DAO Governance Deep Dive and Blockchain-Based Voting with Tally and Flipside #DelegationWeek

Transcript

foreign what's going on guys welcome back to the roll up YouTube channel today we are talking about a very important uh space right now happening in D5 and in blockchain applications in general um this is the aspect of delegated governance which is Rings true to Dows all over um you know it's not one of the financial applications that I think a lot of D5 power users are are looking for we're not going to talk about massive apis we're not going to talk about um just how to how to leverage to the guilds but this is just as important of a topic because it squeezes more value for you as a token holder so we're going

to be talking about delegation in general how Dows are using delegation to further their Community um how token holders can contribute to their doubts that they're a part of by delegating and we're going to take you through all the exciting stuff that's happening uh this week for delegation week uh brought to you by tally we've got Adrian from the tally team and we've also got um we've also got fig and Avi from the flip side team that is going to bring us the perspective of a delegate so thanks guys for joining it's a pleasure to have you guys on uh Adrian why don't you take it away and show us the uh the delegation week UI yeah sounds great so I've got a quick

demo here from two perspectives uh in this case you can see I'm signed in as Fubar who is a delegate and then later I'll show the perspective from this address 0xd who is delegating to a delegate uh so we'll start with Fubar uh if you go to your dials page you'll see the dial you expect with proposals and information on the voting power and all that at the top there's this clear uh information about delegation week so if we click that button we'll go to the the home base for delegation and specifically for delegation week and on the first tab here we see delegated two so here I see I have 10 000 tokens and I'm delegated to myself but my total voting power is a hundred thousand so it

must be because other people are also delegating to me so that's what's on this other tab if I go to received delegations I see the incoming delegations right I see myself those 10 000 as well as three other addresses and totaling 100 000 voting power and on the left you also see your statement whether or not you're seeking delegations and then a summary of that statement you can go into edit that statement say whether or not you're seeking delegations at this time you can write your full your full statement why people should delegate to you what they can expect from you a summary of your statement this will this just like shows up in the preview cards and then issues which help potential

delegators find aligned delegates by choosing something that they want to filter by and find somebody that also cares about that ish about that issue so if we save that we're back at this at this UI and if you click view profile here you'll see all that same information but this is the public page where if you're a delegate you want to campaign for additional voting power you would copy this URL and you would share this on Twitter Discord or wherever your community lives to help share your profile they can see your performance and then hopefully consider delegating to you so that's the experience as a delegate right and if we switch over here to zero XD we we see the same thing except now

this is the perspective of a token holder so we'll click that same button we go to my voting power and on the delegated 2 tab we see it looks slightly different I own 88 000 tokens and I'm delegated to Fubar who we were just looking at who has a 100 000 total voting power and this is just a test out so we don't see performance here but in a normal dial we'd see something closer to this where you can you can also see a summary of their their participation in this case they've have a 43 percentage participation which is kind of maybe that's low and maybe we'll give you a heads up saying that they've missed some key vote so maybe you want to consider redelegating and in that case that you do want to update

your delegation maybe you delegated a year ago and it's it's time to consider other delegates you can explore all delegates and here you see a list of uh all the delegates in the dial you can filter by who's specifically seeking delegations who's intentionally seeking delegations then you'll also be able to filter by issues here to find someone who's aligned that'll be in here by next week uh and then eventually find the right person that you want to delegate to and submit that and the last thing I'll show here is you know this is just the experience for one doubt at Dave Dow in particular but some some holders are participating in many dials so if you if you click in this menu option up here your Dows you can

see a list of all the dials that you're participating and then if you click review on any of these dials you will go into that same UI that we're just looking at but for that specific dial and that's that's about it awesome yeah so the the idea behind delegation week is to increase awareness of of delegates in general and there's some really nice incentives that are getting passed around um ens git coin some a bunch of other Protocols are leveraging uh free delegations right so they're sponsoring a bunch of gas costs somewhere between like one to three eth for most of these projects um in in gas cost subsidies so that any token holder can can delegate during delegation week but once those

incentives run out you're going to be paying 30 50 100 bucks depending on gas cost to delegate so you know we're really trying to spread the word about why delegation is so important um I think fig and Avi you guys you know you've been delegate delegates um in several Dows as part of Flipside governance um from your perspective why is delegation so important okay take it away sure just figuring out how to unmute here um delegation is a great way to actually inspire ownership within crypto ownership has been touted as a defining value and and characteristic of this industry in and one of the best ways to achieve that is through delegation

