Idle DAO Governance Mining

🗂 Proposals 💡 Ideas & Improvements
1

Authors

Treasury League

Summary

Over the past 2 years in the DeFi industry, there have been many evolutions for DAOs and the people who work dedicating their time to a shared mission with other members.

During these months, the Leagues’ contributors noticed less active participation in governance activities. There was less community engagement and voting participation, as analyzed in this report that includes data from all voting proposals, on-chain and off-chain.

We believe that, especially in market times such as we are experiencing, those who remain active in the DAO deserve a reward for their contribution, which adds value to a decentralized organization such as Idle.

From that analysis, we are proposing the “Idle Governance Mining” which is a program to reward the activity and contributions of users in the Idle DAO community and governance.

Rationale

“Voting is the only legitimate form of governance decentralization” - Vitalik, August 2021

This initiative grew out of various reflections and conversations we had with Leagues and our community about incentivizing activity within Idle DAO governance, giving rewards to the contributors who are more active in the governance processes and add value to the community.

The assessment of participation will be calculated using a reputation score published on the Karma platform, which takes into consideration the activity of each individual DAO member in the community and governance.

Proposal

  • Anyone interested in contributing within the community and Idle DAO will be eligible for governance mining according to the reputation score;

  • The reputation score on Karma is calculated by taking into count activity in

    • Idle Governance Forum;
    • Snapshot (IDLE and stkIDLE) voting;
    • On-chain voting;
    • Discord (soon)

  • The final computed scoring will sum all activities and currently follows this formula:

    • Forum proposals Initiated (x10)

    • Forum proposals Discussed (x2)

    • Forum Post Count + Forum Topic Count (x3)

    • Forum Likes Received (x0.5)

    • Forum Posts Read Count (x0.1)

    • Off-chain Vote (x3)

    • On-chain Vote (x5)

    • Delegated Vote (x0.1)

    • Discord → within the same month:
      A. (x1) for each message
      B. After reaching the first 50 messages, (x0.5) for each message
      C. After reaching 100 messages, (x0.1) for each message

      At the end of the month, the score will be reset, with users getting starting from (A).

  • Reputation scores will be updated every 30 days (selection is therefore based on a reputation score created during this timeframe);

  • The first 5 addresses with the highest reputation score will be rewarded (Leagues contributors or governance addresses won’t be counted in this selection); the Treasury League will publish the selection monthly in the governance forum.

  • The Treasury League reserves the right to be able to change the scoring algorithm (if there will be the need to adjust it after measuring the performance during the program);

  • If someone intends to game the scoring system, the Treasury League reserves the right to disqualify these users from rewards.

Rewards

  • 2k IDLE as a monthly budget distributed;
  • NFT badges minted minted via Karma NFT service (on Polygon) to reward contributions for specific activities, such as:
    • Voted off-chain at least once via snapshot;
    • Wrote at least one proposal in the governance forum;
    • Voted on-chain at least once via Idle governance;
    • Interacted the most in the governance forum;
    • Voted the most in Idle DAO (on-chain + off-chain).

Next steps

We are glad to launch this initiative and reward users based on their reputation earned through their contributions to the Idle DAO community and governance.

We are open to discussing further details or including missing activities, either in computed scoring as well as for NFTs minting.

References

8 Likes
2

Great proposal! I was wondering why limiting rewards to only the first 5 addresses? It would make more sense to me to be as inclusive as possible ideally so I would remove this restriction if possibile and maybe reward even up to 20-30 people, proportionally to their score (maybe we can add a cutoff so eg min 5 IDLE for a payment)

Regarding the score, I feel that giving x10 for creating a new forum proposal may lead to spam, is it possible to give such multiplier only if the proposal leads to a vote and reduce it in other cases?

6 Likes
3

Fair point @william, but I think that, if we increase the number of people who are currently eligible, the total reward per person decreases (as it is more distributed of course), and the program may become less incentivized.

In addition to that, the limit of 5 people for rewards is based on the current numbers shown on Karma (based on low activity for now), so we can decide as proposed above to update the rules monthly if we see the need.

Regarding the forum proposal, the multiplier is a nice idea, but at the moment, Karma cannot automate this process: if there will be a proposal going to the voting phase, they need to map it manually.

The spam risk is always behind the door for other messages (e.g., on discord), but we always reserve the right to select the people eligible (so if people spam, they won’t be included).

We think it’s fair to give higher points to people who create proposals in the governance, do you think we should decrease the score for it?

3 Likes
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I am the founder of Karma. Very excited for this program and am glad Karma can help the DAO increase participation.

We just came up with a way to make this possible with very little effort. So, yes, we can definitely do this!

5 Likes
5

That’s true, but if the aim is to on board always new valuable members it’s better to diversify a bit imo or even maybe increase the budget to eg to 2.5k IDLE / 3k IDLE per month

Welcome @mmurthy !

That’s a great addition!

2 Likes
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@william you think DAOs find ambassadors by throwing money at them?

