At a glance
A persistent issue Decentralized Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) face is the notion of voter apathy, which in turn hurts the economic security of a DAO. Voter apathy occurs when the complexity, concentration of power, and time and financial cost outweigh the benefits of participating in governance. In a pseudonymous world like DeFi, solving voter apathy is rather tricky and remains an ongoing challenge.
For many DAOs, their attempt at reducing voter apathy comes by increasing benefits such as Aave’s Orbit program and MakerDAO’s recognized delegate compensation scheme, which financially rewards top delegates/voters. However, such schemes are only available for a select few and don’t tackle the cost side of the equation for the majority of voters. For example, one of the largest causes of low voting turnout is the gas cost of submitting an on-chain vote, coupled with no tangible benefit to the voter. Unfortunately, this is the inherent cost of decentralized governance.
But what if there was a way to offer off-chain (gasless) voting while ensuring on-chain execution, and would it solve the problem of low voting turnout?