Proposal Title
ScrollDAO Delegate Accelerator Proposal
Proposal Type
Governance
Proposal Authors: @Nneoma_StableLab and @Kene_StableLab
Simple Summary
This proposal requests $90,000 + 100,000 SCR for a DAO-funded Delegate Accelerator (D/Acc) program that will develop a competent and diverse set of delegates capable of actively governing the Scroll DAO.
Motivation
The Scroll DAO currently has a votable supply of 6,329,000 SCR, compared to the total supply of SCR and the total number of active delegates, there is a strong case to get more SCR delegated to competent delegates over time. While the DAO is still in its earliest stages, developing a delegate training program would create a system for training the DAOs existing delegates that can actively and competently govern the Scroll DAO.
Who is this training for?
- Existing Scroll DAO delegates looking to refine their governance expertise.
- Prospective delegates seeking delegation from the foundation after proving governance competency.
Why is this important?
A DAO needs a broad group of delegates to ensure several key principles that are fundamental to its success and sustainability:
- Decentralization & Distributed Power: A diverse delegate base prevents power consolidation and ensures fair representation of various stakeholders. A governance system dominated by a few individuals creates vulnerabilities such as biased decision-making and potential corruption.
- Inclusive & Informed Decision-Making: Engaging a wide array of delegates results in well-rounded governance discussions and more informed decisions. A lack of diversity may lead to one-dimensional decisions that do not reflect the views of the broader community.
- Prevention of Cartels & Governance Manipulation: A robust delegate structure makes it harder for small groups to collude and influence governance for personal gain. A DAO that relies on too few delegates is susceptible to manipulation and self-serving decision-making.
- Resilience & Risk Mitigation: More engaged and knowledgeable delegates reduce the risk of governance failure due to inactivity, conflicts of interest, or governance takeovers. When a DAO has a dispersed decision-making body, it can better adapt to changes and unforeseen challenges.
- Expertise & Governance Legitimacy: Delegates with governance expertise add credibility to the DAO, ensuring that proposals are reviewed rigorously and executed effectively. An ecosystem with ill-prepared delegates results in superficial governance processes that fail to achieve any meaningful impact.
- Greater Engagement & Community Participation: A DAO with strong delegate engagement fosters a sense of ownership among its members, encouraging more community involvement in governance processes. This leads to an active, self-sustaining ecosystem where contributors remain invested in decision-making over longer periods.
- Mitigating Risks of Governance Capture: Without a broad delegate base, DAOs are at risk of being captured by influential actors who might act in self-interest rather than in the DAO’s best interest. A system with a continuous influx of trained delegates minimizes this risk.
- Sustainability & Long-Term Viability: Ensuring that new delegates can be continuously onboarded, trained, and incentivized strengthens the DAO’s longevity and adaptability. As governance mechanisms evolve, trained delegates will be better equipped to implement necessary changes and help train new delegates.
Execution
Operational
This proposal focuses on developing the curriculum structure and outlining key aspects for piloting the Delegate Accelerator program at Scroll DAO. Future proposals will address program execution strategies and deployment tools.
Curriculum Overview
The Scroll DAO D/Acc Program will be a 7-week structured cohort, incorporating:
- Practical Tasks: Governance framework drafting, mock voting, proposal analysis.
- Gamified Quests: Interactive missions reinforcing skill application.
- Assessments: Performance-based evaluations to ensure delegate readiness.
Program Format:
- Live Sessions & Recorded Lectures
- Written Materials: Breakdowns, required readings, supplementary videos)
- Assessments & Capstone Projects
Curriculum Structure:
- Total Levels: 7
- Program Length: 7 weeks
- Payouts: Performance-based incentives upon successful completion, in native tokens
- Badges: Issued as POAPs/NFTs with role advancements at each level.
Curriculum Timeline
- Week 0: Final Preparations for the 8-week Training Sprint
- Week 1: Introduction to DAO Governance
- In this section, we focus on the basics of DAO Governance, distinct Governance Models, and Mechanisms; we examine the purpose of governance and how Governor Contracts have supported decision-making in DAOs since the earliest days of the ecosystem.
- Week 2: Understanding the Proposal Life Cycle
- Here, we train delegates on how to engage with the Scroll Governance Process at various points of the proposal life cycle to understand the gaps and opportunities in a proposal while still seeking alignment with the DAO stakeholders, with the main goal of making decisions in the best interest of the DAO.
- This module teaches delegates how to participate in the Co-Creation Cycle, figuring out the early stages of co-designing a proposal, and how to gather feedback and improve a proposal.
