Recently, watching governance voting feels a bit like watching the implied volatility curve of options: on the surface, a lot of people get involved, but in practice the power to decide is often “delegated” to a few big wallets. Put simply, governance tokens may not be governing the protocol parameters—what they’re governing is the allocation of voice. Everyone throws their votes to “active representatives,” which is convenient and there’s nothing wrong with it. But if it goes on for too long, it can easily become oligarchic: eventually, it turns into a few people taking turns to make proposals and endorse each other, while ordinary people are just there to pad the voting turnout.

What’s even more amusing is what’s happening on the macro side: sometimes there are expectations of rate cuts, sometimes the U.S. dollar index shifts, and risk assets move in step—rising and falling together. When sentiment runs hot, governance runs hot too; when sentiment cools down, nobody cares anymore… My approach is: it’s better not to delegate—being non-delegating is better than blind delegation; and if you truly do delegate, then make sure to watch whether the representatives provide ongoing explanations and whether there are conflicts of interest. In any case, don’t just look at their avatars and “contribution scores.”