2 Likes
7

We are not trying to find ambassadors, but incentivizing people to partecipate in governance

1 Like
8

Hey @unicorn, as mentioned by @william this initiative wasn’t created and is not related to Ambassadors. Governance Mining focuses to reward DAO members who are active in the Idle governance, this includes being active as well in the community.

Many DAOs implemented and discussed this kind of initiative: I think it’s more than just throwing money at people, it’s more to give value to the contribution, to people that despite the market situation and everything, are still active and here.

Looking forward to hearing your feedback on it and why you think that, as you mentioned here, this initiative:

“erodes the existing user base and shows a total lack of ability to admit that by any measure/KPI the existing DAO Governance and Tokenomics model failed”.

Thanks :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like
9

Gov token experiment failed.
Time to close the League format, fire everyone and let core team lead the conversation about reimagining the DAO.

Failing to do so implies missing to see reality and lacking innovation in Governance and Tokenomics.

10

@unicorn I still can’t understand, specifically for this initiative, what you think are the weaknesses, would be useful to understand the argumentation (I’m saying this just because we haven’t tested yet this initiative).

Can you share some examples of Governance Mining initiatives that ended up in failure?

11

First Reward Distribution :arrow_right: July 20th, 2022

Glad to announce that we’ll select the first 5 addresses to reward for the Governance Mining initiative on Wednesday 20th, July 2022!

The selection and the score computed will follow the instructions written above in the first message of this post.

:warning: Link your forum nickname to your address (and get more score :eyes:)

Sharing a reminder to link your governance forum nickname into the Idle Finance Karma dashboard, in this way you’ll see scoring added for your forum activity as well.

To link it, please follow the guidelines shared by @mmurthy in this post.

12

@emixprime

I am wondering how this will go further.
I assume this will be every month now, but what with the current activity :sweat_smile:

Are there schedule dates for the next reward moments?

When is the next moment?

What if there is almost no activity in a month?
Sometimes we have multiple proposals (voting rounds) in a month, the other almost nothing or nothing.

How to attract people who anticipate, is there any promotion material to send out? cos new month is already started?!

Wouldn’t be motivated if this gonna be a next flop for this moment.

Shouldn’t the rewards be in Dollars calculated instead of IDLE. Cos now 2000 IDLE is ~$700.
First batch was ~$540
What if 1 IDLE is $10 , is 2000 IDLE ($20.000) still logical? :see_no_evil: i would love to receive it ofcourse. :sweat_smile:

1 Like
13

We’ll continue the initiative for the next month as well while tracking metrics that will help us to understand if the initiative, as was announced, is doing good or not.

Each month counting from the last Gov Mining reward day, so the next one will be on August 21st

In this case the budget won’t be fixed forever. This can be adjusted according to market conditions and the performance of the initiative

1 Like
14

Thnx for the answers.

Is it a fixed budget at the moment a new month starts?
So this month will be 2000 idle again, or??

In my opinion it already should be clear and announced the moment a new month starts.

Ofcourse we don’t want Spam etc. But i do want to see others as motivated as well.

1 Like
15

Here’s another thing:

Off-chain Vote (x3)

On-chain Vote (x5)

Now with:

Stakers vote off-chain

And

Holders on-chain

Therefore they get a different karma score multiplier.

Update:

Also wondering, how to handle double vote/scores ?

Cos someone who has both > staked idle and idle in his private wallet, can vote twice. And therefore get double the karma score for one Snapshot, or on chain vote + Snapshot (for stakers).

16

Hey @AllinCrypto, going in order:

It won’t be a fixed budget. The amount to be distributed can change according to the market conditions and by following the metrics by which the initiative’s success is measured.

This is something related to game the scoring system, so before giving rewards, the TL will double-check that.

Thanks for this point :raised_hands:

Correct, and we’re trying to fix/manage since the entire snapshot page of stkIDLE is considered, from a monitoring system, as off-chain vote.

To have the same score for everyone, the outcome is to see the votes into polls related to IIPs on stkIDLE snapshot page must have the same score as an on-chain vote.

1 Like
17

@emixprime Thanks for the answers again.

Like mentioned in private, more questions came up in my mind and should be really good thought about.

I think there should be some restrictions at some point.

It seems that everyone can anticipate in getting a pretty big reward at this moment, also people who are new into idle, only vote and have not much in their wallet to anticipate with.

Is it at this point logical that…
Someone who has entered idle this month, bought (for example) 200 idle, anticipated in the 2 snapshots we had… and therefore is in the top 5 now and gets a reward of +500 idle for literally only anticipate in 2 easy voting rounds.

It feels weird for me that it can be that easy to easily get such big reward. Should definitely have some deep thoughts about how to continue with this.

We have seen that people can get double the karma score for voting, just for having stake holdings and private wallet holdings. And vote with both.
In the reward distribution for now is thought of that.
But brings up the next thing.

