Charlie Cummings & Jan Brezina: The Future of DAO Governance
DAO Camp 2022
Website: https://daocamp.org
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeHtPZ_ZLZ-nHFMUCXY81RQ
FB: https://www.facebook.com/DAO-Camp-102442798988862/
2. What is the DAO - Decentralized Autonomous Organization?
The DAO was an organization created by developers to automate decisions and
facilitate cryptocurrency transactions.
Investment DAO
Collaborative approach in
investing, typically NFTs,
fungible tokens, other
tokenized assets
Protocol DAO
Governance of decentralized protocols
Non-profit DAO
Transparent & frictionless help to others
Funding of public goods
Social DAOs
Exclusive communities,
manage community
assets & spending
Main types of DAOs
Service DAO
DAO providing professional services to
other DAOs
Product DAO
Decentralized governance for product
development
3. Why DAOs exist?
1. Enable blockchain native structure for coordination of
effort
2. To have truly global organization
3. Mitigate risks associated with unclear regulation
5. DAO structures, challenges and innovations
Current state:
One token one vote or one person one vote
Challenge:
The Distribution of power is excluding particular groups groups (small token holders, minority opinions)
Innovation:
Delegation curve
Quadratic voting
Conviction voting
6. Current state:
Voting is decentralized, everyone has the voting power and should participate in governance for whole DAO
Challenge:
Participation in governance requires a lot of effort, and people might not have time or interest.
Innovation:
Trusted delegation
Incentivization of participation
Vote escrow ( veTokens)
DAO structures, challenges and innovations
7. Current state:
No structure of the DAO in terms of Governance process, all proposals are on DAO level
Challenge:
Team level decisions requires knowledge of the team project, therefore is very hard for non-project people to make
a decision.
Innovation:
Pod structure
Guilds
SubDAOs
DAO structures, challenges and innovations
8. Current state:
Token holders hold the token for its monetary value and not to participate in governance.
Challenge:
Large percentage of eligible voters never participate in governance, which makes reaching quorums and making
decisions hard. Also there is always the risk that they can swing a vote if the decide to.
Innovation:
Trusted Investor
Treasury diversification
Separate governance and financial tokens
DAO structures, challenges and innovations
9. Current state:
Protocols are being successfully taken over by governance attacks.
Challenge:
A DAO’s mission can be derailed by a group of invaders.
Innovation:
Trusted Metagovernance
DAO structures, challenges and innovations
11. Political parties will form both within and between DAOs
● Being a well-informed governance participant takes a lot of work
● Token holders want to delegate their power rather than try to keep up
with every issue and every vote
● People will organize on ideological spectrums such as:
○ Centralization vs decentralization
○ Sustainability vs slash and burn
○ Profit maximization vs distribution of wealth
○ Future value of money vs present value of money
○ Globalism vs protectionism
12. Effectiv DAO leadership will be recognized and coveted
● No better technology has been invented for human coordination
challenges than a strong leader
● DAOs with great leadership will try to keep their talent from leaving
with large incentive packages and other perks
● New, well-funded DAOs will pay $$$$ for the best governance leaders
● Strong DAO leaders will become well-known personalities like great
CEOs , celebrity software engineers, and investors
13. Future of Governance is in the network effect
● Merges on product level but forking on the governance level
● Large ecosystems of partners to work together to develop better products
● Small “two pizzas” autonomous teams aligned on the vision with the large ecosystem but contributing on their
own terms
Pod’s
Ecosystem of partnering DAOs
DAO
