Why Voting Tokens Are F**king Horrible, And 4 Ways to Fix Them

However, token ownership also keeps out those who may be affected but don’t have the capital for buying tokens—a paradigm that becomes increasingly unjust as decisions made become increasingly consequential. It also creates opportunities for vote buying through unbundling economic interest and governance power, where those who are not personally in... See more

Coin Voting allows token holders to participate in decision-making, but most token holders are not well-known (a result of attracting high-APY token holders). Decentralizing governance was delayed rather than building community. Despite the desire for decentralization (for regulatory, idealistic, or scaleable reasons), new alternatives have emerged... See more

A token in a protocol with coin voting is a bundle of two rights that are combined into a single asset: (i) some kind of economic interest in the protocol's revenue and (ii) the right to participate in governance. This combination is deliberate: the goal is to align power and responsibility. But in fact, these two rights are very easy to unbundle f... See more

Decentralized governance in some contexts is both necessary and dangerous, for reasons that I will get into in this post. How can we get the benefits of DeGov while minimizing the risks? I will argue for one key part of the answer: we need to move beyond coin voting as it exists in its present form.