I understand that everyone wants to freely choose the DRep they want. In politics, this makes sense. But a decentralized system must incentivize a high number of actors (ideally) with similar voting power more than the quality of actors. Moreover, a decentralized system cannot judge quality. So, it must rely on incentives. Quality is a necessary property for smart allocation of funds. Therefore, delegators may prefer a few best DReps. In other words, rather centralized governance. Setting incentives is difficult, because we want to achieve both decentralization and quality. Cardano has no governance incentives, nor any restrictions on the size or number of DReps. The top 10 DReps control about 50% of voting power, so governance is centralized. Quality is subjective, but in my opinion it is rather low. This is not necessarily the fault of DReps, but rather the fault of the system. DReps have to decide on a large number of proposals in a short time, often beyond their regular job, family, hobbies, and the possibility of consulting with experts. There are few experts in governance; often they are smaller and little-known DReps. Top DReps can start monetizing their voting power. Instead of rewards being paid from the Treasury, submitters will be the ones who pay. The line between fair compensation and bribery is very thin and difficult to recognize. There is room for corruption and conflict of interest. The current model without incentives does not support either decentralization or quality. On the contrary, it even becomes a place where high concentration of voting power might motivate submitters to pay DReps for consultations and perhaps also buy YES votes. The number of active DReps has dropped below 200, and this trend is likely to continue. To be clear. It is okay if DReps get paid for their work. It is wise for submitters to consult with DReps before submitting a proposal. But it must be transparent. I understand that some people don't want Treasury to incentivize governance because resources are needed for other important things. This reluctance may lead us to a situation where it will be possible to get ₳50M from Treasury for $100K that the submitter pays top DReps for "consulting" and "marketing". Cardano governance needs to incentivize decentralization and quality ASAP. After almost 2 years since MVG launched, we should have enough data and courage to make this change.

Emurgo's Yoroi DRep (almost 0.7B of voting power) voting against the Daedalus maintenance plan, which includes its handover to community-run development, is not just a conflict of interest, but a clear case of a malicious actor in Cardano governance. Sunsetting Daedalus means Yoroi directly benefits as people (mostly Japanese whales) migrate to it, increasing Emurgo’s voting power. Sad day for Cardano, RIP Daedalus.

Daedalus 8.0.0 is live. Now with Mithril bootstrap. New installs can sync in minutes instead of hours. Lower memory usage. Faster sync. Native Apple Silicon support. This release makes running a full node more accessible and more efficient. Upgrade recommended.

🚨 BREAKING CHINA JUST INJECTED ¥813 BILLION INTO THE MARKET! THEY'RE OFFICIALLY STARTING QE (MONEY PRINTING) TO STIMULATE THE ECONOMY. LIQUIDITY FLOOD IS COMING!!