All DAO organizations are either forking or on the path to forking

Written by: Jaleel, BlockBeats

Edited by: Jack, BlockBeats

Establishing a well-functioning fork mechanism does not mean encouraging forks, but forks may be an inevitability as DAOs move towards decentralization.

The fork of Nouns DAO has been discussed many times, but it was only realized last month when Proposal 356 of Nouns DAO V3 was officially passed. After the Forkv3 proposal was approved, the Nouns DAO official website launched a fork page, allowing holders to join the fork and split the DAO treasury. The time window for supporting the fork is one week, and according to the rules, if 20% of Nouns NFTs support the fork by the end of the window, supporters will be separated from the main body of Nouns DAO and will directly split a corresponding proportion of ETH from the treasury.

On September 9, 214 Nouns NFTs chose to join the fork, exceeding 20%, making the fork of Nouns DAO a foregone conclusion.

Will the fork mechanism inevitably lead to a fork? How does a trust crisis occur? Besides needing decentralization, does a DAO also need to be "dehumanized"? To what reasonable extent should dehumanization be achieved? As the Nouns fork progresses, the debate about DAO forks has once again taken center stage, forcing the entire crypto community to re-examine DAO governance and re-understand forks. These questions may be a continuous challenge for all DAO organizations.

Exploration of Governance Mechanisms in DAOs

The DAO that many OGs recognize as one of the most elegant in the crypto industry has forked.

Born on August 8, 2021, Nouns has continued its auction every 24 hours as part of its main culture up to today. After each auction, 100% of the proceeds are sent to the treasury, managed by Nouns owners.

On September 16, this day was referred to by the Nouns community as "Fork Day," when Nouns DAO completed its fork. Out of 846 Nouns NFTs, 472 joined the fork, with more than half of the holders choosing to leave Nouns, withdrawing nearly $27.3 million in ETH from the treasury.

Rage Quit Does Not Just Mean "Leaving in Anger"

The biggest difference between the forked NounsDAO fork0 and the original NounsDAO is the introduction of the "rage quit mechanism." Like the fork, the rage quit mechanism has been discussed many times in NounsDAO but has never been truly implemented.

"Contrary to what many people understand, rage quit is not just used to describe the behavior of DAO members leaving in anger." During an interview with BlockBeats, OG participant Wang Chao (@cwweb3) stated, "The rage quit feature originated from the design of the Moloch protocol, where members can vote against a project they are unhappy with. After voting against, if the proposal still passes, members have seven days to choose to rage quit the DAO. The proposal will only be executed after seven days, allowing dissatisfied members a window to execute their rage quit. However, the implementation of the rage quit feature in the DAO space is not common and can even be said to be very limited."

The rage quit feature allows members to exit by burning their tokens in exchange for a certain proportion of the treasury's share. Moloch DAO, derived from the Moloch protocol, can be said to be a pioneer in investment DAOs, promoting ETH2.0 through donations and being the first DAO initiated based on the Moloch V1 protocol. After receiving donations of 1000 ETH each from Vitalik and ConsenSys founder Joseph Lubin, Moloch gained fame, and it can be said that most investment DAOs currently operating worldwide are built on Moloch.

Subsequently, the "rage quit mechanism" has been borrowed and adopted by some DAOs. Under the consensus of the majority, the will of a small group is also considered, which is the value of the rage quit mechanism. For example, if a member of a DAO disagrees with the group's consensus, they can exercise their "rage quit" ability.

Since Nouns DAO is open, anyone can join freely. As members' wills continue to evolve, it is inevitable that the DAO will gather many different opinions. As the DAO gathers more dissatisfied members, rage quitting may have long been a viable option.

In March of this year, one of the founders of Nouns DAO, 4156, wrote about his thoughts on the rage quit mechanism in a blog: "The original intention of the 'rage quit' design is to protect the minority within the DAO from the oppression of the majority. The basic logic is: if a proposal receives majority support but faces opposition from a minority, those opposing members have the right to withdraw their share from the DAO treasury and exit before the proposal is executed."

