gov/acc

Evidence 106 195 11 24

Practitioner (106) Supporting (195) Contrasting (11) Extending (24)

"“DAOs and other organizations often fall back on highly centralized decision-making that is intransparent and potentially unfair.”"

src Martin Schmidt (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“(i) oracle failures or disputes in prediction markets (ii) investment rules in DAO treasuries being unclear and the source of contention (iii) foundations overriding DAO member votes (iv) self-dealing and quid-pro-quo handouts of DAO treasury funds”"

src Martin Schmidt (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"Centralization is an ongoing issue because, as peers choose to group, they do not gain ownership, and so a small group of owners remain in control while newcomers are powerless."

src ECVM (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"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)."

src ECVM (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Most DAOs have threshold in which only participation from the core team is enough to pass proposals, so there are usually no need to involve the right audience fit.""

src Gbiri Oluwaseun (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"Judiciary in many States is perceived as corrupt or influenced by opaque appointment processes."

src Sneha (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"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."

src Sneha (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""everybody is well aware of the vote whipping phenomenon that happens behind the scenes of any high stakes governance proposal""

src Jeffrey McLarty (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""En abril de 2022, un atacante usó un préstamo flash ... para comprar suficientes votos, aprobar una propuesta maliciosa para vaciar la tesorería""

src Participant 9 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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.""

src Katashe Solutions (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Participation becomes narrower. Governance becomes more concentrated among those with the time or resources to monitor full-time.""

src Katashe Solutions (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“the same few entities/people repeatedly provide the ‘decisive’ analysis, while the majority votes by proxy”"

src Karam (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"we've very often seen proposals that are, managed through token governance where venture capitalists who own a bunch of the token are able to sway the votes significantly"

src Participant 12 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"the entire community feeling one way about a particular issue, but venture capital is feeling like another"

src Participant 12 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"moving beyond token governance. Pure token governance is just clearly incredibly flawed in many ways when anyone can just buy the token"

src Participant 12 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""One governance challenge I observe is the gap between formal decentralization and actual decision making influence.""

src Participant 14 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""low engagement, complexity, and token weighted voting often result in influence concentrating among a small group of highly engaged or well capitalized actors.""

src Participant 14 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""In almost all major DAO ecosystems, there are at least 2-5 professional delegates in the top 10. These teams typically do not hold any tokens, and are not actually building in/using the protocol/tech being built in the ecosystem.""

src Participant 15 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""those with no skin in the game hold a lot of voting power in most DAOs""

src Participant 15 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Most folks tend to assess proposals only from the perspective of token price impact, which often leads to misalignment with the reality & needs of the ecosystem""

src Participant 15 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"many token DAOs have a very high concentration of power."

src Participant 20 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"There are a few token holders which have an overwhelming number of voting tokens or a significant number of voting tokens, which is disproportionately higher than the majority of other token holders."

src Participant 20 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"This stems from initial contributions to core team members and to financial investors like VCs."

src Participant 20 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"The result is that small token holders feel disenfranchised, and token DAOs often make decisions in small side channels comprised of a few large token holders."

src Participant 20 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"anti-capture.com has a dashboard where they show how many token holders need to vote in order for the DAO to reach quorum. In many cases, that number is between 1 and 3 token holders."

src Participant 20 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""If tokenomics are used to distribute voting power then you end up facing issues with votes being 'bought' or power concentration along the lines of wealth concentration. This tends towards plutocracy.""

src Participant 21 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"DAO governance is centralised, opaque and very noisy."

src Participant 23 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"Votes often pass because a relatively small number of large delegates voted in favour while tokens are hardly ever re-delegated: meaning that a small elite of 'old' delegates controls votes."

src Participant 23 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"a lot of back-door lobbying is needed to have proposals be accepted and pass."

src Participant 23 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“We repeatedly see secondary markets around governance rather than around the protocol itself: vote buying / bribing markets ... lobbying delegates”"

src Participant 24 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Delegation concentrates power without increasing decision quality”"

src Participant 24 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“The goal is that influence follows participation, not capital.”"

src Participant 24 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Influence is intended to come from demonstrated involvement rather than passive ownership.”"

src Participant 24 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“the process of selection happens is oqpaque.”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“In another DAO a privileged vendor was awarded 100k to ‘R&D’ the problem.”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Currently we see DAOs paying a premium with zero competition or sane evaluation of the tender process.”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“We have many cases where we see career ‘DAO contributors’ spin the same program and oversight committees.”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“these so called committees becoming a centralising force and very rarely create processes or procedures that involve the broader token holder base.”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Role Concentration Across Committees”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Perpetual Renewal Without Contestation”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Process Creation Happens Internally, Not Publicly”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“If DAOs are supposed to be a democratising force. Our decision system should be broad and inclusive not centralising.”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"I observe the same few people with large balances voting in DAOs"

src Participant 28 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"People with low token balances don't bother voting because they know they can't affect the outcome."

src Participant 28 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"In many votes, I only see voters or delegates with large balances"

src Participant 28 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"Signaling and debating are done through a centralized platform administrated by a small group, and participation rules are different than those for voting."

src Participant 28 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"There's no check on admin power in DAO message boards."

src Participant 28 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"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."

src Participant 29 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"It seems that from day one it becomes more of a smaller conversation with proposals geared towards delegates (who most became large delegates from airdrops"

src Participant 29 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""extreme centralization of voting power (Gini coefficient 0.89, Nakamoto coefficient 4)""

src Participant 31 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""The top 1% of holders control nearly two-thirds of all voting power""

src Participant 31 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""The bottom 97% of addresses hold a negligible share of voting power""

src Participant 31 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""only 4 entities are needed for 51% control""

src Participant 31 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""opaque compensation structures, misaligned incentives, and a systemic bias that favors insiders""

src Participant 31 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""secret bonus of 40,000 unvested ENS tokens distributed to stewards""

src Participant 31 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""rewarding individuals based on 'friendship over contribution'""

src Participant 31 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""fostering an exclusionary environment that punishes rigorous scrutiny rather than rewarding it""

src Participant 31 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""a delegate with a minimal number of delegated votes (e.g., 9 votes) holds the same inherent responsibility as a delegate commanding substantial voting power""

src Participant 31 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""an elected Nominee serving as a Steward may not take up the role for more than two working groups during a single Term""

src Participant 31 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""when you give power to people that have no economic exposure to the outcomes, you just enter a very classical principal agency problem""

src Participant 32 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""there are very strong incentives for the equity holders to just funnel all the value towards the equity and just use the token as a funding mechanism only""

src Participant 32 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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""

src Participant 32 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""6% which then results in whale dominance and lack of decentralisation""

src Participant 33 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“We do see many DAOs, where decisions are made by a handful participants, essentially being oligachies.”"

src Participant 36 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“This is due to concentration of voting power, but also lack of participation from other potential actors.”"

src Participant 36 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“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.”"

src Participant 37 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“the Foundation is managing day-2-day operations themselves and treating DAOs and the delegates with lip service.”"

src Participant 37 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Nepotism, due to a lack of trusted tools to assess the correct fit for roles, with a lack of overall trust in the system and individuals that are overseeing these protocols and DAO’s.”"

src Participant 39 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“In every single case of failed governance and lack of accountability and trust there is always the one with the most money tied that actually has the most sway.”"

src Participant 39 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Even if they were just the early investor or founder but are not suited to leading after the initial idea implementation.”"

src Participant 39 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“This often leads to the high churn rate of qualified contributors leaving, as they continue to see their efforts overlooked or co-opted by others.”"

src Participant 39 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“This leads to further ossification of poor leadership often to the detriment of the protocol, DAO or project regardless of the amount of money involved.”"

src Participant 39 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Social and epistemic capacities (deliberation quality, shared language, institutional memory, stewarding roles) are treated as secondary or ‘soft,’ so they are rarely resourced or measured with the same rigor as token flows.”"

src Participant 42 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Many Web3 organizations end up with brittle governance: systems that look elegant on paper but fail under real-world complexity, create hidden forms of centralization, and struggle to adapt as conditions change.”"

src Participant 42 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“We see participation fatigue, concentration of informal power among the ‘mechanism literate,’ and recurring cycles of crisis-driven governance changes.”"

src Participant 42 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Protocols like Lido and others [are] experimenting with dual or layered governance after discovering that pure token voting produced apathy, whale dominance, and difficulty scaling complex technical decisions.”"

src Participant 42 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Delegates bring back in politics and all the social manipulation that comes with it.”"

src Participant 43 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Governance just becomes a popularity contest because people want to delegate their votes instead of having their own voice.”"

src Participant 43 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“How do we engage in decentralized governance when we're just delegating that back into points of centralization based on social factors that are subjective and not transparent?”"

src Participant 43 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Every DAO I've been in people either vote based on how the ‘influencer’ they support votes or they simply delegate to them.”"

src Participant 43 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Token Voting Failure & Plutocracy""

src Workshop: Token Voting Failure & Plutocracy

""\"Number Go Up\" token-goal tends to result in hierarchy""

src Workshop: Token Voting Failure & Plutocracy

"['New revenue generating protocols deprioritize governance.', 'Most existing DAOs with revenue may not have incentives right for token holders to keep participating.', "So what happens to the 'voter'?"]"

src Workshop: Power concentration

"broken contributor economies and fragmentation expand voter apathy across all stakeholders - delegates aside - decision fatigue worsens it and plutocracy"

src Workshop: Making class interests obfuscated

"Broken contributor economies compound plutocracy - non-whales have no reason to acquire and hold governance tokens, so ownership concentrates further"

src Workshop: Making class interests obfuscated

"Small holders have no voice. No means to grow their stake."

src Workshop: Making class interests obfuscated

"Ossification of power and control"

src Workshop: Ossification of power and control

"Incentive misalignment: token holding insufficient to solve principle-agent problem"

src Workshop: Too many participants with veto rights

"Governance without some kind of structure does not work - see token voting issues; re-centralisation, etc."

src Workshop: Too many participants with veto rights

"the rational response, delegation, reintroduces the centralization governance was designed to eliminate"

src Workshop: sentiment towards Dao

"Outside of delegates, most stakeholders have no incentive beyond impact - and outside the top 10-20 VP holders, impact isn't real."

src Workshop: No pathways for new contributors to make a meaningful impact

"Plutocracy makes apathy rational in absence of functional contributor economies"

src Workshop: No pathways for new contributors to make a meaningful impact

"multiple significant causes of this: too-high-stakes, politics, governance capture, etc"

src Workshop: Most DAOs copied gov from other DAOs vs designing for their needs

""Teams that want to \"Add governance\" but really just need to acrue value to their token""

src Workshop: Insider dealings and DAOs as charades

""making the whole structure just a legal liability wrapper""

src Workshop: Insider dealings and DAOs as charades

"“Visible voting facilitates politicking”"

src Workshop: division between ownership and governance gets messy

"No clarity of valuable contribution - so status as decision maker is not as clear ( eg: top delegates)"

src Workshop: Lack of Mission/Vision/Strategy

"“Concentration risk of Public Goods maintainers”"

src Workshop: Concentration risk of Public Goods maintainers

"“AI Grant Evaluators (Minimise bias)”"

src Workshop: AI Grant Evaluators (Minimise bias)

"## Rep-based voting (i.e Badgeholders v2)"

src Workshop: Rep-based voting (i.e Badgeholders v2)

"End-to-end private voting so participants can't be bribed, manipulated, or pressured - votes reflect conviction, not social dynamics"

src Workshop: Rep-based voting (i.e Badgeholders v2)

"['Political parties', 'Clearly defined interest groups within the DAO', '"Factions"', 'Highlight the power dynamics within organizations (regardless of their legal status).']"

src Workshop: Political parties

"['This could mean be more transparent with the org chart within a Foundation', 'Have facilitators who are balancing power dynamics in decision making meetings.', 'does this mean third-party facilitators?']"

src Workshop: This could mean be more transparent with the org chart within a Foundation

""progressive decentralization is often doomed to failure because giving up power is virtually impossible""

src Workshop: decentralize post Product Market Fit

"Contribution / labor based governance rights"

src Workshop: Contribution / labor based governance rights

""Rules that define who has access to roles, what powers roles have, how roles limit each others powers.""

src Workshop: Contribution / labor based governance rights

"a small number, often three or fewer, of entities exert control over most decisions"

src PDF Resources

"The wealthy rule, decentralisation is a myth. Hostile take-overs are incentivised."

src PDF Resources

"centralized governance in MakerDAO very much exists, while DeFi investors face a trade-off between decentralization and performance of a DeFi protocol"

src PDF Resources

"traditional token voting captures choices but not intensity. This results in environments dominated by whales, late signaling cascades... We found that decay-bounded lock curves, immutable board configurations, and programmable acceptance thresholds can preserve pluralistic preferences while resisting capture."

src Signals Protocol - d/acc residency 2025

"Optimism formalized a two-house system: the Token House (token holders/delegates) and the Citizens’ House (one-person-one-vote based on membership/reputation), aiming to separate “capital-weighted decisions” from “public goods legitimacy.”"

src 7 Governance Experiments That Didn’t End in Chaos

"Bicameral governance constrains whale dominance."

src 7 Governance Experiments That Didn’t End in Chaos

"🔌 Distribute power among many contributors. Community roles should be spread out over many contributors rather than concentrated among 1-3 people."

src DAO Design Principles

"Leadership roles should be fluid, flexible, and revokable (can be removed from leadership position) at any time."

src DAO Design Principles

"Principal-agent problems make organizations work across “us vs. them” lines."

src DAO Design Principles

"The point of decentralization is to reduce the concentration of power or eliminate unilateral control. “Adding more pizzas” can create competition, providing a check on the dominant or incumbent decision maker."

src DAO Function Guidelines (aka The Pizza Framework)

"Organizing at impersonal scale to achieve a given purpose animating collective action entails some measure of concentration of authority and losses to individual autonomy."

src Governance as Conflict: Constitution of Shared Values Defining Future Margins of Disagreement

"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."

src Governance as Conflict: Constitution of Shared Values Defining Future Margins of Disagreement

"The goal is to reduce the platform risk that any one stakeholder dominates decision making at the expense of others."

src Governance in Season 8: The Next Phase

"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."

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"For decades, two companies—ISS and Glass Lewis—have dominated proxy advisory services... The two firms control over 90% of the market, and their influence is enormous."

src I Built Myself an AI Delegate—And Then I Broke It

"A limitation in current Governor systems is “all eggs, one basket” delegation... this can cause stagnation and incumbent delegations, increasing risk of soft collusion."

src Majeur: Major Governance Upgrade

"No contracts exist between the cooperative and its members in an effort to dissolve any hierarchies within the organisation"

src Networked Cooperative Ecosystems

"The advisory board can control, name, but also, dismiss, the board anytime."

src Networked Cooperative Ecosystems

"In traditional companies, requirements to “maximize shareholder value,” short sighted incentives, and governance control by only the largest financial interests lead to a series of short-term decisions"

src Season 9: From Experiment to Organization - Optimism

"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."

src The Future of Optimism Governance

"Across 75 posts with consensus, the top 3 "agents" accounted for 46.6% of consensus-driving events."

src Thread by @governingweb3

"our research reveals a high concentration of voting power among a few members"

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations—Governance, Technology, and Legal Perspectives

"The results indicated that 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"

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations—Governance, Technology, and Legal Perspectives

"The analysis of the distribution of voting power within the DAO reveals a strong concentration of power, with important implications for the participation of all users in the actual decision-making of the DAO, far from a democratic form of governance."

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations—Governance, Technology, and Legal Perspectives

"Nevertheless, the potential for these influential voters to significantly impact outcomes remains, presenting a potential risk to the democratic integrity of the DAO."

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations—Governance, Technology, and Legal Perspectives

"DeFi platforms showcase elements of centralization, usually in the form of ‘governance tokens’ and power concentration to large coin-holders. This phenomenon can lead to collusion among core decision makers during the governance process."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"Our results show that governance centralization influences the Maker protocol and that the distribution of voting power matters."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"At a poll level, we find that the Gini coefficient is always more than 50% and exhibits a maximum of 98.05%. Given that the Gini coefficient estimation is higher than 0.60 for most of the polls, highly centralized voting power in the Maker governance is established."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"In most polls, the largest voter holds a significant proportion of voting power."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"When the three measurements above are higher, more voting power is controlled by large MKR holders... 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

"Generally, the results bring forward a trade-off between decentralized governance and volume of these two tokens, and we also contend that the influences of dominant decision makers can be complicated."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"In the context of DAO, major holders and supermajority holders can even have contrary effects on the trading volume of governance tokens, which implies the complex relationship between governance and trading dynamics in DeFi."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"we find that voters are centralized in a small group and voting power is unequally distributed among these voters. In most voting activities, the largest voters could account for a significant proportion of votes."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"If a dominant voter proposes changes to the Maker protocol, the aim of such proposals might be tied to their own vested interests. With their large voting power, this could lead to further centralization of power and potential collusion during the development of Maker protocol."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"While we reveal that the majority of voting power is concentrated in the hands of a small number of addresses"

src Analyzing Voting Power in Decentralized Governance: Who Controls DAOs?

"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."

src Analyzing Voting Power in Decentralized Governance: Who Controls DAOs?

"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. In this sense, their governance systems are similar to shareholder meetings of traditional companies, where a small number of large investors represent their interests. ENS governance, on the other hand, more resembles a decentralized community."

src Analyzing Voting Power in Decentralized Governance: Who Controls DAOs?

"Token voting potentially clashes with the goal of decentralization because of the danger of two types of entrenchment that threaten to create the equivalent of centralized management."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"The mechanism described above defeats potential entrenchment in the form of explicit or implicit control. Holding a majority or supermajority of tokens no longer secures control of the DAO."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"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 and to any tendency for the decision mechanism to be compromised or blurred as a result of either manipulation."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"Collusion results in winning bidders extracting more added value, reducing the attractiveness ex ante for initial and on-going investment."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"The fact that DAOs have been characterized by low participation rates and a few key players running the show suggests that this situation may be common. Outside candidate collusion with the insiders creates a substantial opportunity for reducing the social surplus that otherwise would accrue to the other token holders."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"The danger of value destruction arises from the possibility that the control party will take the equivalent of a negative economic position in the DAO, one that would increase in value if the DAO flounders, and then will use control to cause the DAO to perform poorly or even to fail entirely."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"Direct control by token holders creates the danger of “treasury raids.”"

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"In addition, the immutability of the auction provisions prevents incumbents from distorting the auction process to their advantage by making control shifts via the auction more difficult or by creating rules that favor incumbent bidders."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"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."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"First, the threat of future auctions has a disciplinary effect with respect to misbehavior or poor performance on the part of existing governing parties, including the case in which a mass of diffuse token holders determine the DAO’s path."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"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."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"Observers have pointed out that 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 of the rest of the tokens."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"However, concerns persist about potential centralization in token ownership and decision-making, which could undermine their democratic potential."

src Voting Governance and Value Creation in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"Non-decentralized aspects such as large voting coalitions also affect DAO value."

src Voting Governance and Value Creation in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"Larger coalitions may increase the risks of coordinated voting that benefits specific groups at the expense of the broader community, especially in systems without on-chain transparency to ensure equitable representation."

src Voting Governance and Value Creation in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"Off-chain governance, in this context, allows dominant factions within the development team to exert outsized influence over decision-making, potentially alienating the broader DAO community and undermining decentralization."

src Voting Governance and Value Creation in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"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."

src Voting Governance and Value Creation in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"the presence and detrimental impact of voting coalitions highlight the need for governance token ownership disclosure rules that prevent voting competition-reducing voter collusion."

src Voting Governance and Value Creation in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"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. Moreover, a heavily concentrated distribution may create an ecosystem where much of the value is captured by a small number of actors."

src Decentralized Finance, Centralized Ownership?

"there is a particular risk that high ownership concentration and complex wrapping structures introduce governance risks"

src Decentralized Finance, Centralized Ownership?

"The concentration of voting rights is another issue, as voting power is typically tied to token ownership, leading to plutocratic governance where a few wealthy stakeholders dominate decision-making"

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"Many organizations experience centralization, as control over decisions and code often remains with a small group, such as the core team"

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"Financial management will be conducted through a multi-signature wallet, ensuring that no single individual has control over resources."

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"Campajola, C., ... (2022). The evolution of centralisation on cryptocurrency platforms. ... Sun, X., Stasinakis, C., & Sermpinis, G. (2024). Decentralization illusion in decentralized finance: Evidence from tokenized voting in MakerDAO polls. ... Liu, X. (2023). The illusion of democracy? An empirical study of DAO governance and voting behavior."

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"The token distribution for all four observed projects is relatively concentrated."

src Demystifying the DAO Governance Process

"none of the distribution methodologies successfully achieved a Nakamoto coefficient surpassing 100 addresses, indicating that none of the projects require a quorum of more than a hundred addresses to effectively enact governance decisions."

src Demystifying the DAO Governance Process

"the involvement of early-stage venture capital investors appears to correlate with a higher concentration of governance tokens amongst fewer addresses."

src Demystifying the DAO Governance Process

"we evaluate their involvement in decision-making processes, discovering that in at least 7.54% of all DAOs, contributors, on average, held the necessary majority to control governance decisions. Furthermore, contributors have singularly decided at least one proposal in 20.41% of DAOs."

src Is DAO Governance Fostering Democracy?

"contributors tend to be centrally positioned within the DAO governance ecosystem, suggesting the presence of inner power circles."

src Is DAO Governance Fostering Democracy?

"decision-making power can be concentrated in the hands of a few"

src Is DAO Governance Fostering Democracy?

"Figure 5 indeed shows a very high concentration level for contributors in all networks with a peak above 7000"

src Is DAO Governance Fostering Democracy?

"contributors are overrepresented in the decision-making process of certain DAOs compared to other governance users."

src Is DAO Governance Fostering Democracy?

"we found evidence of co-voting patterns among contributors, which is an indicator of the existence of inner circles of power in DAOs."

src Is DAO Governance Fostering Democracy?

"In rare cases, we find that the outcome of a proposal has been dominated by contributors of other spaces over the self-contributors of the proposal’s space."

src Is DAO Governance Fostering Democracy?

"In 30 proposals, other-space contributors ( ) had the relative majority in the winning choice and overruled the same-space contributors ( ), voting for the second choice."

src Is DAO Governance Fostering Democracy?

"However, 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."

src Understanding Security Issues in the DAO Governance Process

"Minority members may need to raise disputes against specific decisions, particularly in situations where a single member controls the majority of voting power."

src Understanding Security Issues in the DAO Governance Process

"With regards to 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."

src Understanding Security Issues in the DAO Governance Process

"Centralized regulatory models, while offering streamlined governance and clear accountability, risk concentrating power and control in the hands of a few entities—whether they are governments, corporations, or other stakeholders."

src Evaluating DAO Sustainability and Longevity

"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."

src Evaluating DAO Sustainability and Longevity

"To address concerns about centralized control, the ETHOS framework advocates for the use of DAOs to establish a transparent, participatory, and scalable governance structure."

src Evaluating DAO Sustainability and Longevity

"We show that parties with fewer self-owned votes and those affiliated with the controlling venture capital firm, Andreesen Horowitz (a16z), receive more vote delegations."

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"Being an a16z affiliate significantly increases the votes received from others, by factors between 2,689 and 3,547."

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"Our analysis reveals a governance structure that preserves the appearance of decentralization while enabling tight control within the ecosystem."

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"the concentration of voting power remains sufficiently high to raise fundamental questions about whether DAOs genuinely achieve their decentralization objectives."

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"being an a16z affiliate has a substantial effect—an a16z affiliate receives about 2,689 and 3,548 times the votes compared to a non-affiliated delegate"

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"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."

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"The “Top5” group (n=84) comprises all unique delegates who ranked among the five largest voters in at least one voting event during our sample period."

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"a16z Affiliate 12.502*** ... 12.783*** ..."

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"The results reveal recurring governance patterns, including low participation rates and high proposer concentration, which may undermine long-term viability"

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"Feichtinger et al. [4] found that voting power remains concentrated in most DAOs. In their study of 21 governance systems, 17 were controlled by fewer than 10 participants."

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"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."

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"In particular, large token holders often propose and pass initiatives with minimal community input."

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"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."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"Feichtinger et al. (2023... document very low Nakamoto coefficients... 17 of the 21 DAOs have either a delegate or token holder Nakamoto coefficient of less than 10."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"Epistemic Danger from Whales: Certain parties may hold a very large portion of the total voting rights either stemming from their own token ownership or from delegation. In approaches such as one-token-one-vote that do not employ optimal weights, these “token whales” or “delegate whales” may have too much weight compared to the optimal level and may largely determine decisions"

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"delegation is somewhat lumpy, leading some delegates to amass considerable voting power, consistent with theoretical concerns about over-delegation."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"Simply put, giving all the weight to a small group of gurus increases the chance of an incorrect majority vote, assuming that gurus have a less than perfect accuracy."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"In the face of a possible auction, neither whales or founders can secure on-going control."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"“Analyzing voting power in decentralized governance: Who controls DAOs?”"

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"when proposal flow grows faster than broad participation can keep up, effective control may drift toward a smaller set of highly active participants."

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination: DAO to DAO 3.0

"decentralization gains do not persist indefinitely once governance workload becomes sufficiently high, and load-based measures show especially clear evidence of a transition toward more concentrated realized control."

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination: DAO to DAO 3.0

"when proposal flow grows faster than broad participation can keep up, effective control may drift toward a smaller set of highly active participants."

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination: DAO to DAO 3.0

"The findings show that reputation and share-based models can mitigate the centralization seen in token-based systems"

src DAO Governance: Voting Power, Participation, and Controversy

"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."

src DAO Governance: Voting Power, Participation, and Controversy

"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."

src DAO Governance: Voting Power, Participation, and Controversy

"In other words, a small but changing minority of members is in full control of these DAOs."

src DAO Governance: Voting Power, Participation, and Controversy

"Traditional token governance should be avoided due to its tendency to favour highly centralization voting power distributions."

src DAO Governance: Voting Power, Participation, and Controversy

"LowvoterparticipationincreasessecurityrisksinDAOs, underminesminorityrepresentation, andchallengesthecorerationalefordecentralization."

src DAO Governance: Voting Power, Participation, and Controversy

"Forexample,inUniswap,just7.5%ofgovernancetokenscoulddecideallproposals."

src DAO Governance: Voting Power, Participation, and Controversy

"Ifalargemajorityofvotingweightiscastinfavourofanoutcome,memberswithlittlevotingpowermaynotvoteagainst it,asitwouldhavelittleimpact. Thiscangivethefalseimpressionthatnotjustthemajorityofweightbutalsothemajorityofvotersfavouranoutcome."

src DAO Governance: Voting Power, Participation, and Controversy

"Badgeholders are expected to represent the broader interests of the community while maintaining impartiality through a strict code of conduct, including conflict of interest protocols."

src A Social Choice Analysis of Optimism's Retroactive Project Funding

"Optimism seeks to balance governance power, ensuring that financial influence does not overshadow community input."

src A Social Choice Analysis of Optimism's Retroactive Project Funding

"one person—or more precisely, a pseudonymous wallet holding a badgeholder token—equals one vote, with equal voting power for all voters."

src A Social Choice Analysis of Optimism's Retroactive Project Funding

"Diversification None (37) Some (7) Very (28)"

src A Taxonomy of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"Literature reviews further reveal opportunities and hurdles in implementing digital democracy within DAOs, particularly around power distribution and participatory mechanisms"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Ethereum’s liquid staking issue allowed passive stakers to capture rewards without directly contributing to network security or governance, leading to the concentration of influence among large staking providers."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"this governance carries potential risks, including reduced clarity on who truly “votes” due to the concentration of economic power among large stakeholders"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"the user-activated-soft-fork voting mechanism poses the risk of major economic actors unidirectionally changing Bitcoin"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Blackrock is by now one of the largest Bitcoin holders"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"the user-activated-soft-fork voting mechanism poses the risk of major economic actors unidirectionally changing Bitcoin."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Blackrock is by now one of the largest Bitcoin holders. In their service agreement for their iShares trust, they specify that it is up to them to decide which Bitcoin chain will function as underlying to their ETFs in case of a Fork."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"there is a significant risk that such major economic actors support values that do not align with the larger community of Bitcoin holders."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"However, this also fueled a centralisation of power amongst just a few delegates"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Plutocratic governance mechanisms continue to dominate the DAO space"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"DAOs exhibit an inherent asymmetry of power and information, particularly favoring software developers"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Important governance changes, implemented through improvement proposals, are often controlled by a small group of core developers"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Optimism seeks to balance governance power, ensuring that financial influence does not overshadow community input. In Retroactive Project Funding, one person—or more precisely, a pseudonymous wallet holding a badgeholder token—equals one vote, with equal voting power for all voters."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Badgeholders are expected to represent the broader interests of the community while maintaining impartiality through a strict code of conduct, including conflict of interest protocols."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Power asymmetries can arise when those with more tokens (and, by extension, more financial influence) dominate the voting outcomes [13]."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"A central critique of DAO governance is the concentration of voting power among a small elite of token holders, which undermines decentralization and participatory legitimacy"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"may mitigate free-rider problems, but inadvertently concentrate power among capital-intensive actors"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Large venture capital funds and hedge funds that acquire governance tokens often demand governance privileges such as board representation or treasury veto power, replicating traditional corporate governance hierarchies"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Many DAOs claim to be decentralized, but in practice, function under de facto oligarchies because of token concentration"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"They observe that, while many DeFi projects are marketed as decentralized, significant control over these protocols frequently resides with certain key actors, particularly the developers who design and manage the code."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Blockchain-based governance is frequently praised for its egalitarian potential, but it often concentrates power among a few key actors—such as developers, miners, and tech entrepreneurs—who influence decision-making"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"DAOs managed by AI must rely on legal workarounds, such as delegating activities to developers or DAO members, which contrasts with the principle of decentralization and increases the risk of manipulation or conflicts of interest"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"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."

