Whenever I hear about gas, I get a headache, but today I want to talk about more than gas—what exactly “governance tokens” are really governing.

I recently looked at the delegated voting data, and wow—those big whales casually post millions of votes. They say “community self-governance” on their mouths, but in reality the little votes from small retail users are basically just there to make up the numbers. Honestly, I’m pretty skeptical. The voting threshold is insanely high. Delegating to giant whales is essentially handing over power to someone else, and nobody even bothers to pay attention to you. Put plainly: governance tokens are now a game for a small number of people, and oligarchization is getting increasingly obvious.

Forget it—speaking plainly: if you and I don’t vote, even if the whales vote, they may not truly care about us. Recently, old players have been telling newcomers not to take the last baton. That feels applicable too—attention has shifted to the whole “meme coins” or celebrity call-in the shots routine. Governance has been crowded out by something more “trendy,” and it’s basically gone quiet.

As for me, I’m just browsing the new L2’s testnet these days, and using the opportunity to run a governance experiment with cheaper gas. That’s it for now—stingy, but curious.