Vitalik: We need more and better DAOs, not just treasuries controlled by token voting.

ChainCatcher News, Vitalik Buterin posted an article stating that the current practice of DAOs in the crypto industry has deviated from the original vision. It is necessary to rethink and build a “different and better DAO design.” Vitalik pointed out that Ethereum’s initial concept was inspired by decentralized autonomous organizations, but today DAOs are often simplified to “treasuries controlled by token voting.” While operational in form, they are inefficient, easily manipulated, and have failed to truly address issues caused by human political games.

Vitalik emphasized that DAOs remain an indispensable infrastructure, with application scenarios including: improving oracle design, implementing on-chain dispute resolution, maintaining various critical lists, rapidly launching short-term collaborative projects, and supporting long-term project maintenance after the original team departs. He believes that the current problems are not due to participant motivation but stem from systemic design flaws in governance, oracles, and other systems.

In terms of governance frameworks, Vitalik introduces an analytical perspective of “concavity and convexity problems,” suggesting that different types of issues require different governance structures: scenarios favoring consensus and robustness should emphasize broad participation and resistance to manipulation; while situations requiring decisive decision-making should allow leadership, balanced by decentralized mechanisms.

Vitalik further pointed out that for DAOs to truly function, they must address two major challenges: privacy and decision fatigue. Privacy technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs (ZK), multi-party computation, as well as AI and consensus-based communication tools, can help alleviate governance burdens. He stressed that AI should not replace human judgment but 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 peripheral modules, ensuring that Ethereum’s underlying decentralization and robustness are preserved in its upper-layer applications.