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations For Governance And Operations

"Security-centric patterns such as multi-signature wallets (e.g., Gnosis Safe) and time-lock contracts introduce institutional safeguards. These mechanisms enforce deliberation windows and multi-party consensus for high-impact decisions, mitigating risks of governance capture or impulsive proposals."

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations For Governance And Operations

"Capture Resistance No single party can unilaterally control, censor, halt, or otherwise extract rent from Optimism"

src Optimism's Legitimacy Framework

"Wealth amasses tokens, buys legislative power, corrupts decision making. A voting system that allows voters to buy more votes converges to plutocracy"

src Perils of Current DAO Governance

"Ongweso, E.J.: Democratic DAO Suffers Coup, New Leader Steals Everything."

src Perils of Current DAO Governance

"Common pain points include: • Committees that drift or concentrate power. • Social pressure that favors incumbents over fresh ideas."

src Signals Protocol Litepaper

"However, on the flip side, DAO development faces inevitable challenges, including issues of centralization, high costs, unsustainable tokenization mechanisms, and immature supporting technologies"

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"The quadratic strategy weakens the significant influence of rich stakeholders, diminishing the gap across different individuals."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"highly active groups of participants tend to accumulate major shares of tokens... hence breaching the decentralization due to the concentration of e-voting power."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"Feichtinger et al. [8] conduct an empirical study on 21 DAOs to explore the hidden problems, including high centralization"

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"Daian et al. [71] propose a potential attack form called Dark DAO, which means a group of members form a decentralized cartel and can opaquely manipulate (e.g., buy) on-chain votes."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"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"

src DAO Research Trends: First European DAO Workshop (DAWO)

"it is important to explore how to prevent power centralization, ensure fair voting power distribution, balance stakeholder influence"

src DAO Research Trends: First European DAO Workshop (DAWO)

"Influential blockholders and majority voters can centralize power and manipulate outcomes, raising questions about the true nature of decentralization in DAOs"

src DAO Research Trends: First European DAO Workshop (DAWO)

"there is a growing need on exploring new mechanisms to prevent power concentration and enhance security"

src DAO Research Trends: First European DAO Workshop (DAWO)

"In terms of Documentation, inadequate or unclear documentation from developers may prevent members from effectively participating, increasing the risk of undetected governance attacks or enabling a small group of members to dominate the process."

src The Dao of the DAO: Eastern Philosophies in Decentralized Worlds

"For the Governance Contract, 176 DAOs allow external entities to control their governance contracts, while one DAO permits developers to arbitrarily change the contract’s logic."

src The Dao of the DAO: Eastern Philosophies in Decentralized Worlds

"the developer could manipulate the process by adjusting the voting delay to ensure only they can vote, or by setting an unreasonably high proposal threshold to cancel any unwanted proposals."

src The Dao of the DAO: Eastern Philosophies in Decentralized Worlds

"Developers should be required to disclose all privileged addresses to their members or mandate that all privileged functions be controlled by the governance contract."

src The Dao of the DAO: Eastern Philosophies in Decentralized Worlds

"The tokenization model turns users into decentralized policymakers... However, models like token-weighted voting can paradoxically lead to centralization and plutocracy."

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"those with more power in the community may experience higher pressure because of frequent rounds of negotiations"

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"address hidden power dynamics in CBPP communities"

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"they do not typically occur in scenarios of equitable power dynamics"

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"Despite democratic aspirations, the projects exhibited power imbalances, with leadership eventually consolidating into a form of centralized decision-making"

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"most DAOs have replicated familiar patterns of exclusion: technocratic interfaces, plutocratic voting mechanisms, and rigid governance protocols that often concentrate rather than distribute power"

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"Participation Token-based plutocracy ⁃Role-based governance: decouples voting power from capital ownership"

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"⁃Leadership without control principle: shifts emphasis from centralized token-holding to distributed agency and collective stewardship ⁃Safety rails: embedded protocols ensure accountability and mitigate power concentration risks"

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"it became apparent that those interested in controlling the votes and inducing the governance to work the way they wanted could easily do this by buying enough tokens. This began to happen, and such participants were called whales."

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"The whales were unrelenting and created phantom participants or used proxies to increase their participation power."

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"We show that security structure influences both the conditions under which a control change takes place and the terms on which it occurs."

src One Share/One Vote and the Market for Corporate Control

"An extreme case of this is where votes are assigned no dividend rights."

src One Share/One Vote and the Market for Corporate Control

"one share/one vote protects shareholder value better than any other security structure."

src One Share/One Vote and the Market for Corporate Control

"As a result, buyers who will tend to lower the market value of the firm, and are attempting to purchase the firm for their own (private) benefit, are more likely to be screened out."

src One Share/One Vote and the Market for Corporate Control

"Conversely, if a corporation had a suboptimal voting/security structure an investment bank could profitably repackage the securities and votes to be in the form of one share/one vote."

src One Share/One Vote and the Market for Corporate Control

"We find that, rather than democratizing decision-making, a small number, often three or fewer, of entities exert control over most decisions."

src Control of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"The average voting power of the largest address is sizable, ranging from 39% (Infrastructure) to 45% (DeFi). For the top three voting addresses, power ranges from 67% to 71%, and the top three voters cast the majority of votes for more than 69% of proposals."

src Control of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"concerns mount over the potential for influential token holders—like early blockchain entrepreneurs, tech giants, and wealthy venture capitalists—to wield significant power in the DAO voting process. This calls into question the system’s fairness and leads to a lingering inquiry: is the DAO genuinely decentralized, or is it merely a facade for a new form of plutocracy?"

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"Consequently, decision-making power within DAOs tends to be concentrated in the among a select few large token holders, who are typically the founders, early investors, and major venture capitalists."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"The voting power within DAOs is firmly held by big token holders, with the vast majority of voting activities being determined by a maximum of four large token holders."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"Collectively, 66% of voting outcomes could be dictated by a group of four or fewer voters."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"the leading four voters exhibited a remarkable level of agreement in their voting patterns"

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"Collectively, 66% of voting outcomes could be dictated by a group of four or fewer voters."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"the top four voters persistently voted in a unified manner for every proposal. In some DAOs, these same four voters consistently ranked among the top voters across all proposals, indicating that a small contingent of three to four individuals held substantial influence over the majority of decision outcomes within the DAO."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"large token holders have single-handedly overturned the supermajority’s stance, thereby contradicting the consensus of the wider community."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"DAO decision-making power is concentrated among a few large token holders, with one large voter capable of swaying 35% of all voting outcomes. In total, 66% of voting outcomes could be influenced by four or fewer voters."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"it might be necessary to impose a fiduciary duty on these individuals. Such obligations could entail disclosing any conflicts of interest"

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"Democratic Capture: Citizens cast votes to elect representatives, who in turn raise money from a donor class... when the moneyed donor class wields more influence than the voting electorate, politics risks “capture”"

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"At the extreme, when money buys votes... one-person, one-vote and one-share, one-vote—collapse to one-dollar, one-vote."

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"This superlinear cost (n² tokens for n votes) makes it significantly more expensive for insiders to consolidate control compared to linear systems like token-voting (n tokens, n votes) or shareholder-voting (n shares, n votes)."

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"Unlike one-token, one-vote or one-share, one-vote systems, which are vulnerable to opportunistic “whales” who amass influence, manipulate governance, and exit with a “dump,” community currencies lock whales into the ecosystem, aligning their incentives with the long-term health of the community."

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"In plural voting, the lack of information about a participants’ voting history undermines a briber’s ability to accurately price bribes, even if they know all affiliations."

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"Community currencies mitigate empty voting by tying voting power to irrevocable stake."

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"Democratic capture occurs when decision-making is controlled by a small group prioritizing their own interests over the broader electorate—pursuing “private benefits at diffuse public costs.”"

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"Unlike conventional systems—where dollars directly buy both attention and influence in a linear, transactional manner—PCARE requires that those seeking to influence governance irrevocably stake their interests in the community, making influence accountable rather than a commodity for sale."

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"Under plural voting, actors with the same composition are treated as a single entity and receive a discount."

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"The governance crisis of the digital age is not simply “money buying votes,” but rather money buying attention, and on the cheap... both systems instead succumbing to “overreach” and “capture.”"

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"Even if voting persists in form—whether one-person, one-vote democracy or one-share, one-vote corporate governance—one-dollar, one-vote prevails in substance."

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"Without subsidiarity, community currencies risk being swallowed by global surveillance AIs (and their global currencies)."

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"many DAOs still default to token-based voting, concentrating power among token holders and exposing governance to speculative financial capture... By decoupling influence from marketable tokens, SBTs aim to curb speculative capture and foster pluralistic, trust-based coordination."

src Using Kleros in Appeals and Dispute Resolution of Gitcoin Grants

"core team members may face personal incentives that are misaligned with those of the broader community."

src DAO Governance: Decentralized But Not So Disorganized

"The most successful DAOs achieve this by fostering broad participation, implementing robust security measures, and minimizing excessive privileges or entrenchment for core developers."

src DAO Governance: Decentralized But Not So Disorganized

"DAOs promise horizontal and democratic decision-making."

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations—Governance, Technology, and Legal Perspectives

"In the United States, the creation of control parties by the mechanism can lead to the claim that the 'efforts of others' branch of the Howey test is met because, in the words of Howey, the control party’s efforts are the 'undeniably significant ones,' essential to overall success and profitability."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"The intention of DAOs is to circumvent central authorities and hierarchical structures that are prevalent in traditional organizations, and democratize the decision-making process by distributing voting rights through so-called governance tokens to community members."

src Is DAO Governance Fostering Democracy?

"Notably, variations in the largest-holder percentage did not consistently suppress network participation. This finding complicates assumptions about centralisation effects, suggesting that concentrated capital, when coupled with effective delegation or automation, may coexist with active governance."

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"there is a danger of over-delegation, the concentration of excessive voting power in the hands of one or a few delegates."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"Then all voting rights will be delegated to the single high-competence voter, and the probability of a correct collective decision will plummet to 0.731 from the majority vote outcome of 0.997."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"Tsoukalas and Falk 2020 investigate the effectiveness of decentralized platforms witch use token-weighted-voting and crowdsource information from users. They find that token-weighting generally discourages truthful voting."

src A Taxonomy of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"the distribution of members often adheres to the Pareto Principle (the 80-20 rule [35]), indicating a concentration that could lead to unintended centralization."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"some DAOs experience centralized participation patterns, which could hinder the democratic potential of decentralized organizations."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"a potential threat of implicit centralization caused by oligopolistic blockchain organizations that have taken the first-mover advantages."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"early DAO implementations often replicated firm-like hierarchies and unresolved power asymmetries under the guise of decentralization"

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"Research or frameworks for handling cases where a malicious and determined actor seeks to influence the platform for their own gains should be funded."

src Community & Governance

"the majority of voting power is concentrated in the hands of a small number of addresses, we rarely observe these powerful entities overturning a vote by choosing a different outcome than that of the overall community"

src PDF Resources

"It presents a particular narrative of how Web3 should operate (e.g. resistance to corporate power but not founder power)."

src Constitutions of Web3

"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"

src DAO Decision Design Framework (Working Model)

"Those who control execution infrastructure exercise discretion without bearing proportional responsibility."

src Governance Has Already Moved

"This leads to a need for checks on the special authority exercised by these specially empowered decisionmakers generally"

src Governance as Conflict: Constitution of Shared Values Defining Future Margins of Disagreement

"We’ve replaced a human duopoly with an algorithmic oligopoly that encourages proposers to spend their time massaging their proposals for their AI judges."

src I Built Myself an AI Delegate—And Then I Broke It

"The surety deposit addresses the danger that the bidder will engage in value destruction after gaining control of the DAO."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"Token concentration Quadratic voting; identity-based or membership-weighted tokens"

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"If we fail to allow for dependencies by continuing to weight the set of less competent voters as if they had independent competencies, the outcome is even worse. We will incorrectly weight the 3000 voters three hundred times more than the single more competent voter."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"How much does a governance machine created through independent transfer delegation by whales shade decentralization? Much depends on whether the delegates are truly independent from the whales."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"A major concern for such decentralized organizations is the risk of “majority attacks,” where a group holding the majority of voting rights decide to expropriate the collective resources. To mitigate this, many DAOs allow members to exit before the decision takes effect, ensuring they receive their share of the joint assets upon departure."

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"22. Steven P Lalley and E Glen Weyl. Quadratic voting: How mechanism design can radicalize democracy... 14. Nicola Dimitri. Quadratic voting in blockchain governance."

src A Social Choice Analysis of Optimism's Retroactive Project Funding

"Governance Voting Power: We define how voting power is distributed in a DAO... It can either be the Number of Tokens Owned, Number of Tokens Staked, or Per Individual."

src A Taxonomy of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"Governance Voting Limits: A DAO can also impose restrictions on the voting power of a single DAO member... None and Per Address"

src A Taxonomy of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"For-profit platforms represent a particular type of solution for how to alleviate attention overload in communities as they grow in scale and diversity—by enabling users to largely outsource their governance duties and attention management to the platform, at the cost of degrading user agency and autonomy."

src Online Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"voting delegation, as in GitcoinDAO, is influenced by distributions of social capital among members. This process does not, however, attempt to make that distribution representative demographically, geographically, or in terms of various skill-sets."

src Online Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"In a DAO, decision-making authority resides collectively with token holders in proportion to their governance token holdings."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Decreasing legitimacy via brute force This may be via hard power: Someone has enough voting power to unilaterally impose their will on the DAO"

src Optimism's Legitimacy Framework

"Rewards amplify Signals core design: only positive support, opportunity cost via locks, and time-weighted influence that lets smaller holders compete."

src Signals Protocol Litepaper

"To avoid centralization, DAOs could accordingly prioritize diversity, decentralize decision-making, avoid concentration of assets, embrace transparency, and foster community."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"In September 2018, the firm Andreessen Horowitz acquired 6% of the total MKR supply... In December 2019, Dragonfly Capital Partners and Paradigm collectively purchased $27.5 million of MKR... to influence the decentralized governance of the Maker Protocol."

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"Fredrik Ygge and Hans Akkermans. Decentralized markets versus central control: A comparative study. Journal of artificial intelligence research, 11:301–333, 1999."

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"Our analysis has not, however, dealt with the issue of a change in the security/voting structure by an old company which has a one share/one vote charter. Nevertheless, we would view such a change with suspicion. If such a corporation changes its structure so that incumbent management is entrenched and isolated from the market for corporate control, then our result that one share/one vote is generally in security holders' interest, and the fact that managerial entrenchment is in the managers' self interest, leads us to believe that it is possible that security holders will be harmed."

src One Share/One Vote and the Market for Corporate Control

Evidence 138 122 13 54

Practitioner (138) Supporting (122) Contrasting (13) Extending (54)

"“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.”"

src Afolabi Aiyeloja (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“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.”"

src Afolabi Aiyeloja (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“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.”"

src Afolabi Aiyeloja (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“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.”"

src Afolabi Aiyeloja (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“it hasn't really been... mobile first driven, friendly UX experience for people to do impact.”"

src Afolabi Aiyeloja (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Greengrass is very accessible because it's just a browser app... download it as a PWA. It works fully offline.”"

src Afolabi Aiyeloja (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""There are several problems related to governance participation in the space. First is a complete disregard for governance frameworks in protocols and DAOs. Governance starting to seem unnecessary.""

src Gbiri Oluwaseun (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Low participation rate in governance proposals and discussion.""

src Gbiri Oluwaseun (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Lack of interest from the 'right' audiences.""

src Gbiri Oluwaseun (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""For example, a marketing or a proposal should have marketing experts discussing and trying to push that particular decision forward.""

src Gbiri Oluwaseun (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Most DAOs have threshold in which only participation from the core team is enough to pass proposals, so there are usually no need to involve the right audience fit.""

src Gbiri Oluwaseun (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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""

src Jeffrey McLarty (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""it's just really, really slow. It slows down the process""

src Jeffrey McLarty (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""there's a number of gaps in how identity works in web three, and it impacts DAOs both from, like, an admin and management perspective""

src Jeffrey McLarty (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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""

src Jeffrey McLarty (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""most folks agree that, like, private voting would be great""

src Jeffrey McLarty (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""there's two problems with private voting, and that is, you know, the the UX and the friction associated with it""

src Jeffrey McLarty (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Loss of interest/confidence in DAOs or governance as it is today.”"

src Aman (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Number of delegates are not increasing.”"

src Aman (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Number of proposals are going down each quarter.”"

src Aman (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“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.”"

src Katashe Solutions (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Coverage quickly becomes shallow rather than substantive.""

src Katashe Solutions (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""The goal is not automation for its own sake, but to reduce cognitive overhead while increasing analytical depth for delegates and ecosystem builders.""

src Katashe Solutions (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Delegates and governance contributors operating across multiple DAOs often experience cognitive overload.""

src Katashe Solutions (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""The result is decision fatigue.""

src Katashe Solutions (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Contributors either default to heuristics such as following large delegates, abstaining due to insufficient synthesis time, or voting with partial context.""

src Katashe Solutions (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Over time, this creates burnout and disengagement.""

src Katashe Solutions (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Participation becomes narrower. Governance becomes more concentrated among those with the time or resources to monitor full-time.""

src Katashe Solutions (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""also as a way to not have the issues of, like, people, having the bandwidth to keep up with all the different governance proposals""

src Participant 12 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""low engagement, complexity, and token weighted voting often result in influence concentrating among a small group of highly engaged or well capitalized actors.""

src Participant 14 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“governance infrastructure providers such as Tally, Snapshot, Boardroom, and Agora are working on improving usability, transparency, and delegation mechanisms.”"

src Participant 14 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Ideally, those who have the most skin in the game should be participating in governance.""

src Participant 15 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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""

src Participant 15 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""This group requires a custom onboarding for each case to get them both set up and participating.""

src Participant 15 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Design airdrops to target partners & builders in ecosystem to help seed voting power for these groups in your governance system.""

src Participant 15 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Delegate tagging system on governance interface ... tags all Chains, Apps, Technical Partners, Security Council members & Guardians. There is also an 'active' tag""

src Participant 15 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Delegation pool programs: Allocate a portion of treasury to a delegation pool program that delegates X amount of voting power""

src Participant 15 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Delegate onboarding programs/tests could be useful to ensure delegates understand exactly what your governance governs, understand priorities and strategy.""

src Participant 15 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“people are not engaged enough with governance as a topic. It isn't inspiring for most people in the current formats”"

src Participant 17 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“its such a heavy topic, its reading-heavy”"

src Participant 17 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“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?’”"

src Participant 17 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“People who contribute to governance should get compensated for their time.”"

src Participant 17 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“it should be as easy as connecting your wallet and getting paid for actions you carry out (like voting on DAO proposals)”"

src Participant 17 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“when people saw they were making money from it, that it was sustainable, the participation flew through the roof.”"

src Participant 17 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""In most DAOs, it's really hard to see participants in the DAO, who are not part of a governance provider body.""

src Participant 18 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""if you look at the numbers of people voting and... the people present in the governance setup, you find out that they are usually more familiar faces""

src Participant 18 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""the same set of people per se are usually present in different ecosystems""

src Participant 18 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""too many decisions needing to be taken by too many actors, leads to inertia/discouragement""

src Participant 19 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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""

src Participant 19 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Aragon is working on interesting approaches - basically, subsidiarity, delegation of decisions""

src Participant 19 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"In many token DAOs, there are too many proposals and too many procedural votes. This leads to voter fatigue / apathy."

src Participant 20 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"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."

src Participant 20 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"They can tune out most of the time and then schedule some time to participate regularly."

src Participant 20 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"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."

src Participant 20 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"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."

src Participant 20 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Definitely issues with low participation rates.”"

src Participant 21 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"Voter apathy / rational ignorance leading to recentralization of decision-making, arguably driven by overly-complicated voting experiences"

src Participant 22 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Persistent voter apathy despite years of mechanism iteration”"

src Participant 24 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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""

src Participant 25 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""en todas las DAOs apenas votan 20-30 personas como mucho. Si quitas a los delegados pagados, muchas de esas DAOs no tendrian nadie para votar.""

src Participant 25 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Para la governance apathy, mas contenido educativo-onboarding y mejor diseño de incentivos""

src Participant 25 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""en Anode (antes Stablelab), donde hicimos un curso sobre Scroll Governance en el que hubo bastante participacion y la gente salio contenta""

src Participant 25 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""abogaria por mas DAOs con newsletters/forum posts con resumenes de gobernanza""

src Participant 25 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“these so called committees becoming a centralising force and very rarely create processes or procedures that involve the broader token holder base.”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“High Switching Costs for New Contributors”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“If DAOs are supposed to be a democratising force. Our decision system should be broad and inclusive not centralising.”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"This also leads to low participation rates, proposals that only those with concentrated incentives understand, and non-representative proposals passing because of inattention or disinterest."

src Participant 27 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"When DAOs do try to decentralize, there is low participation because of the time required to research proposals and the lack of incentive to do so."

src Participant 28 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"People with low token balances don't bother voting because they know they can't affect the outcome."

src Participant 28 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"The process for submitting a proposal is too hard to understand, preventing new participation."

src Participant 28 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"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."

src Participant 28 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"Indicated above - impact loss of trust and low participation"

src Participant 29 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"Priority setting, education and standard outside a template on proposals."

src Participant 29 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"Small group to review proposals and push back to make it clearer and something someone outside of crypto wpuld see and make sense."

src Participant 29 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""At just 3-4%, the ENS DAO's active voter engagement is far below the industry average of 25%""

src Participant 31 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""a delegate with a minimal number of delegated votes (e.g., 9 votes) holds the same inherent responsibility as a delegate commanding substantial voting power""

src Participant 31 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"We are seeing challenges with low voter turnout and lack of participation on governance."

src Participant 33 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"A small percentage of community members voting on proposals at any time"

src Participant 33 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"AI support such as NLPs to reduce the cognitive load of voters."

src Participant 33 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“one big challenge is what to do in order to keep a community engaged without the need for extrinsic incentives.”"

src Participant 35 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“they also don't seem to be able to affect projects meaningfully, so they leave.”"

src Participant 35 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“This is due to concentration of voting power, but also lack of participation from other potential actors.”"

src Participant 36 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“There's a lack of compensation, since gov is typically voluntary work.”"

src Participant 36 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“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.”"

src Participant 36 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“an org can invest in marketing for token holders to delegate, good governance ui/ux / platforms, incentivizing delegators.”"

src Participant 36 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“There's also lot of non-financial things you can do to increase community interest”"

src Participant 36 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“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.”"

src Participant 37 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“some of these DAOs do have an auto-abstain wallet for all proposals to pass quorum, but using it like a permanent solution, rather than a temporary one.”"

src Participant 37 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Low participation rate has more to do with the Foundations reducing operational funds for DIPs and less delegates become eligible to receive DIP rewards”"

src Participant 37 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“not everyone checks to vote and so its never clear if there is quorum, if we should wait, its a huge bottleneck”"

src Participant 38 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“It didn't reach quorum, but people were unsure how to vote cause they weren't sure what was the best way to spend the money”"

src Participant 38 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“people not having the skills on how to make a proposal (though i guess there could be a format)”"

src Participant 38 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“limited time to review and vote on a proposal”"

src Participant 38 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“it would be interesting if an online platform could ping you / text you when there is a vote that is required”"

src Participant 38 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“i think a built-in format for proposals could be useful.”"

src Participant 38 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Getting clearer on how to participate. For instance quests for newcommers, gauges for low-intent token holders”"

src Participant 40 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“reputation systems where leveling up gets engaged members a seat at the table where proposals are made.”"

src Participant 40 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“We see participation fatigue, concentration of informal power among the ‘mechanism literate,’ and recurring cycles of crisis-driven governance changes.”"

src Participant 42 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Protocols like Lido and others [are] experimenting with dual or layered governance after discovering that pure token voting produced apathy, whale dominance, and difficulty scaling complex technical decisions.”"

src Participant 42 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“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.”"

src Participant 43 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“In one DAO the ability to reach quorum was lost because so many ppl had delegated to a single member and that member had their wallet compromised so they could no longer vote with it.”"

src Participant 43 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“the ppl that had delegated were so disconnected that they never came back to update their delegation.”"

src Participant 43 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“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.”"

src Participant 43 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“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.”"

src Participant 44 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“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.”"

src Participant 44 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“en otros contribuidores activos deberíamos integrar a los delegados independientes.”"

src Participant 44 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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""

src Participant 45 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""The technical infrastructure exists: we have on-chain voting records, forum archives, Discord logs, GitHub repos. The raw data is technically stored. The problem is that this data is cognitively inaccessible without structured interpretation.""

src Participant 46 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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.""

src Participant 46 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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""

src Participant 47 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“There is generally a burst of excitement at the start of an initiative that involves voting on proposals, that quickly tapers off.”"

src Participant 47 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“I've just seen multiple instances where voting participation tapers off.”"

src Participant 47 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“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.”"

src Participant 47 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Token voting is a dead end given that no one wants to vote”"

src Participant 48 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Other problems are voter fatigue, lack of incentives and unpaid work for govrnance workerss”"

src Participant 48 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Voter participation should be rewarded, inflation of a governance tokens should be directed to good governance participants”"

src Participant 48 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""the main task of governance is voting, but voting partiication is low""

src Participant 50 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""low votable supply relative to total supply, issues meeting quorum in some ecosystems.""

src Participant 50 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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""

src Participant 50 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Create an AI agent that helps groups define the best decision-making mechanism for the specific situation""

src Workshop: Experiment Sandboxes

""Personal governance assistants for decision fatigue""

src Workshop: AI Grant Evaluators (Minimise bias)

"broken contributor economies and fragmentation expand voter apathy across all stakeholders - delegates aside - decision fatigue worsens it and plutocracy"

src Workshop: Making class interests obfuscated

""Voting Fatigue - Noise - impact""

src Workshop: "Legitimacy" undefined

"Decision fatigue compounds voter apathy"

src Workshop: sentiment towards Dao

"No clear pathways to participation for token holders."

src Workshop: sentiment towards Dao

"No pathways for new contributors to make a meaningful impact"

src Workshop: No pathways for new contributors to make a meaningful impact

"Outside of delegates, most stakeholders have no incentive beyond impact - and outside the top 10-20 VP holders, impact isn't real."

src Workshop: No pathways for new contributors to make a meaningful impact

"many ppl 'don't have time' for gov"

src Workshop: No pathways for new contributors to make a meaningful impact

""too much cognitive overload""

src Workshop: too much cognitive overload

"Fragmented governance stacks amplify every other problem friction for existing participants and entry barriers to new ones."

src Workshop: Most DAOs copied gov from other DAOs vs designing for their needs

"'Not: same bubble, new tools. But: new audiences, existing primitives.'"

src Workshop: Acknowledge that rules and institutions are part of governance :)

""Emotional expectation setting from the start""

src Workshop: Acknowledge that rules and institutions are part of governance :)

"Better contributor economies creating organic demand to hold governance tokens"

src Workshop: Governance Patterns

"Clear pathways for token holders to particpate, gated by ability"

src Workshop: Governance Patterns

"The ability to delegate towards interests rather than people"

src Workshop: The ability to delegate towards interests rather than people

"IRL spaces to learn about DAO / onboarding."

src Workshop: The ability to delegate towards interests rather than people

"'community centre'"

src Workshop: The ability to delegate towards interests rather than people

"Reduce voting to once a year"

src Workshop: Use of deliberative processes

"Fund initiatives to template and standardize categories and presentation formats on Eth Magicians to improve process clarity and onboarding."

src Community & Governance

"Fund efforts focused on improving communication and clarity around when the Ethereum community should engage and provide feedback on protocol upgrades."

src Community & Governance

"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."

src Community & Governance

"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"

src Deliberative Tools Gallery | Metagov

"all models suffer from low member engagement, suggesting an over reliance on direct democracy"

src PDF Resources

"DAOs are inherently susceptible to low voter participation, contradicting their decentralized ethos by potentially centralizing decision-making power"

src PDF Resources

"The architecture supports decentralization, broad participation, and differential experimentation... Field workshops demonstrated that these mechanisms maintain liveness under realistic network conditions and allow smaller holders to influence outcomes by committing for longer periods"

src Signals Protocol - d/acc residency 2025

"Uniswap’s governance experimented with explicitly compensating delegates to improve participation quality and sustain long-term attention — basically admitting that “free governance” is often fake governance."

src 7 Governance Experiments That Didn’t End in Chaos

"ENS uses working groups with stewards and defined processes so the DAO doesn’t need to vote on every operational detail."

src 7 Governance Experiments That Didn’t End in Chaos

"Scalable Participation: Need to engage 40+ delegates meaningfully without overwhelming their attention"

src Co-Creation Cycle #3 - Final Report - Governance Iterations

"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."

src Co-Creation Cycle #3 - Final Report - Governance Iterations

"The governance team personally DM’ed every delegate to ensure participation. This high-touch approach is intentional, not a scaling failure:"

src Co-Creation Cycle #3 - Final Report - Governance Iterations

"Short. The constitution should be short and focused. Do not overspecify definitions, rules, and processes. As a rule of thumb, imagine a document that more than 50% of your community would actually read."

src Concerning the Establishment of a Constitution

"Others (notably, the ones following the 1Hive covenant template) are notably “plain,” that is, written in a register that is relatively unmarked by any specialized function. This has the effect of feeling the most inclusive, which perhaps explains why it has been emulated repeatedly."

src Constitutions of Web3

"For example, the 1Hive constitutions promise, quite prominently, the “right to a harassment-free experience”."

src Constitutions of Web3

"The number of subjective decisions voters are asked to make should be reduced."

src DAO Design Principles

"🤚 Establish a talent pipeline + scalable onboarding flows."

src DAO Design Principles

"Expanding participation does not always build stronger governance. When too many decisions compete for limited attention, organizations hit a ceiling: governance overload that erodes focus, engagement, and accountability."

src Governance Overload | Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"And what we have seen in this governance overload context is that it is a lot... there was this governance overload and this constant need or desire or pain point to find a way to lighten that load."

src Governance Overload | Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"Without that party, we would not meet a quorum."

src Governance Overload | Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"many DAO voting rules including minimum participation requirements to validate a particular vote"

src Governance as Conflict: Constitution of Shared Values Defining Future Margins of Disagreement

"Participating in governance should not require spending hours reading forum posts and navigating complex bureaucracy. Being a governance participant should not be a full time, or part time, job."

src Governance in Season 8: The Next Phase

"Fortunately, human nature is not as grim as Hardin paints it. Contrary to Hardin’s pessimistic view, Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom’s groundbreaking research revealed that local communities can sustainably manage shared resources through effective self-governance."

