Hi Fellows,

I'm opening a discussion about the proposal we intend to submit on OpenGov. 

This proposal is based on the Action Research for OpenGov RFP, posted in the W3F grants program. More information about the RFP can be found here.

As described in the RFP, OpenGov was introduced as a new governance system for the Polkadot ecosystem in November 2022 on Kusama, before being deployed on Polkadot in June 2023. There is a need for more encompassing, neutral, practical, and actionable case studies of OpenGov’s implementations, which can help establish a feedback mechanism and prioritize future developments for OpenGov. The RFP lists four examples of research regarding OpenGov. We are interested in researching Example 3, “An analysis of Governance participation on OpenGov implementations”. 

The problem we intend to investigate is understanding the participation in OpenGov regarding its incentives, obstacles, profiles, motivations, trends, and patterns. In this way, the methodology proposed for the research includes the collection and analysis of OpenGov on-chain and off-chain data together with complementary data to be asked from the participants. As a result, we intend to publish a full research article with reasonable answers to the following questions:

1. What does participation in OpenGov look like?
2. Are there incentives for OpenGov participation?
3. Are there obstacles to OpenGov participation?
4. What are the profiles of OpenGov participants?
5. What are the motivations of OpenGov participants?
6. Are there trends in off-chain debates?
7. Are there patterns in on-chain voting?

The full proposal is here: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CDEk4J-g9ISgOLiu_D6mwg5Jgbk9JOKyW97dcSLcycE/edit?usp=sharing

The discussion on Polkadot Forum is here: 

https://forum.polkadot.network/t/an-analysis-of-governance-participation-on-opengov-implementations/10143

Feedback and comments are welcome.