Creating a place for delegates and gov participants to provide constructive feedback on Season 2, ahead of the upcoming Reflection Period. The goal is to keep all of this feedback in one place and free up the #gov-general channel for discussion with proposers about Voting Cycle #8.
Please leave constructive feedback so we keep the signal to noise ratio high in here! All forum engagement is subject to the Forum Rules of Engagement.
Hi,
Thanks for the Thread.
My main concern is the lack of community participation.
How to motivate small OP holders to be involved in governance? Not easy, but I think it can be done by asking them about their needs and concerns and offering places where they can participate in finding new solutions to be implemented in the ecosystem.
Many people come around and use the platform, but know nothing about OP collective values and governance experimentation. Why donât make an incentive for them to fill in some questionary, asking them about their thoughts and collecting data so we can offer them some space for them to participate?
To sum up: There is so much human value out there that is needed. We need to go beyond the digital divide, language barrier, functional diversity, etc. This industry is pretty biased and this would be a good place to break that.
Congrats on all the hard job, I found many people here caring about OP values and sure there are more people like you out there on their way for the near future.
I wish yoy the best for the end of the season.
Season 2 feedback
Discourse:
a) Still having a lot of issues to navigate topics, have been adding tags to many posts but that helps marginally at best.
b) Velodrome Proposal for Cycle 8 getting locked because of so many reports is concerning, essentially they were DDOS. I understand why it exists, but it effectively put a stop to the discussion by shooting everyone dead.
c) Related to both issues a) and b), might be good to extend the nerds solution from Discord to the forum, that was just a taste and on hand moderation will be needed
Committees:
d) The issues relating to votes on the original Committee vote not appearing on snapshot, poisoned all future interactions because people felt (understandably) underrepresented.
e) Committees original idea was to release bandwidth from delegates, which I think it worked. BUT all in all, community that are actually interacting with proposals on the forum are at most 30.
Proposals:
f) Requiring TWO delegates with 0.5% voting power put a stop to many proposals because related to the point e), as a proposers you need to wrangle delegates to go for your proposal and engage with it AND there are only 36 delegates with 0.5% vp.
g) Pacing for proposals feels very hectic at times because of the small (and needed) changes to the OPerating Manual. Proposers tended to get lost on the minutia.
Thank you for starting this thread! Below I have shared a few points of feedback that are top of mind. One of the things I have enjoyed the most about OP governance is the openness to feedback and iteration. I feel the foundation has done a fantastic job of consistently making improvements based on feedback from the community. Below are some of my thoughts on this season, happy to clarify any points or answer any questions.
The biggest point that needs to be addressed (which I think we all agree) is accountability for grant recipients. The presentation on the performance of the governance fund was a sobering wake up call that is critical to have an accountability component for projects that have received grants. Possible solutions could include putting a cap on grant amounts and not granting all of the funds up front. We could require a monthly reporting function in order to unlock additional funds. There are many ways this could be implemented and Iâm looking forward to seeing ideas and new processes in the next season.
Committees seemed like a really great way to decrease delegate workload. However, I donât believe they have worked well or as intended in practice. Essentially, when a vote does not pass, people are upset and have a group to point their negative feelings towards. I have personally not enjoyed being on a committee. Our committee has many years of experience in the space, from many different backgrounds, and we have faced quite a bit of criticism regarding our recommendations when they are meant to be helpful, and delegates are free to vote as they wish. I have personally voted against other committee recommendations and we have seen votes go against committee recommendations. Iâve found that committees have not decreased my workload and being on a committee has been an unpleasant experience (although I have loved working with my team!!!). Committees are not something I believe should be carried into the next season.
Delegate engagement seems fairly low overall. Itâs been pointed out that itâs difficult to get delegate approval for proposals. It seems like there are only 10-15 delegates that are consistently active on the forum and discord. A possible solution for this could be delegate compensation (see below) to incentive delegates to engage on a more consistent basis.
There has been an increase in negative comments and personal attacks recently in the forums and discord. This is an unfortunate reality of the space overall. I believe there should be a zero tolerance policy when it comes to personal attacks. Possible solutions could include having a moderator/community lead role to enforce community guidelines. Ultimately, it is up to us as the OP community to define what is acceptable and what is not. Having a culture that is respectful and welcoming is essential to growth and development, and that starts with how we treat each other.
