[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.

[Curia]

Thank you everyone, for taking the time to read this and provide feedback.

@cp0x We support the idea of having a set of standards for what meaningful participation looks like. We align with you on the idea of maintaining a Delegate Thread should be a minimum requirement for Recognized Delegates and one of the criteria for evaluating their performance when determining eligibility for incentives if we ever decide to have one.

@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.

We believe the points raised by @vegayp and @mendesfabio mentioned are important and we should discuss in more detail what to include in the criteria for evaluating Recognized Delegates performance.

We can also look at other DAOs delegate programs for reference. For example, in the Velora (Paraswap) Delegate Incentives Program, a minimum participation threshold of ≥80% voting participation over the program period is required. They also combine multiple weighted metrics, such as participation rate, Snapshot voting record, and the quality of communicated rationales, to create a more holistic evaluation.

Another useful reference is the Delegate Reputation Score (DRS) used in Obol. This framework rewards active delegates by evaluating them across five key performance components: Voting Participation Score, Voting Impact Score, Voting Timeliness Score, Rationale Submission Score, and Forum Score. Adopting a similar model, we could define a tailored set of criteria for CoW DAO that reflects our current priorities, for example, placing weight on forum participation to address the present need for more engagement, while still incentivizing the overall quality and impact of delegates contributions.

Additionally, if we decide to implement an incentive program for Recognized Delegates, it should allow for flexibility, such as revoking incentives or suspending participation when delegates fail to meet expectations, thereby ensuring accountability and adaptability as the program progresses.

We believe similar approaches could be applied to CoW DAO: establishing clear thresholds, weighted criteria, and mechanisms for accountability, while also encouraging forum engagement beyond mere voting. This would give a structured and measurable framework for Recognized Delegates to drive meaningful governance participation.

We propose this initiative as an opportunity to move from recognition to real impact by defining measurable and meaningful expectations for Recognized Delegates. Clear criteria will not only reward genuine contributions but also set a standard that inspires higher-quality participation across the DAO. That said it would also be great to have further input from the CoW Swap team @middleway.eth to align on actionable next steps that will elevate the role and influence of Recognized Delegates in CoW DAO.

[vegayp]

Besides the forum, is there any governance call where this can be discussed openly?

Great work.

[Areta]

Thanks @Curia for bringing up this discussion!

@Curia

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

Based on our experience as both program managers and participants of delegate incentive programs across ecosystems, some key activities to incentivize include:

• Voting - As it stands, CowDAO doesn’t seem to be facing any issues with meeting quorum. However, looking at other metrics, like the number of unique voters on snapshot proposals, there has been a steady decline since the start of the year from as high as 132 unique voters in CIP-61 (first vote of 2025) to as low as 38 unique voters in CIP-72 (most recent vote), representing a drop of ~71%. If this trend continues, the DAO is likely to face challenges in meeting quorum over the longer term.
• Delegate Feedback - As already highlighted by @Curia analysis, forum activity is low among recognized delegates. Valuable comments or feedback by delegates on proposals could be incentivized. There might be a little bit of subjectivity in determining what counts as valuable, and differences in approach on how to assess this. However, it may make sense to incentivize high-quality feedback that moves the needle in discussions.

[Curia]

@vegayp Currently, CoW doesn’t have a recurring governance call for discussions.

@Areta

Voting - As it stands, CowDAO doesn’t seem to be facing any issues with meeting quorum. However, looking at other metrics, like the number of unique voters on snapshot proposals, there has been a steady decline since the start of the year from as high as 132 unique voters in CIP-61 (first vote of 2025) to as low as 38 unique voters in CIP-72 (most recent vote), representing a drop of ~71%. If this trend continues, the DAO is likely to face challenges in meeting quorum over the longer term.Thanks @Areta for providing such a thoughtful analysis. We really appreciate you highlighting the decline in unique voters, if this trend continues, it could eventually become a quorum issue. We agree that voting should be one of the key criteria when evaluating delegate performance.

Thanks @Areta for providing such a thoughtful analysis. We really appreciate you highlighting the decline in unique voters, if this trend continues, it could eventually become a quorum issue. We agree that voting should be one of the key criteria when evaluating delegate performance.

We’ve queried data from Dune regarding CoW monthly votes and found that the total votes show a downward trend. While proposals have been passing quorum in recent months, they are doing so barely, which reinforces your point.

@Areta

Valuable comments or feedback by delegates on proposals could be incentivized. There might be a little bit of subjectivity in determining what counts as valuable, and differences in approach on how to assess this.

As you noted, forum contributions can be harder to measure objectively. One possible approach would be to weight different types of forum activities by their governance value. For example, Obol uses a “forum score” in its evaluations. We could adopt a similar system with categories such as Proposals Discussed, Proposals Created, and Days Visited, and then aggregate these into a contribution score. That way forum engagement becomes a lot more trackable and measurable.