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"Multilingual support (English, Portuguese, Spanish, Bahasa, and Swahili) to enable inclusive communication"

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"Multilingual support (English, Portuguese, Spanish, Bahasa, and Swahili) to enable inclusive communication"

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"the systemic barriers that prevent youth from the Global Majority from effectively participating in international climate negotiations"

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"This is the promise of AI voters: technology as the great democratizer empowering newly informed participants. Direct democracy’s dream without its cognitive costs."

src I Built Myself an AI Delegate—And Then I Broke It

"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."

src Majeur: Major Governance Upgrade

"As part of their intake process, Anou ensures its basic socioeconomic tenets are well-understood"

src Networked Cooperative Ecosystems

"The mean and average number of times a voter has participated in proposals reveal a very low participation rate, with voters often participating in less than 1% of proposals, and a very low voter turnout."

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations—Governance, Technology, and Legal Perspectives

"difficult accessibility of the governance platforms"

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations—Governance, Technology, and Legal Perspectives

"This commitment to participatory governance is of the utmost importance in order to preserve user involvement, engagement, and confidence."

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations—Governance, Technology, and Legal Perspectives

"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. But this does not seem to be the case in DAOs"

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations—Governance, Technology, and Legal Perspectives

"Maker Governance Polls do not attract much participation and MKR held by the dominant voters may theoretically lead to collusion in some polls."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"Compared with the rapidly increasing number of users, voters are centralized in a small group"

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"For some polls, no more than ten voters will participate in decision making. The finding implies that not all polls have large voting participation. Compared to the rapid growth of Maker users, voters are a small group."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"After tracking the MKR balance of all MKR holders on Ethereum blockchain, we find that a significant portion of MKR holders choose to be passive holders rather than actively engaging in governance."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"On average, in both governance systems less than 10% of total tokens (or 15% of circulating tokens) participate in votes on proposals."

src Analyzing Voting Power in Decentralized Governance: Who Controls DAOs?

"We find that only a very small number of delegates actually participate in voting ... For Compound, the number has been falling and the average is currently around 20, while it has lately been less than 100 for Uniswap."

src Analyzing Voting Power in Decentralized Governance: Who Controls DAOs?

"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."

src Decentralized Finance, Centralized Ownership?

"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."

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"The association seeks to encourage active participation in discussions and decision-making – ideally through digital means."

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"addresses with dust values, where participating in governance is economically not feasible."

src Demystifying the DAO Governance Process

"voters are called to vote on an extremely high number of issues, rendering the accurate expression of their preferences extremely challenging... voters will inevitably have a confident opinion only for a small number of issues"

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"A well-documented possible remedy to this situation is to allow for proxy voting"

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"the distribution of governance tokens is highly concentrated [6,20], and the exercise of voting rights is very low [5]."

src Is DAO Governance Fostering Democracy?

"For RQ2, we investigate whether the DAO offers adequate guidance to its members for participating in the governance process, thereby motivating member engagement in governance process."

src Understanding Security Issues in the DAO Governance Process

"The documentation should provide guidelines on how blockchain users can become DAO members and participate in governance, as well as the participation rights in the governance process."

src Understanding Security Issues in the DAO Governance Process

"Failing to explain voting power could discourage member participation in voting or, conversely, enable a member to accumulate excessive voting power, potentially allowing him to arbitrarily control the result of voting."

src Understanding Security Issues in the DAO 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."

src Evaluating DAO Sustainability and Longevity

"To enhance participation and mitigate free-riding, Governor Bravo, in combination with the respective Governance token smart contract of the DAO, allows token holders to delegate their voting power to others."

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"Snapshot is a decentralized voting system that eliminates the need for voters to pay Ethereum gas fees, which can be volatile and costly, thereby encouraging broader participation."

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"On-chain Vote 2,500,000 Simple majority 40,000,000 affirmative votes 7"

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"many DAOs face sustainability challenges linked to limited user participation, concentrated voting power, and technical design constraints"

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"inclusive governance structures, more equitable resource allocation, and user-friendly voting mechanisms can significantly boost engagement and decentralisation"

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"Our findings confirm that persistent low participation remains a core vulnerability. This aligns with prior studies indicating that under 10% voter turnout can lead to oligarchic outcomes [4]."

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"it may be rational for these potential voters to be in this state of ignorance. Low participation can be optimal whether it is terms of percentage of voting rights exercised or in terms of the proportion of voters participating at least in part."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"“What Happens When Anyone Can Be Your Representative? Studying the Use of Liquid Democracy for High-Stakes Decisions in Online Platforms”"

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"Because decentralized governance is monitor-intensive, rising proposal flow may eventually outpace the capacity of broad-based participation."

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination: DAO to DAO 3.0

"The main result is a statistically significant decline in the marginal responsiveness of active participation once proposal flow crosses this threshold."

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination: DAO to DAO 3.0

"active participation rises with proposal activity up to an interior breakpoint and then becomes substantially less responsive. This pattern is consistent with a monitoring-capacity constraint: as proposal flow increases, the burden of following, evaluating, and voting on governance decisions begins to outpace the capacity of dispersed participants."

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination: DAO to DAO 3.0

"though all models suffer from low member engagement, suggesting an overreliance on direct democracy"

src DAO Governance: Voting Power, Participation, and Controversy

"The analysis shows low voter participation across governance models and supports the hypothesis that this is not due to the cost and complexity of on-chain voting but an excessive use of direct democracy."

src DAO Governance: Voting Power, Participation, and Controversy

"The overwhelming majority of members in all DAOs participated in fewer than 20% of proposals. Only a small fraction of members reached higher participation levels, and participation above 60% is rare across all cases."

src DAO Governance: Voting Power, Participation, and Controversy

"Low Participation: Participation in governance decisions is low, so members should instead elect decision-makers to conduct governance for them."

src DAO Governance: Voting Power, Participation, and Controversy

"ToolslikeSnapshotwereintroducedtoeliminategascostsandsimplifyparticipation;however,theanalysisshowsthatSnapshotvotingalsosuffersfromlowturnoutintheDAOsstudied. Thischallengestheassumptionthatcostisthemainbarrier."

src DAO Governance: Voting Power, Participation, and Controversy

"While the causes of low voter participation remain somewhat unclear, the data tentatively supports the hypothesis that a combination of centralization and direct democracy—rather than cost—is the main driver."

src DAO Governance: Voting Power, Participation, and Controversy

"Moreover, frequentuncontroversialdecision-makingcan causevoterfatigueandfacilitatelowparticipation; ifvotersareconstantlyconfrontedwithsmall,uncontroversial decisions,theymayhavelesstimeandpatiencewhenmoreimportantproposalsarise."

src DAO Governance: Voting Power, Participation, and Controversy

"Entry Barriers Ownership (58) Ownership + Invitation (2) Staking (6) Application (5)"

src A Taxonomy of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"participants frequently find that the enthusiasm for shared authority and accountability come into tension with the limitations of their own attention to engage in those processes fully"

src Online Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"people with less access to free time and educational preparation, for instance, appear less likely to attend meetings, vote, and devote the attention that effective political engagement requires"

src Online Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"a major problem in DAOs is that ‘governance is overwhelming’"

src Online Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"5.8 Critical Mass for Network Activation Thesis: Contribution systems do not primarily struggle with free-riding, but with achieving critical mass. The biggest risk is not that too many users extract value, but that too few contribute early on to reach sustainability."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"DAOs allow anyone to quickly influence decision-making and contribute to tasks"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"open participation"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"significant transaction fees on some blockchains [32], leading to voter fatigue."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Delegation was widely regarded as a way to tackle voter fatigue, which many early DAOs struggled with. Actively taking part in DAO governance comes with high opportunity costs [30] and participation rates are even lower when transaction fees are higher [54]"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"This interdisciplinary approach not only enhances the accessibility of blockchain toolkits for developers and community members alike"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Through a graphical interface that requires no prior coding knowledge, participants can deploy various token types"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"The co-design phase with the community emerges as a critical component of the project. This phase is supported by a toolkit... and is operationalized through workshop sessions that facilitate active engagement with community stakeholders."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"This may reduce cognitive load and limit manipulation."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"If whales hold disproportionate voting power, smaller holders may conclude that their marginal influence is negligible, leading them to free ride on others’ governance efforts"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"regulatory uncertainty erodes bridging social capital by deterring smaller stakeholders from governance participation out of fear of legal liability"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"User feedback highlights the platform’s intuitive interface and seamless integration with Solana wallets, lowering the barrier to entry for non-technical users."

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations For Governance And Operations

"Participation Individual governance participants are able to influence governance outcomes. Participation increases buy-in. Increases legitimacy via high participation High voter turnout Give participants a voice"

src Optimism's Legitimacy Framework

"In an election, there is no incentive for them to vote against the wealthy agents, because to cast a vote on-chain, voters must also pay a transaction fee. Voter’s are economically incentivised to abstain"

src Perils of Current DAO Governance

"DAOs often face low participation: most holders do not see sufficient upside to engage, and reputational risk pushes signaling to the last minute."

src Signals Protocol Litepaper

"Common pain points include: • Endless discussion threads with unclear next steps. • Fragmented knowledge bases that deter newcomers."

src Signals Protocol Litepaper

"Snapshot accordingly introduced an off-chain voting tool that enables practitioners to efficiently access popular DAOs for voting, managing, auditing, and researching."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"All the voting procedures are essentially feeless as the operation is executed off-chain, avoiding costly on-chain verification. Users only need to connect their wallet to the launchpad and allow the action of signing."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"on-chain voting confronts the disadvantages of costly and delayed confirmation, significantly decreasing the willingness of participation of users. In contrast, Snapshot is an off-chain voting tool that removes the expensive consumption of on-chain interactive operations."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"Our empirical results discover a series of facts hidden from the light, covering its unfair distributions on such as participant regions or language usage"

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"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."

src DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND DEMOCRACY:

"the fairness and inclusivity of contemporary decision-making processes [16,17]"

src DAO Research Trends: First European DAO Workshop (DAWO)

"developing advanced voting systems that ensure fairness and inclusivity, allowing all participants to have an equitable say in decision-making processes"

src DAO Research Trends: First European DAO Workshop (DAWO)

"DAOs should provide clear and comprehensive instructions to guide members on how to engage in the governance process. A lack of proper documentation may hinder member participation and create opportunities for attackers to push through malicious proposals."

src The Dao of the DAO: Eastern Philosophies in Decentralized Worlds

"Given that such documentation is crucial for equipping members with the necessary information to engage in governance, we found that its absence correlates with a significant decline in participation. The average number of proposals decreased from 34 to 9, while the average voting participation drops from 3,342 to just 33."

src The Dao of the DAO: Eastern Philosophies in Decentralized Worlds

"The results indicate that DAOs with better documentation see significantly higher engagement. Specifically, the average number of proposals drops from 34 to 9, and the average number of voting participants declines from 3,342 to just 33 in DAOs without documentation."

src The Dao of the DAO: Eastern Philosophies in Decentralized Worlds

"However, more comprehensive documentation significantly enhances member participation in the DAO governance process."

src The Dao of the DAO: Eastern Philosophies in Decentralized Worlds

"This leads to low baseline engagement, which persists across most DAOs. In Decentraland, average voter participation per proposal was 0.79%, with median participation at 0.16%... Across 30,000 DAOs analyzed, 53% were inactive, with no proposals in 6 months, and voter turnout decreased as DAO size increased"

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"Empirical studies should center around governance fatigue and voter apathy in DAOs"

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"decentralized digital spaces can sustain and govern themselves if they can efficiently scale while regulating issues such as hierarchical power structures and uneven participation"

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"many early examples have reproduced the power asymmetries, exclusionary participation models, and inefficiencies found in traditional systems"

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"This structural shift allowed Hypha to replace the “hyper-involved or disengaged” dynamic of earlier versions with a model that invites participation without demanding uniformity."

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"⁃Web2-style onboarding: simplifies user interfaces, reducing technical barriers to entry ⁃Wallet-free participation: allows engagement without requiring crypto expertise"

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"this work proposes a solution to enable the effective participation of stakeholders from different domains and society in a constructive dialogue, using digital platforms as a medium."

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"Aspects of governance that promote broad participation in decision-making or enhance security are associated with positive outcomes. In contrast, barriers to the adoption of improvement proposals are associated with negative outcomes."

src Control of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"this study reveals that DAOs are inherently susceptible to low voter participation, contradicting their decentralized ethos"

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"DAOs are predisposed to low voter participation, especially among smaller stakeholders."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"According to their theory, the primary economic virtue of the public corporation does not lie in its capacity to pool vast amounts of capital. Rather, it is the hierarchical decision-making structure that makes it well-suited for running large business enterprises when shareholders lack expertise or the desire to acquire it."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"DAOs are likely to exhibit low voter participation. A considerable proportion of token holders will abstain from engaging in the decision-making process"

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"The mean voter turnout rate is 1.77%... The median turnout rate is even lower, standing at 0.10%"

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"on-chain voting can be costly, as it requires transaction fees, or “gas fees,”"

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"Within a single DAO, the number of voters can range from a minimum of 76 to over 20,000, indicating that not all token holders exhibit an equal degree of interest in every decision within a DAO"

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"The lower participation rates in these proposals may be attributed to factors such as complexity, limited impact, and lower stake."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"only about 7.92% of token holders ever engaged in the platform’s voting."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"The implementation of quadratic voting can also help to address the issue of voter apathy by providing token holders with a greater sense of agency and control over the decision-making process."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"a mere 7.92% of Uniswap token holders have ever participated in voting."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"Interviewee 8, active in the Translation Guild, framed elections as mechanisms of empowerment: “It was unbelievable that someone as young as myself could represent such a well-known DAO. That kind of empowerment is impossible in a company.”"

src Using Kleros in Appeals and Dispute Resolution of Gitcoin Grants

"successful governance hinges on thoughtful design rather than maximal decentralization. Inclusive participation, well-calibrated constraints, and security mechanisms can reinforce rather than undermine collective decision-making."

src DAO Governance: Decentralized But Not So Disorganized

"off-chain voting through platforms like Snapshot eliminates transaction costs associated with on-chain voting, thus removing financial barriers to participation."

src DAO Governance: Decentralized But Not So Disorganized

"This standardization can reduce the learning curve for new DAO members while maintaining flexibility for DAO-specific customization."

src DAO Governance: Decentralized But Not So Disorganized

"a higher level of voting participation may not necessarily have a positive impact on network factors."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"Chronic lack of participation is consistent with rationality in many instances. The passive token holders may be of portfolio investors or may have a small enough holding that the costs of being an informed voter greatly exceed the potential benefits"

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"there are potential problems arising from both delegation and increased direct participation. Most importantly, there is the danger that delegation or increased direct participation can reduce the likelihood that the DAO will make good decisions."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"The fact that DAOs have been characterized by low participation rates and a few key players running the show suggests that this situation may be common."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"many DAOs appear to be under the de facto control of a relatively small group of active token holders, often connected to the founders, surrounded by a mass of other token holders who rationally do not participate in governance."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"These holders may be portfolio investors or may be less active for Jensen-Meckling reasons: The benefits of the costly effort to become informed will accrue almost entirely to others."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"From an epistemic standpoint, however, the desirability of increasing direct participation is much more nuanced, and it depends heavily on the details of the composition of voting rights across voters."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"The Flooding Danger: Outside of the optimal epistemic environment, there is the danger that adding voters with low levels of competence will significantly lower the probability of making a correct collective decision"

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"Zhao et al. 2022 look at how strategic and operational voting tasks influence product quality. They conclude that the number of operational voting tasks negatively affects product quality."

src A Taxonomy of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"Fig. 3(a) reveals significant variability in participation rates across DAO projects... This variability underlines challenges in sustaining consistent engagement across governance decisions."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"However, challenges such as voter apathy and the concentration of power among a few token holders highlight the need for more robust, inclusive, and accessible governance mechanisms that encourage broader participation"

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"This approach leaves no path for individuals to review and contest the accuracy of the summary, nor the representativeness of the digital twin."

src DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND DEMOCRACY:

"Blockchain initiatives often increase barriers for smallholder participation, favoring corporations and large-scale farmers, and subjecting smallholders to increased scrutiny and dependency on corporate platforms."

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"Inclusive participation, well-calibrated constraints, and security mechanisms can reinforce rather than undermine collective decision-making"

src PDF Resources

"Flexible Participation: Multiple entry points accommodated varying availability and attention budgets"

src Co-Creation Cycle #3 - Final Report - Governance Iterations

"One delegate didn’t have enough context to answer the question, and Harmonica used the knowledge (results of Workshop 1) to provide relevant context and make it easier to respond."

src Co-Creation Cycle #3 - Final Report - Governance Iterations

"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."

src Concerning the Establishment of a Constitution

"Concave decisions benefit from more inputs or more people guessing and are, therefore, better suited to as many decision makers as possible and do not require specialized expertise"

src DAO Decision Design Framework (Working Model)

"Based on our research, DAOs can be good at: Sourcing (product ideas, feature requests, user feedback, BD inbound processing, etc.) Educating (new users, governance participants, and/or developers)"

src DAO Function Guidelines (aka The Pizza Framework)

"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."

src Governance Overload | Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"most organization 'members' (including shareholders/donors) do not have to engage in the day-to-day processes of the organization's production"

src Governance as Conflict: Constitution of Shared Values Defining Future Margins of Disagreement

"These include special commissions or process dedicated to the representation of specific subgroups, especially subgroups that have been historically mistreated or disenfranchised within a given governance system"

src Governance as Conflict: Constitution of Shared Values Defining Future Margins of Disagreement

"That’s why we see access points like SpaceX’s Starlink ... and basic computing devices as crucial first investments and milestones for getting communities onboard."

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"Members are also invited, although not obligated, to participate in the governance of the cooperative itself."

src Networked Cooperative Ecosystems

"We value diversity of perspective because truly addressing complex problems requires evaluating them from more than one angle at a time."

src The Animating Purpose of BlockScience

"In the long term, we can expect the Citizens’ House to expand to include the thousands or millions or billions of humans interacting with Optimism."

src The Future of Optimism Governance

"A higher number of voters has a notable impact on increasing the trading volume of DAI, including total volume and the volume of large transactions. Therefore, a higher voting participation rate proves advantageous for the DAI stablecoin."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"the number of votes per proposal as a proxy for community size is positively associated with DAO treasury size, reflecting the view that a larger crowd is willing to back the DAO"

src Voting Governance and Value Creation in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"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."

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"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."

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"Open membership allows any interested individual to join and participate in votes, ensuring broad engagement."

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"Bélanger, F., & Carter, L. (2009). The impact of the digital divide on e-government use. ... Mäkinen, M. (2006). Digital empowerment as a process for enhancing citizens' participation."

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"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."

src Demystifying the DAO Governance Process

"We first measure the fraction of users that opted to delegate, as a function of the number of dReps... Our results show that it is easier to attract delegation from voters with smaller revealed sets... or with lower k’s."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"decentralized frameworks present a compelling alternative for promoting equitable participation, trust, and resilience in AI regulation"

src Evaluating DAO Sustainability and Longevity

"By leveraging participatory mechanisms, including DAOs, ETHOS directly addresses the EDPB’s call for context-aware evaluations of data subjects’ reasonable expectations."

src Evaluating DAO Sustainability and Longevity

"our findings suggest that structured, data-driven indicators enable DAOs to develop more participatory and automated governance models, ultimately strengthening their sustainability"

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"DAOs with limited participation but substantial financial reserves may benefit from changes to voting accessibility or community engagement strategies."

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"Participation has emerged as a major concern for DAOs. 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."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"There are many sound reasons not to vote. Consider three of them. First, small holders have little economic incentive to become informed... Second, and related, small holders face the “paradox of voting.” Voting is costly... Third, some DAO token owners will be portfolio investors... It will be difficult and costly for them to participate in governance"

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"“Democratic” ideals and the desire to avoid de facto centralized control both create an impetus to increase direct participation. From an epistemic standpoint, however, the desirability of increasing direct participation is much more nuanced"

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"One idea is to include an “abstain” option so that voters can signal engagement without voting for an alternative. Doing so might add to the perceived legitimacy of the choice process."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"DAO participation can be enhanced with no epistemic cost in the optimal epistemic environment."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"active users who understand the protocol and want it to grow, but otherwise lack sufficient voting rights to participate meaningfully."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"Theorem 10. The Mean Rule satisfies participation... Example 5. The Quadratic Rule does not satisfy participation... Example 6. The R3 Quorum Median Rule does not satisfy participation."

src A Social Choice Analysis of Optimism's Retroactive Project Funding

"Governance Process Entry Barriers: ... The entry to governance is always gated through one of the following: Token Ownership, Invitation, Token Ownership and Application, or Token Staking."

src A Taxonomy of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"Community Participation: The Taxonomy uses five characteristics for activity in a DAO... None... Some... High... Very High... Full"

src A Taxonomy of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"The AI-based decision-making of Governatoorr provides a process designed to minimise the requirements of participant attention, but in the process it introduces new obligations—configuring the AI agent and managing the complexities involved in its operation."

src Online Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"there is a pressing need for deeper research into how such systems can support inclusive, democratic, and cooperative values"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"A primary challenge is ensuring enough contributors exist and feel valued, rather than preventing outsiders from consuming for free."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Regular, ongoing voting replaces traditional periodic voting, making active participation more feasible"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Onboarding programs Virtual Geared to onboard developers to Bitcoin core or related projects, eg bitcoindevs.xyz"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"entering the inner circles is less transmissive (e.g., becoming a core developer)."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Many DAOs apply stricter quorum requirements for higher-impact proposals, while allowing lower (or no) quorums for lower-impact proposals"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"This has the potential to generate significant economic and social impacts, fostering more inclusive and collaborative economies"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Time-bound voting periods and configurable quorum thresholds ensure structured and efficient decision-making."

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations For Governance And Operations

"By leveraging preference intensity through time-lock commitments, Signals constructs a dynamic idea board where the most strongly supported initiatives rise naturally, keeping attention on what matters and when."

src Signals Protocol Litepaper

"Implementing such measures, we expect to see an improvement in the overall quality of proposals and a reduction in the number of frivolous or fraudulent proposals."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"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"

src DAO Research Trends: First European DAO Workshop (DAWO)

"addressing these gaps requires proactive measures to integrate marginalized populations and foster inclusive participation"

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"supportingvitalityateverystageofdevelopment"

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"Stakeholders with an ORCID will receive 1 OR free of charge... Stakeholders without an ORCID need to purchase NORs at market value to become members."

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"Iain D Couzin, Christos C Ioannou, Güven Demirel, Thilo Gross, Colin J Torney, Andrew Hartnett, Larissa Conradt, Simon A Levin, and Naomi E Leonard. Uninformed individuals promote democratic consensus in animal groups. science, 334(6062):1578–1580, 2011."

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"[392] Tahira Reid and James Gibert. Inclusion in human–machine interactions."

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"[397] Jário Santos, Ig Bittencourt, Marcelo Reis, Geiser Chalco, and Seiji Isotani. Two billion registered students affected by stereotyped educational environments: an analysis of gender-based color bias."

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"Non-users affected by externalities from the platform—such as anti-social behavior or the spread of misinformation—would also have an incentive to join, gain currency and provide feedback to mitigate negative impacts."