There is currently a fairly hefty workload on delegates that includes reading proposals, providing feedback, voting and providing reasoning, providing approval for proposals, and general community communication and engagement, just to name a few. What we have at the moment is essentially a group of volunteers that are not being compensated for their time, which is probably part of the reason why delegate engagement is low. I would like to see delegate compensation with a retroactive component in the next season.
Agree on every point! 
I fully agree with @katieâs comments except Iâd be open to committees continuing as long as there are improvements to the process given community feedback. I did feel it reduced my workload as a delegate, especially for areas where I didnât have expertise.
Alot of good points posted above.
I also think anonymous feedback questionnaires should be sent to out to protocols that made it to the voting stage, and received OP grants to ensure constructive feedback is received.
I often hear in private DMs how the deadlines are not visible for protocols applying for a grant, and they often rely on the delegates to keep them updated (I have done this many times since OP governance has started).
I have been away camping for a bit (hence the ETH pump I guessâŚ) and have been thinking about our governance system while offline, I came back with lots of points to raise but to be honest youâve laid out almost exactly what I wanted to say.
Since introducing committees weâve seen much less engagement, with less names on Discord and here, as well as a complete change in the vibes, with a huge amount of negativity and at times what seems like targeted harassment, with certain members of the losing committee using their large Twitter accounts to poison opinion of members they disagree with. I would assume that this contributes to the reduction in engagement from other community members who simply do not want to be involved in the drama that is so different from the first season.
The compensation going only to committee members is, as again you have stated, probably a factor in reduced engagement as well. Perhaps rather than dividing the community into committee members and non-members a simpler way to manage compensation would be via something like Coordinape, so anyone who had something of value to add to evaluations could be rewarded for it, this would incentivize useful discussion in proposal threads and mean that delegates who donât want to put the time into reviewing certain proposals themselves could just read the discussion here and be fairly safe in assuming that the rest of the community would have dug into it and pulled out valuable considerations, because they would be retroactively rewarded for doing so.
The only two issues I see here would be whether everyone receiving any reward via Coordinape would need to be KYCâd, and how to avoid sockpuppets and Sybils. I guess that in that case the former would kind of solve for the latter!
Regarding accountability I agree that segmented payouts, linked to KPIs in some way would make sense. Projects could include these KPIs in the proposals and delegates can evaluate these as part of their assessments. This would leave it up to the proposers to find the balance between impressive sounding KPI targets, with the risk of not meeting them, or to make more modest expectations on future performance which could mean their proposal is less enticing in the first place.
TL:DR; basically exactly what you said, but a little less eloquently!
I appreciate the openness and confirmation of what I also believe/think.
From my view once we introduce hierarchical status/power we can only expect people to fight for it (if they want to get to that level). Itâs the human nature⌠voting power is already controversial enough, we shouldnât need another hierarchy on top of that.
That said, removing the status and power I donât see as many issues with âWorking Groupsâ or Community Members paid to put time and effort in the governance process. If we have enough individuals helping proposers and giving some analysis of the proposal (letâs say pros and cons, it doesnât/shouldnât be yes/no) they deserve some compensation for that work, Iâm fine with that as far as people donât need to âfight for itâ.
Paying individuals/groups to do something means everyone else will not care/worry as much about it, someone will do the work (aka âthey get paid for thatâ). Nevertheless itâs not the only reason, as example the more I see people fighting because they donât like a committee recommendation less I want to be involved.
You have put my feelings in a better way. I also think accountability is a must in grant recipients along with other two points you mentioned @katie.
Thanks for the write-up @katie. I outlined some of my thoughts:
I agree that Committees should not continue into the next season. I hope we can learn from their shortcomings during the upcoming reflection period (and potentially longer), with the goal of reintroducing a more effective Committee system in the future.
At Devcon, I was able to speak with delegates and some Committee members, and many were quick to express their dissatisfaction with the current process. Most complaints were about the review periods being too short, conflicts of interest arising between some committee members and grant applicants, and the pressure that is put on Committee members, all of whom are part-time and unpaid.
Presently, the primary responsibility of the Collective is to decide where to allocate OP which brings a large burden on part-time Committee members who essentially became gatekeepers of a multi-million dollar treasury overnight.
