Additional Contributions from Delegates (A Discussion Thread)

Axia · March 11, 2026, 8:24pm

Hey Delegates,

As promised, I have synthesized your responses to the question of what additional contributions can delegates make beyond grant review, and created a visual synthesis for easy viewing. For context, the original thread can be found here.

Next Steps:

Let’s focus on the “High‑Impact Contribution Lanes” and make this concrete. I’d invite each of us to answer the question: What is one low‑lift first step the Collective can take to move the needle in at least one of these lanes?

Rather than defaulting to creating a working group—which, in my experience, often underperform because delegates operate in a vacuum without consistent context from The Foundation or Labs—I suggest we start with specific actions. These should be things we can:

Clearly describe on the forum, and
Deliberately circulate to the right stakeholders (Labs, Collective, Gov Facilitator) to test for alignment and buy‑in.

Looking forward to coming up with some concrete small steps to get us closer to alignment with Rootstock stakeholders.

Eren_DAOplomats · March 14, 2026, 5:40pm

Hey @Axia good idea opening a new thread for taking forward this discussion. A concrete, low-lift step would be establishing a quick, 30-minute “Delegate Network Sync” once a month directly with Rootstock Labs and the Foundation. he sole agenda would be Labs presenting a shortlist of 3-5 specific ecosystem gaps. Delegates can then claim the items where their personal networks hold the most leverage, ensuring our social capital is deployed exactly where the core team needs it most.

SEEDGov · March 19, 2026, 12:13pm

We share the objective expressed in this thread that the DAO and its delegates additional contributions idea to the long-term success of Rootstock beyond the current role of grant evaluators. We believe there is significant value in this.

Based on our experience participating in other DAOs, we suggest approaching this from a specific angle.

A lesson from previous DAO experiences

We have observed a dynamic in practice, for example in the case of the Strategic Objective Setting (SOS) initiative for Arbitrum, where there has been a notable lack of coordination between the DAO and Offchain Labs, which has led to the failure of this initiative. This disconnect led DAO members to propose strategic objectives that weren’t necessarily aligned with the roadmap of the Labs and Arbitrum as a chain.

We must avoid this situation. Otherwise, the DAO risks spending time and effort designing initiatives or strategic ideas to be implemented that end up overlapping with existing efforts, or being purely symbolic, simply because they’re not aligned with the vision or trajectory of the Lab, who have been leading platform development and vision since day one. This is not necessarily a problem of intent, but rather of information asymmetry. Lab naturally have deeper visibility into product roadmap, technical constraints, strategic priorities, and resource allocation.

Because of this, we believe the most effective approach is a top-down coordinated model, where the DAO complements the work of the Lab. This initial coordination is essential. The DAO should act as a complementary force, filling gaps and amplifying the Lab’s efforts. To do so, it must first clearly understand the direction, visión and mid/long term priorities being driven by the Lab, and then the DAO can design initiatives that create real, high-impact value and align with the platform.

In this model, the DAO acts as a complementary execution layer, helping accelerate initiatives that benefit the ecosystem without duplicating work or diverging from strategic priorities and alignment.

Scroll is a good example of this: the governance team ran a Co-Creation Sprint to this very end.

Lido and their GOOSE is another example, where the Lido Foundation, together with the Foundation and other stakeholders, has set the DAO’s strategic goals for 2026. It’s a more centralized solution, but one that ultimately pursues the same goal: to define strategic priorities and establish coordinated actions in response to the needs that reality presents on the blockchain.

A practical example: the Velora Contributors Program

An interesting approach was tested in VeloraDAO, where we served as the Governance Task Force, through the Velora Contributors Program (VCP) mentioned by @ignas in this post.

The idea was to start with an experimental phase, where:

Scopes of work were defined in coordination with the Lab,
Contributors worked on clearly identified initiatives,
Extraordinary contributions that make a real impact was rewarded,
The program iterated over time to refine those scopes.

Unfortunately the program was interrupted due to broader economic constraints, but the methodological approach, initial coordination with the core team, iterative scopes, and structured experimentation, proved to be a productive framework.

Suggestion for Rootstock Collective

For Rootstock, we would suggest exploring a similar model:

First establish structured dialogue with the Lab and core team.
Identify priority areas where DAO contributors could support the Lab’s efforts and areas that the Lab cannot prioritize internally but where the DAO could lead.
Define initial experimental scopes for delegate or contributor involvement.
Iterate based on results and lessons learned.

