Hi all :
As a legacy software (gaming) dev, data and numbers are my thing. Long before I joined, and while I was looking around for a Web3 community to adopt, I ran some analysis on voting snapshots wrt to topics, counts etc.
I am not going to release the data because I don’t want to create any friction or angst; but safe to say, it’s patently shocking. And I am all but certain that anyone here who has paid any attention, is probably aware.
The thread by @DGT rekindled my interest in this subject; and so, I decided to create this Request For Comment thread.
Much has been written by psychologists about why some people tend to vote against their own self interests. So, I won’t get into that.
Let me use AIP-246 as a recent example, and which a whopping 19% voted against.
Everyone here agrees that the APE community isn’t growing beyond its 127K hodlers bubble..
And less than 8K of those are part of the community here on Discourse and on Discord.
And nothing that Yuga has done thus far has moved the needle in terms of APE adoption, increase in the value of $Ape, or community growth. And despite their best efforts, I haven’t seen anything that leads me to believe that Otherside is going to move the needle. At least not in the short-term. Looking at the charts, the HV:MTL release did nothing to change this; nor did either of the Otherside preview trips. It’s basically the same bubble involved in the churn. Precisely the same thing currently going on in the NFT market whereby it’s the same actors vying to see who dies last.
From the charts, it’s easy to also see that the formation of this DAO a little over a year ago didn’t change this either - other than the $Ape spike - after which the majority dumped.
So, why on Earth would 19% of people vote against AIP-246 that’s specifically targeted at marketing & communication which will ultimately have a positive (all things being equal) growth effect for the DAO?
Better yet, I like the idea of AIP-280; but who here truly believes that such integration is going to move the aforementioned needles? Nevertheless, despite being FREE marketing for the DAO, 0.03% voted against it.
It gets better. Lets take a look at AIP-275, yet another beneficial effort that would have provided valuable insight into how to grow this ecosystem. It failed because 21.52% voted against it.
Look at AIP-279, another marketing outreach effort. 31.8% voted against it. As someone who knows the value of targeted marketing and the effects that it can have when properly deployed, I can say that @AmericanApe and his team know precisely how that works. I have actually done various marketing activities for my games; including comics in partnership with DC Comics (!) - with more on the way. You can see them here and here.
I too felt that the key to growth wasn’t in NFTs - obviously Yuga knows this too - hence the reason that I opened the AIP idea (which I don’t plan on revisiting in the foreseeable future) of integrating the community into my upcoming Web3 games so that by participating in things like Web3 focused mechanics, design tests etc - on their own server - that type of Web2/Web3 community integration would spark growth alongside various marketing efforts. Look how that turned out.
I could go on, but you get the picture.
Yesterday, someone (not sure if it was @Sasha or @ssp1111) in the Twitter Spaces called this DAO a plutocracy - at which point everyone dashed off to Google. Thing is, there’s truth to that if you look at the voting stats, while using a baseline of 500K $Ape as the definition for a whale, if going by the number of tokens in circulation. Imagine my surprise when whales subsequently killed AIP-288 which was specifically designed to spur engagement in our processes. I expect that any further attempts to change the voting system so that we move away from this sort of thing, is likely to be killed by whales.
I think that anyone with just a few brain cells is probably aware that the whole voting system is likely being gamed and abused. It’s crypto, so, given historical trends, that sort of thing is par for the course.
Why then would anyone who has bought $5 in $Ape want to participate in this community when they see that the more wealth you have the more likely it is that the wealthy will control the votes - even those that are clearly in the best interests of the community.
FYI. I even ran AI metrics against the AIP threads. Get this; a whopping 97.3% avg of voters didn’t participate in the AIP discussion thread!! The data is there; you can go check this yourself. For the thread views, go to the summary to see the engagement. So, they voted based on the snapshot summary. That’s absolutely nuts to me.
Since it’s inception, the DAO has spent more time voting on patently inconsequential (to its growth & prosperity) things than it has voted on actual things that would lead to growth & prosperity. It’s almost as if the whole thing was setup to fail, while doing nothing to safeguard against manipulation, self-dealing, corruption - and not to mention ensuring that people aren’t in the position to short the token via insider dealings which are designed to aid that sort of thing.
The voting issue is a massive roadblock to growth & prosperity. And if steps aren’t taken quickly to address this, the DAO will die - like so many before it. This goes beyond the $Ape token - which is on a consistent trend to zero. At some point, we need to completely disregard the value of the token and focus on building a community. But to what end? Why are we here? Is it to make money or to belong to something bigger? A $700M startup in the real world is headed straight for bankruptcy if it were run in this way. Especially since this DAO - as controlled by the whales - isn’t in the least bit interested in actually making money, let alone engaging in activities which would yield tangible returns. It’s basically operating like a slush fund.
The other day, I had a good laugh at the fact that AIP-277 by @Moonlyght is seemingly stuck in admin review - a process controlled by the very people whose salaries it’s designed to trim. And other AIP that came after it, already went for vote. Not that I expect it to pass (I mean, c’mon now), but who here thinks that’s normal?
Yesterday, I suggested adopting a 1 person, 1 vote, 24hr span, and @Amplify said the current 3-6 day span was done to accommodate different time zones. I don’t understand that at all. A 24 hr clock is the same around the world. We regularly hold meetings with people half way across the world. Heck, when I need to speak with people in HK, we figure it out - and they are +12 hrs ahead of me. Yet, somehow modifying the voting time line is inconvenient because of time zones? Seriously?
Something needs to change. Spending time voting and on time-wasting activities isn’t a path forward. Nor is incessant clout chasing.
For example, it’s already August, and the Metaverse Working Group - which barely passed (because most whales literally abstained) - is likely to drag on and roll right into the next leadership election in 2024. Especially since there are still a host of related actions (yay! more voting) that still need to be taken in order for it to be functional. Despite the fact that the DAO wasn’t setup so that everything had to be voted on by the community. It’s only this way due to the fact that owning $Ape puts you in the DAO. The Special Council which sits atop everything is more than capable and well suited to make decisions and take actions for a myriad of things that don’t need to go to vote. Even so, we still need to trust that the SC isn’t actually influenced by whales in any regard.
Your comments are welcome. Please understand that I am neither making accusations nor inferring that anyone has done anything wrong. So, just look at the facts while taking my opinions into account if you so choose. At the end of the day, I would like to think that someone with my experience, and having grown up on Usenet and also watched communities rise and fall over the decades, ought to know a thing or two.
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