In the past two days, I’ve seen people again using ETF capital flows and U.S. stock-market risk appetite to explain the ups and downs in crypto prices—like it’s all being tugged by a single line… It sounds smooth, but I’m more concerned about another hidden line: governance tokens—who exactly have they “governed” or affected?

Delegated voting was originally meant to solve the reality that people can’t be bothered to vote, but it’s only getting more and more like oligarchic control. Big holders get votes and delegations, then write rules that benefit themselves even more, while retail investors can at most click “agree” for a sense of participation. If you look at on-chain data long enough, you get that same feeling: lots of activity in terms of addresses, but voting power really belongs to only a few people.

If, back then, everyone cared more about the “concentration of voting power” (a rather boring metric) instead of staring at airdrop expectations every day, many proposals might never even pass. Anyway, when I look at governance projects now, I first check who holds the votes, and then see whether they have any motivation to write you into the charter as something to be harvested… Discipline matters more than excitement.