An extreme example is the "51% attack," where the majority of voters propose to withdraw the entire treasury. However, more often, it may be concerns about legal risks or dissatisfaction with fund allocation. We cannot explicitly code in the protocol when to protect the rights of the minority, so their rights are ultimately safeguarded by the "rage quit" mechanism. Implementing "rage quit" reasonably can not only provide protection for the minority in the DAO but also prevent an existing minority from strategically becoming the majority. Establishing a highly compatible "rage quit" mechanism should be seen as a priority, as it will ensure that future minority groups are protected and keep the DAO focused on its core goals.

Related Reading: 《Thinking About Rage Quit: NounsDAO Founder 4156's Thoughts on the Rage Quit Mechanism》

The DeFi lending protocol Vesta Finance, in which crypto KOL DCFGod is an investor and strategic advisor, has recently also fallen into a major disagreement within the project team. Two of the three co-founders of the project—James "Atum" Peterson and Midnight—have proposed a "rage quit" proposal to exit the project on the governance forum.

Some investors, including early supporters of the project, have called for a "rage quit." Vesta's main investor Ogle believes, "Currently, for investors, 'rage quit' is the best outcome. It's hard to recover from all this." Several DAO members are also strongly demanding a "rage quit," which is seen as the "best solution" for all parties involved.

Regarding the importance of the rage quit mechanism, BlockBeats interviewed Shawn, head of the SeeDAO incubator (Shawn), who believes that a DAO should have three basic mechanisms: first, ensuring multi-signature treasury management; second, having a complete on-chain voting mechanism; and finally, the rage quit mechanism.

In an interview with BlockBeats, Shawn repeatedly emphasized the importance of building a rage quit mechanism for DAO organizations: "In a DAO organization, the rage quit mechanism should be a fundamental and foundational function. Currently, many teams, whether successful or not, encounter various issues in the early stages, and it is common for team members to leave due to differing opinions. However, if there is a 'rage quit' mechanism, most issues can be resolved more smoothly. After all, it can also address the partnership issues we often encounter in traditional companies. I personally believe that the rage quit mechanism is a cornerstone of DAOs."

Guardians Behind the DAO in the Late Night

"When Nouns DAO forked, I felt like I was witnessing the moment in 2016 when Ethereum forked from Ethereum Classic." Compared to the rage quit, which has been overlooked by many DAOs, the fork is one of the most original cultures in the crypto industry.

Brian Flynn (@Flynnjamm), CEO of Rabbithole, expressed a similar view. He supports this fork and chose to join NounsDAO fork0. In his eyes, the original NounsDAO is more like ETC, while the forked version resembles ETH.

Forking allows a group of holders to migrate together to a new protocol instance, thereby maintaining the original ecological momentum as much as possible. The most famous examples are the Ethereum Classic fork and the Bitcoin Cash fork.

As a well-known NFT collector, xaix2 k is also the owner of Noun 1. He successfully bid 613.37 ETH for the first auction of Nouns on August 8, 2021. Although he has commented little on the subsequent development of Nouns, it is clear that he holds a reserved attitude towards this fork and rage quit, believing it is unfair to early holders.

The Nouns Protector Governance Group stated that they strongly support the forking behavior, but they previously voted against Proposal 356. The reasons are concentrated in two main aspects: first, the mixed issues; Proposal 356 bundled two vastly different topics. The fork proposal involves deep-seated incentive mechanisms and organizational structure changes, while the V3 functionality focuses on improving governance participation processes. This bundling has led to chaotic discussions and a loss of governance transparency.

More critically, the Nouns DAO Fork proposal bypassed the conventional process and should not have been proposed by just one team. From start to implementation, the fork functionality was emotionally driven, avoiding the expected process. After the rage quit of Proposal 248, a utopian voice emerged in the community, envisioning a future of infinitely forking Nouns DAO. Two emotional currents hurriedly pushed the Nouns DAO Fork functionality, bypassing the conventional process.