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"Within SeeDAO, xiāo-yáo manifests as a collective ethos rather than an individual state: members move fluidly between roles and projects, balancing initiative with repose."

src Using Kleros in Appeals and Dispute Resolution of Gitcoin Grants

Evidence 147 82 5 41

Practitioner (147) Supporting (82) Contrasting (5) Extending (41)

"“the build key comes from the shared language. I think shared language would be the key thing to take away here.”"

src Afolabi Aiyeloja (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Low participation rate in governance proposals and discussion.""

src Gbiri Oluwaseun (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Most governance proposals are usually not detailed or contextual enough because adding all the details may compromise or hand product features, trade secrets etc.""

src Gbiri Oluwaseun (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""And poses the question of if I am voting for a decision which I just have little or half context, then what really am I voting for?""

src Gbiri Oluwaseun (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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""

src Gbiri Oluwaseun (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"More effective treasury management and capital allocation"

src Mike Cooper (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"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"

src Mike Cooper (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"Evidence driven treasury policy and management, results focused capital allocation strategy"

src Mike Cooper (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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""

src Jeffrey McLarty (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""the call data would be executed creates, like, paralysis with governance teams""

src Jeffrey McLarty (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""it's just really, really slow. It slows down the process""

src Jeffrey McLarty (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""the goal is not automation for its own sake, but to reduce cognitive overhead while increasing analytical depth for delegates and ecosystem builders.""

src Katashe Solutions (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Contributors either default to heuristics such as following large delegates, abstaining due to insufficient synthesis time, or voting with partial context.""

src Katashe Solutions (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“as governance scales, the scarce resource isn’t voting power .... it’s credible review, so outcomes start tracking narrative and urgency more than truth”"

src Karam (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Open governance systems often optimize for participation but not for reasoning”"

src Karam (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Accountability without institutional memory: chains have perfect data, but governance often has amnesia”"

src Karam (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“the system can’t reliably answer ‘what did we buy, did it work, and what did it cost us over time?’”"

src Karam (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“debates restart from zero each cycle, and ‘reputation’ becomes storytelling rather than a verified track record”"

src Karam (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Move from ‘funding as applause’ to procurement as governance: require a pre-flight packet (scope, milestones, acceptance criteria, maintenance expectations, rate justification)”"

src Karam (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“normalize ‘no technical review = no funding’ for technical work”"

src Karam (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Governance suface area is unique in every ecosystem.""

src Participant 15 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Most projects do not communicate the exact governance surface area clearly enough in documentation.""

src Participant 15 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""each ecosystem has their own unique set of values, goals and priorities that delegates unfortunately do not always understand""

src Participant 15 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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.""

src Participant 15 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""All projects could benefit from trying to be more transparent about their true governance surface area.""

src Participant 15 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Delegate onboarding programs/tests could be useful to ensure delegates understand exactly what your governance governs, understand priorities and strategy.""

src Participant 15 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Scroll's co-creation sprint project ... brings core team members/builders together with the community to help agree on annual priorities / strategy.""

src Participant 15 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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.""

src Participant 21 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""It is important to ground any collective project in the what and why.""

src Participant 21 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""How to ensure governance remains peer-to-peer (P2P) at the core, while enabling peers to voluntarily group, recursively.""

src ECVM (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"DAO governance is centralised, opaque and very noisy."

src Participant 23 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"the open door policy means that there is an immense amount of poorly informed opinions and proposals, with very little tools that effectively and efficiently filter the signal from the noise."

src Participant 23 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"I put these problems together because, in my opinion, they are symptoms of the same problem: a lack of governance structure."

src Participant 23 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"There are no roles with designated rights and/or responsibilities, no proper ways to elect or hold representatives to account, etc."

src Participant 23 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"Still a lack of insights from real world governance being applied to the design of new governance protocols."

src Participant 23 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"Governance is not about solving objective bottlenecks to collective alignment, but about creating legitimacy for collective decisions."

src Participant 23 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"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."

src Participant 23 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"We need a governance protocol that provides a simple but general framework for institutional governance design."

src Participant 23 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Expand governance education, onboarding, and digestible summaries to support participation""

src Participant 25 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""en Anode (antes Stablelab), donde hicimos un curso sobre Scroll Governance en el que hubo bastante participacion y la gente salio contenta""

src Participant 25 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""abogaria por mas DAOs con newsletters/forum posts con resumenes de gobernanza""

src Participant 25 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“The inability/lack of willingness of new mechanisms to be scientifically evaluated.”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Given a problem domain (eg. Delegations) how vendors pitch ideas, how the selection happens is oqpaque.”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Since the identification of the problem and selection of the solution there has been zero communication as to the implementation”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Despite pushback from several contributors there was limited opportunity for evaluating the solution space.”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“As a result we have minimal clarity on how the core problem is actually being solved.”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“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.”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Currently we see DAOs paying a premium with zero competition or sane evaluation of the tender process.”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Currently, most DAOs operate with little direction, i.e not moving towards a common goal.”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“How are we evaluating if the projects we are spending money on contribute to that objective?”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“these so called committees becoming a centralising force and very rarely create processes or procedures that involve the broader token holder base.”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“The process for submitting a proposal is too hard to understand, preventing new participation.”"

src Participant 28 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"A lack of leadership clarity from the protocol on their core priorities for the short term for the dao to align as such."

src Participant 29 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"Priority setting, education and standard outside a template on proposals."

src Participant 29 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"Small group to review proposals and push back to make it clearer and something someone outside of crypto wpuld see and make sense."

src Participant 29 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""miscommunication and procedure""

src Participant 31 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""authored a highly significant Request For Proposal (RFP) titled 'Amend Working Group Rules'""

src Participant 31 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""ENS DAO Governance and Operations Documentation/By-laws, Version 1.0, Summer 2024""

src Participant 31 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""ENS DAO Governance and Operations Documentation/By-laws, Version 1.0, Summer 2024""

src Participant 31 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""our Public Goods Award structure (seems to / may) encourage single-maintainer projects""

src Participant 13 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""There are emerging efforts and prototypes at the intersection of AI and governance, including tools that summarize and interpret proposals""

src Participant 14 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“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.”"

src Participant 46 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Protocols lack structured systems to retain and transmit governance decisions across contributor turnover cycles.""

src Participant 46 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""This causes repeated mistakes, redundant proposals, and erosion of institutional knowledge.""

src Participant 46 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""The problem is that this data is cognitively inaccessible without structured interpretation.""

src Participant 46 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Proposal Lifecycle Metadata (PLM): Structured tagging for proposals that captures authorship, problem statement, discussion evolution, and implementation status.""

src Participant 46 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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.""

src Participant 46 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Recurring Themes and Frictions (RTF): Synthesis layer that identifies patterns across proposals.""

src Participant 46 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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.""

src Participant 46 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""The challenge is that most of these solutions require sustained organizational commitment rather than one-time technical fixes.""

src Participant 46 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""it needs to start with a clear definition of the purpose of the DAO and mapping stakeholders.""

src Participant 50 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""there are various tools and approaches towards working with the core stakeholders to identify the strategy and roadmap, and to get at least majority consensus.""

src Participant 50 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""mission public did the deliberation experiment with cosmos. at Scroll there were co-creation cycles, which are being adopted (in some way) in NEAR.""

src Participant 50 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""clarifying the purpose of a DAO and setting realistic expectations, along with developing roadmaps of how to execute on the strategy""

src Participant 50 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""because if we don't know what we're trying to accomplish, what is the point of voting?""

src Participant 50 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"Create governance templates with other decision-making models."

src Workshop: Experiment Sandboxes

"Create an AI agent that helps groups define the best decision-making mechanism for the specific situation"

src Workshop: Experiment Sandboxes

"Governance Around Priorities that can be measured ( eg: Fund Growth Projects, Ecosystem Needs)"

src Workshop: Experiment Sandboxes

"“mapping of phases of gov to tooling - which lead to best outcomes”"

src Workshop: mapping of phases of gov to tooling - which lead to best outcomes

"An AI agent that helps groups define the best decision-making mechanism for the specific situation (following templates)"

src Workshop: A DAO with holacratic governance + accountability based on smart contracts

"1. Intense deliberation, 2. co-creating a constitution, 3. governance minimisation & ossification"

src Workshop: A DAO with holacratic governance + accountability based on smart contracts

"“design a DAO that uses all of the phases of deliberation intentionally https://metagov.org/delib-tools”"

src Workshop: compose smaller, more granular operational primitives

"“A gov framework of proven, legitimate practices that appeal to risk-averse audiences who don't want governance for the sake of governance”"

src Workshop: compose smaller, more granular operational primitives

"Using Frontier AI as a means to screen governance proposals and provide feedback"

src Workshop: Using Frontier AI as a means to screen proposals and provide feedback LINK

"Applying tools from econometrics/ econ policy evaluation, and web2 experimentation eg A/B testing could be a great start"

src Workshop: Using Frontier AI as a means to screen proposals and provide feedback LINK

"Voting without/ too little deliberation"

src Workshop: Voting without/ too little deliberation

"Misunderstanding of social choice theory, ignoring research"

src Workshop: Voting without/ too little deliberation

"existing programs renewed with no reflection"

src Workshop: existing programs renewed with no reflection

"no clear info-sharing channels, or scoped re-election periods, between delegates and voters"

src Workshop: existing programs renewed with no reflection

"Little to no culture for meaningful experimentation."

src Workshop: lack of transparency into contributor renumeration

"(Pilots -> Iterations -> Final Mechanism)"

src Workshop: lack of transparency into contributor renumeration

""Legitimacy" undefined"

src Workshop: "Legitimacy" undefined

""We approach the issue of governance from a technical perspective rather than a human one""

src Workshop: Technical tools without direction

""Mechanisms are designed in a very 'theoretical' manner, often not being grounded in practicalities""

src Workshop: Technical tools without direction

"Most DAOs copied gov from other DAOs vs designing for their needs"

src Workshop: Most DAOs copied gov from other DAOs vs designing for their needs

"This is actually a symptom of a much larger, more serious problem, which is a general stasis and lack of experimentation"

src Workshop: Most DAOs copied gov from other DAOs vs designing for their needs

"Lack of experimentation with deliberative tools"

src Workshop: Lack of experimentation with deliberative tools

"Promising solutions (dual governance, optimistic governance, committees, etc) still very bespoke"

src Workshop: Lack of experimentation with deliberative tools

"hard / expensive to replicate"

src Workshop: Lack of experimentation with deliberative tools

"“governance experimentation is a public good → therefore way underfunded”"

src Workshop: governance experimentation is a public good → therefore way underfunded

"“Difficult to move from theory to practice”"

src Workshop: governance experimentation is a public good → therefore way underfunded

"## Lack of Mission/Vision/Strategy"

src Workshop: Lack of Mission/Vision/Strategy

"Lack of clarity on clear priority of the DAO/Org"

src Workshop: Lack of clarity of whose say is important

"eg: this season we focus funding on tvl"

src Workshop: Lack of clarity of whose say is important

"Should be defined early in the DAO's journey"

src Workshop: Should be defined early in the DAO's journey

"Poor expectation setting at the start leading to mass miscommunication"

src Workshop: Should be defined early in the DAO's journey

"“mission, vision, strategy discussions don't take place”"

src Workshop: mission, vision, strategy discussions don't take place

"Very little shared purpose beyond number go up"

src Workshop: Very little shared purpose beyond number go up

"Technical blocker to flagging something as in or out of scope."

src Workshop: Very little shared purpose beyond number go up

""Governance" view as bloat"

src Workshop: "Governance" view as bloat

"not sufficient knowledge about governance processes"

src Workshop: "Governance" view as bloat

""Imagine you have two identical projects. One with "good governance", and one with "Bad" governance. What do they each look like?""

src Workshop: decentralized governance is too expensive

"“Consolidate the governance stack under shared open, composable, infrastructure”"

src Workshop: Consolidate the governance stack under shared open, composable, infrastructure

"“Less tooling, more practice and organic growth of processes”"

src Workshop: Consolidate the governance stack under shared open, composable, infrastructure

"'Acknowledge that rules and institutions are part of governance :)'"

src Workshop: Acknowledge that rules and institutions are part of governance :)

"'Emotional expectation setting from the start'"

src Workshop: Acknowledge that rules and institutions are part of governance :)

"“Aligning organizational values to better scope the purpose, value, and 'right' structure of governance”"

src Workshop: Smaller DAOs, no expectation of being fully public and open

"Learn from existing off-chain governance"

src Workshop: Learn from existing off-chain governance

"Inspiration from the cooperative world on governance"

src Workshop: Learn from existing off-chain governance

""Rules that define who has access to roles, what powers roles have, how roles limit each others powers.""

src Workshop: Contribution / labor based governance rights

"## Participation Rewards"

src Workshop: Participation Rewards

"Better conversations, not better voting."

src Workshop: Participation Rewards

"“governance is NOT just about decision-making”"

src Workshop: Clarity on threat model - don't overcomplicate

"Formal retros so we can iteratively improve"

src Workshop: Formal retros so we can iteratively improve

"“Use of deliberative processes”"

src Workshop: Use of deliberative processes

"“Iterative governance design that evolves similarly to how case-law does”"

src Workshop: Use of deliberative processes

""How are daily operations separated?""

src Workshop: Policy Making

""Social and epistemic capacities (deliberation quality, shared language, institutional memory, stewarding roles) are treated as secondary or ‘soft,’ so they are rarely resourced or measured with the same rigor as token flows.""

src Participant 42 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Invest in social and epistemic infrastructures—shared language, reflective practice, historical memory.""

src Participant 42 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Epistemic principles (memory, language, and organizational learning) ... decision logs that capture reasoning and context, deliberation processes that surface stakeholder mental models, and regular review cycles.""

src Participant 42 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Social principles (roles, accountability, and graduated escalation) drawing from Ostrom's commons work: clear roles with defined scopes and accountability, graduated conflict resolution pathways, and nested layers of decision-making.""

src Participant 42 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Gitcoin ... are now investing in a constitution, professional delegates, steward training, and clearer roles and scopes.""

src Participant 42 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""We need a fundamental reorientation from ‘designing solutions’ to ‘building capacity for continuous navigation.’""

src Participant 42 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""the only solution is just robust organizational structure that establishes a cultural awareness of the problem and reduces barriers to staying engaged.""

src Participant 43 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“there's no straightforward way to create a sort of 'hybrid-DAO entity' institution cross-over.”"

src Participant 17 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“people are not engaged enough with governance as a topic. It isn't inspiring for most people in the current formats”"

src Participant 17 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“its such a heavy topic, its reading-heavy”"

src Participant 17 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“there's a lack of formal resonsilibities and roles, missing accountability for previous decisions, delegates are not neccessrily reliable, there's not that mich structure.”"

src Participant 36 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Sometimes DAOs tend to spend to much time discussing, and not enough time on implementing / executing.”"

src Participant 36 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“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.”"

src Participant 37 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Not just the Grants committee, but marketing, audits, treasury/expenses management, proposal project management and DIP program management.”"

src Participant 37 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“people not having the skills on how to make a proposal (though i guess there could be a format)”"

src Participant 38 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“i think a built-in format for proposals could be useful.”"

src Participant 38 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Mostly governance is seen as a source of noise and distraction. Not as a place for valuable proposals and contributions.”"

src Participant 40 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Another problem is that governance is too open. Instead of clear guardrails and participation anyone can do anything.”"

src Participant 40 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Getting clearer on how to participate. For instance quests for newcommers, gauges for low-intent token holders”"

src Participant 40 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""one of the governance challenge that I identify is, lack of a clear mission and lack of clear incentives for founders""

src Participant 45 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"Initiatives to design and implement more structured and hierarchical governance and decision-making processes should be funded to improve effectiveness and reduce noise."

src Community & Governance

"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."

src Deliberative Tools Gallery | Metagov

"Agenda setting | prioritizing, framing, identifying dimensions and stakeholders ... Deliberating | explaining yourself to others, being paraphrased to others, articulating values, arguing positions ... Proposing | ideating solutions, forming proposals, modeling scenarios"

src Deliberative Tools Gallery | Metagov

"platform governance design choices are crucial for DAO success"

src PDF Resources

"Because it professionalizes the boring work: reading proposals, analyzing risk, showing up consistently, explaining decisions publicly"

src 7 Governance Experiments That Didn’t End in Chaos

"Turns disconnected programs into one continuous funding system: Design → Fund → Assess."

src CAMF, a New Architecture for Crypto Funding Systems

"Traditional governance approaches face an inherent trade-off: sync workshops provide rich interaction but limit participation, while async forums enable broad participation but often lack depth."

src Co-Creation Cycle #3 - Final Report - Governance Iterations

"Without clear criteria for evaluation, voting became popularity contests rather than strategic assessment."

src Co-Creation Cycle #3 - Final Report - Governance Iterations

"The workshop revealed a key insight: many domains have dependencies that weren’t initially clear: Strategy must precede branding"

src Co-Creation Cycle #3 - Final Report - Governance Iterations

"The ability to adjust prompts based on early responses (Session 1’s shift from “stop” to “start” focus) demonstrated AI’s advantage over traditional surveys."

src Co-Creation Cycle #3 - Final Report - Governance Iterations

"Progressive Prioritization: Build ranking exercises throughout, not just at conclusion"

src Co-Creation Cycle #3 - Final Report - Governance Iterations

"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.)"

src DAO Decision Design Framework (Working Model)

"The number of subjective decisions voters are asked to make should be reduced. Instead, humans should be empowered to override otherwise algorithmic decisions."

src DAO Design Principles

"Attempts at strategic alignment are usually made via artifacts that results in more bureaucracy, not more alignment Strategic alignment must be designed into DAO operations themselves, so merely taking action within the system is inherently aligned"

src DAO Design Principles

"Batch proposals that don’t allow for valuation of specific outputs should be avoided"

src DAO Design Principles

"What MUSE emphasizes is to build a “logic model (implementation plan)” through using structured evidence."

src Evidence Layer for Digital Public Goods

"What was missing were the social tools for deliberation and discussion, like forums, community building, and operations."

src Governance Overload | Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"But that still requires deliberative processes associated with agenda setting and figuring out what proposals are going to be on the docket, establishing various rules about what is required to pass a proposal."

src Governance Overload | Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

""To the extent a future state in which individual organization members disagree is predictable, then mechanisms will be embedded ex-ante to reduce or resolve this disagreement. Unanticipated events ('unknown unknowns') by definition cannot receive this kind of treatment ex-ante.""

src Governance as Conflict: Constitution of Shared Values Defining Future Margins of Disagreement

"The strategy for the algorithm was voted on by citizens at the start of the mission and shaped over the course of the mission by community feedback."

src Part 2: Analyzing the impact of Retro Funding Season 7: Onchain Builders | Open Source Observer

"Finalize the set of proposal types outlined in the Operating Manual and transition the Working Constitution to a Bedrock Constitution on the original four year timeline."

src Season 9: From Experiment to Organization - Optimism

"Critical Nuance & Refinement (7%): This is the rarest. The initial agreement is pressure-tested, challenged, and refined into something more robust."

src Thread by @governingweb3

"the democratic limitations of the Proof of Humanity DAO... due to its lack of political deliberation, internal polarization, weak internal legislation"

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations—Governance, Technology, and Legal Perspectives

"Thecommunityvotesfairlyevenly,withthewinning option receiving an average of 86.73% of the voting power used on that proposal and 75.83% of the votes."

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations—Governance, Technology, and Legal Perspectives

"the analyzed proposals primarily address the day-to-day operational aspects of the community and the development of new projects that will facilitate the platform’s growth. These proposals lack strategic significance and have no further implications"

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations—Governance, Technology, and Legal Perspectives

"Usually, the suggested changes will be written in the form of an Improvement Proposal (IP), which is then voted on through an established poll"

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"Maker users rely on developers to provide detailed proposals, the aims of codes and explanations of all possible outcomes in an understandable way."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"The basic auction creates a determinate outcome, one that awards control to the party that claims it can perform in a way that has the most benefit for the other token holders, a claim that is backed up by a value deposit."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"The first stage of decision-making, known as sentiment analysis, involves community discussion and an off-chain straw poll, providing a cost-effective means of gauging support."

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"A case study of Decidim in Barcelona found that the platform’s interface effectively promoted discussion by combining discussion threads and indicators to guide recommendations"

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"Online discussion forums enable proposals to be debated before voting, fostering informed decision-making."

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"We, therefore, aim to define categories that cover the whole spectrum of proposal types in DAOs that can be used for further, more insightful research on DAO governance."

src Delegation and Participation in Decentralized Governance

"The result shows that over 60% of the examined proposals fail to provide a consistent description and code for their members, highlighting a significant gap in ensuring transparency within the DAO governance process."

src Understanding Security Issues in the DAO Governance Process

"The proposal description should align with the proposal code, ensuring members are fully informed about the proposal’s intent and allowing them to cast an informed vote."

src Understanding Security Issues in the DAO Governance Process

"Our results suggest that members currently do not pay sufficient attention to proposals. Of the 25,051 proposals analyzed, 19,148 either lack a description of the proposal code or only contain a description without corresponding code."

src Understanding Security Issues in the DAO 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."

src Understanding Security Issues in the DAO Governance Process

"The first step involves proposers sharing their ideas on Uniswap’s online discussion forum."

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"before an on-chain vote occurs, the proposer must submit audited source code that implements the proposed change."

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"Temperature Check ... 2 [days]; Consensus Check ... 5 [days]; On-chain Vote ... 7 [days]"

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"we define the following research questions: RQ2: Which Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can be used to evaluate DAO sustainability, including financial stability, governance processes, decentralisation, and community engagement?"

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"Scatter plots of approval rate versus average voting duration suggested that overly short windows may hinder deliberation, while excessively long ones can reduce engagement."

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"“Deliberation and the wisdom of crowds”"

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"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."

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination: DAO to DAO 3.0

"Votingonuncontroversialproposalsiscostlyandinefficient... Thecostanddelayofcollectivedecision-makingcanreducethescalabilityandisparticularlyproblematicfornewDAOsintheirgrowthphase,wheredecisionfrequencycanbehigh."

src DAO Governance: Voting Power, Participation, and Controversy

"This iterative learning mechanism resembles adaptive systems in social choice theory, where feedback loops (such as post-round reports, retrospective debates, and proposal design changes) help refine collective decisions over time."

src A Social Choice Analysis of Optimism's Retroactive Project Funding

"we extend the definition by requiring an explicit notary (voting) process for each DAO. An explicit notary (voting) requires a process that is not ad hoc and leaves space and time for discussion."

src A Taxonomy of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"the emphasis on allocating funds through proposals and DAOstack’s tools came at the expense of other kinds of community building activities. This was additionally compounded by the limitations of the software in providing other interaction affordances such as deliberative discussion."

src Online Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"The design principles we outline below likewise function as a diagnostic checklist or heuristic—a set of critical factors to consider—rather than a statutory code."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"The paper concludes by highlighting opportunities to refine Bitcoin’s deliberation process"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Proposals to improve Bitcoin’s governance, such as its deliberation mechanism"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"We also found that Bitcoin governance could be enhanced by improving deliberation, potentially initiated by a sub-group within the ecosystem integrating recent findings from digital democracy research."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"we observe that the vast majority of mechanisms relate to the phase of voting, while few best practices and more challenges are associated with the preceding phase of deliberation"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"These challenges underscore the need for more robust theoretical frameworks and governance mechanisms to ensure that DAOs can respond to the real needs of the addressed community"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"The absence of cohesive bridging capital between these cohorts can cause confusion about strategic priorities such as short-term price appreciation or long-term protocol sustainability"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"These mechanisms enforce deliberation windows and multi-party consensus for high-impact decisions"

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations For Governance And Operations

"Process Governance processes are consistently upheld (don’t break your own rules!) Increases legitimacy by upholding process Pre-defined change processes Ensuring everyone, including the Foundation, is subject to the same rules"

src Optimism's Legitimacy Framework

"Signals is an on-chain protocol that converts latent community sentiment into a real-time, ranked idea board of DAO initiatives."

src Signals Protocol Litepaper

"the proposer may proceed to draft the proposal by specifying the content, options, and voting rules, as well as setting the start and end dates."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"a considerable number of proposals (approximately 17.7% of all proposals... ) are completely irrelevant to the project’s development, and merely consist of inappropriate or offensive content"

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"the implementation of more stringent entry requirements for proposal creation is necessary, such as mandatory completion of a tutorial on governance principles or holding a minimum number of project tokens."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"When choosing technologies to facilitate or augment governance, we must consider not only their functionality, but also the values implicit within the technologies themselves."

src DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND DEMOCRACY:

"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."

src DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND DEMOCRACY:

"The classification and categorization of DAO proposals present another important challenge that needs to be addressed"

src DAO Research Trends: First European DAO Workshop (DAWO)

"enhancing collaborative decision-making processes"

src DAO Research Trends: First European DAO Workshop (DAWO)

"For Proposal, especially those that involve transferring DAO assets or modifying ownership, the code logic must be clearly defined and fully explained to DAO members."

src The Dao of the DAO: Eastern Philosophies in Decentralized Worlds

"The proposal description must fully detail all aspects of the proposal code to ensure that members are well-informed."

src The Dao of the DAO: Eastern Philosophies in Decentralized Worlds

"In response to the observed inconsistencies in proposals, we suggest that DAOs enforce consistency between proposal descriptions and the actual code."

src The Dao of the DAO: Eastern Philosophies in Decentralized Worlds

"Centralized or semi-centralized governance models can also promote better strategic alignment... Rather than relying on unpredictable token holder sentiment, Optimism can channel effort toward its core mission of funding digital public goods."

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"This model allows voters to independently develop proposals and receive feedback from members of the digital commons before it is put to vote."

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"members of the digital commons must discuss rule changes, or update smart contracts, and subsequently encode these changes"

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"The institutionalization of sense-making—the space for dialogue and deliberation before formal decision-making. “Posting a proposal without having done the sense-making beforehand? Ninety percent of the time, it fails.”"

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"Unlike consensus or majority voting, this approach enables alignment even without agreement: “I may not agree, but I understand and support the direction.”"

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"it is a long debate that requires proper organization to ensure the persistence of the facts produced by a multitude of stakeholders"

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"This article suggests policy interventions to stimulate voter engagement and foster genuine decentralization."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"This change aims to simplify and streamline the governance system, as the previous process was considered too complex, resulting in low participation and engagement from the community."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"UNI holders must post their proposals on the governance forum for a minimum of 7 days to allow the community to review, comment, and ask questions."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"Voters tend to be more engaged in broader strategic decisions and proposals with more significant implications for the platform. In contrast, they may be less interested in voting on technical or specialized matters, which could be due to a lack of understanding or perceived relevance."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"establishing standardized requirements and guidance for information disclosure is a crucial approach to enhancing voter participation and improving DAO governance."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"Implementing proposal standards can significantly improve the quality of proposals and discussions within DAO governance forums. By setting minimum requirements, such as a 5,000-word length or mandating answers to a set of predetermined questions"

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"We kept the community running through meta-rules. Of course, this required a lot of communication. Voting mattered, but it couldn’t replace earlier dialogue"

src Using Kleros in Appeals and Dispute Resolution of Gitcoin Grants

"standardized proposal templates can serve as a tool to guide users to provide comprehensive information about their proposals, including implementation details, expected benefits, and potential risks."

src DAO Governance: Decentralized But Not So Disorganized

"Standardized proposal templates with required fields for impact analysis"

src DAO Governance: Decentralized But Not So Disorganized

"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."

src Co-Creation Cycle #3 - Final Report - Governance Iterations

"Democratic deliberation is supposed to help people reason through complex issues and arrive at reasoned judgments... it’s possible that AI assistants for voting will cheapen deliberation more, leaving voters less informed and less engaged."

src I Built Myself an AI Delegate—And Then I Broke It

"The auction aspect of the mechanism provides a way out of the potential indeterminacy and pathologies that arise from pure voting mechanisms."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"the redirection of attention might also detract from critical components of governance, such as collective deliberation and trust-building through human relationships"

src Online Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"one-sided results do not necessarily mean “bad”, which instead indicate that DAO members tend to make an instant decision without significant debates."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"initiative formulation, democratic deliberation, and perpetual administrative transparency"

src PDF Resources

"we can use the power of collective intelligence to highlight patterns and improve the development of new and existing DAOs"

src amy-jung/collectivedaoarchives.catalog: The Collective DAO Catalog is an open source index of DAO historical events. Together, as an open source database that anyone can contribute to, we can use the power of collective intelligence to highlight patterns and improve the development of new and existing DAOs

"CCC3 followed a deliberate “diverge-converge” methodology across two phases"

src Co-Creation Cycle #3 - Final Report - Governance Iterations

"Draft in stages... Allocate initial responsibility for draft to a small core group... Share the initial draft with a small number of individuals... Share the secondary draft more broadly and give time for the greater commons to respond"

src Concerning the Establishment of a Constitution

"When mapping EBP onto the PDCA cycle, it becomes clear that the P component is lacking... The system is not set up to start projects with evidence-based planning at the P stage."

src Evidence Layer for Digital Public Goods

"Processes relate to kind of both organizational and technical... Rules, norms, and shared practices are implemented to turn attention into outcomes."

src Governance Overload | Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"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."

