Discussion: Representatives vs. Opt-In Delegation

[matto]

I believe Jup Mobile have been working with the Dialect team to implement their alerts system in the wallet.

[albmafia]

You people need to stop pretending.

Doesn’t really matter what system we’ve got, if all we vote on is useless stuff, that can easily done by approving a budget to a marketing team and be done with it.

The sad reality is, we’ve got a charade calling it a “Governance”.

There is zero alignment between team , community and users.

[Paba]

I think Option 1 (Representative System) is a strong step forward — and likely the best fit for a DAO of this size and ambition. Speed, agility, and less voter fatigue are real needs, especially with the growing number of proposals we’re seeing.

The idea of democratically elected Representatives who can help move smaller proposals forward is appealing. It opens space for community leaders to emerge and lets everyday stakers stay involved without feeling overwhelmed. The ability to re-delegate vote-by-vote is a key feature — it prevents centralization and preserves individual control when needed.

That said, I do see a few nuances and potential trade-offs to highlight:

1. Some users may not actively manage their delegation. This could lead to poor vote quality over time.

2. While 301 is a fair number, we should keep an eye on whether it’s large enough to represent the diversity of the community, especially as JUP grows and decentralizes further.

3. A hybrid approach might be worth exploring (e.g. capped vote weight, or tiers).

4. If too many proposals get routed through reps, it could slowly disconnect broader DAO members from the governance process altogether. We need a good balance between agility and inclusion.

Still, overall — I support Option 1. It’s the most scalable path forward, as long as we continue to refine delegation UX, encourage transparency, and remain flexible in adjusting the rep count or thresholds based on real outcomes.

Looking forward to seeing this evolve and happy to participate in the testing phase if it rolls out. Great work by the team as always

[Rico_JHE]

Love the discussion and love the ambition to try something new and refrain from being stagnant. I think Option 1 is a great idea and a way to clear the backlogs and ensuring there aren’t more. Plus it helps keep people active especially if they are looking to attract more stake. Option 2 requires the same amount of thought as we currently have, so probably the same amount of time. I would vote for option 1!

[Fareed99]

That’s great I really like it
Thanks a lot #kash

[matto]

@DanielBR11

the creation of segmented communities functioning as thematic or informational nodes, led by facilitators who can simplify proposals, organize short info sessions, and maintain continuous, accessible communication

nice idea @DanielBR11

there’s definitely a need to have niche groups that serve the ever-increasing diverse community we have here

[DanielBR11]

On different occasions I have stated that it is necessary, at least in my opinion, to promote some facilitation or dissemination group in Spanish, in order to understand and disseminate the real tasks with which greater value could be given to the DAO and the Jupiverse, from the creation of functional organizations in the real world, such as a foundation, or the implementation of entertainment elements, such as a Jupiverse in Sandbox, or other utilities that are initially practical for the consolidation or scalability of Jupiverse, and then for the autonomist functions of the DAO, if it is finally going to be a goal of the community to become independent of the team’s products.

[matto]

It doesn’t even need to be that complex tbh.

Just look at McDonalds for instance: you can find a McDonalds in so many different countries but their menus are adapted to serve local tastes. There are a few staple options on the menu that is signature to the brand, but depending on the country you’ll find all sorts of unexpected options. These JUP groups you’re suggesting should offer the same kind of variety.

But we’re going off topic here for this discussion.

Do you have a proposal here or somewhere where you mentioned this previously?

[DanielBR11]

I’ve only mentioned it in isolated comments, and last year I was starting to put together a proposal, but personal mistrust slowed my process. Then I had to dedicate myself to caring for a relative who ended up passing away, and I distanced myself quite a bit from the DAO and left the market. I work a lot with communities in real life and I also belong to a foundation, which is why I was motivated to also join this DAO with 100% of JUP at stake. For me, JUP really is home. And now that I’m back, I intend to break through my own insecurities so I can contribute work and value to this space, trying to also generate an impact in the real world and thus consolidate strong foundations for the Jpiverse and the business projections it entails. As well as in the DAO, I think the idea of ​​​​gradually generating autonomy seems fantastic due to the disruptive challenge it entails. Since I don’t have a team or close friends interested in participating in the DAO, I think I’ll start by submitting a proposal and slowly begin to build a trusted team or friendship group. Honestly, I’m in a personal phase of rebirth that would allow me to dedicate all my time and effort to the DAO.

[GREATNEZZ]

Good work for dedication put to this proposal, I support Option 1: Representative System. It accelerates decision-making, reduces voter fatigue, and empowers engaged community leaders. Set 301 Representatives and a $500k threshold to balance efficiency and inclusivity. Stakers can still actively participate by switching delegates. This system fosters agility, rewards active governance, and aligns with J4J ethos, while ensuring major decisions remain with the full DAO.

[NightOwl]

I need that Good Representative, that will represent my constituency.