"The rapidly introduced fork mechanism distorts the behavior of community participants due to its incentive mechanism." Therefore, the Nouns Protector Governance Group** recommends rejecting Proposal 356, promoting the V3 upgrade without fork functionality, and returning the fork functionality to the research phase, initiating a DAO Fork Research Sprint to solicit multi-party research and re-push the proposal.**

When new proposals emerge, members of the governance group conduct extensive research behind the scenes and discuss them in meetings every Tuesday night at 8 PM. "Sometimes when I see some good proposals, I feel fortunate to have a vote to support them; it's worth spending time researching. On the other hand, for proposals that are too bad and need to be shot down, I'm glad there are organizations like Nouns Protector to supervise."

Nouns Protector does not vote in favor; they choose to appear in the face of relatively radical proposals, believing that excellent proposals will be liked and supported by everyone, while proposals that waste funds need scrutiny and oversight. Therefore, Nouns Protector only votes against and abstains, presenting the risks to DAO members, pouring cold water on the heated brainstorming, acting as a cold guardian of NounsDAO, the guardians behind the DAO in the late night.

Re-understanding Forks

For many, whether it is a fork or a rage quit, they seem to be a sign of DAOs experiencing pain and confusion, a bad omen. Because of this, many viewpoints believe that Nouns' first fork involving over 28,000 ETH is an astonishing number and a very bad thing.

However, Jacob, co-founder of Zora, has a positive view of the Nouns fork, stating that overall, forks are a good thing.

Jacob believes that unlike Ethereum's forks to combat large-scale hacking attacks, the Nouns fork is long-term and ongoing, and has become an inherent part of the protocol. The design of Nouns is progressive because it allows Nouns holders to easily choose whether to fork, while the entire community can transparently monitor the process.

Moreover, unlike Ethereum's forks, where people can simultaneously hold both ETH and ETC, Nouns holders must choose between the original Nouns and the new version. At the same time, this forking method provides a complete exit mechanism. Through this design of Nouns, users can choose to exit peacefully while reclaiming the value behind their Nouns, approximately 36.6 ETH.

Related Reading: 《Zora Founder Talks Nouns, Forks Are a Good Thing》

Establishing a well-functioning fork mechanism does not mean encouraging forks, nor does it mean that forks are a necessity; forks are merely an option, and the fork mechanism is just a function.

Healthy Forks Are Positive Evolution

The fork mechanism may be the most unique feature of DAOs. It allows for the replication and creation of new versions of systems under new ownership. Just like mutations in biological evolution, small DNA changes can lead to the emergence of new species, while the old species still exist.

The Nouns DAO fork event is seen as a significant event in the crypto circle outside, partly because the community is rethinking and understanding forks. Although forks pose a significant challenge, potentially leading to reduced liquidity, decreased talent concentration, and increased management complexity, as the community grows and wealth accumulates, forks may be a natural outcome. This may also serve as a litmus test for a DAO; a DAO that can solve these problems may be a successful experiment.

If we view DAO governance as a means to find consensus among countless decisions, rather than merely allowing the upper echelons to reach a few decisions, we can see it as a way for large groups to split into smaller, efficient sub-groups when coordination becomes difficult, while also creating value for each other. From this perspective, forks are actually the highest form of decentralization, transforming governance into social interaction, helping people find like-minded sub-groups to achieve their goals.

The core of this governance form is to encourage the community to share and express its preferences: good governance is good user experience. Through healthy divergences, we can encourage the formation of sub DAOs, thereby promoting the development and growth of the ecosystem. Forks, like cell division and biological reproduction, can generate diversity.

Healthy forks are not only improvements to technology or governance models but also refinements of community culture and values. They allow a large community to segment into smaller, more focused groups, thus meeting their unique needs and goals. This segmentation is not a zero-sum game—one group does not benefit at the expense of another. On the contrary, it is a positive-sum game, as each sub-group can innovate and thrive based on its specific needs and goals.

In most cases, the emergence of forks is due to disagreements within the community on a particular issue. Large organizations inevitably face divergences; if these divergences are irreconcilable, they may lead to forks. All organizations that can survive will have a group of staunch supporters; as long as the overall consensus is not damaged, the community will not perish.

But from another perspective, forks can be seen as a form of "evolution" for the community. Just as species adapt to their environment through natural selection and mutation, communities can adapt to their unique challenges and opportunities through forks. This adaptability ensures the community's longevity and resilience, allowing them to thrive in the ever-changing crypto landscape.

