
Ignas | DeFi|Apr 08, 2025 10:30
The old DAO model is in shambles:
Last weekend, hitmonlee.eth paid 5 ETH (~$10k) on @lobbyfinance to buy 19.3M ARB (~6.5m) voting power.
That's more votes than experienced DAO delegates like Wintermute or L2Beat have.
All votes were cast for @CupOJoseph for Arbitrum's oversight and transparency committee.
Lobby Finance allows token holders delegate voting power in a DAO which can be bought by others to influence decisions.
In doing so, token holders earn yield on idle tokens via fixed price or auction.
In another case, 20.1M ARB votes were bought for just 0.0652 ETH!
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This poses serious security risks to DAOs.
Remember Compound DAO attack to siphon 24M in COMP?
Back then attacker simply bought COMP to pull it off.
But Lobby significantly the costs of attacks.
In Joseph's case he will earn 7.5k for 12 months (47.1 ETH) as OAT member and potential bonus of 100k ARB (18.7 ETH).
It's 66 ETH in total for paying 5 ETH in voting power.
Not a bad deal!
Even @CupOJoseph himself, for whom the tokens were cast, said that vote buying is underpriced and risky, potentially allowing attacks on the DAO.
"It should Not cost $1k to get $10k out of the DAO. If should cost $11k to get $10k from the DAO instantly"
He said he didn't even ask for the votes.
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Now, Arbitrum DAO is asking if they should "permit people to explicitly purchase, and compete to purchase, votes?"
• Ban and disqualify bought votes?
• Enforce penalties if vote buying is found?
• Let the market play?
There's no simple solution.
As @OlimpioCrypto said in the forum, it's a new cat and mouse game like censoring or allowing MEV.
If incentives are high enough, votes will be bought.
Currently, there are few incentives to delegate tokens to honest delegates compared to delegating to Lobby.
(By the way, you can delegate ARB to me at 0x3DDC7d25c7a1dc381443e491Bbf1Caa8928A05B0 )
This is a big shift in the already flawed 1 token = 1 vote model. The old DAO model needed revolution a long time ago.
A significant shift would require a radical change in ARB tokenomics.
If ARB is used solely for voting without revenue sharing, staking rewards, etc., the incentives remain too appealing with Lobby.
Incentives rule everything around you.
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