The Equitable Token Merger
Decentralised governance is a sensitive and unexplored topic of technology, yet many of the current instances slack at the core upon closer examination. This blog acts as a medium for thought on the many instances and experiments of governance in the field of web3.
It is recommended readers compliment each edition with a soothing hot cup of tea of their preference, as the road ahead is dark, uneven, and cold.
Acquisitions are nothing new, still in of themselves require nurturing with - time, capital, and compliance. Dealt in the private domain, shareholders fit the demographic of investor or employee and authority is hierarchical. These actors shape the nature of the deal relative to the counterparty, transferring all rights for monetary gain. Where there were companies, there are now protocols.
Some “fat” facilitate a data layer, others more “thin” populate an application layer within, as described in the fat protocol thesis. The stakeholders in these systems differ, fat protocols rely on nodes to process and constitute the validity of network actions derived from the underlying consensus algorithm. Thin protocols tend to define contributors via a native “token”, often streamlined as incentives to bootstrap participation and contribution, allocating governing power to users and actors alike. These share the topology of a flat organisation, where no mere actor is more significant than the other.
It is common for thin protocols to use a weighted voting model, which has the potential for such structure but only if distributed equitably, if not hierarchies can form. Consensus is sufficiently achieved through fulfilling quorum, which more than often can be a low value to strafe from poor voter turnouts. Fat protocol consensus mechanisms differ in each instance, the native “coin” commonly upholds no authority but the resource committed to secure the network does. An example being Bitcoin’s Proof of Work (PoW), where computational power secures and directs the longevity of the network. Other models like Proof of Stake (PoS) function through a consortium model, where each peer stakes a constant denomination of the native asset. Consensus in each instance is enforced through Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT), and in the presence of foul play, adversaries are exonerated at the cost of their commitment.
Legacy organisations regardless of their top-down formation, exemplify some autonomy in the early stages but eventually diminish upon scaling to corporates. Evaluations either public or private, are derived from an entity’s revenue streams, employee count, share float, and presence. The economics and voting dynamics of company shares, rarely refract from the dividend and weighted model, retaining benchmarks of this asset class consistent. Aspects of which can be abstracted to decentralised protocols, but for the most part are inadequate quantifications of relative value. Native assets across thin and fat protocols, drastically diverge in their economics, utility, and authority.
Publicly traded assets throughout their lifetimes can inhibit value accrual from speculation which can be fuelled by economical theory, but more often roots from social sentiments. Arguing that an asset’s “value” is derived from the free market alone, disregards all qualitative reasoning and is susceptible to market manipulation.
if markets reward coercion one should avoid thinking about price as a proxy for success
- sacha saint-leger🎗 (@ssaintleger)
That said, how can one approach deriving relative value across these cooperatives of open collaboration, we know that governance is a necessity at the core of any form of coordination. While monetised votes have always been controversial to the architecture of a governing body, it is nothing new in the world of capitalism. In 1946, a revelation to governance and game theory was formalised by Lionel Penrose. This was then applied upon by John F. Banzhaf the third, to create a methodology distinguishing the probability of a singular actor i
in a set of n
voters that could skew the outcome of a ballot, known as the Banzhaf power index.
On the 8th of November 2021, discussions were unveiled across the public discourses of Gnosis and xDAI about a potential merger authored by the internal management of each organisation. The basis point for this benchmark relied on 14-day time-weighted average price queries to central markets to compute a pre-defined exchange rate, which was criticised because of GNO’s recent all-time highs in the market versus STAKE’s lows. It was retracted for a model with a multiplier which had more acceptance. A month later, the ballots were live and coordinated through the vote signalling solution Snapshot, enforced with no quorum.
As we walk into a new era of commoditisation and public goods, open initiatives are not refrained by the shackles of top-down droit. Therefore, all acts of founder interaction should digress from conflicts of interest.
