The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @kaereste, @Sinkas, and @Manugotsuka, and it’s based on their combined research, fact-checking, and ideation.
We are voting AGAINST the proposal.
We are generally opposed to delegating tokens from the treasury, especially if that voting power is given to already active delegates solely to avoid difficulties in reaching a quorum. While we understand the frustration of needing to rally multiple stakeholders to achieve quorum, this reality in DAOs is a feature, not a bug.
There are multiple reasons why we are against the idea of treasury delegation:
- There is a significant conflict of interest, as existing delegates are voting to delegate voting power to themselves.
- Existing delegates derive their voting power, in whole or in part, from the token holders they represent. That means token-holders can, at any time, re-delegate their voting power away from delegates who no longer represent their interests or are no longer active. By using the treasury to delegate voting power, we circumvent that whole dynamic.
- While the premise is that the additional voting power will assist in achieving quorum, there is no way to ensure it is only used in cases where quorum is difficult to achieve, at least not with the proposed approach.
- While the governance risk is similar to that of reducing quorum, delegating from the treasury creates extra overhead and additional risk. If we are to accept the governance risk, then reducing the quorum is a more straightforward option.
All in all, we understand the challenges associated with meeting quorum, but we are opposed to using treasury delegation as a means to mitigate them. Ideally, the difficulty is reduced by attracting more and more actively involved delegates. Given that it’s a longer-term solution, we’re open to discussing ideas for how we could address a high quorum without having to use the treasury to increase the voting power of current delegates.
For example, a solution we can consider is creating a setup inspired by Optimism’s Anti-Capture Commission (ACC), where we would delegate voting power to a multisig controlled by a few active delegates. That multisig would only be mobilised to vote on proposals that are not contentious, but are not reaching quorum easily. The exact details can be discussed and refined, but we view this as a more suitable solution to the problem at hand.