Paying DReps is probably the most-argued governance topic right now, and it's scattered across a dozen threads. Let me try to pull it into one place.
And it keeps coming up for a reason. There are 100+ proposals to work through, maybe 150 to 200 DReps actually vote on withdrawals, and a good share of those vote on the last days, no rationale, on vibes. (And as if the pressure weren't enough, some Dreps and Delegators are convinced that you have to write half a book to explain the rationale.) People are deciding where hundreds of millions of ada go, for free, and plenty of them are burnt out. You can think DReps shouldn't be paid and still admit that's not sustainable.
It all comes down to one question first: who pays? Four answers are floating around.
1. Delegators pay (voluntary tips).
A delegator sends a cut of their staking rewards to their DRep. CIP-149 does exactly this with tx metadata, and the donations thread here sketches a metadata standard plus "Donate to your DRep" wallet buttons. No ledger change, could ship tomorrow. The catch: it'll probably stay marginal, and it mostly pays the DReps who happen to have a whale or two, not the ones doing the work. (Personally, I'm pretty sure that won't work, more on that at the end.)
2. The protocol pays (ledger-level, like pools).
The ledger just pays DReps from protocol parameters, automatically, same as stake pool operators. Neutral, predictable, nobody has to feel generous. Not a new idea either: Cardano's original treasury research already baked participation rewards in (Bingsheng Zhang's treasury-system talk) Today that lives as CPS-0020 for the problem statement and Governance Participant Compensation (PR #1117) for the concrete pitch, paying whoever voted, at the ledger level.
The catch here is the money. Staking rewards come out of the reserves, which are draining anyway and already pay a yield that looks pretty thin next to what else is on offer. Pull DRep pay from the same pot and you empty it faster. Take it out of existing staking rewards and you make staking even less attractive. So "where does the money come from" isn't a footnote, it's the whole fight. PR #1117's answer: skip the reserves and fund it from the deposits proposers already lock up per action.
3. The treasury pays (a governance budget).
Yoda (Jaromir Tesar) floated carving 1 to 3 percent of the Net Change Limit off for governance, to pay DReps plus neutral expert reviewers and cover coordination (post). Keeps DReps off both the delegator and the proposer payroll, but it's treasury that doesn't go to projects, and someone still has to decide who counts as a paid "expert."
4. Proposers pay (fee for service).
The teams asking for money pay DReps for their time: review, feedback, a signal boost. Crypto Crow (Jason Appleton) just launched a framework for exactly this (overview), and AdaLobby sits in the same lane. One thing a lot of people got wrong about it: you're paying for the DRep's time and an honest read, not for a Yes. No vote outcome is promised, no vote is for sale. It shifts the cost off the treasury and onto the people asking for it, and it fills a real gap, because right now teams basically can't get DRep feedback before a vote. It's still the most argued-over model, for the obvious reason: any money moving between a DRep and a team they vote on raises a neutrality question. But "paid for the time, not the vote" is the distinction the debate keeps skipping over. (Different from #1117, where the deposit gets eaten by the ledger and split neutrally. Here it's a private deal.)
These aren't either/or. Tips now, a deposit-funded ledger layer later, whatever sticks.
Where I land.
If DReps ever get paid, I'm convinced it can only be tied to the voting power delegators actually handed you, exactly like pools. Anything based on activity (did you vote, did you write a rationale, how many actions you touched, how long are your active, etc) is gameable. You automate it, you fake it, you spin up 50 sock-puppet DReps and farm it. That's my problem with any per-vote scheme, #1117 included. Delegated stake is the one and only number you can't fake, because it either means real people picked you or you are paying tons of to fake it (which is also fine), and it's the same assumption the chain already trusts for pools.
And it's not a hunch. That original treasury design already worked this way: the "experts" (the DRep ancestor, you delegate your vote to them) got paid proportional to the delegation they received, out of about 20 percent of the treasury, and explicitly not based on their own stake. Trust from real people was the yardstick from day one.
The obvious pushback: paying by voting power just pays the biggest DReps the most and makes concentration worse (see CPS-0033). Fair. Pools have the exact same problem and answer it with the k-parameter saturation curve. A DRep reward would need the same cap. But the thing you measure still has to be delegated stake, not activity.
So, some questions:
- Which funding source do you actually trust to keep DReps neutral: delegators, protocol, treasury, or proposers?
- Pay for the role (showing up, voting, rationales) or for specific work (reviewing a given proposal)?
- If it's tied to voting power like pools, does it need a saturation cap so it doesn't make concentration worse?