Governance Contribution Recognition

tldr

This post is meant to:

  1. Introduce governance contribution recognition at Scroll DAO,
  2. Sketch what a first proposal would look like, and
  3. Begin the feedback process so that a formal proposal can go for vote in the June voting cycle.

This discussion is taking place at the same time as the votable supply discussion, and there are some related elements (e.g. qualification criteria)

Overview

Governance is work.

As such, we want to introduce the idea of governance contribution recognition (GCR), the first attempt at financially recognizing the work that is being done to help build Scroll DAO in the months since TGE. This will start with a 6 month retro (for contribution from inception, Oct, through mid-April). A separate proposal will be put together to define the subsequent approach’s for GCR.

Additionally, we want to put forth an initial outline of governance contribution compensation to start getting feedback so that we’re ready to vote on a proposal starting June 1.

Governance Contribution Recognition

GCR is meant to serve as a mechanism to reward people for meaningfully contributing to governance at Scroll DAO. As the DAO itself will grow and evolve, the nature of this recognition will change with it.

The first iteration of the GCR will be focused on a roughly 6 monthly retroactive award. Broadly speaking, this structure will have a small baseline reward for some minimal contribution, and will provide increasing awards based on the contribution. This was have a mix of quantitative and qualitative measures.

This initial approach will reward for certain baseline activites that are likely to not get rewarded again (e.g. voting but not partaking on the forum). The logic for including such categories is to provide a small reward (~$120 per vote) to a slightly wider set of participants, to hopefully encourage those who have some interaction to interact more.

There would be additional rewards for contributing beyond the initial baseline. To give a sense of scale, the largest award would be just over $10k USD eqiuvalent at a price of $0.20 SCR/USD.

Beyond the first retro, there will be a new approach defined for at least the subsequent 6 months. That proposal should put in place a more robust system for capturing the relevant data to minimize potential errors.

Requested feedback

We are especially keen to hear your thoughts on:

  • Qualification criteria for who is eligible for governance contribution recognition,
  • Specific things that are recognized,
  • Amounts, and
  • Payout frequency, how often should rewards be distributed?

That having been said, feel free to provide constructive feedback on any aspect.

Proposed framework

NOTE: this retro covers the first 3 votes and forum activity through April 15, 2025.

Qualification criteria

There is only one qualification for the minimum reward, namely:

  • Voted at least once.

Forumla

  • Hourly rate = 300 SCR
  • Proposal bonus = 5,000 SCR
  • Vote time = # votes * 2 hours
    • Assumption: each vote takes 2 hours
  • Call attendance = # of calls attended
    • Assumption: each call was 1 hour
  • Forum = Vote threads + endorsements + meaningful comments on one of 7 active forum posts
    • Assumption: each forum engagement takes 1 hour
  • Proposals to vote = the # of proposals that were written and made it to a formal DAO vote
    • Assumption: the sheparding of each proposal takes ~15-18 hours
  • Negation game participation = 1 if someone participated in an interview and interaction with the Negation Game team, 0 if no

Base reward = (Vote time + Call attendance + Forum) * Hourly rate

Proposal bonus reward = Proposal bonus * Proposals to vote

  • NOTE: only 4 proposals were posted by delegates as of April 15, 2025 that have or will soon go to vote

Bonus reward = (Negation game participation * 300 SCR) + (2500 SCR if 10 or more calls attended) + (2500 SCR if 5 or more meaningful forum comments) + (500 SCR if delegate has a delegate thread with all 3 rationales there) * 6*

  • *6 is a multiplier to bring the reward up to what qualitatively seems to be a more fair payout for contributions, proportionate to our treasury size.

In other words,

  • There is a base reward consisting of the number of hours spent on voting, attending calls, and making meaningful contributions on the forum, which is multiplied by an hourly rate of 300 SCR/hour.
  • There is a proposal bonus of 5,000 SCR for each proposal on the forum that has or will soon go to vote.
  • There is a general bonus that consists of
    • 300 SCR for completing an interview with the Negation Game team.
    • 2,500 SCR for attending 10 or more calls.
    • 2,500 SCR for having 5 or more meaningful interactions on the forum.
    • 500 SCR bonus for having 3/3 voter rationales.
    • There is a multiplier of 6.

