DAO Governance models and use cases

Karolina

16 May 2023
DAO Governance models and use cases

DAO governance models is a crucial aspect of DAOs. It outlines decision-making processes, voting mechanisms, funds management, and stakeholder participation. These models have been used to fund, manage and govern DAOs in the cryptocurrency space for several years. This article will discuss the rise of DAOs and examine the various governance models adopted by these innovative organizations.

Excited about joining the DAO? Check out our guide!

Understanding DAO Governance Models

DAO governance models provide a structure for decentralized decision-making and resource allocation within an organization. These models are designed to promote transparency, inclusivity, and community-driven decision-making. Unlike traditional governance structures, where decisions are made by a select group of individuals or entities, DAOs enable broader participation, allowing stakeholders to contribute and influence decisions. Governance models are critical to the success of decentralized organizations. 

DAO Governance Models - Fundamental Concepts

  • Transparency: Promoting easy access to data and involvement in decision-making.
  • Security: Establishing protective measures against harmful attacks or tampering within the DAO.
  • Flexibility: Facilitating change and growth in response to the DAO's and its ecosystem's development.
  • Inclusivity: Fostering wide-ranging community involvement and engagement of stakeholders.

Main DAO Governance Models

Main DAO governance models

There are four main DAO governance models:

  • ConstitutionDAO, 
  • Friends with Benefits DAO, 
  • JuiceboxDAO,
  • Ethereum Name Service DAO. 

ConstitutionDAO

ConstitutionDAO represents a governing framework that allows users to collectively pool their resources and acquire shared asset ownership through cryptocurrencies. This DAO governance arrangement ensures stability for its members by implementing a clear set of rules that dictate the DAO's operations. 

As one of the first DAO governance structures, ConstitutionDAO has demonstrated the potential of decentralized organizations and the power of collective efforts in achieving shared goals.

Friends with Benefits DAO

FWB, or Friends with Benefits DAO, is a community centered around social tokens that aims to assist creators and forge solid connections between its participants. Utilizing dao governance models, FWB promotes a socially-driven approach where members holding vested tokens can partake in the decision-making process. This method highlights teamwork, repute, and the value of social capital, empowering members to jointly influence the community's path and efforts.

JuiceboxDAO

JuiceboxDAO represents a novel form of dao governance models, integrating aspects of both token-based systems and conviction voting. Within this paradigm, holders of tokens possess voting authority in relation to their stake size, while also being able to demonstrate their dedication by securing their tokens for a certain time frame. As tokens are locked for longer periods, the votes gain more influence. This method encourages lasting engagement and fosters harmony between the motives of stakeholders and the accomplishments of the DAO's projects and endeavors.

Ethereum Name Service DAO

The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) offers a fully distributed domain name system built upon the Ethereum blockchain network. Its governance framework integrates a unique "proof of individuality" process, in which participants establish their distinctiveness through an identity authentication procedure. The ENS DAO employs a quadratic voting mechanism that enables token holders to apportion their voting authority across multiple proposals. In doing so, this model fosters equitable treatment and deters the centralization of power by dispersing influence more evenly among participants.

ENS DAO works on a three-layered approach:

  • Discourse of proposals
  • Off-chain voting used by delegates
  • Voting on the blockchain

Use Cases of DAO Governance Models

1. Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) governance models have significantly impacted the field of decentralized finance (DeFi). DeFi platforms often leverage DAOs to manage key protocol decisions, such as setting interest rates, defining collateral requirements, or introducing new features. Applying a DAO governance structure allows DeFi initiatives to involve community members in the decision-making process, thereby fostering a more inclusive and decentralized financial landscape.

2. Collective Investment and Fund Management

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) have become valuable tools for group investment and the management of funds. With the implementation of DAO governance structures, those who hold tokens can collaboratively make investment choices, resulting in a more equitable and transparent approach to investing. These DAOs enable pooling of resources, empowering participants to team up and invest in various projects, oversee funds, and apportion profits according to predetermined rules.

3. Content Creation and Curation

In the digital content space, DAO governance models offer new opportunities for content creation and curation platforms. Utilizing DAOs allows content creators and curators to obtain rewards through community-driven voting systems and decision-making procedures. This guarantees that the most valuable and high-quality content receives recognition and financial incentives, creating a fairer and more decentralized content ecosystem.

4. Decentralized Governance

Perhaps the most fundamental use case is in decentralized governance itself. DAOs can be created to manage the decision-making processes within communities, organizations, or even entire cities. By giving power back to the people, DAOs facilitate direct democratic participation, allowing individuals to have a say in matters that affect them. This enables greater transparency, accountability, and inclusivity in governance processes.

Conclusion

DAOs have revolutionized traditional management structures, enabling decentralized decision-making and value creation. With the ability to apply different models to different sectors, such as DeFi, content platforms and investments, DAOs are able to transform and revolutionize a variety of industries.

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Aethir Tokenomics – Case Study

Kajetan Olas

22 Nov 2024
Aethir Tokenomics – Case Study

Authors of the contents are not affiliated to the reviewed project in any way and none of the information presented should be taken as financial advice.

In this article we analyze tokenomics of Aethir - a project providing on-demand cloud compute resources for the AI, Gaming, and virtualized compute sectors.
Aethir aims to aggregate enterprise-grade GPUs from multiple providers into a DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network). Its competitive edge comes from utlizing the GPUs for very specific use-cases, such as low-latency rendering for online games.
Due to decentralized nature of its infrastructure Aethir can meet the demands of online-gaming in any region. This is especially important for some gamer-abundant regions in Asia with underdeveloped cloud infrastructure that causes high latency ("lags").
We will analyze Aethir's tokenomics, give our opinion on what was done well, and provide specific recommendations on how to improve it.

