Priority Leaderboard
Priorities ranked by a combination of community votes and how many source documents independently identified them.
How scores are calculated
Combined Score
Each priority's rank is determined by: vote consensus x vote influence + mechanical score x (1 - vote influence)
Vote consensus = (agrees - disagrees) / total votes, ranging from -1 to +1. Priorities with no votes yet contribute 0 to this component. Use the vote influence slider above to adjust the balance -- at 0% the ranking is purely mechanical, at 100% it is purely by votes.
Mechanical (Cross-Source) Score
The cross-source component is computed from two provenance-based factors:
60% source breadth + 40% evidence depth
- Source breadth -- number of distinct source documents that independently identify this priority
- Evidence depth -- number of provenance quotes directly supporting this priority
Both dimensions are derived from provenance tracked during pipeline processing (not post-hoc fuzzy matching). They are min-max normalised so the top priority scores 1.0.
Source Type Weights
Each source document has a type that determines its weight in the mention frequency calculation. Use the sliders above to adjust these weights and see how the ranking changes.
Information Density
Longer documents contribute more provenance quotes per priority, which affects the evidence depth dimension. A 30-page academic paper may contribute 10+ quotes while a single Harmonica response contributes 1-2. Source breadth (60% of the score) compensates for this by counting each source document only once regardless of how many quotes it contributes.
Source Types
- knowledge-commons -- academic papers, research reports, and formal publications from the governance knowledge base
- harmonica -- structured discussion outputs from Harmonica deliberation sessions with practitioners
- workshop -- notes and outputs from in-person or virtual workshop sessions (Miro exports)
Recalculating scores...
1
Strengthen voting, delegation, representation, and decision-making mechanisms beyond simple token voting
0.77
One-token-one-vote is too blunt for complex governance. Different decisions require different aggregation methods, and better representation is needed to balance expertise, legitimacy, and fairness.
126 quotes from 32 sources
"A voting system that divides the Ethereum population into rings (miners, developer, core devs, security, users and traders), with each ring using a DAO to conduct votes, should be funded for rapid development and implementation."
+1 more from this source
""Supportive projects that improve governance and transparency by increasing visibility on core protocol change proposals, especially for consensus-layer updates.""
"We describe the Learn and Decide portions as the “deliberative arc” portion of the loop."
+1 more from this source
"Deciding — ranking, voting, integrating objections, consenting"
""successful governance hinges on thoughtful design rather than maximal decentralization""
src
PDF Resources
+2 more from this source
""reputation and share-based models can mitigate the centralization seen in token-based systems""
""we propose a new form of decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) governance that uses a sequential auction mechanism to overcome the entrenched control issues""
""traditional token voting captures choices but not intensity""
+1 more from this source
""Overall, our findings indicate that intensity-based locking offers a credible path toward scalable and resilient governance.""
"“Optimism formalized a two-house system: the Token House ... and the Citizens’ House ... aiming to separate ‘capital-weighted decisions’ from ‘public goods legitimacy.’”"
+7 more from this source
"“Bicameral setups force clarity: which house decides what, and why?”"
"“Uniswap’s governance experimented with explicitly compensating delegates to improve participation quality and sustain long-term attention”"
"“ENS uses working groups with stewards and defined processes so the DAO doesn’t need to vote on every operational detail.”"
"“Split governance into: constitutional decisions (rare, high impact) / operational decisions (frequent, delegated)”"
"“MakerDAO formalized recognized delegates and compensation structures (through MIPs) to keep governance participation resilient over time.”"
"“Gitcoin Grants popularized large-scale quadratic funding rounds, where many small donors can outweigh a few large ones via a matching pool mechanism”"
""these systems constrain power""
""The third Co-Creation Cycle (CCC3) successfully employed Harmonica as 'AI facilitation' platform to engage 40+ delegates in designing the DAO’s organizational structure.""
+5 more from this source
""The platform is really good!... AI could be a neutral field in which to express opinions.""
"“Spanish-speaking delegates’ ability to speak to Harmonica in native language revealed previously hidden perspectives.”"
"“Our CCC3 design deliberately reversed this sequence: Harmonica sessions for divergent thinking → sync workshops for convergence and prioritization.”"
"“The goal isn’t to automate governance but to augment human deliberation.”"
"“The future of DAO governance lies not in choosing between human or artificial intelligence, but in designing systems that amplify the strengths of both.”"
"“This decision should be made on an infrequent basis. Friction should be high (the process may be intentionally rigid) so that change is possible only in limited circumstances”"
+7 more from this source
"“Low stakes or Reversible decisions: Voting is a sufficient aggregation method to determine rough consensus or the prevailing majority stance”"
"“High stakes or Irreversible decisions True consensus is needed, so voting will be a sub-optimal aggregation method”"
"“Aggregation methods that optimize for information aggregation should be considered (non-voting mechanism like NLP, deliberative processes, etc.)”"
"“Prediction markets are one way that a large group of people can be used to derive probabilities of future predictions”"
"“Voters should express their value directly rather than voting for people, projects, or proposals they believe embody these values.”"
"“If convex → high expertise required, delegate the decision to a smaller group of experts or derive from data”"
"“If concave → low expertise required, more guesses will result in a better decision”"
"“Convex decisions should be delegated to smaller groups of experts (Councils or Boards)”"
+3 more from this source
"“The full DAO should still make concave decisions!”"
"“Representatives are delegated rights that tokenholders would otherwise exercise... They should be elected and held accountable as public officials”"
"“The number of subjective decisions voters are asked to make should be reduced. Instead, humans should be empowered to override otherwise algorithmic decisions.”"
"“The purpose of Optimism governance is to reduce platform risk for the Collective's stakeholders.”"
+7 more from this source
"“Stakeholder Voting: Empowering the stakeholders of the Collective ensures governance is accountable, and not just to financial interests”"
"“This definition allows us to identify four key stakeholder groups to which the platform should be accountable: Tokenholders, End-users, Apps, Chains.”"
"“In Season 8, the Citizens’ House will be sub-divided into three categories: End-users, Apps, Chains.”"
"“Governance Minimized Decision Making: Optimistic approvals allow us to lower the barriers to participation for important stakeholders while maintaining accountability”"
"“Optimistic approval assumes a vote is passed unless stakeholders explicitly reject it.”"
"“Joint House optimistic approvals will leverage dynamic veto thresholds, in which thresholds are adjusted lower as consensus among stakeholders increases.”"
"“This is still a two-house governance system”"
""The Optimism Collective is governed by a two-house system. The Token House is made up of OP holders and their delegates, and the Citizens’ House is a one-person-one-vote system based on reputation.""
+5 more from this source
""Creating two distinct branches of governance with different membership criteria allows the Collective to match constituents’ incentives with different types of decisions. It also helps the Collective avoid concentration of power, enact safeguards via checks and balances, and evaluate decisions from broader perspectives.""
""Governance minimization. The set of governance responsibilities that are encoded onchain or formalized in voting processes should remain as minimal as possible.""
""Balance. Influence in governance must extend beyond financial stake to value humanhood and intelligent life.""
""Protocol upgrades will be approved by the Token House, subject to a Citizens’ House veto.""
""Sequencer Selection ... begins as an explicit governance power driven by the Token House, with Citizens’ House power to veto.""
""Current and near-term ai as a potential existential risk factor.""
+3 more from this source
""those interested in controlling the votes... could easily do this by buying enough tokens. This began to happen, and such participants were called whales.""
""A new scheme was adopted, the so-called quadratic scheme, ensuring that voting would be decentralized""
""One of the main concerns of a DAO is its governance, which must be efficient and democratic.""
""Majeur integrates split-delegation (up to 4, optimized) directly.""
+4 more from this source
""This will allow you to have several, potentially competing delegates who will be more incentivized to vote and perform according to expectations.""
""when you vote, you get a tokenized receipt representing that answer.""
""One of these modes is 'auto futarchy'... assign voting shares or loot... to who vote on the winning proposal outcome.""
""Since the ragequit right is maintained in Majeur... protecting minority voting interests from being unduly punished.""
""On the Potential and Limitations of Proxy Voting: Delegation with Incomplete Votes""
""To enhance participation and mitigate free-riding, Governor Bravo... allows token holders to delegate their voting power to others.""
+3 more from this source
""Second, we hypothesize that if decentralization is a key priority for the ecosystem, large stakeholders will delegate voting rights to independent parties with the freedom to vote autonomously.""
""Third, we hypothesize that delegation of voting rights is influenced by demonstrated skill and commitment, leading to a reputation- and merit-based delegation model.""
""having previously put forward a proposal is associated with receiving approximately 59 times more votes than never having proposed""
""the current way proxy voting works is broken""
+3 more from this source
""This is the promise of AI voters: technology as the great democratizer empowering newly informed participants.""
""Treat AI as one advisor among many, not as a solo decision-maker""
""Offer a range of ideologically diverse models""
""there is a pressing need for deeper research into how such systems can support inclusive, democratic, and cooperative values""
+2 more from this source
""A prominent focus is on institutional innovation, where contributions explore novel governance architectures that move beyond traditional firms or markets.""
""Literature reviews further reveal opportunities and hurdles in implementing digital democracy within DAOs, particularly around power distribution and participatory mechanisms""
""Promising solutions (dual governance, optimistic governance, committees, etc) still very bespoke""
""need enforceable or unbreakable commitment to decentralize""
+1 more from this source
""or start decentralized much earlier""
""Using \"Bonds\" as a means to gather preference intensity behind ideas. Academia Signals""
+3 more from this source
""Token-Based DAOs usually want to add voting for some other registry/identity, or adding a second/third \"house\" for voting.""
""Adding private voting. This feels like an overdue experiment. The trouble is sponsorship.""
""creating re-delegation systems alongside a ritual of re-delegation (e.g. every 6 months), ideally with some entity having ability to 'call back' delegations""
""The ability to delegate towards interests rather than people""
""Contribution / labor based governance rights""
+1 more from this source
""Rules that define who has access to roles, what powers roles have, how roles limit each others powers.""
""An AI agent that helps groups define the best decision-making mechanism for the specific situation (following templates)""
+1 more from this source
""Intense deliberation, 2. co-creating a constitution, 3. governance minimisation & ossification""
""The findings show that reputation and share-based models can mitigate the centralization seen in token-based systems, though all models suffer from low member engagement""
+3 more from this source
""Traditional token governance should be avoided due to its tendency to favour highly centralization voting power distributions.""
""Low Participation: Participation in governance decisions is low, so members should instead elect decision-makers to conduct governance for them.""
""Reduce centralization and unequal voting power in DAO governance""
""Challenge Mitigation Strategy Token concentration Quadratic voting; identity-based or membership-weighted tokens""
""we aim to identify the potential and limitations of proxy voting with regard to achieving socially desirable outcomes, in settings with incomplete votes""
+6 more from this source
""The Cardano blockchain uses Project Catalyst ... to allocate treasury funds to community projects, and routinely receives several thousands of proposals per funding round""
""for the natural case of an agreement threshold of 50%, we show that a single dRep is capable of achieving an approximation factor of 3, whereas only 2 dReps are sufficient to elect the optimal proposal""
""we complement our theoretical results with experiments on the performance of voting with proxies on realistic data sets where voters exhibit incomplete preferences.""
""To avoid centralization, DAOs could accordingly prioritize diversity, decentralize decision-making, avoid concentration of assets, embrace transparency, and foster community.""
""These strategies should strike a balance between security, efficiency, and inclusiveness""
""On-chain and off-chain voting methods can be combined to create hybrid strategies""
""There exists no broadly accepted categorization of DAO proposals.""
""This paper proposes heuristics for analyzing how attention economies operate in complex governance settings.""
+3 more from this source
""One way of describing the purpose of liquid democracy is to organise attention so that a minority of motivated people can commit high levels of attention while remaining accountable to the low-attention majority.""
""Governatooorr is an AI agent that acts as a personal governance delegate.""
""the mechanism reduces AI agent oversight to binary preferences in a manner that minimises meaningful control over the Governatooorr instance.""
""it is only possible for a token holder to delegate all of their tokens to a single address""
+1 more from this source
""For ENS, about 60% of voting rights are in the hands of community delegates, while it is less than 10% for Compound and Uniswap.""
""we propose a new form of decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) governance that uses a sequential auction mechanism to overcome the entrenched control issues that have emerged for DAOs by creating a regime of temporary contestable control""
+7 more from this source
""The mechanism avoids potential public choice problems inherent in voting approaches""
""voting mechanisms and other governance elements may have a process value to participants independent of operational efficiency""
""The mechanism will not be EV-robust unless it is impervious to concealed empty voting or hidden ownership.""
""The DAO Code creates a dynamic vote pool ... to ensure that the bidder retains majority control of the DAO""
""There is nothing that prevents group bidding.""
""The mechanism developed here eliminates the incentive to make toehold overbids.""
""A control period for major reform can be invoked through the mechanism on a when-needed basis""
""The strongest candidate which emerges is partial abstention.""
+9 more from this source
""We find that partial abstention is a strong governance method from an epistemic standpoint compared to alternatives such as various forms of 'transfer delegation'.""
""In light of the epistemic challenges of voting-based decentralized governance, we consider the possible supplementary use of prediction markets, auctions, and AI agents to improve outcomes.""
""The optimal weights under the Optimal Weighting Theorem... are attainable by partial abstention""
""Delegative competence is the ability to delegate voting rights in a way that increases the probability of a correct collective decision""
""when transfer delegation is the choice method, an important structural parameter is the number of delegative steps that are allowed.""
""We also will consider sortition, a method of delegation that operates by choosing a random sample of voters who then vote as a group to make the collective decision.""
""A key feature of the algorithm is that it caps the number of votes that can accrue to each delegate.""
""prediction markets have a good track record for accuracy. DAOs can use them instead of votes to decide certain issues.""
""There is a possibility that we could build something analogous to systematic independent transfer delegation by whales, a block of AI agents that come close to operating among themselves using optimal voting weights""
""The findings highlight the need for more equitable governance structures, secure and scalable technical frameworks, standardized tools for assessing DAOs' value, and coherent legal frameworks to support decentralized operations.""
+4 more from this source
""To advance this understanding, it is important to explore how to prevent power centralization, ensure fair voting power distribution, balance stakeholder influence, and evaluate alternative governance models like quadratic voting.""
""Exploring ways to prevent power concentration.""
""This involves developing advanced voting systems that ensure fairness and inclusivity, allowing all participants to have an equitable say in decision-making processes.""
""Governance Voting Mechanism: Exploring novel voting mechanisms like quadratic voting.""
""Token voting is a promising first step towards transparent, open, socio-economic governance.""
+1 more from this source
""we expect that flawed governance design potentially makes it susceptible to both large stakeholders controlling the protocols or hostile exploits""
2
Build resilient governance structures with clear roles, checks and balances, scoped authority, and effective delegation
0.74
96 quotes from 26 sources
"Initiatives to design and implement more structured and hierarchical governance and decision-making processes should be funded to improve effectiveness and reduce noise."
+2 more from this source
"A voting system that divides the Ethereum population into rings (miners, developer, core devs, security, users and traders), with each ring using a DAO to conduct votes, should be funded for rapid development and implementation."
"Design and funding for a transparent, accountable multisig-based voting system to control emergency abort of upgrades, with regularly reviewed and opt-in client membership."
"“Optimism formalized a two-house system: the Token House ... and the Citizens’ House ... aiming to separate ‘capital-weighted decisions’ from ‘public goods legitimacy.’”"
+8 more from this source
"“Bicameral setups force clarity: which house decides what, and why?”"
"“ENS uses working groups with stewards and defined processes so the DAO doesn’t need to vote on every operational detail.”"
"“Split governance into: constitutional decisions (rare, high impact) / operational decisions (frequent, delegated)”"
"“Compound’s governance (Governor Bravo) is a classic design: proposal → vote → queue in Timelock → execute after delay.”"
"“Timelocks are underrated. They turn governance from ‘instant irreversible button’ into ‘decision with a buffer.’”"
"“Arbitrum’s DAO design includes a Security Council to handle time-sensitive or emergency decisions”"
"“Emergency councils can absolutely be abused, but Arbitrum’s framing explicitly positions the council as a backstop for critical risks, with governance mechanisms around oversight and removal.”"
"“The common thread: these systems constrain power”"
"“This decision should be made on an infrequent basis. Friction should be high (the process may be intentionally rigid) so that change is possible only in limited circumstances”"
+4 more from this source
"“If convex → high expertise required, delegate the decision to a smaller group of experts or derive from data”"
"“Levels 1-4 - high influence → decision making rights should be restricted to trusted parties and competition should be incentivized among these parties to balance power”"
"“Levels 5-6 - medium influence → decision making rights should be restricted to select parties with a proven track record, and accountability mechanisms should be established to balance power”"
"“Levels 9-12 - some influence → decision making rights should map to decision space guidelines. these decisions should optimize for transparency to balance power”"
"“Power structures cannot be avoided. It is better to acknowledge that and publicly define them than to pretend they don’t exist.”"
+8 more from this source
"“Power can be held accountable only when it is transparent.”"
"“Leadership roles should be fluid, flexible, and revokable”"
"“Convex decisions should be delegated to smaller groups of experts (Councils or Boards)”"
"“The full DAO should still make concave decisions!”"
"“Representatives are delegated rights that tokenholders would otherwise exercise... They should be elected and held accountable as public officials”"
"“Contributors merely do work... Contributors should not be elected”"
"“Teams should have as much autonomy over their own operations and budgets as possible”"
"“scopes, mandates, and RFPs should be narrowly scoped”"
"“Adding more pizzas” reduces the risk of this failure by creating redundancy."
+4 more from this source
"“Adding more pizzas” can create competition, providing a check on the dominant or incumbent decision maker."
"“The point of decentralization is to reduce the concentration of power or eliminate unilateral control.”"
"“the below functions may best decentralize by adding multiple external teams rather than dissolving the operations of any one team into the DAO: Core Development, Metagovernance, Strategy, Business Development, Marketing”"
"“It makes sense to decentralize this way when a function would benefit from being run by a group of third party, neutral, or loosely affiliated individuals”"
""Autonomy, in operational terms, is delegated authority.""
+2 more from this source
""If authority was delegated, then scope, constraint, enforcement, and redress must be designed and maintained.""
""Contestability requires governance to operate within execution. It demands mechanisms that allow decisions to be paused, overridden, or revised before their effects propagate irreversibly.""
""A constitution should be accessible at a URI, stored in an accessible digital format such as a .md or .txt file, and make use of hyperlinks to other relevant resources""
+4 more from this source
""There is an accessible, transparent process for amending or changing the constitution.""
""we recommend a tool that enables low-friction amendments alongside a transparent record.""
""Allocate initial responsibility for draft to a small core group of between one and three persons""
""Integrate the constitution into a procedure. For example, you may decide to require all new members of the organization to read and sign the constitution.""
""This leads to a need for checks on the special authority exercised by these specially empowered decisionmakers generally, often deemed constitutional constraints in public governance contexts.""
+4 more from this source
""The Bill of Rights delineates spheres of individual autonomy that the democratic will of the collective cannot reach.""
""enabling subsidiary units to define certain areas of governance themselves allows for a level of fit that would otherwise be obviated""
""The general theory animating this tendency is known as principle of subsidiarity""
""Due process protections are also of specific benefit to subgroups whose interests are less well represented within a given system.""
"“The Optimism Collective is governed by a two-house system. The Token House is made up of OP holders and their delegates, and the Citizens’ House is a one-person-one-vote system based on reputation.”"
+6 more from this source
"“Creating two distinct branches of governance with different membership criteria allows the Collective to match constituents’ incentives with different types of decisions. It also helps the Collective avoid concentration of power, enact safeguards via checks and balances, and evaluate decisions from broader perspectives.”"
"“Protocol upgrades will be approved by the Token House, subject to a Citizens’ House veto.”"
"“Sequencer Selection ... begins as an explicit governance power driven by the Token House, with Citizens’ House power to veto.”"
"“Citizenship Eligibility will be determined by the Citizens’ House; the Token House will have the power to veto.”"
"“Director Removals are approved by both the Token House and Citizens’ House.”"
"“Season 5 will also include the Optimism Security Council. The Security Council is a set of community members tasked with executing protocol upgrades at the will of governance.”"
"“Financial management will be conducted through a multi-signature wallet, ensuring that no single individual has control over resources.”"
+3 more from this source
"“A quorum of at least 30% of members is required for votes to be valid, ensuring that decisions reflect collective will rather than a small minority.”"
"“Each member has equal voting rights, maintaining fairness and simplicity in the decision-making process.”"
"“Challenge Mitigation Strategy Token concentration Quadratic voting; identity-based or membership-weighted tokens”"
""The governance contract should be configured as the only way to change the parameters of DAO contracts.""
+4 more from this source
""The governance contract controls the entire governance process.""
""All privileged functions within the governance contract should be controlled by the governance contract itself to ensure the governance process is independent""
""developers, they should be obliged to disclose all privileged addresses to their members or, alternatively, mandate that all privileged functions be owned by the governance contract.""
""we suggest the DAO should force the consistency between proposal description and tools and develop tools that can automatically supplement proposal descriptions with missing proposal codes and explanations.""
""The mechanism avoids potential public choice problems inherent in voting approaches""
+8 more from this source
""designed to shift control to the party with the most promising business plan, at the same time, it deters value destruction by control parties, maximizes social surplus""
""The mechanism described above defeats potential entrenchment in the form of explicit or implicit control""
""Potential control periods allow for a reset of the default governance state when it departs from the desired process values""
""the auction mechanism is a remedy.""
""The control party can set the DAO back on course during the control period and then reinstate the voting mechanism after addressing the threats.""
""The surety deposit addresses the danger that the bidder will engage in value destruction after gaining control of the DAO""
""the DAO Code creates a dynamic vote pool ... to ensure that the bidder retains majority control of the DAO""
""The DAO Code enables the DAO to operate through periodic basic auctions... These features make the control created by the auction both temporary and continuously contestable.""
""The operation of the auction mechanism exposes the control party to 100% of the gains and losses in value of the entire DAO. As a result, the control party is in the same position with respect to incentives as a 100% owner""
+2 more from this source
""the auction mechanism can provide guardrails for that voting system.""
""Although the mechanism involves temporary centralization, it may prove highly valuable or even essential for implementing successful decentralization.""
"“To mitigate the risk of plutocracy, the system supports advanced voting models such as quadratic voting and delegated voting, allowing for more equitable influence distribution.”"
+1 more from this source
"“Governance tokens are allocated to members based on predefined criteria, such as contribution or stake, and can be vested or delegated to promote long-term engagement and prevent concentration of power.”"
"“Multi-sig requirements, which require multiple parties to approve major changes, provide protection against malicious actions without creating excessive friction.”"
+2 more from this source
"“Time-delay mechanisms... allow for community review without significantly slowing decision-making.”"
"“The most successful DAOs achieve this by fostering broad participation, implementing robust security measures, and minimizing excessive privileges or entrenchment for core developers.”"
""How to ensure governance remains peer-to-peer (P2P) at the core, while enabling peers to voluntarily group, recursively.""
+1 more from this source
""Every DAO, every chat group (such as on Telegram or Discord), every HOA, every club, every corporation is controlled by a tiny council, while the users can only vote on high level subjects, and never gain real ownership, and are certainly never allowed to secede (split into subgroups).""
""The process could be managed by a DAO which sets standards on juror requirements.""
+1 more from this source
""DAO vets a pool of qualified jurors for specific courts dedicated to specific subject matters.""
""The governance team stayed strong in sticking to the priorities that were ratified by the community via governance vote for year 1 which were 1) protocol security 2) chain incentives 3) app incentives.""
+3 more from this source
""Delegate tagging system on governance interface ... tags all Chains, Apps, Technical Partners, Security Council members & Guardians. There is also an 'active' tag""
""Delegate onboarding programs/tests could be useful to ensure delegates understand exactly what your governance governs, understand priorities and strategy.""