Initial breakdown

The below is what the breakdown looks like based on the above rules.

NOTE: the same data was used for this and for the votable supply calculations.

This is a google sheet version you can play around with. Permissions are now fixed, sorry about that.

Concluding note

We believe that this type of proposal is an approximation of rewarding existing governance contribution through April 15, 2025. We hope such a proposal will help attract the highest quality governance contributions and support a culture where governance is seen as important work that can take significant time.

However, we do want to signal that we do not believe this is the best form of ongoing compensation. As we will work on org design for the DAO in the coming months, we are likely to re-design how most work in the DAO happens, and rewards will change accordingly. We didn’t want to delay this so are putting forth these ideas to get a proposal up in time for the June voting cycle.

We look forward to hearing your feedback and to advance this and the votable supply discussions in the upcoming governance calls.

17 Likes

I am supportive of this initiative broadly. I will note that the end date for consideration should be the date of this forum post. All contributions made prior were equally without expectation of compensation. Cutting the last three weeks out seems arbitrary.

Also there are small details such as call attendance and meeting negation game team which should have a path to self report for review if not noted in the current document.

1 Like

Overall supportive of this initiative! Criteria is clear and mostly straightforward.

It makes sense to further reward a proposal given the effort it takes to design and pass a proposal. We would also be supportive of including this criteria in a future proposal. We support the inclusion of a baseline contribution contingent on minimum requirements, however small, both here (as seen in the proposal) and in future rewards, to incentivize sustained participation.

I don’t think call attendance overall has the same impact as meaningful interactions in the forum, as better proposals probably emerge out of meaningful discussions (rather than just attending the call). Interested in hearing what others think.

Some thoughts on a future approach to rewards:

On minimum qualification, it makes sense to have a minimum cut off point. Voted at least once for this retro-contribution makes sense, but in the future it could be something like “voted in at least half of open proposals”.

Even though in a strict compensation sense it makes sense for it to be monthly, given voting cycles are monthly , some months there might be no proposals to vote on.
So it might make more sense in the future either to:

  • extend payout frequency for more than a month (2 or 3 months)
  • if payout frequency is monthly, have more minimum criteria (add min. call attendance, voting power, or other)
3 Likes

I strongly agree here. I think attendance itself is way overweighted. Huge sums of hours are going to attendance. Contribution should matter more. Being on a call doesn’t even mean one was listening at all. I would advocate reallocating rewards from call attendance either to call participation, or to forum contribution, or to both. But, ultimately, it should be something contributive.

1 Like

We would like to see a voting power element incorporated into this. We believe it is important for ecosystems to have active involvement of their largest delegates and for them to be properly incentivised to participate. I believe @SEEDGov may have views on this from their work done with the Arbitrum incentive program and I would like to hear their thoughts on this aspect.

1 Like

Is the intention for the retroactive governance contribution recognition to be a one-off type of thing or a recurring retroactive reward scheme?

Thank you @eugene and the foundation team for pushing the Governance Contribution Recognition initiative forward. Recognising governance efforts is an important step toward sustaining long-term participation, and we’re generally in favor of the proposal as outlined.

Additional suggestions

  1. Define “meaningful” forum comment more tightly. I think the term is subjective and could lead to disputes. Hence there should be clear definition, for instance, a comment should count as meaningful when it meets one of the following criteria:

Examples:

Adds new data or analysis

  • Introduces a new dataset, chart, table, or computed metric.
  • Cites at least one verifiable source link.

Raises a new or previously undiscussed risk or trade-off

  • Clearly explains the mechanism involved
  • Offers at least one mitigation strategy or open question

Prompts substantive delegate discussion

  • Receives at least two substantive replies or @‑mentions from delegates.
  • Each reply extends the conversation with a new argument, question, or piece of information
  1. I agree with @DonOfDAOs that the cutoff for eligible contributions should be May 6, 2025, the date this proposal goes live on the forum, to ensure that all delegate activities up to that point are captured.
3 Likes

@eugene Appreciate the initiative coming from the governance team—it’s a clear sign that governance is being valued.

  • At first glance, the qualification criterion of having voted at least once may seem a bit low. That said, I like the approach of rewarding baseline participation retroactively, and then (possibly) having more strict criteria, to encourage more consistent activity from existing delegates.