With few exceptions (maybe only Overtime?), Committee recommendations were in line with the winning side of votes. They have a major impact on the entire proposal process but we can clearly see them pressed for time, often submitting proposal approvals and recommendations only hours or minutes before they are due. We should seriously consider extending the Voting Cycles.
My biggest concern was one raised on the most recent Governance call: 20% of the entire Governance Fund was used in the first 140 days of the Collectiveâs existence. And while Optimism has grown across every metric during that period and incentives certainly helped, a large number of OP grants were misused or even outright misappropriated.
The Collective needs to put together an urgent response and start running a tighter ship with the treasury. The reality is that sustainable apps/projects can succeed on Optimism without incentives, and the Collective should generally grant smaller and smaller amounts to fewer and fewer projects as time progresses. On this weekâs call, a rep from @GFXlabs put it bluntly when they said we âare not currently being good stewardsâ of the treasury, and I have to agree with them.
There are dozens of examples of blockchains/dapps that wasted large treasuries on a few months of incentives. Optimism is incredibly important for the future of Ethereum and we cannot allow governance to follow a short-sighted path.
I think the personal attacks and overall animosity that arose in this forum and Discord over the last few months are unacceptable. Thankfully it seems the majority of delegates rose above the nonsense.
This may come across as harsh but itâs all out of love, I may be a smol delegate but have been in this community for a while and am concerned with the direction things are heading. I remain a capital âOâ Optimist and continue to build on Optimism every day.
Iâve made a great effort to catch up with the OP governance process. More users participation is needed (not only delegates). I have been providing some feedback as part of the community, but not expecting any airdrop, just because I like this. Thatâs called intrinsic motivation and is stronger than any other.
I posted a proposal a week ago and no feedback at all. Is not the only one:
I donât see how this scenario is going to invite new people to participate.
Sure, I can tell some delegates care about the work theyâre doing and deserve it. But much more delegates are needed and community members working with them. The committeeâs solution was more centralization and as far as I understand delegates are committee members, so much work for them. I think we need to facilitate the participation of new users.
Hey, SR from Gamma. I stuck around for Season 2 to monitor OP governance and learn about your experimental process. Itâs part of a larger scheme Iâm doing to research for our future governance model someday. I must commend everyone on their passion and dedication to Optimism.
I will say that I have one major conclusion from Season 2: The Committee system, while well-intentioned, has been a huge net negative. I will explain my observations briefly below.
1) Committees make the application process confusing for all
I donât think I need to offer much-supporting evidence here. Almost every project has been confused by the committee system. The deadlines, allocations, and pretty much everything has been unclear. While I respect the idea that âweâll figure it out,â I think itâs far too confusing for the average applicant. Many of these projects are simultaneously doing a dozen other governance proposals, and forcing them through a complex committee process isnât efficient.
2) Committees warp the free-market power structure of delegation
One of the cool things about DAOs to me is the free-market aspect of delegation. If I, SR, wanted to become a delegate, I would need to either acquire OP, or convince people to delegate OP to me. If a delegate wishes to have more governance power, they can use any number of strategies to work on that. The best delegates will be the most competitive for the delegated OP. We have delegates that are private holders, DAO enthusiasts, project leads, VCs, and more. Thatâs kinda how it should be IMO.
Unfortunately, committees create bureaucrats. Or, in laymanâs terms, they create gatekeepers with a disproportionate amount of power than they should have. These committee members become lightning rods for controversy and gatekeeping.
3) Committees have brought out the worst in people
Issues #1 and #2 both invariably lead to issue #3, that the committee system has brought out accusations, corruption, innuendo, favoritism, Machiavellianism, brinkmanship, factions, and pretty much everything that poisons the governance process.
This process started during the heated election between the defi committees and never stopped.
It never recovered after that.
Twitter posts attacked the other committeeâs recommendations based on thoroughness.
Users went to other discords to denigrate or discredit other delegates, despite their claims
People requested threads be brigaded
Requests were made to censor or ban users from the discord and governance forums.
It also just became childish with amateur attempts to humiliate delegates
Hey, youâre picking on Velodrome!
