Polkadot's Council is a Centralization Trojan Horse

Council holds emergency powers. The elected body can fast-track referenda and veto community proposals, creating a privileged political class within the governance system.

Delegated Proof-of-Stake centralizes influence. This structure mirrors the pitfalls of DPoS systems like EOS, where voter apathy leads to cartel formation and stagnant leadership.

Treasury control creates soft power. The Council's exclusive proposal rights for the on-chain treasury, akin to Compound's Governor Alpha, centralizes resource allocation and stifles grassroots innovation.

Evidence: In Q1 2024, the 13-member Council approved 100% of treasury spend proposals, demonstrating a rubber-stamp dynamic that bypasses broader stakeholder input.

Council is a political layer. The elected Council holds unilateral power over the Treasury and can fast-track referenda, creating a centralized bottleneck for critical protocol decisions. This mirrors the governance risks seen in early MakerDAO MKR token votes, where a small group dictates system parameters.

Parachain sovereignty is illusory. While parachains like Acala or Moonbeam control their own runtime, the Council's control over the relay chain's shared security and upgrades means sovereignty is conditional. This is a softer centralization than Cosmos Hub's direct governance over chains, but the control point remains.

Evidence in Treasury control. The Council approves all Treasury spends, which totaled over 33 million DOT in 2023. This centralizes the funding mechanism for ecosystem growth, unlike the permissionless grant programs emerging in the Ethereum ecosystem via protocols like Optimism's RetroPGF.

Council is a permissioned veto. The elected Council controls the treasury and can fast-track or veto public referenda. This creates a political class with gatekeeping power over the supposedly permissionless network, mirroring the centralization risks of delegated proof-of-stake systems like EOS.

Technical Committee centralizes development. This small, Council-appointed group can fast-track emergency upgrades without a full referendum. It entrenches core development teams like Parity Technologies, creating a single point of failure and censorship akin to early Ethereum Foundation influence.

Governance security is illusory. The system's complexity and low voter turnout (often <5% of DOT) mean a small, coordinated group like a large exchange or VC syndicate can capture the Council. This is a documented attack vector, not a theoretical risk.

Efficiency is a centralization vector. The Council's power to fast-track proposals and allocate treasury funds creates a political bottleneck. This mirrors the DAO governance capture risks seen in early MakerDAO and Compound, where concentrated voting power dictates protocol direction.

Permissionless chains out-innovate permissioned committees. The Council's gatekeeping role for parachain slots and upgrades inherently filters innovation. Contrast this with the Ethereum L2 ecosystem, where Arbitrum and Optimism launch and iterate without a central committee's approval, accelerating the discovery of scaling solutions.

Credible neutrality is the non-negotiable substrate. A blockchain's core function is to provide a neutral, predictable platform. The Council's discretionary power, like vetoing upgrades or favoring certain parachains, corrodes this neutrality and introduces political risk that developers must now price in.

Evidence: The Polkadot Treasury is Council-controlled. In 2023, over 99% of its spending proposals were approved by the Council, not the broader stakeholder body, demonstrating concentrated financial authority that diverges from the on-chain capital allocation models of DAOs like Uniswap.