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Participation

💡 State the goals and how we solve them

Participation and DAOs​

Participation is the foundation of any organization. Who is able to participate, how they participate, and why they participate define how all organizations work. As we have learned, DAOs have particular characteristics when it comes to these questions. They promote open, permissionless participation as part of their core ethos.

But DAO's often suffer from a divide between theory and practice when it comes to participation. They are, on one hand, touted as open, flat, and "democratic" organizations where anyone can participate and should be judged on the merits of that participation. It is one thing to allow open participation and wholly another to achieve it. To try and design a system where open participation is effective, we have to start by answering a few questions:

  • From whom and what kind of participation does a DAO want?

    This is a broad question, so let’s narrow it down and talk about YAM specifically. YAM holders coordinate around the treasury, so we want participation that grows, stewards, and builds on the treasury. YAM needs contributors who will actively improve the DAO. It needs to be able to decide whether those contributors are doing good work.

  • How does a DAO promote that kind of participation?

    Participation needs to be promoted via incentives and ease of use. Incentives are used to promote the kind of participation that the DAO desires, and discourage that which it does not. Ease refers to how easy it is to participate productively. If there are significant barriers to participation then there will be less participation and the incentives to participate need to be greater.

  • Are there certain types of participation that are necessary to allow other participation?

    In order to create incentives and improve ease of participation, someone has to put in the work to build the structure that allows participation. The system must be bootstrapped by participants who are willing to lay the groundwork for everyone else. These participants build systems that facilitate future participation and this is an ongoing process.

Opt-in Participation​

We must accept that different levels of participation from different actors should be expected and accounted for. We discussed earlier how open decision making and scalability are related. We have seen that if a project becomes broadly popular, the vast majority of token owners will view it as a speculative financial investment and will either never or very rarely participate in governance. Trying to convince casual investors to participate regularly is a hard problem and may be best considered as a value add to a system that works without them.

We want to design an Opt-in mentality to participation, where participation is always possible, but where the system does not break down assuming there is a certain minimum level of participation. As we further build out and develop the systems to increase participation then we can adjust the thresholds for minimum participation to incentivize better outcomes.

Incentivizing Participation​

Participation is work, and it should be rewarded as such. Participation can come in the form of voting, discussing ideas and proposals, coming up with new ideas. It can be full time participation, consistent part time participation, or irregular participation. How each level of participation is valued can be built into the incentive systems of the DAO.

If we want to broaden participation, then we must make some forms of contribution easy and worthwhile. The value proposition of participation must align with the value received from that participation. If we want more full time participation then we must make the process to do so clear and transparent. The path to become a contributor should be visible and achievable.