Summary
BIP-100 proposes introducing VP Delegation as a first-class protocol primitive. Any participant can 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 applies to all pool-generated rewards, with the remainder split between the pool creator and members according to a creator-defined ratio.
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 over-use 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 the stakers are free to design the pools to their choosing, it does not rely an 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, etc. — to participate in curation further decentralizing Botto.
Keys to success
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. This should yield more self-serve assets for delegators to use and onboard freely.
In addition to external communities outside of crypto, we would recommend some delegators set 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.
While rewards are now auto-converted into $BOTTO and creates deeper commitment and buy pressure, we also suggest considering two token sinks:
- 5% tax on rewards earned by the pool used to buy back and burn $BOTTO
- Extending the 100 $BOTTO staked requirement to delegate wallets
#2 should be especially considered as this adds potentially significant friction to adoption by external groups. Mitigations could include the delegator, treasury, or another sponsoring the 100 $BOTTO stake.
Specification
This is subject to change but provides sufficient detail for the DAO to flag any particular areas of concern and align on now.
1. Pool Creation
Any participant with VP may create a pool, regardless of stake size. 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 (AL of addresses, NFT holdings, etc.)
- Revenue split percentage between creator and members
Phase 1 qualification types: NFT contract holding (ERC-721/1155) and minimum $BOTTO staked, with more coming in Phase 2 (Access Pass, Pipe holding, account age, etc.).
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.
4. Voting
Members vote with pool VP and 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 (Phase 1) 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. Phase 2 would be a manual dropdown — a selector next to the VP counter letting users explicitly pick which balance to spend from on each vote (Personal / [Pool Name])
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:
- 5% Buyback-and-burn tax — a fixed protocol parameter applied first. This portion is sent to the buyback contract, which purchases $BOTTO from the open market and burns it.
- Pool creator’s share — the creator's configured split percentage, sent to their wallet.
- 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 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.
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, and reward split plus buyback tax.
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 + Delegator onboarding and marketing rollout 15 days, covering delegator group outreach, 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 us enable more customization in an earlier phase for special requests, as well as commit more to direct onboarding efforts with external groups.
Timeline
June: Phase 1 completion and delegator + delegate outreach
July: Phase 1 roll out to testing groups, Phase 2 build
August: Final debugging and campaign to delegate groups
September: Wider rollout with school groups that come back in session
Criteria of Success
- 500 new wallet participants with weekly average for voters 2x within 2 months of delivering Phase 1
- 1000 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 delegators
- Phase 1 and 2 requiring no overhead to manage other than feature additions after 1 month of release