I know Iâm picking on Velodrome and their attacks on @OPUser, but honestly, their actions (and specific reactions to me calling it out) demonstrated the committee system failure the best. Thatâs what I was trying to show the whole time. @OPUser rejected my original proposal rather harshly. I have no vested interest in any committee member.
I think Velodrome members are just doing what they think they need to do in a hypercompetitive space. Theyâre very pvp and they embrace that. Do I think itâs ethical? No. But I get what theyâre doing.
My recommendation is to abolish the committee system ASAP.
Potential Solution: Recognized Delegates
Recognized Delegates (RDs) are a system where any delegate can go through the âofficial processâ and become legit. RDs are required to vote and to write WHY they voted on proposals. They are then paid based on their participation rates and the # of delegates they have. This incentivizes delegates to write up their feelings on issues and spend some time going through the proposals. Delegates can also get bonuses for assisting usersâ questions.
This is the system MakerDAO uses, and while not perfect, the RD system itself works pretty well. I think itâs an excellent alternative to the committee system. Every delegate has a shot to get paid for doing the work.
Thanks btw, everyone. Itâs been a very fascinating experiment, and I thank everyone (even the velo guys) for the political intrigue.
Iâm glad that @katie and @forrest are teeing up a major unaddressed elephant in the room - the poor outcomes of the distribution process to date. A lot of the structural concerns in my view are related to this core symptom. Iâve been writing a much longer piece of research on this point [edit: nvm this got really long], but I do want to say that Iâm largely in line with their conclusions, which include more selectivity on grants, more time to deliberate, more reporting, staging, and general accountability, etc. Some sort of budgeting (which should start to seek inflows of capacity, to the extent itâs possible) is more than appropriate as well.
I do want to note â because I think some of these postmortems are obliquely referring to a large grant proposal currently on the table, Velodromeâs (i.e., my protocolâs)âthat the wrong thing to do is to have a knee-jerk response to large grants (assuming theyâre well-scoped) and say, âWell, we need to close the purse.â Doing that just kills whatever momentum youâve just spent too much to get. You can say Iâm speaking out of bias, but hear me out hereâIâm trying to make what I think is an important point that I happen to be really attuned to bc of my experience.
Where I disagree with @forrest is that itâs not that Governance has given out too muchâitâs that weâve given an enormous amount to a lot of not-fully-baked grants while lacking an ecosystem-wide thesis on what to grow and when to grow it. If I had to make a totally non-data-backed guess, my hypothesis is that proposals representing 70-80% of the OP shouldnât have been granted at all, not just scaled back. (Iâll be testing this hypothesis soon with a more detailed analysis.) Reporting would have helped with some of this, but primarily itâs for averting or surfacing malfeasance. Staging helps to redirect some OP to more promising ends and lends some teeth to enforcement, but the vast majority, iâm guessing, just never should have been granted in the first place.
Itâs actually a bit surprising to me that nobody here has explicitly said, âMaybe in hindsight, many of these grants we approved actually werenât that well defined.â Delegates who were more prominent figures during the first few cycles should take a hard look at their earlier recommendations and walk back through the logic in approving what they did. I know Iâll plan to do the same for the later cycles. There are already a couple I think I botched. This is underappreciated reflection for this period.
Iâm giving this tough love because the saddest part about this mass distributionâs outcomes (and, to be clear, the vast majority came before committees) was that they were entirely avoidable.
People whoâve been around for a while, for instance, know how some of these things end: retroactive airdrops (exit events), user incentives (sibyl risk, low per-wallet appeal), liquidity mining on low-DAU projects (siphoning by team or last-ditch effort to grow runway)âstuff Iâve been calling out from my very first day in the forums, and Iâm sure I wasnât alone.
What Iâm getting at is that there is no ârightâ cap on all grants: you need to match the asks to an intended outcomeâa well-defined bet that you and the proposer intend to see play out. You can and should add jet fuel with some big bets, just like OP Labs did to great effect with PoolTogether (beloved user hoover), Velodrome (flashy tentpole liquidity sink), and AAVE (blue-chip liquidity magnifier). But you donât take a scattershot approach in grants, giving out a few hundred k here and there; you work with projects to refine their grants until they promise real results. And when you see a path to growth, you fund for precisely that growth.