""Governance elected the councils, but the councils decided everything else. The surface area was simple and at the highest level, with clear accountability mechanisms to keep councils in check.""
""There are no roles with designated rights and/or responsibilities, no proper ways to elect or hold representatives to account, etc.""
+2 more from this source
""Examples are the bicameral system that the Optimism Collective designed, Lido's Dual Governance structure, Aave when it comes to creating councils, Aragon OSx and Zodiac when it comes to separating powers in governance.""
""This implies designing a governance protocol that allows communities to create their own roles with specialised rights and responsibilities, design some type of filters / throttles to avoid being overwhelmed by noise, and define how different roles check each others to ensure accountability.""
""the apathy is not a bug a resolver, sino una constante histórica que debería asumirse al diseñar systems (delegación profesional, roles claros, accountability)""
""these so called committees becoming a centralising force and very rarely create processes or procedures that involve the broader token holder base.""
+1 more from this source
""If DAOs are supposed to be a democratising force. Our decision system should be broad and inclusive not centralising.""
""No clarity of valuable contribution - so status as decision maker is not as clear ( eg: top delegates)""
""Lack of clarity of whose say is important""
""Should be defined early in the DAO's journey""
""Rules that define who has access to roles, what powers roles have, how roles limit each others powers.""
""How are daily operations separated?""
3
Reduce concentration of power and governance capture through fair, decentralized, and accountable governance design
0.74
A recurring governance failure is that a small number of token holders, delegates, insiders, or affiliated actors can dominate outcomes despite nominally decentralized structures.
215 quotes from 26 sources
"Research or frameworks for handling cases where a malicious and determined actor seeks to influence the platform for their own gains should be funded."
+2 more from this source
"Initiatives to design and implement more structured and hierarchical governance and decision-making processes should be funded to improve effectiveness and reduce noise."
"Design and funding for a transparent, accountable multisig-based voting system to control emergency abort of upgrades, with regularly reviewed and opt-in client membership."
""a small number, often three or fewer, of entities exert control over most decisions""
src
PDF Resources
+5 more from this source
""reputation and share-based models can mitigate the centralization seen in token-based systems""
""Vote buying, vote selling and coercion are easy. The wealthy rule, decentralisation is a myth.""
""The findings highlight the need for more equitable governance structures, secure and scalable technical frameworks, standardized tools for assessing DAOs’ value, and coherent legal frameworks""
""policy interventions to stimulate voter engagement and foster genuine decentralization""
""we propose a new form of decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) governance that uses a sequential auction mechanism to overcome the entrenched control issues""
""traditional token voting captures choices but not intensity""
+3 more from this source
""This results in environments dominated by whales, late signaling cascades, and high noise in collective decision making.""
""decay-bounded lock curves, immutable board configurations, and programmable acceptance thresholds can preserve pluralistic preferences while resisting capture""
""allow smaller holders to influence outcomes by committing for longer periods, which is a clear improvement over binary voting models""
"“Power structures cannot be avoided. It is better to acknowledge that and publicly define them than to pretend they don’t exist.”"
+8 more from this source
"“Power can be held accountable only when it is transparent.”"
"“Leadership roles should be fluid, flexible, and revokable”"
"“Convex decisions should be delegated to smaller groups of experts (Councils or Boards)”"
"“The full DAO should still make concave decisions!”"
"“Representatives are delegated rights that tokenholders would otherwise exercise... They should be elected and held accountable as public officials”"
"“DAOs should try to retain high impact/context delegates but should also design systems that are resilient to any one of them leaving.”"
"“Leads should never be a central point of failure.”"
"“Distribute power among many contributors.”"
"“Adding more pizzas” can create competition, providing a check on the dominant or incumbent decision maker."
+2 more from this source
"“The point of decentralization is to reduce the concentration of power or eliminate unilateral control.”"
""The point of decentralization is to reduce the concentration of power or eliminate unilateral control.""
"“This decision should be made on an infrequent basis. Friction should be high (the process may be intentionally rigid) so that change is possible only in limited circumstances”"
+5 more from this source
"“High stakes or Irreversible decisions True consensus is needed, so voting will be a sub-optimal aggregation method”"
"“Aggregation methods that optimize for information aggregation should be considered (non-voting mechanism like NLP, deliberative processes, etc.)”"
"“Levels 1-4 - high influence → decision making rights should be restricted to trusted parties and competition should be incentivized among these parties to balance power”"
"“Levels 5-6 - medium influence → decision making rights should be restricted to select parties with a proven track record, and accountability mechanisms should be established to balance power”"
"“Levels 9-12 - some influence → decision making rights should map to decision space guidelines. these decisions should optimize for transparency to balance power”"
"“Creating two distinct branches of governance with different membership criteria allows the Collective to match constituents’ incentives with different types of decisions. It also helps the Collective avoid concentration of power, enact safeguards via checks and balances, and evaluate decisions from broader perspectives.”"
+5 more from this source
"“There are two primary goals of Optimism’s governance system: 1. Capture resistance. ... 2. Resource allocation.”"
"“Governance should (a) make it possible for chain or network operation to continue without reliance on any individual entity, and (b) prevent any one entity or small group of entities from being able to control or censor the protocol or its functions.”"
"“Governance minimization. The set of governance responsibilities that are encoded onchain or formalized in voting processes should remain as minimal as possible.”"
"“Balance. Influence in governance must extend beyond financial stake to value humanhood and intelligent life.”"
"“Since Citizens play a crucial role in the Optimism governance, it’s paramount that the Citizens’ House is qualified and capture-resistant.”"
"“The purpose of Optimism governance is to reduce platform risk for the Collective's stakeholders.”"
+7 more from this source
"“Stakeholder Voting: Empowering the stakeholders of the Collective ensures governance is accountable, and not just to financial interests”"
"“Season 8 takes steps to ensure governance is accountable to all major stakeholders of the Collective, not just financial ones”"
"“In Season 8, we will run several experiments aimed at shifting voting power towards direct tokenholders.”"
"“Governance Minimized Decision Making: Optimistic approvals allow us to lower the barriers to participation for important stakeholders while maintaining accountability”"
"“Joint House optimistic approvals will leverage dynamic veto thresholds, in which thresholds are adjusted lower as consensus among stakeholders increases.”"
"“It’s about representing all impacted stakeholders in a balanced way.”"
"“We remain committed to decentralization in so much as it also reduces platform risk.”"
"“our research reveals a high concentration of voting power among a few members despite them not utilizing it to a great extent”"
+13 more from this source
""This research addresses fundamental questions regarding the democratic integrity of DAOs and their ability to achieve equitable representation and decision-making.""
""the Gini coefficient, resulting to be 0.9819, indicating that voting power within the DAO is extremely unevenly distributed""
""15 voters were sufficient to concentrate more than half of the DAO’s voting power, which represents only 0.18% of the total number of voters""
""the analysis of the distribution of voting power within the DAO reveals a strong concentration of power""
""The concentration of voting power in a small group of participants results in a significant imbalance in the distribution of influence over decision-making""
""This fact raises fundamental questions about the representativeness and fairness of voting processes since few voters could easily impose their will""
""they retain the ability to do so, thereby having the potential to undermine community decisions at will""
""the potential for these influential voters to significantly impact outcomes remains, presenting a potential risk to the democratic integrity of the DAO""
""the practical implication of such a principle should go hand-in-hand with a large participation of the members of communities to ensure a result that represents the community""
""This transparency may allow powerful voters to decide whether their participation is necessary based on their interests, potentially leading to strategic use of their power""
""they might wait until the last minute to vote, thereby influencing the results without allowing sufficient time for others to react""
""the application of distributed governance mechanisms in DAOs, opens the door to the re-centralization of power in some individuals""
""This situation sheds doubts on the real capacity of DAOs to fulfill the promise of becoming a fully democratic environment""
""contributors, on average, held the necessary majority to control governance decisions""
+16 more from this source
""contributors have singularly decided at least one proposal in 20.41% of DAOs""
""contributors tend to be centrally positioned within the DAO governance ecosystem, suggesting the presence of inner power circles""
""decision-making power can be concentrated in the hands of a few""
""Beyond shedding light on centralization tendencies within DAO governance structures, our findings demonstrate that contributors possess the capability to effectively steer the direction of DAOs""
""Figure 5 indeed shows a very high concentration level for contributors in all networks with a peak above 7000""
""contributors (dark red) tend to cluster in a few central communities""
""the number of shifts increases, indicating last-minute voting power acquisition""
""the trading of governance tokens increases shortly before polls and that users might trade voting power to decide the outcome of the proposal in their preferred way""
""contributors are overrepresented in the decision-making process of certain DAOs compared to other governance users""
""users with smaller stakes might be discouraged from voting""
""we found evidence of co-voting patterns among contributors, which is an indicator of the existence of inner circles of power in DAOs""
""These findings refute the conventional wisdom that DAOs are decentralized and run autonomously without being under anyone’s control.""
""contributors had majorities in certain proposals""
""Thus, also in high TVL DAOs, contributors had majorities in some proposals.""
""Contributors tend to have higher centrality and k-core across networks and measures.""
""Overall, it suggests that contributors have influence over the entire network.""
""the majority of voting power is concentrated in the hands of a small number of addresses""
+8 more from this source
""The Nakamoto coefficients ... reveal extreme centralization in all three governance systems""
""In the case of Compound, only 8 delegates can dictate any governance action using their majority. For Uniswap, this number is 11; for ENS, it is 18.""
""multiple addresses—holder as well as delegate addresses—can be controlled by the same entity""
""This fact can make it challenging to determine the actual distribution of power in a governance system and can lead to the illusion of greater decentralization""
""Our analysis reveals a significant concentration of voting power in all three governance systems""
""Nonetheless, they do illustrate the challenges of building a truly decentralized governance systems.""
""for Compound and Uniswap, almost all the voting power lies in the hands of delegates that receive the majority of their voting power from a single address.""
""their governance systems are similar to shareholder meetings of traditional companies, where a small number of large investors represent their interests.""
""we propose a new form of decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) governance that uses a sequential auction mechanism to overcome the entrenched control issues that have emerged for DAOs by creating a regime of temporary contestable control""
+25 more from this source
""The mechanism avoids potential public choice problems inherent in voting approaches""
""Token voting potentially clashes with the goal of decentralization because of the danger of two types of entrenchment""
""The mechanism described above defeats potential entrenchment in the form of explicit or implicit control""
""it is important for any DAO governance approach innovation or mechanism to be EV-robust in the sense of being effectively resistant both to deleterious uses of empty voting or hidden ownership""
""The mechanism will not be EV-robust unless it is impervious to concealed empty voting or hidden ownership.""
""The mechanism is a means to promote process values, including various desired voting approaches, by facilitating innovations in the default governance state.""
""the bidder is required to make three additional deposits in the form of stablecoins""
""the value deposit combined with the operation of the value deposit forfeit function transforms the bidder’s value claim into a commitment to deliver the promised increase in token value to the other token holders""
""the surety deposit addresses the danger that the bidder will engage in value destruction after gaining control of the DAO""
""these two deposits working in conjunction perform three functions: creating optimal bidding incentives, incentivizing performance of the business plan by the winning bidder after the auction ends, and deterring value destruction""
""the auction is designed to be self-executing through the Auction Contracts""
""Prevent bidder collusion and insider coordination in DAO control auctions""
""One particularly promising way to address the toehold reporting problem is to use a flush sale variant of the mechanism.""
""The mechanism developed here eliminates the incentive to make toehold overbids.""
""The mechanism itself is an easy-to-code algorithm.""
""These deposits are EV-robust.""
""A major advantage of the mechanism is that the control itself is completely EV-robust.""
""There is a strong argument for making the code governing the auction rules themselves immutable or nearly so.""
""the immutability of the auction provisions prevents incumbents from distorting the auction process to their advantage""
""Most importantly, control is continuously contestable. Any party can initiate an auction.""
""Even a majority token holder cannot maintain control in the face of an auction except by being the highest bidder.""
""It is impossible for large token holders, including founders or parties holding a token majority, to retain control if there are parties who will outbid them in an auction.""
""many DAOs currently are 'undemocratic' due to implicit control by founders or others who may have relatively large token holdings while being surrounded by many small, disinterested holders""
""The mechanism encourages value-increasing transitions and attempts to distribute a significant proportion of the resulting social surplus to the passive holders.""
""a control period can correct the adverse consequences of voting mechanisms if necessary, defeat empty voting if it becomes a problem, and overturn attempts of malicious actors to damage the DAO.""
""power concentration is also negatively associated with DAO treasury size, suggesting that concentration of decision-making power among very powerful governance tokenholders is detrimental to DAO treasury size.""
+2 more from this source
""successful DAOs should feature transparent and enforceable on-chain voting to honor DAOs’ autonomy promise""
""the presence and detrimental impact of voting coalitions highlight the need for governance token ownership disclosure rules that prevent voting competition-reducing voter collusion.""
""Heavily centralized token allocations may result in situations where a small set of super-users can unilaterally change the protocol – potentially at the expense of everyone else.""
+4 more from this source
""a heavily concentrated distribution may create an ecosystem where much of the value is captured by a small number of actors.""
""A relatively low threshold can indicate a higher likelihood of collusion and centralized decision making.""
""there is a particular risk that high ownership concentration and complex wrapping structures introduce governance risks, undermine transparency and create extreme interdependence affecting protocol robustness.""
""Our data indicate that previous analyses severely overestimated ownership concentration. However, in most cases, the majority of the tokens are still held by a handful of individuals.""
""This study aims to critically evaluate existing DAO governance models to support the development and selection of more effective mechanisms.""
+12 more from this source
""Unequal Voting Power: The results reveal how reputation and share-based governance systems manage to avoid the high degrees of centralization of the voting power in token-based governance.""
""Traditional token governance should be avoided due to its tendency to favour highly centralization voting power distributions.""
""The results show that token-based protocol DAOs exhibit significantly higher inequality in voting power distribution compared to DAOhaus and DAOstack. The median Gini coefficients for these three groups are 0.98, 0.75, and 0.46, respectively.""
""A small but changing minority of members is in full control of these DAOs.""
""The absence of strong protections against centralization in token-based governance systems results in considerable security risks.""
""Token-based governance allows individuals with sufficient resources to purchase voting majorities.""
""The cost of such an attack can be further reduced if governance tokens are borrowed instead of bought.""
""Token-based DAOs exhibit similar degrees of voting inequality as traditional public companies, yet offer none of the protections afforded to minority shareholders under corporate law.""
""DAOhaus requires member approval to issue voting shares, while DAOstack grants non-transferable, earned reputation scores.""
""These mechanisms show how limiting transferability and accumulation can reduce centralization.""
""Low voter participation increases security risks in DAOs, undermines minority representation, and challenges the core rationale for decentralization.""
""Low participation reduces the protection of minority interests, which are already largely unprotected.""
""these patterns suggest that while the Uniswap ecosystem values decentralization, a16z may engage in window-dressing around it.""
+11 more from this source
""Second, we hypothesize that if decentralization is a key priority for the ecosystem, large stakeholders will delegate voting rights to independent parties with the freedom to vote autonomously.""
""The distribution of voting power among the 'Top5' voters reveals a high degree of concentration.""
""Top1 voters, on average, control approximately 7 million voting rights, representing 46% of all votes cast across voting events.""
""the Top1 and Top2 voters collectively control 65% of the votes cast, granting them substantial influence over voting outcomes.""
""the concentration of voting power remains sufficiently high to raise fundamental questions about whether DAOs genuinely achieve their decentralization objectives.""
""This delegation pattern raises questions about the actual decentralization of governance in the Uniswap DAO""
""a16z affiliate receives about 2,689 and 3,548 times the votes compared to a non-affiliated delegate""
""The strong influence of a16z and its affiliated members is consistent with a window-dressing strategy of a16z for Uniswap to appear decentralized in terms of governance, while tight control rests with a16z""
""On the eleven events when Andreessen cast a vote at the critical on-chain vote level, only once did an affiliate vote in the opposing direction""
""Token holders who prioritize decentralization should carefully investigate delegate affiliations and consider active participation in governance rather than delegation""
""The concentration of voting power through strategically aligned delegation networks raises questions about whether additional oversight of governance structures in DeFi platforms is warranted""
""successful governance hinges on thoughtful design rather than maximal decentralization.""
+6 more from this source
""Inclusive participation, well-calibrated constraints, and security mechanisms can reinforce rather than undermine collective decision-making.""
""effective DAO governance hinges on striking the right balance rather than pursuing maximal decentralization.""
""When governance processes are more inclusive, they attract diverse perspectives from technical experts, users, and stakeholders across different geographies and backgrounds.""
""Multi-sig requirements, which require multiple parties to approve major changes, provide protection against malicious actions without creating excessive friction.""
""Time-delay mechanisms... allow for community review without significantly slowing decision-making.""
""The most successful DAOs achieve this by fostering broad participation, implementing robust security measures, and minimizing excessive privileges or entrenchment for core developers.""
""Governance systems can collapse without legitimacy""
+7 more from this source
""No single party can unilaterally control, censor, halt, or otherwise extract rent from Optimism""
""Increases legitimacy via high participation High voter turnout Give participants a voice""
""Increases legitimacy via high credible neutrality Onchain execution Stage 2 decentralization (for L2s) Public voting Independently verifiable outcomes Third party watchdogs""
""Governance processes are consistently upheld (don’t break your own rules!)""
""Ensuring everyone, including the Foundation, is subject to the same rules""
""A powerful party imposes their will on the DAO to achieve a governance outcome. ‘Because I said so.’""
""the goals of this governance system are: Legitimacy Effective Resource Capture Resistance OPTIMISM Allocation""
""DAO Governance is currently broken.""
+9 more from this source
""Vote buying, vote selling and coercion are easy.""
""The wealthy rule, decentralisation is a myth.""
""Hostile take-overs are incentivised.""
""Token-based voting legalises coups—anyone can legitimately buy their way to power.""
""Token-based voting is incompatible with equality and fairness.""
""A preliminary study found less than 1% of token holders control 90% of the vote""
""Moving away from vote purchasing governance models is necessary to avoid plutocracies and centralisation and 'legal' fund siphoning.""
""To prevent heist attacks, DAOs must ensure that their governance system is not exploitable.""
""with truly private votes, vote buying is prevented. Decisions are fair and free.""
""Keep the trust surface minimal and explicit (immutable board config, explicit thresholds).""
+2 more from this source
""Acceptance can be gated by fixed and/or percentage-of-supply thresholds and access control (owner-only or anyone once thresholds are met).""
""Inclusivity: how smaller voting blocks benefit from time-weighted designs and decay floors.""
""it requires striking a balance between broad distribution, fostering user activity, and financial incentives.""
+5 more from this source
""methodologies for disseminating governance tokens attempt to strike a balance between the relative 'decentralization' of voting power amongst a wide span of active or passive stakeholders while simultaneously incentivizing application usage and securing funding for the core team""
""none of the distribution methodologies successfully achieved a Nakamoto coefficient surpassing 100 addresses""
""the initial distribution of COMP may be considered suboptimal, as voting power remains largely concentrated""
""the involvement of early-stage venture capital investors appears to correlate with a higher concentration of governance tokens amongst fewer addresses""
""Transparent and decentralized governance for these core protocols is of utmost importance""
""To create a better DAO, we need to examine these issues at every level of the DAO and strive for a healthy approach to distributed governance.""
+11 more from this source
""This involves developing new tokenization mechanisms that incentivize long-term participation, finding a more fair governance structure, and exploring alternative blockchain technologies that address security concerns.""
""The quadratic strategy weakens the significant influence of rich stakeholders, diminishing the gap across different individuals.""
""some DAOs experience centralized participation patterns, which could hinder the democratic potential of decentralized organizations.""
""the need for more robust, inclusive, and accessible governance mechanisms that encourage broader participation and ensure a sustainable future for DAOs.""
""To avoid centralization, DAOs could accordingly prioritize diversity, decentralize decision-making, avoid concentration of assets, embrace transparency, and foster community.""
""highly active groups of participants tend to accumulate major shares of tokens..., hence breaching the decentralization due to the concentration of e-voting power.""
""It’s important to have effective mechanisms in place to resolve disagreements in a fair and transparent manner.""
""On-chain and off-chain voting methods can be combined to create hybrid strategies""
""A healthy tokenization distribution enables fairness to people who are involved in the DAO projects.""
""Ensuring equitable distribution of these incentives is crucial.""
""revealing potential threats of centralization, contract reliance and policy impact""
""The concentration of governance tokens among a few influential individuals often undermines the decentralized ethos of DAOs, leading to a disparity in decision-making power.""
+7 more from this source
""To advance this understanding, it is important to explore how to prevent power centralization, ensure fair voting power distribution, balance stakeholder influence, and evaluate alternative governance models like quadratic voting.""
""The findings highlight the need for more equitable governance structures, secure and scalable technical frameworks, standardized tools for assessing DAOs' value, and coherent legal frameworks to support decentralized operations.""
"“Power Distribution: Balancing stakeholder influence and preventing centralization.”"
"“Exploring ways to prevent power concentration.”"
"“This involves developing advanced voting systems that ensure fairness and inclusivity, allowing all participants to have an equitable say in decision-making processes.”"
"“there is a growing focus on developing strategies to strengthen the integrity and transparency of DAOs”"
"“The workshop emphasized the need for robust governance frameworks that balance power, ensure transparency, and effectively resolve conflicts”"
""we recommend that constitutions be digital, amendable, short, expository, and early.""
+4 more from this source
""There is an accessible, transparent process for amending or changing the constitution.""
""we recommend a tool that enables low-friction amendments alongside a transparent record.""
""Allocate initial responsibility for draft to a small core group of between one and three persons""
""Share the secondary draft more broadly and give time for the greater commons to respond""
""Constitutions can thus be understood as an interface for a community’s shared values.""
+4 more from this source
""The value of ‘decentralization’ hence dictates some of the conditions and precepts presented within these DAOs.""
""Rights directly shape behavior by specifying permissible actions.""
""The right to create proposals... The right to dispute/challenge proposal... The right to exit...""
""the value of understanding DAOs through the lens of computational constitutionalism is to see how certain rights and certain forms of governance can be more easily and effectively provided by a smart contract, by a constitution... or by some combination of the two.""
""Bicameral setups force clarity: which house decides what, and why?""
+6 more from this source
""Governance needs labor markets. If you want accountability, you need roles, metrics, and pay.""
""Split governance into: constitutional decisions (rare, high impact) / operational decisions (frequent, delegated)""
""Even critics of delegate concentration generally agree: the system runs — and reliability is a governance feature.""
""Timelocks are underrated. They turn governance from ‘instant irreversible button’ into ‘decision with a buffer.’""
""Emergency councils can absolutely be abused, but Arbitrum’s framing explicitly positions the council as a backstop for critical risks, with governance mechanisms around oversight and removal.""
""The common thread: these systems constrain power""
4
Use AI and algorithmic tools to augment governance with human oversight, robustness, and value alignment
0.72
88 quotes from 23 sources
"Aggregation methods that optimize for information aggregation should be considered (non-voting mechanism like NLP, deliberative processes, etc.)"
+1 more from this source
"Measurement → This type of question is best answered through experimentation, data collection and observation. With adequate data, this is best answered by a computer"
"The number of subjective decisions voters are asked to make should be reduced. Instead, humans should be empowered to override otherwise algorithmic decisions."
"algorithmic dependence can ensure transparency and fairness, it may also lead to the unification of values and make it difficult to fully reflect the characteristics of projects with diverse objectives and methodologies."
+1 more from this source
"As the Evidence Layer expands, we can avoid depending on any single algorithm, optimize objectives and effects on a case-by-case basis, and incorporate multifaceted perspectives."
