BIP-100: VP Delegation

Note: Snapshot is only a summary and may leave ambiguities that are covered in the full BIP in the forum which takes precedent.

Summary

BIP-100 proposes introducing VP Delegation as a first-class protocol primitive. Any participant with 10,000 $BOTTO staked may create a VP pool, commit their own Voting Points to it, and invite other wallets to vote on fragments using that pool's VP. Pool-cast VP counts toward Active Rewards identically to individually cast VP. A buyback-and-burn tax — variable, set by the pool creator, with a minimum of 5% — applies to all pool-generated rewards, with the remainder split between the pool creator and members according to a creator-defined ratio.

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Rationale

Growing participation in Botto is in part a problem of economic planning that leads to more overhead and centralized control in order to avoid sybil risks. The 1 token = 1 vote system functions as a way of tying skin in the game to considered voting and training of Botto. The weakness of that system is the ability to buy governance power rather than earn it by reputation, concentrating decision making and rewards in fewer hands. The counterbalance is Botto's autonomy, where large holders threaten the integrity of Botto's authorship and decentralization if they fully exercise their power.

However, while this has led to many larger holders holding off on using their large decision making power, we have seen that does not completely eliminate vote dumping that can disenfranchise smaller holders. VP delegation is a way to solve for many of these related issues by decentralizing economic planning and determining which reputation signals matter, while keeping the original system intact that avoids a more drastic and heavy change in economy.

Simply, VP delegation allows stakers to commit their VP to a pool that is distributed based on qualifications they determine. The stakers retain their decision making power in the kinds of signals they think are important while distributing it to many more perspectives that represent that signal. Those with relevant reputation then also get a larger say — and share of rewards — in Botto's training, driving larger participation.

Because pool creators are free to design pools to their choosing, it does not rely on a centralized authority or costly consensus building across the DAO to establish and manage. The pool system opens up natural on-ramps for external communities — NFT collectives, art schools, DAOs, friend groups, and others — to participate in curation, further decentralizing Botto.

An additional benefit: holders can create a pool from a cold wallet and delegate to a single hot wallet, eliminating the need to connect a cold wallet to sign in every week.

At the outset, deliberate onboarding of both large holders and external communities will be key to ensuring this gains traction. Working with engaged groups will be a good test bed for onboarding flows that not only get them initially engaged in a light way, but also bring them into deeper participation. We recommend some pool creators set up pools for long-term participants and adjacent communities (e.g. Punks, Art Blocks, 6529) who are already familiar with Botto and would quickly recognize the boost in their voting weight.

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Specification

This specification is subject to change during development execution — a project of this scope can adjust significantly — but provides sufficient detail for the DAO to flag any particular areas of concern and align on now.

1. Pool Creation

Any participant with at least 10,000 $BOTTO staked may create a pool. The pool creator sets the following parameters at creation:

• Pool name, description, and image
• Initial VP commitment from their own balance
• Per-member VP cap (fixed; same for all members regardless of pool size)
• Qualification requirements (allowlist of addresses, NFT holdings, minimum $BOTTO staked, etc.)
• Revenue split percentage between creator and members
• Buyback-and-burn tax percentage (minimum 5%, up to 100%)

Pool parameters may be edited by the creator after creation. Changes take effect at the start of the next round, not mid-round.

2. VP Commitment

The pool creator commits VP from their own balance into the pool at any point during a round. Committed VP is locked for the remainder of that round; additional top-ups are permitted at any time. All VP sources are delegatable — baseline sign-in VP, staking boost, Pipe boost, and Access Pass boost may all be committed.

Members do not contribute their own VP to the pool. Their personal VP balance is unaffected by membership; they may continue voting individually with their own VP outside the pool.

3. Member Access

Pool creators may bring members in via two mechanisms:

• On-chain invite list — specific wallets are added; invitees accept or decline via their dashboard.
• Off-chain invite link — a shareable URL; anyone with the link may join by connecting their wallet, subject to any qualification criteria set by the pool creator.

