Lately, I’ve been reading a few DAO proposals, and the more I read, the more it feels like I’m dismantling a blind box: on the surface, they say “optimizing incentives,” but underneath, they’re really changing who gets the money and who can decide where the money goes. For example, if voting power is tied too tightly to staking/locking, the result is that “the wealthy have more say,” and they also conveniently raise the cost of casting votes in opposition. In plain terms, it’s a reshuffling of the power structure.

That same “chain game” collapse pattern also looks pretty similar: once inflation shows up, studios flood the market, the token price drops, and no matter how pretty the incentive design is, it can’t withstand the spiral. The DAO side is no different—proposals only talk about “rewarding more participation,” but they don’t say where the rewards come from, when they’ll stop, or who can exit early… I usually start by looking at those small-font details like distribution, unlocks, and voting thresholds.

A colleague also complained the other day: “How is voting like signing a contract of servitude?” After hearing that, I felt it was pretty accurate. That’s it for now.