Issue #70: Governance Experiments

Experiments paved the way for modern DAOs Early DAOs were collective investment vehicles designed to function like decentralized venture funds. Tokens represented voting rights and economic interests in the DAO. Every participant was rewarded on Ethereum for their contribution regardless of their contribution. DAO winter coincided with the bear mar... See more

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

Decentralized governance in some contexts is both necessary and dangerous, for reasons that I will get into in this post. How can we get the benefits of DeGov while minimizing the risks? I will argue for one key part of the answer: we need to move beyond coin voting as it exists in its present form.

---------PROTOCOL LEADERSHIP Kain Warwick, Synthetix's former "benevolent dictator," recently explained a problem arising from the decentralized governance of Synthetix. Warwick recalls stepping away from his de facto leadership position and leaving the Spartan Council, a democratically elected body that approved Synthetix protocol changes and was ... See more

The decentralized crypto protocol community is growing. Unlocking the protocols isn't just for ideological reasons; they'll still work, and anyone can build on them. Like loans, loans, and trading, a decentralized governance system is needed for bitcoin. Crypto startups switching to community governance raises many questions about development, vote... See more

Decentralized governance implemented through DAOs encourages open participation in the development of the DeFi industry. By either purchasing or earning governance tokens, actors not only have the opportunity to share in the risk and reward associated with the monetization of a new financial system, but also the incentive to define the economic and... See more

---------SIGNAL VS NOISE Social governance in DeFi applications is usually coordinated through online forums and Discord channels. Snapshot applications conduct "off-chain" voting before protocol changes are encoded on the blockchain. DeFi governance evolved organically but created a lot of noise because proposals, discussions, and votes spread acr... 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