All delegate wallets must hold a minimum of 100 $BOTTO to be eligible to receive rewards from a pool. Pool creators or community sponsors may provide this stake on behalf of members who do not hold $BOTTO.

4. Voting

Members vote with pool VP rather than their own. Votes are attributed to the individual member who cast them for activity records and reward attribution. The member's per-round spend is subject to the per-member cap set by the pool creator.

Voting behavior mirrors personal VP: votes are mutable throughout the round and finalized at round close. The UI default is auto-switch — personal VP is spent first; once depleted, the system draws from pool VP in priority order across the member's pool memberships.

5. Round Close

At round close, votes are finalized and submitted to Botto. Unspent pool VP is forfeited.

6. Reward Distribution

Pool-cast VP counts toward the existing Active Rewards formula (currently: 40% of auction revenue, paid in $BOTTO at ETH-denominated value) identically to individually cast VP. The pool acts as a single wallet in this formula. Rewards are distributed off-chain in three steps:

1. Buyback-and-burn tax — set by the pool creator at creation (minimum 5%, up to 100%). Sent to the buyback contract, which purchases $BOTTO from the open market and burns it.
2. Pool creator's share — the creator's configured split percentage, sent to their wallet.
3. Members' share — the remaining portion distributed pro-rata to members based on VP each spent from the pool that round.

Example: pool earns 1,000 $BOTTO. Buyback tax (5%) = 50 $BOTTO. Of the remaining 950, at a 30/70 pool creator/member split: pool creator receives 285 $BOTTO; members share 665 $BOTTO pro-rata to their VP spent.

7. Unstake Rules

• Pool creator unstakes after committing pool VP — committed VP is forfeited and the pool is disabled for the round. Members may not spend pool VP until the pool creator re-commits VP from an active staking position. This closes the exploit of staking briefly to inflate VP, committing it to a pool, then immediately unstaking.
• Member unstakes mid-round — personal VP is forfeited per existing protocol rules. The member's pool-cast votes for the round are forfeited and their share of pool rewards for that round is forfeited.

8. Pool Creator Removes a Member Mid-Round

Votes already cast by the removed member stand. The member cannot cast new votes. Their reward share for the round is calculated based on VP spent before removal.

9. Karma Attribution

Karma earned from a pool-cast vote goes to the individual member who cast the vote, not the pool creator. Karma is a per-user reputational currency tied to the actor performing the action.

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Budget

Phase 1 implementation is estimated at approximately 20 engineer-days (~4 weeks, 1 full-stack engineer). This covers qualification-gated pools, both invite mechanisms, member leave flow, auto-switch voting, variable buyback tax, and reward split.

Phase 2 (multi-pool-creator pools, additional qualification types, manual VP-source selector, notifications, pool discovery, hardening) is estimated at a further ~20 engineer-days, scoped after Phase 1 data is available.

Delegate and pool creator onboarding and marketing rollout ~15 days, covering outreach to delegator groups, onboarding materials and presentations, and comms planning and execution.

Approximate equivalent in overhead costs: $30K.

We are in discussion with a patron to support some of this development. More support would help enable more customization in an earlier phase for special requests, and commit more to direct onboarding efforts with external groups.

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Timeline

• June: Phase 1 completion and pool creator + delegate outreach
• July: Phase 1 rollout to testing groups, Phase 2 build
• August: Final debugging and campaign to delegate groups
• September: Wider rollout with school groups returning from summer break

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Criteria of Success

• 500 new wallet participants with weekly average for voters 2x within 2 months of delivering Phase 1
• 1,000 new wallet participants with weekly average of voters 3x within 2 months of delivering Phase 2
• 10M+ VP delegated
• 2 of the top 8 voters of the last year becoming pool creators
• Phase 1 and Phase 2 requiring no overhead to manage other than feature additions after 1 month of release