[VeBetterDAO Proposal] Removal of Purchasable Endorsements

VeBetterDAO
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1. Introduction & Problem Statement

The current endorsement system in VeBetterDAO allows dApps to acquire endorsements through two primary methods:

  1. Earning endorsements through genuine user engagement and value contribution.
  2. Purchasing endorsements from a pool of endorsement points.

While the second method may offer short-term liquidity, it introduces a significant risk to the system’s integrity. In particular, allowing individuals to delegate or sell endorsement points via third-party intermediaries—such as veDelegate—leads to passive endorsements from participants who may be indifferent or unaware of how their points are being used.

This effectively turns endorsements into a transactional commodity, distorting their original purpose as meaningful signals of trust, support, and approval. The result is inflated and misleading metrics that do not reflect real engagement or belief in the endorsed dApp.

To preserve the credibility of the endorsement system, this proposal seeks to eliminate the ability to acquire endorsements through third-party purchasing mechanisms. Endorsements should be earned—not bought—ensuring they continue to reflect genuine value, user trust, and active community support.

2. Proposed Changes

  1. Disable Third-Party Endorsement Purchases:

    • Disable the ability for dApps to buy endorsements from a pool.
    • Endorsements should only be earned through organic means (e.g., user participation, governance contributions, or other merit-based criteria).

  2. Retroactive Removal of Purchased Endorsements:

    • Revoke all endorsements previously obtained via non-organic or purchased means.

  3. Grace Period for Transition:

    • Provide a transition period (e.g., 30 days) to allow affected dApps to adjust and comply with the new rules before enforcement begins.

3. Benefits of the Proposal

:white_check_mark: Fair Competition: Ensures endorsements reflect genuine merit, not financial advantage.
:white_check_mark: Increased Trust: Strengthens the credibility of the endorsement system as a true measure of quality.
:white_check_mark: Long-Term Sustainability: Encourages dApps to focus on real value creation rather than shortcut mechanisms.

4. Simplified Feature Change Summary

  1. Removed Features:
    • Purchasable endorsements.
  2. Modified Features:
    • Current endorsement points that have been purchased will be retroactively removed.
  3. Added Features:
    • Grace Period.
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Additionally I would like to add the following points for some extra discussion:

  • It is not possible to monitor for private agreements for paid endorsements. However while these are frowned upon, these demonstrate a conscious decision to endorse the particular dApp in question and would not be removed.
  • One area for discussion could be requiring endorsers to actively use the dApp that they are endorsing. This improves the likelihood that they are aware of the dApps performance and that their endorsement reflects it.
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What about dapps who reward endorsers with a part of their weekly allocation? Isn’t that considered “purchasing” endorsement points as well?

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I think the bigger issue is dApps being endorsed by outright buying their way on using the leftover pooled points system, without requiring any support.

At least with the current endorser reward system it requires more than one node.

Not perfect, still, but definitely a step in the right direction. Changing the entire endorsement system would require more time, deliberation, and would be much more debated upon.

This proposal isn’t trying to fix everything at once, just the core issue that’s currently giving poorer-quality dApps a door to get on the DAO.

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That is an issue in itself, but the difference comes from how the points are acquired. The proposal is targeting the hands-off, pooled approach where an endorser can just put their points up for sale without actually being in contact with any of the dApps.

This leads to the issue of any dApp being able to buy their way in / stay endorsed just from the pool alone. It essentially removes the endorsement process entirely.

I agree rewarding endorsers is an outlier currently. Some dapps do it, some don’t. It needs to be either a dedicated section of the allocation (like 5% of the weekly), or forbidden outright. But that’s a topic for another proposal IMO.

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How would you enforce something like this? On chain there is no difference between a normal user endorsing or vedelegate endorsing with pooled nfts. From a technical point of view is very very hard, if not even impossible, to force this behaviour.

We could say that the good thing is that veDelegate is a loyal product of the DAO, so if a proposal like this passes maybe he removes this feature. But what happens when another dev (anon) creates a service like this? How would you stop it?

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Great point you made — from a technical perspective, it seems impossible to enforce this onchain.
Maybe it would make more sense to submit a direct proposal that explicitly asks VeDelegate to disable this feature.
But the main issue is: you might stop VeDelegate now, but what if a new dapp with the same functionality appears tomorrow? Are we going to write a new proposal to ban the same feature for every new dapp that comes out?
Personally, I think we need to work on a proposal that solves the problem at its root, not one that just patches it each time.
How could we solve this issue in a definitive way? :thinking:

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Crimes aren’t always easy to prevent or catch, but that shouldn’t mean laws shouldn’t be put in place to set the standard.

