The goal of this thread is to kickstart community discussion around the Governance Contribution Rewards (GCR) program, which was recently approved by the DAO:
As outlined in the working group updates, the full 8-month cycle is divided into two equal periods with the following allocations:
May → August (retro, 4 months):280,000 SCR
September → December (4 months):280,000 SCR
The Governance Council is aiming to publish a full proposal in time for the next voting cycle.
With overall DAO activity decreasing in recent months, the Governance Council is recommending that we keep the first iteration simple. The initial suggestion is to base rewards primarily on:
Participation across governance votes:
The two votes that have passed and the upcoming votes (at least until the voting cycle of January 2026)
Contributions during the co-creation cycles
Participation in calls, the forum, etc. Open for discussion how we can track contributions.
This is meant to make the first round of GCR both easy to audit and fair to contributors who engaged consistently.
Thank you so much, @EthereumTGU for posting this. I would suggest keeping it simple, easy to measure, and not using any subjective qualifications, for a balanced program.
Regarding voting, will it be tiered or standardized (i.e. 100% participation required or a minimum of 80% of voting - for example) on all proposals during the Q4 quarter?
Including participation in the current CC cycle is a fair assessment of who is still engaged, as it covers the entire month with eight sessions held over 4+ weeks, allowing for amble opportunities for participation. However, I would suggest to have a minimum percentage (i.e. something like 70%) attendance of the eight sessions to provide a simple way to capture which delegates are the most engaged, vs. others who may only attend the first couple sessions or attend sporadically during the month.
However, I’m not sure how to measure engagement in forum posts, as this can lead to a subjective measurement, and the main cause of friction in other DAO incentive programs.
Having helped design the first iteration, we’re also in favor of keeping things more simple, agree with @coffee-crusher on that point. Regarding the forum activity component, it’s a difficult problem to solve. You either don’t count forum activity at all, use an automated system with transparent parameters and equations (i.e. Curia’s Forum Score from the last payout) which can introduce gaps that leave some people out or unfairly elevate others, or leave it up to a team to subjectively assess comment quality (along the lines of what SEEDGov does at Velora, for example). All things considered, the third option takes the most work but it might be the most fair if the community does want to go down this route. The Gov Council could track delegate comments/replies/posts in a spreadsheet and try to be as transparent as possible regarding what they’re looking for when counting forum participation. You can see SEEDGov’s evaluation criteria here, as an example. If we want to avoid that subjectivity entirely, maybe it’s best to scrap the forum component and just track voting and participation in calls. Also noting that “call participation” also introduces a bit of subjectivity unless we just count attendance only.
congratulations on this, I’ve asked some delegates and they were thankful for the reward received on the first phase. Which already talks about the cost-benefit ratio perceived. Well done.
When will a next round of delegates be accounted for?
We agree with @coffee-crusher that the criteria for this cycle should remain simple and based on metrics that are easy to track.
We believe voting participation and forum rationales should be the core metrics. These directly reflect a delegate’s commitment and are essential for maintaining an active and healthy governance process.
Contributions during the co-creation cycles are also important, as they help gather insights and improve the quality of governance decisions across the DAO.
In addition, we could consider social media posting as a supporting metric. With overall DAO activity decreasing in recent months, increasing brand awareness and communicating key proposals or decisions can play a valuable role in strengthening the ecosystem.
Regarding community calls, we suggest either reducing the weight of this metric or treating it as a bonus, since time zone differences may limit participation for some delegates.
Thanks for surfacing and the work being put in to create a system for us to participate in. A few thoughts on the proposed approach:
On forum activity measurement: The options outlined seem to be the same choices other DAOs have cycled through. Neither has worked well. Subjective assessment creates more overhead than value and tends to incentivize discussion for its own sake rather than meaningful contribution. If we don’t have a better solution than what’s already (mostly failed) elsewhere, I’d vote to exclude forum activity from the criteria entirely.
On call participation: I’m supportive of open calls for those who want them, but skeptical of weighting attendance heavily in compensation criteria. In my experience, the people actually getting things done aren’t sitting on recurring community calls - they’re executing. We should be careful not to design a program that rewards presence over output.
On the retroactive period (May-August): Evaluating contributions from 4-6 months ago invites busy work and memory-based assessments that won’t be accurate. The focus should be forward-looking: who’s contributing to current discussions when it matters, who takes action when asked, and who has demonstrated track records of delivery. If we must include the retroactive period, the criteria must be extremely narrow and limited to voting participation.
The simpler this is, the better. Voting participation is clean and auditable. Everything else adds complexity without proportional value.
I generally am in favor of keeping things simple as others have already pointed out. Delegates have brought fair points about forum activityon both sides. In general following a subjective decision making process goes against keeping things simple, hence I am against including forum activity in the criteria.
Attendance at calls are an interesting way to gauge participation, but how many of those inputs and questions people bring in actually add value to the discussion is once again a subjective decision. Hence I would lean towards not having minor weigh to this criteria.
As DAO activity has slowed during the pause, we agree with @coffee-crusher that GCR should remain simple for this cycle. All activity on the forum should be excluded from the score calculation since there is limited meaningful contribution. We support the initial suggestion to base rewards on voting participation and co-creation contributions, and we think setting clear thresholds will help avoid ambiguity.
For voting, a 100% participation rate with rationale feels reasonable. With only a few proposals during the pause period, participating in all of them is a basic expectation for active delegates.
