Side-by-side governance comparison
The key question: who decides, what gets decided, and how those decisions are enforced.
| Dimension | Dash | eCash |
|---|---|---|
| Decision makers | Masternode operators act as the voting body of the DAO (with specialized node classes introduced for Platform). | Governance is split across miners (hashpower) for block policy and Avalanche stakers for coordinated network polling on certain outcomes. |
| Governance style | Explicit on-chain DAO: proposals are submitted and voted on, with treasury payouts handled by the protocol. | Protocol-policy governance: parameters and reward policies are accepted by the network and coordinated to reduce contention using Avalanche polling. |
| What gets decided | Treasury allocation (funding development, adoption, marketing, etc.) and signaling of project direction. | System policies & parameters (e.g., reward routing, coordination of staking reward selection), emphasizing stable rule-sets rather than monthly proposal budgets. |
| Funding mechanism | DAO treasury: a portion of block rewards is reserved for budget cycles; approved items are paid out via protocol mechanisms. | Infrastructure Funding Policy (IFP)-style coinbase splits route a portion of issuance to development/ecosystem, plus staking rewards—funding is systematic instead of proposal-by-proposal. |
| Veto / accountability | Structured accountability: the DAO can replace or redirect funded entities (and historically uses legal structures to ensure accountability). | More “emergent” accountability: if governance direction is rejected, pressure shows up through miner policy changes, stake participation changes, or—at extremes—chain splits. |
| Key tradeoff |
Pros: very clear “who voted for what.” Cons: voting power is tied to collateral and node operation cost. |
Pros: governance can align with consensus/security actors and reduce contentious forks. Cons: less like “budget democracy,” more like “rules & coordination.” |
One-sentence summary
Dash behaves like a “proposal parliament” funded by a treasury, while eCash behaves like a “protocol constitution,” where network policy is accepted by miners and coordinated via Avalanche.