DAOs and the pitfalls of progressive decentralisation

Decentralisation should not come at the expense of efficiency in the long run. Progressive decentralisation enables an initial team to search for product market fit on its way toward credible neutrality. We will explore examples of DAOs doing this through constrained delegation and working groups, as well as the tools that provide additional layers... See more

Progressive decentralization is not enough - continuous decentralization is important. Because even in true DAOs, there will always be forces that tend towards centralization

Decentralized governance is at the heart of the ideological foundation of crypto: equal participation for all actors. The playbook of progressive decentralization is being followed by more decentralized finance (DeFi) projects. Users and tokenholders can now have more control over protocol parameters, treasury spending, and, in general, the industr... See more

---------CONCLUSION DeFi's decentralized governance allows stakeholders to influence protocol development. Decentralized governance with DAOs can replace traditional firms' transaction costs, allowing crypto projects to welcome more diverse ideas and beliefs. To achieve these benefits, operational efficiency does not have to be sacrificed. Incorpor... See more

The real promise of DAO governance might be forking: using governance to get people to disagree and through the process, discover subcommunities where they're aligned and create their own version of a project. Forking, in that sense, is the ultimate form of decentralization. And it enables governance to become the basis of social graphs where peopl... See more

Key Ideas

The core question explored in this post: do highly decentralized DAOs work, or should their governance start to more closely resemble trad corporations?

Vitalik's main point: there are certain use cases where decentralization is very important. There may be a relatively small number of these orgs, but they will be the very important ones.

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While many crypto startups have successfully made their users into owners by following the Progressive Decentralization playbook, a number of founding teams feel compelled to step back from their projects at the time of token launch to reduce the risk that their tokens will be deemed securities. An alternative path may allow founders to stay involv... See more