On behalf of Unicircle, we voted for this proposal. While we share other delegates’ concern about the high training cost, we believe that investing in new delegates and equipping them with the necessary skills and know‑how far outweighs the expense.
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This was a really challenging choice for me, but in the end I’m voting NO.
The final reason comes down to cost. I personally believe it will take 10-20 hours per facilitator over the total program to provide the facilitation. Not the 45-80 that’s being indicated, coming out to ~$225 an hour ($4.5k) in compensation for facilitation. I mean, I like that idea because I’m one of the facilitators, but I as a delegate I don’t.
The module development is also expensive but I’m less worried about it since it’s one off.
I do believe in the value of the program for bringing in new high quality delegates, and I even believe it will have a long tail effect of bringing new users and awareness to Scroll and it will even be a positive ROI, but the cost is too high. Come back around 64k I’m a yes.
If the proposal passes I wish it great success and I’ll work diligently with the team to enable it to succeed.
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As a delegate I really appreciate the objectiveness of your decision, voting no for a proposal that you have a direct financial interest in demonstrates that you’re truly value aligned and put Scrolls best interest first.
My hope for this proposal is actually the opposite, not bringing in better delegates, but training and offering more context, support and know-how to the existing delegates(me included).
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Thank you for sharing such a thorough response. I want to bring greater clarity to several key points, as I believe the assumptions made in your post do not do justice to either the design intent or potential impact of the Scroll Delegate Accelerator (D/Acc) proposal.
1. Who this program serves: not just “anyone”
This program is not about “training just anyone” to be a delegate. It’s a deliberate, structured effort to identify and support values-aligned, bandwidth-capable contributors who can commit to Scroll governance over the long term.
Many of the program contributors are themselves builders or work closely with Scroll ecosystem projects. And while core builders and investors should be delegates, the reality is that most are already at capacity maintaining infrastructure, shipping products, or supporting crucial integration efforts. They don’t have time to engage in the full-time labour of governance. More importantly, they don’t have the bandwidth to walk the hard road of learning about governance through trial and error. Exactly these ideal delegates are best served through our proposed effort.
D/Acc creates a pathway for builders, researchers, and aligned contributors, to meaningfully engage with governance without having to choose between product and protocol. This isn’t theoretical; the proposal emerged from months of active co-development between delegates and other Scroll-aligned stakeholders. A community-wide survey circulated by the Foundation (including responses from builders and existing and prospective delegates) informed the curriculum design and participation model. TL;DR: This was not designed in a vacuum.
2. The “demand-first” framing is missing the existing demand
The idea that there’s “no clear demand” for governance participation misses the mark. Airdrop-driven governance is flawed by design, as those with the most voting power are often not the best equipped to use it effectively. This program was created to reverse-engineer a better filter – one that prioritises demonstrated understanding, alignment, and meaningful contribution over passive token holding. Effective governance depends on building systems that lower the barrier to high-quality participation. This program serves as that system. Each module includes practical, DAO-relevant tasks that assess knowledge and channel it into real contributions. At a time when Scroll and the broader ecosystem are engaged in existential conversations about governance, this program creates clear onramps for delegates to participate in ways that matter.
3. Delegation and the role of the treasury
Your concern about delegation from the treasury potentially misaligning incentives is made in a governance system where most voting power is already concentrated, with L2BEAT and ACI as dominant forces. This initiative, proposes transparent, merit-based delegation of voting power to participants who complete a rigorous program and demonstrate commitment to the protocol. That’s a clear improvement for the pathway to decentralisation than the status quo.
Rather than entrenching influence, D/Acc expands it. Treasury delegation initiatives are widely used across DAOs (Uniswap, Optimism, Arbitrum) to great effect. Take for example, the Uniswap proposal to delegate UNI to active but underrepresented delegates, which inspired increased and more meaningful participation in the UniswapDAO.
4. On program cost and content
The curriculum is building a context-rich, Scroll-specific educational track that includes hands-on assessments, simulations, and co-creation work. It is by no means “recreating basic resources” or duplicating the docs.The budget has already been revised significantly, and facilitators are now paid ~$96/hr, a rate that reflects below-market compensation for multi-week commitments, assessments, live instruction, and post-program support.
The suggestion that we can do this for less presumes a world where skilled governance contributors work for free or live exclusively in lower-income destinations, which is part of a dynamic this program seeks to correct.
5. Accountability and structure
The program has clearly delineated roles for facilitators, curriculum developers, and evaluation support (via Factory Labs), and responsibilities are transparently described. Suggesting the initiative lacks an “owner” is not borne out by the nature of the proposal – multiple DAO-native teams have stepped up to lead, build, and maintain this. StableLab has driven the initiative so far and plans to continue on as program managers. If Scroll DAO wants plug-and-play contributors with institutional memory and long-term commitment, this is how you build them.
As we’ve stated in this thread and on calls, once the proposal is ratified, facilitators will begin formal project planning: outlining granular program metrics and KPIs, assigning responsibilities, and publishing a transparent project tracker so the community can follow progress and outcomes in real time. Success will be measured through post-program reports, delegate retention, proposal quality, and governance engagement.
All these outcomes we’ll document and share openly.
One key goal is to increase the votable supply, and post-program analysis will help us understand whether shifts in delegation correlate with the program’s impact.
6. Career delegates emerge as the antidote to governance bloat
Finally, I want to restate an idea I mentioned on multiple calls: there’s an opportunity to build a pathway for “career delegates” to emerge – deeply embedded contributors who might choose to commit to a single ecosystem and grow with it. This model potentially reduces conflicts of interest, increases DAO resilience, and ensures that the people shaping protocol policy and decisions actually know how the thing works. If that’s not worth a DAO’s investment, I’m not sure what is.