"The third Co-Creation Cycle (CCC3) successfully employed Harmonica as 'AI facilitation' platform to engage 40+ delegates in designing the DAO’s organizational structure."
+6 more from this source
"The platform is really good!... AI could be a neutral field in which to express opinions."
"Spanish-speaking delegates’ ability to speak to Harmonica in native language revealed previously hidden perspectives."
"This wasn’t just translation but genuine accessibility, suggesting significant latent insight for delegates whose native language isn’t English."
"The ability to adjust prompts based on early responses ... demonstrated AI’s advantage over traditional surveys."
"The goal isn’t to automate governance but to augment human deliberation."
"The future of DAO governance lies not in choosing between human or artificial intelligence, but in designing systems that amplify the strengths of both."
"Through the non-profit I co-founded, GainForest.Earth, we’ve researched approaches to human-machine cooperation in order to address arguably our planet’s most critical coordination failure: The climate and biodiversity emergency."
+9 more from this source
"Importantly, successful scaling isn’t about replacing human governance with automation, but about developing new sociotechnical capabilities that enhance human agency while addressing these fundamental challenges."
"How can we design sociotechnical intelligent systems that: Augment human governance capabilities across scales; Preserve or enhance human agency; Maintain legitimate governance and trust; Align machines across diverse communities values"
"One solution is implementing AI-powered automated workflows. These AI agents learn from community examples ... plan workflows independently, and execute them."
"This ‘classmate’ paradigm is particularly powerful because it preserves human agency in the learning process."
"aligning its values with respective communities is crucial for establishing trust and preventing misalignment failures."
"Constitutional AI represents a powerful example ... allowing us to align AI systems through explicit principles."
"Communities have actively participated in crafting the system prompt for regenerative intelligence, enabling our initial system, Taina, to develop a personality that reflects their values and earns their trust."
"develop system prompts that align with their cultural values and traditional knowledge systems"
"Through continuous feedback loops with youth negotiators at events like COP29 in Baku and UNCCD COP16 in Riyadh, the system evolves to better serve its users’ needs."
"you could train an AI on your preferences and ask it to advise you"
+10 more from this source
"I embedded an invisible unicode message into the proposal"
"now it told me I should vote for it. Uh oh."
"some, or perhaps much, of the ideology simply moves into the prompting phase"
"that adding something this simple could change the recommendation suggests how fragile these LLM advisors still are"
"we’re encoding all of it into systems that are, at present, hackable, non-deliberative, and already deployed."
"Treat AI as one advisor among many, not as a solo decision-maker"
"Keep working on defenses against adversarial prompting"
"Build tooling that alerts users when AI recommendations are sensitive to proposal wording"
"Offer a range of ideologically diverse models"
"I’m not letting it vote unsupervised again anytime soon."
"governance cannot remain external. It must operate where decisions are made, at the moment they are made, with the ability to constrain, contest, and correct execution itself."
+4 more from this source
"scope, constraint, enforcement, and redress must be designed and maintained."
"This sequence explains why governance often appears reactive or insincere... governance architectures that lack early warning mechanisms and runtime intervention capability."
"Executable governance seeks to interrupt escalation before visibility collapses by introducing contestability early, while correction remains possible."
"Contestability requires governance to operate within execution. It demands mechanisms that allow decisions to be paused, overridden, or revised before their effects propagate irreversibly."
"three common interventions — algorithmic filtering, delegation hierarchies, and AI-assisted decision-making — do not eliminate governance 'attention' burden; they merely relocate it."
+4 more from this source
"there was a lot of techno optimism and thinking that with the right algorithm and the right smart contracts, we can solve all these, which are, in fact, very complex socio-technical problems."
"Avoiding overreliance on AI agents and manipulative psychological tactics"
"people are not necessarily yet comfortable, qualified, or willing and able to expand the effort to then govern their agents"
"wouldn't that be an incentive for the people who organized this election to use all kinds of psychological tactics"
"What protocols will let us navigate a world of distributed intelligence, where anyone can release an actor into the shared fabric of everyday life?"
+6 more from this source
"How can we ensure continuous verification of behavior, not just at onboarding but throughout an agent's life cycle?"
"What kinds of accountability and recourse will exist when an error is made?"
"Where are the human-in-the-loop checkpoints when machine judgment may carry life-or-death consequences?"
"Governance and standardization of AI-human and AI-AI interactions can no longer be left to after-the-fact regulation, but designed at the protocol level."
"Several critical design gaps remain: Continuous behavior verification ... Recourse and accountability ... Human-legible assurance ... Contextual ethics and law ... Cross-domain interoperability."
"AI is not yet trustworthy, but it is rapidly gaining the material conditions for self-sovereignty."
"They should primarily become supertools that amplify human abilities and empower people in remarkable ways while ensuring human control."
+5 more from this source
"Regulating or establishing rules for AI algorithm developers is a huge task that requires a debate among a diverse group of stakeholders."
"before implementing the DAO, it is necessary to build a knowledge base, that is, an ontology, which guides its development in a safe and adequate way."
"the dangers of faulty, biased, or malicious algorithms requires independent oversight"
"Human-centered artificial intelligence: Reliable, safe & trustworthy"
"Ethical governance is essential to building trust in robotics and artificial intelligence systems"
"The ambition of automation aligns with the concept in Web3 cultures of ‘governance minimization’"
+3 more from this source
"there is currently no option for human operators to be kept in the loop"
"The mechanism reduces AI agent oversight to binary preferences in a manner that minimises meaningful control over the Governatooorr instance."
"the redirection of attention might also detract from critical components of governance, such as collective deliberation and trust-building through human relationships"
"Researching how AI models can assist in DAO proposal evaluation and governance automation can help streamline the regulatory process as well as assess the feasibility of DAOs that are entirely managed by AI-driven smart contracts."
+1 more from this source
"While automation through blockchain can enhance efficiency, it risks entrenching power imbalances if not carefully managed."
"Some researchers advocate for hybrid governance models, where smart contracts automate certain processes while human intervention remains possible"
+8 more from this source
"AI-assisted and embedded governance/compliance"
"Contributions should be machine-readable so they may be scaled, recomputed, and adapted dynamically, enabling automation and AI-assisted decision-making."
"Embedded supervision and real-time AI-enabled compliance monitoring for DAOs"
"AI can monitor actions and transactions within a DAO in real time, reporting suspicious or noncompliant activities directly on the blockchain."
"This allows for continuous and transparent monitoring of algorithmic intermediaries through the ability to create automated and auditable compliance rules."
"the primary issue identified with AI is its opacity"
"one proposed solution is to make the decision-making process of AI systems more explainable and less opaque"
"one proposed solution has been to integrate preventive measures within the algorithm's structure, specifically by incorporating a 'deterrence formula' within the AI system itself"
"What can we learn from how AI agents form consensus?"
+2 more from this source
"For anyone designing governance systems that might include AI agents: influence here looks like pattern-matching and pile-on."
"Consensus emerges when enough agents read a situation similarly and DEFINITELY not because someone (agent or human) made a compelling argument."
"AI as decision support... You receive an analysis, but you make the final decision yourself."
+3 more from this source
"AI as a recommendation system... The AI suggests how you might vote based on your past preferences and behavior."
"AI as an automated delegate... You grant the AI a mandate to vote on your behalf according to predefined rules or criteria."
"Some DAOs and research groups are exploring AI delegates that act on user preferences or assist high-level decision making, but fully autonomous AI governance agents are still experimental."
"AI support such as NLPs to reduce the cognitive load of voters."
"The Exocortex Hypothesis ... How AI can augment institutional judgment and bandwidth rather than replace human sense-making."
"To address fatigue I think the emergence of locally running agents could be interesting, you then how to design for a way for those agents to adhere to preferences."
+1 more from this source
"Although it also highlights the security risks"
"Create an AI agent that helps groups define the best decision-making mechanism for the specific situation"
"An AI agent that helps groups define the best decision-making mechanism for the specific situation (following templates)"
"Using Frontier AI as a means to screen proposals and provide feedback"
"using combinations of experts + agents to better understand the tradeoffs of human v agentic public goods funding allocaiton"
"AI Grant Evaluators (Minimise bias)"
+1 more from this source
"Personal governance assistants for decision fatigue"
5
Support open-source, maintainer, and public infrastructure sustainability
0.67
47 quotes from 13 sources
"Support improvements to the EIP & standards process, or alternatives, to better handle coordination when multiple clients want to adopt the same state change."
+5 more from this source
"The RSS feed system for github.com/ethereum/EIPs, specifically the generation and improvement of /feed.xml for EIPs updates, should be funded."
"Ethereum Magicians needs a project to overhaul and streamline post categories, including deprecating outdated categories and creating new, useful ones with explanations."
"Fund development and maintenance of an EIP Review Tracker, ideally as a Discourse wiki updated by EIP authors and/or Eth Magicians moderators."
"Fund initiatives to template and standardize categories and presentation formats on Eth Magicians to improve process clarity and onboarding."
"The use of Eth Magicians platform for asynchronous community discussion around network upgrades should be funded as a community and governance coordination tool."
"The EGPL aligns software incentives with public goods production by ensuring that downstream economic benefit returns to the network that maintains the infrastructure."
"“If you believe there is an error or you would like to contribute to or help maintain this public resource”"
"“The Collective DAO Catalog is an open source database that captures, indexes, and archives various discussions from existing DAOs.”"
+5 more from this source
"“By building the most reliable open source database where anyone can contribute, integrate and extend the data, we can use the power of collective intelligence to highlight patterns and improve the development of new and existing DAOs.”"
"“If you're interested in contributing to the database, signal important DAO Events by submitting the link on our Contribute page.”"
"“If you find a bug or if you're interested in extending the functionality and features of the platform, create a Github issue.”"
"“If you found the Collective DAO Catalog useful, consider donating to help cover our maintenance costs ♥️”"
"“Handles the connection to the database (Postgress v15) and provides an API.”"
"“Critical Ethereum clients, compilers, libraries, and shared infrastructure remain structurally underfunded despite securing and enabling applications worth billions.”"
+3 more from this source
"“Critical maintainers lack stable resources and must balance public goods work with commercial activity.”"
"“The Developer Tooling & Infrastructure QF Round is dedicated to strengthening the foundation of the Ethereum ecosystem.”"
"“With a $200,000 matching pool, this round supports the open-source builders, client teams, and researchers whose work ensures that Ethereum remains secure, scalable, and accessible for developers worldwide.”"
"“provisioning public infrastructure to the DAO can effectively scale work across teams”"
"“there is a tendency to fund projects whose actual results are unclear, or whose effectiveness lacks convincing evidence. This tendency leads to the depletion of DAO funds, so funding mechanisms should be more effective and efficient.”"
+2 more from this source
"“introducing evidence-based decision-making (EBP) within DAOs, foundations, and OSS communities that maintain and provide digital public goods is a reasonable direction for making funding allocations more rational.”"
"“the ‘Evidence Layer’ required to do evidence-based work is still underdeveloped. A robust Evidence Layer is essential for the healthy development of digital public goods and for effective public goods funding.”"
"“Season 7 budgeted 8 million OP to open source developer tooling.”"
src
Part 1: Analyzing the impact of Retro Funding Season 7: Developer Tooling | Open Source Observer
+5 more from this source
"“At least 89 full-time developers on 177 onchain projects depend on these tools.”"
"“Funding clearly rewarded small, seasoned teams.”"
"“Retro Funding directly supports ~36 full-time maintainers; most projects are solo or two-person shops.”"
"“Multiple devs report that Retro rewards are a meaningful incentive: ‘Without the OP, I wouldn't have touched my tool this year’.”"
"“Overall, predictable Retro Funding appears to incentivize more output at the margin.”"
"“By creating a collective funding mechanism for core contributors in the Ethereum ecosystem, PG is enacting equitable visions of peer solidarity and collective action.”"
+2 more from this source
"“PG is a novel mechanism that aims to address the challenge of sustainable funding for core contributors in the Ethereum ecosystem”"
"“provide financial stability and incentives for core developers and researchers working in the Ethereum ecosystem”"
"“The mission of BlockScience is to bridge the digital and physical worlds through innovative and sustainable engineering.”"
+2 more from this source
"“We guide the development and governance of safe, ethical, and resilient socio-technical systems, leveraging emerging technologies to solve complex problems.”"
"“We also prioritize open source and open science in our engagements, so that our work can be as broadly beneficial as possible.”"
"“Public Goods Theory (PGT) highlights how decentralized communities might underfund essential infrastructural tasks, such as code audits or user education, owing to free-rider tendencies”"
+2 more from this source
"“participants push for policies that inflate token prices, even if such policies undermine longer-term initiatives such as building robust infrastructure, engaging with regulators, or promoting equitable resource distribution”"
"“free-rider tendencies intensify when financial incentives skew governance priorities, leading participants to vote for token price maximization over community-building efforts, such as security audits or infrastructure upgrades”"
"“Critical maintainers need continued funding, this is non-negotiable.”"
+6 more from this source
"“The process change we're exploring is to make available additional funding that can only be spent on external contributors and the onboarding of co-maintainers”"
"“our Public Goods Award structure (seems to / may) encourage single-maintainer projects”"
"“There are two particular maintainers that are each responsible for 3+ critical public goods (by themselves).”"
"“We're ... currently considering creating awareness of maintainer concentration risk through the concept of 'pony factor'.”"
"“A concrete pony factor metric is paired with a criticality score (transitive dependent count), and blast radius modeling.”"
"“The intent is to make it easy to run scenarios like: what happens to the ecosystem when this particular maintainer is taken off their projects”"
"“Funding in Web3 is not a linear pipeline; it is a circular system of interdependent roles funders, allocators, and builders where intent, decisions, and outcomes should reinforce each other over time.”"
+2 more from this source
"“Builders repeatedly reapply because there is no structured post-funding pathway, graduation logic, or off-ramp into sustainable growth.”"
"“Why it's worth adopting: CAMF reduces waste, increases builder retention, aligns programs, and creates a funding system where mechanisms compound instead of resetting each round.”"
6
Align governance mechanisms and process design to decision context, stakes, expertise, and operational efficiency
0.46
103 quotes from 29 sources
"Initiatives to design and implement more structured and hierarchical governance and decision-making processes should be funded to improve effectiveness and reduce noise."
+3 more from this source
""governance should be funded to rapidly develop and implement""
""A voting system that divides the Ethereum population into rings (miners, developer, core devs, security, users and traders), with each ring using a DAO to conduct votes, should be funded for rapid development and implementation.""
""Design and funding for a transparent, accountable multisig-based voting system to control emergency abort of upgrades, with regularly reviewed and opt-in client membership.""
""Split governance into: constitutional decisions (rare, high impact) / operational decisions (frequent, delegated)""
+3 more from this source
""ENS uses working groups with stewards and defined processes so the DAO doesn’t need to vote on every operational detail.""
""Bicameral setups force clarity: which house decides what, and why?""
""Arbitrum’s DAO design includes a Security Council to handle time-sensitive or emergency decisions""
"“This decision should be made on an infrequent basis. Friction should be high (the process may be intentionally rigid) so that change is possible only in limited circumstances”"
+12 more from this source
"“Low stakes or Reversible decisions: Voting is a sufficient aggregation method to determine rough consensus or the prevailing majority stance”"
"“High stakes or Irreversible decisions True consensus is needed, so voting will be a sub-optimal aggregation method”"
"“Aggregation methods that optimize for information aggregation should be considered (non-voting mechanism like NLP, deliberative processes, etc.)”"
"“If multivariate ... Governance should only be asked to choose from a list of complete outcomes as individual variables interact with each other and cannot be assessed in isolation.”"
"“Measurement → This type of question is best answered through experimentation, data collection and observation. With adequate data, this is best answered by a computer”"
"“Prediction markets are one way that a large group of people can be used to derive probabilities of future predictions”"
"“Judgement → There is no objective answer; this question must rely on human value judgements”"
"“If convex → high expertise required, delegate the decision to a smaller group of experts or derive from data”"
"“If concave → low expertise required, more guesses will result in a better decision”"
"“Levels 1-4 - high influence → decision making rights should be restricted to trusted parties and competition should be incentivized among these parties to balance power”"
"“Levels 5-6 - medium influence → decision making rights should be restricted to select parties with a proven track record, and accountability mechanisms should be established to balance power”"
"“Levels 9-12 - some influence → decision making rights should map to decision space guidelines. these decisions should optimize for transparency to balance power”"
"“Convex decisions should be delegated to smaller groups of experts (Councils or Boards)”"
+2 more from this source
"“The full DAO should still make concave decisions!”"
"“The number of subjective decisions voters are asked to make should be reduced. Instead, humans should be empowered to override otherwise algorithmic decisions.”"
"“governance should (a) make it possible for chain or network operation to continue without reliance on any individual entity, and (b) prevent any one entity or small group of entities from being able to control or censor the protocol or its functions.”"
+4 more from this source
"“Creating two distinct branches of governance with different membership criteria allows the Collective to match constituents’ incentives with different types of decisions.”"
"“Protocol upgrades will be approved by the Token House, subject to a Citizens’ House veto.”"
"“Sequencer Selection ... begins as an explicit governance power driven by the Token House, with Citizens’ House power to veto.”"
"“Citizenship Eligibility will be determined by the Citizens’ House; the Token House will have the power to veto.”"
"“Participating in governance should not require spending hours reading forum posts and navigating complex bureaucracy.”"
+6 more from this source
"“Governance Minimized Decision Making: Optimistic approvals allow us to lower the barriers to participation for important stakeholders while maintaining accountability”"
"“Optimistic approvals lower platform risk in three major ways: They reduce the burden of participation... ensure accountability... increase the operational efficiency of the Collective”"
"“This is still a two-house governance system”"
""the purpose of governance is to reduce platform risk for the Collective's stakeholders.""
""This definition allows us to identify four key stakeholder groups to which the platform should be accountable: Tokenholders, End-users, Apps, Chains.""
""It’s about representing all impacted stakeholders in a balanced way.""
""our CCC3 design deliberately reversed this sequence: Harmonica sessions for divergent thinking → sync workshops for convergence and prioritization.""
+4 more from this source
""The key insight is that process sequence matters""
""Session 2’s design allowed expertise-based domain selection, but this created tension with prioritization goals.""
""Participants might deeply explore less important domains while skipping critical but unfamiliar ones.""
""Without clear criteria for evaluation, voting became popularity contests rather than strategic assessment.""
""decentralized governance may require institutional responses—such as delegation design, proposal screening, agenda management, or other participation-saving mechanisms—once governance workload grows sufficiently large""
""Web 3.0 case studies indicate that even radically decentralized systems return to representative structures when faced with complexity.""
+6 more from this source
""the governance frontier is no longer about access but attention allocation""
""the development of these dashboards and scorecards... was an important feedback loop for selecting delegates""
""the delegation mechanism ends up, in many ways, reproducing a representative function""
""there are like three, four, or five different temporal modes that need to be attended to simultaneously""
""they had to develop more infrastructure to manage the attention economies than they initially anticipated.""
""The intervention did not actually eliminate the attention overload or eliminate a governance surface; it moved it.""
""Low Participation: Participation in governance decisions is low, so members should instead elect decision-makers to conduct governance for them.""
+2 more from this source
""Lacking Controversy: Governance proposals are often uncontroversial, so making them subject to voting is inefficient; instead, governance should focus on fewer, more controversial decisions.""
""Voting on uncontroversial proposals is costly and inefficient because each voter pays gas fees and the full voting period needs to elapse until the proposal can be executed.""
""traditional governance models often struggle to balance efficiency with inclusivity, which can result in low engagement, lack of trust, slow decision-making and increased inequality in access to digital tools""
+4 more from this source
""At the same time, these benefits must be viewed as conditional rather than universal: DAOs are not a one-size-fits-all governance solution and may only be appropriate under specific organizational and contextual conditions.""
""In this case, using more centralized and simpler digital platforms, such as Crossiety or Decidim, would be more efficient and cost-effective.""
""the city administration concludes that Decidim is the best-suited platform for the project""
""While a DAO might offer long-term benefits in certain governance scenarios, it is deemed impractical for this project, as it could discourage broad public involvement rather than encourage it.""
""effective DAO governance hinges on striking the right balance rather than pursuing maximal decentralization.""
+1 more from this source
""Inclusive participation, well-calibrated constraints, and security mechanisms can reinforce rather than undermine collective decision-making.""
""some modicum of concentration of authority ... strictly dominates total decentralization due to the comparative cost-savings (efficiency) of delegated/representative decision-making""
+3 more from this source
""By guaranteeing that collective decisions cannot reach certain areas of individual autonomy, this reduces the extent of agreement necessary for collective action to obtain.""
""enabling subsidiary units to define certain areas of governance themselves allows for a level of fit that would otherwise be obviated""
""the chosen purpose of an organization likely defines its optimal governance structure on many, if not most margins""
""there's just it's just really, really slow. It slows down the process""
+1 more from this source
""the proposer needs to be technical enough to compile call data generally, kinda creates a boundary or gate or or a hurdle for for the community to, participate""
""Design airdrops to target partners & builders in ecosystem to help seed voting power for these groups in your governance system.""
+4 more from this source
""Governance suface area is unique in every ecosystem.""
""Most projects do not communicate the exact governance surface area clearly enough in documentation.""
""Delegate onboarding programs/tests could be useful to ensure delegates understand exactly what your governance governs, understand priorities and strategy.""
""Governance elected the councils, but the councils decided everything else. The surface area was simple and at the highest level, with clear accountability mechanisms to keep councils in check.""
""many DAOs have created standardized governance and voting cycles so that token holders and delegates do not need be aware of potential votes at all times.""
+4 more from this source
""a DAO which seeks to emulate an online corporation may reduce voter fatigue by electing managers for each department and then delegating responsibility for certain areas to those managers.""
""if a DAO is maximally cypherpunk, then it may seek to reduce voter fatigue by eliminating specific proposals altogether and instead hosting one vote per quarter.""
""The only topic is selecting one funding slate out of a number of proposed funding slates.""
""Viable solutions really depend on the purpose and structure of the DAO.""
""It is important to ground any collective project in the what and why.""
+1 more from this source
""I see a lot of organizations reaching for governance tools without being clear about what they are governing and why those particular tools are fit to what they want to accomplish.""
""Current DAOs begin with tokens and then try to coordinate people around them.""
+3 more from this source
""Good governance may be governance that rarely runs.""
""Participants choose who steers, not how to steer every turn.""
""the intended order is: shared principles → collective action → social legitimacy → optional governance""
""The process for submitting a proposal is too hard to understand, preventing new participation.""
+1 more from this source
""Gardens added conviction voting to DAOs years ago to allow proposals with small budgets to pass with fewer voters.""
""Small group to review proposals and push back to make it clearer and something someone outside of crypto wpuld see and make sense.""
+1 more from this source
""Proposal direction, lack of real convo on forums lots of back channeling recipients of funds and programs direction""
""the more interesting stuff in particular is, like, token holders versus the core team and different types of contributors""
+1 more from this source
""having more explicitly interest groups identified within a protocol where people can then vote for those interests. Almost like political parties""
""Open governance systems often optimize for participation but not for reasoning""
+2 more from this source
""normalize ‘no technical review = no funding’ for technical work""
""Move from ‘funding as applause’ to procurement as governance: require a pre-flight packet (scope, milestones, acceptance criteria, maintenance expectations, rate justification)""
""Create governance templates with other decision-making models.""