Evaluation Summary

Aethir Tokenomics Structure

The total supply of ATH tokens is capped at 42 billion ATH. This fixed cap provides a predictable supply environment, and the complete emissions schedule is listed here. As of November 2024 there are approximately 5.2 Billion ATH in circulation. In a year from now (November 2025), the circulating supply will almost triple, and will amount to approximately 15 Billion ATH. By November 2028, today's circulating supply will be diluted by around 86%.

From an investor standpoint the rational decision would be to stake their tokens and hope for rewards that will balance the inflation. Currently the estimated APR for 3-year staking is 195% and for 4-year staking APR is 261%. The rewards are paid out weekly. Furthermore, stakers can expect to get additional rewards from partnered AI projects.

Staking Incentives

Rewards are calculated based on the staking duration and staked amount. These factors are equally important and they linearly influence weekly rewards. This means that someone who stakes 100 ATH for 2 weeks will have the same weekly rewards as someone who stakes 200 ATH for 1 week. This mechanism greatly emphasizes long-term holding. That's because holding a token makes sense only if you go for long-term staking. E.g. a whale staking $200k with 1 week lockup. will have the same weekly rewards as person staking $1k with 4 year lockup. Furthermore the ATH staking rewards are fixed and divided among stakers. Therefore Increase of user base is likely to come with decrease in rewards.
We believe the main weak-point of Aethirs staking is the lack of equivalency between rewards paid out to the users and value generated for the protocol as a result of staking.

Token Distribution

The token distribution of $ATH is well designed and comes with long vesting time-frames. 18-month cliff and 36-moths subsequent linear vesting is applied to team's allocation. This is higher than industry standard and is a sign of long-term commitment.

  • Checkers and Compute Providers: 50%
  • Ecosystem: 15%
  • Team: 12.5%
  • Investors: 11.5%
  • Airdrop: 6%
  • Advisors: 5%

Aethir's airdrop is divided into 3 phases to ensure that only loyal users get rewarded. This mechanism is very-well thought and we rate it highly. It fosters high community engagement within the first months of the project and sets the ground for potentially giving more-control to the DAO.

Governance and Community-Led Development

Aethir’s governance model promotes community-led decision-making in a very practical way. Instead of rushing with creation of a DAO for PR and marketing purposes Aethir is trying to make it the right way. They support projects building on their infrastructure and regularly share updates with their community in the most professional manner.

We believe Aethir would benefit from implementing reputation boosted voting. An example of such system is described here. The core assumption is to abandon the simplistic: 1 token = 1 vote and go towards: Votes = tokens * reputation_based_multiplication_factor.

In the attached example, reputation_based_multiplication_factor rises exponentially with the number of standard deviations above norm, with regard to user's rating. For compute compute providers at Aethir, user's rating could be replaced by provider's uptime.

Perspectives for the future

While it's important to analyze aspects such as supply-side tokenomics, or governance, we must keep in mind that 95% of project's success depends on demand-side. In this regard the outlook for Aethir may be very bright. The project declares $36M annual reccuring revenue. Revenue like this is very rare in the web3 space. Many projects are not able to generate any revenue after succesfull ICO event, due to lack fo product-market-fit.

If you're looking to create a robust tokenomics model and go through institutional-grade testing please reach out to contact@nextrope.com. Our team is ready to help you with the token engineering process and ensure your project’s resilience in the long term.

Nextrope Partners with Hacken to Enhance Blockchain Security

Miłosz

21 Nov 2024
Nextrope Partners with Hacken to Enhance Blockchain Security

Nextrope announces a strategic partnership with Hacken, a renowned blockchain security auditor. It marks a significant step in delivering reliable decentralized solutions. After several successful collaborations resulting in flawless smart contract audits, the alliance solidifies the synergy between Nextrope's innovative blockchain development and Hacken's top-tier security auditing services. Together, we aim to set new benchmarks, ensuring that security is an integral part of blockchain technology.

Strengthening Blockchain Security

The partnership aims to fortify the security protocols within blockchain ecosystems. By integrating Hacken's comprehensive security audits with Nextrope's cutting-edge blockchain solutions, we are poised to offer unparalleled security features in our projects.

"Blockchain security should never be an afterthought"

"Our partnership with Hacken underscores our dedication to embedding security at the core of our blockchain solutions. Together, we're building a safer future for the industry."

said Mateusz Mach, CEO of Nextrope

About Nextrope

Nextrope is a forward-thinking blockchain development house specializing in creating innovative solutions for businesses worldwide. With a team of experienced developers and blockchain experts, Nextrope delivers high-quality, scalable, and secure blockchain applications tailored to meet the unique needs of each client.

About Hacken

Hacken is a leading blockchain security auditor known for its rigorous smart contract audits and security assessments. With a mission to make the industry safer, Hacken provides complex security services that help companies identify and mitigate vulnerabilities in their applications.

Looking Ahead

As a joint mission, both Nextrope and Hacken are committed to continuous innovation. We look forward to the exciting opportunities this partnership will bring and are eager to implement a more secure blockchain environment for all.

For more information, please contact:

Nextrope

Hacken

Join us on our journey to deliver top-notch blockchain tech and a safer future for the industry!