For the co-creation cycle, a 60% attendance requirement seems like a fair benchmark. This reflects consistent contribution to help shape the DAO while still allowing some flexibility for time zone differences.
With the DAO still in a pause period, keeping things simple is the most reasonable to manage this cycle.
For the future, when the DAO returns to normal likely to be around Feb, we should include a forum score as @kevinknielsen suggested. This would allow for automated tracking of delegate activity, which is more transparent than manual tracking.
Seeing how governance evolved at Scroll, I believe the clearest path forward at the moment is also the simplest: the criteria should stay simple, objective, and easy to audit. Voting participation should be the core metric, with everything else kept minimal to avoid unnecessary complexity.
Also, as food for thought I would start from the assumption that all of the delegates could be biased and will each propose metrics that would benefit them.
My take is that the following should be considered:
-proposal voting
+
-on call participation + actively engaging in conversations
+
-forum activity (feedback + rationales)
+
-proposals discussions
+
-subjective measures such as: ideas contributed, work done pro-bono for the dao, etc
We agree with the idea of using a simpler and more lightweight approach to measure the GCR for this cycle, especially considering that overall DAO activity has been slower in the past months. A streamlined model makes sense for this moment.
That said, we believe it’s important that the evaluation still accounts for participation in governance calls and recent on-chain votes, since these are core signals of engagement and responsibility from delegates. Even in a quieter cycle, these contributions show continued commitment to the DAO.
A simple framework is good, as long as it still captures the essentials of active governance participation.
Thank you @EthereumTGU for initiating this discussion for the second half of the GCR (September → December) and inviting suggestions for how to track contributions during the co-creation cycle.
First, I’d like to clarify why the proposal suggests tracking only two votes for the September → December period when there were a total of six votes during that timeframe. The post says:
Some additional context here would be helpful.
With respect to tracking contributions during the co-creation cycle, attendance appears to be the most straightforward metric, as the co-creation process has represented the primary—and most meaningful—DAO activity during the governance pause, aside from any continued activity in Local Nodes as well as Community Grants, which already have compensation built into their budgets.
That said, expectations around attendance were raised during the first call. Given the volume of co-creation sessions and the fact that this is the second time the DAO has undertaken this process, @Juansito indicated that delegates should prioritize attending calls based on topic relevance rather than attempting to attend all sessions. Additionally, some calls have been rescheduled, which can create unavoidable conflicts. For these reasons, it would be unreasonable to evaluate delegates based on full attendance across all calls.
I would also recommend incorporating a qualitative or subjective component when assessing contributions—capturing meaningful input provided during calls as well as follow-up engagement on the forum. Since the purpose of these co-creation cycles is to gather feedback and shape the future governance structure, tracking impactful contributions—rather than raw attendance alone—would better align with that goal.
Thanks for this detailed breakdown @404Gov . I think you’ve highlighted an important point: attendance alone doesn’t tell the full story of a delegate’s contribution. Especially with rescheduled calls and topic-based prioritization, it makes sense to focus on quality over quantity.
Adding a qualitative layer, tracking meaningful input during calls and follow-up engagement on the forum. would give a much clearer picture of who’s actively shaping governance rather than just showing up. It also aligns better with the goal of these co-creation cycles, which is to gather thoughtful feedback and guide the DAO’s evolution.
Overall, I think a mix of attendance plus impact is the way to capture genuine participation without unfairly penalizing unavoidable conflicts. Excited to see how the framework evolves with these considerations.
If we are going to use the co-creation sessions to track engagement, all the tools used should be considered as well (miro boards, negation game, forms, etc). Most of the times, relevant contributions are done after some thought and using those tools.
As the governance structure shifts toward “Optimistic Approvals." Voting participation and rationale are no longer the primary inputs for GCR calculation, it is important to clearly define which delegate behaviors should be incentivized. Ongoing contributions, such as substantive forum discussions, can have a high impact on governance outcomes. Leveraging a Forum Score from previous GCR cycles to define and track which delegate activities count toward incentives could benefit both Scroll and delegates by making contributions more visible and measurable.
For the sake of simplicity and execution efficiency, I’d recommend that we take a more streamlined approach for this GCR cycle.
Specifically, I suggest leaning primarily on on-chain voting participation as the main criterion for ranking delegate activity. Through the Co-Creation Sprint, it became clear that we are not yet equipped with the tooling or processes required to reliably measure participation across multiple variables. Additionally, attendance at governance calls alone does not necessarily translate into meaningful impact.
Given that this GCR cycle is intended to reflect contributions for the quarter, and that voting remains the most direct and measurable form of participation, I would also recommend waiting until the January vote has concluded before finalizing the GCR distribution. This approach would help align incentives with what is currently the most critical action for the DAO and encourage strong delegate participation in the upcoming vote.
Looking ahead, we should continue working toward a clearer, more proactive criteria pipeline for future incentive programs, supported by better tooling and more explicit expectations.
Thanks again, @EthereumTGU, for kicking off this discussion
I support the simplicity of what you’re proposing of tracking on-chain voting for the GCR 2. As I mentioned in an earlier comment on this proposal, the “verification” of value-added comments on Forum is a really subjective method. And as you noted, until we have the tools in place to measure without bias, I see it as leaving too much room for interpretation for the program manager(s).
I also agree that we wait until the important January votes for governance mechanism/structure are completed for the delegates to focus on first (and to get these important on-chain votes completed) before we bring the GCR 2 to a vote. It needs to be about the proprieties’ of what moves the DAO forward.
