Please review the forum post for full proposal details: https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/delegate-to-a-public-access-public-good-citizen-enfranchisement-pool-through-event-horizon/21523/24
Summary
Event Horizon is a public good. It is a public-access metagovernance block. With the aim of enfranchising the tens of thousands of small voters, this proposal suggests we delegate (not grant) 7,000,000 ARB to a public access-voter block subject to a 1 year renewal. This delegation gets mobilized by Voter Pass and Gitcoin Pass holders functionally giving underrepresented DAO citizens multiplied voting power and therefore more incentive to express their voices. The Gitcoin DAO has recently passed a proposal supporting Event Horizon, thereby making our Citizen Enfranchisement pool the #6 delegate on Gitcoin.
We also request a grant of 50k ARB to help the team maintain this public good across this 1 year experiment in addition to retroactively awarding the team for the fully-functional product thus far built out of pocket for the Arbitrum community over the past several months.
Problem
Today, typical Arbitrum voter participation rate floats in the low single digits. However, there are thousands of individual voters who participate in each vote despite having effectively no meaningful say. They should be rewarded with a voice. Moreover, there are likely tens of thousands more incredibly talented community members who are very capable of adding to the collective cognition of the ecosystem, but simply lack the capital means to have a voice and are left discouraged from voting at all. Not voting when you only have, say, $500 worth of ARB doesn’t make sense, it’s a drop in the bucket. Sitting out governance proposals is, unfortunately, the rational decision but collectively makes everyone worse off. The strength of the DAO is directly related to the number of participants having their voices heard by the community. The governance platform and vote multiple that Event Horizon gives to these citizens incentivizes greater participation: our average participation rate is 30%.
Mechanism
Arbitrum Citizens interested in governance may mint a free, soul-bound Voter Pass which allows them to take part in mobilizing this voter enfranchisement pool subject to an additional Gitcoin Pass requirement to prevent sybil attacks to be implemented soon after delegation. As detailed further below, this model:
- Grants a clear and meaningful voice to statistically low capital DAO citizen voters regardless of their financial means
- Incentives participation with additional governance authority, not inflationary rewards
- Incentives participants interested in governance itself, not financial gain
DAOs today rely exclusively on individuals and company entities to serve as network delegates. However, this isn’t the only option. While individual delegates certainly add incredible value to the Arbitrum Ecosystem, so would a governance allotment dedicated to the greater body of smaller citizen participants.
In this regard, Event Horizon slots into the Arbitrum ecosystem in a similar fashion to a standard delegate. However, rather than the block voting based on the decision of one individual, it votes with the collective cognition of hundreds of individual voter pass holders.
This serves two functions:
- It provides a clear and designated voice for smaller, citizen voters.
- It drives participation through a game-theoretic process called Implicit Delegation.
One of the greatest barriers to participation is lack of voice due to lack of capital. Implicit delegation and public access governance changes this. Implicit Delegation is a model by which the full public governance block mobilizes in favor of the consensus of those who do vote, thereby implicitly delegating the authority of those who don’t vote to those who do.
When participation is low… each voter receives a larger slice of the public access pie. This means the fewer people there are voting, the more incentive there is for someone new to come and participate.
When participation is high… there are more voters splitting the same pie, however, citizen participation is high, which is a win for the ecosystem.
Where Direct Governance allocates influence along the lines of capital, and Explicit Delegation allocates influence along the lines of popularity (which often reflects capital), Implicit Delegation allocates influence to those who care most: people showing up to vote.
Because the entirety of the block is always mobilized, those who are most vested are rewarded for their participation by having a larger share of the voting pie. In this regard, Event Horizon’s model leans into a systemic lack of participation to create a solution.
Rationale
7,000,000 ARB would place the Event Horizon community as the 15th largest delegate. Based upon significant dialogue with existing Arbitrum delegates and stakeholders, we think this places a fair amount of power into the 3rd pillar of governance, namely citizens (the other two being organizational and individual delegations) without being large enough to flip any typical proposal.
