Vitalik Buterin: We Need More and Better DAOs, Not Just Token-Vote-Controlled Treasuries

Odaily News Vitalik Buterin published an article stating that the current crypto industry's practice of DAOs has deviated from the original vision, and it is necessary to rethink and build "different and better DAO designs." Vitalik pointed out that Ethereum's initial conception was deeply inspired by decentralized autonomous organizations, but today DAOs are often simplified into "treasuries controlled by token voting." While they may be operational in form, they are inefficient, susceptible to manipulation, and fail to truly alleviate the problems brought by human political games.

Vitalik emphasized that DAOs remain indispensable infrastructure, with application scenarios including: improving oracle designs, implementing on-chain dispute arbitration, maintaining various critical lists, rapidly launching short-term collaborative projects, and supporting long-term project maintenance after the original team exits. He believes the current issue lies not in participant motivation, but in the inherent inadequacy of system designs like governance and oracles.

Regarding governance frameworks, Vitalik introduced the analytical perspective of "concave and convex problems," arguing that different types of problems require different governance structures: scenarios favoring consensus and robustness should prioritize broad participation and resistance to manipulation; while scenarios requiring decisive action can allow for leadership, balanced by decentralized mechanisms.

Vitalik further pointed out that for DAOs to truly function effectively, they must solve the two major challenges of privacy and decision fatigue. Technologies like zero-knowledge proofs (ZK), multi-party computation, as well as AI and consensus-based communication tools can be leveraged to alleviate governance burdens. He stressed that AI should not replace human judgment but should serve as a tool to amplify and assist human intent.

Finally, Vitalik stated that future DAO designs need to treat governance mechanisms, privacy technologies, and communication layers as core components, rather than auxiliary modules, to ensure that the decentralization and robustness of the Ethereum base layer can be sustained in its upper-layer applications.