This program is an ambitious first attempt at capacity building for distributed orgs. It is principled, iterated, and community-shaped. If we want a more decentralized, more competent, and more committed delegate body in Scroll DAO, this is a credible and pragmatic way to get there.
I want to personally thank you for your engagement, I view it as a well-aligned way to improve this important initiative. Please take my comments in the spirit of thoughtful public discourse with the goal to improve understanding and buy-in across the DAO.
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the community at large for the valuable feedback throughout the course of this initiative.
The proposal was passed on Tuesday May 13th, 2025, and now it’s time to ship!
We look forward to collaborating with the community to make this successful, and if possible - something for the broader governance ecosystem to learn from and emulate.
Upcoming Updates & Next Steps
Over the coming weeks, facilitators will be meeting to finalize a detailed project plan and revise the curriculum outline, integrating feedback from this forum thread, community calls, and the proposal drafting process.
You can expect the project plan to be published the week of June 2, and it will include:
- A list of confirmed facilitators, curriculum developers, and support partners
- Designated workstream leads for comms, curriculum, assessments, and program operations
- An overview of the Notion-based program hub, which will serve as the central resource for documentation and progress tracking
- Defined KPIs and program metrics
- Details on the participant application process, including evaluation criteria and the DeForm application link
We’ll continue to share updates transparently and welcome any additional input as we move into the build phase.
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The Delegate Education Program is a strong initiative that adds real value to governance participation. It’s encouraging to see structured learning become part of DAO growth.
I align with DonOfDAOs view that compensation isn’t the primary motivation here. Even without incentives, the program remains compelling because it offers clarity, shared context, and a way for contributors to deepen their understanding of the protocol.
I’m sharing these thoughts perhaps a bit late, as I only just found out about the program.
It would also be great to see the program’s content made accessible to a wider group—delegates or not—so that more community members can benefit and grow along with Scroll.
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Now that’s a masterclass in governance clarity.
Thank you for this deep dive — it does exactly what good governance discourse should do: challenge assumptions, clarify intent, and raise the bar for the conversation.
You’ve clearly articulated why the D/Acc isn’t just a bootcamp, but a foundational pillar for building Scroll-native delegate capacity. The idea of enabling builders and researchers to engage deeply without burning out is not just smart — it’s essential for long-term resilience.
Highlights I resonate with:
- “Not just anyone” → Filtering for aligned, long-term contributors = quality > quantity
- Reverse-engineering demand → Governance isn’t suffering from lack of people, it’s suffering from lack of structure
- Merit-based treasury delegation → A clear improvement over concentration status quo
- Career delegates → A compelling antidote to the fly-by governance we’ve seen across many DAOs
As someone who’s seen both top-down and chaotic community-led attempts at governance, this strikes the right middle ground: structure, without rigidity — and experimentation, without chaos.
Looking forward to the June project plan. Let’s ship something the whole DAO ecosystem can learn from.
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Epic response here @Nneoma_StableLab, shinning through the screen with every chosen word I can feel the diligence, commitment to quality and the depth of care being put into a fit for purpose deeply customised solution. Much respect 
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Looking forward to the execution of this proposal.
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I ended up voting in Favour of this proposal.
I wholeheartedly agree with the issues that @kaereste @Sinkas and @Manugotsuka raised about this proposal. And was considering voting Against.
However, I’m more worried about a larger issue with its own chicken and egg problem. The DAO today is run by delegates who are in good part inexperienced at running organisations, and they’re charged with changing this situation. No one else is coming to save the Scroll DAO. We find this quite problematic and a governance design failure that’s common across Web3.
The question is how to move forward, and past a catch 22. And for that, I believe it would be ideal to advance some of the ideas we have put in our research article on Fixing DAO Governance. BUT, we also need to meet people where we are. It’s going to be hard to start any meaningful dialogue about advanced governance concepts when the basics are not well udnerstood. We’ll be constantly pulled back to the start. So my hope is that the delegate training program actually moves the conversation forward in Scroll, that it creates momentum by providing a forum to actually discuss how we get out of this mess. That we cover foundations we can then take the next step on top of.
And to clarify, this is not a critique of the governance design team in Scroll, but a larger Web3 issue that will require A LOT of work for us to find solutions as an ecosystem and avoid the collapse of our industry. I consider poor governance an existential and urgent concern for the Ethereum ecosystem as a whole, and hence my stance to vote in favour despite Scroll’s limited resources.
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One aspect that’s very misunderstood about the proposal is the fact it has the chance to put Scroll on the “governance pedestal”. Afaik no other ecosystem has tried this and Scroll taking up this mindshare is a unique opportunity.
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Hello all,
We’re glad to share that the preliminary execution plan for the Scroll Delegate Accelerator is now posted on the forum. It outlines the program structure, timeline, curriculum overview, program criteria sets, and budget rollout.
Read the plan
Apply by June 23
We’re kicking off the build phase of this initiative, and your feedback is welcome. Drop comments in the Execution Plan thread or reach out with questions.
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We voted abstained in this proposal. We chose to abstain from voting on the Scroll DAO Delegate Accelerator Proposal because, while we recognize its potential to diversify and professionalize governance, we had concerns about the current budget scale and the readiness of execution plans. The proposal outlines a comprehensive curriculum and incentives framework, but we believe that further clarity, especially on how outcomes will be measured and integrated with existing structures.
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