded to two decimal places for accuracy.

Ranking:

  • After calculating the match percentage for each delegate, the algorithm sorts them from the highest match percentage to the lowest.

Output:

  • The result is a ranked list of delegates, showing their IDs and match percentages, with the highest matches listed first.

There are total 24 delegates that we chose, ranked sample output: https://delegatematch.xyz/matches/5095

Algorithm is open source and can be found here:

Survey questions can be found here:

Encoded delegate responses (as answered by ChatGBT4): delegate-match/app/utils/delegateAnswers.ts at main · wtfsayo/delegate-match · GitHub

Detail of ChatGBT-4o prompt, predicted answers and reasoning here (four questions that didn’t show variance were dropped):

While using ChatGPT to simulate delegate responses may not perfectly reflect each delegate’s exact views, the methodology is unbiased and provides a useful foundation for this proof of concept.

Now that the project is live, we expect to gather direct responses from delegates in future iterations, improving the accuracy of the data.

This process highlights the need for more standardized and comparable data from delegates to enhance transparency and decision-making.

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Ideas for future refinements?

The team is seeking funding and partnerships to drive progress and bring these key tech enhancements in token delegation and governance to life.

  1. Enhance Delegate Data:

    • Advocate for standardized and comparable data for Optimism delegates, including updating delegate statements regularly. This will ensure more accurate representation and improve the matching process for OP token holders.

  2. Incorporate Onchain Voting Analysis:

    • Introduce a methodology to analyze delegates’ onchain voting records and give more weight to these actions in the compatibility scoring process, ensuring that token holders align with delegates based on concrete governance activity.

  3. Build a Dapp for Granularity:

    • Expand beyond the limitations of the Farcaster Frame by developing a dedicated Dapp, offering more detailed options and features for users while maintaining the frame as a top-of-the-funnel engagement tool.

  4. Leverage Social and Token Graphs:

    • Analyze the OP social graph and Farcaster-linked addresses to identify token holders who haven’t yet delegated, tagging and encouraging them to participate in governance through Delegate Match.

  5. User Satisfaction Surveys:

    • Measure the success of the matching algorithm by running surveys that assess tokenholder satisfaction with their delegates after a full voting season. Compare satisfaction rates between those who used Delegate Match and those who selected delegates independently.

  6. Broader Ecosystem Applications:

    • Explore how this technology can be adapted for delegate matching in other ecosystems and similar survey-based applications to expand its impact beyond the Optimism ecosystem.

  7. Redelegation Mechanisms:

    • Develop features that encourage token holders to redelegate away from inactive or non-voting delegates to more active ones, ensuring better participation in governance.
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In case you want to learn more.

We participated today in the SuperChain Demo Day.

Catch it here:

We make our demo from min 13:30