Governance Grievances
Earlier this week Synthetix’s Kain Warwick posted a blog outlining his feelings toward current governance implementations.
The tl;dr is that he sees massive weaknesses with the way things are working in DeFi, pointing to issues at Curve and Maker.
His main concerns are:
plutocracy
voter apathy
vulnerability to attack (flash loan incident)
Even though this is decentralised governance blog, I’m not going to to argue against these criticisms. There are certainly limitations to decentralised governance systems currently.
Having said that I remain optimistic that we can move towards fairer, more democratic, and better functioning governance models as our communities grow.
So what’s next for Synthetix?
The Spartan Council
Working together the Synthetix community have proposed a delegated council in order to govern the protocol more effectively.
The new council will operate using Snapshot, operated by seven elected council members. Every three months new council elections will take place.
The council will vote on proposals, with each member having one vote and votes running for 24 hours.
Conclusion
The proposal from Synthetix is a frank and honest appraisal of the state of governance in our communities, and I think it will allow the platform to sidestep the issues Kain mentions.
In this early stage the focus for many communities is on perfecting the value proposition of their product, improving the features, competitiveness and user experience.
The idealistic dream is to have engaged communities making informed decisions. Until that’s a realistic option, Sythentix’s move to a delegated council is completely understandable.
So how can you get involved?
The next stage is to get involved in discussions and nominate a delegate who you can trust to best represent your interests and has the same vision for the future of the platform.
Be the change you want to see
While Synthetix is moving in this direction now it doesn’t mean that this will be a permanent model.
We need greater engagement across decentralised communities.
With greater participation and tools like quadratic voting we can combat many of the issues we’re facing today.
Decentralised communities need you!
Join the discord.