- Week 3: Supporting Scroll DAO Governance
- Here at Scroll DAO, we intentionally take time to make the right decisions instead of the fastest ones. To do this, delegates must be able to assess proposals by breaking down why it is essential, why now, and whether there is enough data to support the need for this proposal now.
- This module also focuses on how to assess the risks and benefits that come with a proposal; this module does this by asking questions such as what the tradeoffs are.
- This module also focuses on teaching Delegates how to utilize governance to support Local Nodes, Evaluate the milestones of grant proposals, and coordinating with other delegates to perform other supporting functions such translating Governance Documentation and developing educational materials.
- Week 4: Writing and Submitting Proposals
- With a firm understanding of how to analyze a proposal, a delegate would now focus on writing a good proposal that addresses the requirements for the earlier module.
- Week 5: Understanding the Scroll DAOs Offerings
- It is essential for a Scroll Delegate to understand how Scroll works by understanding how the technology works, delegates can seek opportunities for synergy across the ecosystem.
- Week 6: Power Dynamics and Strategic Governance
- In this module, we seek to Understand how your Power is distributed across the Scroll DAOs Ecosystem (Foundation, Grants, Service Providers, and Delegate Power Distribution).
- Trainees will be taught how to identify potential strategic governance initiatives for DAOs.
- Week 7: Dispute Resolution Strategies for DAO Governance
- While working towards making decisions in the best interests of the DAO, conflicts are inevitable; this module focuses on training delegates on providing feedback and sustainably engaging with key stakeholders.
To inform the program design, a survey was conducted within the Scroll community. The key findings revealed that the main barriers to DAO governance include unclear expectations, complex governance structures, and difficulty accessing relevant information. Respondents expressed the strongest interest in learning delegation strategies, proposal writing, and interpreting on-chain data. While most participants were willing to commit to a 7-week program, scheduling flexibility and incentives were key factors for engagement. Additionally, hands-on learning, strategic governance training, and long-term delegate retention strategies were identified as critical components for success.
Survey results can be found here.
Personnel and Resources
Facilitator: The facilitator serves as the program operator, ensuring the smooth execution of the training program. They work closely with curriculum developers and trainees to deliver an impactful learning experience, ensuring resource integrity and overseeing live sessions, assessments, and overall program logistics.
Curriculum Developer: The curriculum developer is responsible for designing and producing the training materials, drawing from their expertise in governance to craft structured content that improves delegate skills. Their goal is to create a comprehensive knowledge base that strengthens the quality of engagement within Scroll DAO governance.
The facilitators and curriculum developers for this program were determined through an opt-in self-nomination process. This process prioritized members who had invested the most time over the past few months co-creating the program through discussions, feedback, and research sessions. The idea for this initiative originated in this governance discussion, and the individuals selected have demonstrated deep engagement and expertise in refining the program’s structure and objectives.
Facilitators:
- Nneoma Kanu (StableLab) - Nneoma is a Technical Governance Specialist at StableLab, where she designs and implements governance frameworks, strategic initiatives and technical solutions for top protocol DAOs, including Lido, Safe, Uniswap, and Arbitrum, ensuring they resonate with their distinctive visions and objectives. She also oversees multiple ecosystem funding initiatives and serves as a strategic advisor to various project teams in the Web3 ecosystem.
- Kenechukwu Eze (StableLab) - Kenechukwu Eze is a Protocol Governance Specialist at StableLab. In his role, he focuses on designing and implementing governance systems for prominent decentralised organisations such as Aave DAO, 1inch DAO, Gnosis and Paladin. Before StableLab, Kene contributed to Wildfire DAO as an Operator where he focused on leveraging partnerships to drive growth for DAOs.
- Ivey (SEEDGov) - Ivey is a governance analyst in SEEDGov, dedicated to design, analysis and implementation of governance programs. Particularly dedicated to Scroll, zkSync, Lido as well as a contributor within Everclear and Paraswap. Before that he was part of Decentraland DAO Facilitation Squad.
- Tino (SEEDGov) - With previous experience as a web3 researcher and technical writer, Tino has been working for the last two and a half years as a research associate conducting technical assessments of decentralised protocols to determine their level of decentralisation under different regulatory frameworks. Since last January, he has been collaborating with SEEDGov as a governance researcher/analyst on Scroll, ZKsync, Lido, and Gitcoin, designing, analysing, and implementing governance programmes.
- Kevin Nielsen - Kevin was previously the founder of Boardroom (a company that Agora recently acquired), a platform supporting DAOs and protocols with governance infrastructure and tooling. He has led governance advisory and operation roles and large protocol DAOs and specialized in delegate management and governance workflows in previous roles.
