I have been concerned about how governance is unfolding in our ecosystem for some time now, and I feel I need to make some changes in my DRep behavior. I hope this post will spark discussion among other DReps.
I want to start by saying that I will highlight some things I dislike about our current governance in this post, but this should not be taken as meaning I find the entire governance of Cardano to be undesirable. I firmly believe that we are running one of the most interesting and meaningful governance experiments of our time, and I am very proud to be a part of it. I also have no intention of stopping from performing my function as a DRep; however, I will be making some changes, which I will try to explain.
In order to make the rest of this make sense, I will first describe what I envisioned as the average governance journey of an ADA holder looking to delegate to a DRep and what I thought/hoped our system was going to eventually look like when fully implemented.
An ADA holder wants to delegate to a DRep. They open a tool, and the tool starts by asking them how they would have voted on a selection of votes that have already been voted on. Based on that user feedback, a list of DReps that have voted in the same way is shown to the user, and the user can browse the different choices and look at the rationales for the votes before choosing a DRep. Once they have chosen a DRep, they are asked if they would like to receive a notification when their DRep casts a vote. When they receive this notification, they are reminded that they can always redelegate if they are so inclined.
Ok, so that’s a very oversimplified version of where I was hoping to see governance go. The main point that I want to stress in this scenario is that users do not put their trust in individuals but in voting records. There is no politics, no social media personalities, only verified blockchain records.
Let’s compare that to what we have in governance today in Cardano. Most DRep delegation decisions are being made based on social media. The delegation is highly centralized to a handful of large DReps. We have many DReps, but now half are inactive, only about 100 to 150 are voting with high frequency, and that number is shrinking rapidly. An argument could be made that many of the popular DReps should be the ones getting the voting power and that it’s fine because they are the ones people like, but I always come back to the same question: How is this different from our current political systems? How can we expect this to yield better outcomes if we allow it to turn into the same games of personality over substance? We have ample evidence that our current political systems pick terrible candidates as leaders. We also know that if we let this run long term, we will get consolidation into a smaller and smaller group of powerful DReps. Eventually, we will likely see two or three “parties” form, and we can say hello to every political system we currently live in. Is this the best that we can do? I don’t think that it is. We have the option to make this a true blockchain governance system if we want. Currently, it is mostly a standard political system with a blockchain veneer.
So, how much do we need to change to move away from the politics and towards a “don’t trust, verify” type of system? Not as much as you might think. This is what I plan on doing myself moving forward. I will continue to vote and perform the functions of a DRep. I will remove my DRep ID from all social media, and I will no longer identify with my DRep name in public forums. I will continue to engage in conversations about governance, but if anyone asks for my DRep ID or DRep name, I will not provide it and instead point them to this post and ask them to look for DReps with similar voting preferences to their own and delegate based on that information alone. How is that supposed to help you, might ask? It won’t if it’s just me, but if even a few DReps start acting this way, it very well might.
To be clear, I am not suggesting that we make some big change to the system to keep DRep IDs secret. That isn’t feasible or necessary. Also, many will undoubtedly choose to do old school politics and will continue to advertise themselves just like politicians. Additionally, if people want to dig a bit, they will be able to figure out who DReps are, but in the end, those cases probably won’t matter. I believe that, given a choice to move away from the current system, many will, and all it would take is a socially driven change. After that, nobody will want to know who their DRep is. Most of us are here because we want something different after all. What could be more popular than saying we can take the politics out of our system and ask people to use the blockchain record to make decisions instead?
What are the main issues that are in the way of creating this new system?
- The voting tooling isn’t built with this system in mind, but it’s not too far off either. You can currently look up DReps and easily see a list of all the actions they voted on and read their voting rationales. This isn’t enough to make this a user-friendly experience, however, and we would need tools that are able to first probe the user to establish their voting preferences, then present like-minded DRep options. This is very much possible to get done, but would require someone to take that on.
- In this system, nobody could engage with their DRep directly to let them know how they want them to vote, since you don’t know who your DRep is. This is perhaps counterintuitive, but I see this as a good thing. The voices of the users should be felt through their delegation choices. DReps will get feedback by either getting more or less stake. There are also system improvements that could be made here to help this be more responsive. For example, a vote could comprise two stages. In the first stage, the DRep votes, and at the end of that stage, their choice is locked in. In the second stage, which could be as short as a single epoch, the delegators have the option to move their stake before the vote is final and the voting power is counted. This would give immediate feedback to DReps regarding their decisions and perhaps also help with the “sticky” delegation issues we currently have. It is also much easier to redelegate when there are no allegiance issues because you don’t know who your DRep was anyway.
- Those who choose to play politics will be easier for average voters to delegate to and therefore will get most of the stake. Perhaps this is true if the social change is not successful, but I would argue that it’s still very much worth trying.
- This doesn’t solve the issue of incentivising DReps to be active, and we will continue to see declining numbers. This is true, but it also doesn’t make things worse than they currently are. Currently, the incentives to be an active DRep are mostly “skin in the game” incentives. This is to say that most active DReps have large holdings or other personal interests such as projects, stake pools, etc. There’s nothing wrong with that in the short term, but long term, I see no possible way to have that system not consolidate to a handful of groups. Alternatively, with a DRep system where delegation flows towards good voting decisions and voting rationales, then even small incentives could prove to significantly increase the overall DRep numbers and diversity. This is still a problem the community needs to tackle either way.
If you’ve read this far, you hopefully have an idea of why I am concerned and what I think would help us move to a better governance system. Fairly straightforward really; create a culture that shuns politics and embraces making decisions based on information that is on chain. That should mean DReps continue to actively debate and discuss matters openly, but never try to recruit voters… because that is not the blockchain way.