Ecosystem contributions

Ecosystem contribution based approach for determining voting power

Overview

Ecosystem contributions as a form of voting power would be determined by the amount of contributions someone makes to the ecosystem. Contributions could come in the form of code contributions, designs, documentation improvements or events hosted as some examples.

Very high execution & scaling complexity (Score - 1)

The complexity with using ecosystem contributions as a way to calculate voting power is there are a wide range of different contributions that someone could make that benefit the ecosystem. It will be difficult to capture all of these contributions and measure their value in a way that can scale up to a large population of users. This approach would need to take into account every person's contributions that happen across the ecosystem for it to be fair and legitimate as the predominant voting power approach. This type of approach would be very difficult to automate and would likely require an ongoing amount of moderation. At a large scale this could make it easier to game this system and abuse this voting power approach. There might be some value in introducing aspects of this approach into other voting power approaches for certain ecosystem contributions that can be more easily verified and considered in a relevant voting process.

Low fairness for network decisions (Score - 2)

People that make contributions that maintain and improve the ecosystem should ideally be compensated for their efforts. Assuming these contributors have been fairly paid for their contributions it makes less sense to give these contributors voting power to decide on network parameters as this approach would ignore the capital people have invested into making the ecosystem a success and the tax contributions people have made to keep the network running. Although ecosystem contributions are not a fair approach as the predominant voting power approach there are still elements of this approach that could be considered in certain voting decisions.

Low fairness for treasury decisions (Score - 2)

People that make contributions that maintain and improve the ecosystem should ideally be compensated for their efforts. Assuming these contributors have been fairly paid for their contributions it makes less sense for those contributors to then be deciding how genesis treasury funds are being allocated instead of the people who invested into the network to get it started. Over the long term transaction fees will play a more important role in funding the ecosystems treasury. A contribution based voting power approach would not be fair to these contributing users as it would mean that a small handful of contributors would be deciding how other people's contributions are being spent. This approach would disadvantage the people who invested into the network initially and then also disadvantage the people who regularly use the network and financially contribute towards the network's operation and success over the long term.

Total score = 5 / 15