In the era of memes and CC0, there are many invisible forks; a new perspective and use case based on core IP is also a fork. By incentivizing anyone to use its IP for free, more value will return to the core IP. By giving up short-term revenue demands, the brand's value may become more significant.

This is still a form of brand building and marketing communication for meme and CC0 IP itself. Therefore, forks are not just a zero-sum game that replaces the original version; they can also be a positive-sum game that accumulates value back to the original IP and brand.

subDAO as Another Form of Fork

Many sub DAOs already exist within the Nouns ecosystem; they are essentially DAOs that receive funding or organize and carry out work within the Nouns ecosystem. Nouns Builder is a tool specifically built to make this precise behavior as simple as possible. By pre-setting auction parameters such as auction duration and starting price, anyone can initiate a Nouns-structured DAO. The team behind Nouns Builder is Zora, which established the Nouns Builder DAO using this tool, applying for 1000 ETH from the Nouns DAO treasury to incubate more creative Nounish DAOs and spread the Nouns model.

A typical subDAO is Lil Nouns. Apart from parameter differences, the rules in other aspects are basically consistent with Nouns. The auction duration for Lil Nouns is 15 minutes, and the starting price is 0.15 ETH. The votes in the Lil Nouns treasury participate in the voting of each proposal in Nouns, lowering the participation threshold and bringing more members into the Nouns ecosystem.

Related Reading: 《Nounish DAO: The Diffusion of DAO, Governance, and Cultural Symbols》

subDAOs are more flexible, reducing the limitations and impacts of large scale and complexity to some extent, akin to another form of a fork.

Maker is one of the oldest DAOs, with Maker DAO's annual revenue exceeding $142 million and project expenditures over $44 million. At this scale, Maker DAO has also struggled with governance coordination issues for many years. To address governance challenges within the Maker DAO ecosystem, this established DeFi project announced the Endgame plan, which sparked dissatisfaction among numerous VCs, including a16z, leading to a sell-off of all tokens.

In addition to upgrading the brand, subDAOs are undoubtedly the biggest feature of Endgame. After all, a problem that no cryptocurrency project can escape is—community governance. MakerDAO founder Rune believes that to govern a community well, one must "simplify complexity," breaking down the large and intricate system into various subsystems, and the goal of Endgame is clearly to achieve this.

Maker DAO has four sub DAOs, among which Sakura DAO has rapidly risen in the Japanese community, and Spark DAO has allowed the Korean community to discover that they can build interactions here. Quant is a sub DAO focused on real-world assets (RWA), leveraging technology and scale to create value, combining Maker's billions in scale with tokenized assets. Qual is also a sub DAO focused on RWA and finance, but it is more oriented towards the Chinese crypto community and Southeast Asian community.

In an interview with BlockBeats, Maker DAO founder Rune expressed his views on sub DAOs: "Even when sub DAOs were still in the hypothetical stage, I clearly saw that sub DAOs are the trend of the future. I believe any project that wants to succeed in this field and has the opportunity to expand will adopt some version of the sub DAO model. If there is no separated management from the beginning, a DAO can only scale to a certain extent or become a company, thus abandoning the entire decentralization and governance. Now we have further developed, and we have shaped the DAO based on market and community signals."

Related Reading: 《Exclusive Interview with MakerDAO: Solana Is Not Our Only Choice》

Behind Governance Wars and Arbitrage: How Trust Crises Arise

Many in the community believe that the main reason for the NounsDAO fork is the erosion of trust among community members. Noun 40 (@noun40__) also expressed his views on this issue: "It is certain that the reason for adding the fork mechanism is not to repay arbitrageurs or invite those we disagree with to leave. The reason for adding the fork mechanism is to allow the remaining factions to coordinate with more trust. I am not saying that the fork mechanism will necessarily lead to a fork. My hope and expectation are that the existence of the fork mechanism will allow both sides to gain more sincere cooperation from each other."

Similar trust issues do not only occur in NounsDAO.

BuidlerDAO, Paraspace: Who Controls the Treasury?

