This is just IMO and isn’t fully formalized yet, but given our current low TVL, I’m worried about a whale
suddenly appearing and hijacking the vote.
how about these to keep things fair?
Diminishing voting power relative to veDUST amount (like a logarithmic scale).
Bonus voting power based on the duration of holding/locking.
Currently, there are 4.26M veDUst locked with 3.1M power. At the same time there is only 1.3M DUST in circulation. Even if the whale buys all of those (kinda hard with V2), they will not have enough power to highjack the Gov.
It has always been a general rule that to make controlling decisions you should be a whale, and taking the power from them would result in a situation where people with little or nothing to lose who are often the majority, will take decisions that affect the financial arm of the protocol, which in turn will make the whales leave, effectively defeating the purpose of this DAO.
The founders will always have large (huge?) voting power. That’s a given. At least that’s the case in all DAOs I’m participating in. That, in itself, will prevent any non-founding whales to dominate voting.
Personally, I feel that goes against the purpose of a DAO. Ultimately, Neverland is planned to be gradually decentralized, as the protocol matures. If you look at our tokenomics, assuming team members don’t sell their allocations at all and don’t accumulate more tokens, the entire team including the founders will only ever have 20% of the token supply (not taking into account burns of course).
So, I feel that it is not a good idea to simply assume that founders and team can and will always outvote any whales who are not part of the team. In that case, the DAO is purely cosmetic and does not serve any purpose besides performative theatrics.
I would like to hear more in detail about your thoughts regarding this, specifically:
Regarding both points that you brought up, here are my comments:
Diminishing voting power relative to veDUST amount (like a logarithmic scale).
Interesting idea, though it discourages people to lock more DUST, which is disadvantageous to the protocol. Also, it would make calculating voting power very complex because you’d have a rising scale based on lock duration, and a falling scale based on amount you own.
Bonus voting power based on the duration of holding/locking.
This is the exact function of a vote-escrow design that we have in Neverland. Users who lock their DUST for longer periods gain more veDUST than those who lock for shorter duration. For example:
1000 DUST locked for 34 days (min duration) gets 90 veDUST
1000 DUST infinite locked gets 1000 veDUST
Therefore, by virtue of locking for the longest duration (infinite), you get more than 11x bonus voting power than someone who locks for the minimum duration.
I agree, with you; but in reality, I’ve participated in a DAO in which some whales have a large/huge voting power, and they voted the same as if they have discussed before casting votes (this is unproven, though…) and eventually the rest of us are outvoted. Of course, some complaints exist on their DC server, but that’s that. I have the details, but I think it’s not wise to spill the beans. lol.
How would Neverland mitigate this? the OP shared some nice suggestions, but still…
Well, the entire team have extensive experience in this area as well, given that we had all been team members on a DAO before Neverland and we had faced such scenarios as well.
Ultimately, I feel that there’s always going to be some friction between the whales and smaller holders. Ironic as it may sound, it is unfair to have egalitarian policies in such cases simply because whales have more skin in the game than a shrimp.
Now, every vote is essentially like a political campaign. If you’re not a whale, but feel strongly about a particular outcome of the vote, then there’s nothing stopping you from trying to convince and persuade more voters (including other whales) to vote with you. This is why we strongly encourage constructive discussions here and on Discord.
Thanks for the insight. It’s clear that under the current circulating supply, a sudden hijacking is practically impossible.
Even if a whale tried a hostile takeover by offering a premium for veDUST NFTs, rational Lost Boys would likely arbitrage by selling them and buying back cheaper DUST to re-lock. This makes it impossible to bypass the supply constraints.
With the current balance, the interests of new whales and existing Lost Boys are perfectly aligned. New capital can enter safely knowing the governance is stable, while long-term holders benefit from the growth. As long as we maintain this high lock-up ratio, the protocol remains ironclad.
I would like to hear more in detail about your thoughts regarding this, specifically:
A whale wouldn’t vote against their own bags unless the exit value they can extract from the treasury is greater than the value of their tokens. If hijacking allows them to liquidate assets for a profit that covers their takeover costs, the project’s sustainability becomes secondary to their immediate ROI.
How would that be applied in Neverland’s context?
Also, right now we are in Phase I of Neverland governance and as such, we have many guardrails set up to prevent malicious attacks. Here’s an excerpt from our current framework:
In case you’ve not seen the Framework yet, here’s a link to it: Neverland Governance Framework
How would that be applied in Neverland’s context?
The team’s current management is excellent, but we should strengthen governance robustness while we still have your “protection.”
As a starting point for discussion—essentially a rough draft—how about mechanisms that maximize the cost and risk for attackers?
One idea is an “Optimistic Governance” model with a “Challenge Period”: after a vote is passed, there is a mandatory delay where anyone can pay a bond to “challenge” the proposal and force a more rigorous review.
Very interesting idea!
I wonder if something like this may result in a filibuster type of situation and reduce governance efficiency 
I agree that compared to a centralized team, there is always a trade-off between efficiency and caution.
However, we can mitigate the “filibuster” risk by making the bond proportional to the delay duration. If the cost is high enough, there is no economic incentive to challenge just for the sake of obstruction.
The goal is to allow Lost Boys to “buy time”. If a challenge gains support during the grace period, the execution window could be extended further. This gives the community a crucial window to either evacuate assets or conduct an emergency code review before a malicious proposal can go live.
This is against the DAO vision that dust tries to build. Imo we need more products in order to make the whales and all the users in general to use more dust and vedust tokens also
As a non whale and holder believer I like these 2 !
could you be a little more specific, soomostaziev?