- Connor McCormick - Connor McCormick has an educational background in business, economics, and computer science. He’s the prior founder of a machine learning computer vision hardware startup where he worked tightly with local, state, and national governments to inform their operations. He has worked professionally in three collective intelligence startups, ranging from climate intelligence (Digital Gaia), to forecasting (Metaculus) and now he is the founder of the Network Goods Institute where he designs tools for collective intelligence and public goods funding. Connor is passionate about creating novel governance and sensemaking frameworks that enable a new era of work and he views Scroll as the perfect place to do it.
Curriculum Developers:
- Bitblondy - Bitblondy has been an active DAO contributor since writing her thesis on governance and engaging with various web3 communities. With a background in social and political sciences, she is passionate about decentralized organizations and protocol politics. She is dedicated to web3 education (also as creator of web3-resources.xyz) and bringing people with different backgrounds together.
- Abidemi - Abidemi is an investment analyst and ecosystem builder dedicated to web3 adoption and venture funding in Africa. She has contributed to various DAOs such as Gitcoin, BanklessDAO/Bankless Africa and Africa3, focusing on marketing, governance, operations, community, and investment strategy. A speaker and mentor, she has guided founders on fundraising and product-market fit. She’s currently supporting investments at Emurgo Kepple Ventures where she specializes in deal sourcing, market research, and due diligence. Her mission is to back founders using crypto, blockchain, and web3 to solve Africa’s coordination challenges.
- Kenechukwu Eze - Kenechukwu Eze is a Protocol Governance Specialist at StableLab. In his role, he focuses on designing and implementing governance systems for prominent decentralised organisations such as Aave DAO, 1inch DAO, Gnosis and Paladin. Before StableLab, Kene contributed to Wildfire DAO as an Operator where he focused on leveraging partnerships to drive growth for DAOs.
- Kevin Nielsen - Kevin was previously the founder of Boardroom (a company that Agora recently acquired), a platform supporting DAOs and protocols with governance infrastructure and tooling. He has led governance advisory and operation roles and large protocol DAOs and specialized in delegate management and governance workflows in previous roles.
- Nneoma Kanu - Nneoma is a Technical Governance Specialist at StableLab, where she designs and implements governance frameworks, strategic initiatives and technical solutions for top protocol DAOs, including Lido, Safe, Uniswap, and Arbitrum, ensuring they resonate with their distinctive visions and objectives. She also oversees multiple ecosystem funding initiatives and serves as a strategic advisor to various project teams in the Web3 ecosystem.
- Ivey (SEEDGov) - Ivey is a governance analyst in SEEDGov, dedicated to design, analysis and implementation of governance programs. Particularly dedicated to Scroll, zkSync, Lido as well as a contributor within Everclear and Paraswap. Before that he was part of Decentraland DAO Facilitation Squad.
- Tino (SEEDGov) - With previous experience as a web3 researcher and technical writer, Tino has been working for the last two and a half years as a research associate conducting technical assessments of decentralised protocols to determine their level of decentralisation under different regulatory frameworks. Since last January, he has been collaborating with SEEDGov as a governance researcher/analyst on Scroll, ZKsync, Lido, and Gitcoin, designing, analysing, and implementing governance programmes.
- Nick Almond (Factory Labs) - Nick is CEO of Factory Labs and has a background in Physics, Governance Design and Learning Theory. He has held Director level Learning and Teaching roles at UK Universities and he completed his academic career as Associate Dean of Learning, Teaching and Enhancement at the London College of Fashion. He has validated and supported in the design of over 200 Higher Education courses, has taught Masters Courses on Curriculum Theory and Development and has trained over a thousand teachers and academics.
- Connor McCormick - Connor McCormick has an educational background in business, economics, and computer science. He’s the prior founder of a machine learning computer vision hardware startup where he worked tightly with local, state, and national governments to inform their operations. He has worked professionally in three collective intelligence startups, ranging from climate intelligence (Digital Gaia), to forecasting (Metaculus) and now he is the founder of the Network Goods Institute where he designs tools for collective intelligence and public goods funding. Connor is passionate about creating novel governance and sensemaking frameworks that enable a new era of work and he views Scroll as the perfect place to do it.
Financial
Trainee Incentives – $15,000
We anticipate that up to 20 participants will complete the program. Rewards will be distributed based on performance and engagement, with detailed assessment methodologies outlined in a follow-up proposal. This budget also includes incentive multipliers to recognize exceptional performance among trainees.
- Trainee Rewards Pool: $10,000
- Additional Rewards for Outstanding Participants: $5,000
- Total Trainee Incentives: $15,000
Curriculum Development & Facilitation – $57,000
Executing this program requires a coordinated effort in curriculum development and facilitation over a 7-week period.
