I think you need to be careful with this. Trying to tie governance with other projects can cause issues with market volatility. Also I think being in actual governance such as Algorand’s governance isn’t “passive”. You still have to join, you still have to make a decision else you are dropped. There is something that has to happen to also the position is still liquid the person is actively locking the token.
While I understand 1 algo=1vote makes sense and is the easiest to follow. As for time, I think that(time) is the best standard as it rewards the patient and not the ones looking for right now yield. There is a reason token locking and slashing has been implemented in so many protocols, those willing to take the risk are typically willing to contribute.
I think there are several issues and they need to be laid bare in many systems and talked about:
1Q. Does staking an L0/L1 token really help the core ecosystem? Especially if that core ecosystem is limited by scarcity (Limit of total available tokens and limited to unlocked/unstaked tokens)?
1A. From a L1 perspective you would want that token to be used a lot and traded around a lot. Basically your L1 token would be worth the usefulness of your ecosystem. Locking it away in a staking mechanism while may temporarily increase it’s value. That would be lost if lets say a lot of people just stopped staking and started spending.
2Q. Does TVL really mean have value? What would 10M TVL mean if it never moved or if it only moved during a market crash, like we are experiencing now?
2A. Probably not. That TVL is still locked to the wallet that deposited it so it isn’t going to get used unless it is some sort of AMM. I think being able to move volumes cheaply or provide a unique use case would be better to incentivize over pure $ amount. An example of this is lending collateral. Large TVLs because people are dropping their LPs into the protocol and then borrowing more to get more until they reach a certain point where inevitably a liquidation cascade happens.
3Q. Would it be better to lock a token for a certain amount of time, 2w, 1m, 3m, 6m, 1y, 2y, 4y? Maybe cause slashing?
3A. I think people willing to take a risk is a good thing. Locking for a certain amount of time does provide some stability to the protocol. I think you could possibly build a liquid locked staking mechanism allowing your position to still be liquid. Then falling outside the rules of locking causes you to get slashed.
I think there are a lot of possibilities. As for just owning the coin to gain staking isn’t healthy for the ecosystem. I think offering input into gov similar to now, building new/innovative dapps, time holding/active staking, and producing governance proposals would be a more healthy mechanism. I think you could follow all of the above on chain.