We appreciate the Uniswap Delegate Reward Working Group’s thorough research. The stakeholder interviews and market analysis provide valuable insights for informed decision-making. We’re excited to contribute to this discussion and suggest initiatives that address the key challenges and opportunities identified in the research.
Challenges
The research reveals several critical challenges in the current governance system. The stakeholder interviews also highlight concerns about the potential misalignment of incentives and the need to ensure that rewards promote genuine, long-term engagement rather than short-term exploitation. Furthermore, there is a clear desire for a more transparent and trusted system that allows the community to recognize and validate all governance participants’ diverse roles and contributions. Addressing these challenges presents an opportunity to create a more holistic, inclusive, and effective governance model.
The market analysis shows that most existing compensation programs rely heavily on objective metrics, such as voting participation and proposal creation, which may not capture the full spectrum of valuable delegate contributions. @StableLab has done a great job tracking some of this in the past, and other tools exist that quickly index this type of activity and performance in real-time. However, this approach may fail to capture delegates’ full range of valuable activities, such as community engagement, new initiatives, IRL activity, working group contributions, mentorship, and knowledge sharing. To create a truly comprehensive and effective compensation system, Uniswap could go beyond these baseline metrics and find ways to recognize and incentivize diverse contributions.
Suggestions
To address these challenges and opportunities, we suggest exploring a comprehensive approach to recognizing and incentivizing governance contributions. By leveraging on-chain data and EAS peer and trusted third-party attestations, Uniswap could create a holistic, transparent, and trusted system that captures the diverse roles and contributions of all governance participants, as stated:
“Delegates contribute to discussions, voting, writing, and reviewing proposals, as well as participating in various working groups.”
This approach involves creating dynamic, verifiable records showcasing each participant’s achievements, activities, and impact within the Uniswap ecosystem. Peer and institutional attestations would allow community members to endorse and validate contributions, fostering active participation and high-quality engagement.
- Real-time onchain and offchain governance and forum data could provide the baseline for becoming a distinguished delegate.
- To expand on this initial baseline, detailed on-chain schemas would be created through the Ethereum Attestation Service. Peers and trusted institutions could vouch for one another over various metrics, such as proposal participation rates, the value of forum contributions, attendance at governance calls, and working group evaluations.
Implementing this system could bring numerous benefits to the governance process, but for the purposes of this discussion, they can enable informed decisions about delegate compensation and incentivize valuable activities. By promoting trust, transparency, and accountability through peer recognition and validation, this approach would contribute to building a more inclusive and sustainable governance ecosystem. As a team passionate about decentralized governance, we’ve begun exploring solutions in this direction and would be excited to collaborate with the Uniswap community to bring this vision to life.
Potential Next Steps
To move this initiative forward, we propose the following next steps:
- Community Feedback: We invite the community to provide feedback on these suggestions. Please share your thoughts, questions, and suggestions in the comments below or contact us directly.
- Collaboration: We are eager to collaborate with interested Uniswap Delegate Reward Working Group, delegates, and the Uniswap Foundation to refine the schema and develop a detailed implementation plan. If you want to get involved, please express interest in the comments or contact us to discuss this further.
- Pilot Program: Based on community feedback and collaboration, we propose a pilot that indexes data and basic attestations for existing delegates to test and iterate on the recognition system. This will allow us to gather real-world data, identify areas for improvement, and make necessary adjustments before a full-scale implementation.