Governance delegation to universities

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Hi all - my name is Tyler, and I’m a Partner at BlockVenture Coalition. We manage an alliance of university blockchain groups. We’re working with API3 to evangelize the technology and strengthen API3’s ties to academia. You can learn more about our work with the community here: API3 | The Web3 API Economy

To grow this program, we thought it would be interesting to work with student-led blockchain groups around the world and get them involved in governance. Other leading DeFi apps such as Uniswap, Aave, and Compound have seen their communities delegate voting power to groups at UC Berkeley and University of Michigan.

Here’s a good thread from the Berkeley group explaining why they are passionate about participating in governance.

Our team at BlockVenture would like to evangelize the API3 DAO and seek similar partnerships with student-led blockchain groups. We’d like to figure out the best way to proceed before speaking with our network and getting commitments.

If anyone has any feedback or guidance on how-to proceed, we’re happy to take a lead and execute this.

Questions we have are as follows:

  1. Is there a minimum token threshold needed to participate in governance?
  2. Is this something where we’d need to get a grant approved, or is it as simple as getting commitments from different people in the ecosystem to delegate some of their voting power?
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No, there’s no minimum.

They wouldn’t need a grant. The university groups can make a delegation pitch here or reach out the VC’s directly.

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Thanks Ryan. We had one more question come up - is there any monetary benefit for being a voting delegate (ie. receive a portion of staking rewards)? If there was, it may impact how student-led groups need to report their taxes.

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There is no monetary benefit for delegates. Staking rewards only go to the token holder.

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