To be honest, I’ve been getting a bit overwhelmed lately reading DAO proposals. Before, I always thought voting was just picking option B or straight up abstaining. But then I realized the incentive structure behind each proposal is actually pretty interesting—plain and simple: whoever is putting real money on the line quietly sees their power grow.

For example, the recent back-and-forth over NFT royalties. On the surface, it’s a fight between creators and secondary-market liquidity. But in the proposal, the way voting power is allocated is more like betting on who has the right to decide whether royalties should be enforced. I dug into it: some proposals set voting thresholds extremely high, which keeps most retail users out. As a result, those whale holders with large governance tokens can easily bend the direction to what they want.

That said, honestly, I haven’t really voted much. First, I’m afraid I won’t understand. Second, I’m afraid that even if I vote, it won’t matter. But occasionally I take a look, and you can feel that those proposals are like little hooks—each one catches different interest groups and pulls them in. Anyway, research is one thing; whether I’ll actually place a vote, we’ll see.