Note on UAC Commentary:
In discussing proposed solutions, the UAC’s goal is not to advocate or oppose, but to offer counterfactuals, steelman arguments, and constructive counterpoints as needed, not to establish formal positions, but to facilitate deeper dialogue and holistic evaluation. Simultaneously, we approach this with care, aiming to represent the community-sourced solutions entrusted to us by builders in good faith.
UAC as a Spotlight and Platform:
We appreciate the community’s alignment on this and hope the above helps both validate the urgency of these concerns and position the UAC as a spotlight and platform for surfacing underrepresented perspectives. As you noted, important signals in decentralized systems often go underacknowledged. We see this effort as one way of helping to correct that.
SEEDGov Response
I will defer to @Getty to provide his perspective on matters and questions related to CPF.
Clarification: CPF is intended for Future Proofing. My understanding, however, is that CPF provides future proofing. While identifying delegates and securing champions is standard practice, it increasingly becomes a bottleneck (particularly at scale) and adds pressure to a shrinking pool of active high-VP participants.
Counterfactual: CPF Still Requires Majority Agreement. While concerns about reduced quorum thresholds are valid, it’s important to note that CPF proposals still operate under the standard referendum process both at the sub and main DAO level. Should the broader DAO dislike or identify a proposal as malicious, the majority community vote would still block the proposal within the CPF from reaching the main DAO. And, should it reach the main DAO, further majority support would be necessary.
Feedback-Derived Improvement – CPF Votes Abstain: A possible configuration that @SEEDGov 's perspective does bring about is to ensure the CPF votes ABSTAIN, rather than FOR. In this regard, the system further relies on standard consensus.
Counterfactual: Delegations tend to be sticky.
While concerns about sustainability are valid, the behavioral dynamics of delegation suggest that incentives don’t necessarily lead to short-term, extractive activity, but are in fact rather sticky.
Incentives typically prompt users to delegate in the first place, an action that requires effort, but there’s no comparable incentive to undelegate. In fact, there’s a disincentive to undelegate: users may fear missing out on future emissions or having to repeat the delegation process later.
We can observe similar dynamics in airdrop-based delegation models. For example, Scroll’s airdrop initiated delegation at token launch. Delegations didn’t unwind through active undelegation, but instead, they tapered off only when users sold their assets. While wallet assets may vacillate delegated status tend to persist.
Conversely, DAOs regularly face problems around high-stickiness, not low. This is seen through ghost delegates; accounts that retain large voting power despite long-term inactivity. In Aave, for instance, only ~7 of the top 100 delegates have voted in the past year, yet very few delegators have undelegated or re-delegated, underscoring the inertia built into delegation behavior.
Finally, this “stickiness” is reflected in the high failure rate of redelegation campaigns. Once a wallet is delegated, it tends to stay that way, even when campaigns try to dislodge it.
In effect, delegation is often a set-and-forget decision, and the risk of mass undelegation following incentive tapering is likely overstated.
Clarification: UVN is a promising solution, but holds a variable timeline and impact.
While UVN is a promising step toward increasing delegation, its timeline remains uncertain, and several implementation details are still to be determined. More importantly, there’s no guarantee that UVN alone will be sufficient to restore quorum stability. In the meantime, DAO-led solutions are necessary. At worst, these initiatives become redundant and can be deprecated upon UVN’s launch; at best, they serve as critical infrastructure to support any delegation gap UVN may leave unaddressed.
Counterfactual: Validators are not always governance-aligned.
It’s also worth noting that validator incentives may not directly translate to responsible governance engagement. Validators often operate with a different focus and skillset from active governance participants, and many may not have the interest or ability, to engage meaningfully in DAO decision-making. It also remains to be seen whether UVN will allow for re-delegation to more involved actors while staked.
Clarification: IDVs do not compete with UVN. The model at the point of UVN would be for IDVs to either complement UVN, or be deprecated, not to compete.
The UAC is actively engaging with both the UF and a16z to help stabilize quorum in the short term. That said, reliance on external coordination, however effective immediately, will always leave the DAO vulnerable to similar risks in the future. Our goal is not only to address the immediate quorum gap, but to help the DAO build a more durable, internally sustained quorum margin over time.
Next Steps: Your support for TDs is noted, it will be included in the upcoming status post as we look toward continued community feedback.
Feedback-Derived Improvement: Clarity around when Optimistic Governance is used. Establishing clearer guidelines for when Optimistic Governance should be used is a valuable suggestion. While it could, in theory, be left to the proposal author to choose the path at the time of posting, broader consensus on the criteria and process would help.
Counterfactual: Optmistic Governance indirectly addresses quorum and directly addresses other concerns.
SEEDGov is correct that Optimistic Governance does not address quorum challenges for high-impact or contentious proposals (nor for proposals that establish the OG framework itself).
However, the core value of OG lies elsewhere: today, every proposal (regardless of scope) is treated as if it were high-stakes, requiring full quorum and maximum attention. By enabling procedural or low-risk proposals to move through a more efficient path, OG helps declutter governance, reduce voter fatigue, and free up attention for the proposals that do merit more intensive participation.
OG does not directly address quorum, though it does indirectly. And, it’s important to note that quorum is the main, but not the only issue/improvement necessary.
Franklin DAO Response
Thank you FranklinDAO for joining the conversation and for the thorough analysis.
Counterfactual: The CPF is a separate, optional track to the primary governance flow. Given the CPF is a separate track there shouldn’t be necessary delays. All delays would be accepted by the proposer as a trade-off. There is nothing preventing proposal authors from seeking a sponsor and pursuing the standard proposal path
Feedback Derived Improvement: standardizing CPF proposal requirements could drive higher quality. Creating a required format and template structure for ‘valid’ CPF proposals could address some of the valid concerns FranklinDAO has raised regarding proposal quality.
Personal Note: I, as an individual, find this approach novel and interesting. I find the incentive to delegate compelling alignment. I would worry that this, if not structured properly, could exaggerate the burden to champion that delegates face. However, I’d be open to scoping this solution out with you more broadly as a potential solution for this or future UAC posts.
Next Steps: Your conditional support has been noted. Should additional support across the DAO continue, full scoping of the unit economics of IDVs will be shared.
Regarding governance quality, IDVs would incentivize delegation to a selected subset of community-selected, high-quality delegates. The selection process would also be concretized should the broader idea continue to receive full or conditional support.
Question: Could you please provide more context?
Your support of TDs has been noted. Could you please:
- Provide suggestions for delegation amounts and caps
- Expand on how best to expand the eligible delegate pool
Regarding selection itself, a formal set of nomination eligibility criteria will be suggested should TDs continue to grow full or conditional support.
This conditionality has been noted. While general sentiment has been against quorum changes, this comment serves as a first pass at establishing the conditions by which the DAO would begin considering adjustments to Quorum.
Next Steps: This configuration suggestion has been noted and will be added to the next status summary the UAC provides.
Thank you @kpk , @SEEDGov and @pennblockchain for joining the conversation. Its a systemically important issue for the DAO and your participation is greatly appreciated.