For the sake of simplicity, this analysis only constitutes the top 100 EOAs (including multisigs) of a circulating supply and the remainder being represented as a singular coalition representing all minor actors for each distribution. This data concerns the timeline precedent to 16-12-2021, and was sourced from Etherscan, Blockscout, and using a custom BigQuery script to derive STAKE holdings converted to GNO. View the raw data, calculations, and charts here.
xDAI
One of the first tangible scaling solutions presented to Ethereum, one that did not wish to compete but instead foster the components of its parent network to help negate transactional costs. Achieved through specifying the base currency with the stablecoin DAI, through bridging it from Ethereum. Originally conceptualised as a Proof of Authority (POA) test network for developers, xDAI blossomed into a landscape for creatives and experiments. Incubating innovations such as the real-time zkSNARK strategy game Dark forest, Omnibridge, and the xDAI bridge providing cross-chain solutions with swift finality. Like any iterations today, are facilitated by multi-signature wallets.
The project eventually pivoted to a Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) consensus algorithm through issuance and application of the STAKE token. The core utility being its affordance in consensus but also was preached as a governance token. Although when a multisig wallet manages the protocols treasury, it exerts doubts about the governance capacity of the token itself. While Snapshot is a useful tool for mitigating financial costs to partake in governance, it still is a system that depends on the assumption of trust between voters and executors to follow through on the underlying decisions polled. It is an ongoing issue with the widespread adoption of this tooling, let alone the theatre that is usually tallied with it.
It is becoming the norm to hold all ballots through this method begging critical inquiry. Context is important, states of criticality or contentiousness should be balloted on-chain. Furthermore, one should ask, what if the topic is contradictory to such executors - there is no backstop to prevent disobedience nor does a Snapshot poll verify prolonged commitments to any ballot, as it is merely a photograph of balances at a select block height. Hypothetically, if orchestrated subtly, an adversary with insider knowledge could purchase voting power prior to a proposal and then liquidate upon voting, reducing price exposure.
While STAKE has pockets of concentration, it is impressive in such a loose analysis to uncover that when the minor actors are aggregated, they act as the second-largest body. It is apparent that this asset’s demographic is vast, as precedent to the buyout it was diversified through a merger with POA network. Consensus here is defined at 51% amongst all participants, as it would be in BFT. There are over 19 different elected cohorts facilitating the role of validators on the network, which one could argue is an improvement in comparison to some larger-scale networks with fewer nodes.
Address | STAKE | Banzhaf Index |
---|---|---|
0x5e…6ad7 | 1372626 | 0.2444441863631056 |
REMAINING | 1165637 | 0.1425486309512017 |
0xe9…241a | 378916 | 0.11162407310432244 |
0x48…170d | 193980 | 0.04764046071842599 |
0x96…4b59 | 191899 | 0.04710927926530592 |
0xb0…84af | 138356 | 0.033634227664410724 |
0xd1…6d2c | 131594 | 0.0319518370363876 |
0xa9…22ba | 121977 | 0.029569718758782004 |
0x26…c81d | 74997 | 0.018069970555026467 |
0x14…e68a | 50387 | 0.012118857528735977 |
0x24…55b9 | 47314 | 0.011377663546395638 |