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"Proposal writing becomes prompt engineering"

src I Built Myself an AI Delegate—And Then I Broke It

"In 2021, Smart Germany undertook a lengthy discussion about whether to raise the fees taken by the cooperative. Möltner says that this process, which took about six months to complete"

src Networked Cooperative Ecosystems

"Continuous improvement. The reward algorithm evolved throughout the round. Weights, event definitions, and metrics are frequently updated in response to community feedback."

src Part 2: Analyzing the impact of Retro Funding Season 7: Onchain Builders | Open Source Observer

"These “Problem Spaces” are intended as starting points for discussion, not as a prescriptive roadmap."

src The Future of Optimism Governance

"Consensus emerges when enough agents read a situation similarly and DEFINITELY not because someone (agent or human) made a compelling argument."

src Thread by @governingweb3

"voting mechanisms and other governance elements may have a process value to participants independent of operational efficiency."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"The Auction Reset Steps are: 1) The purchase deposit... 2) The token deposit and dynamic vote pool transition... 3) The value deposit transition... 4) Treatment of the current surety deposit. 5) Treatment of the previous surety deposit."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"One potential serious problem with this approach is that the enterprise may benefit at a later point from a major reorganization or revamp, perhaps with innovation in mind, that is critical to maintaining ongoing dynamism or even for the survival of the project."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"the consensus rate is negatively associated with DAO treasury size, reflecting arguments that the wisdom of the crowd requires disagreement, at least to some extent, to unfold its potential"

src Voting Governance and Value Creation in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"Members can propose financial expenditures via platforms such as Aragon or Snapshot, followed by public discussions and votes."

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"Aragón, P., ... (2017). Deliberative platform design: The case study of the online discussions in Decidim Barcelona."

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"There exists no broadly accepted categorization of DAO proposals."

src Delegation and Participation in Decentralized Governance

"KPI 3: Voting Mechanism Efficiency: This KPI considers governance effectiveness based on proposal approval rate and voting duration"

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"A more dynamic approach, calibrating voting duration based on prior proposal complexity or participation history, could improve legitimacy without sacrificing efficiency."

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"The analytic approach underlying these claims is based on two epistemic tests... assess how well various governance approaches aggregate information from a diversity of voters to maximize the probability of making a correct collective decision."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"The autonomous actions of the voters solely determine the outcome. Our approach is to apply the two epistemic tests, mining the results for more general insights."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"This type of situation is plausible, especially if a system pressures large sets of rationally uninformed voters into participating. Not wanting to devote much time, which may be totally rational, a large group might, for instance, go online and look at the first result that comes up"

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"Framing the subject proposition also is critical and requires both a choice of objectives and selection of measurable outcomes that embody the objectives."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"For collective decision-making to remain genuinely broad-based, participants must monitor governance activity: they must read proposals, assess tradeoffs, follow discussion, and cast informed votes."

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination: DAO to DAO 3.0

"The core idea is that scale in a DAO should be understood not only as the number of proposals submitted, but as the monitoring burden those proposals impose on the voting community."

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination: DAO to DAO 3.0

"Governance proposals are often uncontroversial, so making them subject to voting is inefficient; instead, governance should focus on fewer, more controversial decisions."

src DAO Governance: Voting Power, Participation, and Controversy

"A.2 Pareto Efficiency... A.3 Monotonicity... A.4 Participation... A.5 Proportionality... A.6 Strategyproofness... A.7 Maximal Social Welfare (Minimal L1)"

src A Social Choice Analysis of Optimism's Retroactive Project Funding

"Governance Process has Proposal Creation Restricted... useful in very large DAOs to prevent spam and keep focus."

src A Taxonomy of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"digital democracy initiatives, such as those in Taiwan, have developed advanced deliberation tools that enhance reasoning, feedback, and sentiment analysis, thereby improving consensus-building and the identification of actionable options"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"strategically important proposals requiring more deliberation should be subject to a higher quorum, while a lower quorum with more operational proposals accounts for voter fatigue and allows the DAO to operate more efficiently"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"feedback loops (such as post-round reports, retrospective debates, and proposal design changes) help refine collective decisions over time"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"strong internal ties can catalyze swift decision-making and unity of purpose, but they may hinder broader outreach and innovation if the group closes itself off from external perspectives"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Future empirical research should systematically examine how DAOs experiment with hybrid governance solutions, such as partial off-chain deliberation, on-chain automated enforcement"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"refining this categorization framework, improving its granularity, and incorporating contextual factors that may affect the success or failure of proposals could optimize proposal design, enhance decision-making processes"

src DAO Research Trends: First European DAO Workshop (DAWO)

"the project highlights the need for a degree of human-centered, deliberative processes to complement algorithmic systems"

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"Outside the blockchain, the Governance Board, through Technical Support, will maintain email lists equivalent to the IETF/IRTF working groups (WGs) ... The GHAIA DAO Internet environment should host a repository of documents equivalent to IETF RFCs"

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"[66] Bianca Trovò and Nazzareno Massari. Ants-review: A privacy-oriented protocol for incentivized open peer review on ethereum."

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"If I knew a proposal would pass, I sometimes voted no. A two-to-one result let it pass but signaled concern"

src Using Kleros in Appeals and Dispute Resolution of Gitcoin Grants

"Tan, J., Merk, T., Hubbard, S., Oak, E. R., Rong, H., Pirovich, J., Rennie, E., Hoefer, R., Zargham, M., Potts, J., Berg, C., Youngblom, R., De Filippi, P., Frey, S., Strnad, J., Mannan, M., Nabben, K., Elrifai, S. N., Hartnell, J., … Boneh, D. (2023). Open Problems in DAOs."

src Using Kleros in Appeals and Dispute Resolution of Gitcoin Grants

Evidence 57 172 5 32

Practitioner (57) Supporting (172) Contrasting (5) Extending (32)

"“Furthermore this creates legal risks and uncertainty for stakeholders.”"

src Martin Schmidt (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Confidentiality vs transparency. Most governance proposals are usually not detailed or contextual enough because adding all the details may compromise or hand product features, trade secrets etc.""

src Gbiri Oluwaseun (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Or some decisions are shrouded in confidentiality agreements (mostly for good reasons) but this creates a problem regarding transparency.""

src Gbiri Oluwaseun (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""providing as much information as legally possible to better inform the right audience""

src Gbiri Oluwaseun (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""At just 3-4%, the ENS DAO's active voter engagement is far below the industry average of 25%""

src Participant 31 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""if a solution is integrative to the product, does it not essentially become part of the protocol, thus requiring a formal DAO vote""

src Participant 31 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""if you don't have direct execution power over the decision, the whole premise of decentralization and censorship resistance disappears""

src Participant 32 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""The actual governance of the project is whoever controls that circuit breaker""

src Participant 32 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""these two assets are inextricably linked, and they should belong within the same governance surface, isolating them just fragments the project""

src Participant 32 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""the governance token typically fails at aligning incentives across stakeholders because it has no viable claim over the economic upside of the underlying infrastructure""

src Participant 32 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""tokens should be treated as as equity""

src Participant 32 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""they should have on chain guarantees for the claims they have over infrastructure and more specifically over the capital flows""

src Participant 32 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""the governance process got overly fixated on distributing grants as opposed to growing the adoption of the underlying stack and capturing value back into the business""

src Participant 32 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""more directly tying the token to claims over the financial success of the underlying infrastructure""

src Participant 32 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""programmatic, excess cash distributions directed to token holders, whether through buybacks and burns or through buyback and distribute or through ve models""

src Participant 32 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""No hay una conexión entre la 'decisión de gobierno' y la 'verdad física' del resultado""

src Participant 9 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""La falta de 'Skin in the Game' físico es lo que impide la adopción real""

src Participant 9 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""En 2023, un tribunal de EE. UU. falló a favor de la CFTC contra Ooki DAO""

src Participant 9 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Esto significó que cualquier persona que hubiera votado en la gobernanza era personal y solidariamente responsable de las multas""

src Participant 9 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""la blockchain solo verificaba la existencia del certificado digital (estado discreto), pero estaba ciega a la realidad física del bosque""

src Participant 9 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""VERP ... crea un puente legal y físico resistente a la censura""

src Participant 9 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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.""

src Participant 21 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""It is important to ground any collective project in the what and why.""

src Participant 21 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Not governance for the sake of governance, but rather real control of material things.""

src Participant 21 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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.""

src Participant 15 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Most projects do not communicate the exact governance surface area clearly enough in documentation.""

src Participant 15 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""each ecosystem has their own unique set of values, goals and priorities that delegates unfortunately do not always understand""

src Participant 15 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Delegate onboarding programs/tests could be useful to ensure delegates understand exactly what your governance governs, understand priorities and strategy.""

src Participant 15 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Scroll's co-creation sprint project ... brings core team members/builders together with the community to help agree on annual priorities / strategy.""

src Participant 15 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Lack of leadership clarity from the protocol on their core priorities for the short term for the dao to align as such.""

src Participant 29 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Currently, most DAOs operate with little direction, i.e not moving towards a common goal.""

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""How are we evaluating if the projects we are spending money on contribute to that objective?""

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""I've seen projects that have been funded with 1M plus funding with zero oversight that does not contribute back to the DAOs core business model.""

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""when we decentralized in the too early or too in the beginning... founders don't have control over the implementation of it because it's already decentralized too early""

src Participant 45 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""I think the decentralization can be a part of, like, feedback mechanism, restricted to some domain, restricted to some part of it""

src Participant 45 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""there's no straightforward way to create a sort of 'hybrid-DAO entity' institution cross-over.""

src Participant 17 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“lack of educational resources like 'guides' to get insitutions started, and wobbly legal infrastructure for institutions to be able to simply begin DAO experiments.”"

src Participant 17 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""because if we don't know what we're trying to accomplish, what is the point of voting?""

src Participant 50 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""it needs to start with a clear definition of the purpose of the DAO and mapping stakeholders.""

src Participant 50 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""there are various tools and approaches towards working with the core stakeholders to identify the strategy and roadmap, and to get at least majority consensus.""

src Participant 50 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""clarifying the purpose of a DAO and setting realistic expectations, along with developing roadmaps of how to execute on the strategy""

src Participant 50 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Our nearly exclusive reliance on game-theoretical solutions to governance problems when they exist as a part of a continuum of potential solutions.""

src Participant 42 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Many Web3 organizations end up with brittle governance: systems that look elegant on paper but fail under real-world complexity, create hidden forms of centralization, and struggle to adapt as conditions change.""

src Participant 42 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Gitcoin ... are now investing in a constitution, professional delegates, steward training, and clearer roles and scopes.""

src Participant 42 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Protocols like Lido and others [are] experimenting with dual or layered governance after discovering that pure token voting produced apathy, whale dominance, and difficulty scaling complex technical decisions.""

src Participant 42 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""A gov framework of proven, legitimate practices that appeal to risk-averse audiences who don't want governance for the sake of governance""

src Workshop: compose smaller, more granular operational primitives

""Governance Around Priorities that can be measured ( eg: Fund Growth Projects, Ecosystem Needs)""

src Workshop: Experiment Sandboxes

""Governance Theater (Used for valuation or legal reasons)""

src Workshop: Governance Theater (Used for valuation or legal reasons)

""DAOs used as a legal risk hedging strategy rather than something cultivated for ppl to engage in""

src Workshop: Governance Theater (Used for valuation or legal reasons)

""Decentralisation" has been only Howey Test defence"

src Workshop: Governance never evolved beyond a growth hack

""Unclear motivation for why a team wants sufficient decentralization (regulatory? strategic? legitimacy/ ideological?)""

src Workshop: mission, vision, strategy discussions don't take place

""Clarify mission, vision, and strategy""

src Workshop: Lack of Mission/Vision/Strategy

""Lack of clarity on clear priority of the DAO/Org""

src Workshop: Lack of clarity of whose say is important

""Most DAOs copied gov from other DAOs vs designing for their needs""

src Workshop: Most DAOs copied gov from other DAOs vs designing for their needs

""Aligning organizational values to better scope the purpose, value, and 'right' structure of governance""

src Workshop: Smaller DAOs, no expectation of being fully public and open

""Learn from existing off-chain governance""

src Workshop: Learn from existing off-chain governance

""Need to use blockchain gov tooling on something IRL""

src Workshop: Concentration risk of Public Goods maintainers

"The study implies that platform governance design choices are crucial for DAO success"

src PDF Resources

"The EGPL aligns software incentives with public goods production by ensuring that downstream economic benefit returns to the network that maintains the infrastructure."

src Signals Protocol - d/acc residency 2025

"If governance is mission-critical (risk parameters, collateral decisions), you need: stable participation, informed voting blocs, clear compensation + accountability"

src 7 Governance Experiments That Didn’t End in Chaos

"Drive strategic alignment: Links capital deployment to long‑term intent so programs reinforce each other, outcomes are comparable, and progression can be measured across funding mechanisms."

src CAMF, a New Architecture for Crypto Funding Systems

"Need for clear differentiation: Consistent calls for defining Scroll’s unique value proposition in the crowded L2 space"

src Co-Creation Cycle #3 - Final Report - Governance Iterations

"Education as growth engine: Strong consensus that developer education and founder support are critical for long-term success"

src Co-Creation Cycle #3 - Final Report - Governance Iterations

"Education emerged as the highest priority domain in Session 2 but was deliberately skipped in Workshop 2 given existing activities planned by other ecosystem stakeholders."

src Co-Creation Cycle #3 - Final Report - Governance Iterations

"Notably, they are more or less embedded in existing legal structures; for instance, the constitution of Ethereum World explicitly mentions Swiss law."

src Constitutions of Web3

"We have coded the goals that appear most frequently as “create technology,” “spread technology” and “create community.”"

src Constitutions of Web3

"Examples of a prediction question: “What strategy will have the biggest long-term impact on sequencer revenue?”"

src DAO Decision Design Framework (Working Model)

"More objective economic frameworks should be developed to reduce self-preservation tendencies that accrue value for the DAO at the expense of the protocol."

src DAO Design Principles

"Based on our research, DAOs have not historically been good at: Designing ... Incubating ... Negotiating or licensing"

src DAO Function Guidelines (aka The Pizza Framework)

"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."

src Evidence Layer for Digital Public Goods

"It helps round operators, donors, and ecosystem stewards see how funding decisions align with the strategic priorities of the Ethereum community."

src GG24 Alignment Dashboard: Mapping Problems, Projects, and Funding

"In regulated environments, this can translate to compliance gaps and board liability."

src Governance Overload | Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"what are the things that are appropriate to do at a smaller scale with a smaller number of people with focused attention? And then what are the things where more dispersed attention is important?"

src Governance Overload | Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"the availability of stablecoins backed by highly liquid (and therefore stable) assets constrains the production choices of any one organization issuing stablecoins"

src Governance as Conflict: Constitution of Shared Values Defining Future Margins of Disagreement

"More generally, an organization's chosen purpose, through reifying a constitutive set of shared values, defining an internal political economy, and a set of competing organizations which members can plausibly join, is a principal determinant of the heterogeneity of member's preferences with respect to collective action."

src Governance as Conflict: Constitution of Shared Values Defining Future Margins of Disagreement

"Additional forces external to an organization that can demand internal collective action include those of the laws and regulations of society, whose changes often require a response from a given organization."

src Governance as Conflict: Constitution of Shared Values Defining Future Margins of Disagreement

"as a DAO's constitutive purpose... increases in scope and/or magnitude, that the need increases for ex-post adjudicative institutional solutions"

src Governance as Conflict: Constitution of Shared Values Defining Future Margins of Disagreement

""Alston et al (2021) define the scope of an organization's purpose as the number of distinct outputs that achieving an organization's purpose entails. They define the magnitude of an organization's purpose as the number of individuals the organization's output is intended to reach or influence.""

src Governance as Conflict: Constitution of Shared Values Defining Future Margins of Disagreement

"The purpose of Optimism governance is to reduce platform risk for the Collective's stakeholders."

src Governance in Season 8: The Next Phase

"By combining technological innovation with social wisdom, RI’s goal is to provide a framework for addressing complex global challenges like climate change"

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"we developed cutting-edge technologies... all in close collaboration with local and Indigenous knowledge holders"

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"The same vulnerabilities I exploited in ten minutes—adversarial framing, invisible prompt injections, exploiting the model’s priors—can feasibly work anywhere AI sits between a human and a consequential choice. Shareholder votes today. Ballot initiatives tomorrow. DAO treasuries. Legislation."

src I Built Myself an AI Delegate—And Then I Broke It

"the DUNA statutes provide a way for DAOs... to receive automatic legal protection if they identify with and adhere to its terms."

src Majeur: Major Governance Upgrade

"This work continues a broader initiative aimed at advancing retrospective funding mechanisms toward recurrent, concurrent, and ROI-positive systems"

src Measuring On-Chain Impact of RetroPGF Season 7: An Exploratory Causal Analysis

"Any definition of "impact" should be co-developed with round managers and the community to align with program goals and shared norms."

src Measuring On-Chain Impact of RetroPGF Season 7: An Exploratory Causal Analysis

"Even the best developed mutualist organizations are constrained by legal and financial infrastructure built for more traditional forms of business."

src Networked Cooperative Ecosystems

"Registered as a U.S. non-profit and a Moroccan cooperative, Anou presents an antidote to models that rely on middlemen, using technology to connect artisans directly to consumers."

src Networked Cooperative Ecosystems

"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."

src Networked Cooperative Ecosystems

"Smart addresses this administrative and legal challenge through the form of the cooperative"

src Networked Cooperative Ecosystems

"in its role as investor, its decisions must balance economic sustainability with the desire for social and economic change through cooperativism."

src Networked Cooperative Ecosystems

"Over the long run, Optimism seeks to measure whether Retro Funding is shifting developer attention and incentives, and ultimately leading to faster innovation cycles, more winning apps going to market on the Superchain, and increasing revenue for the Collective."

src Part 1: Analyzing the impact of Retro Funding Season 7: Developer Tooling | Open Source Observer

"Did this OP spent today bring tomorrow's builders to Optimism faster than any alternative?"

src Part 1: Analyzing the impact of Retro Funding Season 7: Developer Tooling | Open Source Observer

"Over the long run, Optimism seeks to measure whether Retro Funding is shifting developer attention and incentives, and ultimately leading to faster innovation cycles, more winning apps going to market on the Superchain, and increasing revenue for the Collective."

src Part 2: Analyzing the impact of Retro Funding Season 7: Onchain Builders | Open Source Observer

"This impact should be evidenced by the following success metrics: 1. Increased Superchain TVL 2. Increased demand for Superchain blockspace"

src Part 2: Analyzing the impact of Retro Funding Season 7: Onchain Builders | Open Source Observer

"Over the next ~6 months, the Foundation plans to address the above failure modes, and work towards delivering the unique value propositions of Optimism governance, 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"

src Season 9: From Experiment to Organization - Optimism

"This is especially true for an organization at Optimism’s stage in development, which has early product-market fit but must ruthlessly prioritize in order to scale and become profitable."

src Season 9: From Experiment to Organization - Optimism

"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."

src Season 9: From Experiment to Organization - Optimism

"While the US legal landscape for token and governance remains in motion, we are not waiting for “clarity” to take action. OBOL has transitioned to a new operational phase focused on Protocol-Owned Liquidity and market health."

src Strategic Update: The OBOL Economic Engine & Governance Realignment - Announcements

"The Obol Association is currently based in Switzerland with one key constraint: governance is non-binding. We are therefore closely monitoring regulatory developments to assess whether clearer frameworks or alternative structures may emerge that would allow us to establish a governance structure that is more appropriate, meaningful, and legally robust for Obol."

src Strategic Update: The OBOL Economic Engine & Governance Realignment - Announcements

"The mission of BlockScience is to bridge the digital and physical worlds through innovative and sustainable engineering. We guide the development and governance of safe, ethical, and resilient socio-technical systems, leveraging emerging technologies to solve complex problems."

src The Animating Purpose of BlockScience

"The Token House is responsible for decisions that affect business parameters of the system such as inflation or the variables that govern sequencer selection."

src The Future of Optimism Governance

"Existing standards rarely embed cultural norms, moral expectations, or local legal obligations."

src Turning to Trust Experience Design (TXD)

"The primary topics identified are the effective management and governance of the platform and community and the platform’s strategic growth, with a particular emphasis on wearable technology."

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations—Governance, Technology, and Legal Perspectives

"the community is focused on a wide range of topics, including the current infrastructure and practices in order to develop and expand the platform."

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations—Governance, Technology, and Legal Perspectives

"we find centralized governance exerts complex influence on the adoption of Maker protocol."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"The main implication of this study is that centralized governance in MakerDAO tokens, governance very much exists, while DeFi investors face a trade-off between decentralization and performance of a DeFi protocol."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"The DAI market cap is expected to be a metric of the performance of Maker protocol as well."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"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."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"the proposed approach is limited to economic DAOs, which are defined as DAOs with publicly traded governance tokens for which the token value reflects the inherent value of the enterprise."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"At any point after the initiation of the DAO, the mechanism will facilitate the implementation of the value-additive project that results in the highest social surplus"

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"Suppose that among all of the potential bidders’ possible business plans, the business plan (V*, C*) creates the largest amount of social surplus"

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"The goal is to cause the winning bidder to also lower its surplus claim... Successful surplus claim underbidding is socially desirable because more social surplus is shifted to the T1 token holders, which results in a positive investment impact while not affecting the result that the best business plan is put into effect."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"In this case, the social optimum is to end the DAO and distribute the treasury to the token holders, permitting re-investment of the treasury assets in more promising projects."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"In one common organizational structure, the DAO is embodied as a Swiss Foundation. The Foundation acts as a wrapper, creating legal personhood for the DAO, with concomitant limited liability."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"A key issue for both DAOs in general and for the mechanism in particular is the extent to which the associated technologies reduce the need for regulation. “Regulatory equivalence” exists if elements in the technology achieve the same purpose as regulation."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"The mechanism creates some regulatory opportunities, ways in which a DAO may fit more easily within regulatory regimes without compromising its central purposes."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"The ability of the control party to interact with regulators creates a shield for other parties, such as developers, validators, and token holders."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"Here, we have taken the position that the goal is to maximize the value of each DAO project with respect to an extended community that includes both present and potential future participants."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"The institutional investor can focus purely on the question of choosing a business plan that maximizes social surplus creation, aligning their motivation exactly with the auction mechanism."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"The study implies that platform governance design choices are crucial for DAO success."

src Voting Governance and Value Creation in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"Our study seeks to address this gap by exploring the impact of on- vs. off-chain voting governance on DAO valuation."

src Voting Governance and Value Creation in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"we find that DAOs that implement on-chain voting from the very beginning raise five times more funds than those governed off-chain."

src Voting Governance and Value Creation in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"For policymakers, our study has important implications, as DAOs are largely unregulated in most jurisdictions, yet they promise to become central entities in the emerging metaverse"

src Voting Governance and Value Creation in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"Considering the two main reasons for the existence of these tokens, it becomes apparent that token distribution is a critical factor in the protocols’ decentralization efforts."

src Decentralized Finance, Centralized Ownership?

"Future work should look at long-term effects, compare cases across municipalities, and examine the role of legal and regulatory frameworks."

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"Such an assessment ensures that the implementation of DAOs is tailored to the community's real needs and guided by measurable goals such as transparency, participation, and service innovation."

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"It must comply with Swiss association laws"

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"Caviezel, M., Spychiger, F., & Stallone, V. (2024). Aspects for implementations of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) in Switzerland. ... Diallo, N., ... (2018). eGov-DAO: A better government using blockchain-based decentralized autonomous organization. ... Ietto, B., ... (2023). Blockchain for citizens' participation in urban planning: The case of the city of Berlin."

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"the teams evaluate the balance between decentralization, incentivized participation and the need to secure venture capital"

src Demystifying the DAO Governance Process

"Transparent and decentralized governance for these core protocols is of utmost importance, reinforcing the call for design-driven research of on-chain governance mechanisms."

src Demystifying the DAO Governance Process

"these insights have significant implications regarding accountability. Moreover, they are relevant in the context of current regulatory initiatives aimed at pinpointing the individuals who either control or exert notable influence over DeFi operations or structures"

src Is DAO Governance Fostering Democracy?

"a significant concern for regulators currently formulating policy recommendations for Decentralized Finance (DeFi) systems"

src Is DAO Governance Fostering Democracy?

"it offers a systematic investigation into the role of vested users in the governance of DAOs. This, in turn, can provide valuable insights and inform ongoing regulatory debates on that topic."

src Is DAO Governance Fostering Democracy?

"These proposals can change any aspect of the DAO, such as allocating funds, changing risk parameters of a Decentralized Finance (DeFi) application, upgrading the protocol, changing the rule for governance, or engaging in partnerships with other DAOs or companies."

src Delegation and Participation in Decentralized Governance

"Partnerships and Ecosystem Development (PED) ... engaging in regulatory and legal activism"

src Delegation and Participation in Decentralized Governance

"The DAO Model Law [30]... seeks to bridge the divide between DAOs and traditional regulatory frameworks yet to adapt to new company structures fostered by the blockchain."

src Understanding Security Issues in the DAO Governance Process

"This integration not only complements existing frameworks but also introduces innovative mechanisms for compliance, transparency, and participatory governance, ensuring that autonomous AI agents are managed effectively and ethically on a global scale."

src Evaluating DAO Sustainability and Longevity

"Inspired by existing tiered risk classification systems like those in the EU AI Act, the framework grouped AI agents into four tiers"

src Evaluating DAO Sustainability and Longevity

"Given the global nature of AI development and deployment, international coordination is vital to promoting harmonized regulations across jurisdictions... reducing fragmentation and ensuring consistent governance of AI agents."

src Evaluating DAO Sustainability and Longevity

"The recent opinion by the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) on the use of personal data in the development and deployment of AI models underscores the critical need to balance innovation with the protection of fundamental rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)"

src Evaluating DAO Sustainability and Longevity

"A key regulatory concern is whether these platforms are “sufficiently decentralized,” a designation that can exempt them from certain legal frameworks, including the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation."

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"Governance decisions fall into two broad categories. The first involves technical and economic decisions, such as protocol configuration changes"

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"our results reveal that their delegated voting power may inadvertently reinforce a16z’s control even when delegating to an at first apparently independent delegate."

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"Legal uncertainties persist in many jurisdictions, raising questions about liability [12], despite the fact that some jurisdictions have begun formalizing DAO-friendly statutes"

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"Evaluating DAOs as complex socio-technical systems, rather than through isolated metrics, provides a more accurate account of their governance dynamics."

