Manage Polkadot more like a corporation, decentralised corporate -like why not?

Governance
, ,
1

Polkadot OpenGov,Current state of affairs:

constant centralisation of power

Polkadot has always had, through OpenGov, a centralisation of power driven by several factors.Fragmentation of proposals:

At the beginning, we had thousands of votes to cast on tiny things and it was extremely time-consuming.This had the effect of discouraging small holders because of the amount of time required.

As a result, whales gained more power because not voting is itself a form of voting in favour of those who vote in large numbers.To counter this, we introduced delegations and delegated validators (DVs), but the same problem appeared: centralisation of power + excessive rewards for certain people.

To save the ship, the Web3 Foundation is now taking back control and positioning itself against DVs — which is a good thing, but it still represents yet another form of centralisation.I love Polkadot but this has to stop.

I only see two things that could fix this:

1/ Make voting free — it makes no sense to pay transaction fees while also wasting huge amounts of lifetime reviewing thousands of proposals.And offer compensation to those who actually vote: we need to incentivise participation, otherwise power will never become distributed (As already mentioned: an annual voting reward for participating holders — this encourages both voting and holding over the year, and it aligns perfectly with what comes next.)

Expected effect:

Better participation from holders, fragmentation / distribution of power, and encouragement to hold.

2/ Drastically reduce the number of votes.

Enough with votes on every minor nonsense topic accompanied by huge rewards and why don’t we manage Polkadot more like a corporation, where holders are shareholders who vote every year to re-elect or replace directors?

Yes, some people who love being in the spotlight will scream, and no, this is not centralisation — it’s decentralisation with a clear, transparent structure where holders are decision-making shareholders proportional to their stake.

For example:

We could vote to hire a director, recruit based on CV, vote on their budget, give them clear objectives, and evaluate their performance at the end of the year to decide whether to keep or replace them.We could have 2–3 directors depending on the areas to manage.

Gavin, you could be the Technical Director focused on research & technical development of everything being built, because you’re a true professional at what you do.

We could have a Director of Marketing / University / Ecosystem Growth.

I love Polkadot and it frustrates me to see that, in the community, some people get to feel important without having the actual skills — community management has been a failure.

In my opinion, what’s missing is what makes any project successful:

Rigour, organisation, professionalism, clear objectives.

Expected effect:

Much lighter proposal load: we vote to hire a director and approve their budget.

Reduction in proposal fragmentation thanks to clear organisation and by hiring real professionals in their respective fields to succeed in those fields.

In conclusion

In my view — laugh at me if you want — this would greatly improve things without sacrificing decentralisation. Quite the opposite: structured decentralisation is something that still needs to be invented.

What do you think ?

2

Good in theory but poor in practice. I’ve had the same thought myself when I was on about working groups and collectives a few years back.

The problem is everyone becomes your boss. Think about what it must be like working at parity. You have all the normal work BS that everyone deals with everywhere but you also have this added layer of random first post alt account people screaming at [insert random employee] based on something that probably wasn’t even their role or decision in the first place. Then, who do you listen to? Which random alt accounts actually know what they’re talking about and which are from borderline functional people?

For example, I could say I have xyz experience but how do you know I actually had that experience? It’s this weird work dynamic, low / no trust environment, and a lack of verifiable credentials that lead to a lot of problems. That, coupled with an open system where anyone can come participate and it’s a recipe for what we’ve had so far.

On top of this add in the fact that small groups tend to increase pressure to conform and typically result in exit / expulsion of dissenters – it’s another recipe for disaster. For example, if on the fellowship, gav signals on an RFC, it would alter how others in the fellowship view, approach, comment/respond to that RFC. It would increase the social pressure of others to conform and dissent would be less likely and more negatively reacted to.

It’s not just about making decisions. We can have a benevolent dictator (which would probably be best for the network right now) and get tons of decisions made and have a direction known. But that doesn’t create the systems and processes that are needed for it to become autonomous – you’d be forever relying on some benevolent dictator.

So, you have things like the staking dashboard for instance – I think it’s the most useless thing ever – Other people disagree. How do you make decisions on highly subjective things? I could show how it’s not really in the road map and is completely superfluous. But beyond that, it’s subjective.

1 Like
3

Another problem with the current structure is the absence of accountability. In a clear hierarchy, it is regulated who is responsible for what. In the event of failure, the person responsible must be replaced. None of this is currently the case.

On the contrary, Gavin is treated by his lackeys as a kind of religious leader, even though he is not a leader and does not want to be one. So he transferred responsibility to sycophants, who in turn also want nothing to do with this responsibility and blame the community for everything, which is of course nonsense, because the community has by far the least influence on what is happening.

It is clearly an internal problem, and the first step is to clean up the current leadership.

4

That’s true, you’re right.

Anyway, OpenGov is a failure because it lacks clear structure and organization.

It’s impossible for Polkadot to work without structure; indeed, the point raised about “everyone is your boss” is a real problem.

I also think it’s a false problem because:

The structure can create a noisy space where the community expresses itself to debate objectives—this is the current mess of OpenGov—and where we could have some kind of referent, a VOLUNTEER spokesperson. Gavin, that should be you to give instructions.

Like boards of directors, which is what happens in big companies.

Plus, with annual objectives, it makes things simpler.

Very sincerely and between us, Polkadot could be a model for managing a corporation or decentralized company.

I’m just throwing out ideas without blinders to the current issues, and the DV program was a serious mistake: giving power like that for free without objectives, it’s sure that it doesn’t work.

Thinking about some kind of decentralized structure to hire REAL PROFESSIONALS in managing large international companies or/and REAL PROFESSIONALS in marketing or whatever would be beneficial.

Another point I wanted to clarify from my first post:

The reward for holders that I mentioned/imagined could be a decentralized reflection of what happens on the stock market through the annual payment of dividends when there are good results.

It’s an aspect that could align the community on a real objective, the objective that’s common to the human race in society: making money.

If we don’t align on that, it will never work and we’ll remain a Debian of the blockchain.

We need to stop electing people who only do what they want and what’s good for them alone, like enriching themselves personally.

We need to hire qualified employees to do things they’re paid for and in which they’re professionals.

I like the community, but we have to stop: we’re not professionals in every field and, between us, thanks for stopping the DV program.

I’d like to debate these aspects:

More decentralization with free voting.

More encouragement for holders/active participants.

Dividends for voting holders; simplification of management in decision-making with reflection on a decentralized structure, perhaps starting with something inspired by what’s already done in international companies.

It wouldn’t shock me to vote for objectives and pay someone to achieve them, even if it means having a decentralized headquarters with holders as shareholders.

Voting on annual budgets for legal, development, research, etc., personally seems like a very good path to me.

Last thing:

Mr. Gavin Wood, you wanted decentralization at all costs; your social experiment is a real good thing.

Nevertheless, without clear structure, it can’t work: no one can improvise as a professional in any field.

So now, you’re going to have to take your responsibilities and we finally need someone to drive this damn car.

When are you going to understand that your Ferrari can’t be driven by kids in a playground?

Success depends only on that.

Even if you don’t feel like it, you’re the only captain in reality, the real authority in Polkadot, and because of that, you’re going to have to take things more in hand at the level of communication in debates, even if we don’t agree.

The problem with the community is that it’s the one who speaks the most or the loudest who is right, not the one who is actually right.