[RFC] CoW DAO Recognized Delegates Enhancement Initiative

[Curia]

Recognized Delegates were introduced on August 18th, 2024, with the aim of fostering active governance participation and consistent engagement. However, this initiative currently lacks defined responsibilities, clear KPIs, or robust tracking mechanisms to measure its impact. This has contributed to a critical challenge: low engagement within the CoW DAO forum, which is crucial for robust decentralized governance and the development of strong proposals. While recognized delegates consistently demonstrate commitment through high Snapshot voting participation, a disconnect exists, as their engagement in forum discussions, or even the publication of vote rationales, remains limited. This creates a bottleneck in the collaborative development of ideas and community consensus building. To truly make this role effective and impactful, it is imperative to establish clear goals for Recognized Delegates and implement a compensation framework that incentivizes their active contributions.

@c3rnst

Recognized delegates are key participants in governance, contributing through active engagement, proposal discussions, and sharing insights. Over time, recognized delegates may evolve into vital thought leaders within the ecosystem. CoW DAO may consider additional remuneration based on their success and contribution.

Recognized Delegate Snapshot Voting Participation (since CIP-52):

Delegate	Proposals Voted	Participation Rate
Tané	18 / 18	100%
Karpatkey	18 / 18	100%
Chim9	15 / 18	83.3%
Curia Lab	15 / 18	83.3%
Hasu	13 / 18	72.2%
MasterMojo	12 / 18	66.7%
middleway.eth	11 / 18	61.1%
Stefan	10 / 18	55.6%
yvesfracari.eth	10 / 18	55.6%
GNSPS	7 / 18	38.9%
Eylon Aviv	1 / 18	5.6%
kubesqrt	0 / 18	0%

Average: 12 / 18 proposals voted (66.7%), but only a minority are engaging on the forum.

Note: cp0x.eth and Areta were recently added to the Recognized Delegates list on June 26th, 2025.

While Recognized Delegates maintain active participation in Snapshot voting, a deeper look into forum engagement reveals a different picture. The following data presents the activity of Recognized Delegates on the forum after August 2024, including replies and the delegate threads, which are a key channel for publishing vote rationales.

Recognized Delegate Forum Activity (after August 2024):

Delegate	Replies	Delegate threads
Tané	17	18
middleway.eth	68	0
MasterMojo	7	0
yvesfracari.eth	6	0
Karpatkey	9	0
Chim9	23	0
Curia Lab	5	15
Eylon Aviv	0	0
kubesqrt	1	0
Stefan	0	0
Hasu	1	0
GNSPS	0	0

Note: This data is presented objectively to highlight the overall low engagement on the forum and is not intended to criticize or single out any individual delegate.

This high voting activity on Snapshot contrasts sharply with the observed lower engagement on the CoW DAO forum. To truly foster a decentralized and participatory environment, it is imperative to align forum engagement with Snapshot voting activity.

Open Questions

-What types of engagement or activity should be recognized as valuable and therefore rewarded?

-What specific types of forum engagement do the community and delegates find most valuable? -What KPIs or metrics should we use to define “active engagement”? -Should delegates be expected to publish vote rationales as a norm?

This proposal serves as a starting point to discuss how we can make the Recognized Delegates more impactful.

[cp0x]

Good topic and important questions.

As a new Recognized Delegate, it’s hard for me to understand why so few people engage in discussions, but I have a few thoughts:
– I believe that, at the very least, maintaining a delegate thread should be required.
– There should also be incentives for participating in proposal discussions.
– If CoW is willing to reward both voting and these kinds of contributions, it could have a significant impact

[vegayp]

This is great.

1. I think the proposal should also identified other forms of engagements. For example a delegates call once a month, to provide feedback to proposals (cadence can change according to governance cicles). Attendance to this calls can also be tracked.
2. Matching participation rates above 50% with forum activity above 50% should be rewarded. And as time progresses those percentages increases as well as the incentive.
3. High participation rate DAO members (such as grantees, non-core members) should also be rewarded with smaller amounts of governance token, to incentivise participation, specially grantees, as a way to retain their participation in governance and not just extracting value.
4. Also It would be interesting to know what would be the governance participation that is expected from delegates.

[mendesfabio]

Good analysis - thanks @Curia for putting together!

One thing missing IMO - number of delegate-led governance proposals. Goes beyond simply voting and highlights active engagement/participation to the DAO. Should definitely be part of any tracked engagement metrics.

I would expect delegates to describe their rationale when voting, but we need to agree on where it should be posted - forum thread? Snapshot directly? Both work, just needs to be consistent so one can easily track it.