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"All these results are significant because epistemic performance matters if entities such as DAOs... wish to compete with organizations that are more centralized."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"for independent transfer delegation by whales to be properly incentivized, the DAO must be an economic DAO, which we defined in subsection 2.1 as one for which the aggregate token value reflects the value of the project."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"There also are regulatory factors. Some approaches such as the FIT21 legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and pending in the U.S. Senate create quantitative ownership tests that determine regulatory treatment."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"Some approaches such as the FIT21 legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and pending in the U.S. Senate create quantitative ownership tests that determine regulatory treatment."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"For economic DAOs, there is an obvious governance objective that emerges from capital market pressures: maximizing market capitalization."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"“House Passes Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act with Overwhelming Bipartisan Support”"

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"The primary goal is to capture the “ground truth” of which projects have contributed the most value to the ecosystem."

src A Social Choice Analysis of Optimism's Retroactive Project Funding

"Purpose Community Building and Engagement (13) Product Building and Management (48) Investing or Fund Raising (11)"

src A Taxonomy of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"Has Legal Entity Yes – No"

src A Taxonomy of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"Purpose tries to describe roughly what a DAO’s main goal is... Community Building and Engagement, Product Building and Management, and Investing or Fund Raising."

src A Taxonomy of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"They invite consideration of whether the structure of attention in a system is appropriate, efficient, and just."

src Online Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"Finally, the theme of legal and regulatory transformation explores how existing frameworks must evolve to accommodate the decentralized and autonomous nature of DAOs."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"the primary function of a contribution system is to create and sustain a contribution economy"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Discussion of important design decisions in Bitcoin, such as the lack of a legal entity or the permissionless entry into the organization, put into the context of recent developments, e.g., Bitcoin ETFs"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"mechanisms supporting Bitcoin’s viability, such as the absence of a legal entity, that stem from its core value of permissionlessness."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"poses the risk of the DAO being considered centralised by regulators and being regulated as such"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"governance design is influenced by conflicting interests which do not primarily optimise for good governance"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Unlike market-driven cryptocurrencies, these applications require governance and token systems tailored to collaborative objectives"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"The motivation for this research is based on the increasing interest in utilizing blockchain technology for social good and non-speculative applications"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"This supplementary framework would enable users to conceptualize and implement tokenized systems that align with their specific economic, social, and governance objectives"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"The guiding principle is that “impact should be rewarded,” and therefore projects creating ecosystem value should be financially supported."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"we focus on how well various mechanisms perform with respect to efficiency, strategic resistance, and fairness under realistic voter models"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"this study advocates tailored governance strategies, ranging from reputation-based voting models to legally compliant organizational wrappers"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"This study aims not only to provide theoretical clarity but also to point toward practical recommendations, including governance token design, liability structuring, and ways of fortifying trust among disparate participants"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"DAOs navigating securities laws or seeking to limit liability exposure often introduce centralized governance elements"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"The decentralized architecture of DAOs raises significant barriers to conventional regulatory efforts, calling for innovative regulatory approaches to address these digital and boundary-less entities."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"the rules that should be enacted for algorithmic intermediaries should be significantly different from those currently in place for traditional intermediaries"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"the New Code is dedicated to; (i) proffering resolutions to previously identified issues, (ii) rectifying deficiencies in existing regulations, (iii) proposing a harmonized and internationally applicable regulation..."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"this New Code is dedicated to; (i) proffering resolutions to previously identified issues, (ii) rectifying deficiencies in existing regulations, (iii) proposing a harmonized and internationally applicable regulation"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Given the rapid advancement of technology, it is imperative to incorporate solutions rooted in innovative approaches into contemporary legal systems rather than merely adapting traditional models."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"The legal structuring of DAOs, which bridge the digital blockchain environment with traditional legal frameworks, remains an evolving field that requires careful consideration of regulatory compliance, governance efficiency, and the core principles of decentralisation."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Ongoing regulatory developments will determine how much DAOs can achieve mainstream adoption while preserving their decentralised governance models."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Another critical provision of the MiCA Regulation is Recital 74... This requirement has significant implications for DAOs seeking to provide crypto-asset services within the EU. Specifically, DAOs must adopt a recognised legal structure and establish a registered office in an EU Member State."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Therefore, governance tokens—viewed as utility tokens with partial investment functions—may fall within the scope of MiCA. In that case, the DAO to make an ICO of governance token should be a legal person within the EU106 (wrappedDAO), thus integrating the formal tax nexus with the jurisdiction of incorporation of the legal entity."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"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."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Additional enhancements include AI-powered analytics, automated treasury management, and regulatory compliance modules to support a wider range of organizational use cases"

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations For Governance And Operations

"All Foundation governance team goals must tie to a source legitimacy"

src Optimism's Legitimacy Framework

"Forgoing ballot secrecy is to regress centuries of progress, violate human rights and returning coercion and inequality as norms"

src Perils of Current DAO Governance

"UN General Assembly: Universal declaration of human rights."

src Perils of Current DAO Governance

"Exlopring how our findings can be related/reflected to real-world scenarios, in particular for policy considerations."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"DAOs exhibit a broad range of voting contexts, covering topics from budget allocations and project funding to community events and hiring decisions."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"legal services (LegalDAO)"

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"Properly embracing legal regulation can avoid the above problems. Laws or regulations about blockchain governance need to be properly established"

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"governance primarily comes from governments of different countries, even though blockchain is designed to be decentralized."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"Ethereum (after the Merge) PoS validators who rely on MEV-boots services may be monitored and regulated by the government (OFAC-compliant [74]). Additionally, pure cryptocurrency companies can also be governed. A noteworthy example is the US sanctions against Tornadocash [75]."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"important questions concerning the compatibility with current economic and regulatory frameworks"

src DAO Research Trends: First European DAO Workshop (DAWO)

"coherent legal frameworks to support decentralized operations"

src DAO Research Trends: First European DAO Workshop (DAWO)

"it will be crucial to create tailored designs that address the unique requirements of different industries. This involves ensuring that DAOs can integrate effectively with existing and complex organizational systems"

src DAO Research Trends: First European DAO Workshop (DAWO)

"there is a need to collaborate with policymakers and legal experts to navigate and resolve ambiguities, ensuring that DAOs can function within clear and supportive legal frameworks"

src DAO Research Trends: First European DAO Workshop (DAWO)

"The DAO Model Law [30], a type of Model Law [34], aims to bridge the gap between DAOs and traditional regulatory frameworks, which have yet to adapt to the new organizational structures enabled by blockchain."

src The Dao of the DAO: Eastern Philosophies in Decentralized Worlds

"Further, it underscores the environmental costs of blockchain infrastructure... Ultimately, the authors propose a “dual imperative”: to develop context-sensitive, inclusive governance architectures within DAOs, while pursuing international legal recognition and standards."

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"MiCA emphasizes consumer protection and operational transparency, which could pressure DAOs to adopt more formal structures or partner with compliant entities if they wish to serve EU users."

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"Switzerland’s canton of Zug, often referred to as “Crypto Valley”, has developed progressive laws that allow DAOs to register as legal entities, such as associations or foundations... This legal recognition provides DAOs with the ability to enter into contracts, hold assets, and interact with traditional financial systems, while still preserving aspects of decentralization."

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"empirical studies should explore how DAOs can adopt legal entities such as LLCs, cooperatives, or trusts while preserving decentralization"

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"market volatility led to the devaluation of FairCoin, undermining its ability to sustain the network"

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"ThisstudyismotivatedbytheneedtounderstandhowDAOscanovercomewell-documentedgovernancechallengesandsupport participatory, regenerative development, particularly in resource-constrained environments"

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"⁃Field-tested use cases: implemented across diverse real-world contexts including energy, climate, and economic regeneration initiatives ⁃Community validation: actively shaped by practical input and iterative feedback from actual users"

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"The economic model of the GHAIA DAO’s operating structure must be formally constructed prior to its establishment."

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"DAOs are not yet regulated in many countries, which can create legal uncertainty."

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"Roger Clarke. Regulatory alternatives for ai. Computer Law & Security Review, 35(4):398–409, 2019."

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"We shall suppose that in the normal course of events each of the firm's securities is in the hands of a large number of small investors (i.e., the corporation is widely held)"

src One Share/One Vote and the Market for Corporate Control

"Empirically, private benefits are, in most cases, forced to be small by.the fiduciary responsibility of management, and by the minority shareholders' appraisal remedy."

src One Share/One Vote and the Market for Corporate Control

"legal doctrines of "fiduciary responsibility" and "fairness" will prevent them from being large very frequently."

src One Share/One Vote and the Market for Corporate Control

"It is difficult to know how the courts will deal with these issues in the abstract"

src One Share/One Vote and the Market for Corporate Control

"We thus see no reason to interfere with the ability of a new company to choose a corporate charter and security structure which gives it the lowest cost of raising capital."

src One Share/One Vote and the Market for Corporate Control

"Even if it is undesirable to allow post changes in security/voting structures, this has no particular implication for legislation regarding listing requirements. An Exchange's listing requirements are an attempt to provide information to traders about the characteristics of the securities being traded."

src One Share/One Vote and the Market for Corporate Control

"This makes sense when we interpret one of the bidders as the incumbent, but does not make sense if neither bidder is the incumbent."

src One Share/One Vote and the Market for Corporate Control

"Indeed, an important regulatory concern in this space is how to police misleading characterizations, particularly regarding the extent of decentralization"

src Control of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"These findings carry significant implications for the classification of DAO tokens as securities, hinging on their genuinely decentralized decision-making attributes."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"DAOs provide early-stage entrepreneurs with a protective layer through a novel organizational structure, underpinned by technological barriers and distinct ideologies."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"a16z recommends entrepreneurs in its portfolio adopt a strategy known as “progressive decentralization.” This approach entails that, following the creation of a product and the formulation of basic governance guidelines, the founding team should swiftly transition control to the community, ultimately attaining a sufficient level of decentralization."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"If empirical evidence corroborates this hypothesis of low voter participation, it would suggest that achieving a genuinely decentralized decision-making process is an elusive goal. As a result, DAOs should not be granted special recognition under corporate law and securities regulations."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"By analyzing the subjects of voting proposals and the support they receive, one can determine which matters fall within the purview of token holders for governance"

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"The sector in which each DAO operates influences the proposal types that attract voters."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"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."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"The proposed “probationary business classification,” grounded in voting data, offers a potential regulatory solution to address the classification challenges posed by varying levels of decentralization in DAOs."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"ensuring those with influence over governance decisions have a vested and long-term interest in the community’s success."

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"This self-sorting better aligns the scope of beneficiaries (those who benefit from decisions) with payers (those who fund or bear the costs of those decisions)."

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"community currencies expand the possibility space to rectify externalities without necessarily compromising profit."

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"the most meaningful exchanges remain in person, within trusted relationships. Community AI agents—rooted in local relationships and deputized to extend cooperation—can serve as the foundation for a bottom-up alternative"

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"Although blockchain-based projects operate under significant regulatory constraints, grassroots DAOs have nonetheless taken shape... structural exclusion from global financial circuits and recurring challenges in sustaining finance-oriented models compelled SeeDAO to pivot toward community-centered activities... reorient the community toward public-interest projects and offline engagements"

src Using Kleros in Appeals and Dispute Resolution of Gitcoin Grants

"We realized our goal wasn’t to make money but to build relationships"

src Using Kleros in Appeals and Dispute Resolution of Gitcoin Grants

"their governance will likely evolve to align in accordance with their objectives. Such objectives may differ considerably from those of corporations."

src DAO Governance: Decentralized But Not So Disorganized

"Regulatory resources, therefore, would be better directed toward addressing harmful behaviors, such as insider trading and other actions that threaten market integrity, rather than imposing one-size-fits-all governance rules."

src DAO Governance: Decentralized But Not So Disorganized

"Governance centralization, however, appears to mitigate this effect."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"Implementation challenges arise from the difficulty of achieving global consensus on ethical principles and governance standards, which may lead to fragmented adoption."

src Evaluating DAO Sustainability and Longevity

"The two “innocent” goals of (i) allowing unrestricted participation in governance by bidding for shares (and associated voting rights) and (ii) safeguarding members from majority attacks by allowing them to exit and redeem their share can combine in practice to yield unintended consequences"

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"Consequently, requiring human oversight within DAOs would fundamentally conflict with their intended autonomous operational model and could undermine their functionality and efficiency."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"it remains assertable, within the existing legal regime, that classifying DAO as a JSC is not feasible de lege lata neither under Turkish Law nor German Law."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"These findings carry significant implications for the classification of DAO tokens as securities"

src PDF Resources

"to elucidate the lived experiences and ethical visions of DAO participants in China"

src The Dao of the DAO Eastern Philosophies in Decentralized Worlds

"The Evidence Layer is the foundation for making scientific knowledge usable in the field"

src Evidence Layer for Digital Public Goods

"the potential value of new organizational forms cannot be understood without a firm grounding in the efficiencies (and equities) that existing legacy systems have provided"

src Governance as Conflict: Constitution of Shared Values Defining Future Margins of Disagreement

"This automated legal protection is provided to simplify the cold-start problem for many DAOs, that want some level of bare legal protection to even figure out what they are doing without incurring liability"

src Majeur: Major Governance Upgrade

"Is the investment in these projects ROI-positive — meaning, does the additional transaction volume generated (multiplied by the Superchain sequencer fees) exceed the amount of funding received?"

src Measuring On-Chain Impact of RetroPGF Season 7: An Exploratory Causal Analysis

"The question isn't whether fees exceed funding, but whether funding changed behavior meaningfully."

src Measuring On-Chain Impact of RetroPGF Season 7: An Exploratory Causal Analysis

"Möltner is working with a cross-sector group called GenoDigital to lobby the government to modernise cooperative law, calling for small but critical changes in policy to allow for digital membership, coop formation, and registration"

src Networked Cooperative Ecosystems

"The following year, the Hungarian and Dutch experiments were put on hold, and the Netherlands foundation formally wound down in 2022. In the same year, Smart France was put into receivership for a brief period while the cooperative reorganised its affairs, which had seen a 26% decrease in revenue"

src Networked Cooperative Ecosystems

"We consider a project successful only when our work improves the lives of others."

src The Animating Purpose of BlockScience

"more decentralized governance (e.g., a higher number of voters) has positive effects (e.g., an increase in trading volume), while higher Gini can negatively affect MKR and DAI"

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"the potential bidder chooses the business plan (V*, C*) that results in ψ = ψ*, the largest possible social surplus"

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"Bidding intensity and the viability of the mechanism itself depend on capital market adequacy, the depth and development of capital markets."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"The second kind of regulation can be described as a joint and several responsibility approach. Some party or set of parties must be responsible for meeting traditional regulatory requirements, and in the absence of a designated party or parties, a wide variety of participants are effectively at risk of being held responsible"

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"DAOs are best suited for long-term, ongoing projects that require high levels of transparency, member engagement, and automated processes"

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"Considering that the DAO Model Law[34], as referenced in Section II-C, prescribes specific rules for documentation, we have consolidated the documentation requirements from the DAO Model Law into the following six rules."

src Understanding Security Issues in the DAO Governance Process

"how to create governance that is both decentralized and efficient enough to be competitive with centralized alternatives."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"Governance issues that directly or indirectly impact voting power distribution, participation, and controversy include legal ambiguities, rigidity, and voting misconduct... Beyond operational concerns, the long-term sustainability and adoption of these governance models remain persistent challenges."

src DAO Governance: Voting Power, Participation, and Controversy

"Has Legal Entity: Specifies whether a DAO has an underlying legal structure."

src A Taxonomy of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"future DAO designs may adopt hybrid forms, balancing legal interoperability with permissionless organizations"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"the Sponsor [iShares Delaware Trust Sponsor LLC] will, if permitted by the terms of the Trust Agreement, use its discretion to determine which network should be considered the appropriate network for the Trust’s purposes"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"considering (correctly) DAOs as infrastructure rather than enterprises could be a solution to find a way to regulate these entities"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"a potential investor deciding to interact with a Protocol DAO that has not received the authorization label will bear full risk and responsibility of his acts"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Nabben, K.: Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) as Data Trusts: A general-purpose data governance framework for decentralised data ownership, storage, and utilisation."

src Perils of Current DAO Governance

"the creation of robust marketing and product design departments is essential. These departments should develop effective product and content strategies that align with the principles of each DAO project."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"a framework for evaluating the business value of DAOs from an open systems perspective"

src DAO Research Trends: First European DAO Workshop (DAWO)

"our method leverages LLM to verify whether the provided DAO documentation aligns with the requirements outlined in the DAO model laws."

src The Dao of the DAO: Eastern Philosophies in Decentralized Worlds

"In 2021, Wyoming became the first U.S. state to legally recognize DAOs... DAO can obtain legal personhood, meaning they can enter contracts, own assets, and benefit from limited liability protections"

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"issues around legal status and liability remain unresolved... the emergence of DAO-recognized legal entities in jurisdictions such as the Marshall Islands, Wyoming, and Liechtenstein reflects a growing willingness to provide legal scaffolding"

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"communities—such as academic societies, open-source software groups, churches, or artistic collectives—pursue non-financial goals"

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"Applied to artificial intelligence, community currencies offer a way to embed social context into neural networks"

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"The implications extend beyond provisioning to reimagining credit and insurance systems; reframing policy debates about trade and security (or speech and censorship); and even updating regulatory regimes designed in the analogue age for greater coherence and legitimacy in the digital age."

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

Evidence 84 137 2 44

Practitioner (84) Supporting (137) Contrasting (2) Extending (44)

"“DAOs and other organizations often fall back on highly centralized decision-making that is intransparent and potentially unfair.”"

src Martin Schmidt (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“(ii) investment rules in DAO treasuries being unclear and the source of contention (iii) foundations overriding DAO member votes (iv) self-dealing and quid-pro-quo handouts of DAO treasury funds”"

src Martin Schmidt (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“impact reporting... compliance and verification and being able to document... we've only really looked at it narrowly through the lens of finances.”"

src Afolabi Aiyeloja (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“we're building Green Goods, which is a impact reporting platform, built on... Arbitrum... supports... attest to work on chain... bundle that work into hypercerts as impact certificates.”"

src Afolabi Aiyeloja (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“with those hypercerts, have a capital formation mechanism... where funders could put funds into the vault.”"

src Afolabi Aiyeloja (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Confidentiality vs transparency. Most governance proposals are usually not detailed or contextual enough because adding all the details may compromise or hand product features, trade secrets etc.""

src Gbiri Oluwaseun (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Or some decisions are shrouded in confidentiality agreements (mostly for good reasons) but this creates a problem regarding transparency.""

src Gbiri Oluwaseun (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""And poses the question of if I am voting for a decision which I just have little or half context, then what really am I voting for?""

src Gbiri Oluwaseun (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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""

src Gbiri Oluwaseun (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"More effective treasury management and capital allocation"

src Mike Cooper (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"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"

src Mike Cooper (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"Unsusintable treasury spending versus inflows, lack of return on capital investments"

src Mike Cooper (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"Evidence driven treasury policy and management, results focused capital allocation strategy"

src Mike Cooper (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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.""

src Katashe Solutions (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""To form a coherent view of governance health, participation quality, proposal velocity, delegate concentration, or emerging conflicts requires significant manual synthesis.""

src Katashe Solutions (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""One approach to addressing this challenge is the development of AI-assisted governance intelligence agents that move beyond raw data aggregation toward contextual synthesis.""

src Katashe Solutions (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""There is still limited infrastructure that meaningfully integrates qualitative governance judgment with quantitative onchain signals.""

src Katashe Solutions (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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.""

src Katashe Solutions (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Treasury spending as monetary policy without price discovery: communities treat the treasury like a grant program, but it’s effectively inflation-funded procurement”"

src Karam (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Funding norms get anchored by precedent (‘we paid X before, so X is fair’), which quietly turns one-off approvals into long-term entitlements”"

src Karam (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Recurring proposals with ambiguous scopes, rising ‘market rate’ claims that don’t map to measurable outcomes, and retroactive asks that create moral hazard”"

src Karam (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Accountability without institutional memory: chains have perfect data, but governance often has amnesia”"

src Karam (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“the system can’t reliably answer ‘what did we buy, did it work, and what did it cost us over time?’”"

src Karam (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“debates restart from zero each cycle, and ‘reputation’ becomes storytelling rather than a verified track record”"

src Karam (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Move from ‘funding as applause’ to procurement as governance: require a pre-flight packet (scope, milestones, acceptance criteria, maintenance expectations, rate justification)”"

src Karam (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“normalize ‘no technical review = no funding’ for technical work”"

src Karam (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Critical maintainers need continued funding, this is non-negotiable.""

src Participant 13 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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""

src Participant 13 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""El dinero no va al valor, y el valor no va al dinero.""

src Participant 25 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Muchas DAOs tiene programas de grants y esperan a que aparezcan great builders, pero acaban apareciendo equipos y proposals optimizadas para recibir la grant y no tanto para los resultados""

src Participant 25 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Academic research found that only around 40% of grant-funded projects remained active one year after receiving funding.""

src Participant 25 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""According to @CornaroLabs, only 2.4% of EU-funded blockchain projects reach a technical demonstrator or pilot.""

src Participant 25 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""When grant systems reward documentation over deployment, outcomes follow incentives, regardless of the tech.""

src Participant 25 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Para el tema de dinero-valor. Mas scouting como el mundo tradicional.""

src Participant 25 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""los procesos de grants generan selección adversa: atraen a equipos optimizados para navegar gobernanza, no necesariamente a los mejores builders""

src Participant 25 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Sin incorporar intermediarios activos (scouting, curaduría, delegados profesionales) y asumir estas restricciones humanas, los programas seguirán financiando legibilidad y proceso más que impacto real.""

src Participant 25 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Given a problem domain (eg. Delegations) how vendors pitch ideas, how the selection happens is oqpaque.”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Since the identification of the problem and selection of the solution there has been zero communication as to the implementation”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“As a result we have minimal clarity on how the core problem is actually being solved.”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“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.”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Currently we see DAOs paying a premium with zero competition or sane evaluation of the tender process.”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Currently, most DAOs operate with little direction, i.e not moving towards a common goal.”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“How are we evaluating if the projects we are spending money on contribute to that objective?”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“I've seen projects that have been funded with 1M plus funding with zero oversight that does not contribute back to the DAOs core business model.”"

src Participant 26 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""250,000 USDC that had been transferred to SpruceID ... sat idle in SpruceID's wallet for over a year""

src Participant 31 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""the DAO's financial reports were fragmented across various sources""

src Participant 31 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""This pressure helped validate the community concern and led to proposals for a centralized financial dashboard RFP""

src Participant 31 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""if an active proposal is put forward to dissolve a working group, all working group funds, including outgoing payments, must be immediately frozen""

src Participant 31 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""they should have on chain guarantees for the claims they have over infrastructure and more specifically over the capital flows""

src Participant 32 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""the governance process got overly fixated on distributing grants as opposed to growing the adoption of the underlying stack and capturing value back into the business""

src Participant 32 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""a fundraising mechanism that releases or makes funds available to the team, based on milestones being met is a big one""

src Participant 32 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""the capital would become available to the teams based on meeting specific milestones""

src Participant 32 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Foundation is taking on 'DAO operations' work - i..e. management of the treasury without any visibility or current transparency of the spend.""

src Participant 37 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Just 'approve this budget and trust us'.""

src Participant 37 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Not just the Grants committee, but marketing, audits, treasury/expenses management, proposal project management and DIP program management.""

src Participant 37 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“value of data accrues to private companies”"

src Participant 41 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Protocols lack structured systems to retain and transmit governance decisions across contributor turnover cycles.""

src Participant 46 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""This causes repeated mistakes, redundant proposals, and erosion of institutional knowledge.""

src Participant 46 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""The technical infrastructure exists: we have on-chain voting records, forum archives, Discord logs, GitHub repos. The raw data is technically stored. The problem is that this data is cognitively inaccessible without structured interpretation.""

src Participant 46 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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.""

src Participant 46 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""In the GMS framework I'm developing, I call this the Proposal Lifecycle Metadata problem.""

src Participant 46 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""You can technically find a past proposal in an explorer, but you can't easily answer: Who authored it? What problem was it trying to solve? How did it evolve during discussion? What happened after implementation? Were there unintended consequences?""

src Participant 46 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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.""

src Participant 46 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Proposal Lifecycle Metadata (PLM): Structured tagging for proposals that captures authorship, problem statement, discussion evolution, and implementation status.""

src Participant 46 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""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.""

src Participant 46 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Governance Health Index (GHI): A diagnostic framework I developed that assesses five dimensions - Inclusiveness, Transparency, Feedback Loops, Accountability, and Coordination Infrastructure.""

src Participant 46 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""In the GMS framework I'm developing, I call this the Proposal Lifecycle Metadata problem.""

src Participant 46 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""In the terms of governance security, solutions to surface risk and allow for easier reading of complex blockchain data is essential too""

src Participant 48 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"Governance Around Priorities that can be measured ( eg: Fund Growth Projects, Ecosystem Needs)"

src Workshop: Experiment Sandboxes

"“evaluation/accountability councils of agents (eg using GenLayer) to bring down the very high cost of evaluation, which is a key input into accountability mechanisms”"

src Workshop: compose smaller, more granular operational primitives

"Using Frontier AI as a means to screen governance proposals and provide feedback"

src Workshop: Using Frontier AI as a means to screen proposals and provide feedback LINK

"Applying tools from econometrics/ econ policy evaluation, and web2 experimentation eg A/B testing could be a great start"

src Workshop: Using Frontier AI as a means to screen proposals and provide feedback LINK

""Contributor value is typically better tracked implicitly""

src Workshop: Contributor value is typically better tracked implicitly

""Having to play the politics game in order to get funding approval, rather than being evaluated against an outcome""

src Workshop: Contributor value is typically better tracked implicitly

"## Zero accountablity"

src Workshop: Zero accountablity

"Playing Oprah: "everyone gets funded""

src Workshop: Zero accountablity

"existing programs renewed with no reflection"

src Workshop: existing programs renewed with no reflection

"minimal accountability structures"

src Workshop: minimal accountability structures

"lack of insights into value delivered by contributors"

src Workshop: minimal accountability structures

"impediments to foundation management and transparency"

src Workshop: minimal accountability structures

"## lack of transparency into contributor renumeration"

src Workshop: lack of transparency into contributor renumeration

""Impact Evaluation still not figured out""

src Workshop: Political fatigue

"Formal retros so we can iteratively improve"

src Workshop: Formal retros so we can iteratively improve

"More robust accountability (e.g. GAO for a DAO)"

src Workshop: Formal retros so we can iteratively improve

"Support projects that improve governance and transparency by increasing visibility on core protocol change proposals, especially for consensus-layer updates."

src Community & Governance

"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."

src Community & Governance

"Evaluating | reflecting on current conditions ... Actuating | taking a decision and making it happen, tracking status"

src Deliberative Tools Gallery | Metagov

"perpetual administrative transparency"

src PDF Resources

"bringing qualitative information of DAO Events into one searchable, source of truth"

src amy-jung/collectivedaoarchives.catalog: The Collective DAO Catalog is an open source index of DAO historical events. Together, as an open source database that anyone can contribute to, we can use the power of collective intelligence to highlight patterns and improve the development of new and existing DAOs

"It also faced real adversarial pressure (Sybil attacks), and the system evolved defenses rather than collapsing into “welp, guess governance is impossible.”"

src 7 Governance Experiments That Didn’t End in Chaos

"Because it has a measurable output: funding allocations people can evaluate."

src 7 Governance Experiments That Didn’t End in Chaos

"Makes capital flows legible and comparable so strategy, accountability, and learning can compound across cycles."

src CAMF, a New Architecture for Crypto Funding Systems

"Treasury Management: RFP approach rather than permanent council - Professional service providers selected competitively - Accountability council oversight rather than dedicated treasury council"

src Co-Creation Cycle #3 - Final Report - Governance Iterations

"Grounding in Evidence: All conclusions traceable to specific participant inputs"

src Co-Creation Cycle #3 - Final Report - Governance Iterations

"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."

src Concerning the Establishment of a Constitution

"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"

src DAO Decision Design Framework (Working Model)

"Power can be held accountable only when it is transparent."

src DAO Design Principles

"More objective economic frameworks should be developed to reduce self-preservation tendencies that accrue value for the DAO at the expense of the protocol. This principle is usually lacking in DAO treasury allocation strategies, which are usually managed subjectively"

src DAO Design Principles

"To the extent possible, work should be valued based on output/impact, and should not be valued on hourly, or other, inputs"

src DAO Design Principles

"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."

src Evidence Layer for Digital Public Goods

"to truly assess the effectiveness of an intervention, we must prioritize outcomes (e.g., behavioral changes among participants after an event), which require more complex data collection and analysis."

src Evidence Layer for Digital Public Goods

"This dashboard brings those problems, the projects addressing them, and the distribution of capital into one place. It helps round operators, donors, and ecosystem stewards see how funding decisions align with the strategic priorities of the Ethereum community."

src GG24 Alignment Dashboard: Mapping Problems, Projects, and Funding

"They also create a reputation system where you could monitor your stewards through cards that would monitor their voting behavior."

src Governance Overload | Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"feedback... is really how this loops back around because these are not one-shot games... Without a feedback process that gives rise to a continued injection of attention from the various stakeholders... it becomes kind of a zombie."

src Governance Overload | Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"DAOs have already emerged to allocate funds for community development purposes that are broadly defined to a point where clear satisfaction of a funding purpose is considerably harder to objectively verify"

src Governance as Conflict: Constitution of Shared Values Defining Future Margins of Disagreement

"Maximize accountability: Those impacted by a decision should be able to veto or override a decision that directly impacts them."

src Governance in Season 8: The Next Phase

"A public wallet address serves as your immutable digital identity that gets registered, receives funds, and maintains reputation."

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"Ecological hypercerts are blockchain-based impact certificates that enforce a structured data standard through three key components: identity (who made the impact), formalized claims (what impact was achieved), and provided evidence (proof of impact)."

