The current process for Say-on-Pay votes is a logistical and financial burden. Companies rely on a chain of intermediaries—proxy advisors, transfer agents, and tabulators—to distribute materials, collect votes, and verify identities. This creates weeks of delay, high administrative costs, and a significant risk of errors or lost votes. For shareholders, especially institutional ones managing multiple portfolios, this process is fragmented and opaque, making it difficult to track their vote's journey and final tally with certainty.
LABS
Use Cases
Token-Weighted Executive Compensation Votes
A blockchain-based system for shareholder 'say-on-pay' votes where voting power is directly and immutably weighted by equity ownership, ensuring integrity and reducing administrative overhead.
Chainscore © 2026
problem-statement
CORPORATE GOVERNANCE
The Challenge: Inefficient, Opaque, and Costly Say-on-Pay Votes
Traditional shareholder votes on executive compensation are plagued by administrative friction, lack of transparency, and significant costs, undermining their intended governance purpose.
This inefficiency directly impacts corporate governance and shareholder engagement. The lack of a real-time, immutable audit trail means disputes over vote counts can arise, and final results lack the verifiable proof needed for complete trust. Furthermore, the process offers little insight into voting trends or the rationale behind decisions, preventing a meaningful dialogue between management and investors. This opacity can erode investor confidence and make compensation packages appear less legitimate, even when they are sound.
Implementing a token-weighted voting system on a blockchain directly addresses these pain points. Each share can be represented by a digital token, granting voting power proportional to ownership. Votes are cast directly on-chain, creating an instant, cryptographically secure, and publicly verifiable record. This eliminates intermediary fees, reduces the voting cycle from weeks to minutes, and provides a perfect audit trail. The result is a process that is not only cheaper and faster but also fundamentally more transparent and trustworthy.
The business ROI is clear and quantifiable. Companies can expect a 60-80% reduction in administrative costs associated with proxy voting logistics. The speed of the process allows for more agile governance and faster execution of shareholder mandates. For CFOs and boards, the immutable ledger provides defensible proof of compliance with regulations and a powerful tool for demonstrating governance integrity to investors, potentially reducing the cost of capital by strengthening stakeholder trust.
key-benefits
TOKEN-WEIGHTED GOVERNANCE
Key Benefits: From Cost Center to Strategic Advantage
Transform executive compensation from a compliance exercise into a strategic lever for alignment and performance. Blockchain-based voting provides an immutable, transparent, and efficient mechanism for shareholder engagement.
01
Slash Proxy Solicitation Costs
Eliminate the multi-million dollar annual expense of printing, mailing, and tabulating paper proxy votes. On-chain voting automates the entire process, reducing administrative overhead by 60-80%. For example, a large public company can save over $500k per year by moving shareholder meetings to a secure digital ledger, with votes tallied in real-time.
60-80%
Cost Reduction
< 1 sec
Vote Tally Speed
02
Eliminate Vote Tampering & Disputes
Create an immutable audit trail for every vote, ending costly recounts and legal challenges. Each shareholder's token-weighted vote is cryptographically signed and permanently recorded. This tamper-proof ledger ensures regulatory compliance (e.g., SEC Rule 14a-8) and provides definitive proof of governance actions, as demonstrated by DAOs like Uniswap which manage billions in treasury assets through on-chain proposals.
03
Increase Shareholder Participation
Boost engagement from <30% to 70%+ by enabling secure, mobile-friendly voting. Tokenized shares allow for fractional voting rights and participation from global investors 24/7. This leads to more representative outcomes and strengthens the board's mandate. Real-world platforms like Broadridge's blockchain proxy solution have shown significant increases in retail investor turnout.
04
Align Long-Term Incentives
Tie executive compensation packages directly to verifiable, on-chain performance metrics and long-term shareholder votes. Programmable smart contracts can release equity or bonuses only when multi-year goals are met and ratified by token holders. This moves beyond simple stock options to a dynamic, transparent incentive model that reduces agency costs and aligns C-suite actions with investor interests.
05
Automate Compliance & Reporting
Streamline SEC filings and internal reporting with automated data provenance. Every compensation vote and its outcome is instantly verifiable, reducing manual labor for legal and finance teams by hundreds of hours annually. This creates a single source of truth for auditors and regulators, dramatically cutting the risk of errors in Form DEF 14A filings.
06
Future-Proof for Digital Assets
Prepare for the future where equity is natively digital. Token-weighted governance is the infrastructure for stock splits, dividend distributions, and M&A events executed via smart contracts. Early adopters gain a competitive edge in capital markets innovation, similar to how JPMorgan's Onyx uses blockchain for intraday repo settlements, setting a new standard for operational efficiency.