We believe that isolated initiatives driven solely by the DAO carry a higher risk of failure, while coordinated initiatives significantly increase the probability of alignment and meaningful impact.

This initial coordination with the Lab can take place, for example, through the forum or calls with the delegates as @eren_daoplomats proposed.

Axia · March 23, 2026, 7:21pm

Hello delegates,

Thank you to everyone who shared feedback on how delegates can contribute beyond grants — the responses have been valuable.

The next step is clear: we need to understand Labs’ priorities and roadmap.

In any well-functioning decentralized system, alignment is essential. Information asymmetry will always exist to some degree, but minimizing it matters — without it, the DAO risks working on the wrong things and misallocating resources. Left unaddressed, this compounds over time.

We’re in a strong position: Rootstock Collective already has active voices from both Labs and the Collective, and a diverse group of delegates with complementary expertise. What’s missing is a shared view of short- and long-term priorities.

To address this, I’d like to set up a 1-hour call focused specifically on understanding Labs’ priorities — so the DAO can plan how to best deploy its resources and delegate capacity.

I’ll coordinate scheduling in Telegram — feel free to reply with your questions or comments here in the meantime.

DAOstar_gov · March 24, 2026, 11:03pm

Appreciate you coordinating and driving this important discussion, @Axia . We believe that it’s imperative to have a good understanding of the Labs + Collectives goals and priorties, and as noted by @ChronoTrigger in a separate chat, that events participation strategy and coordination is paramont. Thank you to you and @Raphael_Anode for moving the meeting forward.

Raphael_Anode · March 25, 2026, 12:12pm

We’re going to run a harmonica.chat session first to do some sensemaking and coordinating around what the top questions and priorities are. I will post the link in a forum post with an explainer asap.

Tane · March 27, 2026, 11:05am

Thanks for driving this forward, @Axia. The visual synthesis makes the convergence across delegates easy to see.

We think @SEEDGov’s framing of the Arbitrum SOS failure is the right cautionary reference here. The risk isn’t that delegates lack ideas; it’s that effort gets deployed without a feedback loop to Labs’ actual constraints and roadmap. A structured call with Labs should help close that gap.

Where we’d want to stay disciplined is the step after that call. The synthesis lays out a clean pathway (define priorities, design pilots, measure, compensate), but the transition from “Labs shares priorities” to “delegates run a pilot” is where these efforts tend to stall. Once we have a shared view of priorities, we should move quickly to define what a well-scoped pilot actually looks like: scope, success metric, timeline, and which stakeholder owns the feedback loop. Without that structure, there’s a risk the call produces alignment on paper but no follow-through.

@Raphael_Anode’s harmonica.chat session is a good move to surface the right questions beforehand, so the Labs call can be focused and productive rather than open-ended.

Curia · April 1, 2026, 8:07am

Thank you @Axia for putting this initiative and @Raphael_Anode for setting up the Harmonica to gather delegates thoughts on priorities that will be used in the Q&A session with the Lab, which we have already completed the chat.

We do agree with @SEEDGov mentioned about Scroll Co-creation.

From our experience attending the last 2 co-creation, Co-creation 3 during the time Eugene was head of governance could be used as a good example. Before every session, we had to complete a Harmonica session that set up specific topics to use during the next session (e.g. strategic focus). We think Harmonica works really well if it’s used with specific aspects, not too open, as it helps narrow things down and gives a clearer picture.

During the session, we used a Miro board (this Miro board setup is a good example) to help brainstorm. We then broke down into small groups to discuss and later came back to present ideas. This kind of interaction helped clear the fog.

One thing we learned from Scroll is that when the initiative is coming mainly from delegates, it can lead to misalignment or overlap with what the Foundation is doing. Therefore, it’s important to also have the perspective from the Foundation.

We believe high-level strategic pillars should come from the Lab, while the detailed execution can be left for the DAO to manage, ensuring alignment so we move in the same direction without overlapping

Raphael_Anode · April 8, 2026, 8:59am

Ahead of the meeting later today, I wanted to post the final report from Harmonica chat. We have had 8 participants now.

Delegate Questions for RLabs: Strategic Alignment Session Summary

High-Level Overview

This session captured detailed input from 7 delegate groups seeking clarity on how to better support Rootstock Labs beyond grant reviews. The overarching theme: delegates want to contribute strategically but need RLabs’ roadmap and priorities to avoid duplication and maximize impact.