Delegates and delegation: A conceptual overview
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When participating in the Arbitrum DAO, token holders have the option to either vote directly on proposals or to give their voting power to a delegate. This concept doc explores the role of delegates and delegation within the context of the Arbitrum DAO.
What is a delegate?
A delegate is a member of the Arbitrum DAO community who has been elected to represent other token holders and vote on their behalf. Delegates are elected by token holders who choose to grant their voting power to them. Delegates are required to follow the protocols defined by the Constitution of the Arbitrum DAO, and must act in the best interest of the token holders whom they represent.
Why delegate?
Delegation allows token holders to participate in the governance of the Arbitrum DAO without having to actively keep track of every proposal and vote. By granting their voting power to a delegate, token holders can passively participate by entrusting a representative to vote on proposals in a way that aligns with their own beliefs and values.
Token holders who delegate their voting power are able to revoke this delegation and reclaim voting power back to themselves at any time. They may want to do this if, for example, there's an important proposal that they themselves want to vote on directly.
How to delegate
The Arbitrum DAO uses Tally to facilitate delegation. The process in a nutshell:
- Connect your Ethereum wallet to Tally and navigate to the Arbitrum DAO page.
- Select the "delegate" button.
- Search for the delegate you'd like to delegate your voting power to and confirm the delegation by following Tally's prompts.
Note that through Tally, you can change or revoke your delegation at any time. You can also proportionally delegate your voting power to multiple delegates. For more detailed how-to guidance, see How to delegate your voting power.
Conclusion
The Arbitrum DAO's delegation mechanism lets $ARB token holders passively participate in Arbitrum DAO's governance by facilitating the transfer of their token-weighted voting power to values-aligned representatives of the Arbitrum DAO's values, as defined by The Constitution of the Arbitrum DAO.