Swimming with Whales: Analysis of Power Imbalances in Stake-Weighted Governance
The paper titled 'Swimming with Whales: Analysis of Power Imbalances in Stake-Weighted Governance' explores the governance issues in Proof-of-Stake blockchains. It highlights how large stakeholders can dominate decision-making processes, leading to significant power imbalances. The authors provide both analytical and empirical insights into these dynamics using real-world data from Project Catalyst.
- ▪Voting methods weighted by stakes are fundamental in Proof-of-Stake blockchains.
- ▪The study reveals that a few users with large stakes can control decision-making despite not owning all stakes.
- ▪The authors analyze power imbalances using the Penrose-Banzhaf power index and real-world governance data.
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Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence arXiv:2605.19264 (cs) [Submitted on 19 May 2026] Title:Swimming with Whales: Analysis of Power Imbalances in Stake-Weighted Governance Authors:Yuzhe Zhang, Manvir Schneider, Qin Wang, Davide Grossi View a PDF of the paper titled Swimming with Whales: Analysis of Power Imbalances in Stake-Weighted Governance, by Yuzhe Zhang and 3 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract: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.
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