0x2c…7e55 | 46229 | 0.011116060497923111 |
0x86…40f9 | 43978 | 0.0105734750362733 |
0x64…e879 | 42382 | 0.010188891027342429 |
0x00…05fa | 40000 | 0.009615082184289463 |
0x1c…a0e2 | 39346 | 0.009457573205846137 |
0x32…c5c6 | 37464 | 0.009004395504897542 |
0xe1…bd6e | 32723 | 0.007863290142249136 |
0x0d…92fe | 31323 | 0.007526454959667192 |
0x9f…aec4 | 30098 | 0.0072317690201023094 |
0x28…5ed1 | 25697 | 0.006173384591246561 |
0x18…bc1e | 24865 | 0.005973351324965386 |
0xef…f8db | 24466 | 0.005877427384666152 |
0x5d…413a | 23784 | 0.005713475175518873 |
0xbc…5ca1 | 21269 | 0.005108954441632169 |
0x3e…03ba | 20996 | 0.005043341972182873 |
0xbe…950a | 20100 | 0.004828008198809365 |
0x16…1d0d | 18568 | 0.004459858915724145 |
0x34…12f7 | 18009 | 0.004325537540373836 |
0x0a…c6fb | 17258 | 0.004145088619893044 |
0x45…0162 | 17256 | 0.004144608075286944 |
0x67…521b | 16865 | 0.0040506627799887255 |
0xad…dce9 | 15487 | 0.0037195896903293797 |
0x9c…91b1 | 14454 | 0.0034714223575922462 |
0x64…3ed3 | 14157 | 0.0034000738402902336 |
0x32…ee6b | 13127 | 0.003152644717154841 |
0xf9…080a | 12758 | 0.0030640057118445055 |
0x44…8cf9 | 11711 | 0.002812509844398831 |
0x70…41c7 | 11137 | 0.002674636433708613 |
0x34…6ece | 10461 | 0.002512267062842477 |
0xe9…1cb0 | 10292 | 0.0024716753985762185 |
0x02…246e | 10201 | 0.002449818457696532 |
0x4f…98c1 | 10018 | 0.0024058646177008 |
0x19…ecf0 | 10006 | 0.0024029824092218492 |
0x65…9d6b | 10001 | 0.0024017814894025163 |
0xb0…effc | 10000 | 0.0024015413054654733 |
0xe8…d8a6 | 10000 | 0.0024015413054654733 |
0xee…9131 | 10000 | 0.0024015413054654733 |
0xf8…b52a | 9981 | 0.0023969778123590748 |
0x4b…4c9c | 9975 | 0.0023955367099422966 |
0x7c…d7d6 | 9874 | 0.0023712782006223318 |
0xb5…d125 | 9586 | 0.0023021059128831996 |
0x90…986f | 9208 | 0.0022113183605104044 |
0xfe…1ffb | 9000 | 0.002161361693591051 |
0xf6…2da7 | 8878 | 0.002132060349511339 |
0xdc…ed97 | 8704 | 0.002090270111946481 |
0xe1…0f53 | 8527 | 0.0020477595947344463 |
0xbb…6dc4 | 8517 | 0.002045357877772434 |
0x46…e642 | 8454 | 0.0020302270783846246 |
0xc3…3443 | 8275 | 0.00198723655736115 |
0x05…ba39 | 8117 | 0.0019492898141427134 |
0xe3…6cac | 8003 | 0.0019219106311174083 |
0x25…5ec3 | 7942 | 0.001907260404790542 |
0x83…d483 | 7705 | 0.0018503409218864973 |
0x0b…6601 | 7685 | 0.0018455376078661094 |
0x26…916b | 7683 | 0.0018450572766153482 |
0x45…be99 | 7631 | 0.00183256867371887 |
0xf3…090d | 7604 | 0.001826084214114598 |
0x17…dcdf | 7533 | 0.0018090325106134763 |
0x89…c181 | 7149 | 0.0017168097930337818 |
0x14…23d9 | 6834 | 0.0016411590509800296 |
0x91…678b | 6792 | 0.001631072331791892 |
0x16…6476 | 6629 | 0.001591926355801861 |
0x0c…27e7 | 6625 | 0.0015909657203497336 |
0xf0…e88b | 6437 | 0.0015458159600184956 |
0xa2…5169 | 6354 | 0.0015258828862300077 |
0x6d…39e0 | 6274 | 0.0015066703220361216 |
0x22…b9ff | 6244 | 0.0014994656197441839 |
0x44…e480 | 6073 | 0.00145839891190472 |
0xb8…4901 | 6022 | 0.0014461509773511922 |
0x79…e902 | 5997 | 0.0014401470929868562 |
0xdb…4298 | 5954 | 0.001429820419711905 |
0x4b…f762 | 5690 | 0.0013664196619794862 |
0x4d…3591 | 5595 | 0.001343605082989271 |
0xb8…1850 | 5567 | 0.0013368807946730257 |
0x7b…f7a1 | 5394 | 0.001295334384800477 |
0x70…3310 | 5325 | 0.0012787638919104724 |
0x4e…b6ed | 5297 | 0.001272039640408809 |
0x01…09ef | 5284 | 0.0012689176677607784 |
0xe4…2431 | 5261 | 0.0012633941796460321 |
0x43…5e5f | 5001 | 0.0012009549192554467 |
0xed…66c1 | 5000 | 0.0012007147688475905 |
0x3a…e43c | 4971 | 0.00119375040896099 |
0x15…4924 | 4881 | 0.0011721369019841183 |
0xbd…85a0 | 4653 | 0.0011173828410420876 |
