The Telos of the DAO

[lex_node]

@drnick

This is no doubt, at the very least, a weird phenomenon to see. It does seem like it creates a meta-centralisation effect across DAOs. Not only do we have a small pool of delegates, but the same pool of delegates are congregating into positions of (non-linear) power across all of the DAOs. Even ones effectively in direct competition with one another.

On a long enough timeline this will at least create a kind of homogenisation of approach, if not direct conflicts of interest. It does seem like incentive schemes shaped towards people focussing on individual DAOs might make sense, although the notion of exclusivity does seem antithetical to the DAO idea. A curious problem. It would be interesting to think about an incentive scheme as the means to shape the structure of power in the DAO towards diverse high quality delegates. I’ve seen arbitrum wrestling with this problem recently and ending up at qualitative assessment technique, which could get messy.

I see the current ‘professional delegates’ as hopefully being placeholders for delegates from communities that rely on ZKsync. One of the biggest delegates now is a DEX (which may include individuals with ties to those communities or may include DAOs). This sort of approach is what the makes the most sense imo and I think it can emerge organically as, frankly, a long-term ZK holder will probably be best positioned by delegating across a range of popular ZKsync apps plus some governance junkies like us guys. Right now it’s too weighted toward governance junkies imo but that should naturally change over time if ZK ecosystem is successful and has strong apps.

This would also tend to suggest incentivizing delegation is not needed and possibly is undesirable as could incentivize entrenchment rather than encouraging this long-term natural evolution toward app communities having governance power. But I see both sides of the issue.

this post is being made in my capacity as a delegate and not any other capacity (eg Guardian)