TOKEN-WEIGHTED VOTING IMPLEMENTATION
ROI Breakdown: Legacy Costs vs. Blockchain Efficiency
Quantifying the operational and financial impact of modernizing executive compensation governance.
| Cost & Process Factor | Legacy Manual Process | Hybrid Digital System | On-Chain Token Voting |
|---|---|---|---|
Annual Administrative Labor Cost | $150K-300K | $75K-150K | $5K-15K |
Vote Collection & Tally Time | 3-6 weeks | 1-2 weeks | < 1 hour |
Audit Trail Provisioning | 2-4 weeks manual | 3-5 days semi-automated | Real-time, immutable |
Compliance Reporting Error Rate | 2-5% manual entry | 0.5-1% system-assisted | 0% (cryptographically verified) |
Shareholder/Stakeholder Participation | 15-30% (via proxy) | 25-40% (digital portal) | 60-85% (direct wallet voting) |
Cost per Vote Processed | $50-100 | $20-40 | < $1 |
Dispute Resolution Timeline | Months, legal intensive | Weeks, IT/legal review | Minutes, on-chain proof |
System Integration Complexity | High (bespoke, fragile) | Medium (APIs, middleware) | Low (standard smart contract) |
real-world-examples
TOKEN-WEIGHTED GOVERNANCE
Real-World Examples & Forerunners
Leading enterprises are using blockchain to transform executive compensation from a compliance exercise into a strategic tool for shareholder alignment and long-term value creation.
03
Programmable Vesting & Performance Triggers
The Pain Point: Static vesting schedules lack agility and fail to dynamically link pay to real-time, verifiable performance metrics.
The Blockchain Fix: Smart contracts can encode performance-based vesting conditions. Executive tokens vest automatically when on-chain or oracle-verified business milestones (e.g., revenue, ESG goals) are met.
- Dynamic compensation: Payouts adjust in real-time based on objective KPIs.
- Reduced agency costs: Automatically aligns executive pay with shareholder value.
- Transparent reporting: Every vesting event is an immutable, auditable record.
Conceptual Example: Linking a portion of equity to the verifiable on-chain transaction volume of a new product line.
04
ROI: From Cost Center to Strategic Asset
Justification for the CFO: Move from viewing governance as a pure compliance cost to an investment in capital efficiency and trust.
Quantifiable Benefits:
- ~60-80% reduction in proxy voting administration and audit costs through automation.
- Enhanced valuation multiples from improved governance scores and investor trust.
- Faster capital actions (e.g., approvals for acquisitions) via streamlined stakeholder coordination.
The Bottom Line: Blockchain transforms executive compensation from a back-office function into a transparent system that actively reduces risk, lowers costs, and strengthens your corporate equity story.
EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION
Adoption Challenges & Considerations
While token-weighted voting offers a powerful tool for governance, its application to executive pay introduces unique compliance, technical, and cultural hurdles. Success requires navigating these complexities with a clear-eyed, phased approach.
Navigating securities law is the primary hurdle. The token used for voting must be carefully structured to avoid being classified as a security, which would trigger stringent SEC regulations. This often involves using a utility token with no profit expectation, governed by a clear legal framework. For public companies, proxy voting rules and disclosure requirements under SEC Regulation S-K still apply. The blockchain record provides an immutable audit trail, which can simplify compliance reporting but does not exempt the process from existing governance laws. Legal counsel specializing in both corporate and crypto law is non-negotiable.
pilot-program
BLOCKCHAIN IN CORPORATE GOVERNANCE
The Pilot Program: Start Small, Prove Value
Deploy a targeted pilot to demonstrate tangible ROI and build internal consensus before scaling. Token-weighted voting for executive compensation is a low-risk, high-visibility starting point.
03
Reduce Administrative Overhead
Replace costly, error-prone manual processes for vote collection, tabulation, and reporting with a self-executing digital process. Smart contracts handle the entire lifecycle.
- Key Savings:
- Eliminate third-party proxy solicitation fees for these specific votes.
- Reduce internal legal and finance team hours spent on vote administration by an estimated 40-60%.
- Instant, certified results replace days of manual verification.
05
Pilot with a Controlled Asset
Mitigate risk by using a non-tradable governance token representing voting rights, not equity. This isolates the pilot from market volatility and securities regulation complexity.
- Implementation Path:
- Issue tokens 1:1 with shares for a specific vote.
- Conduct the vote on a private, enterprise-grade blockchain.
- Analyze results and process efficiency vs. the traditional method.
- Outcome: A clear, contained business case with measurable time and cost savings to justify broader rollout.
06
Create an Audit Trail for Regulators
Provide regulators with cryptographically verifiable proof of the entire voting process—from token distribution to final tally—instantly. This pre-empts inquiries and simplifies examinations.
- Compliance Advantage: The immutable ledger details every step, proving no votes were altered, lost, or double-counted. This is superior to current electronic systems which rely on internal logs.
- Strategic Benefit: Positions the company as a leader in RegTech, potentially influencing future regulatory standards and reducing long-term compliance burden.
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$20M+
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