Earlier this year, BuidlerDAO was embroiled in a dispute over the management of its treasury funds and conflicts among the founding team. Former team member Chen Jian claimed in his social circle that "the founders did something against the bottom line," which subsequently attracted widespread attention from the community, even rumors of founders trading treasury funds, leading BuidlerDAO into a crisis of credibility.

Months later, BuidlerDAO founder Kuai Xiaoba Niels publicly clarified the situation, stating that the turmoil stemmed from a conflict between him and another core team member, Chen Jian. According to Niels' clarification, he admitted to adjusting 150,000 USDC in the treasury to ETH and BTC in December 2022, but this action was taken with the consultation and advice of investors, and there were no signs of funds flowing to personal wallets or exchanges. The on-chain data is as follows: https://etherscan.io/address/0x72Dcfc6F1Aa963d01b1D48C53a1b0630EF87db28.

The BuidlerDAO incident is not just a conflict between two founding team members; it also reflects core issues such as transparency and automated governance in DAO governance. Although Kuai Xiaoba Niels has provided reasonable explanations for his actions, the lack of established multi-signature signers and rules for the treasury meant that the multi-signature wallet of BuidlerDAO was controlled solely by him, which left him vulnerable to criticism and, to some extent, weakened BuidlerDAO's transparency and credibility. BuidlerDAO has also learned a valuable lesson from this.

Not only BuidlerDAO, but also Paraspace, a team that has received over ten million dollars in investments from top VCs like Sequoia, Coinbase, and Founders Fund, has staged a spectacular "power struggle" over funding-related issues. On May 10, several well-known KOLs warned that the NFT lending protocol Paraspace was experiencing problems and advised users to withdraw their funds as soon as possible. This news spread rapidly on Twitter and within the community, causing strong panic. Paraspace founder Yubo faced not only accusations of misappropriating funds but also an explosive internal governance disagreement.

The incident was triggered by a hack that caused financial losses for Paraspace. When the security company BlockSec intercepted the damaged funds for return to Paraspace, the return of funds was not fully completed in a timely manner.

In response to the allegations of misappropriating funds, Yubo stated in a Twitter Space that this was due to the protocol's debt gap being in stablecoins, while BlockSec returned the funds in ETH, so he decided to gradually sell off and fill the protocol's debt gap based on market changes. The address starting with 0x909 is actually Paraspace's daily operating wallet, which is indeed controlled by him for efficiency reasons. The reason for the "misappropriation of public funds" debate is precisely because BlockSec sent the stolen funds to a user address that the protocol's smart contract could not control. However, the Paraspace team, as a whole, should have immediately decided which address to use to receive the funds after the stolen funds were recovered and what the return process would be. The main point of contention in this "public dispute" was the specific return process of the funds, leading to a trust crisis.

Arbitrage Behavior Exists Longer Than DAOs

Arbitrage behavior in the market predates the existence of DAO organizations themselves.

Returning to Nouns DAO, the ongoing issue of waste in the Nouns treasury funds has increasingly manifested as dissatisfaction among community members. The endless stream of arbitrageurs, high approval rates for poor proposals, and proposals that have not been well delivered have led participants to vote with their feet, and many holders have voiced their complaints. One of the founders of Nouns, Seneca, candidly stated that in the early stages of Nouns DAO's development, the attitude towards finances was indeed lax, which not only wasted opportunities to experiment with many initiatives but also harmed the network value of Nouns. However, now Nouns DAO should improve in this regard.

KOL hype (@hype_eth) also exposed on social media how nounsbrand stole nearly 400 ETH (about $640,000) from the treasury: they first raised 355 ETH from the treasury to establish the brand nounsbrand, and then applied for an additional 33 ETH from the treasury to create counterfeit LV luggage with bobbleheads, but they never delivered anything. They have now deleted their images, website, and all nouns-related content on social media.

0xBobateas, the proposer of "Nounify New York Fashion Week" (i.e., Proposal 129), also provided a more detailed disclosure of this matter in an article: after getting acquainted with the Advsiry team, Advsiry promised to provide Advice X Nouns attendance badges and Nouns gifts for guests, to post the Nouns brand at the venue, to host a Nounish afterparty, and to showcase Nouns objects designed by Keith Herron on the runway, with all these activities quoted at 33 ETH.