  • I also support the decision to use a set of activity-based criteria rather than selecting between delegates with the most voting power. That said, I’d suggest including a small minimum threshold of voting power to ensure that delegates have some stake in the ecosystem.

  • On the general criteria: the proposal bonus is a great idea. It emphasizes initiative and active contribution over passive voting. Regarding the call attendance—do you track it as one call per week or by total calls? I know Scroll hosts two governance calls every Wednesday to support different time zones, so it might be difficult for some delegates to attend both.

  • The amount seems generous, and the bonus reward for delegates going the extra mile seems reasonable as well.

  • On payout frequency, I don’t have a strong preference, maybe quarterly for balancing operational efficiency with continuity for delegates.

Overall, this is a well-thought-out proposal and a positive surprise for many delegates. I’m curious to see how this evolves, and I believe a recognition programs like this can really help attract and retain high-quality delegates for Scroll.

We believe this proposal is a good step toward fostering a more engaged and accountable governance. And it’s important to recognize the time and effort delegates invest in reviewing proposals, providing feedback, and participating in discussions. Also an incentives can lead to higher quality summaries, reports, and rationale sharing.

The current reward structure are reasonable and well suited for this early stage of Scroll DAO development.

Same question with Sinkas, is this retro reward just one time, will it happen regularly in the future? If so, in the next retrospectives, we’d suggest introducing clearer and more robust criteria to reduce the risk of vote farming or low effort participation.

As for payout timing, we think 3 or 6 months cycle will be appropriate for this.

Thank you, Eugene, and the entire Scroll Foundation team for initiating retroactive recognition for governance contributions and for your commitment to create a formal governance-contribution recognition (GCR) system. As long‑time contributors to delegate incentives thought leadership and research —dating back to a blog post that Rika wrote for Content Guild on delegate rewards, the DAOstar Delegate Incentives working group and our feedback on Sam McCarthy’s research, who was funded by the Scroll Foundation—we appreciate seeing these ideas come to fruition and want to acknowledge Eugene’s foresight in championing this topic.

With that context in mind, we’d like to offer two sets of feedback:


1. Feedback on the retroactive governance-contribution rewards

  • Delegate Day at ETHDenver

    Attendance at Scroll Delegate Day (including its workshops and the early Negation Game demo) required substantial time and should count toward call‑attendance metrics.

  • Delegate‑incentives dinner

    The session where Sam presented his research and delegates exchanged feedback provided valuable insight and should also be recognized.

  • Working‑group participation

    Hands‑on involvement in working groups—e.g., the Treasury Management WG—represents meaningful governance labor that merits inclusion.

    Disclosure: We participated in all three activities above and would benefit if they are added to the retro‑contribution scope.


2. Feedback on designing a formal governance-contribution system

  • Close the feedback loop on proposals

    Forum‑comment counts alone can encourage noise (even if meaningful). To ensure feedback genuinely improves proposals, authors can document how they integrate substantive suggestions. A transparent change‑log that cites the delegates whose input is adopted creates an accountability trail and keeps the focus on high‑impact contributions.

  • Leverage the Negation Game

    One option: have proposal authors assign each comment a “feedback score” in the Negation Game, reflecting whether it meaningfully improved the proposal. These scores could feed into a delegate‑reputation system, weighting future comments from high‑scoring delegates more heavily—and tying rewards to demonstrable impact, not just forum discussion.

We hope these suggestions help refine both the retro‑recognition criteria and the forthcoming governance-contribution recognition framework. We remain eager to collaborate in building a transparent, data‑driven system that fairly compensates delegates while strengthening Scroll’s governance.

Hi everyone,

First we want to echo what has been said so far regarding recognizing governance work, this proposal is a thoughtful attempt to do so and the work behind this doesn’t go unnoticed. Ty @eugene and @Jamilya!

As per the unfolding of the conversation we’d also like to make the distinction on the two topics being discussed: the retroactive governance contributions and the potential delegate incentive program outline. We find this distinction relevant since although they are related, there’s a difference between knowing what you are being compensated for and contributing without pre-defined expectations.

