Swimming with Whales: Analysis of Power Imbalances in Stake-Weighted Governance
Quick Take
The study analyzes power imbalances in stake-weighted governance using the Penrose-Banzhaf power index.
Key Points
- Stake-weighted voting can lead to power distortions.
- Large stakeholders may dominate decision-making processes.
- Empirical analysis from Project Catalyst reveals significant power imbalances.
📖 Reader Mode
~2 min readAbstract:Voting methods weighted by stakes are the fundamental governance paradigm in Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchains. Such a paradigm is known to be prone to power distortions: a few users possessing large stakes may completely control decision making, even without owning the totality of the stakes. We study this phenomenon through the lens of computational social choice, focusing on the extent of power imbalances in stake-weighted voting when power is quantified using the Penrose-Banzhaf power index. Our work presents both analytical and empirical contributions. Analytically, we demonstrate that while a perfect alignment between power and relative stake ownership is generally unattainable, it can be approximated in expectation under specific conditions. Empirically, using data from a real-world on-chain governance system (Project Catalyst), we provide a more fine-grained understanding of the power imbalances that are likely to occur in current stake-weighted governance systems.
| Subjects: | Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Multiagent Systems (cs.MA) |
| Cite as: | arXiv:2605.19264 [cs.AI] |
| (or arXiv:2605.19264v1 [cs.AI] for this version) | |
| https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.19264 arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) |
Submission history
From: Yuzhe Zhang [view email]
[v1]
Tue, 19 May 2026 02:25:16 UTC (200 KB)
— Originally published at arxiv.org
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