Governance Participation: Perils and Promise

It reduces plutocracy, whale attacks, and voter apathy. Furthermore, it accounts for skin-in-the-game, direct signaling and is relatively permissionless. By using tools like Conviction Voting, holders can increase their voting power. Due to a lack of top-down strategy setting, convergence is a challenge for many DAOs. As a final note, the above sys... See more

The three key governance areas Growing DAOs will likely reach the point where their communities demand governance structures for all three key needs. Below, I share a more detailed breakdown of each of them to help builders/protocol developers identify where they will have to put their focus if they want to build a successful DAO.

The promise of DAOs lies in self-governance. With the appropriate tools and mechanics, contributors can onboard, coordinate, reward one another, rather than relying on one single point of failure. In absence of such infrastructure, decisions will continue to be made arbitrarily and consensus cannot scale across the network.

Even if members’ paths to engagement within a DAO may be more emergent or unpredictable in nature, DAO designers and operators still have important top-down roles to play as arbiters of the possibility spaces within their respective communities.