  Blockchains revolutionized centralized sectors like banking and finance by
promoting decentralization and transparency. In a blockchain, information is
transmitted through transactions issued by participants or applications. Miners
crucially select, order, and validate pending transactions for block inclusion,
prioritizing those with higher incentives or fees. The order in which
transactions are included can impact the blockchain final state. Moreover,
applications running on top of a blockchain often rely on governance protocols
to decentralize the decision-making power to make changes to their core
functionality. These changes can affect how participants interact with these
applications. Since one token equals one vote, participants holding multiple
tokens have a higher voting power to support or reject the proposed changes.
The extent to which this voting power is distributed is questionable and if
highly concentrated among a few holders can lead to governance attacks. In this
thesis, we audit the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains to investigate the norms
followed by miners in determining the transaction prioritization. We also audit
decentralized governance protocols such as Compound to evaluate whether the
voting power is fairly distributed among the participants. Our findings have
significant implications for future developments of blockchains and
decentralized applications.