As of now it is incredibly easy for a dapp to buy itself onto the dao. It takes all of 10 minutes as we saw with oily. At the very least we should target that.

As far as implementation, doesn’t the foundation control what dapps/apps are located within the VeWorld wallet? If a new one comes along that breaks this rule, couldn’t it just be removed from the platform completely?

Maybe Roberto’s right and there’s other things we can think of, but when? How long til we fix this endorsement system and the flaws with it? It’s gonna take a lot so I think this proposal at least buys us some time til we figure that all out.

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Agreed with @BreakingBallz. This one might be something that is hard to enforce technically but if a dapp is found out breaking the rule (if this would be written down as something not allowed for listed dapps) it would be great reason to remove that dApp from the DAO with a proposal.

Like breakingballz says, right now it’s just free real estate for anyone that wants to buy endorsements. If it would be forbidden, I would argue most good dapps wouldn’t risk going for it.

Until a technical implementation can be done a written rule to follow would be good. But a more technical enforcement would definitely be worth investigating and discussing.

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Discussed a different possible on-chain solution to this with @ltcSpitfire, @BreakingBallz and @Dan briefly.

These are the new rules:

To endorse a dapp, the node holder must:

  • Endorse with their node as per current rules

  • Deposit a minimum stake of 10 vot3 with the endorsement. The deposit must be signed by the node holders private key and can not come from a delegated address. The stake is there for as long as the endorsement is active.

  • The node holder must submit a comment for the reason for endorsing with the deposit of vot3. The comment will be analyzed by b3mo for authenticity/quality control

  • Until the node holder has deposited the minimum vot3, the endorsement will appear as inactive on the app’s endorsement page.

  • The endorser can at any point cancel the inactive endorsement, but they can only endorse one dapp at a time, either inactive or active.

  • If the endorsement is activated, it is locked as per the current rules, ie until next round currently

  • For the transition, any current endorser has 14 days after implementation to deposit the required vot3 to activate the endorsement, otherwise it will be inactivated and endorsement points removed.

When endorsing manually (without any pool interaction etc), the node holder wanting to endorse could just automatically deposit the vot3 immediately, in essence mimicing the current endorsement process, as long as the endorsement does not come from a delegated node. If it does, a separate transaction to activate the endorsement would be needed i suppose.

This would mean pools would at best be able to activate the initial inactive endorsement, but to get any actual points, the endorser itself needs to activate the endorsement manually on vebetterdao.

Thoughts on this? In my opinion it could elegantly solve the pooling issue without causing any large inconveniences compared to how it is currently.

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The whole point for us creating a delegation service for nodes is that a lot of times node’s owners do not want to connect their ledger or the wallet where they hold their nodes because they are afraid about losing that node by clicking the wrong button.
Another reason is that since currently an account cannot hold more than 1 node it could become very handy to use delegation and control all of them with a single wallet.

Wouldn’t removing this delegation feature make the process for endorsers more difficult and riskier? Should we wait that new nodes (coming with Galactica) are out and we see if any technical implementation is possible there?

Personally I find your solution very diffiult to follow and it seems to make the usability of the platfor more complicated, and I’m not sure I like it.

Altough I understand what BreakingBallz is saying: “Crimes aren’t always easy to prevent or catch, but that shouldn’t mean laws shouldn’t be put in place to set the standard.”

Also, " If a new one comes along that breaks this rule, couldn’t it just be removed from the platform completely?", this is kind of true, not from a foundation level but we as a dao can take that decision if there is a rule that enforces this.

I think it’s hard to identify a clear proof of when a dapp bought its way in or not. We could analyize the veDelegate contract addresses, but then a new service could come and we would start from zero. This is for sure a tricky one.

But, if I can, isn’t this the same thing almost all of the apps are doing: paying their endorsers? Does it matter if you find them on twitter or on discord after a week or if you just use veDelegate? At the end of the day it seems to me that endorsers want a piece of the cake and the apps are giving it to them.
To me it seems that what vedelegate does is removing the communication between apps and endorsers and automatizing this process.

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I get your points @Dan. It does complicate things so it might not be right but I wanted to put it out there as an option to discuss.

Regarding the delegation, to be clear it’s not removing delegation altogether. It would only require the owner’s wallet to “activate” the endorsement. The delegation itself would not be touched. Maybe it could just be a sign? The deposit might not be needed technically.

As for the rest, yes endorsement points pooling from vedelegate (or anyone else that could offer it) is just removing the communication. But it’s a different kind of communication IMO.