[matto]

Proposals are a total waste of time.

The only proposals that should be published here on the forum are ones whose details have already been agreed to by CoC heads/leaders.

Official DAO proposals have a 100% approval rate while community-led proposals have a 0% approval rate.

Do what you wish with that information.

[JUPTurkey]

I support Option 1

It offers a practical balance between efficiency and decentralization. As someone working closely with a regional community, I see this model making governance more accessible without overwhelming voters.

Excited to see this move forward!

[Kash]

responding within your response for ease/clarity!

@matto

On the Representative System (Option 1)

Main concerns…

Preventing stake splitting: Anyone can create new wallets and spread their tokens around - how is the prevention of stake splitting actually enforceable in a decentralised system?

Kash Note: Good shout - open to ideas from the community!

Equal voting power issue: Why should a rep with 10,000 delegated JUP have the same vote as one with 1,000,000? This seems to go against the whole point of stake-weighted governance. If someone’s willing to risk more capital, shouldn’t their voice carry more weight?

KN: This was specifically changed after talking to some community members who felt worried that large holders would have even more of an outsized voice in a system where there were fewer votes. Stakeweight still matters in terms of Representatives and deciding who gets to be a Rep, so it’s not going against the whole point of SWG, but rather just a mitigation

Vote direction / info problem: If a delegator can change their rep vote-by-vote, don’t they need to know how their rep plans to vote beforehand? Without that knowledge, this flexibility is meaningless. And whose to say a rep won’t change their vote in order to improve their chances of attracting stake so that they can maintain their Community Leader status?

KN: Yup! The idea is that Representatives who want to stay Reps would signal in advance their voting intention, could even build this into the Delegation website. You’d also be able to change mid-vote, based on how the Rep has votes. As for changing their vote to attract stake - seems good to me actually! doesn’t defeat the purpose of anything, actually makes Representatives responsive to their delegators

On Opt-In Delegation (Option 2)

Privacy concern: Showing voting history publicly could be problematic. Votes should probably stay private between delegators and their reps to avoid social pressure and potential retaliation.

KN: interesting point - curious to see what others say here

A few other questions

Rep compensation: worth repeating what @meow brought up in a recent JUP Rally call: how are representatives getting paid for all this extra work? The proposal mentions ASR for delegators but nothing for the reps themselves.

@Kash

In Option 1 (Representatives), a delegator would receive ASR on Representative Votes only if their Representative actually voted. This provides an incentive for stakers to ensure they are delegating to active Representatives who are paying attention.

KN: it’s not actually any extra work - for example in Option 2, they’d have to vote every time anyway for ASR. And if we don’t go with either option, then they also have to vote every time if they want ASR

Monitoring reps: If delegators have to constantly watch whether their rep is voting to protect their ASR, what’s the point of delegation? At that point they might as well just vote themselves - it’s probably less work than rep monitoring. A default voting mechanism could help here.

KN: ideally they’d be delegating to people they know/trust to actually participate in governance. e.g. delegate to Matto, since you know he’s always around. And monitoring is also actually a good thing to the degree it keeps people somewhat aware of what’s happening in governance, without needing to read every proposal/comment/attend ever event/etc

Default voting mechanism: What happens if a rep misses a vote due to illness or other legitimate reasons? Should there be an automatic “abstain” or default option to ensure delegators still get their ASR? Otherwise the DAO is creating potential financial disputes between delegators and their reps.

KN: having a “default” vote would defeat the purpose of ASR (since then everyone gets it by default for being staked), so don’t think that’ll work. and yes, would be up to the delegators to ensure that their Rep had voted

Final thoughts

While I love this discussion and the fact that we’re trying new things, our goal here should be solving voter fatigue without breaking what makes DAO governance actually work.

Rather than picking one option, maybe we should look at hybrid approaches like:

• Keeping stake-weighted voting among reps
• Adding privacy protections for delegation
• Proper rep compensation

KN: i actually love the idea of compensating representatives, but many others were against it. I thought doing an e.g. 5% commission on the delegated ASR would incentize more people to do it, and would create even more interesting dynamics"

Anyway, those are my early thoughts. Would love to hear what others have to say in the coming days.

Btw isn’t it great to share and discuss all our ideas before a proposal is drafted?

KN: yessir!

It takes a bit of weight off the discussion and enables a free flow of ideas.

[Kash]

@bombtek

I like the option 2 if I have to choose imo since I spend about 9 hrs a day in the crypto space and usually about an hour of that on jup. I know this isnt part of the agenda but have you guys thought about automatic app notifications for voting? this way it will alert anyone with the app on their phone that a vote needs to be voted on.

I personally dont believe in delegation because I feel that it is taking away the right to voice your opinion on a topic.