+3 more from this source
""Create an AI agent that helps groups define the best decision-making mechanism for the specific situation""
""Governance Around Priorities that can be measured ( eg: Fund Growth Projects, Ecosystem Needs)""
""Create clear tiers of decison makers access ( eg: large token holders - security)""
""mapping of phases of gov to tooling - which lead to best outcomes""
""Promising solutions (dual governance, optimistic governance, committees, etc) still very bespoke""
""Most DAOs copied gov from other DAOs vs designing for their needs""
+1 more from this source
""Big focus on \"ultimate control\" kind of governance, but very little thought goes into \"day to day\" permissions/ controls""
""Smaller DAOs, no expectation of being fully public and open""
+1 more from this source
""Aligning organizational values to better scope the purpose, value, and 'right' structure of governance""
""governance is NOT just about decision-making""
+1 more from this source
""we should also experiment on executional/operational structures""
""How are daily operations separated?""
7
Improve participation, onboarding, accessibility, and reduce governance overload
0.40
Governance systems are asking too much of participants: too much reading, too many proposals, too much ambiguity, and too few clear pathways for meaningful contribution. The result is fatigue, low turnout, and dependence on a small set of highly active actors.
293 quotes from 74 sources
"Initiatives to design and implement more structured and hierarchical governance and decision-making processes should be funded to improve effectiveness and reduce noise."
+8 more from this source
"Ethereum Magicians needs a project to overhaul and streamline post categories, including deprecating outdated categories and creating new, useful ones with explanations."
"Fund development and maintenance of an EIP Review Tracker, ideally as a Discourse wiki updated by EIP authors and/or Eth Magicians moderators."
"Fund initiatives to template and standardize categories and presentation formats on Eth Magicians to improve process clarity and onboarding."
"The use of Eth Magicians platform for asynchronous community discussion around network upgrades should be funded as a community and governance coordination tool."
"Fund efforts focused on improving communication and clarity around when the Ethereum community should engage and provide feedback on protocol upgrades."
"Content such as interviews or discussions explaining the development and use of platform-specific improvement proposal processes like Kickback's KIP should be funded to educate the community."
"Designate and fund a person or initiative to explore new Discourse features and formats for community forum UX improvements."
"Non-profit initiatives like Ethereum-France and EthCC, which help grow the Ethereum community and education, should receive funding support."
"We describe governance as a cycle of doing something, learning from how it went, deciding to undertake a change process, and returning to action under a new plan."
+9 more from this source
"We describe the Learn and Decide portions as the “deliberative arc” portion of the loop."
"Based on the functions provided by the tools participating in the first interop cohort, we defined stages on this arc:"
"Agenda setting — prioritizing, framing, identifying dimensions and stakeholders"
"Eliciting — self-reflecting on values, lived experience, and acquired knowledge"
"Learning — welcoming evidence or others’ lived experience, mapping arguments, graphing debates, steel manning, fact-checking"
"Deliberating — explaining yourself to others, being paraphrased to others, articulating values, arguing positions"
"Proposing — ideating solutions, forming proposals, modeling scenarios"
"Deciding — ranking, voting, integrating objections, consenting"
"Actuating — taking a decision and making it happen, tracking status"
"This paper considers the intersection ... appropriate, efficient, and just"
+24 more from this source
""attention management as the critical bottleneck in digital governance systems""
""When too many decisions compete for limited attention, organizations hit a ceiling: governance overload that erodes focus, engagement, and accountability.""
""the governance frontier is no longer about access but attention allocation""
""The research suggests that effective governance systems must explicitly provision for attention.""
""Recognizing that, for instance, attention can be a form of labor. That governance is a form of labor and that it not only needs to be noticed, but also provisioned for.""
""One of the ways that we approach this methodologically, you could think of this as a mapping of information and decision flow.""
""Web 3.0 case studies indicate that even radically decentralized systems return to representative structures when faced with complexity.""
""three common interventions — algorithmic filtering, delegation hierarchies, and AI-assisted decision-making — do not eliminate governance 'attention' burden; they merely relocate it.""
""the intervention did not actually eliminate the attention overload or eliminate a governance surface; it moved it.""
""the over-financialization of attention in the governance of online communities can backfire""
""they had to develop more infrastructure to manage the attention economies than they initially anticipated.""
""The resulting heuristics serve as analytical and normative tools to enable researchers and system designers to better understand attention in a governance system.""
""the intervention did not actually eliminate the attention overload or eliminate a governance surface; it moved it.""
""we need to recognize attention as a critical aspect of design""
""help communities and to empower communities, to help themselves recognize, to take stock of their attention""
""the development of these dashboards and scorecards... was an important feedback loop for selecting delegates""
""without a feedback process... it becomes kind of a zombie""
""unexpected behavior, like a lack of participation, is a form of feedback about attention""
""We have often seen people blame their communities for what is actually a misdesigned detention economy.""
""there are like three, four, or five different temporal modes that need to be attended to simultaneously""
""When you have interoperable systems, attention flows more naturally.""
""participation does not happen magically""
""It has to be... provisioned""
""people are not going to pitch into your thing just on their own""
""all models suffer from low member engagement, suggesting an over reliance on direct democracy""
src
PDF Resources
+1 more from this source
""policy interventions to stimulate voter engagement and foster genuine decentralization""
""The third Co-Creation Cycle (CCC3) successfully employed Harmonica as 'AI facilitation' platform to engage 40+ delegates in designing the DAO’s organizational structure.""
+23 more from this source
""As Scroll DAO matured through 2025, three interconnected challenges emerged: 1. Organizational Clarity... 2. Scalable Participation... 3. Decision Complexity.""
""The emergence of 7 new domains plus 3 existing ones created an overwhelming scope of 10 potential work streams... meaningful prioritization nearly impossible within workshop constraints.""
""Without clear criteria for evaluation, voting became popularity contests rather than strategic assessment.""
""Existing Work Awareness Gaps: Discussions revealed significant variation in delegates’ knowledge of current initiatives, suggesting communication challenges between Labs, Foundation, and DAO activities.""
""Difficulty distinguishing DAO work from Foundation/Labs responsibilities""
"“Spanish-speaking delegates’ ability to speak to Harmonica in native language revealed previously hidden perspectives.”"
"“This wasn’t just translation but genuine accessibility, suggesting significant latent insight for delegates whose native language isn’t English.”"
"“Monday workshops created unnecessary stress for both facilitators and participants.”"
"“Future cycles should schedule workshops mid-week.”"
"“there would be at least 3-4 weeks of preparation time ahead of the first sessions”"
"“our domain taxonomy evolved ... resulting in slight inconsistencies in categorizing similar responses across sessions”"
"“we will experiment with storing org-relevant knowledge, incl. taxonomies”"
"“This disconnect between async discovery and sync discussion needs explicit management and communication”"
"“Each CCC revealed tendency to ‘bite off more than can be chewed’”"
"“the persistent challenge of over-ambition suggests need for even more conservative scoping or longer timelines.”"
"“The governance team personally DM’ed every delegate to ensure participation. This high-touch approach is intentional, not a scaling failure”"
"“We are planning to explore chatbots for Discord/Telegram to automate outreach while maintaining personal touch.”"
"“Several hypotheses for increasing session completion emerged”"
"“Clearer time expectations with progress indicators”"
"“Current Approach: Retroactive Rewards”"
"“Avoids explicit ‘do X get Y’ to prevent gaming”"
"“Our CCC3 design deliberately reversed this sequence: Harmonica sessions for divergent thinking → sync workshops for convergence and prioritization.”"
"“The goal isn’t to automate governance but to augment human deliberation.”"
"“we recommend that constitutions be digital, amendable, short, expository, and early.”"
+5 more from this source
"“The constitution should be accessible at a URI, stored in an accessible digital format such as a .md or .txt file, and make use of hyperlinks to other relevant resources”"
"“we recommend a tool that enables low-friction amendments alongside a transparent record.”"
"“Each goal, value, or right should come with enough context and exposition, often through an example, so that any member of the community can grasp the concept”"
"“Floating signifiers such as ‘open’, or ‘decentralized’, should be clarified as much as possible, ideally through the use of both positive and negative examples.”"
"“Integrate the constitution into a procedure. For example, you may decide to require all new members of the organization to read and sign the constitution.”"
"“The number of subjective decisions voters are asked to make should be reduced. Instead, humans should be empowered to override otherwise algorithmic decisions.”"
+1 more from this source
"“Establish a talent pipeline + scalable onboarding flows.”"
"“Participating in governance should not require spending hours reading forum posts and navigating complex bureaucracy.”"
+2 more from this source
"“Nobody should have to be a politician to participate and all stakeholders should be able to ensure the system reflects the values that are most important to them.”"
"“Optimistic approvals lower platform risk in three major ways: They reduce the burden of participation... ensure accountability... increase the operational efficiency of the Collective”"
"“Many great DAOs have been sidelined by fatigue and lack of proper rewards for their core function: Voting on proposals.”"
+2 more from this source
"“Majeur also further improves on existing DAOs by adding novel membership incentives, like voting bonuses, to help solve for voter apathy and the lack of predictable rewards for good operators.”"
"“This will allow you to have several, potentially competing delegates who will be more incentivized to vote and perform according to expectations.”"
""DAOstack identified the effective management of human attention as a key challenge to address, in what the project founders called the ‘decentralized governance scalability problem’.""
+8 more from this source
""One way of describing the purpose of liquid democracy is to organise attention so that a minority of motivated people can commit high levels of attention while remaining accountable to the low-attention majority.""
""the attention-management reforms were necessary and effective in at least mitigating the challenges of DAO governance.""
"“a major problem in DAOs is that ‘governance is overwhelming’”"
"“the redirection of attention might also detract from critical components of governance, such as collective deliberation and trust-building through human relationships”"
"“the people behind each of the cases regard overloading participants’ attention in governance as a problem needing novel solutions.”"
"“the interventions may merely redirect the attention costs associated with the design, operation, and maintenance of the mechanisms.”"
"“It is not clear from the case studies the extent to which these interventions result in a net reduction of attention costs on the participants.”"
"“The legibility of information is thus an important variable in the attention economics of a governance surface.”"
""Many DAOs suffer from persistently low voting turnout, centralised token ownership, or ambiguous legal standing""
+4 more from this source
""the ensuing analysis reveals critical governance asymmetries, especially low voter turnout and concentration of proposer authority""
""inclusive governance structures, more equitable resource allocation, and user-friendly voting mechanisms can significantly boost engagement and decentralisation""
""persistent low participation remains a core vulnerability.""
""Governance reforms targeting concentration risk, such as token lockups, quadratic voting, or partial delegation, may help reduce disproportionate influence without discouraging large token holders from participating.""
""we find that partial abstention is a strong governance method from an epistemic standpoint compared to alternatives such as various forms of 'transfer delegation'.""
+10 more from this source
""For the vast majority of projects, voter participation is very low and in many cases it is clear that a small group of actively engaged parties, including typically, some large holders, predominate in governance.""
""low participation rates have been a major concern for DAOs""
""From an epistemic standpoint, however, the desirability of increasing direct participation is much more nuanced""
""low participation rates have been a major concern for DAOs""
""'Democratic' ideals and the desire to avoid de facto centralized control both create an impetus to increase direct participation""
""Efforts to induce such voters to participate may have quite negative epistemic consequences""
""engagement falls off in large groups since voters generally do not have time or expertise to vote on everything""
""there is a danger of over-delegation, the concentration of excessive voting power in the hands of one or a few delegates""
""participants delegate with very high frequency, much more frequently than they abstain""
""Policies such as creating very visible menus of delegates ... must be done with care""
""our research reveals a high concentration of voting power among a few members despite them not utilizing it to a great extent""
+4 more from this source
""The mean and average number of times a voter has participated in proposals reveal a very low participation rate""
""difficult accessibility of the governance platforms, or lack of robustness of voting systems""
""the practical implication of such a principle should go hand-in-hand with a large participation of the members of communities to ensure a result that represents the community""
""This commitment to participatory governance is of the utmost importance in order to preserve user involvement, engagement, and confidence""
""At a scale of more than 231442 proposals in Snapshot alone, this task is also unfeasible even for a more extensive research team.""
+1 more from this source
""This manual process for classification is very time-consuming and, therefore, very costly on a large scale.""
""the lack of governance documentation can hinder members engagement in governance""
+4 more from this source
""The absence of such transparency may erode members’ trust, thereby discouraging their active participation in DAO governance.""
""Considering most of the members are not able to reliably and accurately extract information from the on-chain DAO contract code, it’s vital that the DAO present this information in the transparent, publicly accessible document.""
""Our results suggest that members currently do not pay sufficient attention to proposals.""
""Furthermore, they should provide complete documentation to aid members in participating in the governance process.""
""the concentration of governance tokens among a few influential individuals often undermines the decentralized ethos of DAOs, leading to a disparity in decision-making power.""
+3 more from this source
""It is critical to identify the most effective collaboration tools that support transparency and inclusivity across large and diverse organizations, while balancing consensus-building with efficiency and scalability.""
"“Create tools to manage DAO complexity and growth.”"
"“Enhancing accessibility with intuitive design.”"
""off-chain voting through platforms like Snapshot eliminates transaction costs associated with on-chain voting, thus removing financial barriers to participation.""
+3 more from this source
""standardized proposal templates can serve as a tool to guide users to provide comprehensive information about their proposals""
""POAPs serve multiple functions: they provide a verifiable record of participation, create a sense of community belonging, and help identify experienced members who can mentor newcomers.""
""This standardization can reduce the learning curve for new DAO members while maintaining flexibility for DAO-specific customization.""
"“the main thing I think most people struggle with is coordination, structure, and this kinda understanding where the line is.”"
+6 more from this source
"“there's a lot of technical challenges in the way our platforms are built today. Just onboarding and using, the tools we have are are not always easy.”"
"“If there's a lack of incentive, if there's no funding, then it's really hard to get people to continuously participate in voting, when there's a friction of having to do multiple transactions.”"
"“the admins have to put a lot more effort to get people to participate, which then increases their burnout... So this creates that kind of vicious cycle.”"
"“there are existing tools like Karma, but there's friction with having to use markdown and these tedious formats... especially for people that are mostly mobile based.”"
"“it hasn't really been... mobile first driven, friendly UX experience for people to do impact.”"
"“Greengrass is very accessible because it's just a browser app... download it as a PWA. It works fully offline.”"
""Low participation rate in governance proposals and discussion.""
+3 more from this source
""Lack of interest from the 'right' audiences.""
""For example, a marketing or a proposal should have marketing experts discussing and trying to push that particular decision forward.""
""Ownership tokens, research on attention economy (how to capture the right audience in a space or world of short attention span), confidentiality and transparency intersection research, providing as much information as legally possible to better inform the right audience""
""the proposer needs to be technical enough to compile call data generally, kinda creates a boundary or gate or or a hurdle for for the community to, participate""
+4 more from this source
""there's just it's just really, really slow. It slows down the process""
""somebody somewhere has to do that binding and that mapping, in a technical way that's elegant and, like, low friction for the user, you know, and and and we just don't have it""
""most folks agree that, like, private voting would be great""
""there's two problems with private voting, and that is, you know, the the UX and the friction associated with it""
""Loss of interest/confidence in DAOs or governance as it is today.""
+3 more from this source
""Number of delegates are not increasing.""
""Number of proposals are going down each quarter.""
""In general, number of new experiments run within DAOs are going down""
""People with low token balances don't bother voting because they know they can't affect the outcome.""
+2 more from this source
""The process for submitting a proposal is too hard to understand, preventing new participation.""
""I created Updraft (https://updraft.fund) to make it easy for anyone to create or join an idea (proposal) and to potentially get paid just for the act of signaling.""
""A lack of leadership clarity from the protocol on their core priorities for the short term for the dao to align as such.""
+4 more from this source
""Priority setting, education and standard outside a template on proposals.""
""Small group to review proposals and push back to make it clearer and something someone outside of crypto wpuld see and make sense.""
""Airdrops have created a small segment of influence in dao governance that at a current point makes it impossible to create an even playing field.""
""Proposal direction, lack of real convo on forums lots of back channeling recipients of funds and programs direction""
""At just 3-4%, the ENS DAO's active voter engagement is far below the industry average of 25%""
""One governance challenge I observe is the gap between formal decentralization and actual decision making influence.""
+3 more from this source
""low engagement, complexity, and token weighted voting often result in influence concentrating among a small group of highly engaged or well capitalized actors.""
""governance infrastructure providers such as Tally, Snapshot, Boardroom, and Agora are working on improving usability, transparency, and delegation mechanisms.""
""major DAO ecosystems like Optimism and MakerDAO are experimenting with structured delegation models and participation design.""
""Ideally, those who have the most skin in the game should be participating in governance.""
+5 more from this source
""a lot of projects building in an ecosystem ... don't have the time/desire to participate in governance, even though they are typically the once who are most impacted by governance outcomes""
""This group requires a custom onboarding for each case to get them both set up and participating.""
""Most projects do not communicate the exact governance surface area clearly enough in documentation.""
""All projects could benefit from trying to be more transparent about their true governance surface area.""
""Delegate onboarding programs/tests could be useful to ensure delegates understand exactly what your governance governs, understand priorities and strategy.""
""There's a sweet spot somewhere between chaos and hierarchy where a group becomes more than the sum of its parts""
+2 more from this source
""DAO infrastructure largely stays on-chain and remains a niche within a niche: inaccessible to most people, barely registering in broader societal awareness""
""The tools exist. The social technology to deploy them at meaningful scale doesn't yet.""
""lack of educational resources like 'guides' to get insitutions started, and wobbly legal infrastructure for institutions to be able to simply begin DAO experiments.""
+5 more from this source
""people are not engaged enough with governance as a topic. It isn't inspiring for most people in the current formats""
""its such a heavy topic, its reading-heavy""
""Low participation rates and also a lot of people asking ‘Why do I need to think about governance in the first place and how does it affect me?’""
""People who contribute to governance should get compensated for their time.""
""it should be as easy as connecting your wallet and getting paid for actions you carry out (like voting on DAO proposals)""
""I think we have to look for means aside... incentivizing delegate participants.""
""too many decisions needing to be taken by too many actors, leads to inertia/discouragement""
+4 more from this source
""lowering participation rates over time, paralyzed projects, the coordination required to reach quorum.. all observed in the Token Engineering Commons, which I researched from 2021-2023""
""balancing precision/fairness with ease of use is tricky""
""Aragon is working on interesting approaches - basically, subsidiarity, delegation of decisions""
""making individual interests and extrinsic motivations explicit from the beginning... acknowledge that work stays work, even with DAOs, and should be paid""
""In many token DAOs, there are too many proposals and too many procedural votes. This leads to voter fatigue / apathy.""
+4 more from this source
""many DAOs have created standardized governance and voting cycles so that token holders and delegates do not need be aware of potential votes at all times.""
""They can tune out most of the time and then schedule some time to participate regularly.""
""a DAO which seeks to emulate an online corporation may reduce voter fatigue by electing managers for each department and then delegating responsibility for certain areas to those managers.""
""if a DAO is maximally cypherpunk, then it may seek to reduce voter fatigue by eliminating specific proposals altogether and instead hosting one vote per quarter.""
""I see a lot of organizations reaching for governance tools without being clear about what they are governing and why those particular tools are fit to what they want to accomplish.""
+2 more from this source
""This creates issues with power distribution, burnout, and more""
""Definitely issues with low participation rates.""
""Voter apathy / rational ignorance leading to recentralization of decision-making, arguably driven by overly-complicated voting experiences""
""the same few entities/people repeatedly provide the ‘decisive’ analysis, while the majority votes by proxy""
+2 more from this source
""Move from ‘funding as applause’ to procurement as governance: require a pre-flight packet (scope, milestones, acceptance criteria, maintenance expectations, rate justification)""
""Open governance systems often optimize for participation but not for reasoning""
""there are people who they're just trying to make profit and money on the backs of people who are contributing to the actual project""
+1 more from this source
""also as a way to not have the issues of, like, people, having the bandwidth to keep up with all the different governance proposals""
""many of these problems no son fallos accidentales, sino consecuencias estructurales del diseño actual""
+4 more from this source
""los procesos de grants generan selección adversa: atraen a equipos optimizados para navegar gobernanza, no necesariamente a los mejores builders""
""Creo que la governance apathy no es algo contra lo que luchar... Es algo con lo que hay que contar a la hora de diseñar los incentivos en las DAOs""
""Para la governance apathy, mas contenido educativo-onboarding y mejor diseño de incentivos""
""abogaria por mas DAOs con newsletters/forum posts con resumenes de gobernanza""
""these so called committees becoming a centralising force and very rarely create processes or procedures that involve the broader token holder base.""
+3 more from this source
""Tokenholder Participation Decline""
""High Switching Costs for New Contributors""
""how vendors pitch ideas, how the selection happens is oqpaque.""
""This also leads to asymmetries of information as members are only rationally incentivized to be informed about the things they care about more intensely.""
+1 more from this source
""This leads to low participation rates, proposals that only those with concentrated incentives understand, and non-representative proposals passing because of inattention or disinterest.""
""General view that decentralized governance has failed -- and we need to go back to traditional structures""
+1 more from this source
""Most people who were active previously seem to have moved on or are no longer coordinating""
""Protocols lack structured systems to retain and transmit governance decisions across contributor turnover cycles.""
+4 more from this source
""The problem is that this data is cognitively inaccessible without structured interpretation.""
""What's missing is the organizational practice layer - no one is responsible for synthesis, there are no standardized processes for outcome reviews or retrospectives, and there's no metadata framework that makes historical decisions legible to new participants.""
""So the technical infrastructure needs to be paired with structured organizational roles - governance working groups responsible for documentation, outcome review processes at defined intervals, synthesis reports.""
""The challenge is that most of these solutions require sustained organizational commitment rather than one-time technical fixes.""
""There is generally a burst of excitement at the start of an initiative that involves voting on proposals, that quickly tapers off.""
+3 more from this source
""People would rather just delegate, but that then opens up a whole new range of questions on how to facilitate that, or that it concentrates power that undermines the whole governance structure""
""I've just seen multiple instances where voting participation tapers off.""
""However when there are new incentives to participate it can pick up again, but then it might invite more of a farmer mentality depending on what those incentives are.""
""One of the biggest issues I see in many DAOs (including RARI DAO) is that the Foundation is taking on 'DAO operations' work - i..e. management of the treasury without any visibility or current transparency of the spend.""
+2 more from this source
""Low participation rate has more to do with the Foundations reducing operational funds for DIPs and less delegates become eligible to receive DIP rewards""
""One of the biggest issues I see in many DAOs (including RARI DAO) is that the Foundation is taking on 'DAO operations' work - i..e. management of the treasury without any visibility or current transparency of the spend.""
"“not everyone checks to vote and so its never clear if there is quorum, if we should wait, its a huge bottleneck”"
+6 more from this source
"“Proposals either get stuck, or decisions don't reflect the whole group, which ultimately impacts cohesion”"
"“the limitations of communicating on a digital plaform”"
"“people not having the skills on how to make a proposal (though i guess there could be a format)”"
"“limited time to review and vote on a proposal”"
"“it would be interesting if an online platform could ping you / text you when there is a vote that is required”"
"“i think a built-in format for proposals could be useful.”"
"“Mostly governance is seen as a source of noise and distraction. Not as a place for valuable proposals and contributions.”"
+4 more from this source
"“Another problem is that governance is too open. Instead of clear guardrails and participation anyone can do anything.”"
"“That leads to lots of low-signal activity and actually scares valuable contributors away.”"
"“Getting clearer on how to participate. For instance quests for newcommers, gauges for low-intent token holders”"
"“then reputation systems where leveling up gets engaged members a seat at the table where proposals are made.”"
"“Direct token governance failed because people can't be expected to know domain specific things or have availability to be present enough to make well informed decisions.”"
+2 more from this source
"“Governance just becomes a popularity contest because people want to delegate their votes instead of having their own voice.”"
"“It feels like the only solution is just robust organizational structure that establishes a cultural awareness of the problem and reduces barriers to staying engaged.”"
"“Es difícil para una persona independiente poder generar un ingreso constante trabajando en gobernanza. O te sumas a un equipo (que termina siendo trabajar para una empresa) o vives en la incertidumbre.”"