0xfb…c4bc | 4466 | 0.001072475067013981 |
0xb5…2bbf | 4302 | 0.001033090824181557 |
0xde…4821 | 4111 | 0.00098722272029753 |
0xa9…1959 | 4000 | 0.0009605664496889018 |
Computing the power distributions shows us that the largest singular actor is actually the treasury (as expected), as it is internally managed through a multisig, therefore, isn’t a piece of infrastructure. The disparity between the top 3 actors and the remainder seems equitable at first glance but is diminished by the restraints of computing the Banzhaf power index for large n
player finite games, and the attempt to negate this by clustering all minor actors into a singular coalition.
When we look into the specifics of the proposal, that dictated the future of the network, it seems the turnout wasn’t quite what is deemed as consensus in distributed systems. According to the xDAI proposal; a total of 1,210,318 STAKE out of the circulating amount of 4,991,236 STAKE was only cast to the ballot. A ratio of 1:2.1 to the quorum, which is quite the divergence.
On light inspection three addresses stand out in this demographic, the major actor 0xe96…0d12 was delegated weights from the multisig address 0xbc…26bb that has direct association to the Gnosis partnership with xDAI and provided the majority of liquidity to GNO/STAKE Uniswap V3 pool. Then 0xFe…b7F4 that purchased approximately $425,000 of STAKE and 0x454…be99 that bought $100,000 a day before the ballot went live.
Not that any of these actions are unethical, this is just the nature of monetised voting but it does show us the sheer influence the counterparty had. From these three addresses alone, they held approximately 30% of all voting weight in the ballot, and this is without a thorough analysis of all actors. The fact that this proposal did not adhere to the standards of fat protocol consensus is a matter of concern.
Gnosis
The owls are not what they seem, some say. Gnosis, originally a prediction market on Ethereum, incepted amidst the gold rush of 2017 and catalysed from a “poorly designed” Dutch auction where 95% of the supply was retained by the internal players. From day one, with 250,000 ETH raised it was a behemoth. Although that amount is measly today compared to the many wallets that Gnosis operates from serial investing and trading - with, of course, the money raised that was supposed to build out a protocol of value. While the premise of prediction markets was endorsed as revolutionary back in the dissonance of 2017, we know today that this was a fallow statement - from an inability to capture traction, the concept being subject to regulatory scrutiny and the delusion of futarchy having extensive benefits to a governing body (more on that later).
Gnosis Ltd, knew this all too well as overcast foreshadowed the markets and eventually were criticised. They quickly pivoted and found their niche in bringing open-source tooling to Ethereum, notably of which was multi-signature wallets. An essential form of tooling to mitigate risk in fund management. The accessibility granted through developing and publicising such tooling has had immense benefits for individuals and open organisations. The question still remained of their token utility, and still seemed to be an ongoing narrative up until the acquisition.
While we could talk all day about the many ventures Gnosis ignited, whether successful or failures, for internal financial gain or public goods. It is worthy to note their resilience. Furthermore, while the organisational structure is less like a protocol and more like a corporation, let’s investigate how their journey towards decentralisation is going.
