April 15, 2025
DAOs have been "dead" since 2018.
They died when ConstitutionDAO dissolved after raising $47 million but losing its bid.
They died during the 2022 market crash when treasuries evaporated.
They died when attention shifted to AI and meme coins.
Yet after every funeral, these organizations build back stronger. DAOs are what connect many of us in crypto – they stitch the space together through bear markets and hype cycles. While the spotlight moved elsewhere, builders continued creating, refining, and solving the hardest problems.
I think we've entered a new chapter for DAOs.
Let's examine where we are, what's working, what isn't, and what comes next.
Why This Moment Matters
For years, the barriers to effective DAOs were threefold: regulatory uncertainty, the cost and complexity of going offshore, and immature tooling. In 2025, we're witnessing the simultaneous collapse of all three.
Regulatory clarity has finally arrived.
After years of ambiguity, we have workable frameworks for tokenized organizations that protect both founders and participants. For the first time, there's a viable path to building compliant, decentralized organizations in major jurisdictions – and that changes everything.
Technical economics now make sense.
With transaction costs falling dramatically, actions that once cost hundreds of dollars now cost pennies. What previously cost $400 to launch on Ethereum mainnet now costs just $3. Real-time governance and treasury management are financially viable at last, removing a fundamental constraint on how DAOs can operate.
Infrastructure maturity has reached a tipping point.
The days of cobbling together Discord, Snapshot, and a wallet are ending. Purpose-built platforms now provide comprehensive, voter-obsessed solutions for launching and managing DAOs with minimal technical expertise required.
These changes have created an environment where DAOs can finally deliver on their foundational promise: transparent, accountable coordination at scale.
The Current State: Growing Pains and Opportunities
The public narrative around DAOs today is mixed. After waves of experimentation – from ConstitutionDAO's rise and fall to investment DAOs like Olympus DAO that essentially disappeared – many have written off the model entirely.
This is understandable.
First-generation DAOs suffered from critical flaws:
- Governance Fatigue: When every decision requires a vote, nothing gets done
- Operational Fragmentation: Critical information scattered across multiple platforms with completely unrelated access controls (token holders vs. email vs. core team group chats)
- Legal Liability Issues: Organizations like OokiDAO exposed members to unlimited liability as partners
- Prohibitively Expensive: It costs $300K+ to do a thing that's supposed to be more accessible
- Unclear Value Accrual: Many tokens had no sustainable path to value
The result has been a Darwinian cull, with many early DAOs struggling or failing outright.
But this period of natural selection has been invaluable – we've learned what doesn't work.
And despite the broader narrative, certain DAOs continue to not just survive but thrive. ENS manages massive resources through a sophisticated delegation model. Maker DAO pioneered decentralized governance in DeFi. RaidGuild has built a sustainable services business through member-driven contribution. These success stories aren't accidents – they reveal patterns we can learn from.
What's Working and What Isn't
Through years of trial and error, clear patterns have emerged in what makes DAOs succeed or fail.
The Failure Patterns
Governance Obsession: Too many DAOs get caught in the trap of building elaborate governance systems while neglecting their core mission. Putting tech first makes it the problem, not the solution.
Direct Democracy: Organizations that require voting on everything inevitably grind to a halt. When everyone must decide everything, nothing gets decided.
Tokens Without Purpose: Launching tokens without clear governance rights or value accrual mechanisms creates perverse incentives (pump and dump).
Scattered Operations: When critical functions are spread across multiple platforms, information gets lost and participation drops.
The Success Patterns
Delegated Authority: Successful DAOs like ENS create structured delegation systems, where governance sets direction while empowered working groups handle execution.
Resource Allocation Frameworks: Clear processes for distributing treasury resources prevent both paralysis and capture.
Community Passion: The DAOs that endure are united by mission, not just financial upside. When token price is the only common value, communities fall apart in downturns.
Value Accruing Tokens: Launching tokens with clear rights and sustainable value accrual mechanisms attracts long term people who want to play long term games.
Operational Integration: The best DAOs consolidate core functions in unified systems, reducing friction and increasing participation.
The key insight here is that decentralization is not about the absence of structure – it's about transparent, accountable structure that evolves through community consensus.
The Path Forward
The next generation of DAOs will look fundamentally different from their predecessors.
From Experiment to Infrastructure
DAOs are evolving from experimental governance systems to comprehensive organizational infrastructure. This shift requires rethinking how we approach every aspect of DAO creation and management:
- Compliant by Design: New DAOs must integrate legal best practices from the beginning, rather than treating compliance as an afterthought.
- Mobile-First Governance: For DAOs to reach mainstream adoption, participation must be as simple as checking social media – not a technical ordeal requiring desktop wallets. It should be driven by AI, and feel more like a concierge.
- Integrated Operations: Treasury, governance, access management, and community engagement need to live within unified systems, not scattered across a dozen platforms.
- Adaptive Structures: Governance systems must support flexible hierarchy and delegation while maintaining transparent accountability to token holders.
Real-World Impact
The most exciting development is watching DAOs extend beyond crypto-native use cases. University clubs are organizing as DAOs. Municipalities are exploring DAO models for community projects. Creative collectives are managing intellectual property through on-chain systems.
This real-world adoption will accelerate as the friction of participation decreases. When joining and contributing to a DAO becomes as simple as using any other digital service, we'll see an explosion of creative applications – across governments and universities to agriculture, energy and more.
Building the Bridge
The future of DAOs isn't about destroying traditional organizations or embracing crypto chaos. It's about building systems that take the best from both worlds.
At Decent, we're building that bridge – an operating system for organizations that want to harness the transparency and participation of web3 without sacrificing operational effectiveness.
The foundation is ready. The tools exist. Now we need builders who care about getting it right – creating systems that actually work for people while staying true to crypto's promise of openness and agency.
DAOs aren't dead – they're finally learning how to walk.
— Parker McCurley,
Founder & CEO, Decent Labs