After becoming more of an active member within this community, and witnessing the voter turn outs on Snapshot, I’ve come to realize that although the DAO in nature provides decentralization to the protocol, the outcome of each vote is generally dictated by the few.
This is not only a problem within Bancor, but within most DAOs in general. Users simply want to sit back, collect fees, make friends / complain here and there within various chat mediums while expecting others to make the right decisions for themselves.
There is no way to transform a passive user into an active member… unless… users are given some sort of benefit.
Perhaps there may be a way where, active participation in Gov & at the end of each snapshot vote, each wallet address that participated // or account, is given some sort of benefit for x period of time within the protocol.
benefits
- bancor will further decentralize itself via more active participants and voters
- this will rally and strengthen the community via active members
- this will encourage users to hold onto … or dare I even say it… purchase BNT / vBNT
drawbacks
- passive users who choose not to be active members will feel that they are not treated fairly
- TKN lps who dont own any BNT will feel its unfair
- when ethereum gas fees rise, people will complain its too expensive to vote
IMO, I think that the pros outweigh the cons. The incentive to become an active participant is still unknown, but its clear that humans are financially motivated, so if we can think of a way to for users to gain some sort of benefit from voting // actively participating in dao discussions then the protocol as a whole will benefit from this.
Perhaps Bancor Gov can incorporate some features from reddit whereas;
- when a user creates a thread that generates good discussion, they can be given some sort of karma point score.
- If a user posts comments on a thread which gets upvoted, this will also generate further karma point scores.
- When a user votes on snapshot, this also generates points.
Users can be given some sort of badges within gov, which is kind of fun, but if these badges can translate into some benefit within the protocol itself, then this will surely increase the voter turnout on snapshot & encourage active participation & constructive conversations while minimizing the senseless ones taking place on telegram etc.