[PRE]delegators meet up! "How should delegators evaluate DELEGATES?"

🏛 Governance Governance Proposals
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[PRE]delegators meet up!
“How should delegators evaluate DELEGATES? Especially regarding potential conflicts of interest.”

Is this topic hot or spicy? Am I getting ahead of the foundation or is this anticipated?

For the past few days I have been looking at the delegate profile thread, trying to find my delegates in case a token is distributed in the future. And very genuinely wondered how delegators should evaluate delegates. Especially regarding possible conflicts of interest.

If a delegate holds a position with another dao, even if that dao is not currently a competitor of starknet, how do you determine he will be able to make fair decisions in the future if his another community comes to have aspects of our competitor?
Also, if a dev of the project in Starknet ecosystem were to be appointed as a delegate, how would you determine if he or she would be able to act fairly when participating in decisions that are closely related to the interests of its project?

Please share your opinion as I do not have enough knowledge, experience and stuff about DAO. Anything other than the points I wrote upper is welcome.

Note; This thread is not intended to demotivate members who are currently running for governance as delegates, but only to exchange ideas and opinions among community members.

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Providing reasoning for their decision would be one approach to encourage more open and transparent governance. By doing so the community could hold called out any bad actor, If they see bias in their decision

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Each Delegator will have their own criteria for evaluating the Delegates. It will be important to have discussion forums that allow open dialogue around the various Delgate’s characteristics, history and ethos.

Perhaps an idea would be enabling some way of tracking a reputational metric that shows that the Delegates are consistently acting in the best interests of their Delegators the Starknet ecosystem?

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From what I see, as delegator, you’ll have access to a website (https://delegate.starknet.io) to browse through the delegates’ profiles (using https://www.karmahq.xyz), which will allow you to access the voting history of each delegate as well as their conversation history on the forum. This will likely provide you with more information to make an informed decision.

As a developer and delegate, my perception regarding the conflict of interest issue you raised is as follows: I’ll strive to be as transparent as possible while acknowledging that this issue may arise in relation to the project I am building within Screenshot. I will always prioritize what I believe is best for the network’s development, and if the conflict of interest is too significant, I will simply abstain from voting.

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Great question. I believe we can leverage on and off chain reputation metrics for this.

Some metrics that might be displayed on delegate’s profile:

  • ETH holdings
  • Validator activity (yes/no)
  • Attestation of Twitter/Discord activity and involvement with Starknet via tools like Clique (been used for Optimism)
  • Wallet scoring
  • Community credentials (ability to vouch/issue credentials by trusted issuers starting with core team for example).

The more complex this metrics will get, the more educated choices delegators can make, but on/off chain reputation is the only way to go IMO.

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Agree with introducing some certain on-chain metrics, but personally don’t see how “personal” & more “subjective” info is beneficial for the health of the community.

  • ETH holdings

Don’t see how it would be relevant. Most people would (should, imo haha) be warry of sharing this anyways. In fact, I’d encourage delegates to use a burner wallet/specific wallet for the purpose of being a delegate; not just for opsec reasons, but to prevent bias & avoid showing “acts of support” through other on-chain activities eg holding select tokens etc.

  • Wallet scoring

Same as above.

  • Attestation of Twitter/Discord activity

Plenty of brilliant people in the Starknet community don’t actively use these platforms (esp not in a reputation building/public interacting sort of way). This would harmfully filter out those.

  • Community credentials

While I agree to an extent, probably insofar as adopting the builders council (a certain amount of OG power needs to be held esp in the early years of the network as to maintain and bring out the vision), having too much of this would just keep the strange out of Starknet. Should actively try to branch out to avoid an echo chamber going forward.

When agreeing to introducing on-chain metrics as a way of seeing how other delegators do (insofar as delegates would need to actually “evaluate other delegates”, which presumably shouldn’t be often), I moreso refer to metrics such as “delegate voting activity/history”, “% participating votes”, etc.

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Thanks guys for various comments!

I personally agree that delegates could have the option to submit third-party metrics to support their self-representation comments in the future.

Reputation metrics by on/off chain would be valid, but it seems to me that the former has a risk with capitalistic and the latter with populism one. To mitigate these risks, I think the implementation of tools such as karma, clique, (mentioned by remi.stark, love2bluff) sybilshield (https://sybilshield.fly.dev/ ) are worth discussing in the future.

As Chas pointed out, I too feel that the aspect that many brilliant starknet people are not positive about the web2-like use of certain platforms.
So, metrics that are too favorable to reputation builders should be considered, since they may weaken most professional and thoughtful people’s voices.

It is hoped that the anonymity and transparency of wallets and on/off activity logs can be achieved in a way that is not too invasive of each other. (For example, could we consider implementing something could be called the Starknet Passport?)

With blockchain and smart contracts, we believe we can create a governance system that is more transparent, effective and mechanizable than those in the outside the world of chains. But therefore, as primitive pointed out, open person-to-person communication will also become more important.

I believe that for Starknet to flourish, it is important not only to attract innovative and user-friendly project’s developers and users, but also to attract enthusiastic end users who can become thoughtful delegates in the future.
Therefore, it seems important that the foundation, OG, and other core/early members to present and disseminate a simple and robust message that clearly and concretely identifies the goals of StarkNet, to not only the people at the center of the network, but also the end users who are eager to learn.
This is because it can be a non-quantifiable metrics for making decisions based on the open person-to-person / peer-to-peer communication that mentioned earlier.

I hope this thread will continue to be a forum for the presentation and exchange of various opinions and ideas for everyone’s learning and consideration about delegates and delegator.

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I understand your point of view, but it is up to each delegate to separate their functions in each DAO that acts, and focus on the decisions of the community, each action depending on their voting power can change a lot within the community, it would be unfair not to look at the community . I think that every bad thing you do or do for your own benefit, harming someone,
one day it can come back to you 10 times worse, that’s why I always focus on doing good and thinking a lot about my attitudes. I would like many people to think like this, I believe that many Delegates will separate their functions from other projects that they work on for the good and future of the starknet. I also believe that the team will filter out these people with intentions other than the good of the community.

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Well, this is where freedom of choice comes in.
First of all , you need to make sure you read everything in the profile of a delegate including the conflicts of interest , if it doesn’t align with your beliefs or you belief such a delegate might be bias to some extent through your findings, you can easily delegate to the one that meets your criteria.

I believe with the current test phase ongoing as time goes on you can vet the delegates based on their activities during governance phases.

You can as well take your time.

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How do we delegate to be able to vote in the DAO?

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Honestly not much you can do, as many people said you can dig around their past and their wallets but ultimately it comes down to your subjective perception.

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