The more I’ve been looking at the governance votes of a few projects lately, the more it feels like “handing your breakfast voucher to a roommate to claim it on your behalf”… Delegated voting is supposed to save you time and effort, but the person you delegate to just keeps getting more and more skilled at it—so in the end, who does the cafeteria actually listen to? To put it bluntly, governance tokens often don’t end up governing the “community.” They’re usually controlled by a few big holders who can mobilize vote banks and, as a bonus, influence expectations for funding-rate moves. If you don’t vote, it’s basically giving default authorization to the person who’s best at arguing and causing a scene. That’s pretty unsettling.

That whole round of shouting matches about NFT royalties also feels similar. Creators want “a little something—some butter—every time it changes hands,” while trading markets complain that you’re adding too much and that makes the asset harder to sell. Governance works the same way: sure, the rules may be written on-chain, but whoever has liquidity and whoever can rally votes ends up looking like they’re the one writing the menu. Anyway, whenever I see “delegated to so-and-so representative,” I can’t help thinking: does this representative speak for me, or for themselves… We’ll talk about it next time.