Governance should always exist as a form of shareholder vote just as regular stocks hold votes. If your holding shares between certain periods, you are eligible.
Now, I agree this isn’t worth much but that is why we have xgov which already passed the vote… this needs to be expanded upon to bring more value to the blockchain as a whole. We do this just like everyone else… staking, and what that means is you must run a participation node. With concerns around defi participation I would concede the longer lock up periods but it is absolutely vital that we start securing and decentralizing the network. We can worry about relay nodes later. They are already paid until a certain date. At some point maybe we make relay nodes another layer of governance with lockups and slashing to incentivize good node running similar to running a validator on ethereum.
So here is what I would like to do as a participant.
- Have my whole stack backing a participation node. This would be a layer of governance.
- Participate in governance voting. Same rules as stocks. Small reward.
- Use something like algofi to do governance so real coins are locked up and receive wrapped tokens to use in defi. Ideally a non permanent loss pool.
I would do all this and be happy with all parts summing up to ~10% apr which anyone can do. This brings much more value than just doing defi rewards or just doing governance. If everyone did this it should count towards TVL and everyone is happy.
Abondoning governance and just handing out money in the form of government subsidies is distasteful and I would avoid at all costs. It only gets messier from here.