I just looked at a few DAO proposals, and I didn’t expect the voter turnout to be this low. Some proposals are written in a flashy way—things like “incentives committee power adjustment” and “community governance upgrade.” But when you look closely, it basically means a few big holders want to change the rules so they can get more voting power. The votes that us small retail users cast amount to almost nothing—like it’s the same as not voting at all.

With the recent airdrop season, the “farming the rewards” crowd is grinding as if they’re working a regular job. Points-based systems have become the new game. But to be honest, many projects’ DAO voting mechanisms follow the same logic too: it looks like everyone can participate, but in reality, power is still concentrated in early investors and the core team. A friend of mine said he put in something like a few hundred thousand U in a certain DAO—then after the proposal passed, the reward mechanism got changed, and he ended up losing even more than what he would have gained from the airdrop. The tuition wasn’t wasted—at least I understand now. That kind of “decentralization” sounds nice, but the people who can truly change the rules of the game are still the ones controlling the code and the fund flows behind the scenes. With that time, you’d be better off researching the project’s wallet addresses—see who they’ve been interacting with recently—because that’s more reliable than judging the proposals.