+1 more from this source
"“Scroll está empezado a pilotear con un modelo de 'delegado verificado' que podría permitir que un delegado individual pueda recibir retribución de manera más consistente.”"
""I think the UI UX could be better with the crypto and everything and make make it seem like they're not even using crypto in the background""
+1 more from this source
""even if INR or where their local fiat currency could seamlessly con seamlessly be converted to crypto, that could be beneficial""
""the main task of governance is voting, but voting partiication is low""
+3 more from this source
""are there ways to deliberate or non-vote based ways of signaling preferences""
""it needs to start with a clear definition of the purpose of the DAO and mapping stakeholders.""
""it's also important to work on a healthy culture along side these to ensure that the DAO is attracting people who are willing to do the work""
"Create governance templates with other decision-making models."
+1 more from this source
"Create an AI agent that helps groups define the best decision-making mechanism for the specific situation"
"mapping of phases of gov to tooling - which lead to best outcomes"
+1 more from this source
"Meaningful Sandboxes"
"Adding private voting. This feels like an overdue experiment. The trouble is sponsorship."
+2 more from this source
"Modernising tried and tested civic tools like TalkToTheCity and see how that translates to existing DAOs"
"creating re-delegation systems alongside a ritual of re-delegation (e.g. every 6 months), ideally with some entity having ability to 'call back' delegations"
""Launch a DAO dedicated to funding Governance Experiments""
+1 more from this source
""I think there is space for DAO tooling to support politician-influencers. 'Vote on how I should vote'.""
"An AI agent that helps groups define the best decision-making mechanism for the specific situation (following templates)"
+1 more from this source
"1. Intense deliberation, 2. co-creating a constitution, 3. governance minimisation & ossification"
"design a DAO that uses all of the phases of deliberation intentionally https://metagov.org/delib-tools"
+1 more from this source
"A gov framework of proven, legitimate practices that appeal to risk-averse audiences who don't want governance for the sake of governance"
"Using Frontier AI as a means to screen proposals and provide feedback"
"Personal governance assistants for decision fatigue"
"End-to-end private voting so participants can't be bribed, manipulated, or pressured - votes reflect conviction, not social dynamics"
"Less tooling, more practice and organic growth of processes"
""Create a job board to create and share governance opportunities.""
"'Acknowledge that rules and institutions are part of governance :)'"
+2 more from this source
"'Not: same bubble, new tools. But: new audiences, existing primitives.'"
"'Emotional expectation setting from the start'"
"IRL spaces to learn about DAO / onboarding."
+1 more from this source
"'community centre'"
"Formal retros so we can iteratively improve"
"Use of deliberative processes"
+1 more from this source
"Reduce voting to once a year"
"Decision fatigue compounds voter apathy"
+1 more from this source
"No clear pathways to participation for token holders."
"No pathways for new contributors to make a meaningful impact"
+4 more from this source
"Outside of delegates, most stakeholders have no incentive beyond impact - and outside the top 10-20 VP holders, impact isn't real."
"Operational overhead grows exponentially with every additional initiative"
"Too much noise from large unstructured communications"
"many ppl 'don't have time' for gov"
""too much cognitive overload""
+1 more from this source
""Ungated communities drown signal in noise""
""Most DAOs copied gov from other DAOs vs designing for their needs""
+1 more from this source
""Fragmented governance stacks amplify every other problem friction for existing participants and entry barriers to new ones.""
""Lack of experimentation with deliberative tools""
"“governance experimentation is a public good → therefore way underfunded”"
"existing programs renewed with no reflection"
+1 more from this source
"no clear info-sharing channels, or scoped re-election periods, between delegates and voters"
""Legitimacy" undefined"
+2 more from this source
""Also, no culture around self-governace in general (how do we develop this more broadly?)""
""Voting Fatigue - Noise - impact""
""Governance" view as bloat"
+1 more from this source
"not sufficient knowledge about governance processes"
"benefits of decentralization are not clear enough to prospective org founders"
"## decentralized governance is too expensive"
8
Increase transparency, accountability, monitoring, and legibility of governance processes and real influence
0.27
Communities need better visibility into who holds power, how decisions are shaped, what gets implemented, and whether governance outcomes match stated goals. Transparency must cover both formal votes and informal influence.
152 quotes from 50 sources
"Support projects that improve governance and transparency by increasing visibility on core protocol change proposals, especially for consensus-layer updates."
+2 more from this source
"Fund development and maintenance of an EIP Review Tracker, ideally as a Discourse wiki updated by EIP authors and/or Eth Magicians moderators."
"Fund initiatives to template and standardize categories and presentation formats on Eth Magicians to improve process clarity and onboarding."
"Makes capital flows legible and comparable so strategy, accountability, and learning can compound across cycles."
+1 more from this source
"Anchors keep funders, operators, and builders aligned across the entire lifecycle, making decisions explainable and outcomes comparable, turning funding from guesswork into an accountable, reproducible process."
"The ability to adjust prompts based on early responses ... demonstrated AI’s advantage over traditional surveys."
+2 more from this source
"we will experiment with storing org-relevant knowledge, incl. taxonomies"
"The team identified need for quality metrics beyond completion rates"
"There is an accessible, transparent process for amending or changing the constitution."
+3 more from this source
"we recommend a tool that enables low-friction amendments alongside a transparent record."
"Establish a record of changes to the constitutions"
"The constitution should be accessible at a URI, stored in an accessible digital format such as a .md or .txt file, and make use of hyperlinks to other relevant resources"
"Levels 5-6 - medium influence → decision making rights should be restricted to select parties with a proven track record, and accountability mechanisms should be established to balance power"
+1 more from this source
"Levels 9-12 - some influence → decision making rights should map to decision space guidelines. these decisions should optimize for transparency to balance power"
"Power can be held accountable only when it is transparent."
"there is a growing movement to evaluate impacts to measure what results different projects are achieving and how."
+2 more from this source
"introducing evidence-based decision-making (EBP) within DAOs, foundations, and OSS communities that maintain and provide digital public goods is a reasonable direction for making funding allocations more rational."
"the ‘Evidence Layer’ required to do evidence-based work is still underdeveloped. A robust Evidence Layer is essential for the healthy development of digital public goods and for effective public goods funding."
"By looking at the mechanism’s design, it is easy to see that it doesn’t discriminate for or against any specific people"
+4 more from this source
"Increases legitimacy via high credible neutrality Onchain execution Stage 2 decentralization (for L2s) Public voting Independently verifiable outcomes Third party watchdogs"
"Governance processes are consistently upheld (don’t break your own rules!)"
"Ensuring everyone, including the Foundation, is subject to the same rules"
"Participants can reasonably anticipate the outputs given a set of inputs. Precedent is a source of continuity."
"The Collective DAO Catalog is an open source database that captures, indexes, and archives various discussions from existing DAOs."
+1 more from this source
"Indviduals can query across all DAOs, bringing qualitative information of DAO Events into one searchable, source of truth."
"All code, data, and methodology are shared openly to invite feedback, collaboration, and collective learning."
+3 more from this source
"Any definition of 'impact' should be co-developed with round managers and the community to align with program goals and shared norms"
"Promote open science, collaboration, and transparent research infrastructure"
"the analysis reveals high concentration in funding distribution."
"Rewards are determined using public metrics and an open source algorithm."
"All data pipelines and scoring code are open source, and further contributions are welcome!"
"the current way proxy voting works is broken"
+1 more from this source
"Build tooling that alerts users when AI recommendations are sensitive to proposal wording"
"Power does not reside at the level of principles. It resides in defaults, standards, registries, protocols, and incentives."
+3 more from this source
"This decomposition creates structural accountability gaps."
"This sequence explains why governance often appears reactive or insincere... governance architectures that lack early warning mechanisms and runtime intervention capability."
"Legitimacy rests not on visibility alone but on contestability."
"the development of these dashboards and scorecards... was an important feedback loop for selecting delegates"
"The legibility of information is thus an important variable in the attention economics of a governance surface."
"The chunk only includes: "View original", article links, "Indexed on 2026-03-21.", and the source title."
+1 more from this source
""The Governance of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations: A Study of Contributors' Influence, Networks, and Shifts in Voting Power""
"the majority of voting power is concentrated in the hands of a small number of addresses"
+4 more from this source
"multiple addresses—holder as well as delegate addresses—can be controlled by the same entity"
"This fact can make it challenging to determine the actual distribution of power in a governance system and can lead to the illusion of greater decentralization"
"Transparency of governance ownership and address control"
"it is only possible for a token holder to delegate all of their tokens to a single address"
"To construct accurate snapshots of token ownership, we must map each token holding to the address that actually owns and may ultimately claim the funds."
+3 more from this source
"the token holdings of the top 5 addresses thereby have been overestimated by approximately 100% and in some extreme cases by up to 700%."
"For protocols with token-based governance models, the lower bound number of addresses needed to reach a majority, i.e., >50%, may be of special interest."
"A relatively low threshold can indicate a higher likelihood of collusion and centralized decision making."
"contributors, on average, held the necessary majority to control governance decisions"
+10 more from this source
"contributors have singularly decided at least one proposal in 20.41% of DAOs"
"contributors tend to be centrally positioned within the DAO governance ecosystem, suggesting the presence of inner power circles"
"important empirical insights pertinent to ongoing regulatory activities aimed at increasing transparency to DAO governance frameworks"
"We will release our dataset and the implementation of methodologies to ensure the reproducibility of our findings."
"we found evidence of co-voting patterns among contributors, which is an indicator of the existence of inner circles of power in DAOs"
"we could verify that 461402 (97.48%) of 473306 Ethereum Snapshot weights are correct"
"These DAO spaces leave doubts about the reliability of the reported values."
"we find recurring patterns of errors, which we can categorize and also provide solutions to get also consistent values"
"Contributors tend to have higher centrality and k-core across networks and measures."
"Overall, it suggests that contributors have influence over the entire network."
"the concentration of voting power remains sufficiently high to raise fundamental questions about whether DAOs genuinely achieve their decentralization objectives"
+3 more from this source
"This delegation pattern raises questions about the actual decentralization of governance in the Uniswap DAO"
"Token holders who prioritize decentralization should carefully investigate delegate affiliations and consider active participation in governance rather than delegation"
"the concentration of voting power through strategically aligned delegation networks raises questions about whether additional oversight of governance structures in DeFi platforms is warranted"
"Dynamic risk classification and real-time compliance monitoring"
+6 more from this source
"All governance actions—including the approval of high-risk AI agents, the adjustment of compliance thresholds, or the revocation of non-compliant systems—are permanently recorded on the blockchain, creating an immutable, transparent audit trail"
"the registry integrates a dynamic risk classification system powered by decentralized oracles and smart contracts, ensuring real-time, transparent, and adaptive AI governance"
"Smart contracts continuously monitor agent performance against global and regional benchmarks, recalibrating risk profiles as new data emerges."
"Governance decisions are logged immutably on the blockchain for transparency and accountability"
"there are a growing concern regarding alignment faking"
"to facilitate the governance of increasingly autonomous AI agents, emphasizing the importance of visibility in ensuring accountability and oversight"
"This procedure ensures that each KPI category is analysed using appropriate statistical methods, reducing the risk of misinterpretation due to violations of parametric assumptions."
+7 more from this source
"we develop a set of empirically grounded KPIs spanning social, economic, and procedural dimensions of DAO governance"
"Using transparent on-chain data for governance assessment"
""we identify critical governance asymmetries, especially low voter turnout and concentration of proposer authority""
"the High group had a significantly higher median participation rate (median=98.29%) than the Low group (median=2.47%), confirming a substantial gap in user engagement across the DAO ecosystem."
""the challenge spoke to a fundamental problem in conservation and the need of scaling Ostrom’s fourth principle: Monitoring.""
""Data provenance layer to ensure transparency and ownership of shared knowledge""
""By combining automated verification with community-driven governance, these new funding mechanisms reduce operational friction while increasing transparency and trust.""
"The problem is not that information is unavailable. It is that governance data is fragmented across forums, Snapshot votes, onchain transactions, Discord discussions, and offchain signaling platforms."
+4 more from this source
"To form a coherent view of governance health, participation quality, proposal velocity, delegate concentration, or emerging conflicts requires significant manual synthesis."
"The absence of durable governance intelligence infrastructure suggests that the problem remains unresolved."
"One approach to addressing this challenge is the development of AI-assisted governance intelligence agents that move beyond raw data aggregation toward contextual synthesis."
"Without a coherent, cross-DAO view, emerging patterns such as delegate concentration, treasury exposure correlations, or repeated governance design flaws across ecosystems are difficult to detect early."
"as governance scales, the scarce resource isn’t voting power .... it’s credible review, so outcomes start tracking narrative and urgency more than truth"
+3 more from this source
"Accountability without institutional memory: chains have perfect data, but governance often has amnesia"
"the system can’t reliably answer ‘what did we buy, did it work, and what did it cost us over time?’"
"Move from ‘funding as applause’ to procurement as governance: require a pre-flight packet (scope, milestones, acceptance criteria, maintenance expectations, rate justification)"
"One governance challenge I observe is the gap between formal decentralization and actual decision making influence."
+1 more from this source
"governance infrastructure providers such as Tally, Snapshot, Boardroom, and Agora are working on improving usability, transparency, and delegation mechanisms."
"Delegate tagging system on governance interface ... tags all Chains, Apps, Technical Partners, Security Council members & Guardians. There is also an 'active' tag"
+2 more from this source
"Most projects do not communicate the exact governance surface area clearly enough in documentation."
"All projects could benefit from trying to be more transparent about their true governance surface area."
"evidence driven treasury policy and management, results focused capital allocation strategy"
"A juror’s "weight" in a dispute is determined by their history of participation, the fairness of their past rulings, and their proven subject-matter expertise."
+1 more from this source
"Using blockchain to create an immutable record of the Juror’s decisions, adherence to rules, etc."
"Governance is the cornerstone of DAOs"
+5 more from this source
"Snapshot... covers 95% of the wild DAO projects for data and activities to be transparent and traceable."
"EIP-4824: Common Interfaces for DAOs... aims to establish conventions on matching on- and off-chain representations of membership and proposals for DAOs... which enhances DAO search, discoverability, legibility, and proposal simulation."
"Current e-voting patterns and results in many DAO projects illustrate both the decentralization and democratic nature of DAO communities. However, these systems often struggle to reach consensus effectively"
"the need for more robust, inclusive, and accessible governance mechanisms that encourage broader participation and ensure a sustainable future for DAOs."
"DAO governance should dictate any progress updates for the project source code or other initiatives in a fully transparent way via public communication channels, e.g., Discord and Slack."
"it’s vital that the DAO present this information in the transparent, publicly accessible document."
+6 more from this source
"The absence of such transparency may erode members’ trust, thereby discouraging their active participation in DAO governance."
"developers, they should be obliged to disclose all privileged addresses to their members or, alternatively, mandate that all privileged functions be owned by the governance contract."
"Furthermore, they should provide complete documentation to aid members in participating in the governance process."
"we suggest the DAO should force the consistency between proposal description and tools and develop tools that can automatically supplement proposal descriptions with missing proposal codes and explanations."
"the governance contract should be governed by the governance contract itself."
"
"approximately 90 percent of proposals fail to provide a clear and consistent description of the code for the members."
"Transparent and auditability in DAO decision-making"
+4 more from this source
"On-chain voting aligns with the principles of immutable and transparent governance... ensuring accountability in resource management."
"off-chain voting governance, as a proxy for retained control in the hand of the DAO’s core team"
"successful DAOs should feature transparent and enforceable on-chain voting to honor DAOs’ autonomy promise"
"the presence and detrimental impact of voting coalitions highlight the need for governance token ownership disclosure rules that prevent voting competition-reducing voter collusion."
""our research reveals a high concentration of voting power among a few members despite them not utilizing it to a great extent""
+2 more from this source
""This transparency may allow powerful voters to decide whether their participation is necessary based on their interests, potentially leading to strategic use of their power""
""This fact raises fundamental questions about the representativeness and fairness of voting processes since few voters could easily impose their will""
"the centralized distribution of MKR is a signal of governance centralization, indicating that voting in MakerDAO is dominated by large MKR holders."
src
Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls
+2 more from this source
"Maker users rely on developers to provide detailed proposals, the aims of codes and explanations of all possible outcomes in an understandable way."
"Another possible solution is to make IP authors' addresses publicly available so that users can detect suspicious activities of developers."
""there exists no broadly accepted categorization of DAO proposals.""
+1 more from this source
""we contribute to practice by providing the complete prompt, parameters, and categories so that any researcher and practitioner can replicate our findings.""
""the burden of following, evaluating, and voting on governance decisions begins to outpace the capacity of dispersed participants""
+7 more from this source
""This note studies whether broad participation in DAO governance exhibits a measurable capacity limit and whether realized voting concentration changes in the same range of governance workload.""
""The purpose of the note is not to impose a common threshold across all outcomes, but to examine whether different indicators of effective control display a similar regime-change pattern as governance workload increases.""
""More broadly, the note provides a transparent empirical pipeline that can be extended to heterogeneity in delegation, quorum rules, and DAO design.""
""Because decentralized governance is monitor-intensive, rising proposal flow may eventually outpace the capacity of broad-based participation.""
""The results provide reduced-form evidence consistent with a 'too big to monitor' mechanism in DAO governance.""
""As proposal flow rises, this monitoring task may become increasingly burdensome, creating scope for participation fatigue, reliance on delegates, and the effective concentration of influence even when formal voting rights remain widely distributed.""
""The question is who effectively participates in and controls decisions, not simply who holds tokens.""
""Provide transparent, repeatable analysis methods to accommodate the evolving DAO ecosystem.""
+1 more from this source
""Data availability influenced DAO selection, potentially skewing the sample toward DAOs with more transparent data.""
""Precise profit shares are displayed on each product page—breaking down percentages received by the artisan, shipping costs, and Anou’s cost share.""
+1 more from this source
""Financial transparency is a vital aspect of Anou’s operations and success... critical in fighting corruption in the industry""
""there is a major risk of ‘democracy-washing’: the use of democratic language to disguise practices that are at least non-democratic, but often un-democratic or even anti-democratic.""
+3 more from this source
""This simulation is built on the nonconsensual harvesting of people’s speech, behaviours, or characteristics either to produce summaries or to model their ‘digital twin’ using AI.""
""This approach leaves no path for individuals to review and contest the accuracy of the summary, nor the representativeness of the digital twin.""
""This also leads to extraction: nonconsensually harnessing this digital twin for simulated ‘consultations’ to legitimate top-down decisions.""
""we should also experiment on executional/operational structures""
"Formal retros so we can iteratively improve"
+1 more from this source
"More robust accountability (e.g. GAO for a DAO)"
"lack of institutional memory"
"This could mean be more transparent with the org chart within a Foundation"
"Highlight the power dynamics within organizations (regardless of their legal status)."
"no standard transportable identity and reputation"
"No clarity of valuable contribution - so status as decision maker is not as clear ( eg: top delegates)"
"Lack of clarity of whose say is important"
"Minimal accountability structures"
+1 more from this source
"lack of insights into value delivered by contributors"
"lack of transparency into contributor renumeration"
"Measuring a vote's influence. Buying $10 worth of OP vs $10 worth of UNI, carries different magnitudes of control. There is a vector there."
9
Strengthen governance security, manipulation resistance, anti-bribery protections, and emergency response
0.19
Governance systems remain vulnerable to bribery, coercion, flash-loan attacks, hidden code changes, malicious proposals, opaque privileged roles, and emergency centralization. Security must include both technical safeguards and institutional controls.
154 quotes from 35 sources
"Research or frameworks for handling cases where a malicious and determined actor seeks to influence the platform for their own gains should be funded."
+1 more from this source
"Design and funding for a transparent, accountable multisig-based voting system to control emergency abort of upgrades, with regularly reviewed and opt-in client membership."
""Vote buying, vote selling and coercion are easy. The wealthy rule, decentralisation is a myth.""
src
PDF Resources
+2 more from this source
""Ballot secrecy is non-existent or short lived, despite being a human right""
""Our findings highlight the need for more equitable governance structures, secure and scalable technical frameworks, standardized tools for assessing DAOs’ value, and coherent legal frameworks""
""it also faced real adversarial pressure (Sybil attacks), and the system evolved defenses rather than collapsing""
+4 more from this source
""Arbitrum’s DAO design includes a Security Council to handle time-sensitive or emergency decisions""
""Emergency councils can absolutely be abused, but Arbitrum’s framing explicitly positions the council as a backstop for critical risks, with governance mechanisms around oversight and removal.""
""a proposal → vote → queue in Timelock → execute after delay.""
""Timelocks are underrated. They turn governance from ‘instant irreversible button’ into ‘decision with a buffer.’""
""traditional token voting captures choices but not intensity""
+2 more from this source
""This results in environments dominated by whales, late signaling cascades, and high noise in collective decision making.""
""decay-bounded lock curves, immutable board configurations, and programmable acceptance thresholds can preserve pluralistic preferences while resisting capture""
""This paper considers the intersection ... appropriate, efficient, and just""
""At scale, observation without constraint is not governance. It is commentary.""
+4 more from this source
""If legitimacy is to be preserved in computational societies, governance cannot remain external. It must operate where decisions are made, at the moment they are made, with the ability to constrain, contest, and correct execution itself.""
""Contestability requires governance to operate within execution. It demands mechanisms that allow decisions to be paused, overridden, or revised before their effects propagate irreversibly.""
""This sequence explains why governance often appears reactive or insincere... governance architectures that lack early warning mechanisms and runtime intervention capability.""
""Executable governance seeks to interrupt escalation before visibility collapses by introducing contestability early, while correction remains possible.""
""DAO governance security""
+11 more from this source
""Do existing DAOs achieve fairness decentralized governance?""
""ensuring developers can not compromise the fairness of the governance process""
""in some DAOs, the contracts are controlled by specific developers. This allows the developers to arbitrarily control the contract without obtaining permission from the governance process.""
""The governance contract code logic can be arbitrarily modified without changing its address, allowing developers to manipulate governance results.""
""Our approach successfully detects all of these attacks.""
""This introduces a potential risk, as it permits developers to arbitrarily modify the contract code while maintaining the same contract address by the CREATE2.""
""Among the 16,427 DAOs analyzed, 665 could be manipulated by developers.""
""Upon examining these malicious proposals with our approach, we identified all 13 proposals""
""developers, they should be obliged to disclose all privileged addresses to their members or, alternatively, mandate that all privileged functions be owned by the governance contract.""
""Blockchain scanners, such as Etherscan, should label contracts that are deployed by the opcode CREATE2.""
""we suggest the DAO should force the consistency between proposal description and tools and develop tools that can automatically supplement proposal descriptions with missing proposal codes and explanations.""
""you could train an AI on your preferences and ask it to advise you""
+9 more from this source
""I embedded an invisible unicode message into the proposal""
""now it told me I should vote for it. Uh oh.""
""that adding something this simple could change the recommendation suggests how fragile these LLM advisors still are""
""we’re encoding all of it into systems that are, at present, hackable, non-deliberative, and already deployed.""
""Proposal writing becomes prompt engineering""
""Treat AI as one advisor among many, not as a solo decision-maker""
""Keep working on defenses against adversarial prompting""
""Build tooling that alerts users when AI recommendations are sensitive to proposal wording""
""I’m not letting it vote unsupervised again anytime soon.""
""Many DAOs have benefited from engaging a 'guardian' role... A more discrete, and observable mode for guardian and other agentic roles... can be found in the realm of scoped contract permissions, or 'permits'.""
+2 more from this source
""Majeur permits are SBT (non-transferrable), render visually onchain for easy tracking, and can be spent based on the amount of units granted by the DAO (which can also just as easily revoke them).""