We see a relatively similar topology to xDAI’s stakeholders, the contrast being the remaining minor coalition is only the 5th largest and versus contracts (which is outside the scope of this analysis), are approximately 30% more concentrated. Where quorum is defined at 51%, as if we were to use gnosis’s own value at 4% - it would be infeasible to compute the index due to probability constraints.
Address | GNO | Banzhaf Index |
---|---|---|
0x2e…6a13 | 282543 | 0.31079299006291866 |
0x9d…53d5 | 133364 | 0.07898748651781151 |
0xaf…c0d6 | 75000 | 0.05124487198407653 |
0xfc…a2e8 | 71618 | 0.04897624251003832 |
REMAINING | 66750 | 0.04568859217933548 |
0xa4…46c1 | 50251 | 0.03448033366956244 |
0x1d…a341 | 50001 | 0.034309766469972795 |
0xad…76e3 | 41168 | 0.02827310059328169 |
0x62…3112 | 38438 | 0.026404028670435904 |
0x97…a73b | 38230 | 0.02626156728736583 |
0xae…d7a9 | 34951 | 0.024014807533713222 |
0xfe…b7f4 | 31224 | 0.021459052732673515 |
0x2d…5cdd | 26999 | 0.018559628052894864 |
0xb1…c269 | 25000 | 0.01718711058280377 |
0x39…ebdf | 23928 | 0.01645090864231301 |
0xe9…40e8 | 19562 | 0.013451479099828452 |
0x9e…ca61 | 16627 | 0.011434344111027056 |
0xbc…26bb | 16591 | 0.011409598867211022 |
0xde…6870 | 13779 | 0.00947649192556307 |
0xfb…bb98 | 13492 | 0.009279170462733315 |
0x94…a3a3 | 13018 | 0.008953271939631054 |
0x95…1dc3 | 11857 | 0.008154983270337854 |
0x57…593e | 11111 | 0.007642012773520306 |
0xf5…2764 | 10000 | 0.006878017735743157 |
0xa8…0bb6 | 9320 | 0.006410384125780234 |
0x40…3ddd | 7756 | 0.005334770954634757 |
0x55…f224 | 6955 | 0.004783870788886505 |
0x7d…41b4 | 6103 | 0.004197877469347734 |
0x28…1d60 | 6016 | 0.004138039215161724 |
0x41…4c6b | 5946 | 0.004089893377794901 |
0x53…efc4 | 5942 | 0.004087142184002658 |
0x8f…3b0c | 5797 | 0.0039874111866138725 |
0x49…9ec6 | 5680 | 0.003906938277956872 |
0x29…0858 | 5000 | 0.003439227290678738 |
0xe3…0e18 | 4691 | 0.003226691185925732 |
0x0c…56ec | 4665 | 0.003208807816477484 |
0x81…f1e1 | 4392 | 0.003021031785892139 |
0x67…1c87 | 4379 | 0.0030120900411596306 |
0x00…0497 | 4207 | 0.0028937836404990076 |
0xf0…8461 | 3922 | 0.002697751741029259 |
0x75…8608 | 3557 | 0.0024466917361390915 |
0xec…63fb | 3537 | 0.0024329349743849983 |
0x44…2a3f | 3502 | 0.0024088606294971077 |
0x46…26e9 | 3479 | 0.002393040337584361 |
0x64…e5f1 | 3414 | 0.0023483307825139083 |
0xcd…944e | 3408 | 0.0023442037441190728 |
0x55…da65 | 3330 | 0.0022905522064550965 |