If someone wants to cheat the system on a other way, he / she can easily anticipate with multiple wallets, especially when there is like at this point, nobody further than me has linked there forum and discord handle.
4 of the 5 persons who are rewarded this month, had it for only Snapshot voting. In theory it can be 4 times the same person with different wallets.

Some options to take in consideration:

A person who wants to anticipate should at least link one of the following:

  • His/her forum profile
  • Her/his discord account

I think the reward should have some restrictions and maybe therefore soms extra calculations.

For example:
A person can’t get a max reward that is not higher then 10 or 20% of his total wallet hodlings.
This are just examples and in my humble opinion needs absolutely more discussion.

I still think that it’s better to reward in dollars instead of idle. Ofcourse the reward itself is in IDLE , but the calculations shouldn’t.
This so that we won’t get big differences each month, especially in rewards.

Example:
In Juni people with the same anticipate had by lowest
222 IDLE > ~$ 66 ?!
This month (July)
273 IDLE > ~$ 82 ?!

(Idle price compared to 30 days ago is pretty much the same)

It’s probably harder but in my opinion more fair, shouldn’t be that hard to make a calculator for it in for example Excel or by coding.

Karma score can give the basic info in anticipation.
But rewards should be for example:

$10,- for every (off chain) Snapshot vote.
$20,- for every on chain vote, they are more important (so therefore extra compensation for gas costs).
$30,- for every legit forum proposal.

Starting from the highest legit karma score down till that month budget exceeds.
As long as there is budget, the more people who are able to get a reward.
If there aren’t enough people who anticipate and there is budget left over, 2 things can happen with it.

  1. Take it to the next 30 days
  2. Reward it to most visible active community member, or someone who did something special/extra that month.

By this the rewards will be much more fair and more people can anticipate then just 5, like @william mentioned and asked.

Example

person 1
Votes 1 time and has 100 idle as voting power
IDLE price $0,30 , max reward $10.
He/she brought in 100 idle so at this moment $30,-
This persons max reward (example, 10%) can not be more then 10 IDLE ( $3,-)

person 2
Votes 2 times , 1 of chain snapshot and one other voting round on chain, he / she has 1000 idle as voting power
IDLE price $0,30
max reward for off chain $10.
max reward for on chain $20.
He/she brought in 1000 idle so at this moment $300,-
This persons max reward (example, 10%) can not be more then 100 IDLE ( $30,-) This is the maximum, so this person is fully rewarded for his/here contributing in to idle.

person 3
Votes 2 times , 1 of chain snapshot and one other voting round on chain, he / she has 1100 idle as voting power.
He / she posted also a forum proposal.
IDLE price $0,30
max reward for off chain $10.
max reward for on chain $20.
max reward for forum proposal $30.
He/she brought in 1100 idle so at this moment $330,-
This persons max reward (example, 10%) can not be more then 110 IDLE ( $33,-) This is NOT the maximum of $60 , cos with his holdings it can’t be higher then 10% of his / her total holding.

So this 3 persons have earned in total 230 IDLE from the 2000 , so this can continue as long as there are users legit to be rewarded.

Ofcourse, these are examples and discord is not tracked yet. But, like multiple times mentioned, the setup should be different to make it a fair play and not get way different end results (rewards) every 30 days.

I had more questions in my mind before, for now this is it. :see_no_evil:

We should literally more deep dive in this reward program, so it gets more attractive and logical for everyone.

18

I think that bigger rewards should be reserved for on chain voters, so to somewhat ‘refund’ some of the gas costs.

Agree with this

–
In general as stated before It would be good to see an increased number of partecipants being rewarded and potentially have a lower distributed amount, if there is not a lot of activity, but I don’t think that capping the number of IDLE received, proportionally to the amount owned, is a good idea

1 Like
19

@emixprime How will be votes handled from polls who are active during the moment that the last 30 day reward distribution is calculated?

For example:

Poll starts 20th of a month till 23th that month.
Calculations is 21th of a month.

Someone who votes 20th of the month gets his karma score that day?!
And therefore goes to the last 30 days that will be calculated on the 21th?

Someone who votes 23th of the month gets his karma score that day?!
And therefore goes to the next 30 days that will be calculated 30 days later?

Wondering, cos in the 30 day filter you should only see last 30 days. So a vote on the 20th, won’t be visible on the 21th a month later, this when poll was active till 24th.

@mmurthy is it possible to cheat this system?
So i vote before the distribution and change my vote after the distribution, will it be seen as new vote?

Best solution would be that score distribution starts after a poll is closed and not at the moment a vote is placed. But maybe this is already happening, and these questions are for nothing :see_no_evil:. I only don’t think this happens, cos a score is visible after voting.

20

Karma will give a score to votes when these are cast (because they track votes based on “created”).

So, if there’s a snapshot poll “in the middle” between the previous tracking period (30 days) and the new one, regardless of the expiration of the snapshot, Karma will assign the score to all the votes that will be created.

No, based on how Karma described tracking the votes, a single “update” of the vote won’t be tracked because won’t be recognized as “created” again.

1 Like