{"id":96073,"date":"2026-04-10T10:54:29","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T07:54:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=96073"},"modified":"2026-04-10T10:56:41","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T07:56:41","slug":"good-or-nothing-how-daos-are-faring-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/good-or-nothing-how-daos-are-faring-in-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Good\u2019 or \u2018nothing\u2019? How DAOs are faring in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Experts polled by ForkLog are split over the present and future of decentralised autonomous organisations.<\/em><\/p>\n

A few years ago, decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) seemed the first realisation of crypto-anarchist ideals: a future without hierarchies and bureaucracy, in which communities take decisions via smart contracts; code replaces the need to trust people; tokens apportion influence; votes displace politics. Something, however, went awry.<\/p>\n

Cases of DAOs being paused or frozen are multiplying. Votes barely reach quorum, forums empty out, treasuries sit idle and projects wind down. No one declares a death; instead come euphemisms: \u201ctemporarily pausing governance\u201d, \u201crevisiting the model\u201d, \u201coptimising processes for speed\u201d.<\/p>\n

What happened? Has the idea crashed into the laws of human psychology, power and economics\u2014or are we witnessing a crisis that will be followed by a powerful evolutionary refit of the system? We asked the experts.<\/p>\n

Grasp a DAO\u2014and die<\/h2>\n

Today more than 12,000<\/a> DAOs manage roughly $28bn in assets. Average turnout among decision-makers hovers around 20%, and in many cases only one in ten actually uses their right to vote. What initially promised radical decentralisation (one token\u2014one vote; decisions by the community rather than a board-like cabal) looks very different in 2026.<\/p>\n

In January, after its leader exited Scroll DAO, the organisation fully suspended<\/a> operations amid uncertainty over which proposals were even under consideration\u2014a curious look for a system that prizes transparency. Earlier, Jupiter froze<\/a> all governance votes and locked access to its funds first until 2026, then 2027. Yuga Labs abandoned<\/a> a DAO structure, citing inefficiency.<\/p>\n

More often the story is less dramatic: a reversion to centralisation, where real power flows back to the developer team and the DAO remains a formality. Thus Compound<\/a> drifted from an open system into a club of delegates.<\/p>\n

Uniswap<\/a> tries to preserve decentralisation (token voting and on-chain execution) but in practice leans towards centralising decisions via thresholds, filters and a delegation model\u2014meant to ease governance overload and raise efficiency, but also narrowing the circle of true decision-makers.<\/p>\n

A Cornell University group in 2025 published<\/a> an analysis of Compound and Uniswap governance.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAnalysing more than 370 governance proposals and millions of on-chain events from inception to August 2024, we found substantial centralisation of voting power: as few as three to five voters were sufficient to sway most proposals. We also found that the cost of voting falls disproportionately on small tokenholders, and that strategic voting behaviour\u2014such as delayed participation and coalition formation\u2014further distorts governance outcomes. Our findings show that, despite their decentralised ideals, existing DAO governance mechanisms underperform in practice,\u201d the authors reported.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Why so? The idea was elegant: give people governance tools\u2014wallets, interfaces like Snapshot or Tally\u2014and they will rush in. Every tokenholder could influence a project\u2019s fate directly. But participation takes work: hours spent reading forum proposals, untangling tokenomics where yield farming<\/a>, impermanent loss<\/a> and gas fees interlock like a puzzle. Then comes voting on knotty trade-offs: \u201cShould we raise token emissions to stimulate liquidity, or not?\u201d<\/p>\n

In reality, 1% of tokenholders control<\/a> 90% of voting rights. This is not a bug so much as human nature: early zeal gives way to apathy and delegation\u2014be it to an oligarch or to an AI.<\/p>\n

DAOs have hit the limits of their architecture, of motivation, and of tokenomics. Roughly put, embed capital and you inherit the costs of capitalism. Our experts split into two camps: some say the idea has failed; others argue the model is simply evolving into more resilient forms.<\/p>\n

DAO believers<\/h2>\n

DAOs have a habit of looking \u201ceffective\u201d merely because they run many votes or boast high TVL<\/span>. That does not mean they are well governed. Beyond voting, execution, transparency and the ability to allocate resources without constant hand-holding matter.<\/p>\n

There are no universal yardsticks: DAOs vary widely by type<\/a>\u2014from grant-giving to protocol DAOs, from small clubs to billion-dollar treasuries. Still, some broad parameters apply.<\/p>\n

Most assessments focus on four blocks:<\/p>\n