Module Development – $27,000
Six core modules will be developed by nine contributors, with one additional module created by the Scroll Foundation. Each contributor-developed module is budgeted at $4,500–$5,000, based on the following:
- Estimated time per module: ~15 hours
- Breakdown: (0.5–1 hour per session × 7 sessions) + ~5 hours prep/review
- Contributor rate assumptions:
- $150/hr for two collaborators: 15 hrs × $150 × 2 = $4,500
- $200/hr for one contributor: 15 hrs × $200 = $3,000
Costs may vary depending on module complexity, but the total for six modules will not exceed $27,000.
Facilitation – $29,000
Facilitators are responsible for the end-to-end delivery of the training program over an 8-10 week sprint period. Their duties include:
- Designing and managing the application process (~20 hours)
- Hosting live sessions (~15 hours)
- Conducting assessments and reviewing deliverables (~20 hours)
- Creating and maintaining the Notion Hub (~10 hours)
- Post-program evaluation and reporting (~10–15 hours)
Tooling & Administrative Costs – $1,000
Covers essential tools and administrative needs such as workspace software, access management, and collaboration platforms.
Delegation Pool – 100,000 SCR
A pool of 100,000 SCR will be delegated via a multi-sig managed by the Foundation. This non-monetary budget (i.e., delegated voting power, not liquid tokens) will support 5,000 SCR delegations to each high-performing graduate who successfully completes the program.
| Line Item Breakdown | Cost |
|---|---|
| Trainee Incentives | $15,000 |
| Module Development | $27,000 |
| Facilitator Compensation | $29,000 |
| Tooling and Admin Costs | $1,000 |
| Budget Buffer* | $15,000 |
| Budget for delegation pool | 100,000 SCR |
| Total | $87,000 + 100,000 SCR |
Total proposal request = $87,000 equivalent in SCR + 100,000 SCR for delegation.
All funds requested will be paid in SCR.
Note: The budget buffer ensures adequate coverage in the event of adverse price action or unanticipated execution costs. Unused funds will be returned to the DAO treasury or rolled over into a future program iteration.
Program Evaluation and Accountability.
This program will run for 7 weeks, and the execution team will work to ensure that the curriculum reflects the best possible standards. At the end of the program, the execution team will submit a report that details all the learnings, metrics, and possible areas of improvement to the program; this will be submitted on the DAO forum. Success will be evaluated through post-program metrics such as delegate retention rates, proposal pass/fail ratios, and community sentiment analysis. This report, along with the conduct of our newly minted delegates, will go on to determine if this program needs to be continued or discontinued.
Factory Labs will join the Delegate Accelerator programme in a curriculum evaluation and support role. At key way points in the programme, Nick Almond and Matt Haynes will deploy VOICE, a tool for aggregating sentiment and preferences of participants and facilitators. Using a combination of voting and AI, VOICE will collect a data set that can be used to support facilitators in directing focus and support towards topics that participants are finding most interesting and challenging.
In the post delivery phase Factory Labs will contact delegates and support them in using VOICE to evaluate their experience, diagnose any remaining gaps in their learning and identify areas where the programme can be improved in future iterations. A key output will be both to evaluate the effectiveness of this programme, but also to establish technology enhanced evaluation practices that can be used in other Scroll DAO initiatives.
Closing Note
By investing in this program, the Scroll DAO will cultivate a robust pipeline of informed, engaged delegates equipped to navigate the complexities of decentralized governance. We anticipate measurable outcomes, including:
- Increased Active Votable Supply: Delegates trained through this program will attract greater SCR delegation, thus enhancing participation and diversifying governance influence.
- Higher-Quality Proposals: Scroll delegates will gain the skills to draft, analyze, and refine proposals that align with the DAO’s long-term vision.
- Stronger Community Resilience: A decentralized, knowledgeable delegate base mitigates risks of centralization, cartel formation, and governance apathy, and ensures decisions reflect broad stakeholder consensus.
This pilot program lays the groundwork for sustainable, participatory governance at Scroll DAO. A follow-up proposal will expand on operational specifics, including detailed curriculum specifics, program tooling, trainee compensation structures, and KPIs for impact. By approving this initiative, the Scroll DAO reaffirms its commitment to decentralization, inclusivity, and proactive community stewardship.
Special thanks to the Scroll Foundation team members and community contributors who participated in various discussion and feedback sessions to develop the proposal: Eugene, Jamilya, Ivey (SEEDGov), Tino (SEEDGov), Kevin Nielsen, Nick Almond, Abidemi, Bitblondy, Connor McCormick, Alex, Humberto Besso-Oberto, Luis Cedeño, Marlene M., and others.
Date: Wednesday April 2nd
Time: 1p EST/UTC-4
Where: