From Thought to Change: Let’s Reward Those Who Dare to Propose

VeBetterDAO
1

Dear VeFam,

I’m Roberto Califano, and over the past few months, I’ve taken time to reflect on several ideas that have come to mind. I often receive private messages from users saying things like: “This should be done to improve the DAO.” And I find myself thinking: “Great, you’re proposing something valuable — why not turn it into an official proposal and publish it on the DAO platform so that everyone can benefit from your insight?”

The concept is simple: the DAO is a decentralized organization. We cannot always wait for someone to magically solve the issues at hand. Each of us must be an active participant in the process of improvement and progress.

That’s why I came up with a proposal aimed at transforming DAO members from passive users into active citizens of this governance system.

Ideas have the power to change the world — and in our case, to improve our DAO. So why not incentivize them?

Here’s my proposal:
Let’s allocate 1.5 million B3TR from the treasury into a wallet managed by the Foundation, to be used exclusively for rewarding proposals that are officially approved by the community.
(A potential wallet could be 0x5D9A5f5125f96729CfF4adc97f7F6702F0206263, unless @VeChainOps provides a different address.)

In order to access this grant, proposal authors will need to meet a few clear criteria:

  • Open a discussion on Discourse to gather support and consensus from all key ecosystem players (Dapps – Users – Nodes);
  • Clearly outline what the proposal aims to improve or implement (feedback from the Discourse discussion should be used to refine the proposal);
  • When submitting the proposal, include a link to the Discourse discussion, your social profile, and the wallet address where the reward should be sent as recognition for your effort.

Here are a couple of well-written proposals to use as reference:

Before finalizing this proposal, I would love to hear from the community on a key point: What do you think is a fair reward (in USD) for those who dedicate time and effort to writing a high-quality proposal?
Some initial options: $500, $750, or $1000?

Currently, 1.5 million B3TR is equivalent to approximately $317,000 USD. Considering that only 5-6 proposals have been submitted so far, this fund could potentially support many valuable ideas for years to come. And if the value of B3TR increases over time, the impact will be even greater.

It’s important to note that, if this proposal is approved, it will not receive any funding itself. The grant will only apply to proposals approved after this initiative goes live, as clearly stated within the proposal.

Looking forward to your thoughts and feedback. Together, we can build a stronger and more dynamic DAO.

Warm regards,
Roberto Califano

2

I think the premise of this idea is a very good starting point. People like Data take a lot of their personal time to come up with these ideas and think of every way to cover the ins and outs of each proposal.

3

I was only just saying yesterday that at least from my perspective that there is not much faith in the functionality of the proposal system. I only see foundation lead proposals pass and this “Restoring the GM NFT System” is the first community lead proposal to my knowledge to even gain support. This gives me a little bit of hope for the future.

I support this idea of yours as we need to incentivise more proposals somehow but the problem remains that the current structure discourages us from putting in the effort. There have been many proposals that should have got support and I have wanted to make one myself at times but thought whats the point. I will put all this time and energy in it only for people to not support as they either:

  • Are selfish and dont want to lose their voting rewards
  • See that the amount required to pass is too high and know no one else will support
  • Are benefitting from a problem we try to solve so either dont support or vote against

So unless we can change that, we need something like this to encourage people to try again.

Regarding the fair reward, I would say start high and see if we get flooded with proposals then bring it down accordingly or if at all.

4

I don’t think we can go off of the past, a lot of these proposals I’ve seen are poorly written, I don’t agree with the overall idea, or we are trying to write something better. As the foundation also said yesterday you can only put so much into a proposal to help it get implemented. They asked us to break these up into smaller ones. Some of the proposals people have added include 10 different ideas and some dont even start a discourse before submitting them.

5

On this point, I have to kindly disagree :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
One of my proposals was also approved (I even included the link among the examples), and I definitely consider myself closer to the community than to the foundation :grin:
I remember that when there was an issue to solve, I took the time to listen to all the community’s suggestions — and in fact, I received great support from everyone!

Thank you for your suggestion — it definitely makes sense to start high and adjust if needed based on proposal volume.

Actually, a member of the Italian community gave me a great insight: instead of assigning the full reward right away (e.g., $1000), we could implement a dynamic reward system based on how much support the proposal receives in the final vote.

The idea is simple:

  • Each approved proposal starts with a base reward of $500
  • The reward increases proportionally based on the percentage of favorable votes, up to a maximum of $1000

This mechanism creates a real incentive to write thoughtful, high-quality proposals that gain wide community support. It rewards not just participation, but effectiveness and clarity.

Here’s an example of how it would work:

% of Favorable Votes Final Reward
50% $500
60% $600
75% $750
90% $900
100% $1000

For each percentage point above 50%, an additional $10 is added to the reward.

This way, the system becomes more merit-based and motivates proposal authors to truly engage the community, refine their ideas, and aim for the highest possible impact.

That said, I still firmly believe that even if someone were to act like an “opportunist” — trying to submit a proposal just to take money from the DAO — they would most likely fail.
If a proposal is poorly written, clearly self-serving, or lacks meaningful benefit to the ecosystem, it’s very unlikely to gain the support needed from all actors involved in the DAO to pass both voting phases.

In other words, the system already has natural safeguards — and this incentive structure would push even more towards quality, transparency, and real contribution.

Let me know what you think — always happy to improve this based on community feedback!

6

In principle I am for this. But are you saying you only get rewarded if the proposal reaches final approval, or if it just gathers enough support to go through to be voted on? Also need to consider could this be abused by a small number of bad actors. The rewards you propose would make it worth while doing so.

7

I thought it was clear but thanks for this clarification so I can reiterate and specify it better, the proposal must pass both votes and win the final approval, only then will you have the reward.

  • Proposal that gets support = NO PAYMENT
  • Proposal that gets support + Second round vote + not approved = NO PAYMENT
  • Proposal that gets support + Final vote + final approval = YES PAYMENT
8

Fair enough, I’ve seen the admin tag since I joined the telegram over a year ago and assume you’re in their close circle. But has that proposal actually happened? All we have from that is linear rewards.

Regarding the dynamic system, it seems unnecessary as no one will ever get 100% due to abstentions. The idea is sound but perhaps a different measure or scale? A proposal simply passing is a massive achievement in itself.

And this payment must not be automatic after passing. Give the foundation some time to review in case of bad actors.

9

In overall I support the idea of financial recognition of those, who put time and effort for the betterment of the DAO. This might encourage more quality proposals.

To avoid abuse and make the reward appealing in different market (price) and ecosystem conditions (amount of voters and voting rewards), I`d consider a dynamic reward based on price, voting reward % and total amount of VOT3 needed for a proposal to pass the initial stage.
At least I’d put some numbers in simulation to figure out, if it would make sense at certain conditions for few whales to push a proposal for the financial gain.

Currently 3.7 m VOT3 would yield ~1.68% (62k) b3tr in voting rewards, while 1k USD proposal reward would be ~5.8k b3tr. So it does not make sense for few whales to push a proposal.

But, if the voting rewards decreased 10 times to 0.16% and the price drop to 0.05 USD, then 1000 USD reward would yield 20K b3tr, but the 3.7 m VOT3 needed for the proposal would yield only 5.9K b3tr. In this scenario theoretically it would make sense to abuse this reward system.

10

These proposals should aim to improve or enhance the DAO’s governance, participation mechanisms, transparency, or efficiency — not some operational matters.

Bonus consideration for proposals that show evidence of community feedback or collaborative drafting before submission.

The proposal should be realistic to implement, aligning with the DAO’s mission and technical capacity.

I agree with the post-approval review before issuing the reward.

Can be done in a quarterly manner.

11

I’m reading all your suggestions with great interest. I don’t claim to have a magic wand to solve every issue within the DAO, but I believe that proposal after proposal, we can make it stronger together.
That said, I’ve started considering an alternative approach to the one I originally had in mind.
Initially, I had planned to move 1.5 million B3TR from the treasury to fund anyone willing to actively contribute by submitting proposals to improve the DAO. However, since it’s not yet clear whether this initiative would truly spark greater engagement from the community, I’m now thinking of launching a lighter version of the proposal — as an experiment to study its real impact.
Let me explain more clearly.
We could start with a first test phase, setting a maximum budget of 80,000 B3TR to be moved from the treasury. I would specify in the proposal (just as an example) that from June 1st, 2025, to October 1st, 2025, anyone who actively contributes by submitting a quality proposal aimed at improving the DAO will receive a reward, based on a set of criteria still under development.
This way, we’re not moving a large amount of B3TR upfront, but we give ourselves the opportunity to measure the level of community involvement, track real data, and assess whether this incentive model effectively encourages meaningful participation.
If the outcome of this test is positive and engagement increases, we’ll have a solid foundation to build a more structured and robust final proposal.