Many of the gameability concerns mentioned come out of this distinction and now that contributions are roughly identified the incentive for delegates to participate will naturally adapt, thus much more focus should be made in the future look of governance contribution recognition than to what has already been done. As mentioned, the GCR is not meant to be sustainable but to acknowledge efforts that have added up to this point in Scroll governance.

On the specific feedback of the items,

GRC - Retroactive Contributions

  1. Timeframe - We do agree on the timeframe to be set at the date of the forum post as mentioned by @DonOfDAOs, which seems like a less arbitrary cut-off date.

  2. Baseline contributions - We think the parameters taken are reasonable for the baseline activity and glad to see some qualitative criteria included regarding the forum interactions. Some further breakdown on those aspects would be insightful.

  1. Proposal Bonus - As the maximum expression of on-chain governance we strongly support this as the top bonus.

  2. Bonus Rewards - First we support this item in its effort to capture contributions on top of the baseline. Some explanation on the “meaningful” criteria should help delegates understand the authors perspective on what they consider to be meaningful. Also, the amount (5) is reasonable given the level of activity.

Regarding the calls items, we do think they’ve played a big role in reaching up to this point in governance. Many factors played into this: facilitation, cadence, turnout, topics, etc, but they’ve definitely been a space of co-creation that later reflect on forum comments and feedback. Of course we can go granular on what sort of contributions were made on the calls but that might be a pretty substantial overhead for the GRC although it could certainly be considered in the future round. In that sense, the amount (10) should be a good proxy of contribution.

Future program

For what’s next, and having the GCR as reference, we think that some aspects that could be leveraged.

Voting

  1. Voting in the proposed timeframe

  2. Historical voting participation

“Meaningful” contributions

As mentioned by @Curia and @404Gov, there’s room to expand on this. We could then develop a rubric in order to leverage contributions against. As an example, here’s the one utilized in the Arbitrum 1.6 Delegate Incentive Program

If we were to select some of these, and based on the comments of some delegates, we are leaning towards contributions that have an Impact within the final outcome and have depth of analysis on its development. This rubric would then be comprehensive of contributions made within forum posts and calls in order to capture both formats.

Also something we’ve observed is that Rationales and Feedback (to proposals) are sometimes overlapped and it’s hard to attribute value to each of those separately. In that sense, merging both contributions or even not rewarding rationales would be something to consider.

Voting Power

Based on @ACI’s comment we do believe that a VP component should be added to future rounds both in the reward calculation and the threshold to participate. In the Arbitrum DIP, this component is calculated as a multiplier that linearly rewards delegates based on their VP. In other words, it slightly reduces the scoring points derived from voting for smaller delegates.

  • A delegate with 50,000 VP should have a multiplier of 0.8 (minimum).
  • A delegate with 4,000,000 VP or more should have a multiplier of 1.0 (maximum).
  • For VP between 50,000 and 4,000,000, the multiplier is calculated using the linear equation.

Nonetheless, the multiplier shouldn’t be hardly exclusive since it should allow for reaching incentivization criteria with other mapped contributions. The specific maths can be worked out upon the proposal since they correspond to quorum calculations.

Since VP is currently being discussed we suggest to conclude that discussion first in order to have a clear picture of the distribution before moving to reward mechanisms.

1 Like

This is an excellent first step toward formalizing a culture of accountability and rewarding delegates for participating in Scroll governance. Thank you for putting in the work to structure this.
I believe the majority of the delegates agree that governance is work and are most likely positively surprised to see this post that will in theory reward there contributions.

The formula is pretty well designed in a way that attempts to quantify the majority of the actions a delegate that cares about Scroll would partake in and also to reward more the participants that have went the extra mile via the bonus. While the exact criteria and amounts may not be perfect(or set in stone) this is a great start and the overall compensation strategy behind the proposal captures the most important things.

Some suggestions for the future iterations:

  • As discussed in the call, creating a working group to help refine the next GCR round, ideally composed of an independent team would be an option, but seeing how small in reality the governance space is, this could also pave the way into centralization and gamification of the system long term. I believe the optimal approach would be to have an independent team supervised by one Scroll governance facilitator, independent team and handpicked delegates with no social graph relationship between each other(at least in theory) to advise.
  • Exploring integrating reputation or credentialing systems (e.g. Karma, Hats Protocol) to automate some of the evaluation and reduce manual subjectivity over time. These have their own vulnerabilities, but can be used as another data point in the overall strategy.
  • Creating a lightweight governance registry: a ledger of contributions, proposals, and rationales across time where delegates can vote on and surface the things they believe are most important - this would not be a final weigh in future payments, but a way to capture and iterate of governance contributions- when thinking about rewarding them, we could randomize which specific contributions we want 2 reward(just an idea).

