Liquid Democracy in DPoS Blockchains

TL;DR

This paper investigates the real-world implementation of liquid democracy in DPoS blockchains, analyzing user participation and delegation networks in EOS and Steem to inform future governance designs.

Contribution

It provides the first empirical analysis of liquid democracy in DPoS blockchains using actual data from EOS and Steem, highlighting participation patterns and delegation structures.

Findings

Different user types show varying participation levels.

Delegation chains reveal complex network structures.

Liquid democracy effectively increases voter engagement.

Abstract

Voting mechanisms play a crucial role in decentralized governance of blockchain systems. Liquid democracy, also known as delegative voting, allows voters to vote directly or delegate their voting power to others, thereby contributing to the resolution of problems such as low voter turnout. In recent years, liquid democracy has been widely adopted by Delegated-Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) blockchains and implemented successfully on platforms with millions of users. However, little is known regarding the characteristics and actual effectiveness of liquid democracy in decentralized governance. This paper explored for the first time the practical implementation of liquid democracy in DPoS blockchain systems. Using actual data collected from two major DPoS blockchains, EOS and Steem, our study compared and evaluated the participation of different types of users of DPoS blockchain systems in liquid democracy, as well as extracting and analyzing the delegation chains and networks formed during the process of liquid democracy within the systems. We believe that the findings of this paper will contribute to further studies on the design and implementation of liquid democracy and other voting mechanisms in decentralized governance.