Benefits compared to Token Incentivized Governance:
While token rewards for participation hold legitimate merit and are an intuitive remedy for low turnout, it has limitations.
Misaligned Incentives: Token-based incentives attract returns-interested parties. However, when it comes to governance, participation is most valuable when it comes from those interested in participating not payout. Implicit delegation directly appeals to these individuals as it rewards those who participate, not with capital, but with greater voting power.
Added Thought Capital: in line with the notion above, there are likely thousands, of community members each holding both strong ideas and valuable contributions for the ecosystem, but simply lack enough voice to justify participation. Through Implicit Delegation, any community member of the Arbitrum ecosystem has an opportunity to have their voice heard, bringing thousands more minds and ideas to the surface.
Inflationary: While token rewards drive participation at the expense of inflation, Implicit delegation simply leverages its game theory model to increase incentive to vote in the form of a greater voting share. This does not cost the token any inflation, nor the treasury any ARB.
Non-scalable: Token-based rewards are finite and require a constant drain of ARB funds to continue driving participation. As the ecosystem scales, and more participants join, greater and greater sums of ARB will be needed to continue fueling growth. Implicit delegation has no cost, and its balanced game theory functions with no burn.
Specification
Past Performance
The above is not just theory. The Event Horizon community is already active on Ethereum providing meta-governing public goods to Uniswap, AAVE, Compound, ShapeShift, and of course, Arbitrum. In fact, in several recent Uniswap votes, the Event Horizon community was the 10th largest voter in the Uniswap Ecosystem. Event Horizon has also recently voted as the 8th largest delegate in recent Aave votes. Gitcoin DAO just voted to make Event Horizon the 6th largest delegate in the DAO via delegation.
![Screenshot 2024-04-16 at 3.03.39 PM.png]()
Since its inception, the Event Horizon protocol has placed over $28M of governance authority and enfranchisement directly into the hands of the citizen voter, a feat not seen anywhere else in the DAO space. Some more metrics worth highlighting:
Votes Processed on Behalf of Retail voters: $28,000,000
Number of Metagovernance Proposals Passed: ~250
Voter Participation: >30%
Average Authority Mobilized Multiple: >8,000x
Mechanisms
Step 1 – Duplication: Once a delegation is established, Event Horizon begins automatically duplicating all base DAO (in this case Arbitrum) proposals within its own voting portal.
![Screenshot 2024-04-16 at 3.05.02 PM.png]()
Step 2 – Metagovernance: Retail voters may mint a free voter pass and begin voting to decide how the retail enfranchisement pool is mobilized in the base DAO proposal.
![Screenshot 2024-04-16 at 3.05.29 PM.png]()
Step 3 – Base DAO Voting: 24 hours prior to the closure of the base DAO proposal, the Event Horizon metagovernance proposal closes. Event Horizon then automatically pushes the consensus decision established by the retail community during the metagovernance proposal into the base DAO proposal.
![Screenshot 2024-04-16 at 3.05.50 PM.png]()
Steps to Implementation
The primary step to implementation would be the delegation and grant of ARB to the EventHorizonArbitrum.eth SAFE. After initial delegation from the DAO Event Horizon handles everything from there. Event Horizon will facilitate and maintain all elements of the pool from pass minting to metagovernance.
Additional Considerations
The Arbitrum Event Horizon Oversight Committee: A committee of 5 existing, notable delegates will be voted on by the Arbitrum community to be given the ability to guide the Event Horizon voting pool on matters of Arbitrum metagovernance. A simple 3/5 majority would allow this committee to veto the decisions of the voter pool within the 24 hours between the closing of the Event Horizon proposal, and the underlying DAO’s proposal.
We also partnered with Gitcoin to add Gitcoin Passport requirements shortly after initial delegation to mitigate sybil risk.
