Delegate Mission Request: Incentivize and increase governance participation

[opjulian]

Delegate Mission Request: Incentivize and increase governance participation

Delegate Mission Request Summary
Overview:
This request aims to increase governance participation on the Optimism network by employing Velodrome’s govNFTs. These govNFTs will enable participants to vote or delegate their granted OP without the ability to transfer or use it economically for a year, thereby encouraging more focused and long-term governance engagement. The intention is not necessarily to generate economic activity; rather, the goal here is for projects to employ this primitive to encourage commitment to and activity on Optimism as a governance community.

S5 Intent 19 2: Intent 4: Governance

Proposing Delegate: Jack Anorak

Proposal Tier 16 1: Fledging Tier

Baseline grant amount: Total budget at 75k; baseline grants at 5-40k OP, depending on the likely scale and reach of projects. I’m envisioning a per-user amount of 50 OP but this could be tuned.

Should this Foundation Mission be fulfilled by one or multiple applicants: Unlimited up to budget

Completion date: August 1, 2024

Apply Here

Specification

How will this Delegate Mission Request help accomplish the above Intent?

*Simply put, there is no more direct way, other than airdrops, to broaden and encourage governance activity other than to distribute OP. Because of the nature of grant distribution, all non-growth grants are distributed in locked OP. Therefore, the only grants that immediately allow governance participation to date have been growth grants, which are generally used for the purpose of encouraging economic activity.

Velodrome’s govNFTs, implemented pursuant to an earlier Mission, turn this formula on its head by allowing grantees to immediately use the governance functions of granted OP without being able to perform any economic activities. They can vote or delegate with this OP, but they can’t transfer it for a year. This is a powerful tool for any governance initiative looking to encourage new participation.

We could see not just defi protocols dropping these but (perhaps preferably) classrooms, hackathons, conferences, and so on.

The hope here is for teams to think creatively about how to get more governance participation - this would be a direct tool, quickly showing whether certain initiatives do in fact lead to more activity.

A clarifying piece: Velodrome does not stand to benefit in any way from the use of govNFTs. It does not collect fees on these or interact with them. It simply created the primitive, which can be freely used. There are no competing standards of govNFTs, which makes sense because they have no real commercial function.

What is required to execute this Delegate Mission Request?

Selection of well-scoped programs with a credible hypothesis for why the distribution of govNFTs under these programs will result in more governance participation.
Unlike with other grants, pivoting here (with coordination with the Grant Council) could be encouragetd as projects look to continue experiments.
How should the Token House measure progress towards this Mission?

We should see pretty immediate results from distribution to onchain governance activity. Programs will be expected to provide periodic updates on their performance.

How should badgeholders measure impact upon completion of this Mission?

• Onchain voting and delegation activity among granted wallets
• Share of granted wallets new to governance functions
• Share of granted wallets new to Optimism
• To the extent that attribution is possible, entrance of new deleates or governance participants directly resulting from one of these distribution programs.