Briefly
- Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin tweeted that DAOs have drifted towards “primarily referring to a treasury managed by token-holder voting.”
- He mentioned fashionable DAO design is “inefficient, weak to seize, and fails totally on the aim of mitigating the weaknesses of human politics.”
- Buterin instructed zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) as an answer to among the points impacting DAOs, which many consultants advised Decrypt was viable.
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has argued that fashionable DAO design is “inefficient, weak to seize, and fails totally on the aim of mitigating the weaknesses of human politics.”
In a tweet, Buterin mentioned he as soon as believed that programs of code and guidelines current on decentralized networks may “handle sources and direct exercise extra effectively and extra robustly” than typical governments and companies.
We want extra DAOs – however completely different and higher DAOs.
The unique drive to construct Ethereum was closely impressed by decentralized autonomous organizations: programs of code and guidelines that lived on decentralized networks that would handle sources and direct exercise, extra…
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 19, 2026
Nevertheless, he claimed that since Ethereum’s founding, DAOs in follow have drifted towards “primarily referring to a treasury managed by token-holder voting.” This, he argued, leaves them open to regulate by centralized actors and has made many observers cynical about DAOs as an idea.
“We want extra DAOs – however completely different and higher DAOs,” Buterin wrote.
Among the many options he proposed have been enhancements to the oracles that energy DAOs and DeFi protocols. In crypto, blockchain oracles join blockchains to exterior real-world programs, enabling sensible contracts to execute by bridging on-chain and off-chain knowledge. Buterin criticized each token-based oracles and human curation, calling the latter “not very decentralized.”
Buterin recognized two core issues that he thinks should be solved for DAOs to operate successfully: privateness and choice fatigue.
“With out privateness, governance turns into a social recreation,” he mentioned.
He mentioned fashionable know-how may open “the door to a renaissance” when it comes to fixing the above issues, particularly the usage of zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) for privateness. In cryptography, a zero-knowledge proof is a technique used to show that one thing is understood with out revealing the recognized info straight, which might be helpful for privacy-centric purposes.
Buterin additionally highlighted the power of AI to cut back choice fatigue, however warned in opposition to placing a mainstream giant language mannequin like OpenAI’s GPT or China’s DeepSeek in command of a DAO.
Zero-knowledge proofs and DAOs
Zero-knowledge specialist Harry Halpin, CEO and co-founder of combine community Nym Applied sciences and a former analysis scientist at MIT, advised Decrypt that the know-how may assist DAOs operate extra pretty.
"DAOs are the way forward for democratic politics, and simply as we don’t need our votes for president in a nationwide election to be public, we don’t need our votes in token governance to be public both," Halpin mentioned, including that, "Zero-knowledge proofs are one method to obtain that."
Halpin acknowledged that zero-knowledge DAOs aren’t but “technically mature”, however mentioned Nym can be pleased to undertake them as soon as the software program is prepared. Halpin pointed to tasks resembling AnonDAO, a undertaking related to privacy-centric Layer-1 blockchain DarkFi, as proof that personal DAO governance is possible in follow.
Members of the DarkFi undertaking advised Decrypt they have been impressed by the AssangeDAO undertaking, which helped to lift over $50 million for Australian political activist Julian Assange.
Rachel Rose O'Leary, a founder and core developer at DarkFi, advised Decrypt that “transparency compelled us at hand management of the funds to an off-chain nonprofit basis,” throughout her work on AssangeDAO.
"DAOs can’t do actual shit with out anonymity," she advised Decrypt. "Give DAOs anonymity and also you give them actual political energy."
