Swimming with Whales: Analysis of Power Imbalances in Stake-Weighted Governance

Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence [Submitted on 19 May 2026] Swimming with Whales: Analysis of Power Imbalances in Stake-Weighted Governance Yuzhe Zhang, Manvir Schneider, Qin Wang, Davide Grossi 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. We study this phenomenon through the lens of computational social choice, focusing on the extent of power imbalances in stake-weighted voting when power is quantified using the Penrose-Banzhaf power index. Our work presents both analytical and empirical contributions. Analytically, we demonstrate that while a perfect alignment between power and relative stake ownership is generally unattainable, it can be approximated in expectation under specific conditions. Empirically, using data from a real-world on-chain governance system (Project Catalyst), we provide a more fine-grained understanding of the power imbalances that are likely to occur in current stake-weighted governance systems. Subjects: Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Multiagent Systems (cs.MA) Cite as: arXiv:2605.19264 [cs.AI]   (or arXiv:2605.19264v1 [cs.AI] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.19264 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Yuzhe Zhang [view email] [v1] Tue, 19 May 2026 02:25:16 UTC (200 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: cs.AI < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-05 Change to browse by: cs cs.MA References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)