Hi everyone,
I’ve been thinking a lot about delegation markets in governance and wanted to open up a conversation about whether they’re actually helping participation or just centralizing power in new ways. On paper, the idea makes sense—most token holders don’t have time to follow every proposal, so delegating to someone more informed should increase the quality of votes. But in practice, we’re seeing a handful of delegates consistently hold outsized influence, and sometimes without much transparency or accountability.
Some ecosystems are experimenting with dynamic delegation or time-limited authority, which could help avoid delegate stagnation. Others are proposing economic incentives to align delegates with the broader protocol’s health. I’m curious if anyone here is working on or observing newer mechanisms—like rotating delegation, quadratic delegation, or even slashing for inactive delegates.
For the Unit Zero ecosystem, where governance is still early in development, this feels like a key area to get right before voting power becomes too concentrated. Are there design patterns that encourage both broad participation and high-quality decisions? Should we be treating delegation more like reputation or more like a service?
Would love to hear thoughts from others building or participating in governance experiments, especially if you’ve seen delegation models work—or fail—in the wild.