# DAO Decentralization: Voting-Bloc Entropy, Bribery, and Dark DAOs

Source: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.03530
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/DAO-Decentralization-Voting-Bloc-Entropy-Bribery-and-Dark-DAOs?index=0x66baa5118f180b6b61fe4c3bd480deb22e32c22af3649d26a0539af04bb1574b0d988453
Submitted by gokhan.eth on 2024-08-13 UTC, 4 upvotes, 0 comments

## Summary

The authors propose Voting-Bloc Entropy (VBE), a metric that formalizes a broader notion of decentralization in DAO proposal voting by measuring the similarity of participants' utility functions across a set of proposals. Using VBE, they prove results about the decentralizing effects of vote delegation, proposal bundling, bribery, and quadratic voting, and they offer practical suggestions for improving DAO decentralization. The paper also warns of systemic bribery risk as DAOs decentralize. To show this threat is realistic, the authors present the first practical Dark DAO prototype, which uses trusted execution environments on the Oasis Sapphire blockchain to attack Ethereum DAOs.

## Article

DAO Decentralization: Voting-Bloc Entropy, Bribery, and Dark DAOs

Authors: James Austgen, Andrés Fábrega, Sarah Allen, Kushal Babel, Mahimna Kelkar, Ari Juels

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) use smart contracts to foster communities working toward common goals. Existing definitions of decentralization, however-the 'D' in DAO-fall short of capturing key properties characteristic of diverse and equitable participation. We propose a new metric called Voting-Bloc Entropy (VBE, pronounced ''vibe'') that formalizes a broad notion of decentralization in voting on DAO proposals. VBE measures the similarity of participants' utility functions across a set of proposals. We use VBE to prove a number of results about the decentralizing effects of vote delegation, proposal bundling, bribery, and quadratic voting. Our results lead to practical suggestions for enhancing DAO decentralization. One of our results highlights the risk of systemic bribery with increasing DAO decentralization. To show that this threat is realistic, we present the first practical realization of a Dark DAO, a proposed mechanism for privacy-preserving corruption of identity systems, including those used in DAO voting. Our Dark-DAO prototype uses trusted execution environments (TEEs) in the Oasis Sapphire blockchain for attacks on Ethereum DAOs. It demonstrates that Dark DAOs constitute a realistic future concern for DAO governance.