[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-82350-en":3,"doc-seo-82350-105":29,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":91},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":20,"is_downloadable":20,"audit_status":20,"page_count":21,"language":22,"language_code":23,"site_id":24,"html_lang":23,"table_of_contents":25,"faqs":26,"seo_title":13,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":27,"read_time":28},82350,1374391974585,"Genevieve","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_276721f389ce27ea32af1340a28f341c",8,"Research & Report","Voting Biases in Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) Governance","Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) rely on token-weighted voting to allocate resources, define protocol rules, and legitimize collective decisions, yet voting support concentrates around particular proposal choices. The study examines DAO governance at the proposal-choice level by linking each choice’s voting-power share to measurable features: whether the choice signals an approval-oriented stance, its position in the choice list, and whether it is selected by the proposal author. Results show author-selected choices have the strongest and most robust association, followed by approval-oriented and first-listed positional effects. These correlations are treated as systematic bias rather than proven causal distortion, reframing interface and social signals as key design factors.","arXiv :2607 .09435v1 [ cs .CY] 10 Jul 2026  \nVoting Biases in Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) Governance  \nStefano Balietti 1 , Pietro Saggese2 ,3 , and Markus Strohmaier3 ,4 ,5  \n1 Private Sector  \n2 IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca  \n3 Complexity Science Hub Vienna  \n4 University of Mannheim  \n5 GESIS-Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences  \nAbstract. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) use token-weighted voting to allocate resources, set protocol rules, and legitimate collective decisions. Yet, support in DAO voting is strikingly concentrated. What happens inside the ballot that produces this concentration? We study DAOs’ governance at the proposal-choice level, linking each choice’s votingpower share to three observable features: whether it expresses an approval-oriented stance, where it appears in the choice list, and whether it is selected by the proposal author. We find that (i) author-selected choices show the strongest and most robust association with votingpower share, with a 58.8% increase relative to non-author choices; (ii) approval-oriented choices retain a positive but slightly less consistent advantage (27.1%); and (iii) first-listed choices also attract systematically higher shares, consistent with position and order effects (7.7%) . Results are robust across several specifications, which include subtracting an author’s own voting power from computations. We use bias descriptively, to denote systematic associations rather than proven causal distortion. The results shift attention from proposal outcomes alone to the interface and social signals through which choices are presented. In DAO governance, ordering, author signals, and vote visibility should be treated as institutional design choices, not neutral implementation details.  \nJEL Codes: D71, D72, G23, G34, O33  \nKeywords: Decentralized Autonomous Organization, DAO, Governance, Bias, Blockchain, Voting, Collective decision-making, Decentralized Finance, DeFi  \n2 S. Balietti, P. Saggese, M. Strohmaier  \n1 Introduction  \nDecentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) are a novel blockchain-based governance model that promises to deliver efficient and democratic coordination mechanisms for small and large groups of individuals [66,32] . By employing smart contracts and so-called governance tokens deployed on distributed ledger technologies (DLTs), they automate governance rules and distribute voting rights to community members, boasting a flat hierarchy with no central authority and an open, transparent, and democratic governance model. DAOs test a central promise of digital governance: that transparency and open participation can produce robust collective decisions. Yet public voting alone does not show whether outcomes emerge from substantive participation or from the social cues, presentation choices, and human processes through which proposals are encountered and supported.  \nDAOs govern a wide range of projects, from decentralized applications such as DeFi protocols [4], to social and funding initiatives run by online communities [22,67], and collaborative projects in virtual economies, including metaverse, play-to-earn, and NFT ecosystems [30,6] . Notably, many of these organizations – especially those controlling DeFi protocols like MakerDAO [43,58], Uniswap [2], Sushiswap [59], and Compound [39] – manage treasuries in the order oftens or hundreds of million of dollars.  \nDecision-making is executed through voting on so-called governance proposals that can affect any aspect of the organization: its technical infrastructure [62], the economic incentives and design [24,20], and the allocation of funds [61,63]—for instance, for hiring new developers or starting a marketing campaign. Governance users can participate in the voting by possessing governance tokens, which determine their proportional share of decision-making power (in short, voting power) . Prior research has documented several frictions in the DAO decision-making p","cbCaijn6Lc1ZkePu","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaijn6Lc1ZkePu","pdf",554394,1,59,"English","en",105,"# Introduction\n## DAO governance model and token-weighted voting\n## Participation and decision-making frictions\n## The support skew puzzle and prior findings\n## Presentation and social cues as potential drivers","[{\"question\":\"What does the paper study about DAO voting support concentration?\",\"answer\":\"It studies what happens inside the ballot that produces concentrated support by analyzing governance at the proposal-choice level and relating voting-power shares to observable choice features.\"},{\"question\":\"Which proposal-choice features show the strongest association with voting-power share?\",\"answer\":\"Choices selected by the proposal author show the strongest and most robust association, with approval-oriented choices showing a positive but slightly less consistent advantage, and first-listed choices showing smaller position/order effects.\"},{\"question\":\"Why does the paper describe the findings as “bias” rather than confirmed causal distortion?\",\"answer\":\"The paper uses bias descriptively to denote systematic associations between choice features and voting-power share, without claiming proven causal 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does the paper study about DAO voting support concentration?","Question",{"text":75,"@type":76},"It studies what happens inside the ballot that produces concentrated support by analyzing governance at the proposal-choice level and relating voting-power shares to observable choice features.","Answer",{"name":78,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":79},"Which proposal-choice features show the strongest association with voting-power share?",{"text":80,"@type":76},"Choices selected by the proposal author show the strongest and most robust association, with approval-oriented choices showing a positive but slightly less consistent advantage, and first-listed choices showing smaller position/order effects.",{"name":82,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":83},"Why does the paper describe the findings as “bias” rather than confirmed causal distortion?",{"text":84,"@type":76},"The paper uses bias descriptively to denote systematic associations between choice features and voting-power share, without claiming 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