We’ll publish a report shortly on this. But note that the list you give is only used as examples. It does not mean the initiative will actually study them in details. We also don’t know exact solutions yet.
In brief, we believe that there are at least two fundamental assumptions that Polkadot has got wrong regarding on-chain governance:
- That coin voters automatically have the best interest of Polkadot as a whole.
- That it’s in coin voters best interest to participate in on-chain governance, if they hold coins.
The first assumption breaks because of game theory, of coin voters’ two conflicting incentives and their obvious priorities. The second assumption breaks because of the vote-by-feet possibility.
Our initial analysis shows that we have some methods, via off-chain signals, to partially counteract 1). We also have something in draft that will make it easier for voters to decide on things (we’re essentially always asking two things at once in most referendums right now, and it’s possible to design the governance system so that we ask the first thing in advance, and only then the second thing), which also counteracts 1). We don’t have any concrete solutions for 2), or perhaps it’s impossible to fix. We don’t know yet.
There are also issues with bribery, which I’ll show you the game theory analysis as well – in short, it’s in every whale’s interest to engage in bribery or self voting, as long as the public cannot easily find out (not finding out by the public is actually extremely easy, if you know how). They also don’t have strong incentives to call out other whales doing bribery, as long as everyone “stays in line”. For this part, we also don’t have any concrete proposals yet.
Anyway, we’ll publish some reports later on this, so long as I have time to write them, so that you can examine the game theory analysis yourself.