And this goes back to my first comments re committees, during the start of what several individuals here have marked as a downturn in vibes: there need to be in some capacity specialists whose focus is specifically on these grants. There is just too much to do. These are difficult questions, and thereâs a lot to follow up on. These specialists need to outline a systemic growth thesis, they need to follow an actual cooperative due diligence process, and they need some limited executive power to make and enforce rules to speed up an otherwise bogged down process. One such example is reporting; there was a whole thread in June discussing the need for follow-up reporting, and nobody managed to get a framework together.
People reacted violently to my suggesting as much in June because perhaps they interpreted what I was saying as that people without the necessary expertise to take on these roles lacked the aptitude or intelligence or something. Of course thatâs not true! What Iâve said is that being charged with giving out millions of OP requires some clear direction, experience, and knowhow; itâs inherently a technocratic thing, and I do think that ecosystem protocol teams have a lot to offer in experience, perspective, and news. Even better, though, are known subject matter experts from throughout crypto, and Iâd love to see about getting a few more involved (weâre lucky to have several as delegates and more than a few on committees).
To be clear, Iâm not talking about committees now, nor am I saying I or anyone in particular fits this profile! No idea what structure we will/should take, and yeah I agree that the system we have isnât the best fit (agree with @StrategicReserveâs suggestion to look to RDs and look forward to getting thoughts from @katie and @GFXlabs on applicability) â but I think this is a principle worth seriously considering.
Weâre all here because we believe in the potential of the Collective to be a self-sustaining community, one that can recycle this first round of grants and ensuing economic activity into new capacity to do ever more interesting things. Realizing this vision is a lot more likely when we knock out some low-hanging fruit early in our processes, avoid pressure to over-distribute, andâmost importantlyâbe informed and active.
Want to echo this. Nowhere else in the world (or even DeFi) are millions of dollars handed out on the backs of volunteer labor. There is a saying out in the regulatory landscape when people have had a drink and want to dunk on DeFi â that DAOs are the greatest breakthrough in labor relations since the cat-o-nine-tails. Thatâs not what we want here. The goal is inclusion, yes, but not uncompensated responsibilities that are difficult to bear for delegates who donât receive compensation outside of Optimism, yet carry possible liability and reputational risk from being tasked with saying âNoâ to unwise spending proposals.
Delegates have put in a great effort, but when this role competes with families, jobs, hobbies, and life in general, itâs difficult to expect better results than were presented in the sobering call this week. That the single grant to Aave has surpassed ALL grants from this governance in effectiveness by orders of magnitude says a lot. The modest and very specific justification for proposals that typically fall before the Tooling Committee vs most others (with meme requests like 420k) also serves as an anecdotal alarm that things are not well in the grant program.
Given the large sums at risk, professionalization seems imperative â and that only comes with compensation. Even just reducing the amount of waste would more than pay for a couple dozen delegates to put in 8-10 hours a week. Paying for 3-4 days a month of delegate time seems prudent here.
We are confident, however, that Optimism can overcome these challenges. We donât necessarily agree that committees should be disbanded, but perhaps exploring other power structures could be useful. Perhaps the committees decide what comes up for a vote. Or perhaps they only have veto power to block a proposal. Or perhaps they continue in merely an advisory role. Or perhaps they have an optimistic role where their recommendations stand unless X votes choose to send the choice to a full vote as we do today. There are many options beyond disbandment â committees have been a net positive for governance, even if serving on one is onerous and unpleasant.
Rather than jump to a conclusion or prescription now, perhaps this upcoming Reflection Period would be a good time to understand which delegates are active, get in-depth feedback beyond a forum reply, and make some changes. Many of us (at least on DeFi Committee A) are professional governance service providers. These are not new problems. Some have defied solutions on other protocols (so letâs avoid those same attempts here) while others have yielded to trial and error (so letâs learn from that here). Please utilize the experiences that seasoned individuals and entities bring to the table. Coupled with the energy of Optimism-native enthusiasts, governance iteration can be faster, fairer, and more productive.
Good to see the camping meme jump over to Op forums 
Regarding delegate compensation: we have extremely low participation from token holders too. Engagement for the last cycle was dangerously low with some proposals passing with <5% circulating tokens voting For. So, Iâd like to see appropriate rewards for both a) active delegates and b) token holders that vote for active delegates (active can be defined as simple as voting for >X% governance proposals). Iâd assume one of the future airdrops will target this - but I hope to see an initiative to drive more participation immediately/asap.
