25 Pages Posted: 11 Jul 2019 Last revised: 22 Jun 2020

Date Written: June 14, 2020

Abstract

The transparent and immutable nature of the blockchain provides incentives for organizations wishing to create and implement an open, decentralized governance structure. As members exercise their voting rights, a fault tolerant record accumulates on the blockchain that can be analyzed to diagnose and intercept potential threats to the governing body. To date, there has not been a systematic study of on-chain governance with respect to voting. In this paper, we provide an analysis of blockchain governance through a case study of the first cryptocurrency to adopt on-chain voting, Dash. Our analysis introduces the key characteristics of blockchain governance, steps through a data-driven exploration of Dash's on-chain voting system enabled only by the transparent nature of the blockchain and highlights exploitable attack vectors and vulnerabilities for the subversion of Dash's on-chain voting system via a novel network analysis methodology before concluding with guidelines for other organizations looking to implement similar blockchain governance solutions while maintaining integrity in their operations.