Towards a Systematic Understanding of Blockchain Governance in Proposal Voting: A Dash Case Study

Abstract

The transparent and immutable nature of the blockchain provides incentives for companies wishing to create an open, decentralized governance structure within their organization. As members exercise their voting rights, a fault tolerant record accumulates on the blockchain that can be analyzed to diagnose and intercept potential threats to the governing body. To date there has not been a systematic study of on-chain governance with respect to voting. In this paper, we provide an analysis of blockchain governance through a case study of the first cryptocurrency to adopt on-chain voting, Dash. Our analysis introduces the key characteristics of blockchain governance, highlights exploitable attack vectors for the subversion of the Dash voting system, and steps through a data driven exploration enabled only by the transparent nature of the blockchain before concluding with guidelines for other organizations looking to implement similar on-chain governance solutions.