With LQ price declines, current rewards may no longer sufficiently attract high-quality contributions.
This is already showing in practice — participation in April dropped to just a single submission, highlighting a significant decline in contributor engagement and suggesting the current incentive structure is no longer effective.
Specification
A) Shift to Content-Based Rewards
Reward the top 5 content pieces per month
Allow contributors to win multiple times
Why this works:
Rewards are based purely on content quality and impact
Incentivizes both quality and output
Makes the system identity-agnostic, reducing Sybil concerns
B) Increase Reward Size
Increase rewards to 200 LQ per winning piece
Goal: Maintain strong incentives and reward meaningful contributions.
C) Incentive-Aligned Design
This proposal focuses on mechanism design:
Rewards are tied to outputs (content), not identities
The system becomes Sybil-agnostic
The dominant strategy is to produce better content, not optimize account structure
D) Minimum Participation Rule
If fewer than 5 content pieces receive votes with LQ in a given month:
Each qualifying content piece receives the fixed reward of 200 LQ
Any unallocated portion of the monthly reward budget remains in the treasury
Expected Impact
Higher-quality content
Increased contributor output
Stronger incentive alignment
Reduced need for enforcement
Greater ecosystem visibility
Risks & Considerations
Reward concentration: Top contributors may win multiple rewards
Some have suggested capping wins per contributor (e.g., max 2 rewards). While this could improve distribution, it introduces artificial constraints that may discourage top contributors from maximizing impact.
A pure merit-based system is likely more effective initially. If reward concentration later reduces participation, a cap can be introduced.
Higher token emissions: Doubling rewards increases distribution and should be weighed against program value.
Program discontinuation preference: Some community members may prefer discontinuing LCIMP entirely rather than modifying it. This option is included in the temperature check to capture that preference.
Next Steps
Gather community feedback via temperature check
Run a governance proposal
Implement changes for the May LCIMP cycle
Temperature Check
Do you support this governance temperature check?
Note:
The “Pause the LCIMP indefinitely” option reflects a preference to stop the program rather than modify it.
Yes, I support this governance temperature check.
No, I do not support this governance temperature check.
→ declare clearly the max total reward pool per month, and include what happens if less participation than what the reward pool allows (e.g., if only 1 participation → only its share or sharing the full pool with itself ? ^^).
Not sure 200 LQ is needed:
→ because 100 $LQ is still above minimum salary if you’re efficient at creating content ^^
→ because I don’t think much people see the participations anyways, and I am doubtful they lead to much user conversion (but at least they provide presence/coverage about Liqwid).
→ But true it might attract longer/better work (only if competition rises though).
But it does not fix that in low participation case (or low voting participation case) some less good content get same amount as better content (but whatever, who cares for such a program)
Per content piece vs. per creator: makes sense to eventually attract more pieces. But then couldn’t you get also multiple less quality content entries per participants, instead of one good one ?
(personally I don’t think I would do content more than once per month, nor that there is that much stuff to say that hasn’t been said yet, especially with low frequency of new features/markets these days. But who knows if features get released or I have too much spare time^^).
Realistically, this incentive program at 100–200 LQ levels (~$20–40) if considered at work pay value is not attracting rather ‘pro’ high quality content creation that would do it for the instant pay (not good pay if more than a very few hours of work, well at least in terms of ‘western income’ standards for lack of a better term).
I suspect most participants do it either out of genuine interest in Liqwid, or betting on future LQ price appreciation / staking revenue, not the direct payout itself (and so 100 LQ might be enough for them to be motivated).
Seeing it as a direct payout motivation works only for content taking much less time (unless ‘lower income’ standards country).
So raising to 200 LQ might make the speculation more attractive, and maybe also a correct pay at current price in certain parts of the world.
Will include max total reward per month (1,000 LQ) and what happens when we see under-participation (total pot might not get spent - each top voted piece of content still earns 200 LQ). I think the rest will solve itself/improve as the program becomes more popular/well-known and $LQ appreciates in value.
Don’t you guys think we need some kind of ranking metric = LQ value capped to a max ofc. Rewarding formula contemplating views, likes and retweeting. Exclude any governance vote for winner participation . This would kill any chance of me competing in the future, but I’d rather see the program take off.
As much as I see merit in rewarding objective measurable statistics like views, likes and retweeting, I fear this’d put more burden on the program. I am personally not against moving in this direction but I think at first we should experiment more minor iterations on the program like the one I proposed above (with Gil’s feedback included).
What are your thoughts on my take?
On another note, what would motivate DAO members like you, @FlorianVolery, @gil, Opa, Bradmath and others to contribute more actively in this program? I think feedback from participants is key to aligning incentives and increasing the impact of the program on Liqwid’s social and educational positioning.
Probably will be wise to not have abrupt changes… i support
On the other note: what really would help motivate more participation, IMO would be more detailed information about current status of everything (respecting data that strategically wouldn’t be interesting to share ) like for example: Liqwid prime? Waiting for V3, more off chain bureaucracy ?
Framework for building yielding treasury, it only in the air for now? Any idea specifically how this will be build? Any idea in what stage of sustainability we could start building that? Far, close…
I don’t know if im clear, its not about giving sensitive data, but for us to feel close as possible.
Reposting from Discord community discussions: @Kylix: @Mnemo quite curious as to your thoughts on the LCIMP temp check, seems you voted against?
@Mnemo: Very briefly: the content is repetitive, brings nothing new except AI-generated images, and in my view it’s just wasted funds going to a few nearly anonymous accounts that keep recycling the same thing over and over. The only real value, in my opinion, was the AI agent (I think from Gil). Moreover, these videos were targeting small retail users—and a large portion of them don’t like you now anyway. So either pay for a proper campaign (and I’d wait for V3 for that) with someone credible who has real reach, especially beyond the Cardano community, or just keep those LQ tokens. If you really need to inform people about the protocol, it’s relatively easy nowadays to build an AI agent, feed it the right data, and deploy it publicly, or simply have it answer questions directly on your website.
@𐎷𐎱𐎡𐎽:money_with_wings:: Agree I would vote to cease or at least pause lcimp for now @ADA_Matt: Same @Kylix: Thank you @Mnemo, @𐎷𐎱𐎡𐎽:money_with_wings: and @ADA_Matt, your feedback is invaluable. As much as I personally think the program has potential to grow and improve, I’ll include your responses in the governance temperature check and add an additional vote option to pause the LCIMP indefinitely with rationale based on your arguments. Do you think there’s a better alternative that we could fund via an incentives program with similar budgetting that’d cause more impact? What would this look like? Do you think changing the LCIMP to concentrate full rewards (1,000 LQ with the newly proposed ceiling) on a single output/deliverable drive the type of impact and change you think the current format doesn’t or would you say you think there’s no value in any program of the sort at this point in time and cancelling it altogether is the only “reasonable” path forward? I’m all open to ideas - I think with more discussion, more varied perspectives and embracing openness and decentralized decision making, we will improve Liqwid on all fronts, whether that is marketing, image, adoption, growth or otherwise.
𐎷𐎱𐎡𐎽:money_with_wings:: Agree I would vote to cease or at least pause lcimp for now