[As of December 14th, Delegate Profiles have been moved to governance.starknet.io]
Hi Starknet, my name is Deven Matthews. As a member of the Starknet Foundation Governance Committee, I’ve been intimately involved in the planning of Starknet Governance. I’m an acting Governance Facilitator for Starknet Foundation, and most importantly been managing everything around Delegation in Starknet Governance. I’m so excited to finally announce Starknet is ready to invite community members to become Delegates for Starknet Governance!
Some brief background on myself: I’m a mechanism design researcher at Nethermind; and previously lead the Governance department for Blockchain at Berkeley a team that participates as delegates across many Ethereum Defi DAOs.
For any questions about Delegation or Governance, please post in this thread; you can reach out to me on twitter @DevenMat, email deven.matthews@StarknetFoundation.org, or through my Starknet forum account.
TL;DR
- Starknet’s Governance mechanism implements Delegation of voting power
- Delegation enables a system in which where token-holders who take economic stake in the network, elect Delegates who take social stake in the community
- All are welcome to receive delegation and participate in governance as a Starknet Delegate: to signal your willingness to receive delegation, please post your delegate profile on the linked Delegate profile thread
- Token-holders are encouraged to select a delegate from the Delegate Profile page to delegate to if they do not plan to vote themselves
- Information about delegate responsibilities can be viewed on the Delegate expectations post
- More information coming
Along with the steps to decentralize Starknet’s system components (Sequencer and Prover), Starknet has started moving towards decentralizing the decision-making processes related to the network itself. See previous announcements on Starknet Governance for more information: Foundation Governance Post, announcements Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
This post covers the concept of Delegation, and how it fits into the plan to decentralize decision making about the Starknet network.
Delegation is the process of enabling a wallet (Delegate Wallet) to utilize the voting shares associated with another wallet’s token holdings (Delegator Wallet). In other words, token-holders can grant their voting power at a delegate while maintaining control of their own tokens. Locked and unlocked $STRK tokens’ voting rights can now be Delegated permissionlessly to any wallet using the delegation contract or Snapshot Frontend.
Delegation allows Starknet community members to accumulate Starknet voting power without high capital cost.
We envision a system in which token-holders who take economic stake in the network elect Delegates who take social stake in the community.
Systems that rely solely on monetary stake for governance rights in practice are often characterized by a lack of voter participation and proposal discussion. This is because token-holders, while they benefit from good-faith governance, aren’t necessarily the most qualified actors to actively advise development of the network. The Foundation thinks that the best way of achieving the network’s long term preservation of values involves a system which enables Starknet community members to be granted voting power based on their good-faith contributions towards Starknet governance. Delegates are incentivized to actively vote in the network’s best interest to maintain their delegations, and token-holders can off-load the burden of governance participation onto verifiably competent Delegates.
To put the network’s future in the hands of the most Starknet aligned, the Foundation is committing to the continuous upkeep of community and tooling to enable a permissionless ecosystem of Delegates to guide Starknet network upgrades.
A vital piece of creating a thriving governance ecosystem is attracting dedicated Delegates and giving them a platform for accessibility. These individuals, teams, community members, builders, and everything in between are to become the core decision makers in the StarkNet network, and soul of Starknet governance. We are making an open call for all interested in becoming a Delegate to post their Delegate profile on the Delegate Profile page. Posting a Delegate profile is not required to receive delegation, but will increase Delegate’s visibility to potential Delegators and the broader community. We also provided a Delegate Expectations framework for community members to gauge the expectations of Delegates. Over time the community can expect more tooling to facilitate and incentivize the relationship between Delegates, token-holders, Starknet Core-Developers, and the broader community.
The Foundation has previously identified progressive decentralization as playing an important role in the Starknet Governance roadmap. The Foundation is committed to actively pushing the mechanisms that underpin Starknet Governance to be permissionless and decentralized. We will be taking several measures to bring more of the community into the discussion about Starknet Governance. Becoming a Delegate, and commenting on governance related forum posts, is the best way for community members to get involved today.
