I looked through a DAO voting proposal today, and the more I read it, the more I feel like this whole thing isn’t that mysterious. How voting power is allocated, how much reward the people in the proposal receive—put simply, it comes down to who’s in control and who gets the benefits. I’m still not even good at drawing charts, so when I saw those voting thresholds and incentive curves, my first reaction was: doesn’t this feel a bit like the recent concepts of “social mining” and “attention is mining”? If voting power is controlled by whales, then for ordinary people, casting a vote just amounts to voting into thin air. In any case, the lesson I learned is this: first look at the incentive structure in the proposal—whether it’s designed to “let more people share the pie,” or “add extra food for a few.” If you can’t understand the structure, don’t vote blindly. I take complexity as the enemy, and I’ll simplify it into one sentence: whoever designed the rules controls the power. I’m logging this pitfall so that, after you’ve read it, maybe you can pay less tuition.