Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has called for a fundamental redesign of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), arguing that most current models fall short of their original promise. According to Buterin, many DAOs have become little more than token-voting treasuries, a structure he says is inefficient, vulnerable to capture, and poorly suited to improving on traditional political or corporate systems.
Buterin believes DAOs should focus on solving concrete infrastructure problems rather than merely allocating funds. He highlighted key use cases such as onchain dispute resolution, decentralized oracles, insurance-style judgments, and long-term stewardship of projects that may outlive their founding teams. He also pointed to the value of DAOs maintaining shared resources like anti-scam registries and standardized governance frameworks.
Using his “concave versus convex” governance framework, Buterin argued that different problems require different DAO designs. Issues where compromise is preferable should rely on broad participation and aggregation, while decisions demanding bold action may need strong leadership with accountability, rather than pure decentralization.
He also warned that lack of privacy and decision fatigue undermine participation. To address this, Buterin suggested tools such as zero-knowledge proofs and limited use of artificial intelligence to assist analysis or delegation, while stressing that DAOs should not be run by AI.
As DAO ecosystems grow but struggle with low voter turnout and whale dominance, Buterin emphasized that governance design must be treated as core infrastructure, not an afterthought, if decentralized systems are to scale sustainably.
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