Recently looking at a DAO proposal for a certain protocol, it looks democratic on the surface. But if you dig a little deeper into the incentive and power structure, it gets interesting: the more voting rewards are handed out regularly, the more it feels like they’re effectively “buying” a sense of participation. Meanwhile, small details like the voting threshold, the default value for delegation, and the snapshot timing basically decide “who gets the final say.” To put it bluntly, it’s not that everyone is irrational—rather, the rules raise the cost of acting rationally, so in the end only a small number of people can consistently keep up.

And then there’s that kind of thing where parameter changes are quietly slipped into “routine operations,” and with a bit of “for the community,” it’s easy to get the proposal passed. These days, whenever I see a proposal, I first look for two things: where the money is going to flow, and where the power is going to gather.

In the group these past few days, people have also been circulating rumors about stablecoin regulation, reserve audits, and de-pegging… Once emotions run high, it’s even easier to turn voting into a matter of taking sides. Anyway, I’d rather vote more slowly, and first make sure I fully understand the terms—voting wrong is more awkward than not voting at all.