You can delegate your voting power to another address. The other address votes on your behalf; you can revoke at any time. You remain responsible for whom you trust.
What delegation buys you
- Participation in proposals you do not have time to read
- Specialised opinion (a legal-DAO delegate, a code-review delegate)
- Voting alignment when the chain is busy and you're offline
What delegation costs you
- Capture risk. If your delegate is bribed, you voted with the bribe. Your tokens stayed in your wallet, but your say was sold.
- Concentration. Delegations cluster. A handful of "professional delegates" can end up controlling outsize voting power. They become attack targets.
- Inattention. You may forget you delegated. A delegate may shift positions over time. Revisit your delegation quarterly.
How to choose a delegate
- Track record. What have they voted for and against in the last 12 months? Did they justify their votes publicly?
- Independence. Are they paid by the protocol? By a competitor? By a venture firm with a position?
- Transparency. Do they publish a voting policy you can sanity- check before delegating?
- Revocability. Can you revoke in one transaction? (You can.)
A duty, not a chore
If you hold governance tokens, you hold a tiny fraction of stewardship over the system. Stewardship is not the same as ownership. Delegation is OK; abandonment is not.