After leveraging 0xBobateas' connections to gain support, Proposal 129 passed with 59 votes in favor and 1 against. However, disappointingly, there was almost no presence of Nouns during the New York Fashion Week event. The proposal was hardly executed, and the 33 ETH was not refunded, leading to a deterioration of trust among Nouns community members. Since the inception of Nouns, community members have been contemplating how to use treasury funds to purchase influence and how to become priority decision-makers in the public domain culture. The lax approval of proposals seems to be a design flaw for many holders.

Moreover, the entire process of the Nouns fork was also a large-scale arbitrage activity.

For participants in the fork, they can choose to continue using new NFTs in the new Nouns DAO fork or utilize the "rage quit" mechanism to proportionally withdraw their ETH contributions. Considering that participating in the fork could bring about 35 ETH in book value, while current market dynamics show that Nouns prices have consistently been below their "book value," with auction prices mainly between 20-30 ETH, arbitrageurs clearly saw a price gap in between.

In recent months, arbitrageurs have been actively buying Nouns during market downturns, hoping to exchange their ETH for higher returns after the fork. These voters recently purchased Nouns at prices below book value and held opposing views on most proposals, only supporting a few measures such as v3 audits, core development funds, and voting refunds—these are all measures that directly or indirectly support their arbitrage or cost-saving efforts.

Regarding such arbitrage behavior, Shawn, head of the SeeDAO incubator, told BlockBeats: "Arbitrage phenomena are actually expected; they present a challenge and opportunity for DAO organizations, even serving as a litmus test for DAO organizations. Just like witch attacks, we cannot avoid witch attacks, but similar attacks can actually help the organization move towards improvement. The important thing is for the organization to recognize these phenomena and make corresponding adjustments and improvements. Without such challenges, the organization may become complacent and stop progressing."

BlockBeats learned from the Nouns Protector Governance Group: purely arbitrage-driven operations account for only a small part of the reasons for the fork. From May of this year until just before the fork, the number of Nouner has basically stopped growing, while Nouns auctions are still ongoing. During this period, participating in auctions to "stockpile" Nouns and acquiring more Nouns in the secondary market before and after the fork are normal market behaviors, among which there are indeed participants who genuinely long Nouns and contribute to Nouns. The final widespread participation in the fork should not be attributed to individuals but rather to the overall spontaneity.

Not Only Decentralization, DAOs Also Need to Be De-"Humanized"

During an interview with BlockBeats, OG participant in the DAO space, Wang Chao, expressed his views: "According to the standards and concepts defined in the previous Ethereum white paper, there may not be a true DAO in the world yet, because in practical operation, human participation and governance are still required."

The concept of DAO is to automate certain governance processes so that they can run continuously without human intervention. In Ethereum's white paper, a true DAO should be a decentralized autonomous organization that does not rely on human coordination at all. Even Bitcoin has only partially realized this concept, being closer to the definition of a DAO but not fully compliant. Strictly speaking, although many organizations claim to be DAOs, they have not yet reached true autonomy and self-governance. DAOs not only need to be decentralized but also need to be de-"humanized."

Reducing Human Governance, Moving Towards Autonomy

In some DeFi DAOs or community DAOs, due to flaws in governance mechanism design or other constraints, excessive "human governance" has led to unreasonable decisions or actions. On March 28, the Arbitrum community initiated a vote on the Arbitrum Improvement Proposal 1 (AIP-1) on Snapshot, proposing to introduce a decentralized autonomous organization structure managed by ARB holders, with the Arbitrum Foundation also serving the Arbitrum DAO community and being managed by it.

However, before the vote ended, the AIP-1 proposal had not yet passed. It was exposed by a blog post from Patrick McCorry that the Arbitrum Foundation had already created a multi-signature wallet named "Arbitrum DAO Treasury2," receiving nearly 700 million ARB tokens and had already sold ARB tokens in advance for stablecoins. The community and some partners felt extremely disappointed with the Arbitrum team and the so-called governance, believing that AIP-1 was not a genuine vote and that the DAO principles were directly thrown out the window. What significance does such a vote have when the proposal's content has already been executed without community consent?

