Thanks for putting this item into discussion.
I want to share a few comments regarding the following point:
IMO, a good governance process is robust enough to work DESPITE attempts to break it, ensuring fairness in decision-making. The framing I’m making here is:
governance process = set of rules + engagement
If you have the rules but not enough engagement, it will not work. If no rules, and a lot of engagement, it will not work either. Hopefully, a good set of rules with healthy engagement will keep things on the right track.
It is not feasible to try to create a set of rules to prevent every possible offense to the process. This is the discussion we, as a DAO, have been having for some time in this particular case. However, I see the question presented here with a different wording:
How do we prevent bad engagement from happening?
The short answer is: we can’t. Under our current system (delegated), the way to fight this is to increase representation/active voting of good engagement. And that can only happen with more voting power being active in the decision-making process.
Only having more token holders engaged (directly or by delegation) will solve this issue. Vote buying is not the real issue; Voter (tokenholder) apathy is.
I won’t repeat the points @JoJo laid down in his comment, but I share the sentiment: It is mandatory to increase the overall engagement to dilute the weight of bad engagement (when/if it happens). The DAO started to explore some tools to deal with it a few months ago. I believe it is time to resume this conversation.