Why Delegates Matter More Than Ever?

by jensei (Governance Coordinator)

May 2025 has been a milestone month for Lazy Summer. Not just because more vaults were deployed, more strategies were onboarded, and the Protocol reached $100M TVL, or the first **Governance Jam** was held; but because we asked and started exploring a big question:

What is governance worth?

With [SIP5.6] Delegate Compensation now passed and executed onchain via Tally, it’s a good time to zoom out. Let’s take a moment to reflect on the state of the Lazy Summer DAO, the metrics that got us here, and the importance of professionalized delegation as Lazy Summer scales toward a more decentralized future.

Governance is Growing and so is the Work

Since the launch of the Lazy Summer Protocol in February (2025), the initial vault system was transformed into an active protocol with dozens of strategies, cross-chain deployments (Base, Mainnet, Arbitrum, Sonic), and an evolving token economy. This is awesome! But it also means governance activity has exploded.

From the newly built Dune dashboard tracking the governance, here are a few highlights:

Onchain Proposal Volume

• Total Proposals: 38 submitted so far
• April alone: 8 SIPs finalized, 7 votes moved onchain
• May alone: 12 SIPs finalized, 14 votes moved onchain

We’re seeing more community led RFCs (Requests for Comment) being formalized and passed across new vaults, strategy onboarding, emissions updates, and treasury actions.

This is not just rubber-stamping. Every proposal demands:

• considerations of the implications on the broad ecosystem
• deep technical and risk analysis (Block Analitica)
• alignment across the cross-chain nature of the protocol
• coordination with smart contract deployments

And increasingly, it’s delegates doing this work.

Who’s Actually Participating?

Lazy Summer DAO has a healthy number of SUMR token holders (4,380), users delegating (2,525) and delegates (489), but delegation remains uneven.

Delegation and Voting Participation Stats

• 17 active delegates (activated via Tally), ~15 voting on every proposal
• Top 5 delegates control a significant portion of voting power (81%)
• Quorum Concentration sitting at 3 Top delegates
• ~71% of the SUMR circulating supply is staked*staking allows for user to delegate their tokens

In May:

Informed by the above mentioned tiers and other metrics (DAO Dashboard, **SUMR Dashboard, Compensation Breakdown**) we can takeaway couple of points:

• TIER 1 has the highest number of token holders delegating and receives the majority of the total compensation.
  • It includes 1,728 delegates, representing approx. 85.5% of the total number of delegates.
  • The total compensation (MAR-MAY) for TIER 1 is approx. 66,327.30 SUMR, which is about 52.4% of the total compensation distributed.
• TIER 2 has a smaller number of delegates but receives a significant portion of the total compensation.
  • It comprises 256 delegates, around 12.7% of the total delegates.
  • The total compensation (MAR-MAY) for TIER 2 is approx. 50,622.72 SUMR, representing about 40% of the overall compensation.
• TIER 3 has a small number of delegates and receives a relatively small portion of the total compensation.
  • It includes 37 delegates, which is about 1.8% of the total delegates.
  • The total compensation (MAR-MAY) for Tier 3 is approximately 9,636.36 SUMR accounting for about 7.6% of the total compensation.

*As mentioned above the eligibility of these delegates (calculated monthly) stems from their participation. E.g.: in the month of May there were 13 out of 29 delegates who are eligible for compensation.

This shows the current system leans on a small number of highly engaged contributors.

Delegate Spotlight

In the table below I want to highlight couple of delegates that have at least 2 people delegating to them, while having sub-optimal participation rates. This makes them not eligible for delegate compensation.

*If you are delegating your tokens, make sure to keep an eye out on the performance of individual delegates. The size of voting power should not be your only decision maker. Look at the activity of individual delegates on the forum, their voting participation via the dune dashboard, and delegate accordingly.

Why Delegate Compensation Makes Sense?

The Delegate Compensation **[SIP5.6]** introduced a tier based assessment of the delegates on monthly basis.

Any delegate is eligible who:

• has more than 10,000 SUMR tokens delegated to them
• votes on at least 50% of onchain proposals

Any delegate is eligible for activity boost if:

• voted on 100% of proposals published, or
• made 20+ forum comments, or
• created at least 1 forum topic

Why this structure?

✅ Simple and clear

✅ Easy to track onchain via Tally API

✅ Encourages consistent participation

✅ Aligns contributors

It’s not just about compensation. It’s about recognizing the time and context-switching it takes to understand risk frameworks, vault emissions, and composability decisions, week after week.

Is It Endgame?

Not at all. This is the first iteration of the delegate compensation and we should strive to experiment and further adjust the calculations, and metrics going forward.

Governance is Not Set and Forget!

The Lazy Summer Protocol is meant to become THE automated, composable, modular, cross-chain yield layer. But this only works if governance keeps up.

Here is what a good governance looks like to me right now:

• regularly scheduled updates (track via the new DAO Calendar)
• bi-weekly governance jams (shout out to StableLab for co-hosting)
• proposal templates and consistent RFC → SIP → ONCHAIN workflows
• organic conversations on forum and outside
• sustainable incentives for delegates

But we’re not done!

Metrics the Community Should Look Into

Here are a few open questions for the DAO community to reflect on:

1. How do we grow the number of quality delegates?Compensation is just the beginning. Should training, onboarding, or even mentorship for new delegates be funded by the DAO?
2. How do we prevent collusion?Creating an update-delegate-only chat group seems reasonable, at the same time how can individual delegates be incentivized to report seemingly adverse delegate behavior?
3. How do we ensure DAO actions map to protocol outcomes?Should a periodic reporting on metrics that link governance actions (like emissions votes, vault/strategy creations) directly to performance outcomes (like TVL, APY, or retention) be established?
4. How do we coordinate an outward-facing reach out to other DAOs?It is important to not stay in a bubble and incentivize DAO-to-DAO partnerships. This could be deployment of DAO treasuries, new integrations partners, etc. Referral Codes is one way of individuals participating in the growth. What other ways can be experimented with?

Stay Accountable While Staying Lazy

The delegate compensation proposal isn’t just a line item on a spreadsheet.

It’s a signal that the DAO sees governance as real work. That participation deserves recognition, and that our contributors are not disposable, even if the DAO is designed to be modular.

It’s still early, and we’re still learning. But together, this Community is shaping Lazy Summer Protocol into something more than just another DeFi project.

It’s a space where strategy meets community, and composability meets care.

If you’re a SUMR holder: DELEGATE!

If you’re a delegate: STAY CONSISTENT!

If you’re watching from the sidelines: JOIN US!

See you in the forum. Your friendly neighborhood green blob.

https://forum.summer.fi/

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