0x7d…9530 | 3116 | 0.0021433540413478285 |
0x42…c62f | 3042 | 0.0020924536241649673 |
0xea…b9a4 | 3013 | 0.00207250614751555 |
0x1f…2aef | 2922 | 0.002009912284721754 |
0x5d…6905 | 2896 | 0.001992028308371022 |
0x49…e462 | 2891 | 0.001988589081368263 |
0xfe…ab3e | 2722 | 0.0018723430638347715 |
0xdd…3544 | 2455 | 0.0016886875694740904 |
0xce…250a | 2446 | 0.001682496923875317 |
0x57…a4a2 | 2382 | 0.0016384745354854299 |
0x39…04f7 | 2104 | 0.0014472519046249308 |
0xf5…dcb3 | 2038 | 0.0014018536403934995 |
0x12…8034 | 1991 | 0.001369524554601292 |
0xa4…8aa9 | 1989 | 0.001368148848481798 |
0x22…cb32 | 1947 | 0.0013392590136376353 |
0x12…109c | 1731 | 0.0011906825375149863 |
0x08…9ffb | 1660 | 0.0011418448366306796 |
0xee…a1e5 | 1605 | 0.001104012794799654 |
0x90…de31 | 1598 | 0.001099197806437207 |
0x65…e6b2 | 1513 | 0.0010407300692846717 |
0xd0…549d | 1508 | 0.0010372907894268864 |
0xb0…00ec | 1424 | 0.0009795108686037708 |
0xe5…c948 | 1411 | 0.0009705687348340199 |
0x74…c129 | 1384 | 0.0009519966082164706 |
0x70…87dc | 1369 | 0.0009416787585790292 |
0x7c…55cb | 1321 | 0.0009086616326170941 |
0xe6…8ac1 | 1309 | 0.0009004073494621078 |
0xed…c15e | 1228 | 0.0008446909213655568 |
0x5f…9bef | 1219 | 0.0008385002053739057 |
0x18…b73a | 1205 | 0.0008288702020404591 |
0xf7…08a2 | 1200 | 0.0008254309149366431 |
0xd4…9988 | 1147 | 0.0007889744653245416 |
0x1d…b9fe | 1093 | 0.000751830146683271 |
0x8f…0ec3 | 1039 | 0.0007146858169883382 |
0x8a…fa6f | 1026 | 0.0007057436619533626 |
0x00…78d8 | 1005 | 0.0006912986410144979 |
0x10…48b9 | 997 | 0.0006857957754888846 |
0xb8…f2c9 | 980 | 0.0006741021855144276 |
0x00…cff3 | 966 | 0.0006644721695030913 |
0x05…fb7d | 964 | 0.0006630964528762203 |
0x24…8e66 | 957 | 0.0006582814445770462 |
0xea…ec99 | 953 | 0.0006555300111901419 |
0xe9…837b | 866 | 0.0005956863223222633 |
0x1f…109b | 864 | 0.0005943106050607677 |
0xf7…4d0c | 836 | 0.0005750505621540512 |
With observation to the remaining minor coalitions across both power distributions, GNO’s minors have approximately 80% less influence in the system compared to STAKE. This value may be saturated due to the discrepancy in computing large finite games, and grouping all minor actors to negate this. Furthermore, if we were to assume that there is a commonality amongst a selection of actors in the demographic; such as multisig addresses with a majority holding in GNO, a different picture emerges.