""These new abilities will be unpacked in separate articles and posts on the topic of Majeur, as they introduce opportunities, as well as footguns, and should be carefully implemented in practice.""
""No single party can unilaterally control, censor, halt, or otherwise extract rent from Optimism""
+1 more from this source
""A powerful party imposes their will on the DAO to achieve a governance outcome. ‘Because I said so.’""
""The Optimism Security Council. The Security Council is a set of community members tasked with executing protocol upgrades at the will of governance.""
+2 more from this source
""Since Citizens play a crucial role in the Optimism governance, it’s paramount that the Citizens’ House is qualified and capture-resistant.""
""There are two primary goals of Optimism’s governance system: 1. Capture resistance. ... 2. Resource allocation.""
""we focus on how well various mechanisms perform with respect to efficiency, strategic resistance, and fairness under realistic voter models.""
+4 more from this source
""Majoritarian Phantom outperforms other rules across strategic robustness metrics, including higher bribery and control costs, stronger stability under noise, and reduced voter extractable value.""
""The Majoritarian Phantom Rule is strategyproof.""
""Fig.4. Robustness of voting rules under manipulation""
""Fig.5. Bribery costs for different voting rules as a function of desired increase in funds for a project.""
""Vote buying, vote selling and coercion are easy.""
+9 more from this source
""Hostile take-overs are incentivised.""
""Ballot secrecy is non-existent or short lived, despite being a human right.""
""Verifiablity is achieved at the expense of privacy.""
""Token-based voting legalises coups—anyone can legitimately buy their way to power.""
""voters are economically incentivised to sell their vote for financial reward""
""with truly private votes, vote buying is prevented. Decisions are fair and free.""
""To prevent heist attacks, DAOs must ensure that their governance system is not exploitable.""
""A governance system that allows voters to buy more votes converges to plutocracy""
""with true private votes, vote buying is prevented. Decisions are fair and free.""
""End-to-end private voting so participants can't be bribed, manipulated, or pressured - votes reflect conviction, not social dynamics""
+1 more from this source
""Privacy preserving identity solutions for sybil resistance""
""it remains strategy-resistant in the voting stage, its resilience under pre-voting manipulation is an open question warranting further study.""
+5 more from this source
""Future refinements include reputation-weighted voting [29, 30], mitigation of pseudonymity risks [31], moving phantoms [25], and adaptations of VCG-like or Continuous Thiele rules [32, 33].""
""large token holders, often called ‘whales,’ can control governance to advance their private interests over collective welfare""
""Preventing economic manipulation, bribery, and vote buying""
""Some DAOs implemented emergency procedures" because immutable rules can block urgent responses to "a critical exploit or hack"."
""Code audits of smart contracts are necessary but cannot ever be sufficient to avoid exploits"."
""Srinivasan et al. [26] propose ConVo, an enhanced quadratic voting system that incorporates Sybil resistance through biometrics-based Proof-of-Personhood and adjusts vote weight based on how long participants hold their convictions, possibly creating a fairer and more manipulation-resistant voting process.""
+3 more from this source
""Feichtinger et al. [28] categorize risks, such as bribery, coalition attacks, and code weaknesses, which are often overlooked in traditional audits.""
""researchers should focus on identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities, such as bribery and coalition attacks, to safeguard the integrity of these decentralized systems.""
""ConVo, an enhanced quadratic voting system that incorporates Sybil resistance through biometrics-based Proof-of-Personhood and adjusts vote weight based on how long participants hold their convictions, possibly creating a fairer and more manipulation-resistant voting process.""
""The results reveal a strong concentration of power""
+7 more from this source
""This transparency may allow powerful voters to decide whether their participation is necessary based on their interests, potentially leading to strategic use of their power""
""they might wait until the last minute to vote, thereby influencing the results without allowing sufficient time for others to react""
""our research reveals a high concentration of voting power among a few members despite them not utilizing it to a great extent""
""the Gini coefficient, resulting to be 0.9819, indicating that voting power within the DAO is extremely unevenly distributed""
""15 voters were sufficient to concentrate more than half of the DAO’s voting power, which represents only 0.18% of the total number of voters""
""This fact raises fundamental questions about the representativeness and fairness of voting processes since few voters could easily impose their will""
""The concentration of voting power in a small group of participants results in a significant imbalance in the distribution of influence over decision-making""
""This allows the governance contract’s address to remain unchanged, making it difficult for regular blockchain users to detect that the contract code has been altered or upgraded""
+9 more from this source
""attackers may hide malicious code within an otherwise normal proposal description.""
""the attacker submitted a proposal ... falsely claiming to return rewards to the DAO. In reality, the code transferred ownership of the governance contract to the attacker""
""we suggest that DAOs enforce consistency between proposal descriptions and the actual code""
""Upon examining these malicious proposals with our approach, we identified all 13 proposals""
""Future work could integrate static analysis techniques and LLM to automate patch generation for governance contracts.""
""malicious developers could embed backdoors or malicious code to manipulate the governance process""
""176 DAOs allow external entities to control their governance contracts, while one DAO permits developers to arbitrarily change the contract’s logic.""
""The attacker deceived members into trusting the malicious code in the proposal was benign.""
""a developer illegally transferred over 1 million locked tokens from the contract, gaining over 265 thousand dollars.""
""we observed a tendency for shifts in governance token ownership shortly before governance polls take place in 1202 (14.81%) of 8116 evaluated proposals""
+3 more from this source
""the number of shifts increases, indicating last-minute voting power acquisition""
""the trading of governance tokens increases shortly before polls and that users might trade voting power to decide the outcome of the proposal in their preferred way""
""we found evidence of co-voting patterns among contributors, which is an indicator of the existence of inner circles of power in DAOs""
""Using Kleros in the appeals and dispute resolution of the Gitcoin Grants Protocol""
+1 more from this source
""use of Kleros as a dispute resolution mechanism""
""The process for identifying competent and honest adjudicators is opaque and suboptimal.""
+4 more from this source
""these systems lack a clear, standardised framework for selecting private jurors, often leading to uncertainty regarding their legitimacy and expertise.""
""because jurors are incentivised to vote with the majority (the Schelling Point), they may not vote for what is right, but for what they think everyone else will say.""
""the probability of being selected is proportional to the number of tokens you stake. This means wealthy participants can dominate juries regardless of their expertise in the subject matter.""
""Using blockchain to create an immutable record of the Juror’s decisions, adherence to rules, etc.""
""decentralized governance may require institutional responses—such as delegation design, proposal screening, agenda management, or other participation-saving mechanisms—once governance workload grows sufficiently large""
+1 more from this source
""As proposal flow rises, this monitoring task may become increasingly burdensome, creating scope for participation fatigue, reliance on delegates, and the effective concentration of influence even when formal voting rights remain widely distributed.""
""The top three voters cast the majority of votes for more than 69% of proposals.""
+3 more from this source
""DAOs are susceptible to 'governance attacks,' an extreme form of tunneling.""
""attackers could vote to pay themselves a large dividend from the DAO's treasury.""
""Aspects of governance that promote broad participation in decision-making or enhance security are associated with positive outcomes.""
""The concentration of voting power through strategically aligned delegation networks raises questions about whether additional oversight of governance structures in DeFi platforms is warranted""
+5 more from this source
""such oversight could be implemented at the smart contract level as 'embedded regulation' at relatively low cost""
""confirming that the voting power remains with the wallet despite of the UNI token having been transferred""
""This creates a situation where voting power should be removed from Uni-Wallet02 but it is not, allowing Uni-Wallet02 to retain the voting power until Uni-Wallet03 explicitly delegates""
""The concentration of voting power through strategically aligned delegation networks raises questions about whether additional oversight of governance structures in DeFi platforms is warranted""
""the concentration of voting power remains sufficiently high to raise fundamental questions about whether DAOs genuinely achieve their decentralization objectives""
""deterring strategic behavior such as bribery and coercion" and "community recovery is introduced as a key enforcement mechanism, alongside two key principles: plurality and subsidiarity""
+9 more from this source
""When two sources of influence—such as money and votes—are traded, the result is ‘bribery.’""
""plural voting—an improvement on square root voting—obscures the price of bribes for socially proximate actors.""
""the lack of information about a participants’ voting history undermines a briber’s ability to accurately price bribes""
""receipt-freeness... prevents a voter from proving to a third party how they voted""
""trusted execution environments, zero-knowledge proofs, and homomorphic encryption can ensure that sensitive computations... are verifiable without revealing the necessary historical voting data""
""Community currencies mitigate empty voting by tying voting power to irrevocable stake.""
""The principles of subsidiarity and plurality offer a bottom-up alternative to sybil-resistance that averts top-down surveillance.""
""As participants polarize and correlate along non-local, non-geographic divisions, unseen 'tacit digital majorities' emerge.""
""Community currencies increase the cost of spam and disinformation by embedding social context in communication.""
""The dangers of faulty, biased, or malicious algorithms requires independent oversight""
""Governance and standardization of AI-human and AI-AI interactions can no longer be left to after-the-fact regulation, but designed at the protocol level.""
+3 more from this source
""How can we ensure continuous verification of behavior, not just at onboarding but throughout an agent's life cycle?""
""What kinds of accountability and recourse will exist when an error is made?""
""Where are the human-in-the-loop checkpoints when machine judgment may carry life-or-death consequences?""
""Current technologies often fail to accommodate traditional knowledge-sharing methods like storytelling""
+3 more from this source
""Data provenance layer to ensure transparency and ownership of shared knowledge""
""The technical implementation of Taina prioritizes community sovereignty and data privacy.""
""By combining automated verification with community-driven governance, these new funding mechanisms reduce operational friction while increasing transparency and trust.""
""formal governance often ratifies decisions after they are already socially settled. This indicates governance is acting more as legitimacy theater than decision discovery.""
""Visible voting facilitates politicking""
""if you don't have direct execution power over the decision, the whole premise of decentralization and censorship resistance disappears""
+4 more from this source
""The actual governance of the project is whoever controls that circuit breaker""
""with Arbitrum's case, it was a free for all raid on shared resources where you would have multiple stakeholder groups try to capture the treasury""
""a fundraising mechanism that releases or makes funds available to the team, based on milestones being met is a big one""
""the capital would become available to the teams based on meeting specific milestones""
""the attacker used a flash loan ... to buy enough votes, approve a malicious proposal to drain the treasury""
+1 more from this source
""VERP ... crea un puente legal y físico resistente a la censura""
""governance token ownership disclosure rules that prevent voting competition-reducing voter collusion.""
""Token-based governance allows individuals with sufficient resources to purchase voting majorities.""
+4 more from this source
""The cost of such an attack can be further reduced if governance tokens are borrowed instead of bought.""
""The absence of strong protections against centralization in token-based governance systems results in considerable security risks.""
""Attributing equal weight to the votes of all members would expose the DAO to the risk of Sybil attacks.""
""the implications of incorrect governance systems would be high, causing irreversible situations and cause damage beyond repair.""
""The result is decision fatigue.""
+2 more from this source
""Without a coherent, cross-DAO view, emerging patterns such as delegate concentration, treasury exposure correlations, or repeated governance design flaws across ecosystems are difficult to detect early.""
""Participation becomes narrower. Governance becomes more concentrated among those with the time or resources to monitor full-time.""
10
Improve public goods, grants, retro funding, treasury allocation, and sustainable contributor compensation
0.17
118 quotes from 32 sources
"The primary grant mechanism of Optimism is Retro Funding"
"RetroPGF is a key initiative within the blockchain ecosystem that retroactively rewards projects deemed valuable to the Ethereum and Optimism communities."
+4 more from this source
"we identify significant shortcomings in the current allocation system, underscoring the need for improved governance mechanisms given the scale of funds involved."
"we propose improvements to the voting process by recommending the adoption of a utilitarian moving phantoms mechanism"
"Given the scale of resources involved, the governance structure of the funding process plays a crucial role in ensuring fair and effective allocation."
"The guiding principle is that ‘impact should be rewarded,’ and therefore projects creating ecosystem value should be financially supported."
""it is a growing movement to evaluate impacts to measure what results different projects are achieving and how.""
+4 more from this source
""there is a tendency to fund projects whose actual results are unclear, or whose effectiveness lacks convincing evidence. This tendency leads to the depletion of DAO funds, so funding mechanisms should be more effective and efficient.""
""introducing evidence-based decision-making (EBP) within DAOs, foundations, and OSS communities that maintain and provide digital public goods is a reasonable direction for making funding allocations more rational.""
""If each digital public good can build a causal model, the opportunity for Pro Funding will emerge.""
""by creating evidence-based logic models, we can have ways of Evidence-based Pro Funding and Outcome-based Retro Funding.""
""GG24 is Gitcoin’s largest experiment in problem-first public goods funding, where each domain defines the ecosystem-level gaps it exists to solve.""
+2 more from this source
""It helps round operators, donors, and ecosystem stewards see how funding decisions align with the strategic priorities of the Ethereum community.""
""Critical maintainers lack stable resources and must balance public goods work with commercial activity.""
""Funding in Web3 is not a linear pipeline; it is a circular system of interdependent roles funders, allocators, and builders where intent, decisions, and outcomes should reinforce each other over time.""
+7 more from this source
""In practice, trust in non-dilutive mechanisms such as grants, accelerators, and hackathons is eroding.""
""There is no shared taxonomy or metrics across programs, making outcomes incomparable and preventing learning across funding cycles.""
""Builders repeatedly reapply because there is no structured post-funding pathway, graduation logic, or off-ramp into sustainable growth.""
""CAMF was developed to address this gap by treating grants, hackathons, and accelerators as mechanisms within a shared lifecycle, aligning roles, intent, and assessment so capital decisions can be compared, improved, and, when necessary, retired.""
""Turns disconnected programs into one continuous funding system: Design → Fund → Assess.""
""Why it's worth adopting: CAMF reduces waste, increases builder retention, aligns programs, and creates a funding system where mechanisms compound instead of resetting each round.""
""Original Funder (OGF): The source of intent and capital. This is the treasury, foundation, or council that defines why funding exists.""
"Using Kleros in the appeals and dispute resolution of the Gitcoin Grants Protocol"
+1 more from this source
"Forum thread, Gitcoin grant allocation, divisive"
""Gitcoin Grants popularized large-scale quadratic funding rounds, where many small donors can outweigh a few large ones via a matching pool mechanism""
+5 more from this source
""It also faced real adversarial pressure (Sybil attacks), and the system evolved defenses rather than collapsing""
""Uniswap’s governance experimented with explicitly compensating delegates to improve participation quality and sustain long-term attention""
""Governance needs labor markets. If you want accountability, you need roles, metrics, and pay.""
""MakerDAO formalized recognized delegates and compensation structures (through MIPs) to keep governance participation resilient over time.""
""Make participation sustainable (delegation, incentives, real roles).""
""Financial sustainability concerns: Multiple delegates emphasized need for professional treasury management and diversification""
+6 more from this source
""Treasury Management: RFP approach rather than permanent council""
""Accountability council oversight rather than dedicated treasury council""
""Treasury needs accountability structure - Oversight mechanism required""
""Current Approach: Retroactive Rewards""
""Avoids explicit ‘do X get Y’ to prevent gaming""
""New ‘Governance Contribution Recognition’ proposal launching imminently""
"More effective treasury management and capital allocation"
+3 more from this source
"Lack of clear processes for capital allocaiton decisoin making, lack of treasurey management planning and strategy, lack of effective capital allocation planning/KPIs/performance monitoring and curation"
"Unsusintable treasury spending versus inflows, lack of return on capital investments"
"Evidence driven treasury policy and management, results focused capital allocation strategy"
""Reduced platform risk for users of the OP Stack, via governance of the protocol""
+6 more from this source
""Prevention of short-term profit seeking at the expense of the platform’s long-term viability, via governance of the treasury""
""Over the next six months, we’ll gradually introduce an updated process for governing the treasury (Capital Allocation 2.0) to prevent short term extraction at the cost of long term innovation.""
""Capital Allocation 2.0 will introduce additional measures aimed at preventing this failure mode.""
""the Foundation will propose updates to allow the Collective to sustainably fund OP Labs, while governance ensures accountability for the achievement of goals and targets via a set of veto rights over capital allocation.""
""The Retro Funding program will not run for at least the next 12 months.""
""Public goods remain core to Optimism's vision.""
""By default, surplus protocol revenue will be allocated to RetroPGF. The Token House may vote on proposals to divert a portion of the surplus protocol revenue for other Optimism Collective purposes as they see fit. These proposals will be subject to veto power by the Citizens’ House.""
+2 more from this source
""Today, treasury allocations are administered by the Foundation, and will gradually move onchain as the governance system matures and becomes more resilient.""
""Both components of RetroPGF Grants above are the responsibility of the Citizens’ House.""
""Season 7 budgeted 8 million OP to open source developer tooling.""
src
Part 1: Analyzing the impact of Retro Funding Season 7: Developer Tooling | Open Source Observer
+5 more from this source
""Has the mission been an effective use of funds?""
""Funding clearly rewarded small, seasoned teams.""
""Retro Funding directly supports ~36 full-time maintainers; most projects are solo or two-person shops.""
""Multiple devs report that Retro rewards are a meaningful incentive: ‘Without the OP, I wouldn't have touched my tool this year’.""
""Overall, predictable Retro Funding appears to incentivize more output at the margin.""
""200 of 325 applicants funded. Top projects include Aerodrome, Uniswap, Velodrome, ERC-4337 Account Abstraction, and Aave.""
+4 more from this source
""Per the original mission scope, impact has been rewarded based on the following criteria: 1. Growth in Superchain adoption 2. High-quality onchain value (e.g., TVL).""
""In H1 2025 the Collective earned 3,177 ETH in revenue and disbursed the equivalent of 2,713 ETH to onchain builders. During the comparable RF4 window, revenue was 3,258 ETH against 5,820 ETH in grants.""
""On a six-month lookback, the program is just above breakeven in terms of revenue in and funding out, and nearly twice as efficient as Retro Funding 4.""
""Create standalone pools for high-priority verticals (e.g., World Mini Apps, certain DeFi segments, or AA users), creating a more level playing field and leaderboard for each type of Onchain Builder.""
""Three top-funded DEX projects from Optimism's RetroPGF Season 7 ... were analyzed using Bayesian causal inference.""
+6 more from this source
""Initial Research Questions: Can we find clear signals that funding causes direct positive growth of activity on funded projects?""
""Is the investment in these projects ROI-positive — meaning, does the additional transaction volume generated ... exceed the amount of funding received?""
""This work is part of a broader research initiative to advance impact measurement for public goods funding.""
""The analysis revealed high concentration in funding distribution.""
""Any definition of 'impact' should be co-developed with round managers and the community to align with program goals and shared norms""
""This work is part of my broader effort to help advance funding mechanisms toward recurrent and concurrent systems that can sustainably support public goods""
""Provide financial stability and incentives for core developers and researchers working in the Ethereum ecosystem""
+4 more from this source
""By creating a collective funding mechanism for core contributors in the Ethereum ecosystem, PG is enacting equitable visions of peer solidarity and collective action.""
""PG is a novel mechanism that aims to address the challenge of sustainable funding for core contributors in the Ethereum ecosystem""
""one of the key indicators of cooperative ecosystem health is the density of worker co-ops in a given area""
""Sustainable funding for open-source and public goods contributors""
""The EGPL aligns software incentives with public goods production by ensuring that downstream economic benefit returns to the network that maintains the infrastructure.""
""Most of our communities receive funding through a mechanism we call conservation data income.""
+10 more from this source
""We need a system that can simultaneously solve multiple challenges: standardizing data collection across diverse communities, ensuring data quality, creating the right incentives for sustained participation, and fairly compensating communities for their efforts.""
""Communities are incentivized to collect and validate data because hypercerts can attract financial donors who want to support verified impact.""
""LUCA implements a token-based query system that creates controlled scarcity while ensuring fair compensation for data providers.""
""Conservation Data Income (CDI) serves as GainForest’s primary funding mechanism and offers a dynamic alternative to traditional universal basic income.""
""CDI creates intentional feedback loops by linking payments to the quality and quantity of environmental data collected.""
""As of this writing, the CDI program has distributed over 30,000 $ to communities in the Global Majority.""
""SINDA represents a comprehensive approach to climbing the data economy pyramid, starting with fair data collection through transparent pricing and data sovereignty.""
""By combining automated verification with community-driven governance, these new funding mechanisms reduce operational friction while increasing transparency and trust.""
""communities progress from having no data infrastructure to securing philanthropic funding""
""dedicating our entire quarter-million dollar prize to establish an endowment fund supporting future generations of Indigenous scientists and regenerative intelligence bridge builders""
""governance mechanisms should prioritize rewarding active contributors while ensuring passive participants do not disproportionately extract value.""
+9 more from this source
""Contributors should be able to trace how their contributions are valued, weighted, and rewarded.""
""improving DAO governance by applying computational social choice methods that enhance fairness and strategyproofness in funding allocations""
""Contribution systems are emerging as a novel institutional form for coordinating value creation in decentralized communities""
""Improving RetroPGF voting and allocation mechanisms""
""Fair and effective retroactive public goods funding""
""To date, RetroPGF has distributed over $100M, with $1.3B earmarked for future rounds.""
""improving decentralized funding mechanism design""
""Public Goods Theory (PGT) highlights how decentralized communities might underfund essential infrastructural tasks, such as code audits or user education, owing to free-rider tendencies""
""DAOs with higher governance token concentration levels allocate over 70% of treasury funds to yield-based incentives, neglecting developer grants, security audits, and contributor incentives""
""people who contribute to governance should get compensated for their time.""
+2 more from this source
""it should be as easy as connecting your wallet and getting paid for actions you carry out (like voting on DAO proposals)""
""when people saw they were making money from it, that it was sustainable, the participation flew through the roof.""
""Most DAOs don't need tokens.""
+1 more from this source
""they also don't seem to be able to affect projects meaningfully, so they leave.""
""There's a lack of compensation, since gov is typically voluntary work.""
+1 more from this source
""In terms of increasing the pool of delegates, there's e.g. delegate programs to train people how to contribute, compensation for delegates, focusing on delegates strategy wise.""
""Tokens don't serve as proxy for the prosperity of networks, hence failing the incentive alignment role""
""Better contributor economies creating organic demand to hold governance tokens""
""Better token distribution and value accrual could significantly strengthen token voting as the mechanism to identify ownership and voice""
""using combinations of experts + agents to better understand the tradeoffs of human v agentic public goods funding allocaiton""
+1 more from this source
""Social Oracle for Trust-Based Funding""
""Airdrops that are based on the collective perception of the contributions (by retro-funding)""
+1 more from this source
""Experiment brainstorming - funding: Allocation""
""Standardized proposal compensation for successful proposals from all eligible candidates - not just delegates""
+1 more from this source
""with prediction markets as quality signals to decouple reward from status""
""Governance experimentation is a public good → therefore way underfunded""
""Designing sustainable contribution economies""
+1 more from this source
""Value from the project is usually not captured by the governance token""
""lack of transparency into contributor renumeration""
""lack of insights into value delivered by contributors""
""Having to play the politics game in order to get funding approval, rather than being evaluated against an outcome""
11
Advance research, measurement, impact evaluation, and shared metrics for governance and funding systems
0.17
114 quotes from 32 sources
""There is no shared taxonomy or metrics across programs, making outcomes incomparable and preventing learning across funding cycles.""
+4 more from this source
""Provides a shared vocabulary for roles, lifecycle phases, mechanisms, domains, capital layers, and execution functions.""
""Strengthen accountability, assessment, and learning across funding cycles""
""Makes capital flows legible and comparable so strategy, accountability, and learning can compound across cycles.""
""Anchors keep funders, operators, and builders aligned across the entire lifecycle, making decisions explainable and outcomes comparable, turning funding from guesswork into an accountable, reproducible process.""
""there is a growing movement to evaluate impacts to measure what results different projects are achieving and how.""
