Gardens vs veDelegate: community voting or VeChain rewards?

Gardens and veDelegate both sit in governance incentives, but they address different needs. Gardens gives communities tools to decide how shared funds are spent. Its conviction voting lets support build over time, and its proposal types cover grants, signaling and ongoing payouts. The app is deployed across seven networks. veDelegate is designed for the VeChain ecosystem: users stake B3TR or VET, while the service handles weekly VeBetterDAO voting and reward claiming and re-staking. It operates on one chain and is not a general-purpose community treasury tool. In short, Gardens is about collective decisions and funding; veDelegate is about automating an individual’s participation in a particular voting-reward system.

Neither project publishes a fee schedule, so there is no published basis for saying one is cheaper. Gardens users should expect normal gas costs on the chain where their community pool operates. The listed networks include Gnosis, Base and Optimism, as well as Ethereum and others; transaction costs can differ by network, but specific amounts are not published. veDelegate users should also expect ordinary VeChain transaction costs when staking or withdrawing. Its service fee, including whether it takes a share of voting rewards, is not published. Check the app for any displayed charges before approving a transaction. If knowing the service commission in advance is essential, neither project currently provides a published fee schedule to compare.

The clearest difference in published security information is that veDelegate has two audits listed, with Hacken audits referenced from March 2025. The audit reports and their scope are not available here, so the listings should not be treated as a guarantee. Gardens has no audits listed, and the project does not confirm a security review. This matters because Gardens pools can hold community funds, while veDelegate users stake assets through smart contracts and rely on the service to vote and claim correctly. veDelegate also has a recovery tool for scanning owned pools and retrieving assets, which provides a fallback route but does not remove contract risk. Both remain exposed to smart-contract issues; review the relevant terms and use caution with funds.

Gardens has the broader feature set for groups: conviction voting, an enforceable Covenant, several proposal formats, community creation and public grant tracking. Its TVL is about $71,000, and its ease-of-use score is 6/10. The voting model may take time to understand and can be slow to reach a decision. veDelegate is more focused and scored 7.5/10 for ease of use. It automates weekly voting and reward actions, and its recovery tool can help users retrieve assets from owned pools. Its TVL is about $767,000, though it remains tied to a single ecosystem. Neither has a listed project token. The better fit depends less on feature count than on whether you need community funding decisions or a simpler way to participate in VeBetterDAO.