um we try to make experiences easier for the user and for a token holder and delegation is a great way to trust put your trust and put your utility of a token into somebody else who's been doing this full-time yeah yeah I would also add um I think like you know delegation in general s are facing problems of getting you know competent folks involved in the day-to-day and you know if the goal obviously is to decentralize operations and and move along that Spectrum um you need to figure out ways to incentivize that type of participation and so

um obviously delegation is a simple way to start to distribute power into the hands of folks who uh you know one are interested obviously anticipating have the competency to do it and then empowering folks to find the right people to go in and perform the duties to down needs and obviously it's just one critical piece of the overall puzzle we need to create better ways to be incentivizing the sexual behavior incentivizing the right people to get involved and we're seeing the professionalization of delegates so um it's it's a means to an end but it definitely doesn't solve all the issues but it it distributes power into the hands of people who uh you know can ensure that the Dow is evolving the way it should so uh yeah yeah that that's what I've seen as well

and even from a standpoint of governance aside from crypto like we have this this idea of Representative governance and then those select few sometimes it's it's as small as set as one person is making the decisions on behalf of an entire population and we've we've started to realize that decentralization is so important in both the technical and the non-technical aspects of coordinating people so from what I found is like a decentralized group of people uh make better decisions it's a better coordination system than a small set representing the entire the entire population um and I think we're starting to see

this in doubts like as they become more complex a contributor who has a technical uh background may not be the best person to make non-technical decisions and then that's when they would delegate their voting power to a non-technical person um in specific instances where uh they would vote on non-technical proposals so I see it as like a really important for the specialization endows as they get more and more complex um so I'm also curious like what what kind of dows tally is working with um and and delegates which ones you guys are working with and then kind of you know why it would make sense to delegate to one one delegate and not another does that make sense so like Adrian

maybe you could give an example of the the spectrum of Dao's that uh have delegated uh governance and then fig and hobby I'm curious like you know kind of what values flip side represents us as a delegate um and overall why someone would choose Flipside as their delegate yeah for sure uh there's definitely a spectrum on tally um I'd say you know all the way from something like arbitrum is a you know L2 protocol uh I think 400 000 holders billions of dollars of assets like really like that's that's that's the that's on one side of the scale and uh Protocols are are probably a focus uh but there's also on the other side of

the spectrum is something like content Guild which is uh just a less than a dozen members um small Treasury and and it's not a protocol they're just a collective of people who are creating content but they're they're fully on chain as far as how people get paid and how people request to get paid so they create content for people in the webview space um so it's cool having a spectrum but I'd say there definitely is a it's a focus and around uh doubts like like let's say arbitrum yeah thanks Adrian um we participate across all different ecosystems ebm so any you know Network or protocol that involves met events IBC and Cosmos and in Solana as well

the reason why we play these places is to align with our data infrastructure Flipside has invested deeply in on-chain data and helping people make decisions via that data um so we are in arbitrum we're an optimism we're in dydx we're a navi these are just a few on the evm realm in terms of values you should look for in a delegate we think transparency and accountability is Paramount you know actually understanding why people are making these decisions and how for us that's relying on this infrastructure that we've created through data really showing the numbers and and the reasons we're advocating for certain roles

I think Simplicity and and being a real human often gets lost within crypto and at flip side we really tried to represent that through all sorts of Partnerships um some other values I look at is the you know where have they participated before what unique experience or perspective are they offering those are just a few ways to think about how to diversify ownership and voting power across delegates yeah and Adrian you showed us kind of the the channel of of communication that delegates can have with their their token holders um through the UI there's there's

mechanisms that kind of give token holders an alert if their their delegate isn't active how do you guys promote like very uh cohesive relationships between delegates and their constituents yeah you know I I'd say it's still really early in that regard and there's a huge opportunity to improve that I think there's an opportunity to create more channels where delegates can check in you know before a big proposal and say which way they're leaning and then give an opportunity to to their delegators to to voice an opinion and or ask questions and follow up but uh create more of a dialogue and I think there's just a huge opportunity right now uh this UI that we that we displayed today is you know it's super fresh and uh really in the early early parts of

tackling this opportunity yeah yeah that that's what I've seen is like a lot of times um delegates you know are very hyped up like arbitrum and optimism have this delegate profile right when you right when they air dropped I think you had to actually pick a delegate in order to claim the token um but then as their governance kind of evolved a lot of those delegates dropped off the face of the Earth you know like they just stopped participating in proposals stop voting um so like that that's a real problem you know I think voter participation in general is is benefited by delegate democracy or delegate governance in general

