Lately I've been looking at governance votes on several protocols, and the more I look, the more it seems like "delegated voting"—how to discourage retail investors: you think handing over your vote is participating in governance, but honestly, it's more like handing the steering wheel to a few large wallets or institutional representatives. In the end, who actually controls the governance tokens? You probably have a rough idea. On-chain data is quite honest; the proposal discussion areas are lively, but the votes that can really change the rules are basically just a handful of players going back and forth.

But I can't say it’s set in stone; delegation was originally for efficiency, and no one can watch proposals every day. The problem is, after power becomes concentrated, many decisions tend to automatically favor "maintaining the current players' profits." For example, recently retail investors have been complaining about validator income, MEV, and transaction ordering fairness. After arguing for a while, the changes that can be pushed often depend on whether the same group of people give the nod... Anyway, when I look at governance now, I first check the voting concentration and delegation flow, then see how the narrative is packaged, and finally look at how well the proposals are written.