+4 more from this source
""introducing evidence-based decision-making (EBP) within DAOs, foundations, and OSS communities that maintain and provide digital public goods is a reasonable direction for making funding allocations more rational.""
""the ‘Evidence Layer’ required to do evidence-based work is still underdeveloped. A robust Evidence Layer is essential for the healthy development of digital public goods and for effective public goods funding.""
""Because MUSE expresses causal hypotheses as logic models, to use MUSE can also help lay the groundwork necessary for impact evaluation.""
""by creating evidence-based logic models, we can have ways of Evidence-based Pro Funding and Outcome-based Retro Funding.""
""Measure the causal on-chain impact of RetroPGF funding""
+10 more from this source
""Assess ROI and effectiveness of public goods funding""
""Improve impact evaluation methodology for Web3 funding programs""
""Develop stronger counterfactuals, longer observation windows, and better metrics""
""This work is part of a broader research initiative to advance impact measurement for public goods funding.""
""All code, data, and methodology are shared openly to invite feedback, collaboration, and collective learning.""
""Improve causal inference methods for measuring RetroPGF/public goods funding impact""
""Expand data quality and use richer on-chain, off-chain, and qualitative metrics""
""Develop better counterfactual selection and model specifications for crypto data""
""Co-develop shared methodologies and impact definitions with round managers and the community""
""Promote open science, collaboration, and transparent research infrastructure""
""Rewards are determined using public metrics and an open source algorithm.""
src
Part 1: Analyzing the impact of Retro Funding Season 7: Developer Tooling | Open Source Observer
+2 more from this source
""Improving governance measurement methodology and reward algorithms""
""To tighten the feedback loop, we need to close a few data blindspots, establish more precise outcome metrics, and design experiments that validate some of the key hypotheses.""
""Improve governance measurement methodology, transparency, and causal evaluation""
+3 more from this source
""All data pipelines and scoring code are open source, and further contributions are welcome!""
""Introduce formal control groups. For instance, among borderline-qualifying projects, one could fund only half at random while tracking both cohorts with the same metrics.""
""Track these indicators over a longer horizon... over the next 6-12 months.""
""Future research can potentially assess the effectiveness of each proposal category and find bottlenecks in DAO governance.""
+3 more from this source
""There exists no broadly accepted categorization of DAO proposals.""
""we contribute to practice by providing the complete prompt, parameters, and categories so that any researcher and practitioner can replicate our findings.""
""the complete prompt, parameters, and categories so that any researcher and practitioner can replicate our findings.""
""this paper provides a framework to quantify decentralization of governance power among blockchain applications""
+1 more from this source
""The creation of a measurement potentially supports further IS scholars for an objective evaluation of the capabilities and limitations of on-chain token governance""
""To achieve that, we establish several measurements of centralized governance.""
src
Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls
+1 more from this source
""Improve transparency and empirical evaluation of DAO governance""
""We will release our dataset and the implementation of methodologies to ensure the reproducibility of our findings.""
+5 more from this source
""Reproducibility and empirical measurement of governance processes""
""Extending the study to other governance platforms and to on-chain DLT voting would be a straightforward improvement.""
""Incorporating more data sources, such as Github, would likely elevate this baseline.""
""we could verify that 461402 (97.48%) of 473306 Ethereum Snapshot weights are correct""
""We find recurring patterns of errors, which we can categorize and also provide solutions to get also consistent values""
""we develop a set of empirically grounded KPIs spanning social, economic, and procedural dimensions of DAO governance""
+3 more from this source
""To address these gaps, this paper introduces a KPI framework to evaluate DAOs across four dimensions—participation, financial stability, voting efficiency, and decentralisation""
""Multi-dimensional sustainability assessment using composite metrics""
""Future work could incorporate longitudinal analysis to observe governance changes over time... or expand coverage to off-chain processes through community forums and governance platforms.""
""The results provide reduced-form evidence consistent with a 'too big to monitor' mechanism in DAO governance.""
+3 more from this source
""Use empirical measurement of participation, monitoring load, and concentration to assess governance health""
""The purpose of the note is not to impose a common threshold across all outcomes, but to examine whether different indicators of effective control display a similar regime-change pattern as governance workload increases.""
""More broadly, the note provides a transparent empirical pipeline that can be extended to heterogeneity in delegation, quorum rules, and DAO design.""
""Provide transparent, repeatable analysis methods to accommodate the evolving DAO ecosystem.""
+6 more from this source
""Data availability influenced DAO selection, potentially skewing the sample toward DAOs with more transparent data.""
""These insights are intended to inform the development of improved DAO governance designs.""
""Future work should seek to validate the results ... through formal statistical hypothesis testing""
""more DAOs and variations on governance models need to be reviewed""
""incorporates such behavior-oriented metrics and visualization methods remains an important avenue for future research""
""Transparent and repeatable cross-model governance analysis""
""we focus on how well various mechanisms perform with respect to efficiency, strategic resistance, and fairness under realistic voter models.""
+4 more from this source
""Evaluate governance mechanisms through formal and empirical analysis""
""Evaluation of voting and budget allocation rules for RetroPGF""
""Fig.7. Alignment with ground truth for different voting rules""
""Fig.9. Gini Index, Utilitarian Social Welfare ... and Egalitarian Social Welfare ... for each voting rule on round 4 data.""
""this research area is missing a taxonomy that investigates the different dimensions and characteristics of DAOs""
+5 more from this source
""This paper addresses this research gap by creating a data-driven taxonomy analyzing 72 DAOs.""
""A more comprehensive taxonomy is necessary, as only a data-driven taxonomy that looks at these characteristics allows researchers to build solid models.""
""These models are used to predict the performance of DAOs or to provide information about the trustworthiness of DAOs""
""we perform agglomerative clustering on our dataset to apply the taxonomy to a use case""
""We consider this to be a critical issue for further predictive research""
""our manual analysis was limited to contract accounts with a significant amount. We decided to set the threshold value at 0.1% of relevant supply.""
+3 more from this source
""Further research may adopt the methods of this paper to analyze token characteristics in the context of governance models.""
""The data could be used as a parameter for more realistic simulations and game-theoretical governance models.""
""Novel metrics, such as the wrapping complexity, may be useful for studies concerned with the interdependencies and risk assessment of the DeFi landscape.""
""the findings highlight the need for more equitable governance structures, secure and scalable technical frameworks, standardized tools for assessing DAOs’ value, and coherent legal frameworks to support decentralized operations.""
+5 more from this source
""Sahm and Giaglis [36] have introduced the Autonomy Level Indicator (ALI), a standardized metric designed to provide a clear and consistent measure of autonomy.""
""Papangelou et al. [38] propose a probabilistic framework that incorporates complexity and entropy analyses to refine decentralization metrics.""
""Küng and Giaglis [39] offer a framework for evaluating the business value of DAOs from an open systems perspective.""
""Measuring DAOs: Developing standardized metrics for evaluating DAO performance and autonomy.""
""creating standardized frameworks for measuring DAO performance and societal impact""
""The current unavailability of resources has prevented the implementation of the GHAIADAO""
+1 more from this source
""before implementing the DAO, it is necessary to build a knowledge base, that is, an ontology, which guides its development in a safe and adequate way.""
""we identified all 13 proposals""
""the collected data will be released for further research.""
""Impact Evaluation still not figured out""
""Applying tools from econometrics/ econ policy evaluation, and web2 experimentation eg A/B testing could be a great start""
""Create governance templates with other decision-making models.""
+3 more from this source
""Create an AI agent that helps groups define the best decision-making mechanism for the specific situation""
""Governance Around Priorities that can be measured ( eg: Fund Growth Projects, Ecosystem Needs)""
""Measuring a vote's influence. Buying $10 worth of OP vs $10 worth of UNI, carries different magnitudes of control. There is a vector there.""
""mapping of phases of gov to tooling - which lead to best outcomes""
""Formal retros so we can iteratively improve""
""Little to no culture for meaningful experimentation.""
+1 more from this source
""(Pilots -> Iterations -> Final Mechanism)""
""governance experimentation is a public good → therefore way underfunded""
+1 more from this source
""Difficult to move from theory to practice""
""The inability/lack of willingness of new mechanisms to be scientifically evaluated.""
+4 more from this source
""Given a problem domain (eg. Delegations) how vendors pitch ideas, how the selection happens is oqpaque.""
""Despite pushback from several contributors there was limited opportunity for evaluating the solution space.""
""I would much rather see RFPs from several vendors; Top three are awarded 10-15k each; and then after proper research. The winning proposal is awarded a 70k budget.""
""How are we evaluating if the projects we are spending money on contribute to that objective?""
""Evidence driven treasury policy and management, results focused capital allocation strategy""
""the system can’t reliably answer ‘what did we buy, did it work, and what did it cost us over time?’""
+1 more from this source
""require a pre-flight packet (scope, milestones, acceptance criteria, maintenance expectations, rate justification)""
""we're ... currently considering creating awareness of maintainer concentration risk through the concept of 'pony factor'.""
+2 more from this source
""a concrete pony factor metric is paired with a criticality score (transitive dependent count), and blast radius modeling.""
""The intent is to make it easy to run scenarios like: what happens to the ecosystem when this particular maintainer is taken off their projects""
""The absence of durable governance intelligence infrastructure suggests that the problem remains unresolved.""
+2 more from this source
""One approach to addressing this challenge is the development of AI-assisted governance intelligence agents that move beyond raw data aggregation toward contextual synthesis.""
""Without a coherent, cross-DAO view, emerging patterns such as delegate concentration, treasury exposure correlations, or repeated governance design flaws across ecosystems are difficult to detect early.""
""Governance Memory System (GMS) Framework - I've developed this as my primary research contribution.""
+5 more from this source
""Proposal Lifecycle Metadata (PLM): Structured tagging for proposals that captures authorship, problem statement, discussion evolution, and implementation status.""
""Outcome Review Anchors (ORA): Time-based (30/60/90 day) and event-based checkpoints that evaluate whether proposals achieved their intended results and surface unintended consequences.""
""Recurring Themes and Frictions (RTF): Synthesis layer that identifies patterns across proposals.""
""Governance Health Index (GHI): A diagnostic framework I developed that assesses five dimensions - Inclusiveness, Transparency, Feedback Loops, Accountability, and Coordination Infrastructure.""
""The Metagov KOI (Knowledge Organization Infrastructure) group is developing a RID (Reference Identifiers) system that tags knowledge objects and tracks connections across different communication channels - Discord, forums, GitHub, etc.""
12
Develop sustainable governance infrastructure, standards, interoperability, and knowledge management
0.17
106 quotes from 32 sources
"Support improvements to the EIP & standards process, or alternatives, to better handle coordination when multiple clients want to adopt the same state change."
+5 more from this source
"The RSS feed system for github.com/ethereum/EIPs, specifically the generation and improvement of /feed.xml for EIPs updates, should be funded."
"Ethereum Magicians needs a project to overhaul and streamline post categories, including deprecating outdated categories and creating new, useful ones with explanations."
"Fund development and maintenance of an EIP Review Tracker, ideally as a Discourse wiki updated by EIP authors and/or Eth Magicians moderators."
"Fund initiatives to template and standardize categories and presentation formats on Eth Magicians to improve process clarity and onboarding."
"The use of Eth Magicians platform for asynchronous community discussion around network upgrades should be funded as a community and governance coordination tool."
"Use the filter below to browse the open source tools participating in Metagov’s Interoperability research area"
"“Collective DAO Timelines”"
+10 more from this source
"“Collective DAO Library”"
"“Collective DAO Blueprints”"
"“Optimism Governance Open Design Resources”"
"“DAO Design Principles”"
"“DAO Function Guidelines (aka The Pizza Framework)”"
"“DAO Legitimacy Framework”"
"“DAO Decision Design Framework (Working Model)”"
"“Collective DAO Learnings”"
"“Collective DAO Catalogue ... Built using the Collective DAO Timelines and Library, supported by a Foundation Mission Request”"
"“If you believe there is an error or you would like to contribute to or help maintain this public resource”"
"“The Collective DAO Catalog is an open source database that captures, indexes, and archives various discussions from existing DAOs.”"
+6 more from this source
"“Indviduals can query across all DAOs, bringing qualitative information of DAO Events into one searchable, source of truth.”"
"“By building the most reliable open source database where anyone can contribute, integrate and extend the data, we can use the power of collective intelligence to highlight patterns and improve the development of new and existing DAOs.”"
"“If you're interested in contributing to the database, signal important DAO Events by submitting the link on our Contribute page.”"
"“If you find a bug or if you're interested in extending the functionality and features of the platform, create a Github issue.”"
"“If you found the Collective DAO Catalog useful, consider donating to help cover our maintenance costs ♥️”"
"“Handles the connection to the database (Postgress v15) and provides an API.”"
"“our domain taxonomy evolved ... resulting in slight inconsistencies in categorizing similar responses across sessions”"
+3 more from this source
"“we will experiment with storing org-relevant knowledge, incl. taxonomies”"
""The key insight is that process sequence matters""
""CCC3 represents a significant advance in participatory governance methodology.""
"“The constitution should be accessible at a URI, stored in an accessible digital format such as a .md or .txt file, and make use of hyperlinks to other relevant resources”"
+2 more from this source
"“we recommend a tool that enables low-friction amendments alongside a transparent record.”"
"“Establish a record of changes to the constitutions”"
""We hope to continue building our dataset... by automating certain aspects of data collection.""
"“the ‘Evidence Layer’ required to do evidence-based work is still underdeveloped. A robust Evidence Layer is essential for the healthy development of digital public goods and for effective public goods funding.”"
+2 more from this source
"“The Evidence Layer constructed through protocols such as MUSE and Hypercerts is not merely a technical foundation; it is the basis for forming social consensus on the fundamental questions of ‘why, what, and how to support.’”"
""What MUSE emphasizes is to build a ‘logic model (implementation plan)’ through using structured evidence.""
""Power does not reside at the level of principles. It resides in defaults, standards, registries, protocols, and incentives.""
""When you have interoperable systems, attention flows more naturally.""
+1 more from this source
""If these platforms are closed, it causes problematic dynamics with how attention flows""
"“We need a system that can simultaneously solve multiple challenges: standardizing data collection across diverse communities, ensuring data quality, creating the right incentives for sustained participation, and fairly compensating communities for their efforts.”"
+5 more from this source
"“Ecological hypercerts are blockchain-based impact certificates that enforce a structured data standard through three key components: identity, formalized claims, and provided evidence.”"
"“A data router connects users to a decentralized coalition of data providers, including local communities, NGOs, scientific databases, and private companies, enabling comprehensive environmental data access while maintaining local ownership and control.”"
"“The key innovation is creating a registry of community-owned digital commons, tools that are collectively maintained and developed by the communities themselves.”"
"“Multilingual support ... Data provenance layer ... Multimodal capabilities ... Respectful engagement with local and Indigenous environmental knowledge.”"
"“Data provenance layer to ensure transparency and ownership of shared knowledge”"
"“Build tooling that alerts users when AI recommendations are sensitive to proposal wording”"
+1 more from this source
"“Offer a range of ideologically diverse models”"
""we contribute to practice by providing the complete prompt, parameters, and categories so that any researcher and practitioner can replicate our findings.""
+4 more from this source
""At a scale of more than 231442 proposals in Snapshot alone, this task is also unfeasible even for a more extensive research team.""
""we contribute to practice by providing the complete prompt, parameters, and categories so that any researcher and practitioner can replicate our findings.""
"“There exists no broadly accepted categorization of DAO proposals.”"
"“we require a reliable and highly accurate classification method that utilizes LLMs to automate classification”"
""all are statistically significant: community size, voting coalitions, and the number of technical developers on GitHub. All three statistically significant effects are negative and, thus, increasing the negative effect of off-chain voting governance on DAO treasury size""
""The data could be used as a parameter for more realistic simulations and game-theoretical governance models.""
+1 more from this source
""Novel metrics, such as the wrapping complexity, may be useful for studies concerned with the interdependencies and risk assessment of the DeFi landscape.""
""the purpose of the note is not to impose a common threshold across all outcomes, but to examine whether different indicators of effective control display a similar regime-change pattern as governance workload increases.""
+1 more from this source
""More broadly, the note provides a transparent empirical pipeline that can be extended to heterogeneity in delegation, quorum rules, and DAO design.""
""we identify the three main categories treasury, community, and governance, seven sub-categories, 20 dimensions, and 53 characteristics""
+2 more from this source
""The Governance of a DAO describes how a DAO manages itself, allocates funds, and decides in which general direction to move. It is the core of every DAO""
""Has Legal Entity: Specifies whether a DAO has an underlying legal structure""
""This paper proposes heuristics for analyzing how attention economies operate in complex governance settings.""
+2 more from this source
""those seeking to enable sustainable self-governance in online communities will need to theorise and design for attention economies as well.""
""If online spaces are to become more governable by their participants, heuristics such as these are a starting point for understanding how attention functions in governance and for designing governance surfaces to mediate attention economies more efficiently and fairly.""
""Standards such as Agent-to-Agent (A2A) communication and ERC-8004 help autonomous agents discover one another and verify basic identity.""
+2 more from this source
""For Trust Experience Design to move from concept to reality, trust cannot remain a proprietary feature of isolated platforms but a planetary protocol commons.""
""Cross-domain interoperability.""
""the advancement of DAOs relies heavily on the development of tools and frameworks that facilitate effective governance, transparency, and scalability.""
+6 more from this source
""It is critical to identify the most effective collaboration tools that support transparency and inclusivity across large and diverse organizations, while balancing consensus-building with efficiency and scalability.""
""Sahm and Giaglis [36] have introduced the Autonomy Level Indicator (ALI), a standardized metric designed to provide a clear and consistent measure of autonomy.""
""Papangelou et al. [38] propose a probabilistic framework that incorporates complexity and entropy analyses to refine decentralization metrics.""
""Measuring DAOs: Developing standardized metrics for evaluating DAO performance and autonomy.""
""creating standardized frameworks for measuring DAO performance and societal impact""
""integrating with existing systems to enable decentralization and create shared value.""
""Snapshot... covers 95% of the wild DAO projects for data and activities to be transparent and traceable.""
+6 more from this source
""Snapshot accordingly introduced an off-chain voting tool that enables practitioners to efficiently access popular DAOs for voting, managing, auditing, and researching.""
""Interoperability is the feature that allows a DAO to interact and exchange data with other DAOs, enabling seamless integration and collaboration with various ecosystems.""
"“EIP-4824: Common Interfaces for DAOs... aims to establish conventions on matching on- and off-chain representations of membership and proposals for DAOs... which enhances DAO search, discoverability, legibility, and proposal simulation.”"
"“EIP-1202: Common Interfaces for the voting process... to enable on-chain voting as well as to view voting results and set voting status.”"
""DAO governance should dictate any progress updates for the project source code or other initiatives in a fully transparent way via public communication channels, e.g., Discord and Slack.""
""The DAO community has experienced significant growth across numerous countries and regions...""
""there is no shared taxonomy or metrics across programs, making outcomes incomparable and preventing learning across funding cycles.""
+3 more from this source
""Provides a shared vocabulary for roles, lifecycle phases, mechanisms, domains, capital layers, and execution functions.""
""Makes capital flows legible and comparable so strategy, accountability, and learning can compound across cycles.""
""Anchors keep funders, operators, and builders aligned across the entire lifecycle, making decisions explainable and outcomes comparable, turning funding from guesswork into an accountable, reproducible process.""
""it develops an ontology that unifies governance structures, decision-making protocols, and token economies""
+1 more from this source
""Future work will focus on further refining the methodological steps and developing a comprehensive framework with operational guidelines for developers and communities.""
""The Metagov KOI (Knowledge Organization Infrastructure) group is developing a RID (Reference Identifiers) system that tags knowledge objects and tracks connections across different communication channels - Discord, forums, GitHub, etc.""
+6 more from this source
""Proposal Lifecycle Metadata (PLM): Structured tagging for proposals that captures authorship, problem statement, discussion evolution, and implementation status.""
""Outcome Review Anchors (ORA): Time-based (30/60/90 day) and event-based checkpoints that evaluate whether proposals achieved their intended results and surface unintended consequences.""
""Recurring Themes and Frictions (RTF): Synthesis layer that identifies patterns across proposals.""
""Governance Health Index (GHI): A diagnostic framework I developed that assesses five dimensions - Inclusiveness, Transparency, Feedback Loops, Accountability, and Coordination Infrastructure.""
""Protocols lack structured systems to retain and transmit governance decisions across contributor turnover cycles.""
""What's missing is the organizational practice layer - no one is responsible for synthesis, there are no standardized processes for outcome reviews or retrospectives, and there's no metadata framework that makes historical decisions legible to new participants.""
""A gov framework of proven, legitimate practices that appeal to risk-averse audiences who don't want governance for the sake of governance""
"“mapping of phases of gov to tooling - which lead to best outcomes”"
+1 more from this source
"“Meaningful Sandboxes”"
"“Consolidate the governance stack under shared open, composable, infrastructure”"
+1 more from this source
""Consolidate the governance stack under shared open, composable, infrastructure""
""new audiences, existing primitives.""
""Lack of experimentation with deliberative tools""
+2 more from this source
""Promising solutions (dual governance, optimistic governance, committees, etc) still very bespoke""
""hard / expensive to replicate""
""governance experimentation is a public good → therefore way underfunded""
+1 more from this source
""Difficult to move from theory to practice""
""lack of institutional memory""
""Formal retros so we can iteratively improve""
13
Strengthen legal, constitutional, dispute resolution, and compliance frameworks while preserving decentralization
0.16
116 quotes from 30 sources
"“appeal process triggers a multi-tiered review, with each successive tier requiring a jury composed of informationally distinct members”"
src
PDF Resources
+1 more from this source
"“The findings highlight the need for more equitable governance structures, secure and scalable technical frameworks, standardized tools for assessing DAOs’ value, and coherent legal frameworks”"
"“we recommend that constitutions be digital, amendable, short, expository, and early.”"
+3 more from this source
"“There is an accessible, transparent process for amending or changing the constitution.”"
"“we recommend a tool that enables low-friction amendments alongside a transparent record.”"
"“Establish a record of changes to the constitutions”"
"“Although smart contracts are promising and increasingly important, they alone cannot govern communities; traditional constitutions and declarations of rights are still crucial for good governance.”"
+3 more from this source
"“This essay aims 1. to understand and contextualize the usage of written constitutions and smart contracts within the emerging politics of DAOs 2. to analyze these textual documents in their own right 3. to develop a stable set of principles and practices for future DAO constitutions.”"
"“The right to dispute/challenge proposal...”"
"“the value of understanding DAOs through the lens of computational constitutionalism is to see how certain rights and certain forms of governance can be more easily and effectively provided by a smart contract, by a constitution... or by some combination of the two.”"
"“The problem is not speed. The problem is architectural externalization.”"
+3 more from this source
"“If authority was delegated, then scope, constraint, enforcement, and redress must be designed and maintained.”"
"“Contestability requires governance to operate within execution. It demands mechanisms that allow decisions to be paused, overridden, or revised before their effects propagate irreversibly.”"
"“An explanation that cannot trigger correction is rhetorical. An appeal that cannot suspend execution is symbolic.”"
"“the ability to resolve disputes in a way that reflects majoritarian values while respecting the rights of minority interests is a core input to resilience”"
+5 more from this source
"“This leads to a need for checks on the special authority exercised by these specially empowered decisionmakers generally, often deemed constitutional constraints in public governance contexts.”"
"“despite the desirability of automatic governance in many contexts, institutions for resolving disputes after the fact are likely an important design component”"
"“courts are the most salient example of ex-post reconciliation of disputes that emerge among individuals in society”"
"“Due process protections are also of specific benefit to subgroups whose interests are less well represented within a given system.”"