because a lot of times these smaller token holders almost priced out of of voting and important decisions so they're able to now delegate but if their delegate isn't active you know that that's a real issue Avi fig what have you guys seen as far as like you know you guys have you guys are coming in from the professional delegate angle so how does the level of professionalism benefit you guys so that you know I think you guys are consistent in the votes and the proposals that you guys make how does that separate you from some of the other types of delegates that are out there like we've seen University groups kind of these other classes of delegates what do you guys say is a specific characteristic of professional delegates

yeah I mean I guess just to speak generally to like the process by which delegation is happening you know as professional delegates I think a lot of the differentiation in the work that we like the work we do and the value we provide is day over day in these Dows it's being in the trenches and you know you kind of put in the work and earn the trust of the community and then bring you know a unique value-add so through analytics and data review the world um through candid discussions and promoting um you know obviously like all hearing all voices on on issues and being open to communication if you're talking to other delegates community members all that's key I think as professional delegates um we do feel like we need to

differentiate ourselves through bringing certain types of value or or more team members to be able to contribute to the doubt and be able to you know not only provide Frameworks and Direction and guidance on proposals but obviously to provide analytics and kind of data-driven decision making and that obviously has an extra element we've seen great student organizations also bringing really unique value ads to they've been working towards some levels of professionalization sometimes they're hurt maybe by the turnover but I think some of the best delegates out there are University clubs as well and we lots of folks have a lot to learn from them um in terms of what's Happening Now with delegation and how Dows are rolling it out there is a bit of an issue and it's

it's not because um a lack of trying it's just really hard to resolve how to um get tokens delegated to the right Folks at a scale in a scalable way right so um you may be a really established delegate but you end up below the fold in in delegations when people are going and claiming their tokens and you don't get as many delegations as a random person and then that random person is in the top 20 and then they don't show up ever right and then it's like it is is a tough way to balance and so um Dows do need to figure out ways to incentivize three delegations like that's my delegation week is amazing right it was subsidizing that the the amount of redelegations that happen in Dallas is minimal because people want

either they don't care enough to go and do it or it's too costly and so we need to figure out ways to do that um you know maker had a great model uh before they moved to end game where where your delegate contract would expire after a year so that's forcing folks to either redelegate or um or you don't have power at all and so I think setting time periods like that is an effective way to ensure the tokens either um you know don't get don't stay with delegates who are doing not doing anything or you know obviously just forcing people to be a little more active in the Dao so I think there are definitely more incentive structures and more mechanisms we could put in place and dials to help ensure that the right people who are actually carrying the belt forward have the power that they

deserve so it's nuanced and we're so early but it's critical to make sure that the responsible people um who know the most about the Dow and caramos end up with uh the decision-making pattern yeah yeah I I love how early it is because there's so much fertile ground to make innovation in this space um like I've also seen like a a slashing mechanism where if you're not participating in proposals as a delegate your voting power gets slashed and I think that is a real problem that we've seen as well is like these these delegates sometimes don't have a stake there's no skin in the game for them so when they drop off they're not hurting themselves they're just hurting their their token holders

um so yeah coming up with like new and innovative ways to design incentive structures to promote uh kind of prosperous governance for the Dow I think is really important both from the off chain perspective which is kind of like Hobby and fit what you guys do in the trenches you know on discourse forums a lot of off-chain proposals and voting and and almost like just galvanizing the community for support on a specific issue and then Adrian you know tally comes in from the on-chain perspective so we have off chain on chain how can we you know really facilitate like prosperous governance between on-chain and off chain and and bring the two together so that ultimately doubts benefit

to general questions just to anyone you know not anyone in particular but like it's almost like we we have these two disconnected um worlds right now when it comes to decentralized governance the on-chain world in the off chain world what is tally or what is Flipside doing to kind of bring those two worlds together yeah so I think what Tally's doing and is a good first start is building better tooling um the reason off-chain voting exists is to make it more accommodating right like participating on chin is expensive there's a gas costs which is incurred um we've seen instances of Dallas which you know really merged these two worlds

well I would say Ave is one of them and then we've seen other Dallas who totally neglect one or the other um being able to see these discussions and understand the votes and having a clear framework of how to migrate from off chain to unchain to finalized and implemented is a really first like important playbook for people getting involved yeah I agree with that I'll add I mean when I think of off chain is what comes up what comes to mind is blockchain discussions blockchain profiles and off-chain voting and temperature checks with off chain profiles uh so the delegate profiles that that we demoed earlier that's off chain right

