IIP-165: Contributor Ownership Plan

[anthonyb.eth]

@shawn16400

For clarification, does this mean that as of the point of effective grant date (Oct 1 2022), tokens will be delegated to grantees for which they have the accumulated 3 years worth of unearned tokens for which to vote? Meaning there are an additional ~1.6M (533*3 )tokens available for governance?

Each contributor will be able to vote with the full amount of their unvested tokens which is standard practice in traditional startups. After speaking with our largest token holders for many months and having in-depth conversations, we came to an informal consensus that giving the highest-context contributors voting power would be in the best interest of all token-holders.

The end result is that contributors will control an additional 1.6M INDEX voting power which is a large shift, but one that is supported by many INDEX holders.

@shawn16400

I assume that if compensation or “leverage” level changes during that 36 month window the allocation of delegated tokens will change? And if someone leaves prior to total vesting, all non-earned delegated tokens will be removed?

The allocation of the token grant is not expected to be dynamic, in that contributors wouldn’t renegotiate their token grant. The DAO can still terminate the vesting contract and clawback unvested tokens, though if a contributor were to be off-boarded.

@shawn16400

I can see ancillary benefits to encourage participation in governance by contributors, and it will immediately dilute larger token holder influence by ~1.6M tokens. And yes, I still count individual delegations of investor tokens as “influence”.

The purpose is to give individual contributors a chance to actually influence governance in a way that has never before been possible. @jackiepoo’s work on the outcome of governance votes proved that contributors never really had a true say in outcome of IIPs, but this proposal would make if possible for a contributor to have a reasonable chance to be the deciding vote.

@shawn16400

Finally, I may be a little boomer here, but I would typically expect to see incentive grants linked to impact/performance/goal metrics. A kind of “perform and grant” model vs. “grant and hope that drives perform”. But again, it will be interesting to see if this mechanism moves INDEX to outperform the market over the next 6 to 12 months and beyond.

This was definitely considered, however, in the end we opted for simplicity. We evaluated many models and decided after input from partners, token-holders, and contributors that this was the DAO’s best option.