# ChainSights Weekly — Feb 17-22, 2026

*The week in DAO governance, measured.*

By [ChainSights](https://paragraph.com/@chainsights) · 2026-02-22

governance, daos, weekly, analytics, dgi

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DGI Composite: 6.38
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The ecosystem-wide Decentralized Governance Index sits at **6.38** — a healthy B grade across 44 tracked DAOs. But this week's story isn't the composite. It's what's underneath.

This Week's Biggest Movers
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We completed a major data infrastructure upgrade this week: historical proposal backfill. For 19 DAOs that previously showed placeholder scores due to governance inactivity, we now calculate scores based on their last active governance period. The result: the most accurate ranking we've ever published.

**Biggest risers:**

*   **Optimism** +3.87 → 7.1 — Jumped from the bottom half to #13. Historical data reveals strong delegate engagement (DEI 6.4) that was invisible when only looking at a 90-day window.
    
*   **Stargate / LayerZero** +3.58 → 6.8 — Similar story. Active governance in its peak period scores solidly in the B range.
    
*   **dYdX** +3.54 → 6.8 — Another Infrastructure DAO showing real governance health when measured against its active period.
    
*   **KlimaDAO** +2.95 → 6.2 — Strong grassroots participation (GPI 6.0) lifts this Public Goods DAO out of the basement.
    
*   **StakeDAO** +2.35 → 8.3 — Now #2 overall, with perfect scores on HPR and DEI.
    

**Notable declines:**

*   **Wormhole** -3.69 → 3.2
    
*   **Euler Finance** -2.82 → 2.9
    
*   **Bancor** -2.62 → 3.4
    

These three DAOs still show limited governance data. We're working on completing their historical backfill.

Category Snapshot
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Category

DGI

Assessment

Public Goods

7.03

Healthy — led by Gitcoin (7.5) and Giveth (7.3)

Infrastructure

6.64

Healthy — Arbitrum (7.3) and Optimism (7.1) lead

Social

6.41

Stable — Aavegotchi (7.8) is the standout

DeFi

6.23

Stable — largest category (26 DAOs), wide spread from 8.4 to 2.9

**The surprise:** Public Goods DAOs lead the ecosystem. The category that exists to serve the community also governs the best. Gitcoin, Giveth, Octan, and KlimaDAO all score above 6.0.

One Insight: The DEI Gap
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The most revealing metric this week is **Delegate Engagement (DEI)**. The spread is enormous:

*   **Top:** Frax (10.0), StakeDAO (10.0), Gitcoin (9.1) — delegates who actually show up
    
*   **Bottom:** Hop Protocol (0.8), Yearn (0.8), BanklessDAO (1.2) — delegates holding power but barely voting
    

A DAO can have perfect human participation (HPR 10.0) and still have governance problems if its delegates aren't engaging. 15 of 44 DAOs score below 3.0 on DEI — meaning their delegate layer is essentially decorative.

From the Community
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This week we had a substantive discussion in the Lido governance forum about delegate structure. BCV (an ENS and Lido delegate) argued that Lido needs a decentralized delegate set functioning as an oversight layer — not just a rubber-stamp committee under Labs. The question of whether delegates should be generalists or specialists is one our Focus metric in the Vote Quality Score tries to address. The debate continues.

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_All data is free and open at_ [_chainsights.one/matrix_](https://chainsights.one/matrix)_. No login, no paywall._

_Wallets lie. We don't._

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*Originally published on [ChainSights](https://paragraph.com/@chainsights/weekly-feb-17-22-2026)*