What I personally do not like is that the pools are a broadcast and not a unicast e.g.:

  • Broadcast: “hey anyone that listens, I have points for sale”.
  • Unicast: “hey you, I have points, I like your dApp, you get my points and I get a share of your allocation”

The purchase of the endorsement does not require any direct acknowledgement from the endorser with a pool, it’s a one-way communication at the time of purchase with no say from the endorser on the specific dApp it’s endorsing.

The vot3 deposit in my suggestion is the acknowledgement from the endorser saying “I approve that this dapp buys my endorsement” essentially. That way it’s the same as a dapp reaching out to an endorser on discord, X or otherwise.

If that’s over-solving an issue I’m not sure but definitely good to discuss. With a soft rule it will definitely be hard to prove anything not allowed has been done.

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Your broadcast vs unicast example resonates with me.

Enforcing the endorsement to not be “delegated” could actually solve the issue, because only the wallet holding the nft can endorse / unendorse.

At this point my main concern is about the ux of it, since some actions can be done with delegated wallet (eg: link your node to gm nft) others only with the main wallet. As I said before I can see great benefits in allowing delegation of the xnodes such as: avoid hacks, avoid touching your ledger that stores great amounts of funds, greater accessibility (since you can “use” your node wherever you are)

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Thanks for that! Totally forgot to respond, but I get the UX issues too.

I’ve circled back a little bit to this topic as we have seen issues creep up again surrounding endorsements.

  • dApps buying endorsements from veDelegate’s endorsement pool and immediately cancelling it, returning to the grace period, only to repeat this again before they lose endorsements altogether. veDelegate does not yet have any clear logging for this so it’s not obviously visible if you don’t check the transactions.

Outside the pooling issues, additional endorsement issues have crept up.

  • dApps offering higher and higher % of the rewards pool to endorsers. Some have gone as far as 20% of the entire allocation to endorsers. Just a few months ago, 0% or 5% was the normal endorser reward.
  • If not offering a % of the pool, they’re offering massive rewards multipliers for endorsers. Some have gone up to 10x rewards for endorsers.

The endorsement system was designed to gate dApps from receiving allocations if they weren’t performing well, did not meet the expected quality, failed to protect from exploits/farmers, etc.

Right now, it feels like it’s a race to secure endorsements with any monetary means necessary, ignoring the quality/security aspect of the dApp. Therefore, the endorsement system fails to serve its designed purpose.

At the same time, node holders deserve some rewards as long-standing supporters of the ecosystem. It just shouldn’t come passively with zero due diligence in my opinion.

Therefore, an alternative solution that might be simpler on the UX-front, while still rewarding node holders, is to simply tie the endorsement rewards to the endorsement process itself.

  1. A node holder can choose to endorse a dApp just like today.
  2. In doing so, the node holder’s wallet (delegator or delegate) will earn a 2X (governance configurable) multiplier on the endorsed dApp specifically.
  3. Any other direct monetary reward would be strictly forbidden.
    1. While this is hard to implement in code, if sufficient proof is found, it would be cause for immediate blacklisting of the dApp through a proposal.

This leads to the endorser:

  • Needing to do some basic research in the dApp
    • (2X isn’t worth anything if the dApp fails to meet basic security requirements, bleeding rewards to exploits)
    • Solves “unprepared” dApps being endorsed too soon
  • Requires the endorser to use the dApp to get any reward - solves “passive” rewards
  • Aligns endorser incentives with dApp incentives
    • (the more votes a dApp gets, the higher rewards to the endorser and the dApp).
    • Brings value to the endorsement outside just the fact of being endorsed (endorsers can help pursue votes etc)

Curious to hear everyone’s thoughts on this.

Edit:

This might not be feasible for every single dApp, so with the above system, the dApp themselves would set the ‘endorser bonus’ from 0% (meaning their default 1X rate), up to 100% (the 2X reward as proposed above), so that they can opt in if they want to use the endorsement rewards.

It’s possible a cap of b3tr per action is something that dApps should be able to set themselves too.

The point is to funnel all endorsement rewards into an equally fair system for everyone to use as they please.

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Given the unfeasible nature of the original proposal, this seems like a logical improvement and if others, like me, believe this is a good idea and worth exploring. A new separate proposal will need to be written.

The only concern with this is the evidence required to blacklist a dApp for breaking the rules. Perhaps a shortlist of criteria needs to be worked on that must be addressed as best as possible when creating a blacklisting proposal should a dApp seemingly break the rules.

Such as:

  • Consistent and multiple receipt of funds

  • Traceable flow of funds from dapp to the endorser (since this can be obscured, addtional requirements are needed here),

  • Recency of transfers (to avoid reliance on evidence that is too old)

This new idea, should it be written into a new proposal, will also need to include that the rules that we decide upon be added to the Official VeBetterDAO Rulebook.

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