Governance Contribution Recognition (Cycle 2: May - December 2025)

Proposal Type

Governance Proposal Authors: @Bitblondy, @Seiryuu, @kevinknielsen & Alex Sampson (Proxy)

Summary

Continuation of Delegate Incentives: This proposal launches the second iteration of the Governance Contribution Recognition (GCR) program to reward Scroll DAO delegates for their contributions from May 1st through December 31st, 2025. The 8 months will be split in two parts, with one retroactive period (reward structure included in this proposal) and one future part (rewards to be processed in December).

It follows the successful first GCR program that covered Oct 2024 – Apr 2025, extending Scroll’s commitment to recognize governance work. Here, we propose a 4-tier, performance-based scoring system (Tier 4 up to Tier 1). Delegates are scored on multiple criteria (onchain voting rate, forum participation, level of involvement in the Scroll ecosystem, etc.), producing a final performance percentage. Based on their total score, delegates fall into one of four tiers (60–70%, 70–80%, 80–90%, 90–100%), with higher tiers earning greater rewards. This tiered approach attempts to balance between preventing gamification (this prevention can introduce a degree of subjectivity) and distinguishing the quality of contribution.

This proposal requests a total budget of 580,000 SCR for this 8-month period’s rewards (approx. ~$209,000 at $0.36 /SCR). As in the first cycle, rewards are denominated in SCR and allocated to delegates according to their tier following the passage of this proposal.

By financially rewarding meaningful governance work, this program aims to incentivize delegates to remain active and engaged, improve the quality of deliberation, signal that Scroll will continue to value long-term quality governance contribution, and fairly account for as many possible methods of contribution as possible. We expect to retain top-performing delegates and encourage new delegates to contribute meaningfully to Scroll’s governance ecosystem.

Motivation

Having an active and knowledgeable delegate base is a critical step toward building a system of competent, decentralized governance. That said, it’s important for a DAO to recognize governance work and the delegates actively shaping Scroll DAO and its ecosystem. The first GCR program acknowledged this by retroactively rewarding those involved in Scroll’s governance after the DAO’s launch.

We now want to take that further, supporting the work done since then to develop Scroll DAO. This follow-up proposal (GCR Cycle 2) continues that mission for the next evaluation period, ensuring that active delegates are recognized for their efforts and contribute further.

While the first iteration successfully rewarded many contributors, some criteria could be optimized to promote quality over quantity. At the same time, we still want new contributors to be able to join; this proposal aims to strike a balance between inclusivity and standardization.

In this proposal, we refined the criteria to focus on meaningful participation and rewarding depth of engagement more than passive activity. Our aim is to encourage a higher standard of contribution, while also leaving room for future GCR cycles to reward deeper levels of engagement and professionalize the delegate role even further.

In the past five weeks, our Working Group has analyzed multiple delegate incentive models (including Optimism, Arbitum, Uniswap, and ParaSwap, among others). We attempted to aggregate as many learnings as possible across those different ecosystems to inform the criteria design for the GCR Cycle 2. We noted, for instance, that many successful programs set a minimum participation threshold for eligibility and use tiered rewards or points-based systems to differentiate performance. Drawing on these insights, we adapted relevant criteria to Scroll’s context.

Execution

Operational

Program Structure: The GCR Cycle 2 program will evaluate delegate activity over the period May – December 2025 and assign each eligible delegate a performance score (0–100%). This score is based on a weighted combination of criteria that capture both onchain and offchain governance contributions. We then categorize delegates into 4 tiers according to their score (Tier 1 = 90–100%, Tier 2 = 80–89.9%, Tier 3 = 70–79.9%, Tier 4 = 60–69.9%).

Only delegates who score at least 60% will receive a reward. This ensures a basic level of involvement is met, in line with other programs that require ~70% participation to qualify. Delegates below the 60% cutoff (i.e. with minimal engagement in this period) would not be compensated in this cycle.

Required Minimum Criteria: Delegates must meet the following criteria to be eligible for the GCR Cycle 2 program:

1. Scroll Verified Delegate: To align incentives among delegates who receive compensation from this program and the broader Scroll DAO, awardees must be Scroll Verified Delegates. This includes having a minimum 2500 SCR delegated to you and having greater than 5 delegators. A snapshot is taken at the end of the respective payout period, which allows new delegates to join during the cycle.
2. Disclosures & Conflict of Interest: Any party who maintains status as a service provider or otherwise is compensated by the Scroll Foundation for any activities must include a conflict of interest statement in their Agora profile and their delegate thread. Service providers won't be excluded from being compensated, but they must be transparent about their involvement.

Scoring Criteria: The following criteria (decided by the working group after analyzing multiple DAO programs) will be used to calculate each delegate’s score. Each criterion will be measured quantitatively where possible, with data pulled from on-chain records and the Scroll governance forum. For qualitative factors, the working group performed a good-faith evaluation based on available evidence such as post history. We aim to be as transparent as possible with regards to any qualitative-based decisions. The criteria and their implementation are:

1. Voting Participation: Users that vote on proposals are given a percentage score equal to the percentage of proposals that they voted on during this time period. Users that voted 8/11 proposals, for example, are given a score of 72.72% for this criterion. We recognize that new delegates entering Scroll governance (e.g. through the Delegate Accelerator) may not have a deep voting history.

   • Weight and rationale: High. This criterion ensures reliability in participation. Delegates who voted in all proposals in this cycle get full marks for this category, whereas missing votes will reduce the score proportionally.

2. Rationale Rate: Users who post rationale for their votes on the governance forum are, similar to voting participation, given a proportional percentage score equal to percent of rationales that they posted. Users that posted 8/11 rationales in this time period would score 72.72% for this criterion.

   • Weight and rationale: Moderate. We reward delegates who not only vote, but also provide context or reasoning for their votes. That said, we did not want to over-index on posting rationale. It is a valuable part of decentralized governance, but we didn’t wish to heavily punish users who do not take part in this aspect of governance.

3. Forum Engagement (Discussion & Feedback): Using Curia’s Forum Score, users are assigned a percentage score that is calculated through a formula which represents their total contributions to the Scroll forums. Users that earn a Forum Score of 82, for example, are given a score of 82% for this criterion. Teams with multiple Forum accounts, but one onchain identity, will receive an aggregated Forum Score.

   • Weight and rationale: Moderate. This metric measures constructive contributions on the Scroll governance forum. This includes meaningful forum posts such as analyzing proposals, offering feedback during the ideation phase, and engaging in discussions that shape governance outcomes. Rather than focusing on raw post numbers, Curia scores contributions higher if the user is an active participant that offers real value to the DAO. Curia’s Forum Score consists of three parts: Proposal Score (PS), Engagement Score (ES), and Activeness Score (AS). Read Curia’s proposal to learn more. Although we are not including a dedicated Curia dashboard in this budget request (see an example here), this one-time integration leaves that as an option for future GCR cycles.

The next two categories capture other positive

... please visit link below to view full proposal

https://gov.scroll.io/proposals/84294918157976894858048860391138207218295133971592083664910187859023806547948