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"Ecological hypercerts are blockchain-based impact certificates that enforce a structured data standard through three key components: identity (who made the impact), formalized claims (what impact was achieved), and provided evidence (proof of impact). This framework creates an immutable record that links to both provided evidence and public datasets."

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"Data provenance layer to ensure transparency and ownership of shared knowledge"

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"each proposal Id also generates a real-time svg to track proposal status via ERC6909 URI"

src Majeur: Major Governance Upgrade

"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 about what works (and what doesn't) in measuring retroactive funding effectiveness."

src Measuring On-Chain Impact of RetroPGF Season 7: An Exploratory Causal Analysis

"Any signal (if present) cannot be distinguished from background noise with our current approach"

src Measuring On-Chain Impact of RetroPGF Season 7: An Exploratory Causal Analysis

"Future iterations could incorporate these holistic ecosystem metrics to refine the definition of positive impact, construct a transparent composite impact index, and improve ROI assessment"

src Measuring On-Chain Impact of RetroPGF Season 7: An Exploratory Causal Analysis

"Precise profit shares are displayed on each product page—breaking down percentages received by the artisan, shipping costs, and Anou’s cost share."

src Networked Cooperative Ecosystems

"Financial transparency is a vital aspect of Anou’s operations and success."

src Networked Cooperative Ecosystems

"Anou’s digital platform facilitates this by automatically sending multiple text messages once a sale has been made to confirm and ensure that the funds are received by the maker of the product, not an intermediary."

src Networked Cooperative Ecosystems

"This analysis looks in detail at three questions: 1. Which tools got funded? 2. What measurable impact have those tools had on the Superchain? 3. Has the mission been an effective use of funds?"

src Part 1: Analyzing the impact of Retro Funding Season 7: Developer Tooling | Open Source Observer

"Rewards are determined using public metrics and an open source algorithm maintained in this GitHub repo. The strategy for the algorithm was voted on by citizens at the start of the mission and shaped over the course of the mission by community feedback."

src Part 1: Analyzing the impact of Retro Funding Season 7: Developer Tooling | Open Source Observer

"Rewards are determined using public metrics and an open source algorithm maintained in this GitHub repo."

src Part 2: Analyzing the impact of Retro Funding Season 7: Onchain Builders | Open Source Observer

"This analysis looks in detail at three questions: 1. Which onchain builders got funded? 2. What measurable impact have they had on the Superchain? 3. Has the mission been an effective use of funds?"

src Part 2: Analyzing the impact of Retro Funding Season 7: Onchain Builders | Open Source Observer

"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."

src Part 2: Analyzing the impact of Retro Funding Season 7: Onchain Builders | Open Source Observer

"The board of directors, as the primary accountability mechanism for public companies, was cited as a significant source of failure of corporate governance in many of our expert interviews (i.e. failing to hold management accountable). Capital Allocation 2.0 will introduce additional accountability mechanisms to ensure management “can’t be evil.”"

src Season 9: From Experiment to Organization - Optimism

"Over the next few months, 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."

src Season 9: From Experiment to Organization - Optimism

"Preserving Value: We are pausing these systems to preserve treasury value and focus our resources. By stopping dilutive emissions and pausing the scoring of inactive governance, we ensure every resource is purposely used."

src Strategic Update: The OBOL Economic Engine & Governance Realignment - Announcements

"Execution of Strategic Treasury Operation: This week, Obol successfully acquired 1,706,309 OBOL from the open market using protocol fees."

src Strategic Update: The OBOL Economic Engine & Governance Realignment - Announcements

"Foundation Budget Approvals, which are governed jointly by both houses."

src The Future of Optimism Governance

"The voting results are documented on blockchain."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"Another possible solution is to make IP authors’ addresses publicly available so that users can detect suspicious activities of developers."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"Uniswap’s governance, for example, somewhat controversially voted to create a lobbying group called the “DeFi Education Fund” and allocated $20 million of treasury funds to it"

src Analyzing Voting Power in Decentralized Governance: Who Controls DAOs?

"Control parties that fail to achieve the token target price forfeit a portion or all of a substantial value deposit to the other token holders"

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"If the token value does not reach S, then, as discussed below, transfer of part or all of the value deposit to the other token holders will ensure that they are at least as well off as if the value S was realized."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"Thus, 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."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"The basic auction mechanism requires that the bidder report any toehold position as part of the bid for two reasons. First, an accurate report of the toehold is necessary for the mechanism to work as intended."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"A Success Termination occurs if the token price reaches at least S on a sustained basis. “Sustained basis” must be defined in a manner that is code feasible. For example, the criterion might require that the token price, as determined by some group of price oracles maintained by the DAO, averages at least S for 30 days and sustains a value at or above S consecutively for at least 10 of those days."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"The most pernicious example of a treasury raid is one in which a party gains control of the DAO and then transfers the entire treasury to itself by voting positively on a suitable proposal."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"Finally, disclosure of the identity of the guiding parties of an enterprise is a major goal of securities regulation. The diffusion of control in DAOs tends to make identification of managing parties and elucidation of information about them difficult if not impossible. In contrast, by the operation of the mechanism, the identity of the managing parties will be evident, at least during control periods."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"Because the control party has an interest in the outcome of the estimation, an estimation method would need to be hard-coded at the constitutional level of the DAO to avoid manipulation by the control party."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"Non-algorithmic off-chain voting governance of decision-making leads to a substantial discount in DAO value."

src Voting Governance and Value Creation in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"On-chain voting aligns with the principles of immutable and transparent governance found in digital commons, ensuring accountability in resource management."

src Voting Governance and Value Creation in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"The empirical main finding is that off-chain voting has a significantly negative effect on DAO valuation, plausibly mirroring potential transparency issues associated with the uncertainty with which core DAO team members will implement the DAO community’s collective decision."

src Voting Governance and Value Creation in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"Our evidence suggests that DAOs lose much of the transparency and automation that defines blockchain-based governance when voting is executed off-chain, generating uncertainty among tokenholders and potential backers."

src Voting Governance and Value Creation in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"Specifically, successful DAOs should feature transparent and enforceable on-chain voting to honor DAOs’ autonomy promise"

src Voting Governance and Value Creation in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"While it is true that the DeFi space is extremely transparent in the sense that almost all data is available on-chain, it is very cumbersome to collect the data and prepare it in a digestible form."

src Decentralized Finance, Centralized Ownership?

"complex wrapping structures introduce governance risks, undermine transparency"

src Decentralized Finance, Centralized Ownership?

"The analysis suggest that DAOs may enable new forms of participation and more transparent procedures"

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"Transparency is a core feature, with all decisions and transactions recorded on a blockchain or similar open system, fostering trust among participants and reducing the need for external oversight"

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"all transactions logged onto the blockchain for transparency. Regular financial audits and blockchain-based reporting tools will ensure accountability and security."

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"Declaration of conflicting interest The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest ... Funding statement This study was supported by ‘Digitale Verwaltung Schweiz (DVS)’ [grant number IN 16]."

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"Our findings highlight the central role of contributors across a spectrum of DAOs... Our research also offers important empirical insights pertinent to ongoing regulatory activities aimed at increasing transparency to DAO governance frameworks."

src Is DAO Governance Fostering Democracy?

"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. These insights have significant implications regarding accountability."

src Is DAO Governance Fostering Democracy?

"This is relevant for resolving questions of accountability, as vested users and large governance token holders may be considered members of a legally recognized entity and therefore responsible for the underlying dApp."

src Is DAO Governance Fostering Democracy?

"These DAO spaces leave doubts about the reliability of the reported values. Thus, we selected only 357 out of 367 DAOs where all votes have been fully validated."

src Is DAO Governance Fostering Democracy?

"Treasury and Asset Management (TAM) - Oversee the DAO's own treasury and assets. This encompasses decisions concerning the security, investment, diversification, and financial reporting of the DAO’s own assets"

src Delegation and Participation in Decentralized Governance

"Moreover, DAOs can also be manipulated by the developers... the developer illegally transferred over 1 million locked tokens from the token contract to swap for over 265 thousand dollars, resulting in a 99% drop in the token value."

src Understanding Security Issues in the DAO Governance Process

"it’s vital that the DAO present this information in the transparent, publicly accessible document. The absence of such transparency may erode members’ trust, thereby discouraging their active participation in DAO governance."

src Understanding Security Issues in the DAO Governance Process

"Furthermore, they should provide complete documentation to aid members in participating in the governance process."

src Understanding Security Issues in the DAO Governance Process

"Governance decisions are logged immutably on the blockchain for transparency and accountability"

src Evaluating DAO Sustainability and Longevity

"Blockchain-based audit trails record every AI agent’s decision, input, and outcome in immutable blocks."

src Evaluating DAO Sustainability and Longevity

"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 that fosters trust and accountability."

src Evaluating DAO Sustainability and Longevity

"ETHOS operationalizes these principles through dynamic compliance tools such as blockchain-based audit trails and privacy-preserving technologies like Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs)"

src Evaluating DAO Sustainability and Longevity

"The second category pertains to financial decisions, where DAO members propose initiatives requiring funding from the protocol’s treasury"

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"The system records voting results on the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and immutably stores only the final results—not individual votes—on the Ethereum blockchain, ensuring verifiability and reducing the risk of disputes."

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"Token holders who prioritize decentralization should carefully investigate delegate affiliations"

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"Anyone can inspect these wallets and respective transaction hashes on any Ethereum explorer like etherscan.io"

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"we develop a set of empirically grounded KPIs spanning social, economic, and procedural dimensions of DAO governance... including voting activity, treasury management, automation, and distribution of power"

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"DAOs with strong participation but weaker financial capacity may need to diversify treasury structures or enhance economic sustainability mechanisms."

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"Bidders submit deposits that guarantee performance and that will be slashed with compensatory payments to the other token holders if the DAO declines in value during the control period."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"In September 2023, the exit from the DAO by a substantial share of its members led to a loss of (at the time) approximately $27 million."

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"Intuitively, introducing spending into the model will make forks less likely as the treasury shrinks and incentives to participate for arbitrageurs are reduced."

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"Given the scale of resources involved, the governance structure of the funding process plays a crucial role in ensuring fair and effective allocation."

src A Social Choice Analysis of Optimism's Retroactive Project Funding

"To assess how well each voting rule reflects the true distribution of voter preferences, we compute the ℓ1 distance between the final allocation produced by a voting rule and a benchmark reference distribution."

src A Social Choice Analysis of Optimism's Retroactive Project Funding

"Proposal Process is fully Public Yes (66) No (6)"

src A Taxonomy of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"Treasury is Public Yes – No"

src A Taxonomy of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"many of the proposals that go before its token-holders, and particularly its Stewards, require the comprehension of significant context in order to make informed decisions. Proposals may represent funding allocations for projects or ongoing activities that are only part of a larger budgetary picture, or treasury-management decisions that would normally be the purview of financial professionals."

src Online Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"The GitcoinDAO scorecard system makes certain information accessible in order to ease decision-making but introduces assumptions regarding what to measure and how to measure it."

src Online Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"Real-world experiments such as the Optimism Retroactive Public Goods Funding initiative provide insights into improving DAO governance by applying computational social choice methods that enhance fairness and strategyproofness in funding allocations"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Contributors should be able to trace how their contributions are valued, weighted, and rewarded."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Contribution systems should have open valuation models that allow for audits and adjustments."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Transparency Information related to the organization can be accessed by all community members"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"They inherit key democratic principles such as procedural transparency and immutable records from being based on blockchain technology."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"on-chain governance of DAOs creates an immutable record, enabling after-the-fact accountability mechanisms of voter fraud detection and thus disincentivising corruption beforehand"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"ensuring transparency and trust through blockchain execution"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"RetroPGF distributes funds ex post, rewarding projects based on their verified impact rather than projected outcomes."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"To evaluate voting rules in the Retroactive Project Funding framework, we consider key theoretical properties and performance metrics."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"opacity regarding who is legally responsible for contract breaches or securities violations compounds agency problems"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"They also cannot, on their own, diagnose or measure latent power asymmetries when decision-making shifts from public, on-chain discussions to private negotiations among influential token holders"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Additionally, DAOs serve as a mechanism for transparency and accountability [2]; by voting on proposed changes and maintaining an open record of decisions, DAOs promote a level of trust and reliability rarely seen in traditional financial institutions."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"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"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"This technology introduces a novel governance paradigm characterised by the progressive elimination of intermediaries... where technological mechanisms serve as infrastructure and regulatory frameworks enabling transparency."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"This measure enhances the ability of EU tax authorities to monitor and verify crypto-asset revenues and their tax implications."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"the Coalition of Automated Legal Applications (COALA), through its Model Law for Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAO), proposed a taxation provision that upholds the principle of transparency."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"All governance decisions are recorded immutably on-chain, providing a complete audit trail and fostering trust among participants."

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations For Governance And Operations

"The platform’s core smart contracts manage DAO creation, membership, proposal submission, voting, and treasury operations."

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations For Governance And Operations

"Performance The outputs of governance lead to results that achieve the DAO’s strategic goals... Grant allocations generate positive ROI Treasury management strategies generate positive returns"

src Optimism's Legitimacy Framework

"Credible Neutrality... Increases legitimacy via high credible neutrality Onchain execution Public voting Independently verifiable outcomes Third party watchdogs"

src Optimism's Legitimacy Framework

"The coup drained nearly $500,000 tokens from the Build Finance DAO... The instances wherein an attacker acquires sufficient voting power to siphon treasury funds are not anecdotal"

src Perils of Current DAO Governance

"DAO is an entity that is collaboratively managed by on-chain participants... enabling on-chain rules and activities to be transparent and traceable."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"The snapshot technique is to record the in-time token-holding status of all accounts and wallets on-chain at a specific block height... Owing to the benefits of transparency and traceability"

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"treasury oversight (TokenTerminal, Zapper)"

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"Embracing transparency by making all decisions and transactions publicly visible can prevent any hidden centralization from occurring."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"There are also practical values that are instrumental to achieving these two values, such as transparency, which helps ensure and defend equal empowerment."

src DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND DEMOCRACY:

"the transparency, community-oriented governance, and the role of smart contracts in ensuring that decisions and operations are visible and collectively controlled"

src DAO Research Trends: First European DAO Workshop (DAWO)

"there is a growing focus on developing strategies to strengthen the integrity and transparency of DAOs"

src DAO Research Trends: First European DAO Workshop (DAWO)

"As for Proposals, over 90% of the examined proposals (32,500) fail to provide consistent descriptions and code for their members, highlighting a significant gap in transparency within the DAO governance process."

src The Dao of the DAO: Eastern Philosophies in Decentralized Worlds

"Thus, it is hard for members to classify whether these functions are potentially backdoors or designated for guardians to protect the governance process."

src The Dao of the DAO: Eastern Philosophies in Decentralized Worlds

"Additionally, they should provide complete documentation to facilitate member participation in the governance process."

src The Dao of the DAO: Eastern Philosophies in Decentralized Worlds

"MiCA emphasizes consumer protection and operational transparency"

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"users’ actions are more easily tracked and audited by other users"

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"These features make it possible to mobilize capital into hyperlocal contexts... without friction, while ensuring traceability and transparency in how funds and impact circulate."

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"The author declares no commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The author previously collaborated with Hypha as an Impact Ecosystem Builder over two years ago and is currently engaged in a separate ecosystemic finance pilot with the organisation as part of doctoral research. These relationships did not influence the design, analysis, or reporting of this case study."

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"The GHAIADAO treasury must have collateral equivalent to the value of the number of NORs distributed in ORs."

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"Andreas Theodorou, Robert H Wortham, and Joanna J Bryson. Designing and implementing transparency for realtime inspection of autonomous robots. Connection Science, 29(3):230–241, 2017."

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"Guy R Vishnia and Gareth W Peters. Auditchain: A trading audit platform over blockchain. Frontiers in Blockchain, 3:9, 2020."

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"For example, attackers could vote to pay themselves a large dividend from the DAO’s treasury."

src Control of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"three methods for improvement can be proposed: (1) Quadratic voting, (2) Small group decision-making mechanisms, and (3) Standardized information disclosure requirements and guidance."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"Such rules are designed to bolster transparency and accountability by ensuring token holders are equipped with precise and pertinent information. This includes: (1) General disclosure provisions... (2) A mandate for proponents to disclose any potential conflicts of interest; (3) An anti-fraud provision prohibiting the use of false or misleading statements"

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"This model enhances transparency while simultaneously raising the cost of influence in lobbying—two essential pillars of accountability."

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"A history of exchanges not only exposes their priorities and the lobbyists they engage with but also situates them within a broader social and economic network."

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"Treasury and incentive systems are designed to embed reciprocity. The City Hall treasury is replenished each quarter following Assembly approval, and all inflows and outflows remain transparent to members."

src Using Kleros in Appeals and Dispute Resolution of Gitcoin Grants

"principles-based approaches emphasizing transparency and participant protection are likely to be more effective than rigid, prescriptive rules for DAO governance."

src DAO Governance: Decentralized But Not So Disorganized

"When governance is external, it cannot constrain outcomes at the moment they are produced. It can observe, explain, and react, but it cannot decide. At scale, observation without constraint is not governance. It is commentary."

src Governance Has Already Moved

"An explanation that cannot trigger correction is rhetorical. An appeal that cannot suspend execution is symbolic. A report that arrives after harm has compounded documents failure without preventing it."

src Governance Has Already Moved

"querying “What concerns do participants have about accountability structures?” surfaced consistent worry about “accountability theater”, i.e. appearing rigorous without actual oversight."

src Co-Creation Cycle #3 - Final Report - Governance Iterations

"If each digital public good can build a causal model, the opportunity for Pro Funding will emerge. By designing projects in an evidence-based manner, it will likely become easier to secure validity, accountability, and persuasion from communities for prospectively raising funds."

src Evidence Layer for Digital Public Goods

"Decisions about logging granularity determine whether actions can be reconstructed and challenged. Fine grained logs preserve the possibility of contestation. Coarse logs collapse decision histories into aggregates that foreclose meaningful appeal."

src Governance Has Already Moved

"Transparency is necessary for governance, but it is not sufficient. In many cases, it functions as a substitute for power rather than its expression."

src Governance Has Already Moved

"By combining automated verification with community-driven governance, these new funding mechanisms reduce operational friction while increasing transparency and trust."

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"The analysis reveals what we need to measure impact better: longer time horizons, richer counterfactuals, and metrics beyond transaction counts."

src Measuring On-Chain Impact of RetroPGF Season 7: An Exploratory Causal Analysis

"A more holistic ROI view should consider: Total Value Locked (TVL) growth across the ecosystem; Developer mindshare and talent retention; Market share vs competing L2 ecosystems; Protocol innovation and technical improvements; User acquisition and retention at the ecosystem level; Long-term sustainability and resilience of public goods infrastructure"

src Measuring On-Chain Impact of RetroPGF Season 7: An Exploratory Causal Analysis

"The organization has also successfully raised $92 million USD (value at time of donation) for its members, demonstrating its ability to attract support for core contributors."

src Networked Cooperative Ecosystems

"We believe this preliminary analysis from Season 7 shows that Retro Funding can move the needle. However, evaluating the effectiveness of the program still relies on proxy metrics and anecdotal feedback. 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 about why the program exists in the first place."

src Part 1: Analyzing the impact of Retro Funding Season 7: Developer Tooling | Open Source Observer

"Track these indicators over a longer horizon... Add retention metrics... Collect structured qualitative feedback."

src Part 2: Analyzing the impact of Retro Funding Season 7: Onchain Builders | Open Source Observer

"We also prioritize open source and open science in our engagements, so that our work can be as broadly beneficial as possible."

src The Animating Purpose of BlockScience

"Designing for trust in the agentic era makes trust experience design (TXD) inseparable from design practice... TXD is structured across three layers: (1) trust evidence (cryptographic attestations, tamper-evident logs, explainable reasoning trails)"

src Turning to Trust Experience Design (TXD)

"Snapshot enables anyone to view the outcome of the proposals in real-time. 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."

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations—Governance, Technology, and Legal Perspectives

"we identify voters whose identity is publicly available, the top ten voters that participate in most polls, the top ten voters with the largest total votes and the top ten voters that have the largest votes in a single poll."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"blockchain-based governance systems are not always entirely transparent, and that the power within them can be more centralized than it initially perceived"

src Analyzing Voting Power in Decentralized Governance: Who Controls DAOs?

"The DAO Code may refund part or all of the value deposit when the bidder’s control comes to an end, with the rest forfeited and paid to the other token holders."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"Finally, note that if deterrence fails and value destruction is successful, forfeiture of the deposits fully compensates the token holders other than the control party."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"At least during control periods, there is a clear party who can coordinate and interact with regulators, parallel to the managers of a traditional corporation."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"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."

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"In addition to the categorization, we prompted the LLM to check if the personal wealth of the voter is affected, come up with its own categorization, provide the perceived risk for the dao, extract the total cost and revenue"

src Delegation and Participation in Decentralized Governance

"Such testing would provide valuable insights for policymakers refining regulations, developers optimizing AI system designs, and end users benefiting from safer, more transparent AI technologies."

src Evaluating DAO Sustainability and Longevity

"Treasury Size denotes the total assets held in smart contracts under DAO control. Larger treasuries allow for sustained contributor rewards, protocol development, and other activities."

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"“The Hidden Shortcomings of (D)AOs – An Empirical Study of On-Chain Governance”"

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"The effect of setting a tax is similar to the effect of a higher κ or lower initial treasury: it reduces the redemption value and, thereby, the willingness to pay by arbitrageurs."

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"It is immediately clear that depending on the expected level of spending, forks can be prevented entirely by, for example, committing to spend the entire treasury in each period."

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"Selection Bias: Data availability influenced DAO selection, potentially skewing the sample toward DAOs with more transparent data."

src DAO Governance: Voting Power, Participation, and Controversy

"Alignment with ground truth measures the deviation from an objective allocation x∗"

src A Social Choice Analysis of Optimism's Retroactive Project Funding

"Governance Application is fully Public: Here, we refer to the accessibility of the governance process. If the entire process is visible outside without any barriers, we use the characteristic Yes."

src A Taxonomy of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"Treasury is Public: This dimension, with flag characteristics Yes and No, states if anyone can view the balance and content of the DAO Treasury at any time."

src A Taxonomy of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"Transparent access to the information concerning the organization is made available via various online and offline channels"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Bayesian truth serum methods [19, 20] may further help validate whether a rule meaningfully uncovers ground truth."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Article 20: Remedy, Procedure, and the Statute of Limitation 1. Pursuant to Article 18 and Article 19, if more than one individual is obliged to indemnify the same damage, they shall be jointly and severally liable."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"it would be impossible to identify an individual with signature authority to fulfil tax compliance obligations, such as submitting tax returns or making tax payments. These obligations must be fulfilled anonymously and automatically, a requirement that current tax systems are not equipped to handle."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Smart contracts could automate tax payments directly at the transactional level, enhancing efficiency and compliance."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"A Bounties contract escrows ERC-20 rewards per initiative."

src Signals Protocol Litepaper

"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."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"Community members can also verify each other’s contributions through on-chain records, ensuring transparency in governance."

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"Participants with an OR also vote for the Control Council, consisting of seven (7) members whose purpose is to ensure that there are no excesses on the part of the Governance Council."

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"[138] Timnit Gebru, Jamie Morgenstern, Briana Vecchione, Jennifer Wortman Vaughan, Hanna Wallach, Hal Daumé Iii, and Kate Crawford. Datasheets for datasets."

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"[174] Margaret Mitchell, Simone Wu, Andrew Zaldivar, Parker Barnes, Lucy Vasserman, Ben Hutchinson, Elena Spitzer, Inioluwa Deborah Raji, and Timnit Gebru. Model cards for model reporting."

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"[402] Ben Shneiderman. The dangers of faulty, biased, or malicious algorithms requires independent oversight."

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"C. Standardized Information Disclosure Requirements and Guidance for Enhancing Voter Participation and DAO Governance"

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"Where full transparency (“all light”) overexposes information and total opacity (“going dark”) stifles cooperation, community currencies offer a balanced alternative: partially light, partially dark"

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"AI might help summarize proposals and predict their impacts on performance"

src DAO Governance: Decentralized But Not So Disorganized

Evidence 59 118 4 57

Practitioner (59) Supporting (118) Contrasting (4) Extending (57)

"Developing governance mechanisms such as enforcement committees, contestable control, forking protocols, restaking, and AI-based rule enforcement"

src Martin Schmidt (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“enforcement by committees”"

src Martin Schmidt (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“mix of elected enforcement committee and external dispute resolution (QGOV)”"

src Martin Schmidt (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"How to ensure governance remains peer-to-peer (P2P) at the core, while enabling peers to voluntarily group, recursively."

src ECVM (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"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)."

src ECVM (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"The process could be managed by a DAO which sets standards on juror requirements."

src Sneha (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"DAO vets a pool of qualified jurors for specific courts dedicated to specific subject matters."

src Sneha (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""Enable multi-house and semi-permissionless governance models""

src Jeffrey McLarty (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""It's it's, it's an attestation based framework that basically abandons the concept of on chain execution for a moment""

src Jeffrey McLarty (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""it pulls apart the weight, the voting power, and the and the identity""

src Jeffrey McLarty (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""it decouples those things and just records this identity voted this way""

src Jeffrey McLarty (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Aragon is working on interesting approaches - basically, subsidiarity, delegation of decisions”"

src Participant 19 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"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."

src Participant 20 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"DAO governance is centralised, opaque and very noisy."

src Participant 23 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"I put these problems together because, in my opinion, they are symptoms of the same problem: a lack of governance structure."

src Participant 23 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"There are no roles with designated rights and/or responsibilities, no proper ways to elect or hold representatives to account, etc."

src Participant 23 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"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."

src Participant 23 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"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."

src Participant 23 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"We need a governance protocol that provides a simple but general framework for institutional governance design."

src Participant 23 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""delegates usually are voluntary or don't have a formal role, they're less obliged and or motivated to stay long-term.""

src Participant 36 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Often times, there's a lack of formal resonsilibities and roles, missing accountability for previous decisions, delegates are not neccessrily reliable, there's not that mich structure.”"

src Participant 36 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Sometimes DAOs tend to spend to much time discussing, and not enough time on implementing / executing.”"

src Participant 36 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“there's more major issues, like proposals not beeing (fully) executed, announcements not being fulfilled, communication stopping, and / or no consenquences for that.”"

src Participant 36 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“The recent dispute in AAVE DAO is an example for unclear responsibilities, coordination dispute.”"

src Participant 36 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“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.”"

src Participant 36 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“I believe we need to have more organization specialization roles in committees in DAOs to actually run the day-2-day ops of the DAO.”"

src Participant 37 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Not just the Grants committee, but marketing, audits, treasury/expenses management, proposal project management and DIP program management.”"

src Participant 37 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Scroll DAO is working towards this (in a very limited version - phase 1).”"

src Participant 37 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Web3 governance is framed almost entirely as a problem of incentive design for atomized agents, rather than as the joint design of institutions, norms, roles, and sense-making practices.”"

src Participant 42 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Build institutional and constitutional structures that can hold tension”"

src Participant 42 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Structural principles (tensegrity and paradox management) ... multiple decision venues at different speeds, role structures with differentiated mandates, and explicit constitutional space for managing contradictions.”"

src Participant 42 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Social principles (roles, accountability, and graduated escalation) drawing from Ostrom's commons work: clear roles with defined scopes and accountability, graduated conflict resolution pathways, and nested layers of decision-making.”"

src Participant 42 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Gitcoin ... are now investing in a constitution, professional delegates, steward training, and clearer roles and scopes.”"

src Participant 42 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"“Protocols like Lido and others [are] experimenting with dual or layered governance after discovering that pure token voting produced apathy, whale dominance, and difficulty scaling complex technical decisions.”"

src Participant 42 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

""The challenge is that most of these solutions require sustained organizational commitment rather than one-time technical fixes.""

src Participant 46 (gov/acc research - phase 1)

"Create governance templates with other decision-making models."