I understand committees are not the perfect solution, but unfortunately we donât have a better one right now. Losing committees would make delegate participation even worse - I certainly donât have the bandwidth to consider all of those proposals. From the perspective of a delegate, we need something like this - at least for the Gov Fund proposals.
Thanks for your feedback.
I like the idea. Should delegates or users gain some particular âexpert badgesâ in some field theyâre specialized in?
I would like to echo concern related to overall lack of engagement as others have mentioned above.
Fund accountability and lack of communication from prior grant receiver
Apart from Uni, Rubicon, Pooltogether no one is sharing any detail related to use of fund and its impact on the ecosystem. I dont expect OP Foundation to poke every protocol but may be from community side we can put some pressure on them, we have many delegate with huge online presence. All we need is little push. To my surprise when I contacted Slingshot for details on Phase 0 fund usage they were kind enough to provide a detailed report (Its not dune but its something)while Stargate didnt even responded to direct DM or twit. We did approve those fund, this is the least we could do.
Fund accountability
I dont believe we are spending too much or too fast, I think we are doing the distribution in dark without proper data. Phase 0 was inauguration ceremony, we did bulk approval. At that, There were 7 proposal I would have voted against and now when I look back and read those proposal, this number has moved to 13 (which also show that we have made progress in auditing proposal). So, using old metric to evaluate a proposal might hurt us in long run.
I would like to iterate again, and last community call should be wake up call for all of us, we need data on overall fund use. Here, I dont trust any project as they could possibly inflate the number, I am advocating that this report should either come from Foundation or from an independent third party.
Usually protocol as responsive to feedback and willing to adjust the token requested but one think I am reading frequently is that âwe believe X amount of $OP is justifiable because a similar project in Phase 0 was approvedâ or in other word, when foundation can approve a similar grant why you are asking to reduce it. ? I can answer to this question if we have data.
Looking at upcoming go-live date of other L2s, we need to be more competitive and this could help us that.
What we are hearing now is the echo of our bulk approvals,I wouldnât call it a mistake, but I am afraid, it will be if we go one more season without accountability of fund. (Here I am talking about both grant, Gov + Foundation)
This is quite important, at least to me, protocols are comparing their proposal from past proposal, like mentioned above, without knowing the context.
We are doing all this in an iteration, rushing to make chance mid-cycle makes no sense at all. New community members are not aware of this and we should help them understand the process but in this season I saw that existing community member were rushing to make changes mid-cycle.
Some delegates are engaged with other task and does not have enough bandwidth to read everything, that was one reason to form the committee, and if you spam the complete channel on daily basis then either it will create an illusion that what you are advocating for is a common opinion hence creating a echo-chamber and delegates will end of making an un-informed decision.
Those are my personal opinion, as a committee we will also share a committee feedback summary.
I would avoid any kind of subjective assessment from OP labs or other delegates that can be used to determine what someone is or is not good at.
RDs are pretty simple. You have your âstoryâ. You fill out a questionnaire about your background and skills. On maker, they actually make you deploy a contract too.
Once youâre an RD. You are judged by three factors:
These get put into the algo (itâs progressive, so whales get paid less per OP) and you are paid for your contributions. If you miss a vote, your participation percentage goes down. If you miss a response, your response percentage goes down. If people undelegate, your voting weight goes down. All these things will determine how much you are paid.
RDs avoid gaming the system by internal policing. Responses are not screened for being fair or balanced etc, they are simply screened for being cohesive and understandable, If someone is just copy pasting a canned response, that can be evaluated by the OP labs foundation.
It would be wise for OPLabs foundation to create a sort of âOmbudsmanâ type role, that validated usersâ responses as adequate and kept the delegates in check to their status.
There has been some concern expressed by delegate that they donât have the time/bandwith/allocations to do this work. But I would strongly discourage tolerating that behavior. In a delegate free market, if you donât vote and participate, you should generally lose delegation, and you certainly shouldnât be paid. Paying RDs gives smaller delegates a chance to snatch OP from bigger ones by being more thorough.