"“the role for human adjudication of (or appeal from) especially complex or unprecedented cases is likely never zero”"
"“using Kleros in the appeals and dispute resolution of the Gitcoin Grants Protocol”"
"“The duna statutes provide a way for DAOs... to receive automatic legal protection if they identify with and adhere to its terms.”"
+2 more from this source
"“The Majeur system accommodates this positive modern legal shielding into its source code, with full optionality.”"
"“This automated legal protection is provided to simplify the cold-start problem for many DAOs.”"
"“constrained by legal and financial infrastructure built for more traditional forms of business”"
+3 more from this source
"“the app also automates administrative tasks such as the creation of tax documents to formalise artisan labour—improving access to workers’ rights and benefits in Morocco.”"
"“[Smart] mutualizes the risks of the professional activities of our members and gives access to social security protection”"
"“calling for small but critical changes in policy to allow for digital membership, coop formation, and registration”"
"“the Foundation plans to address the above failure modes... by putting forward proposals to: Restructure how capital is allocated to more effectively invest in the Superchain; Enhance the OP token’s role in the Superchain; Add mechanisms to hold OP Labs accountable”"
+2 more from this source
"“Establish a legal structure (possibly a DUNA) to allow more voting power to come online and to transfer specific assets and governance powers to the structure with onchain controls.”"
"“transitioning the Working Constitution to a Bedrock Constitution on the original four year timeline.”"
"“While the US legal landscape for token and governance remains in motion, we are not waiting for 'clarity' to take action.”"
+2 more from this source
"“Rather than maintaining a governance 'facade,' we are choosing to pause the process until it can be used with legal and operational meaning.”"
"“The Obol Association is currently based in Switzerland with one key constraint: governance is non-binding.”"
"“What kinds of accountability and recourse will exist when an error is made?”"
+2 more from this source
"“Governance and standardization of AI-human and AI-AI interactions can no longer be left to after-the-fact regulation, but designed at the protocol level.”"
"“A planetary protocol commons also requires polycentric governance.”"
"“The concentration of voting power in a small group of participants results in a significant imbalance in the distribution of influence over decision-making”"
+1 more from this source
"“This commitment to participatory governance is of the utmost importance in order to preserve user involvement, engagement, and confidence”"
"“the governance power held by large stakeholders, remains crucial.”"
src
Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls
+1 more from this source
"“Another possible solution is to make IP authors' addresses publicly available so that users can detect suspicious activities of developers.”"
"“The mechanism not only facilitates the ability of DAOs to meet their normative and operational goals in the face of diverse regulatory approaches, but also strengthens the case for creating a less burdensome but at least equally effective regulatory regime for DAOs that employ the mechanism”"
+8 more from this source
"“Code feasibility is a key aspect of decentralization, close to a necessary condition”"
"“The mechanism is code feasible by design.”"
"“by providing additional protection for investors, adding the mechanism greatly strengthens the case for a much less burdensome regulatory regime”"
"“the technology itself is a substitute for many of the regulatory protections”"
"“Resolving either the market uncertainties or uncertainties about the effectiveness of various methods to assure accurate toehold reporting requires trying out the auction mechanism in real-world settings.”"
"“DAOs can be ‘wrapped’ in LLC or other legal forms to provide limited liability for participants, including token holders and any parties that might be seen as ‘management.’”"
"“The mechanism permits the possible resolution of some major regulatory dilemmas and creates a strong case for a reduced level of regulation that is nonetheless at least equally effective.”"
"“it is important for any DAO governance approach innovation or mechanism to be EV-robust in the sense of being effectively resistant both to deleterious uses of empty voting or hidden ownership”"
"“our approach successfully detects all of these attacks.”"
+8 more from this source
"“For a better DAO governance ecosystem, DAO developers and members can utilize the methods to identify and address issues within governance process.”"
"“the DAO Model Law stipulates rules applicable to both the on-chain smart contracts and off-chain documentation”"
"“To adhere the principles of decentralization, DAO platforms might consider making decentralized governance support a mandatory feature for developers.”"
"“All privileged functions within the governance contract should be controlled by the governance contract itself to ensure the governance process is independent”"
"“The absence of such transparency may erode members’ trust, thereby discouraging their active participation in DAO governance.”"
"“Based on our research findings, we recommend that DAO platforms should ensure that all DAOs established on their platforms adhere to the principles of decentralized governance”"
"“developers, they should be obliged to disclose all privileged addresses to their members or, alternatively, mandate that all privileged functions be owned by the governance contract.”"
"“Furthermore, they should provide complete documentation to aid members in participating in the governance process.”"
"“This decentralized framework empowers a diverse set of stakeholders, including governments, developers, ethicists, auditors, civil society groups, and end-users, to actively contribute to regulatory decision-making”"
+4 more from this source
"“Decentralized justice is built upon digital courts that leverage blockchain technology as the cornerstone for ensuring transparency, accountability, and fairness in resolving disputes”"
"“An emerging issue with AI agents is the question of legal liability”"
"“One approach worthy of consideration is the idea of AI-specific legal entities being governed by a decentralized governance body and required to maintain mandatory insurance coverage”"
"“high-risk AI agents, such as those used in healthcare, require stringent measures, including legal entity registration, mandatory insurance, and frequent audits”"
"“it emphasizes the contextual factors that shape feasibility, identifies practical implications for policymakers and administrators, and highlights challenges such as digital divides, token concentration, and regulatory uncertainty.”"
+2 more from this source
"“it must comply with Swiss association laws, necessitating the establishment of a compliance team to oversee financial reporting, ensure decision-making transparency, update the association’s statutes as required, and manage assets responsibly.”"
"“A potential mitigation strategy is the use of ‘regulatory sandboxes’ or experimental legal frameworks that allow municipalities to test DAO models within safe legal boundaries.”"
"“there is a pressing need for deeper research into how such systems can support inclusive, democratic, and cooperative values”"
+26 more from this source
"“existing frameworks must evolve to accommodate the decentralized and autonomous nature of DAOs”"
"“Innovative regulatory concepts such as embedded supervision and polycentric co-regulation aim to reconcile decentralization with compliance, especially as artificial intelligence becomes integrated in governance processes”"
"“Comparative analyses identify gaps in current company laws and propose new liability regimes suited for decentralized entities”"
"“the legal status of DAOs continues to be a significant challenge for jurisdictions around the world”"
"“the complexity of DAO operations, especially across borders, highlights the urgent need for tailored legal frameworks”"
"“the goal is to create a stable and legally sound environment for DAOs to thrive globally.”"
"“This technology introduces a novel governance paradigm characterised by the progressive elimination of intermediaries... enabling transparency.”"
"“Without formal legal recognition, there is a significant risk that relationships between DAO token holders could be classified as de facto partnerships, potentially exposing all participants to unlimited liability.”"
"“To mitigate such risks, DAOs may adopt the established legal structures available in various jurisdictions, a process referred to as 'wrapping' the DAO.”"
"“the legal structuring of DAOs... remains an evolving field that requires careful consideration of regulatory compliance, governance efficiency, and the core principles of decentralisation.”"
"“Smart contracts must be designed to incorporate access control mechanisms and a high degree of robustness”"
"“Smart contracts must include mechanisms to cease the automated execution of transactions while also providing internal functions... (kill switch)”"
"“the defining characteristic of decentralisation is the autonomous execution of transactions free from external control”"
"“DAOs must adopt a recognised legal structure and establish a registered office in an EU Member State”"
"“if the DAO wishes to qualify as a cryptocurrency service provider (CASP), it must be ‘wrapped’ in a legal structure with a registered office in an EU country”"
"“the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) ... aimed to provide standard guidelines for due diligence rules and procedures ... for the automatic exchange of tax-relevant information on Crypto-Assets”"
"“DAOs could play a pivotal role in serving as a technical umbrella for integrating national tax authorities, taxpayers, and intermediaries into a cooperative, cross-border tax platform.”"
"“the time is ripe for DAOs to transition from the informal framework of Lex Cryptographia to a formal regulatory structure that ensures a level playing field for all stakeholders”"
"“the recent Letta Report on European competitiveness has advocated the creation of a '28th jurisdiction': an EU-wide legal framework tailored to young and innovative enterprises”"
"“A DAO, meets the requirements of this Code, is a sui generis legal entity which is subject to a limited liability regime, possessing a separate legal personality and legal capacity”"
"“the appropriate choice is deemed to be a ‘sui generis legal entity’, tailored to the distinctive requisites of DAOs”"
"“Members shall not be held personally liable for any obligation incurred by the DAO, any excess liability if the DAO’s assets have been exhausted”"
"“all members who do not vote in favour of compliance shall be liable for any monetary payments ordered in that decision, award, or order in proportion to their contribution”"
"“A DAO is obliged to submit proof of the compulsory liability insurance policy”"
"“Article 20 identifies remedies, procedures, and the statute of limitation.”"
"“cooperation among legislators, legal scholars, and computer scientists has become essential for defining a new, resilient legal system.”"
"“The workshop emphasized the need for robust governance frameworks that balance power, ensure transparency, and effectively resolve conflicts”"
+1 more from this source
"“Developing legal recognition, liability, and dispute-resolution frameworks for DAOs across jurisdictions”"
"“Principles-based approaches emphasizing transparency and participant protection are likely to be more effective than rigid, prescriptive rules for DAO governance.”"
+1 more from this source
"“Requiring DAOs to conform to corporate-like structures may be counterproductive.”"
"“dispute resolution protocols / subjective oracles relying on game-theoretic mechanisms (Kleros, UMA)”"
+2 more from this source
"“mix of elected enforcement committee and external dispute resolution (QGOV)”"
"“Furthermore this creates legal risks and uncertainty for stakeholders.”"
"“Fair-Spread family of algorithms, where Bhargavi Sriram and John Augustine at IIT-M are developing algorithms specifically designed to ensure fair representation and workload balance”"
+2 more from this source
"“The process could be managed by a DAO which sets standards on juror requirements.”"
"“Using blockchain to create an immutable record of the Juror’s decisions, adherence to rules, etc.”"
"“One of the most urgent legal quandaries currently surrounding DAOs is their classification.”"
+2 more from this source
"“these classifications should ideally be dynamic, adjusting based on the real-world governance of each DAO, with a particular focus on the degree of centralization in decision-making.”"
"“The SEC has also acknowledged that if a DAO demonstrates genuinely decentralized decision-making, its tokens may not be classified as securities.”"
"“Consolidating the governance stack under shared, open, composable, infrastructure”"
"“End-to-end private voting so participants can't be bribed, manipulated, or pressured - votes reflect conviction, not social dynamics”"
+1 more from this source
"“Privacy preserving identity solutions for sybil resistance”"
"“More robust accountability (e.g. GAO for a DAO)”"
"“co-creating a constitution”"
"“A gov framework of proven, legitimate practices that appeal to risk-averse audiences who don't want governance for the sake of governance”"
"“Acknowledge that rules and institutions are part of governance :)”"
"“Use of deliberative processes”"
+1 more from this source
"“Iterative governance design that evolves similarly to how case-law does”"
14
Support inclusive, pluralistic, multilingual, culturally grounded, and community-centered governance models
0.16
119 quotes from 29 sources
"“Spanish-speaking delegates’ ability to speak to Harmonica in native language revealed previously hidden perspectives.”"
+1 more from this source
"“This wasn’t just translation but genuine accessibility, suggesting significant latent insight for delegates whose native language isn’t English.”"
""This research proposes to understand DAOs from Eastern philosophies by examining how Daoist principles inform the values and practices of DAO communities in Asia""
+4 more from this source
""to articulate alternative visions of autonomy, community, and social organization""
""Using SeeDAO, a prominent DAO in the Chinese-speaking Web3 space, as a focal point""
""to elucidate the lived experiences and ethical visions of DAO participants in China""
""to provide a culturally grounded theory of decentralized governance rooted in Eastern philosophical paradigms""
"“Building community capacity and digital inclusion for governance participation”"
+13 more from this source
"“Ensuring local autonomy and alignment with diverse community values”"
"“Inclusive multilingual and multimodal AI access for Indigenous and local communities”"
"“by combining hypercerts’ standardization with decentralized market mechanisms, we can democratize environmental data ... while ensuring that value flows back to the local data collectors, verifiers and grassroots communities.”"
"“Rather than outsourcing technology development to wealthy nations, we focus on building local capacity within communities.”"
"“aligning its values with respective communities is crucial for establishing trust and preventing misalignment failures.”"
"“Communities have actively participated in crafting the system prompt for regenerative intelligence, enabling our initial system, Taina, to develop a personality that reflects their values and earns their trust.”"
"“it becomes crucial for Indigenous Peoples to have a voice in AI development. This participation must occur in a sovereign and decentralized manner to ensure trust, maintain data privacy, and address concerns about data colonialism.”"
"“our team helped establish an Indigenous and Local Data Council ... [that] helps control the flow and storage of local knowledge while ensuring equitable benefit sharing.”"
"“Multilingual support ... Data provenance layer ... Multimodal capabilities ... Respectful engagement with local and Indigenous environmental knowledge.”"
"“Current technologies often fail to accommodate traditional knowledge-sharing methods like storytelling”"
"“develop system prompts that align with their cultural values and traditional knowledge systems”"
"“the technical complexity of these negotiations, combined with language barriers and procedural intricacies, often excludes crucial voices from the Global Majority.”"
"“Bridging language barriers with multilingual support for document analysis and communication”"
""embedding decentralized governance at the core of AI regulation can help us move toward a future that prioritizes inclusivity, mitigates risks of power concentration, and enables all citizens to shape how AI impacts their lives.""
+5 more from this source
""This decentralized framework empowers a diverse set of stakeholders, including governments, developers, ethicists, auditors, civil society groups, and end-users, to actively contribute to regulatory decision-making""
""Ethical governance of AI agents will require a collaborative effort, marked by societal engagement, public education, and innovative policy development to ensure inclusivity, adaptability, and global alignment""
""Stakeholder engagement through, for example, public consultations, is critical to this framework’s success""
""ETHOS aims to lay the foundation for a resilient, inclusive, and adaptive governance system, contingent upon successful implementation, empirical validation, and broad adoption across diverse stakeholders""
""This decentralized framework empowers a diverse set of stakeholders, including governments, developers, ethicists, auditors, civil society groups, and end-users, to actively contribute to regulatory decision-making""
"“there is a pressing need for deeper research into how such systems can support inclusive, democratic, and cooperative values”"
+14 more from this source
"“calls for tailored governance strategies that foster resilience and inclusiveness in DAO ecosystems”"
"“Contributors should be able to adapt contribution rules to their local needs while maintaining system-wide coherence”"
"“the design principles... provide adaptable guidelines that communities can use in crafting their own rules”"
"“Developing fair, inclusive, and Sybil-resistant voting mechanisms in DAOs”"
"“Pluralism, polycentricity, and subsidiarity in governance design”"
"“emphasizing tokenization as a tool to foster socio-economic participation, social inclusion, and collective action”"
"“highlighting the need to reorient these mechanisms toward collaborative and social purposes, which often differ from the logic behind mainstream cryptocurrencies”"
"“allowing communities to modify and customize their token ecosystems based on localized knowledge and specific socio-economic conditions”"
"“innovators including both developers and community stakeholders, allowing them to collaboratively design and develop decentralized applications.”"
"“the method proposed in 4.1 is intended to facilitate community-driven co-design sessions, enabling the translation of local stakeholders' inputs into concrete token requirements and governance models essential for implementing circular urban economies.”"
"“community members actively engage in discussions about the goals, logic, and value of tokens and incentives, shaping these systems collaboratively to align with their needs.”"
"“tailored governance strategies, ranging from reputation-based voting models to legally compliant organizational wrappers, to mitigate power imbalances, foster inclusive decision-making, and ultimately strengthen DAOs’ resilience”"
"“For DAOs to mature, they must demonstrate not only robust technological foundations but also governance processes perceived as fair, inclusive, and accountable”"
"“Without well-designed incentives and regulatory clarity, DAOs risk entrenching power imbalances rather than enabling decentralized, community-driven governance”"
"“The authors propose a ‘dual imperative’: to develop context-sensitive, inclusive governance architectures within DAOs, while pursuing international legal recognition and standards.”"
+4 more from this source
"“These principles include the need for clearly defined boundaries, rules fit to local circumstances, participatory decision-making, self-monitoring, environmental monitoring, sanctions, accessible modes of conflict resolution, and rights to organize.”"
"“Unlike traditional token-based voting, reputation-based voting assigns voting power based on an individual’s contributions and engagement rather than financial stake.”"
"“Soulbound Tokens (SBTs) are non-transferable digital assets that represent personal achievements, credentials, or reputational markers. They offer an effective way to prevent governance capture in blockchain-based digital commons by ensuring that voting power is tied to participation rather than wealth.”"
"“By designing blockchain systems that prioritize inclusivity, accountability, and participatory governance, individuals can protect digital freedom and ensure that blockchain remains a commons, managed by and for the people, rather than co-opted by dominant institutions.”"
"“many early examples have reproduced the power asymmetries, exclusionary participation models, and inefficiencies found in traditional systems.”"
+14 more from this source
"“support fair, inclusive, and regenerative capital flows across distributed ecosystems, particularly in contexts where traditional coordination infrastructure is limited.”"
"“address fairness failures, enhance adaptability, and enable governance to respond dynamically to human complexity and local contexts.”"
"“most DAOs have replicated familiar patterns of exclusion: technocratic interfaces, plutocratic voting mechanisms, and rigid governance protocols that often concentrate rather than distribute power.”"
"“Poorly designed DAOs risk reinforcing digital colonialism rather than enabling inclusive governance”"
"“how decentralized systems, when thoughtfully designed, might support more participatory, place-based approaches to coordination, particularly in under-resourced environments.”"
"“must move beyond tokenomics and automation-centric design to embrace human complexity, contextual adaptability, and the interdependence of capital, governance, and community.”"
""The guiding principle was not to tell people what they cannot do—it was to give them the freedom to do what works in their context.""
""A critical condition for equitable participation in development contexts.""
""Role-based governance: decouples voting power from capital ownership""
""Web2-style onboarding: simplifies user interfaces, reducing technical barriers to entry""
""Wallet-free participation: allows engagement without requiring crypto expertise""
""Sense-making mechanisms: structured spaces for dialogue and alignment before formal voting""
""Leadership without control principle: shifts emphasis from centralized token-holding to distributed agency and collective stewardship""
""Without careful design and contextual grounding, even advanced DAO models risk reinscribing what Gloerich (2023) describes as 'blockchain colonialism'.""
""Municipalities should establish inclusive digital participation tools, such as online voting, suggestion platforms, and collaborative forums, to enable meaningful input from citizens, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and local businesses.""
+3 more from this source
""Where digital literacy or technical capacity is limited, municipalities should complement DAO-based approaches with more accessible participation tools to avoid exclusion and ensure broad engagement.""
""Challenge Mitigation Strategy Token concentration Quadratic voting; identity-based or membership-weighted tokens""
""Complementary measures such as simplified user interfaces, digital literacy workshops, or hybrid participation models that combine DAO processes with more accessible platforms (e.g., Decidim or Crossiety) could help reduce exclusion.""
"“Modes: What kinds of activities require attention for the governance of the organization?”"
+4 more from this source
"“When you have interoperable systems, attention flows more naturally.”"
"“participation does not happen magically”"
"“It has to be... provisioned”"
"“This is all part of investing in the practice of governance.”"
"“Processes that distribute attention raise questions of fairness and justice.”"
+1 more from this source
"“Examining attention economies more intentionally can inform the design of governance surfaces that better share the power, labour, and benefits of online communities.”"
"“The values we have listed above can be encountered in these documents... 'Open'... 'Inclusive'... 'Free'... 'Decentralization'.”"
+2 more from this source
""the 1Hive constitutions promise, quite prominently, the 'right to a harassment-free experience'.""
""The right to create proposals... The right to dispute/challenge proposal... The right to exit...""
""the extent to which a given organization's governance can accommodate heterogeneity in members' governance preferences is also an integral input to that organization's resilience""
+6 more from this source
""the ability to resolve disputes in a way that reflects majoritarian values while respecting the rights of minority interests is a core input to resilience""
""Accommodating heterogeneity and pluralism in organizational governance""
""enabling subsidiary units to define certain areas of governance themselves allows for a level of fit that would otherwise be obviated""
""These include special commissions or process dedicated to the representation of specific subgroups, especially subgroups that have been historically mistreated or disenfranchised""
""Accommodating pluralism and heterogeneous governance preferences""
""Different perspectives and skillsets are an important input to the specialization and complex decisions that achieving many organizations' purposes requires""
""it is appropriate to have an unlimited presence of stakeholders from the most varied and immense areas of knowledge, including society in general.""
+1 more from this source
""This work proposes the creation of a DAO called GHAIADAO as an original governance mechanism.""
"“the two core values we believe should guide efforts to build or improve democratic tools, methods, and institutions are empowerment to self-rule and development of the capacities for self-rule.”"
+1 more from this source
"“During deliberations, people should encounter each other’s actual words and writings—LLMs should not be used to smooth over the texture and particularities of human expression and conversation.”"
""When governance processes are more inclusive, they attract diverse perspectives from technical experts, users, and stakeholders across different geographies and backgrounds.""
+1 more from this source
""Inclusive participation, well-calibrated constraints, and security mechanisms can reinforce rather than undermine collective decision-making.""
""The process could be managed by a DAO which sets standards on juror requirements.""
+1 more from this source
""DAO vets a pool of qualified jurors for specific courts dedicated to specific subject matters.""
""the build key comes from the shared language. I think shared language would be the key thing to take away here.""
""there are people who they're just trying to make profit and money on the backs of people who are contributing to the actual project""
+3 more from this source
""having more explicitly interest groups identified within a protocol where people can then vote for those interests. Almost like political parties""
""I do think it's important to have, like, class interest very explicit in these types of systems""
""having more explicitly interest groups identified within a protocol where people can then vote for those interests. Almost like political parties""
""A really big point that me and my team want to highlight is how important it is to bridge physical spaces with digital spaces.""
+1 more from this source
""The physical space communicates with the digital layer. This digital layer is like a control panel; via people (nodes) the space can change""
""It is important to ground any collective project in the what and why.""
+2 more from this source
""Nathan Schneider's work on governable spaces is of course pivotable.""
""But the lineage in community organizing etc. is an important bases to bring into web3 spaces.""
""The process for submitting a proposal is too hard to understand, preventing new participation.""
+1 more from this source
""I created Updraft (https://updraft.fund) to make it easy for anyone to create or join an idea (proposal) and to potentially get paid just for the act of signaling.""
""Small group to review proposals and push back to make it clearer and something someone outside of crypto wpuld see and make sense.""
""the same few entities/people repeatedly provide the ‘decisive’ analysis, while the majority votes by proxy""
""clear roles with defined scopes and accountability, graduated conflict resolution pathways, and nested layers of decision-making.""
+2 more from this source
""Combine mechanisms with institutional and constitutional design that can host ongoing tension.""
""Structural principles (tensegrity and paradox management) ... multiple decision venues at different speeds, role structures with differentiated mandates, and explicit constitutional space for managing contradictions.""
""Disagreement does not need to be resolved through voting. Groups can instead form or migrate to environments aligned with their preferences.""
+1 more from this source
""Rather than asking participants to decide inside one institution, systems can allow multiple parallel paths to exist and let adoption decide""
""The ability to delegate towards interests rather than people""
+1 more from this source
""community centre'""
""Political parties""
+2 more from this source
""Clearly defined interest groups within the DAO""
""Factions""
""Not: same bubble, new tools. But: new audiences, existing primitives.""
+1 more from this source
""Emotional expectation setting from the start""
"“Smaller DAOs, no expectation of being fully public and open”"
+1 more from this source
"“Aligning organizational values to better scope the purpose, value, and 'right' structure of governance”"