I’m slightly inclined to think that, in the end, governance tokens are more about “governance whales” than about the governance protocol itself… but I also don’t dare say it as a certainty. The reason is pretty real: as soon as delegated voting becomes available, people outsource their sense of participation. The result is that voting power keeps clustering more and more like an oligarchy. On-chain, you can feel that level of concentration just by looking at a few delegate flows going in the same direction. Proposal discussions are lively and heated—yet when it comes to execution, it’s still those same few addresses that decide.

More subtly, once everyone’s emotions kick in, they treat “the stance I support” as “decentralization.” Put simply, it’s like a mirror ball: once it turns, what you see is only yourself. The recent extreme funding rate episode is the same, too—back in the group chat, people bicker about whether to reverse or keep squeezing the bubble, and I’d rather first check whether perpetual position changes, on-chain net inflows, and whether voting delegations are heating up are moving in sync… when they don’t line up, I remind myself: maybe we’re just telling stories. For now, let’s stop here—better to cast a few fewer votes than to package laziness as faith.