When Money Talks: The Shady Side of Arbitrum’s Voting Game 🎭💰

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In the parched soils of Arbitrum, where hope and ambition once sprouted like wildflowers, the latest news drips like overripe fruit from a tree – vote buying has reared its head, a greased pig slipping through the cracks of their egalitarian governance.

This dream of decentralized autonomous organizations, that once promised to free the wallets of the weary from the iron grasp of centralized powers, seems to have been nothing but a mirage. On a balmy Tuesday, with the promise of prosperity dancing in the air, a certain individual named hitmonlee.eth decided to toss 5 ETH into the winds, buying themselves a staggering 19.3 million in voting power. 🤑 That’s enough sway to make even a seasoned politician blush.

The old DAO model is in shambles:

Last weekend, hitmonlee.eth paid 5 ETH (~$10k) on @lobbyfinance to buy 19.3M ARB (~$6.5m) voting power.

That’s more votes than experienced DAO delegates like Wintermute or L2Beat have.

All votes were cast for @CupOJoseph for Arbitrum’s…

— Ignas | DeFi (@DefiIgnas) April 8, 2025

For the tidy sum of around $10,000, our friend managed to hold sway over decisions entangled with approximately $6.5 million—not chump change by anyone’s measure—outdoing the voting heft of industry veterans like L2Beat and Wintermute. They called upon LobbyFi, a cunning little platform that lets token holders cash in on their governance power like it’s Sunday brunch at a buffet. 🍳

For what noble cause, you ask? Why, to bolster the candidacy of CupOJoseph to a seat on the Oversight and Transparency Committee. The very irony—that vote buying, that age-old cronyism, would be utilized to influence an election concerning transparency—is enough to send anyone’s head spinning like a windmill in a tempest.

According to Ignas from Pink Brains, this oversight position pays about $7,500 a month for a whole year. A tidy sum indeed! It indicates the buy-in might not just be about ideals but rather a cold calculation of dollar signs. It suggests a wandering vulnerability within the one-token-one-vote model that makes it easier to manipulate than your cousin with a car full of fireworks on the Fourth of July.

DAO vote buying security risks

Take, if you will, the tale of Compound DAO, which narrowly scraped through a vote that doled out $24 million—or a meager 5% of the treasury— to an outside protocol. This fortuitous maneuver was proposed by one of the major COMP holders, proving the old adage: he who has the gold makes the rules. 🌟

And what’s to be done about platforms like LobbyFi, you wonder? They’ve become like slippery fishmongers selling cheap squid to hungry sharks, drastically reducing the cost of governance attacks. Whether for gain or for sport, these shadowy figures can now skew the playing field with pennies, robbing the token holders and the very foundation solemnly built to protect them.

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2025-04-08 18:04