The aim of this discussion is to assess interest in putting the Hydration POL staked DOT to work in Polkadot governance by delegating it to ChaosDAO.

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Currently, the Hydration DAO is staking 438,700 DOT - you can check the address 13RSNAx31mcP5H5KYf12cP5YChq6JeD8Hi64twhhxKtHqBkg here - rewards are distributed to a separate account 14kovW62mmGZBRvbNT1w5J7m9SQskd5JTRTLKZLpkpjmZBJ8 here.

The lockup on these staked DOT is 28 days - which rolls continuously and only begins to count down once the unbonding extrinsic has been executed by Hydration DAO directly, or via instructions through governance to the Council controlled multisig which has staking proxy powers.

As most of you are likely aware, Polkadot OpenGov controls execution of upgrades, as well as all spends from the Polkadot Treasury, and many other things. It is important that as many DOT participate in these decisions as possible, in order to best represent the interests of all DOT token holders. As a large token holder ( 438,700 DOT staked, an additional 100,000+ DOT as POL in the Omnipool) I believe that it's important that Hydration DAO's interests are represented in Polkadot OpenGov.

That being said, I believe that direct participation through HDX holder voting would be a huge distraction from our mission and would be detrimental to our growth - therefore I am proposing that we delegate our votes at 3X conviction to ChaosDAO. My rationale for choosing ChaosDAO are as below:

• ChaosDAO has completed 2 cohorts of the Web3 Foundation Decentralized Voices program, whereby the foundation entrusts delegates with large amounts of DOT vote weight to help decentralise decision making
• They vote using a decentralized process within the ChaosDAO private discord server - whereby individuals anonymously vote, with the outcome of the vote being based on the overall voting direction - this makes ChaosDAO immune to bribery and quid-pro-quo corruption scandals
• ChaosDAO is the biggest community in the Polkadot ecosystem and is formed of enthusiasts and builders, who carefully discuss and contemplate every single vote, referring to expertise wherever possible - this means all votes are assessed based on their value to the ecosystem and reflect urgent needs of the ecosystem instead of individual biases
• ChaosDAO supported all previous proposals from Hydration and has shown alignment with our needs e.g. supporting the DeFi bounty, PAL bounty, Interlay iBTC rewards proposal, Bifrost vDOT loan, Polkadot Treasury DCA schemes (all 3)
• The image below shows that the vast majority of the current Hydration Council are members of ChaosDAO - further demonstrating alignment between that community and ours:
  
• ChaosDAO has more delegations that any other existing delegate in both number of delegations and number of votes:
  

Please note that I am proposing a 3x conviction as this adds no additional time lock or opportunity costs versus our existing staking locks - so there is 0 downside for our POL

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Some further materials to explore ChaosDAO performance to date:

• Web3 Foundation Decentralized Voices program cohort 1 analysis: https://medium.com/web3foundation/empowering-the-community-the-positive-impact-of-decentralized-voices-on-opengov-c681e017628b
• Dune dashboard - Participation on finished referenda: https://dune.com/queries/3924619/6598058
• Dune dashboard - Aye, Nay & Abstain analysis: https://dune.com/queries/3527635/5933442

I was unfortunately unable to create an Opensquare poll as Opensquare wouldn't correctly select the dates and times needed