2026-01-13 11:23:50

In the development of decentralized finance, how important is governance? Honestly, many early DeFi projects claim to be decentralized, but in reality, core decisions are still controlled by the team, and community governance is largely symbolic.

Walrus Protocol clearly aims to break this situation. They have designed a three-layer governance structure with a fairly clear logic: daily operational decisions are made through quick voting by token holders; major protocol upgrades follow a more rigorous process; and proposals involving fundamental rules (they call them "Constitution-level") must go through multiple debates, expert reviews, and finally a community referendum. This approach ensures broad participation while avoiding hasty decisions.

What's even more interesting is the innovation in their voting mechanism. Simple one-token-one-vote can be easily dominated by large holders, so they introduced time-weighted voting— the longer $WAL is locked, the higher the voting weight. This incentivizes long-term holders to participate in governance. They are also experimenting with including non-financial contributions, such as code contributions and documentation maintenance, into the voting weight system, allowing actual work to also earn governance rights.

What is the value of this design? The layered mechanism addresses the conflict between efficiency and democracy; the weighted voting prevents power concentration. This replicable model indeed offers valuable insights for the maturation of DAO structures.

WAL-0,85%

View Original

This page may contain third-party content, which is provided for information purposes only (not representations/warranties) and should not be considered as an endorsement of its views by Gate, nor as financial or professional advice. See Disclaimer for details.

11 Likes

Reward
11
3
Repost
Share

Comment

0/400

SnapshotDayLaborer

· 6h ago

Time-weighted voting is indeed a brilliant move; long-term holders finally have some say.

View OriginalReply0

GasFeeBeggar

· 6h ago

Another project claiming to be decentralized. I bet five dollars that in the end, it's just a few big whales calling the shots. Time-weighted voting is indeed an interesting approach, but only if the big players are willing to lock their tokens; otherwise, it's pointless. The real issue is that no matter how good the governance structure is, it can't withstand a community full of shitcoin hunters who don't genuinely participate in voting and discussions. A constitutional-level proposal with multiple rounds of debate? It looks more like an additional layer of approval, just making things more sluggish. This framework looks nice on paper, but whether it can be truly implemented is another matter. Many DAO governance documents are written like constitutions, but how do they work in practice... Hmm, it's somewhat interesting. If non-financial contribution weighting can really be implemented, that would indeed be a breakthrough. But hold on, how do you distinguish genuine contributions from just spamming? Wouldn't that require manual review again? That's still centralized, haha. Basically, it's an attempt to find a balance between decentralization and practical feasibility, but who knows how stable that balance really is.

View OriginalReply0

GateUser-44a00d6c

· 6h ago

The three-tier architecture sounds good, but how many can actually implement it? I'm just worried that in the end, it will still turn into a game for the big players.

View OriginalReply0