Proposal: Gov Contribution Recognition - Retro & Working Group

Proposal Type: Governance

Summary

This post is meant to:

1. Introduce governance contribution recognition at Scroll DAO,
2. Sketch what a first proposal would look like, including a working group to plan the next steps, and
3. Begin the feedback process so that a formal proposal can go for vote in the June voting cycle.

The discussion related to this proposal took place in this post. The formal proposal is here (though the endorsements are in the discussion).

This proposal technically did not follow protocol because that post was not in the appropriate template and did not include all of the relevant details. We are still moving forward with submitting this proposal in the June 2025 voting cycle given that there is good reason to believe that delegates were treating the above post as a proposal, and it did receive the right amount of endorsements.

If delegates do not approve of any details or the break in protocol, they should vote against it and the protocol shall be followed in the July voting cycle.

Alternatively, the Foundation can run an offchain vote in order to make amendments to the proposal and those will be retroactively voted on in the subsequent GCR proposal. This option will only be pursued if requested by delegates

Motivation

Governance is work.

As such, we want to introduce the idea of governance contribution recognition (GCR), the first attempt at financially recognizing the work that is being done to help build Scroll DAO in the months since TGE. This will start with a 6 month retro (for contribution from inception, Oct, through mid-April). Additionally, this proposal introduces a GCR Working Group, that will have a mandate to generate a plan for GCR at least for the next 3 months (June-August).

We want to put forth an initial outline of governance contribution compensation to start getting feedback so that we're ready to vote on a proposal starting June 1.

Governance Contribution Recognition

GCR is meant to serve as a mechanism to reward people for meaningfully contributing to governance at Scroll DAO. As the DAO itself will grow and evolve, the nature of this recognition will change with it.

The first iteration of the GCR will be focused on a roughly 6 monthly retroactive award. Broadly speaking, this structure will have a small baseline reward for some minimal contribution, and will provide increasing awards based on the contribution. This was have a mix of quantitative and qualitative measures.

This initial approach will reward for certain baseline activites that are likely to not get rewarded again (e.g. voting but not partaking on the forum). The logic for including such categories is to provide a small reward (~$150 per vote) to a slightly wider set of participants, to hopefully encourage those who have some interaction to interact more in the future.

There would be additional rewards for contributing beyond the initial baseline. To give a sense of scale, the largest award would be just over $15k USD eqiuvalent at a price of $0.30 SCR/USD.

Beyond the first retro, there will be a new approach defined for at least the next 3-6 months. That proposal should put in place a more robust system for capturing the relevant data to minimize potential errors.

Execution

Operational

Once the proposal passes, the Foundation ops team will manage transfering the funds (for the GCR and for the working group) to a new multi-sig, and then on to the appropriate receipients.

The Foundation team will also manage a KYC process for those who will receive the compensation.

Proposed framework

NOTE: this retro covers the first 3 votes and forum activity through April 30, 2025.

Qualification criteria

There is only one qualification for the minimum reward, namely:

• Voted at least once.

Forumla

• Hourly rate = 300 SCR
• Proposal bonus = 5,000 SCR
• Vote time = # votes * 2 hours
  • Assumption: each vote takes 2 hours
• Call attendance = # of calls attended
  • Assumption: each call was 1 hour
  • Note: call attendance has a 0.5 multiplier below
• Forum = Vote threads + endorsements + meaningful comments on one of 7 active forum posts within the time frame
  • Assumption: each forum engagement takes 1 hour
• Proposals to vote = the # of proposals that were written and made it to a formal DAO vote
  • Assumption: the sheparding of each proposal takes ~15-18 hours
• Negation game participation = 1 if someone participated in an interview and interaction with the Negation Game team, 0 if no

Base reward = (Vote time + (Call attendance*0.5) + Forum) * Hourly rate

Proposal bonus reward = Proposal bonus * Proposals to vote

• NOTE: only 4 proposals were posted by delegates as of April 15, 2025 that have or will soon go to vote

Bonus reward = (Negation game participation * 300 SCR) + (2000 SCR if 10 or more calls attended) + (3000 SCR if 5 or more meaningful forum comments) + (500 SCR if delegate has a delegate thread with all 3 rationales there) * 6*

• *6 is a multiplier to bring the reward up to what qualitatively seems to be a more fair payout for contributions, proportionate to the treasury size.

