Unit 4 · Level 4 · DAOs & governance
Who does the work
Peek inside a big 'decentralized' organization and you'll usually find something familiar: a paid core team shipping the product, a treasury spending through grants, delegates voting with other people's tokens, and a multisig wallet (a handful of trusted keyholders) moving the funds. None of that is necessarily bad, but it's closer to a startup with a very loud comment section than to leaderless magic.
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What you get asked
Who does the day-to-day work in most large DAOs?
Code doesn't write itself and forums don't ship products. Salaried contributors do, which means influence pools around them.
Many DAO treasuries are actually controlled by a ___ wallet that needs several signatures to move funds.
A 3-of-5 multisig is safer than one key, but it also means five known people, not 'the community', ultimately hold the money.
Match the DAO role to its honest description
Map these four groups in any DAO and you've mapped its real power structure, no org chart required.
Contributors paid in the DAO's own token face which recurring problem?
Token pay aligns incentives in bull markets and empties kitchens in bear markets. Contributors selling their pay also adds steady sell pressure, an emissions story you know from Unit 1.
A protocol calls itself 'fully decentralized'. What's the grown-up response?
'Decentralized' is a claim, not a fact. The keyholders, the holder chart, and the turnout numbers tell you how true it is. 🐜
The rest of this unit
Token votes, treasury raids, and finding out who really holds the keys.