I had been locking BR consistently for several months. Not huge amounts each time, but steady. I was watching my veBR balance grow, my voting weight compound, my position in emission allocation strengthen with each cycle. It felt like building something that accumulated meaning over time. ⚒️
Then the seasonal reset hit.
My accumulated voting influence cleared down to base level. Not completely wiped, Bedrock's ve model retains continuity through active locks. But the compounding effect I had been building across multiple consistent cycles reset to a starting point that a wallet locking for the first time that same week could reach quickly. Months of showing up produced the same opening position as someone who had never participated before.
I wasn't surprised by the mechanics. I had read about the reset. What I hadn't fully priced in was how it would feel to watch consistent participation produce the same governance starting point as a first-time entrant. The mechanism is designed to prevent early holders from permanently concentrating governance power over time. That's a legitimate design goal and it solves a real failure mode the ve model is known for creating.
What the reset experience clarified about Bedrock's governance trade-off is something the documentation explains without emphasizing. The design chose periodic freshness over compounding loyalty. Long-term BR holders retain the yield benefits across reset cycles, but governance influence resets regardless of how long you've been consistently participating. The people most economically aligned with Bedrock's long-term health don't automatically accumulate the most governance power over time.
Whether that's the right call depends on what you think protocol governance should optimize for. Bedrock's answer is clearly freshness over entrenchment. I understand the logic now. I just wish I had understood the feeling of it before I spent months building something designed to reset. 🫠
