Governance “bribery” gets a bad rap in crypto, but in our view this is inevitable as bribes will exist in any permissionless system.

Governance power clearly has value, particularly in the Cosmos app-chain PoS paradigm where governance is particularly important. However, it matters more for certain participants, on certain proposals, than others. Absent a marketplace, bribing will still likely happen but it will be both covert and less efficient. As we see it, creating a market for governance power should tend to make things more transparent and efficient.

This has been done on Ethereum by the likes of Convex, Redacted, and Aura Finance. However, they’ve exclusively focused on veTokens. Given the lack of veTokens currently on Cosmos, the design should focus on non-veTokens but also have the possibility of integrating veTokens once they exist. Ultimately, any token that can vote should be able to get paid for its governance power if they don’t care about it (e.g. LP tokens used in Superfluid Staking)Such a marketplace would connect users interested in earning a yield by selling their governance power, with participants interested in purchasing governance power.  It should also offer maximum flexibility, allowing participants to sell votes on individual proposals, delegate all their governance power for a given time period in advance, and/or continuously delegate their governance power with the ability to claw this back at any moment. Where: This should be built cross-chain from the beginning, integrating with any chain which has governance.

Mentor: Sunny (cofounder of Osmosis)