A question I get a lot from friends is some version of: “What do you actually do?”

When I try to answer, I usually reach for an imperfect analogy: governance work in crypto is closest to a board of directors — except it’s decentralized, transparent, and governing an open-source, permissionless protocol rather than a single company.

That difference matters a lot.

In most crypto ecosystems, there are three distinct stakeholder groups that coexist in tension:

• The Corporation or Labs entity that originally built the protocol

• A Foundation that stewards governance and ecosystem health

• The DAO — the community of token holders who have decision making power over the protocol's treasury

Delegates in a DAO of a decentralized finance protocol function a bit like a board. They’re the ones proposing, debating, and voting on how shared resources are used. Sometimes that’s treasury allocation. Sometimes it’s economic parameters like inflation or lending and borrowing rates. Sometimes it’s the governance process itself.

Unlike a traditional board, though, this power exists in a permissionless environment. Anyone can build on top of the protocol. Anyone can form a company. Anyone can ship a public good. There’s no approval step.

That’s rare.

The closest Web2 analogy I think about is Android developers — but even that falls short. Building a successful Android app is hard, expensive, and mostly disconnected from any sense of shared ownership. Crypto protocols, at their best, offer something different: a community that developers are building with, not just building for.

And when that community disappears, something important breaks.

As Dennison Bertram, the co-founder of Tally, a core governance infrastructure platform for DAOs, says in this video, when there’s no community, the “magic” is gone.

All of this sounds neat in theory. In practice, it’s messy — and often fails.

I’ve been spending a lot of my time as an endorsed delegate in NEAR, an ecosystem with a genuinely vibrant community, impressive tech, and a governance history that includes failure. NEAR’s first attempt at a DAO — the NEAR Digital Collective — didn’t hold. Incentives broke. Participation skewed. Power concentrated in ways that weren’t intended.

But failure isn’t unique to NEAR. It’s a common part of building any ambitious system, in crypto and in tech more broadly. What matters isn’t that you fail — it’s how you respond, and whether you’re willing to try again with the lessons you’ve learned.

NEAR’s second attempt at a DAO looks very different. It’s called House of Stake.

House of Stake uses a stake-weighted, time-locked mechanism through a vote-escrowed token called veNEAR (vote-escrowed NEAR). Users obtain veNEAR by locking their NEAR or supported liquid staking tokens, stNEAR, or liNEAR, in a smart contract. Rewards accrue gradually over time, increasing with longer lockups to incentivize long-term alignment.

To encourage early participation, veNEAR holders receive additional rewards on top of standard staking yields. These incentives aren’t meant to be permanent subsidies, but a way to bootstrap participation while the system is still in its infancy.

House of Stake itself is the governance framework that empowers token holders by facilitating this transparent and stake-weighted decision-making. One of the first proposals passed under this framework established the veNEAR holder rewards program described above.

This design is a direct response to what broke in NEAR’s first DAO iteration. Specifically inefficient execution, misaligned incentives, low engagement, and opaque decisions.

What’s kept me engaged in NEAR House of Stake isn’t the belief that governance has been solved — it hasn’t. It’s that, after failure, protocol stakeholders got back up and chose to keep listening and bringing the community into the process of shaping the next iteration of governance.

The community doesn’t always agree. Friction is constant. But that friction is part of the magic. Centralization would have smoothed the edges — and flattened everything else along with it.

As we head into 2026, many DAOs are reaching an inflection point. Regulations are becoming clearer, organizational structures are evolving, and institutional participation is increasing. The next phase of governance will test which systems can adapt without losing the communities that make them worth governing in the first place.

As always, feel free to reach out to me directly with questions, suggestions, or feedback. You can also drop me a message on Twitter. My DMs are open.

A question I get a lot from friends is some version of: “What do you actually do?”

When I try to answer, I usually reach for an imperfect analogy: governance work in crypto is closest to a board of directors — except it’s decentralized, transparent, and governing an open-source, permissionless protocol rather than a single company.

That difference matters a lot.

In most crypto ecosystems, there are three distinct stakeholder groups that coexist in tension:

• The Corporation or Labs entity that originally built the protocol

• A Foundation that stewards governance and ecosystem health

• The DAO — the community of token holders who have decision making power over the protocol's treasury

Delegates in a DAO of a decentralized finance protocol function a bit like a board. They’re the ones proposing, debating, and voting on how shared resources are used. Sometimes that’s treasury allocation. Sometimes it’s economic parameters like inflation or lending and borrowing rates. Sometimes it’s the governance process itself.

Unlike a traditional board, though, this power exists in a permissionless environment. Anyone can build on top of the protocol. Anyone can form a company. Anyone can ship a public good. There’s no approval step.

That’s rare.

The closest Web2 analogy I think about is Android developers — but even that falls short. Building a successful Android app is hard, expensive, and mostly disconnected from any sense of shared ownership. Crypto protocols, at their best, offer something different: a community that developers are building with, not just building for.

And when that community disappears, something important breaks.

As Dennison Bertram, the co-founder of Tally, a core governance infrastructure platform for DAOs, says in this video, when there’s no community, the “magic” is gone.

All of this sounds neat in theory. In practice, it’s messy — and often fails.

I’ve been spending a lot of my time as an endorsed delegate in NEAR, an ecosystem with a genuinely vibrant community, impressive tech, and a governance history that includes failure. NEAR’s first attempt at a DAO — the NEAR Digital Collective — didn’t hold. Incentives broke. Participation skewed. Power concentrated in ways that weren’t intended.

But failure isn’t unique to NEAR. It’s a common part of building any ambitious system, in crypto and in tech more broadly. What matters isn’t that you fail — it’s how you respond, and whether you’re willing to try again with the lessons you’ve learned.

NEAR’s second attempt at a DAO looks very different. It’s called House of Stake.

House of Stake uses a stake-weighted, time-locked mechanism through a vote-escrowed token called veNEAR (vote-escrowed NEAR). Users obtain veNEAR by locking their NEAR or supported liquid staking tokens, stNEAR, or liNEAR, in a smart contract. Rewards accrue gradually over time, increasing with longer lockups to incentivize long-term alignment.

To encourage early participation, veNEAR holders receive additional rewards on top of standard staking yields. These incentives aren’t meant to be permanent subsidies, but a way to bootstrap participation while the system is still in its infancy.

House of Stake itself is the governance framework that empowers token holders by facilitating this transparent and stake-weighted decision-making. One of the first proposals passed under this framework established the veNEAR holder rewards program described above.

This design is a direct response to what broke in NEAR’s first DAO iteration. Specifically inefficient execution, misaligned incentives, low engagement, and opaque decisions.

What’s kept me engaged in NEAR House of Stake isn’t the belief that governance has been solved — it hasn’t. It’s that, after failure, protocol stakeholders got back up and chose to keep listening and bringing the community into the process of shaping the next iteration of governance.

The community doesn’t always agree. Friction is constant. But that friction is part of the magic. Centralization would have smoothed the edges — and flattened everything else along with it.

As we head into 2026, many DAOs are reaching an inflection point. Regulations are becoming clearer, organizational structures are evolving, and institutional participation is increasing. The next phase of governance will test which systems can adapt without losing the communities that make them worth governing in the first place.

As always, feel free to reach out to me directly with questions, suggestions, or feedback. You can also drop me a message on Twitter. My DMs are open.