<\/p>\n
Chase Chapman is not terribly enthralled with how most blockchain governance mechanisms operate today. \u201cWe think about governance as this design space that people give a shit about, and I just think that\u2019s not really true for the most part.\u201d<\/p>\n
The host of the On the Other Side podcast says that during the last crypto bull market, governance was developed and touted as an activity in which people would want to participate, but that isn\u2019t how it\u2019s panned out for the most part.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Blockworks on the Lightspeed podcast (Spotify<\/a>\/Apple<\/a>), Chapman says, \u201cWe need to move towards governance as this feature of consumer applications<\/a>, where it\u2019s built into these experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been thinking a lot about that and how to make governance more fun.\u201d <\/p>\n Unless you\u2019re a hacker or someone gaming the system in an attempt to \u201crug a treasury,\u201d David Phelps says, \u201cgovernance<\/a> sucks.\u201d The co-founder of JokeRace explains that\u2019s why the platform instead uses the term \u201ccontests.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you switch it to the word \u2018contest,\u2019 you realize,\u201d he says, \u201ceverything is a contest.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEvery social media platform is a contest,\u201d Phelps says. On X, formerly known as Twitter, for example, he says, \u201cyou are putting a proposal to the world and saying, \u2018What do you think of this?\u2019 And then a bunch of people upload it with this feature called a \u2018like\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Phelps explains that likes and reposts essentially act as votes. \u201cAnd so you are in a contest, where you\u2019re competing against everyone else\u2019s content in order to gain visibility.\u201d<\/p>\n Ultimately, social media likes and reposts are governance devices, Phelps says. It\u2019s effectively addictive, Phelps says, and succeeds in enticing people to participate in governance.<\/p>\n A blockchain is also, ultimately, a contest in itself, Phelps says. \u201cIt is like a bunch of transactions all competing to get inclusion in a block.\u201d<\/p>\n Most blockchain DAOs<\/a> are structured in such a way that users are often only able to vote on boring positions that are irrelevant to the voters themselves, according to Phelps. \u201cAnd then people are telling you, we need more participation because we need more uninformed people making really boring decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat the hell are you guys thinking?\u201d he exclaims. \u201cThis is a terrible system. Don\u2019t do this.\u201d<\/p>\n The projects that have managed to build engaging governance tools are the ones who have built it into applications and \u201cnot even called it governance,\u201d says Chapman. FWB, or the Friends with Benefits app, springs to mind for Chapman as an example.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey built in a governance page on the app where you can look at all of the proposals that are happening,\u201d she explains. Governance mechanics should be built natively into applications rather than as a separate experience that \u201cpeople need to go do\u201d elsewhere, Chapman says.<\/p>\n Phelps says the \u201cultra great use case\u201d of governance was demonstrated years ago by a recurring event called the \u201cMirror Write Race\u201d \u2014 a weekly showdown between members of the Mirror DAO.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPeople would all vie to get a WRITE token, which would allow them to have a publication on Mirror,\u201d Phelps explains. \u201cThe really cool thing about this mechanism was if you won, you not only got a WRITE token, but you got to become a voter, as well.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s really cool about the Mirror Write Race,\u201d Phelps says, \u201cis it\u2019s actually an election in disguise, that\u2019s never marketed as an election.\u201d<\/p>\n The governance activity was marketed as a contest, Phelps says, \u201cbut what you\u2019re doing is you\u2019re electing this council.\u201d The group of legitimate users expanded over time and decided who else to bring into the community via the contest mechanism, he explains.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is this progressive decentralization, where it includes more and more people over time.\u201d<\/p>\n Things can get really interesting, Phelps says, \u201cwhen you move beyond governance for governance\u2019s sake<\/a>, and you get to the point where you\u2019re actually providing value to the people who are participating in governance in some way.\u201d<\/p>\n Get the day\u2019s top crypto news and insights delivered to your email every evening.\u00a0Subscribe to Blockworks\u2019 free newsletter<\/a>\u00a0now.<\/strong><\/p>\n Want alpha sent directly to your inbox? Get degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance, can\u2019t-miss tweets and more from\u00a0Blockworks Research\u2019s Daily Debrief<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Can\u2019t wait? Get our news the fastest way possible.\u00a0Join us on Telegram<\/a>\u00a0and follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chase Chapman is not terribly enthralled with how most blockchain governance mechanisms operate today. \u201cWe think about governance as this design space that people give a shit about, and I just think that\u2019s not really true for the most part.\u201d The host of the On the Other Side podcast says that during the last crypto […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[230,225,221,227,226,228,229,60,223,224,222],"class_list":["post-138503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency","tag-brave","tag-coinbase","tag-crypto","tag-decentralised","tag-decentralized","tag-decentralized-exchange","tag-erc-20","tag-featured","tag-meme-coin","tag-robinhood","tag-solana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138503"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148054,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138503\/revisions\/148054"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Don\u2019t do this<\/h2>\n
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