What is the Filament Delegates Program?
The Delegates Program is a vital organ of the Filament Hub and responsible for voting on airdrop criteria and distribution proposals. Delegates are DeFi power users, KOLs, (semi-)professional airdrop farmers, researchers, builders, and investors. The program aims to connect relevant stakeholders in the airdrop ecosystem and facilitate straightforward expression of preferences for token incentive designs.
What problem are we trying to solve?
Everybody is frustrated by the current airdrop meta. Users feel resentment against projects due to opaque eligibility criteria and lacking reward for their efforts and capital contributions, and projects feel farmed and abandoned by airdrop farmers. This dynamic results in drama and selling pressure of newly launched tokens.
By creating a governance committee within a framework of economic and reputation incentive mechanisms, we address the time preference and arbitrariness of airdrop campaigns. The Delegates Program connects all relevant stakeholders and enables them to influence airdrop criteria and distribution design together with the campaigner.
Campaigners profit from community alignment and distributed responsibility, delegates are rewarded with fees and reputation gains, and $FILA delegators/stakers benefit from improved expression of community preferences and economic upside.
How does it work?
Campaigners initiate a new campaign by putting up a bond and selecting and evicting delegates from the delegates pool. Selecting delegates happens based on matching the delegates´ competence and preferences of the campaigner. The campaigner must include a minimum amount of delegates, and every eviction is associated with an eviction fee.
Once the delegates have been selected, they will be added to a Telegram group for communication between delegates and the campaigner.
How, when, and why to vote?
Campaigns last for one calendar week. During that week, selected delegates are required to vote on:
- (1) airdrop criteria: Which actions should get rewarded?, and
- (2) airdrop distribution: How should actions be rewarded?
However, the Filament Delegates Program improves on conventional DAO governance processes. Instead of live-attendance drama, we are building the infrastructure for a turn-based game. Delegates can set overarching preferences and conditions of approval that automatically integrate into campaigns.
Consequently, campaigners can get a feeling for delegates´ stances before creating a campaign and thus set campaign proposals to reach a consensus with most delegates. Delegates can assume a workload of 1-2 hours per campaign.
To account for the objectives the campaigner wants to optimize for, delegates can weigh criteria differently. This weighting is subjective, i.e., it is up to the delegates´ discretion to build an opinion which criteria align best with the campaigners objectives.
What makes a good delegate?
Delegates are incentivized to maximize their financial and reputational upside. The amount of $FILA staked with them constitutes their voting power. Therefore, delegates are incentivized to represent the preferences of their community.
On the other hand, if delegates build a reputation for disproportionate demands from campaigners, they are more likely to get evicted from campaigns, resulting in no compensation. Stakers are incentivized to delegate $FILA to the delegates offering the highest staking rewards paid in proprietary campaigner tokens. Thus, delegates need to find a balance between community representation and productive dialogue with campaigners.
Delegates will be rewarded based on how well their voting behavior aligns with the objectives set by the campaigner. To determine the compensation, we implement a Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism (to be detailed in future post). However, delegates will always receive a base compensation, unless clearly malicious voting behavior has been detected. Thus, participating in a campaign will be unambiguous +EV.
Why should I become a delegate?
If you are devoting mindshare to airdrop farming, criteria, and distribution, participating in the Filament Delegate Program is an easy way to capitalize on your competence beyond your own airdrop farming efforts. There are several ways you can profit from becoming a delegate:
- (1) Reputational gain: Flawed airdrops are a concern for a wide spectrum of the crypto community. By being an active and vocal contributor to fixing token incentives, you can build a strong reputation and audience.
- (2) Financial upside: If you are an early member of our Delegates Program, you will receive a $FILA allocation. Additionally, campaigners will pay delegates a fee in their proprietary token, which is calculated as a multiple of the median airdrop allocation. This fee will be distributed to delegates based on aligning with the campaigner´s objectives and their $FILA voting power, and a share of the fees will go to stakers. If a campaign fails or a campaigner abandons their campaign, the campaigner´s bond will get slashed, and delegates still receive compensation for their efforts.
- (3) Advisorships: Helping new projects with one of their critical go-to-market initiatives is a great way to build long-term relations. If you have ambitions to serve projects of your interest niche as an advisor, engaging in the Filament Delegates Program might be one of the easiest and straightforward ways out there!
How can I become a delegate?
DM us on Twitter or hit us up in our Telegram group. Provide a short intro of yourself, your engagement in airdrop campaigns, and why you would like to join us as a delegate.
If your profile is interesting, we will jump on a call to get to know you better and evaluate your fit.
No worries, you can stay anon and operate under a pseudonym!