Looking through the 5 most recent proposals, there have been approximately 150 voters per proposal (with the exception of SCP-57). For these proposals, a quorum was achieved based on the votes of 6 or 7 wallets. As an investor, this creates significant risks.
My idea is to implement an initiative that will incentivize votes and participation in the proposals. Greater participation will lead to greater interest in owning Fox tokens which will contribute to the diversification of ownership.
The incentive would be to grant 10 Fox tokens to each voting wallet for each proposal for a period of 10 proposals. If voting activity remains the same as it has been, this would amount to an estimated cost of 15,000 FOX. Ideally, the incentive increases voter participation so this cost should exceed that amount. Of course if our voter participation increases by 50% then the total cost would be 22,500 FOX. Although the increase voters would mean increase cost, that would be okay since the initiative would be achieving the overall goal.
There are a couple obvious risks with this initiative. One being that users might spread their FOX to multiple wallets, and vote from each wallet, to obtain more granted FOX. I think the likelihood of this is low due to the cost/benefit of moving the FOX around. The other risk is that once the initiative is over, voter activity could return to the same level prior to the initiative.
I wanted to get your thoughts on this…I’m sure there are many things I haven’t considered.
I would be against this. I think that this creates the opportunity for someone to create 1000’s of wallets to profit off of this due to there being no gas fees to vote.
I definitely agree that this is a problem, and that we should be actively searching for a solution, but incentivized voting (at least in the direct fashion described) just doesn’t work. It’s not sybil-resistant, and it also specifically incentivizes pressing the vote button – not reading the proposal and making an informed decision.
I’d love to see a solution here and I’m very happy you’ve started the conversation. I think part of it is that we need to make it easier to vote; I’m also now thinking about some ways we could make voting (or delegation of votes) optionally anonymous with ZK proofs, which would definitely make me more likely to vote on average issues and not just the really important ones.
Having recently participated in a DAO that had created a voting reward system as well as the ability to dilute non voting token holders, I would strongly suggest against this process for the time being.
That DAO did have very high participation, somewhere around 65% of token holders were voting. However, the effect was simply that proposal’s from the “core” group just became rubber stamped by most token holders in order to get their rewards. I don’t think it solved any meaningful problem in the DAO ecosystem.
I think there is an interesting question here to be considered over time, but agree for all the reasons others have stated that I don’t think this is the right way to go for the ShapeShift DAO today.
Thank you for putting this post together! Yes, this is very much an issue that we’re facing (as well as many other DAOs) and a great conversation to be held. I’ve love to continue the conversation.
Based on the feedback here, it’s clear that incentivizing voting with FOX tokens is not supported. POAPs may be supported. However, I agree with that we want to have quality votes, not just quantity. Perhaps the broader conversation is now to do we get more people involved in the governance process as a whole, not just the voting.
Unfortunately, I have more questions than i have answers at this point. Would love to keep this conversation going!
From a housekeeping stand point - this post is the Forum stage, not Ideation. 1f642
Initially I was thinking more votes would equal more engagement, but based on ’s experience that is not necessarily the case. I agree that more engagement, particularly more diversified engagement, should be the end goal.
At some point, it might be worth surveying token holders (since everyone loves surveys 1f642) about their engagement or lack thereof. We could give a POAP for completing the survey…Not a priority, just brainstorming here.
thanks for letting me know about the housekeeping item. I don’t have the ability to edit the post or else I would change it.