I just went back to look at a few DAO proposals, and honestly, every time I see those “vote-to-earn” clauses, I get a little worked up. On the surface they talk about community self-governance, but in practice, the distribution of voting power and the incentive structure of the proposals often hide the schemes of the big players.

For example, in some proposals, the voting rewards are directly tied to how much you lock. If you’re a small retail voter, your single vote just can’t compare to what a whale or mining pool account can do. At first, I even foolishly kept refreshing and voting on every proposal, but later I realized it’s better to just look at on-chain data—see who’s laying groundwork early and who’s quietly tweaking the rules.

For the recent incentive round on the testnet, a bunch of people were farming points, and I joined in a bit too, but I’m clear-headed: nobody knows whether the mainnet token launch will happen, so it’s basically just paying tuition. Anyway, my current principle is: only look at the chain, not the emotions. Still, sometimes I get led astray by FOMO—like yesterday, I saw a community say, “Points can be exchanged for an airdrop,” and I went and clicked a vote anyway out of sheer curiosity.

Forget it—if I have to pay tuition, then so be it. At least I might be able to snag a few airdrops from the top 50, haha.