src Workshop: Experiment Sandboxes

"Create clear tiers of decison makers access ( eg: large token holders - security)"

src Workshop: Experiment Sandboxes

""mapping of phases of gov to tooling - which lead to best outcomes""

src Workshop: mapping of phases of gov to tooling - which lead to best outcomes

"Token-Based DAOs usually want to add voting for some other registry/identity, or adding a second/third "house" for voting."

src Workshop: Experiment brainstorming: Existing DAO

"Agora has a protocol that sets this up, such that it works with any identity list."

src Workshop: Experiment brainstorming: Existing DAO

"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"

src Workshop: Experiment brainstorming: Existing DAO

"A DAO with holacratic governance + accountability based on smart contracts"

src Workshop: A DAO with holacratic governance + accountability based on smart contracts

"fully agent-enabled organization (to address cost of organizing with central coordinators/orchestrators)"

src Workshop: A DAO with holacratic governance + accountability based on smart contracts

"“A gov framework of proven, legitimate practices that appeal to risk-averse audiences who don't want governance for the sake of governance”"

src Workshop: compose smaller, more granular operational primitives

"Governance without some kind of structure does not work - see token voting issues; re-centralisation, etc."

src Workshop: Too many participants with veto rights

"existing programs renewed with no reflection"

src Workshop: existing programs renewed with no reflection

"no clear info-sharing channels, or scoped re-election periods, between delegates and voters"

src Workshop: existing programs renewed with no reflection

"minimal accountability structures"

src Workshop: minimal accountability structures

"Most DAOs copied gov from other DAOs vs designing for their needs"

src Workshop: Most DAOs copied gov from other DAOs vs designing for their needs

"Big focus on "ultimate control" kind of governance, but very little thought goes into "day to day" permissions/ controls"

src Workshop: Most DAOs copied gov from other DAOs vs designing for their needs

"Promising solutions (dual governance, optimistic governance, committees, etc) still very bespoke"

src Workshop: Lack of experimentation with deliberative tools

"“governance is NOT just about decision-making”"

src Workshop: Clarity on threat model - don't overcomplicate

"“we should also experiment on executional/operational structures”"

src Workshop: Clarity on threat model - don't overcomplicate

"Formal retros so we can iteratively improve"

src Workshop: Formal retros so we can iteratively improve

"More robust accountability (e.g. GAO for a DAO)"

src Workshop: Formal retros so we can iteratively improve

"Pick champions and let them cook"

src Workshop: Sortition

"optimistic governance as safety net"

src Workshop: Sortition

""How are daily operations separated?""

src Workshop: Policy Making

""is this a representative democracy?""

src Workshop: Policy Making

"Actuating | taking a decision and making it happen, tracking status"

src Deliberative Tools Gallery | Metagov

"Our engineered approach deploys a dual-tier computational infrastructure that elegantly synthesizes immutable cryptographic protocols with adaptive collaborative mechanisms operating beyond the blockchain boundary"

src PDF Resources

"Governance needs labor markets. If you want accountability, you need roles, metrics, and pay."

src 7 Governance Experiments That Didn’t End in Chaos

"DAO Constitution -> Working Group Mandates -> Steward Execution"

src 7 Governance Experiments That Didn’t End in Chaos

"Roles define who is responsible at each point in the capital lifecycle and how intent and information move between them."

src CAMF, a New Architecture for Crypto Funding Systems

"actionable recommendations for council formation"

src Co-Creation Cycle #3 - Final Report - Governance Iterations

"Domains Identified: 7 distinct areas emerged from the clustering exercise"

src Co-Creation Cycle #3 - Final Report - Governance Iterations

"CCC3: Better calibrated expectations—goal was organizational design, led to a few councils being proposed an voted on in subsequent voting cycles"

src Co-Creation Cycle #3 - Final Report - Governance Iterations

"Reality Injection: Include budget/capacity constraints from the start"

src Co-Creation Cycle #3 - Final Report - Governance Iterations

"Some of these smart contracts are quite simple, with only a treasury. Others are more sophisticated, with governance processes such as quadratic voting or conditional timelocks."

src Constitutions of Web3

"If convex → high expertise required, delegate the decision to a smaller group of experts or derive from data"

src DAO Decision Design Framework (Working Model)

"There seems to be an upper limit of ~50 full(ish) time contributors, which should inform the number of Councils that can be supported (~5)"

src DAO Design Principles

"Convex decisions should be delegated to smaller groups of experts (Councils or Boards)"

src DAO Design Principles

"Leads coordinate, direct, and facilitate the members of their teams. They set up the processes and infrastructure required to allow anyone to step in and contribute effectively."

src DAO Design Principles

"Or, we can cut up the existing pizza into 8 more slices, totalling 16 slices (Empower the community to execute elements of work that would otherwise be the core team’s responsibility)"

src DAO Function Guidelines (aka The Pizza Framework)

"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."

src Governance Has Already Moved

"The research suggests that effective governance systems design information flows for heterogeneous engagement levels."

src Governance Overload | Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"In the Gitcoin case study, it was a steward role... and a delegates way."

src Governance Overload | Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"some modicum of concentration of authority (and division of distinct sub-authority) strictly dominates total decentralization due to the comparative cost-savings (efficiency) of delegated/representative decision-making"

src Governance as Conflict: Constitution of Shared Values Defining Future Margins of Disagreement

"Another hallmark constitutional solution to heterogeneity of governance preferences resultant from divergence of shared values surrounds the division of governance authority into overlapping horizontal levels, or parallel vertical systems."

src Governance as Conflict: Constitution of Shared Values Defining Future Margins of Disagreement

"Subsidiary units, frequently called states or provinces, are commonly granted their own competencies within a larger constitutional order, allowing for tailoring of policy questions to variance in local preferences."

src Governance as Conflict: Constitution of Shared Values Defining Future Margins of Disagreement

"Subsidiary networks are being designed to reduce the processing load required on the main blockchain network."

src Governance as Conflict: Constitution of Shared Values Defining Future Margins of Disagreement

""the original constitutional design displays the decentralized design choice of placing the residual authority to legislate with subsidiary units.""

src Governance as Conflict: Constitution of Shared Values Defining Future Margins of Disagreement

"Instead, we approach each governance question as a decision module with unique properties."

src Governance in Season 8: The Next Phase

"Nested Systems | Traditional hierarchies linking local to regional"

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"The power of a decentralized guild lies in its modular extensibility."

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"We’ve discovered that one of the most critical challenges in scaling regenerative governance is establishing sustainable funding mechanisms that support communities through their growth journey."

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"we recognized that scaling Ostrom’s principles requires addressing coordination challenges at multiple levels simultaneously"

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"The development of both Taina and Polly demonstrates how early versions of regenerative intelligence can operate across different scales and contexts."

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"Treat AI as one advisor among many, not as a solo decision-maker."

src I Built Myself an AI Delegate—And Then I Broke It

"Majeur integrates split-delegation (up to 4, optimized) directly. This will allow you to have several, potentially competing delegates who will be more incentivized to vote and perform according to expectations."

src Majeur: Major Governance Upgrade

"In many ways, they either operate as cooperatives or, at the very least, match the function of cooperatives, such as guilds or unions, in leveraging collective power and labour in order to provide social and economic benefits in their respective ecosystems."

src Networked Cooperative Ecosystems

"Artisan leaders are involved in knowledge exchanges with other Anou artisans in order to build financial skills, digital literacy, etc."

src Networked Cooperative Ecosystems

"Smart Germany has a four-tiered governance structure"

src Networked Cooperative Ecosystems

"She points to an ongoing discussion within Smart Germany as to whether maintaining a larger, Berlin-based cooperative is better than devolving into smaller, more local coops in the long run."

src Networked Cooperative Ecosystems

"Add mechanisms to hold OP Labs accountable, including: 1. 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 onchain 2. A final set of proposal types outlined in the Operating Manual"

src Season 9: From Experiment to Organization - Optimism

"In the coming Seasons, the Collective may implement a Security Council responsible for executing upgrades following the will of governance."

src The Future of Optimism Governance

"other key bigrams include the “curation committee” and “revocations committee,” which indicates an effective organizational structure dedicated to managing and facilitating the decisions"

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations—Governance, Technology, and Legal Perspectives

"[‘decentraland’,‘system’,‘delegate’, ‘incentives’,‘squad’,‘land’,‘voting’, ‘events’,‘add’,‘proposals’] Delegation and Incentives"

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations—Governance, Technology, and Legal Perspectives

"MKR holders can be voters and directly choose their options on the Maker Governance Portal. On the other hand, they can choose a Vote Delegate to be their representative."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"Currently, there are three types of voting in Maker governance, i.e., Forum Signal Threads, Governance Polls and Executive Votes."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"The results of signal threads are related to on-chain governance... off-chain governance acts as the foundation of on-chain governance"

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"increased voting power of >100k and Delegate can decrease the growth of ETH ratio"

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"The basic auction moves the DAO from a default governance state that typically is a voting regime into a control period in which the winning bidder controls the DAO"

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"The mechanism here can be seen as an extension that adds a way to right the ship through temporary, contestable delegation of control to a competent party if the usual voting and delegation mechanisms break down."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"The auction mechanism here could extend to some current projects as a unified whole, encompassing both the centralized and decentralized portions of the projects."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"If a proposal is approved, smart contracts automatically execute the decision."

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"Additional teams may be formed as needed, with membership subject to time limitations and financial allocations for self-governance."

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"we introduce a model of proxy voting, where voters... may either delegate to a proxy, if there is sufficient agreement... or vote directly"

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"When λ = 2k+1, proxy selection for coherent instances and any k ≥ 0 can be optimally solved."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"We complement our theoretical results with experiments on the performance of voting with proxies on realistic data sets where voters exhibit incomplete preferences. We highlight the effect that the number of dReps, revealed set sizes and thresholds have on the total number of voters who delegate instead of voting directly..."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"Delegates in DAOs receive voting rights from tokenholders and vote in their names. They actively participate in governance and get paid for this activity."

src Delegation and Participation in Decentralized Governance

"Its uniqueness lies in its ability to integrate philosophical anticipation of AI agents’ diverse use cases into a structured, dynamic risk-based framework, while also proposing an adaptive, decentralized regulatory approach that evolves alongside AI technology."

src Evaluating DAO Sustainability and Longevity

"In some of the most important DAOs in DeFi, token holders who choose not to vote directly can delegate their votes to representatives, known as delegates, who vote on their behalf."

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"The fourth and final step in the governance process is the on-chain vote. The Governor Bravo smart contract facilitates the management of this part of the process in conjunction with the UNI token smart contract that keeps track of vote delegations."

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"Table 1. Governance process stages ... Temperature Check ... Consensus Check ... On-chain Vote"

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"we assess decentralisation based on the largest token holder’s share, whether there is sufficient participation, and whether decisions are executed automatically. We label a DAO’s decisions as “fully automated” when successful on-chain proposals directly trigger contract execution"

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"Hence, introducing tiered quorums or partial delegation (as in Liquid Democracy) could further diversify proposer authority."

src Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

"Throughout, as a default, we assume that voters have flexibility with respect to abstaining, voting, and delegating: Assumption 6 (Voter Flexibility): Voters may choose to vote or abstain on any portion of their voting rights. If explicit delegation of voting rights to others is permitted, voters may delegate any portion of such voting rights in any mixture to as many delegates as desired."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"considering transfer delegation requires adding an additional dimension to the concept of competence: Delegative competence is the ability to delegate voting rights in a way that increases the probability of a correct collective decision"

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"Delegative competence is the ability to delegate voting rights in a way that increases the probability of a correct collective decision."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"The composition of the menu and whether there are limits on transfer delegation to each delegate may make a big difference."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"Delegation is a key function of management, whether centralized or decentralized."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"After the control period ends, the DAO reverts to its baseline governance state, typically a voting system such as the ones we have examined in this paper. As a result, the auction mechanism can provide guardrails for that voting system."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"“The Convergence of Iterative Delegations in Liquid Democracy in a Social Network”"

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"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."

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination: DAO to DAO 3.0

"Small group decision-making in DAOs is typically done through multi-signature wallets ... mainly used in three ways: 1) as the only mechanism governing the DAO or a subsection of the DAO, 2) as a safeguard that can override or veto democratic decisions, or 3) implement non-binding off-chain votes."

src DAO Governance: Voting Power, Participation, and Controversy

"the delegation of fund allocation to a small group of certified badgeholders"

src A Social Choice Analysis of Optimism's Retroactive Project Funding

"Execution Automatic (20) Manual (52)"

src A Taxonomy of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"the DAO divided activities into ‘workstreams’—a kind of rebranding of corporate departments or business units for a fluid, virtual workplace."

src Online Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"The following year, GitcoinDAO created the Steward Council, an entity that invites Stewards to participate in a structured governance experience, including regular ‘sync calls’ and other interpersonal activities to more intentionally organise the attention of leading Stewards"

src Online Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"The organisation had to augment that system with additional provisions to support Stewards in directing adequate attention to their roles, as well as to more intentionally coordinate operational attention through workstreams."

src Online Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"These provisions included issuing reputational capital (scorecards and awards), establishing tight-knit groups (a board-like Council and workstreams), and providing direct financial support."

src Online Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"Other core principles include tracking dependencies, ensuring continuous valuation, and structuring modular, adaptive governance mechanisms."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Contributors should be able to adapt contribution rules to their local needs while maintaining system-wide coherence"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Regen Network uses localized ecological contribution tracking, nested within a broader blockchain-based credit system, ensuring different ecological zones can develop their own governance models while maintaining interoperability."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Such implementations allow for nested, tree-like dependencies, which can be part of an overarching democratic governance process."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Delegation and liquid democracy"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"conceptualizes DAO architectures as comprising five distinct layers, three of which are specific to DAO systems and define their organizational, coordination, and execution structures"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"This distinction is particularly relevant for understanding which toolkits serve as infrastructural components and which act as final applications"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"the DAOMod ontology formalizes the three key perspectives of DAO architecture—Organization, Coordination, and Execution"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"the practical evolution of DAOs reflects a gradual transition from decentralized experimentation to hybrid governance models that blend decentralized decision-making with institutional oversight"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Further example can be found in the Aragon DAO [36], a project aimed at developing tools to create other DAOs running on the Ethereum network, which uses the Aragon Association as its “manager” (“stewardship”)."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Contemporary decentralised projects typically operate through a tripartite structure comprising a non-legal entity (the DAO), a development company (DEVCO), and a foundation. Each entity serves a distinct yet complementary role in ensuring the project’s long-term success and sustainability."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"As already pointed out, a DAO must be wrapped in a legal entity to enter in an employment contract."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"The architectural anatomy of a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) is best conceptualized as a layered socio-technical stack"

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations For Governance And Operations

"The modular pattern decomposes DAO logic into discrete, interoperable contracts—such as governance, treasury, and identity modules—enabling isolated upgrades and enhanced auditability."

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations For Governance And Operations

"Why open source this framework? Representative structures in the Collective can now adopt and adapt this framework to their operations, so that decision making frameworks are consistent across the Collective"

src Optimism's Legitimacy Framework

"Signals works with Initiatives—ideas or actions seeking support. Initiatives live inside Boards (configuration sets), and DAOs can run multiple Boards with different parameters."

src Signals Protocol Litepaper

"Delegated voting: The voting power is based on a delegation strategy."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"SubDAOs are an emerging approach for different working groups to create their own foundation and ownership structure."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"The last role is the guardian, a specific blockchain user tasked with monitoring the DAO governance process. If the guardian detects malicious proposals targeting DAO governance, he has the authority within the governance contract to cancel such proposals."

src The Dao of the DAO: Eastern Philosophies in Decentralized Worlds

"In response to low voter participation, governance delegation allow users to delegate votes to representatives... This approach attempts to balance broad participation with effective decision-making"

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"current implementations have adopted tools to overcome former limitations and change smart contracts as deemed necessary through collective determination."

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"Hypha’s governance innovations include multi-layer modular voting, “leadership without control” protocols"

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"DAO 3.0’s modular, relational, and context-adaptive designs"

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"This nested structure, referred to as “membranic” because it operates like semi-permeable boundaries in biological systems. Enables both independent action and interconnected collaboration."

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"Hypha also embraced a fractal and membranic architecture, allowing decision-making processes to emerge organically across nested layers, whether global, local, or thematic."

src Decentralizing Governance: Digital Commons and DAOs

"Other DAOs... establish a Governance Council that will look after their governance for a previously agreed period."

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"Technical and Operational Support is composed of technical, administrative and other personnel who are adequately remunerated."

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"Shuai Wang, Wenwen Ding, Juanjuan Li, Yong Yuan, Liwei Ouyang, and Fei-Yue Wang. Decentralized autonomous organizations: Concept, model, and applications. IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems, 6(5):870–878, 2019."

src How Decentralized is the Governance of Blockchain-based Finance

"Enhancing DAO Governance through Committee-Based Decision Making"

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"Consequently, shareholder voting should serve as a last resort for accountability, rather than the primary mode of decision-making."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"The voting process in Uniswap consists of three phases"

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"Proposals that pass the off-chain phase proceed to on-chain voting, where the proposal initiator must write code for a smart contract"

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"many DAOs have adopted this approach as a direction for governance transformation by establishing decision-making committees and mandating that token holders delegate their voting rights to committee members."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"many DAOs have adopted this approach as a direction for governance transformation by establishing decision-making committees and mandating that token holders delegate their voting rights to committee members."

src The Illusion of Democracy: Why Voting in DAOs Is Doomed to Fail

"Community recovery is introduced as a key enforcement mechanism, alongside two key principles: plurality and subsidiarity."

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"Under subsidiarity, “higher-bandwidth” local communities benefit from lower monitoring costs because of periodic in-person voting and verified peer-to-peer interactions."

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"Vertically, communities are embedded in sub-networks, which in turn belong to broader networks."

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"Delegates or elected representatives would likely emerge to voice coalition needs more effectively in the broader network."

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"At different social scales—communities, sub-networks, and networks—bridging bonuses elevate consensus across differences"

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"This nested feedback and adaptation—community AIs within coalition AIs, etc.—presumes that member communities retain fine-grained control over their agents"

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"the vision proposed here is a network of contextualized and interrelated AIs—each unique with partial differentials in stake... Subsidiarity deepens AI networks—pushing down control for accountability, while bridging bonuses expand breadth"

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"Organizationally, SeeDAO codifies a layered system that blends bottom-up emergence with light top-down coordination... a combination of self-organization and hierarchical flow-layered governance... The “City Hall” functions as the day-to-day governance organ... The “Strategic Incubator” operates under expert governance..."

src Using Kleros in Appeals and Dispute Resolution of Gitcoin Grants

"As SeeDAO matured, mid-level coordinators emerged as stewards of institutional continuity, effectively functioning as the enactors of instrumental rationality and custodians of procedural commitment."

src Using Kleros in Appeals and Dispute Resolution of Gitcoin Grants

"This reflection exemplifies what Ostrom (1990) termed nested rule systems–procedures maintained through deliberation and mutual trust rather than hierarchy."

src Using Kleros in Appeals and Dispute Resolution of Gitcoin Grants

"Delegation capabilities for token holders"

src DAO Governance: Decentralized But Not So Disorganized

"one overarching structural weakness to which DAOs are subject is those of the costs associated with democratization of decision-making among organization members"

src Governance as Conflict: Constitution of Shared Values Defining Future Margins of Disagreement

"The above observations illustrate that delegations are not utilized to a great extent in Compound and Uniswap governance. Most voting power lies in the hands of delegates who receive most of their voting power from a single token holder."

src Analyzing Voting Power in Decentralized Governance: Who Controls DAOs?

"delegation can lead to what Wandler [4] terms “recentralization,” the concentration of the bulk of voting rights in a few hands."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"We claim that the relationship between them is more complex than appears from the existing literature. Decentralization does not necessarily advance the wisdom of crowds. Many methods of delegation are problematic. Increased participation is not necessarily desirable."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"the appeal process triggers a multi-tiered review, with each successive tier requiring a jury composed of informationally distinct members"

src PDF Resources

"These 7 new domains would need to integrate with 3 existing priority areas ... creating a total of 10 potential work streams."

src Co-Creation Cycle #3 - Final Report - Governance Iterations

"First, it explicates a framework for minimal viable governance for obstacles that appear early on"

src Concerning the Establishment of a Constitution

"Executable governance challenges this arrangement by forcing realignment. If authority is delegated, its scope must be explicit. If execution is automated, enforcement must be continuous. If harm occurs, redress must be structurally supported."

src Governance Has Already Moved

"Governance must operate at the level of execution frequency, default operation, and cumulative impact."

src Governance Has Already Moved

"there are like three, four, or five different temporal modes that need to be attended to simultaneously."

src Governance Overload | Governance Surfaces & Attention Economies

"Thus, our decentralized and remote team structure includes people with diverse backgrounds, perspectives, experiences, and belief systems."

src The Animating Purpose of BlockScience

"A planetary protocol commons also requires polycentric governance... this principle suggests community-driven protocol improvement, graduated sanctions for misbehaving autonomous technologies and AI agents, and integration with municipal and legal oversight"

src Turning to Trust Experience Design (TXD)

"Topics such as grant administration, incentives, and delegating suggest that systematic efforts are made to assist creators and encourage active engagement on the platform."

src Decentralized Autonomous Organizations—Governance, Technology, and Legal Perspectives

"The mechanism of voting delegates was introduced in July 2021... Noticeably, the total votes and the highest votes in a single poll are different among these known voters."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"This could also be supported by studies suggesting that delegating tasks to a group of experts can lead to better aggregation of information."

src Decentralization Illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from Tokenized Voting in MakerDAO Polls

"To vote, a simple form of liquid democracy is used: To be able to vote, a token holder must delegate their tokens to a delegate."

src Analyzing Voting Power in Decentralized Governance: Who Controls DAOs?

"Notably, we find that those large and powerful delegates rarely exercise their voting power to overturn a vote. In most cases, they decide in the same way as the larger community, i.e., smaller delegates or community delegates."

src Analyzing Voting Power in Decentralized Governance: Who Controls DAOs?

"The DAO Code creates a dynamic vote pool consisting of vT(qT, tdq) additional voting rights assigned to the bidder, an amount that is adjusted continuously"

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"This perpetual ability to renew and redesign the unified enterprise also addresses another rigidity, one that is intertemporal."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"A classic market solution to these problems is to put the entrepreneur in a management role, with one or more institutional investors providing the funds, and then to create a management contract..."

src Economic DAO Governance: A Contestable Control Approach

"Without these mechanisms, off-chain voting in larger developer teams can lead to fragmented decision-making, governance disputes, and ultimately, a decline in DAO valuation."

src Voting Governance and Value Creation in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"Through decentralized coordination and the automation of key functions, such as voting and fund distribution via smart contracts, DAOs can facilitate quick, democratic, and transparent decision-making."

src 2026_Wollenschlaeger-Lustenberger_Self-organizaztion-digital-participation

"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"

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"When λ=2, proxy selection for majority agreement can be optimally solved."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"Additionally, this vertical addresses proposals that create or iterate upon processes for onboarding and offboarding roles and entities vital to governance operations, such as service providers, facilitators, working groups, and councils."

src Delegation and Participation in Decentralized Governance

"To implement a scalable, decentralized governance model, our proposed framework leverages the following core technologies"

src Evaluating DAO Sustainability and Longevity

"Smart contracts automate decision enforcement, such as implementing updated compliance standards or triggering escalated oversight for flagged systems."

src Evaluating DAO Sustainability and Longevity

"delegation decisions are not driven by individual voting events. Instead, they appear to be long-term decisions, akin to the appointment of independent board members in companies, who are designated to act as delegated monitors on behalf of shareholders."

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"We then successfully cast a vote on an active proposal using Uni-Wallet02, confirming that the voting power remains with the wallet despite of the UNI token having been transferred to Uni-Wallet03 already."

src Decentralized Governance of AI Agents

"Prominent academics and industry participants see explicit delegation of voting rights to others as a possible way both to address low participation and to direct voting power to more informed and competent voters."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"Classic delegation involves the explicit transfer of voting rights to others, which we call “transfer delegation.”"

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"One component is weight competence, the ability to ascertain what the optimal weights are for other voters in the independence case or to ascertain independent signals and their associated optimal weights in the case of dependencies."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"when transfer delegation is the choice method, an important structural parameter is the number of delegative steps that are allowed."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"Suppose, however, that the whale uses its stake to create a collection of carefully selected delegates, each of whom are granted independence from the whale with respect to voting."

src Repeated Auctions with Speculators: Arbitrage Incentives and Forks in DAOs

"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"

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination: DAO to DAO 3.0

"Low Participation: Participation in governance decisions is low, so members should instead elect decision-makers to conduct governance for them."

src DAO Governance: Voting Power, Participation, and Controversy

"Centralizationcanmakemembersfeeltheirvotehaslittleimpact, whilefrequentproposalsindirectdemocracyincreasetheeffortrequiredtostayengagedbeyondtheperceivedbenefit."

src DAO Governance: Voting Power, Participation, and Controversy

"We present the final taxonomy in Table 1. It consists of three main categories, seven sub-categories, 20 dimensions, and 53 characteristics"

src A Taxonomy of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"Governance Process Execution: ... It can either be executed Automatically... or Manually, where one or more members of the DAO must issue the transaction in good faith."

src A Taxonomy of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"Zhao, X., Ai, P., Lai, F., Luo, X., and Benitez, J. 2022. “Task management in decentralized autonomous organization”"

src A Taxonomy of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"Delegation and liquid democracy"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Pluralism and polycentricity"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Subsidiarity"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"In response, some DAOs adopt legal wrappers (e.g., LLCs, Swiss Associations, or Foundations) to delineate liability, at least partially"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"it is the appropriate and rational choice to delegate regulation of these matters to the Contracting States’ discretion"

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"According to this regulation, 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 to comply with MICA purposes."

src DAWO25: European DAO Workshop Proceedings

"Snapshot is often used for polling. AragonDAO, Uniswap and MakerDAO are examples of DAOs using a hybrid governance solution"

src Perils of Current DAO Governance

"Endorsement-based extensions and advanced incentive schemas are scoped as optional modules and may evolve separately from the core."

src Signals Protocol Litepaper

"Further providing several promising directions that can be improved in the future to fit our identified four aspects in results (e.g., multi-DAO Collaboration, the incorporation of subDAOs)."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"Voting in SubDAOs can also be utilized to facilitate the delegation of decision-making power to specialized groups, enabling efficiency in governance."

src Understanding DAOs: An Empirical Study on Governance Dynamics

"DAOs should be viewed as a diverse landscape rather than a singular organizational model"

src DAO Research Trends: First European DAO Workshop (DAWO)

"researchers should investigate new tools and frameworks to further automate and streamline DAO functions, aiming to enhance efficiency and scalability"

src DAO Research Trends: First European DAO Workshop (DAWO)

"The documentation should provide a comprehensive overview of the DAO, detailing the governance process and how members can interact with it."

src The Dao of the DAO: Eastern Philosophies in Decentralized Worlds

"the execution of these proposals is carried out by the DAO developers rather than being automatically triggered by smart contracts"

src The Dao of the DAO: Eastern Philosophies in Decentralized Worlds

"The Optimism Collective’s bicameral governance model... blends token-based governance with a more curated form of public goods funding... the system intentionally separates financial incentives from social value"

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"When CBPP communities begin upsizing, they normally try to decentralize control over infrastructure and increase the level of formalization in organizational processes"

src Governance for Regenerative Coordination

"The relative ease of forking a DAO potentially limits negative effects of centralization, as dissident members can pursue their objectives independently."

src Control of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

"Within a given community or social layer... However, in a vertically nested network—where communities are embedded within sub-networks and broader networks with subsidiarity"

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"With enough common ground, two groups may form an umbrella currency to open a shared space for dialogue, while nonetheless maintaining their own internal channels."

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"Community currencies prioritize efficient enforcement—not perfect enforcement—redirecting resources to where they matter most: more valuable local currencies receive greater scrutiny, while less valuable global currencies receive less."

src Community Currencies: The Price of Attention and Cost of Influence

"Reijers, W., Wuisman, I., Mannan, M., De Filippi, P., Wray, C., Rae-Looi, V., Cubillos Vélez, A., & Orgad, L. (2021). Now the Code Runs Itself: On-Chain and Off-Chain Governance of Blockchain Technologies."

src Using Kleros in Appeals and Dispute Resolution of Gitcoin Grants