The Decentralized Voices (DV) program was brought into being for to achieve more balanced governance decisions through the distribution of voting power within our community.
However, the recent developments show clearly that it works against the principles for which it was originally constructed.
What we observe now is a pattern whereby various DAOs possess memberships that overlap with one another. Through this concentration, certain members of the community can exercise their influence over multiple DVs at the same time, thereby multiplying their voting power by three or even four times.
Such a bundling of influence stands in direct opposition to the original mission of the program, which was to prevent centralized control.
Further, a well-known whale wallet, that previously was able to sway voting, has sold a significant portion of their DOT, and can no longer wield the same influence.
Since the DV program now enables exactly the sort of power concentration it was meant to hinder, we must conclude that the initiative no longer fulfills its intended purpose.
Although we recognize the positive intentions at its beginning, the current implementation no longer works as designed.
Hello! This is Vikk from the Hungarian Polkadot DAO, one of the Decentralized Voices (DV) in the current cohort.
The current plutocratic system (1 DOT = 1 vote) embedded in OpenGov unfortunately cannot yet be replaced with another system, as there is no fully functioning alternative, such as quadratic voting. This is mainly because Sybil attacks cannot be effectively mitigated in a fully decentralized manner. (Check this very long, but really interesting discussion about quadratic voting on OpenGov: Quadratic Voting for Polkadot Governance)
I believe the DV Program is currently necessary to increase voter participation and reduce voting apathy—an issue that affects all DAOs, regardless of the blockchain they operate on. The DV Program serves as a great incentive for smaller communities like ours, helping us gain recognition within our local community in Hungary. I can already see the benefits: members of our community are becoming more aware of OpenGov and are starting to consider delegating their votes to us. Slowly but steadily we can gain more voting power from our community members and if W3F undelegate their DOTs, there would left some voting power delegated to our multisig.
From the perspective of an elected DV, the program is valuable—it incentivizes us at the Hungarian Polkadot DAO to increase awareness, expand our outreach, and attract new delegations. Not to mention, I can see that many new DAOs have emerged in the past few months and are actively participating in the decision-making process. I’m guessing this is because they’d like to be elected as a Decentralized Voice in the future.
So, long story short: IMO, the main problem in OpenGov is voting apathy. The DV program aims to increase voting participation. If the program disappears, voting apathy will remain consistent. If you have ideas on how to increase voting participation without the DV program, let us know.
Looking ahead, I see a possible evolution of the DV Program in which more entities gradually receive smaller portions of voting power from W3F. Over time, this could be the key to fostering a more balanced, inclusive, and fair voting system within Polkadot OpenGov.
If DV is to remain it should be setup in such a way that it cannot be abused.
Having prominent community members voting in several DAOs, and influencing the members of several DAOs, defeats the purpose of DV.
A strict rule should be, you can only be active in one DAO and not vote or influence in many DAOs as is happening now.
Also if a DAO member is the recipient of an OpenGov proposal, then the whole DAO should abstain. Otherwise this can quickly escalate into horse trading between DAO members.
Regardless of whether Giotto is around or not, the DV program creation was targeted more towards the aim of increasing the total number of voters overall and not just because a single whale was around so it’s got more to do with increasing the total voting percentage than A or B whale voting.
With that being said, there is a point we agree here and it’s the heavy overlap of participants across delegated DAOs not being the ideal condition for delegated governance. This is not a problem exclusive to Polkadot though, it’s a common issue with many governance systems that now includes on-chain delegations (Arbitrum has a similar problem with some of the core Arbitrum team exerting heavy influence through other delegation groups).
The projection of influence from groups or specific individuals into other groups is also something that should be minimized as much as possible but that is a whole other discussion.
These reasons are what made us include this item for our operations back in 2020 (but only archived as early as 2023)
We are not part and will never be part of any DAOs, BORG, private groups, forums or validator alliances that will plan things or direct things for us. Nor we will seek “social validation” or “peer pressure” from certain groups so our independence of action from any outside pressure will be guaranteed at all times.
This is an item that we had anticipated and we believe it should be a common denominator for all W3F delegations moving forward. The issue is simple, when a group receives influence from another group or other members thereof, this group becomes highly correlated with the former. Even it could go as far as the original and uncorrelated members becoming disillusioned with the group that was their own. Consequently, losing independence of action and thinking. Most commonly, the second group starts acting on behalf of the first group or its members if the influence is severe.
Consequently, we agree on the fact that all DV delegations should seek to be as uncorrelated in the human resources / voters as possible. In that way, we could reach a wider audience and wider interests.
Agree with @Vikk on this point that DV’s can be broken up into multiple groups based on Seniority, with new participants being awarded smaller amounts - possibly even reducing slightly ‘original DV’s’ to help create an even more level playing field.
However - the DV’s that have stood the test of time need be rewarded for their efforts, not removed.
It has been a net positive for DV’s to exist (imo) and would like to see this continue into the future.
I fully agree with that statement. The intention was good, making votes more diversified and not controlled by single whales, but eventually we found ourselves where the DV’s themselves become those concentrated whales
In addition, there are more flaws in the program, and the main one imo is the lack of skin in the game. The program should require locking funds from any elected DV (similar to the validator DN program who should lock 7500 DOT for being nominated by W3F)
Beyond that, it’s better to choose tens of DVs to have much higher distribution and not only few with very high concentrated power (and without skin in the game)
As long as all those flaws remain, I truly believe it’s time to shut down this program