um because there is no standard yet for on-chain delegate profile but that's something that we're working with working on with a few other tools in the space to create a standard for delegate profile so that can now be on chain that can be interoperable and shared across tools instead of siled on our servers for example that's something that we're excited about with off-chain voting I think the L2 movement is huge for that or because one of the biggest reasons why that temperature check happens you know on blockchain is because it's cheaper but once once once you bring down that price and maybe more about what will just happen on chain and that would be such such of a barrier and with discussions uh I'm not sure what opportunities are there for on-chain uh but I think there's some opportunities around uh

context like being able to associate blockchain contacts with an Unchained proposal just so that that context can live on chain and maybe that persists and it's easier to to reference in the future yeah that's what comes to mind for me yeah the context is interesting because you can almost have suggested proposals or suggested discussions for certain proposals depending on if you're going off chain to on chain or the other the other way around um so like overall voter participation I think you know there there's lots of room to grow and there's lots of fertile ground to kind of make improvements there um you mentioned like some other issues you know that are kind of facing delegation and decentralized governance right now

what are some of the solutions that you've seen kind of across the ecosystem you know there's a lot of fragmented tools snapshot Karma tally boardroom like how do you guys use uh each of these tools to make the best decisions on behalf of the token holders yeah I mean uh Big Ups to the tally crew I mean I feel like uh they've done an amazing job of combining um kind of like a market leading Community Building marketing element um where they really do get kind of the the ethos and the evolution of Dao's and delegate work and then supporting that with kind of like you know leading tooling that's helping round that out

and so um there's other groups out there like Senate uh is building a really interesting tool and the karma folks trying to solve some of this um you know obviously in terms of you know there's uh really difficult ways to boardroom also another great team um that's building awesome tooling and giving insights into into forums uh part of this Anna off chain on chain discussion and uh it's come up a bit in terms of incentivizing participation and compensation structures around owls it's kind of been a hot thing um for the level of work required if delegates and then the compensation you know there's a short time frame where people need to you know put up or shut up in a sense like if you

want the value then you need to you need to start paying for it and viewing these people is providing that value so there are ways to evaluate that we could start creating tools out of station tools ways to bring in you know Forum participation on discourse or Commonwealth and start to put some of that participation on chain and drive rewards from that like there are creative ways we can start to combine um these two worlds in order to start to evaluate like the value the participation levels of of participants but you know the tally crew is definitely leading the charge and um laying the foundation uh for uh for the right tooling that dials and delegators need so and I love that it's all kind of combined in this one UI uh

you know it's replicating any any voter for a representative uh wants a forum to track what they're represented is representative is doing and and where their votes are going and so I think that it's a great experience yeah yeah I love that too because you can also start to track token holders even if they don't have voting power delegated to them you could kind of kind of collect the contribute contributions they've made in Discord or in discourse and then build the delegate profile before they even have voting power to them um and represent that on chain so yeah I'm I'm really Keen to see kind of these two worlds come together as blockchain scales gas costs decrease and more of

this can live on chain I think we'll have a more legitimate uh representation of of dows um and and better decisions made you know I think the coordination mechanisms are getting better and better um as we bring more stuff on chain so we're starting to see like even more uh reputation and and verifiable reputation brought um as far as who the contributors are to certain doubts who's making an impact and you know when that impact is felt so um yeah anything else you got you guys would like to add this this was a pleasure um I know I I got a lot out of it and I think um I hope that uh anyone who's watching is also you know better

thing from learning about delegated delegated governance as well as how to delegate who to delegate to and and why anything you guys would like to add no thanks very much for having us this is awesome Adrian great work on the app in the demo Robbie thanks very much for having us it's fun thanks Rob thanks Adrian yeah that's great great to meet you guys thanks for having us uh the only thing I'll add is to take a look at the delegationweek.com website there's a bunch of information on who's participating and events that are happening next week Twitter spaces some great discussions uh so would recommend checking that out but yeah thanks for having us this has been awesome yeah pleasure guys uh so I got the list of uh Dows here that are subsidizing gas

costs we got get coin uniswap ens arbitrum pull together um and hop is also doing some uh some subsidies for specific specifically for smaller token holders um flip side you guys are you guys are delegates in any of those in arbitrum and and also um any of the other ones I didn't get all of the lists quickly oh sorry so uh we've got git coin uni swap ens arbitrum and pool together yeah all right Richard nice cool guys if you want to check us out too you can head over to Flipside crypto keep up to date with what we're doing sweet so the pleasure guys thanks for

joining thank you see ya