IMO if voter fatigue is the problem here just set everyone to abstain and anyone that makes it for the vote can change it too whatever they want.

always great to meet a crypto solider, but i don’t think the same is true of the vast majority of our stakers, and want to make sure they still are able to participate! we are indeed getting the vote notifications out soon as wel

delegation wouldn’t be taking away your right to voice your opinion - in Option 1, you could still comment/ask questions/give feedback as always, and change your delegation within a vote if you wanted to be very actively involved. you’d have effectively the same input as you have now, except that it wouldn’t be coming from your wallet directly on a limited subset of votes.

remember, in all cases, there would still also be full DAO votes!

[Kash]

@The_Lacrymator

For me personally, I prefer Option 2 as I prefer to read the proposals, the discussion from the community and then I make up my mind having gone through all the pros and cons. But if the community decides on Option 1, I would support that too even though my preference was Option 2.

appreciate you sharing your opinion, and your open-mindedness to go with what the community is looking for!

[Kash]

@lochie2001

Option 1 it is for me

We defs need to classify Big from Small.

So how we categorise them I’m happy to leave the CWG.
But I do think clearing the backlog needs tk be a top priority. I’m sympathise for JUP N juice who had to wait months for the budget vote to go live.

something tells me you’d end up as a Rep as well! thanks buddy

[Kash]

@DanielBR11

In that sense, I propose considering a few complementary or alternative mechanisms. First, the creation of segmented communities functioning as thematic or informational nodes, led by facilitators who can simplify proposals, organize short info sessions, and maintain continuous, accessible communication. These facilitators could be incentivized—perhaps through a portion of the ASR from uncast votes.

We could also explore a system of staggered or simultaneous thematic voting blocks, allowing the DAO to divide voting loads without losing momentum, while giving participants more time for analysis without overwhelming them. Finally, I believe it is essential to provide some form of compensation for community participation beyond simply voting: proposal analysis, content review, or comprehension checks of the issues being discussed are all meaningful ways to contribute to the ecosystem.

always room for improvement on the faciliation of proposals - i think Jup and Juice, Uplink, and some of the other working groups do a good job of this now though!

but yes agree with your point that if we go with Option 2, we’d need to start doing multiple votes at the same time (e.g. 2-3 proposals at once) just to keep making positive momentum.

agreed all of those things you mention are of value, not sure how to best compensate them, but would love to see ideas in a separate thread! here’s my honest opinion though: i think that the full DAO would vote against any additional expendiutres here, even if its on the order of e.g. $50k/year. I do think a smaller set of more engaged people (Representaives) might pass that vote since they’d see the value. that’s actually a small part of the reaosn i like Option 1 - if we focus voting among those who are highly engaged, they are better positioned to see what brings benefit than the e.g. 400k largest staker who staked once and then just votes against any budget spend at all.

[Kash]

@WTP

• Optional delegation is personally more attractive. Namely because I fear the Representative system is more easily gamed. For example, an individual with 20mm JUP staked (~3% of total staked JUP) unstakes and splits the JUP amongst 20 wallets, with 1mm JUP in each. Assuming these are all (still) in the top 300 (they currently would be), the individual now has 6.7% of all Representative voting power, more than double their previous voting power. While I appreciate there will be a budget threshold to help combat the power this individual might wield (in $ terms), I still am worried about this.
• If Representatives is preferable for most others, I like the 301 number. I agree that it is a meaningful number of people, but not an unruly amount.
• I actually would prefer a % of DAO treasury instead of a fixed dollar amount, so that as the treasury is depleted, the threshold reduces in $ terms to reflect the greater scarcity of DAO resources remaining. I’d say if 0.5-1% of DAO treasury funds are in play, it should go to a full DAO vote. Perhaps 0.5%, so that it would take about 200 small votes to fully deplete the treasury, which, at one vote per week, on average, would mean 200 weeks or about 4 years.

as always, appreciate your thoughtfulness WTP!

1. Yeah the vote splitting could be an issue, agreed. I think there are some natural barriers to it (e.g. splitting your stake would a) require you unstaking for 30 days, then b) manually fixing up 20 wallets, and then c) having to click through 20 different wallets on every single vote) which would dissuade at least some point from doing it. but you are right that it exists as a potential vector. Perhaps the solution would be to increase the number of Representatives in that case - e.g. if we move to 1001, you’d have to split across so many wallets that it just wouldn’t be worth it, potenitally.

2. See above

3. That’s a good shout! I like that as well actually. Though if it was capped in the way you suggest, the DAO treasury could never be depleted (Zeno’s Paradox)

[Kash]

@tekah29

I think I will still go for the Opt-In Delegation. It aligns more to the DAO’s mission. I think we just need to tweak some things a little bit. If the new governance website will show the voting history, why not include discord roles for Supervoters, at least their friends will know who actively participates in the votes and who’s not.

appreciate your opinion, and yes agreed we should have a discord role for supervoters!