Delegate Collusion

Delegate collusion occurs when multiple governance delegates coordinate their voting behavior to achieve a specific outcome that benefits them at the expense of the protocol. By forming informal coalitions, these delegates can effectively control the outcome of governance proposals, regardless of the individual preferences of their delegators.

This behavior often happens behind closed doors, making it difficult for the community to detect or counteract. Such actions can lead to the passage of proposals that extract value from the protocol, such as excessive treasury spending or changes to economic parameters that favor the colluding parties.

It represents a significant threat to the integrity of decentralized systems by subverting the democratic process. Protecting against this requires high transparency, on-chain voting analytics, and mechanisms that discourage monolithic voting blocs.

It is a form of adversarial game play that exploits the lack of formal coordination rules.