Although the DAO concept aims to let organizations be entirely controlled by code, in reality, many DAOs still have excessive human participation and decision-making, and this excessive human involvement is the essence of the trust crisis in DAOs.

In the interview, DAO OG participant Wang Chao told BlockBeats that to some extent, he agrees with this viewpoint: "If a DAO still requires a lot of human governance, it may have already deviated from the true definition of a DAO. When an organization relies too much on human decision-making, it is closer to a simple decentralized organization rather than a fully autonomous DAO."

With the development of smart contracts and infrastructure, DAOs are gradually increasing their level of decentralization. For example, Nouns DAO has already achieved fund management through multi-signature wallets while using smart contracts to automatically trigger fund disbursements after proposals are passed.

However, complete on-chain governance remains a significant challenge for many projects. Despite continuous improvements in foundational technology, many complex decisions and business logic are still difficult to automate. This means that human involvement is still necessary in many cases, such as the execution risks DAOs face in the real world, whether in batch disbursements, reviewing task completion, or most importantly, executing proposals—all require human participation.

DAOs not only need to be decentralized but also need to consider to what extent they should be de-"humanized." This may be a continuous challenge for all DAO organizations.

After the Fork, Where Do We Go From Here?

Which is more legitimate, the new DAO or the original DAO?

On this issue, the Nouns Protector Governance Group told BlockBeats that the current debate about legitimacy is not important; this question is too early. Many discussions about legitimacy are merely because everyone is pursuing practical interests. If we were discussing the legitimacy of Ethereum in 2016, it would also seem absurd. In the short term, the party holding the most funds often has greater influence. But in the long run, what truly matters is which organization can foster meaningful and valuable innovations.

Of course, many are concerned about the possibility of infinite forks of Nouns. On this issue, BlockBeats learned from Wang Chao that from a tool perspective, Nouns seems easy to fork. However, he believes that forks will not occur frequently, as successfully maintaining an active organization with social consensus is extremely challenging. "Although the recent fork has sparked prolonged debates and exposed some dissatisfaction, I feel this is just a temporary state. I am not very clear about the current development trend, but this fork is likely a wake-up call, and I still believe Nouns can continue to develop healthily." Wang Chao said.

After the fork, where do the holders go? In choosing between the new DAO and the original DAO, BlockBeats found that the community's choices are mostly loyal to their trust. "Where our trusted friends, teams, and community members are, that is where our choice lies."

Looking at the precedents of many forks, such as MolochDAO, which has been forked into multiple DAOs with different goals since its launch in March 2019, such as MetaCartel Ventures and Marketing DAO. Although MolochDAO has not voted out many well-known projects except for Tornado.cash, the DAOs forked from Moloch DAO are now quite diverse.

The Nouns DAO fork proposal has also attracted considerable attention in the governance of other DAO organizations, becoming a reference model for others. For example, members of Floor DAO have also proposed a proposal in the community to implement a rage quit mechanism for token holders through the forked DAO "Floork DAO."

Is complete autonomy and decentralization merely a utopian illusion? In this new world defined by "code is law," will human subjective will still play an important role? The Nouns DAO fork event has prompted many governance practitioners and the crypto community to re-examine the meaning and prospects of DAOs.

Perhaps, at present, DAOs find it difficult to completely escape human influence, and the road to autonomy is winding and tortuous. But with the advancement of AI tools and the infrastructure of the crypto industry, for those idealists, the future of DAOs is certainly not just a large experiment.

This article is particularly grateful to: Nouns Protector Governance Group, DAO OG participant Wang Chao, Shawn, head of SeeDAO incubator.

Reference Content:

1. 《S1E10｜VENTUREDAO Prequel: The Arrogant Proposals of the Nameless Become the Cornerstone of the Industry｜DAO Special》
2. 《Keeping up with the Nouns》
3. 《Introducing Nouns Fork: A Last-Resort Minority Protection Mechanism》
4. 《Thinking About Rage Quit》
5. 《Forks Are a Good Thing: This Is a New Feature, Not a Bug》
6. 《Cross-Community Sharing - When the Elegant NounsDAO Encounters Governance Attacks》