TLDR - Invest INDEX in people that invest themselves in Index Coop not people that invest money in INDEX or DPI. Use DPI as payment for everything else.
In respect to “Increasing $INDEX distribution” we need to figure out if we want quality or quantity of holders. Obviously we want quality. INDEX is a governance token given to community members to manage a protocol, and not some form of payment for arbitrary tasks which we can use $DPI tokens for.
For example @tompain’s suggestion of airdrops to wallets gets a large quantity of holders but in my opinion very low quality holders because if you use a mobile wallet instead of hardware/smart contract wallet you definitely aren’t sophisticated enough to participate in INDEX governance. Same with filling out user research forms, that’s very low effort and while it is valuable data we should pay for I don’t think it warrants a stake in a governance token, if they were a good candidate for governance they would be taking the initiative to improve it and receive INDEX for that effort anyway. We definitely shouldn’t be paying INDEX to our users (e.g. form fillers, DPI stakers) because that’s not adding value to the Coop at large and they should be plenty incentivized by getting a better product (filling form) or having fees rebated/earning yield (staking DPI).
Depending how high we set the bar for the affiliate program ($25M in new DPI minted and locked is a good target which brings us almost to our 1% goal) requires spending enough time + energy in learning our product, connecting with a wide or wealthy audience, and demonstrating the value in our product that they will probably be good long term participants in the DAO. Same with Dune Analytics if we require someone to do multiple queries and maybe publish some data analysis after. Basically anything that makes the person learn more about Index Coop as a platform AND expand our ecosystem vs something that benefits you even without the INDEX reward.
Disclaimer: I could be totally biased because I have no intention of ever using DPI and am only working here to benefit Index Coop. My personal viewpoint on DPI holders is that they aren’t really committed to the Coop since they are receiving a product/service and they would participate at the platform level if they wanted to receive INDEX so are low quality governance participants.