In other words,

• There is a base reward consisting of the number of hours spent on voting, attending calls, and making meaningful contributions on the forum, which is multiplied by an hourly rate of 300 SCR/hour.
• There is a proposal bonus of 5,000 SCR for each proposal on the forum that has or will soon go to vote.
• There is a general bonus that consists of
  • 300 SCR for completing an interview with the Negation Game team.
  • 2,000 SCR for attending 10 or more calls.
  • 3,000 SCR for having 5 or more meaningful interactions on the forum.
  • 500 SCR bonus for having 3/3 voter rationales.
  • There is a multiplier of 6.

Initial breakdown

The below is what the breakdown looks like based on the above rules.

INSERT IMAGE

NOTE: the same data was used for this and for the votable supply calculations.

This is a google sheet version.

Working Group

This proposal also suggests to form a working group with 3 individuals or groups to collaborate on the next GCR proposal, covering at least 3 if not 6 months. These individuals will be chosen based on a transparent hiring process conducted by the Foundation.

The goal of this working group would be to generate a subsequent GCR proposal for the August 1 voting cycle.

*Timeline: June 10th - voting cycle concludes, application for recruiting the working group goes live (we might post it earlier acknowledging it might not happen if the proposal fails) June 15th - application cycle concludes June 20th - announcement of the working group, veto window starts June 25th - veto window ends, team starts working July 9th - at least initial thought forum post, ideally first proposal draft July 16th - proposal needs to be on the forum, getting feedback and ultimately endorsements by July 31 August 1st - proposal goes live

The team will have weekly check-in's with the Foundation and will get support as needed.

It is important to call out, this timeline is likely unreasonable if the data needs to be analyzed in this time. The priority is for this group to put forth a formula / approach and a rough budget. The Foundation team will help with manual data entry and getting the right data provider in place, but there is a chance the latter will not be feasible.

If it becomes clear that this timeline is unreasonable for any reason, the working group and the governance team will need to produce a forum post providing an explanation and a revised timeline.

Personnel & Resources

The Foundation team will manage the operational aspects, including the recruitment of the working group.

The 3 members of the working group are TBD. A public recruiting process will commence via a Foundation managed form. Results and information will be shared afterwards. A 3 buniness day veto will begin once the announcement is posted on the forum.

Financial

The total request is 614,645 SCR.

This is broken down as follows:

• 584,645 SCR for the GCR retro
• 30,000 SCR for the working-group

Any funds that are not claimed (retro) or used (working-group) within 2 months will be used as part of a future GCR proposal.

Evaluation

The metrics for this proposal include:

• The # of qualified delegates as defined in this proposal 6 and 12 months out
• The # of delegates voting on proposals
• The # of delegates voting on more than 50% of propals
• The # increase in delegate threads on the forum
• The average # of quality comments a proposal or significant discussion gets
• The # of attendees making active contributions during calls

Conclusion

We believe that this type of proposal is an approximation of rewarding existing governance contribution through April 30, 2025. We hope such a proposal will help attract the highest quality governance contributions and support a culture where governance is seen as important work that can take significant time.

However, we do want to signal that we do not believe this is the best form of ongoing compensation. The Foundation team will work with the working group through the process of creating a subsequent GCR proposal for the August voting cycle.

As we will work on org design for the DAO in the coming months, we are likely to re-design how most work in the DAO happens, and rewards will change accordingly. We didn't want to delay this so are putting forth these ideas to get a proposal up in time for the June voting cycle.