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 want to thank StableLabs for the effort put into drafting the proposal and responding to all the questions and feedback so far. Delegate onboarding and training are, in our view, complicated topics. It is not necessarily about the onboarding process or the training itself, but rather about who the targeted audience is.
Below, we’ve distilled our concerns about a delegate accelerator program, as we’ve also expressed them during the governance calls. We’ve broken them down into challenges we see in the concept of delegate training and concerns we have about this proposal in particular.
On the concept of the delegate accelerator
Role of a Delegate
First and foremost, being on the same page about the role of delegates within Scroll DAO is crucial in understanding our point of view. In our opinion, delegates should help decide on the direction the DAO should take to support and grow Scroll’s ecosystem. And who better to do this than Scroll’s stakeholders: builders, investors, big token holders, etc.
Training just anyone to become a delegate when they might not have a material stake in Scroll’s success seems like a fruitless endeavour. It’s not that we do not want contributors who are engaged with the DAO and have strong knowledge and lots of context about how everything works, but those people don’t necessarily need to be delegates and drive decision-making.
With that in mind, if we were to pursue a training program, it should either be focused on Scroll’s stakeholders to enable them to participate in governance, or it should be more bare bones and act as a guide on how individual contributors and service providers can work for Scroll’s DAO, which brings us to our second point.
Demand
The whole approach to structuring the program is backwards. Instead of existing stakeholders wanting to participate in governance and the program filling in that gap, we’re creating the program first and hoping to find the right participants after the fact. We understand that it can be a ‘chicken and egg’ situation, but at the very least, we should have soft confirmation from existing stakeholders that they want to participate in governance, and if not, we should figure out why.
Similarly, although kind of different, if we are to train individual contributors and service providers on how they can work for the DAO, we should first have concrete things for them to do. One experience we have from an onboarding group we helped facilitate in a different DAO was that we were trying to onboard people to the DAO, but there weren’t any places they could actually contribute to in a structured way.
Practical influence
Lastly, a big reason we are sceptical about a delegate training program is that, in practice, a delegate with no voting power cannot easily influence decision-making, nor do they make it easier to meet the quorum. While, in theory, an active delegate would slowly start accumulating voting power from token holders who take notice, it doesn’t actually work like that in practice.
The proposal itself acknowledges this, with the proposed solution to mitigate it being delegating voting power to trained delegates from the DAO’s treasury. We are generally against the idea of treasury delegation, and we have written our extensive reasoning in another proposal here.
On this particular proposal
Leaving the points about the concept of a delegate training/accelerator program aside, we also reviewed and assessed the proposal itself. Given that we are not the only delegates, the proposal can be passed even if we vote against it. Understanding that, we want to share our feedback on the specifics.
Contrary to high-level things, the below points could be addressed or changed for us to be more comfortable with supporting the proposal.
Program’s costs
As other have pointed out, we also think the cost of the program to be on the high side. That’s not because of the cost itself, but rather because we think there is not much to actually do in each curriculum to justify such costs.
As an example:
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Introduction to DAO governance
Many articles and videos online explain DAOs, how governance works, and the different types of governance. Recreating those seems like a waste of time, effort, and money.
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Understanding the Proposal Life Cycle
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Writing and Submitting Proposals
The DAO’s docs should be more than enough of a resource to get someone familiar with these topics. Creating an additional resource and hand-holding trainees through it seems overkill. Also, if there are gaps or things that are not up-to-date with the docs, we believe it would be more useful to point those out to the Foundation.
Facilitators, Curriculum Developers, and Accountability
We do not understand the separation between facilitation and curriculum development, especially since most facilitators are also curriculum developers. Besides the scope of work, what’s the point of separating these two functions?
More importantly, however, it’s unclear to us who the ultimate accountable party for the program is. Who can we expect to be responsible for ensuring the success of the program or for communicating any potential issues to delegates in a timely manner? Right now, it seems that this responsibility is kind of diffused between everyone involved, so there’s no real ‘owner’ of the initiative.
Unclear expectations
From the survey results shared, one of the main challenges or barriers raised was unclear expectations and responsibilities. However, the proposed curriculum does not mention delegate expectations or responsibilities.
On top of that, we’re also not clear on what the expectations are from the program itself, especially if we are to include existing delegates. Is it an increase in delegated supply? If so, how are we to attribute that to the program and not to circumstance? Is it higher-quality proposals? If so, how are we to measure it, and how do we compare it to the quality of proposals now? Is it stronger community resilience? How do we…you get the point.
Trainee incentives
Having to incentivize trainees to undergo the delegate accelerator program highlights one of the key issues we mentioned above, which is the role of the delegate. Delegates should want to participate in the program because their end goal is to be able to effectively participate in the DAO and help shape the Scroll ecosystem, not because they’re getting paid to do so.
Going forward
All in all, we’re very keen on increasing governance participation and activity and are open to exploring ways to achieve that. Although the proposed program does have its merits, we’re not confident enough in its potential to have a meaningful impact on the DAO and its governance.
Having said that, if the proposal passes, we will try to help in any way we can to help it succeed.