More than most people give it credit for. Voting in on-chain governance signals that you’re an engaged stakeholder, not just someone trying to extract value. Projects that care about genuine decentralization — which is increasingly all of them, due to regulatory pressure — weight governance participation heavily.
Optimism built multiple airdrop rounds around governance involvement. ENS rewarded domain holders who had participated in governance. Even if a project doesn’t explicitly list governance as an eligibility criterion, it’s often a background signal that pushes borderline wallets into the qualified bucket.
It also costs almost nothing. If a protocol has an active DAO and you’re already farming it, vote on the proposals. The upside is asymmetric.
