Nine days ago, I asked three specific questions about Kusama’s governance direction and tagged those with direct visibility into the strategic intent. No one has responded.
I want to update the community on why this matters more today than when I posted.
A live example
Referendum 1836 — the PAPI team’s funding proposal on Polkadot — sat at approximately 100% approval with 14.7M DOT in support and near-zero opposition. Every comment on Subsquare is supportive. Teams across the ecosystem — Talisman, XCM tooling developers, wallet builders — endorsed it publicly.
Today, six wallets voted Nay with a combined conviction-weighted total of approximately 131M DOT, dropping approval from ~100% to ~10%.
| Wallets | Balance | Conviction | Weighted Nay |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 addresses | ~43.7M DOT total | All 3x | ~131M DOT |
For context, the entire Aye side represents ~14.7M DOT of conviction-weighted support. One entity, voting across multiple addresses, now controls nine times the voting power of the entire supporting community combined.
What this illustrates
This is not a comment on the merits of the PAPI proposal. Josep’s detailed account speaks for itself. What I want to highlight is the structural implication.
OpenGov was designed so that any token holder can submit proposals and the community decides through weighted voting. In practice, when a single entity holds enough tokens to outweigh the rest of the voting community by an order of magnitude, the system functions as a veto mechanism — regardless of when or how transparently that vote is cast.
This is the same dynamic that shaped Referendum 627 on Kusama. The specific objections differ, the timing differs, but the structural outcome is identical: community consensus overridden by concentrated voting power.
Why this connects to my original questions
If Kusama’s governance direction is being determined by an entity with this degree of influence over OpenGov outcomes — on both chains — then the questions I raised are not abstract:
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Is Kusama governance independent? If the same entity can override community consensus on Polkadot and Kusama simultaneously, the distinction between “independent” and “subsidiary” becomes functional rather than formal.
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Who makes Kusama-specific decisions? WFC 573 envisioned a Kusama that charts its own technical path. But if proposals that differentiate Kusama from Polkadot can be vetoed by an entity whose primary focus is Polkadot, the experimental mandate is constrained by that entity’s preferences.
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What is the point of community engagement? Teams invest months iterating proposals, gathering feedback, and building support — only to have the outcome determined by a single vote that outweighs all other participants combined. The rational response is to seek that entity’s approval in advance, which is precisely what Josep describes being required to do.
The governance question
I want to be clear: large token holders voting is not illegitimate. It is how the system was designed. The question is whether a system where one entity can routinely override broad community consensus is producing the governance outcomes the ecosystem needs.
That is a design question, not a complaint. And it deserves an answer — from the Foundation, from the Fellowship, and from the community.
The silence on my original post suggests the answer may be uncomfortable. I am still asking.