This is the first article in a series where we analyse voting power dynamics in DAOs.

As is widely acknowledged, most DAO governance decisions are made by large voters, leaving little room for smaller voters to make a difference. But just how much influence do whales have?

We dug into 100 of the most recent proposals from the top 60 DAOs to crunch the numbers.

How unbalanced is the distribution of voters? Are large voting power holders aligned with minority voters? Would proposals outcomes have been different if minority voters were better represented?

We came up with a whale pivotality metric, showing the proportion of whale votes which were pivotal — that is their vote alters the outcome.

Read more in our Report below, built in collaboration with takeabreath: