• General
  • Data-driven Governance at Klima DAO via Karma

Hello everyone! I'm Kathleen from Karma. In the following, I'd like to introduce Karma's tooling for data-driven governance and how we can support Klima DAO.

BACKGROUND

To ensure informed decision-making in Klima DAO, a solid foundation for governance has been established via community participation in the forum and proposal voting process. However, voting participation on most governance issues stays low (max. 6% of total voting power).

To improve informed governance engagement, several measures can be taken. These include:

  • The possibility to delegate voting power to dedicated governance contributors,
  • Incentive programs, such as offering recognition and rewards to active contributors.

Regardless of which measures are chosen, transparency is key to developing fair and frictionless governance processes. Karma’s product suite can help with it.

INTRODUCTION

Karma tracks and analyzes governance contributions across various sources such as Snapshot, on-chain voting systems, forum and Discord. The resulting data provides actionable insights made easily accessible through a DAO’s governance dashboard.

Data-driven governance via Karma increases accountability amongst contributors and facilitates decision-making across a range of use cases, including delegation, granting permissions and rewarding contributors.

A few notable implementations are:

  • Optimism, Aave & dYdX commissioned Karma to build their Delegation Dashboard.
  • Karma powers Gitcoin’s Steward Health Cards. The Karma health scores were recently used as the basis for the Steward Awards.
  • ENS DAO uses Karma’s discourse forum plugin to display the governance stats of DAO participants inside their forum.
  • Idle Finance tracks governance contributions via Karma, to Identify & Reward its most engaged participants.

IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS

The implementation of Karma analytics and the corresponding dashboard can be divided into the following categories: a) indexing contributions, b) contribution scoring, c) custom contribution dashboard and d) activation/automation. Details of each component are given below:

a) Indexing Contributions
Karma can index Klima DAO’s sources relevant to DAO governance contributions. These can include (but are not limited to):

  • Voting contract
  • Snapshot
  • Forum
  • Discord

b) Contribution Scoring (optional)
For a simplified review of governance activity and to provide input for follow-up actions (e.g. allocation of permissions), Karma aggregates different contribution data and calculates respective scores.

An example of the scoring model used by Gitcoin can be found here: https://github.com/show-karma/reputation-scores/blob/main/src/score/gitcoin-health-score.provider.ts
Final scoring results can be seen here: Gitcoin DAO Contributors Leaderboard

Note: As governance contributions vary from DAO to DAO and have different significance in them, the scoring will be customized in close coordination with the DAO. The scoring logic is open source so that Klima DAO can audit and verify the scores at all times. The aggregated data is exposed through APIs and can be freely integrated with other applications as needed.

c) Actionable Insights via custom Contribution Dashboard
A custom dashboard (hosted on Klima DAO’s subdomain) can be set up to display contributor stats.
Features of the custom dashboard include (but are not limited to):

  • Contributor details (ENS, Twitter, Forum, Discord Handle)
  • Delegation Pitch
  • Voting stats, history and voting reasons for each proposal
  • Forum stats
  • Contribution Scores (optionally)
  • Delegate directly from the dashboard

Example: Optimism Delegation Dashboard



Through API access, the governance contribution stats can also be displayed outside the dashboard, wherever it is needed, e.g. in Discord or the Forum.

Example: ENS Forum Plugin
*shows governance contribution stats when hovering/clicking the avatar

d) Activation / Automation
Based on actionable insights, governance tasks can be initiated, e.g. distributing rewards, allocating voting power or issuing permissions. In addition, badges could be minted that serve as on-chain credentials and role assignments (e.g. membership levels).

An example of distributing rewards based on contribution scores is Idle Finance's governance mining program. Here, the DAO uses Karma to incentivize its most active members with native tokens.

Note: Karma is fully composable and believes in the power of DAO Governance Legos. Token-gating based on scores could be for example implemented in collaboration with players such as Guild.xyz.

FUTURE PROOF

Karma is modular and can be extended as desired, e.g. additional sources for tracking.
In addition, Karma has many features on its product roadmap Klima DAO would benefit from, such as flagging ghost delegates with automated re-delegation functions or a KPI Dashboard view for overall governance performance display. In short: Karma lays the foundation for scalable data-driven governance.

OFFERING

We would like to build a dashboard for Klima DAO to provide delegation functionality and visibility into active contributors of the DAO. The dashboard will serve multiple purposes:

  1. Display governance stats of delegates and other contributors,
  2. Enables Delegation and helps token holders find active delegates,
  3. Reward active contributors in the future.

The pricing depends on the level of customization. Typically, charges range from $5k to $10k for setup and a monthly service fee of around $1k.

CLOSING WORD

Karma is a powerful tool with many possibilities. This post outlines some of its potential use cases. However, we (@mmurthy and I) are open to discussing other possibilities not mentioned here. We welcome any questions or suggestions you may have. Happy to chat!

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