Address | GNO | Banzhaf Index |
---|---|---|
MULTISIGS W/ GNO | 879464 | 1 |
REMAINING | 66750 | 0 |
0xae…d7a9 | 34951 | 0 |
0xfe…b7f4 | 31224 | 0 |
0x2d…5cdd | 26999 | 0 |
0x39…ebdf | 23928 | 0 |
0xbc…26bb | 16591 | 0 |
0xde…6870 | 13779 | 0 |
0xfb…bb98 | 13492 | 0 |
0x94…a3a3 | 13018 | 0 |
0xf5…2764 | 10000 | 0 |
0xa8…0bb6 | 9320 | 0 |
0x40…3ddd | 7756 | 0 |
0x55…f224 | 6955 | 0 |
0x7d…41b4 | 6103 | 0 |
0x28…1d60 | 6016 | 0 |
0x41…4c6b | 5946 | 0 |
0x53…efc4 | 5942 | 0 |
0x8f…3b0c | 5797 | 0 |
0x49…9ec6 | 5680 | 0 |
0x29…0858 | 5000 | 0 |
0xe3…0e18 | 4691 | 0 |
0x0c…56ec | 4665 | 0 |
0x81…f1e1 | 4392 | 0 |
0x67…1c87 | 4379 | 0 |
0x00…0497 | 4207 | 0 |
0xf0…8461 | 3922 | 0 |
0x75…8608 | 3557 | 0 |
0xec…63fb | 3537 | 0 |
0x44…2a3f | 3502 | 0 |
0x46…26e9 | 3479 | 0 |
0x64…e5f1 | 3414 | 0 |
0xcd…944e | 3408 | 0 |
0x55…da65 | 3330 | 0 |
0x1f…2aef | 2922 | 0 |
0x5d…6905 | 2896 | 0 |
0x49…e462 | 2891 | 0 |
0xfe…ab3e | 2722 | 0 |
0xdd…3544 | 2455 | 0 |
0xce…250a | 2446 | 0 |
0x57…a4a2 | 2382 | 0 |
0x39…04f7 | 2104 | 0 |
0xf5…dcb3 | 2038 | 0 |
0x12…8034 | 1991 | 0 |
0xa4…8aa9 | 1989 | 0 |
0x22…cb32 | 1947 | 0 |
0x12…109c | 1731 | 0 |
0x08…9ffb | 1660 | 0 |
0xee…a1e5 | 1605 | 0 |
0x65…e6b2 | 1513 | 0 |
0xd0…549d | 1508 | 0 |
0xb0…00ec | 1424 | 0 |
0x74…c129 | 1384 | 0 |
0x70…87dc | 1369 | 0 |
0x7c…55cb | 1321 | 0 |
0xed…c15e | 1228 | 0 |
0x5f…9bef | 1219 | 0 |
0xf7…08a2 | 1200 | 0 |
0xd4…9988 | 1147 | 0 |
0x1d…b9fe | 1093 | 0 |
0x8f…0ec3 | 1039 | 0 |
0x8a…fa6f | 1026 | 0 |
0x00…78d8 | 1005 | 0 |
0x10…48b9 | 997 | 0 |
0xb8…f2c9 | 980 | 0 |
0x00…cff3 | 966 | 0 |
0x05…fb7d | 964 | 0 |
0x24…8e66 | 957 | 0 |
0xea…ec99 | 953 | 0 |
0xe9…837b | 866 | 0 |
0x1f…109b | 864 | 0 |
0xf7…4d0c | 836 | 0 |
What we see above is this assumed profiled coalition holding all governing power, and every other actor being disenfranchised or more commonly defined as dummy candidates. It goes without mentioning, that this benchmark does not include the unallocated supply that Gnosis Ltd still manages with no strategic plan how to distribute for an equitable governance landscape. Only recently, did they launch “GnosisDAO” which is in fact, yes you guessed right - a multisig. Not only does this constitute the means that GNO is not a governance token at the time of writing but if it was, it would be anything but democratic, one could even argue a dictatorship.
Conclusion
Protocols architected poorly set a bad precedent and standards for the industry, they are paradoxical to the true means of distributed systems and attempt to cash in on the value provided from so. Individual sovereignty is not only compromised but non-existent. These systems should not be designed in the faith of prolific actors, they should be equitable and diverse, or else they are just reflections of the inequitable societal structures we all know too well.
Decentralised autonomous organisations at scale are not multi-signature wallets, they are smart contracts directly governed by all stakeholders. This opens the field to many possibilities and potential attack vectors, yet the benefits of doing so far extend that of a conglomerate. They are agile and open to all actors. Furthermore, open organisations should have robust policies to define consensus providing defence from external; or case in point, internal exploitation.
Huge thanks to Dennis Leech, Professor of Economics at Warick University for his research in deriving more effective computations of power indices, Ruben R. Puentedura who formalised the theory into a python script and Heinrich Hartmann optimising the algorithm with vectorisation. I hope to contribute to this field myself as this blog progresses, upon realising the potential application of parallel programming.