Hi all. Thanks for the thoughtful feedback and for getting the forum discussion going.

Although the post was published on May 6, we had been openly discussing the intent to bring this proposal forward, which may have created an expectation of its upcoming submission. That said, we can adjust to April 30 or another date.

The self reporting is pinging Eugene or Jamilya! Sorry it’s a manual process for now, but the data was gathered manually so please do feel free to nudge if we missed something.

Are you suggesting to not count calls at all, to have a smaller amount for calls, or something else?

I do think doing quarterly ones will be most realistic for the next quarter or two, and we can reassess as we go.

Do you have a suggested weighting? Agree with this view, especially going forward. Interested to hear what folks are tihnking for this # as @Web3Citizen and @DonOfDAOs are mentioning

We recognize the balance of incentivizing those with most voting power to stay active and those with less voting to make sure it’s not just a small number of people deciding everything.

What are your thoughts on the multiplier system such as in Arbitrum? Any other ideas come to mind?

This proposal is intended as a one-time initiative, but our goal is to develop a more suitable long-term scheme. If you have any metrics in mind that you would like to see included, please let us know.

We agree - a clearer definition is needed. For this instance, we considered any comment that went beyond a simple approval/disapproval or a like as meaningful. We can certainly consider something along the lines of what you’re proposing for the future, however, we should also ensure that the selected criteria encourages genuine, voluntary engagement rather than incentivizing inorganic participation.

Also, curious to hear if you have any insights from the Forum Score Dashboard integraiton in Arbitrum.

The decision to set the threshold at a minimum of one vote was primarily driven by our goal to ensure that delegates who joined later and have been active since - despite missing the initial voting cycles - are still eligible for retroactive compensation. This is just one of several factors influencing the compensation calculation. Looking ahead, we can work on clearly defining the status of an active delegate and establish stricter metrics for voting participation.

We agree that prioritizing activity and performance over voting power is more appropriate. If you have any suggestions for what the minimum threshold should be, please let us know.

We counted the total number of calls starting from autumn 2024, including all CCC recorded calls and DAO calls from January 2025. To account for time zone constraints, we set an arbitrary threshold of 10 calls.

Regarding your question about repeated calls—there is no expectation for delegates to attend both. Being an active delegate means that if you joined just one call per week, you would reach the 10-call threshold in approximately 10 weeks, which is 2.5 months out of the 6 months covered by the retroactive compensation period.

As mentioned, this particular proposal is aiming to be a retro reward for the first 6 months, and we are aiming to develop more comprehensive delegate compensation scheme in the future. Let us know what you think would be appropriate to include in terms of metrics.

We acknowledge that it’s challenging to develop metrics that are equally fair to everyone. For instance, call times are inevitably more convenient for some time zones than others, which can create an uneven playing field.

Being present at the Denver conference is an example of an opportunity that even less accessible to everyone. Travel to the U.S. can be complicated due to visa requirements, geographical distance, and financial constraints. Our goal is to balance these factors while ensuring fair recognition of active contributions.

In addition to the response to the previous point, that dinner was a Metagov/DAOstar event that the Foundation sponsored to bring together delegates from multiple ecosystems together. There were a number of delegates there who were not from Scroll DAO, so we don’t think this one qualifies.

Similar to the metric mentioned above, we are not ignoring this aspect. However, the reality is that it would be impossible to account for every single contribution.

For working group participation, we have accounted for both call attendance and forum contributions. If there are any specific metrics you think we could potentially use, let us know.

In the future, the goal is that councils (or any other structure) will have clear roles, responsibilities, and renumeration. We recognize that doesn’t cover all work done to date, but again, this retro is meant to a one time recognition of contribution (as opposed to a perfect relfection of work done).

Absolutely, which is why we do not suggest using that metric in the future. However, for the retro, we think this is reasonable while we work on more clearly articulating roles and responsibilities within the DAO.

When we start getting into governance research and experimentation in future proposals, we can explore a way for proposal authors to easily vote on the most impactful comments.

Happy to discuss this with @connormcmk.

Thanks for highlighting this. This proposal is currently only focused on the former, the retro. The latter, GCR going forward, will be worked on in the future. One idea is to potentially include a line item for a working group to define the proposal.

Thanks for providing some examples from other ecosystems. We should definetely take into consideration some of the examples as we think about how to shape the GCR going forward.

Definetely curious to hear your thoughts the Delegate incentive program, given very detailed metrics, calculations and a lot of effort put into the program.

If there is a desire for this rubric, or some rubric, when would we start using it? For this initial retro (aka sort the rubric in the next week to 10 days to have the proposal up in time for the June 1 voting cycle)?

Let us know if you have a suggestion for what it could look like for us.

Just making sure I’m following, Indepence = no social graph relationship (at least in theory)? I’m open to getting a party not involved in the ecosystem potentially, and would be keen to hear what others think.

Going forward, 100%.

I wonder if that’s easiest through a tool where the author can see the responses in a reddit style layout and upvote the most relevant / impactful ones.

6 Likes

A smaller amount, so instead of 2500 SCR if 10 or more calls, maybe around 1500. I don’t have a concrete number for this, but my thought process was to reward meaningful comments more than call attendance.

Got it, thanks for clarifying. We are going to work on putting together some different versions of the comp to have a sense of what it looks like when adjusting a few parameters.

From our perspective, this is a great step in the right direction towards incentivizing governance contributions.

The only note we would add is joining our voice with @SEEDGov to suggest including voting power and quality of feedback considerations, ensuring we can balance the reward mechanism effectively.

I’m supportive of this initiative.

One of the largest factors behind failure to meet quorum in more mature DAOs is delegate drop out. This is usually due to a mix of factors including voter fatigue, forum hostility, etc. But a key issue is lack of appropriate compensation. This proposal signals to contributors “your work is valued” and is a necessary, but not sufficient, way of avoiding delegate drop out.

Yes, having an independent member not involved would help, the suggestion was more around the relationship between the delegates that will be on board, ideally they are not from the same team or entity.

On the registry, I have not yet explored what the options would be, but a voting tool could be a great start.

A question for you and @SEEDGov on that. What exactly would you want to see in this direction? That every comment up to the cut off day is graded by a single rubric?

We had a much more informal binary for each comment, and once a comment seems substantive enough, we counted it. We can obviously do something more comprehensive if delegates request it. We were trying to do something a bit more quick and scrappy just given time constraints. Let us know what you think.

Got it. If this is of interest to the DAO, it’s definitely doable.

Some more comments on our end and a quick clarification: we’re comfortable with the GCR being up for a vote in it’s current form.

As it has been mentioned, by no means this sets a precedent on what governance compensation is going to look like for Scroll, this should be seen as a good-will attemp to avoid delegate fatigue and bootstrap all of the talent that is currently engaging in the DAO actively up to the specific cut-off point of this proposal, which we consider to be a good call.

The VP threshold/multiplier, the final qualitative rubric and the final set of contributions that will make it to the formula should be considered for the next iteration. Whether this proposal passes or not, we do think the natural next step is setting up a working group/Council in order to refine this moving forward and take the discussion with another pace than the one set by the voting calendar.

Voting Power

We’re happy to build this once the Votable Supply Adjustment reaches an outcome that provides a somewhat clear picture of what the distribution will look like. This topics are naturally related so since the multiplier is tied to quorum requirements (and to “quorum contributions by voting”) we should first define what quorum will look like in order to run scenarios.

Some early thoughts are that VP should be definitely considered on a non exclusive way but certainly accounting for the relative weight of delegates at the time of voting, allowing for alternative contribution pathways in order to access rewards, build reputation and overall contribute to the DAO.

Quality of contributions

To the ends of the GCR we’d rely on the self-reporting of delegates who might not be comfortable with the standing compensation and maybe a case-by-case approach can be taken in that case. We definitely see the need for clear guidelines (rubric/formats) in the future that mostly account by impact rather than high-level participation or side-lane parameters.