GOVERNANCE CASE STUDY — MAY 2026

 On February 20, 2020, a 10-year irrevocable vesting contract was established to fund the Decentraland Foundation. It ends February 2030. When it does, the primary funding source that has sustained the platform for a decade ends with it.

No publicly available, governance-approved transition plan exists for what happens next. No definition of success. No roadmap. The deadline has been known since day one.

"The Decentraland community has heard 'we're early' for years. The Foundation vesting contract ends February 2030. That is not early. That is a deadline."

The Proposals

Between March and May 2026, a community member known as MetaBeast (1existence.dcl.eth) submitted a series of governance proposals attempting to address this gap. The results:

• Governance Automation Poll — March 3, 2026 — 703,054 VP — 99% Yes — PASSED

• Transparency Infrastructure Poll — March 25, 2026 — 2,604,646 VP — 100% Yes — PASSED

• Transparency Draft Proposal — April 22, 2026 — 2,357,140 VP — 99% Yes — PASSED

• 2030 Transition Plan Draft — April 27, 2026 — 100% Yes — 25 votes — PASSED

• 2030 Transition Plan Binding Vote — May 2026 — 47 Yes — 0 No — 1 Abstain — THRESHOLD NOT MET

Every proposal that reached a vote passed. The binding proposal — the one that would have required the Council to produce a formal 2030 roadmap — received unanimous support from every participating voter and did not pass.

No proposal in this initiative received a majority No vote.

The required VP participation was not reached. Several large VP holders did not participate in the vote.

In the same period, a wallet holding 8.5 million VP — more than enough to have passed the binding proposal alone — was actively used for a separate internal governance action.

What the Research Uncovered

While preparing these proposals, research into DAO infrastructure revealed:

• An 18-month gap in the public transaction record (September 2024 to March 2026) that missed the largest treasury disbursement in DAO history

• Official DAO documentation describing governance bodies that no longer exist — the DAO Committee, Revocations Committee, and multiple squads all deprecated in 2025

• Multiple official documentation URLs returning page not found errors

• The Governance Legislative Tracker — the DAO's official rulebook — last updated May 2024, nearly two years ago

• Approximately 28% of all DAO voting power held by wallets with zero participation history

• No documented SLA for how long the Council must act after a poll passes

What Was Committed

In response to this initiative, the following public commitments were made:

• Regenesis Labs (GinoCT) committed to fixing the transparency infrastructure — broken links, documentation gaps, and improving accessibility of DAO information

• The DAO Council indicated they intend to engage the community on the longer-term 2030 horizon

• The Council published a formal RFI process — a quarterly channel for community questions to receive public responses

None of these commitments are binding. They are public statements on record.

The Point

This initiative highlighted a structural governance challenge within the Decentraland DAO: unanimous community support and binding governance action are not the same thing. The tools to pass community mandates exist. The tools to enforce them — without a supermajority of VP from a small number of large, mostly inactive wallets — do not.

The questions this initiative raised have not gone away. The Foundation vesting still ends in February 2030. A governance-approved transition plan still does not exist. The verbal commitments made in response are now on public record. Whether they are fulfilled is what comes next.

"I am laying everything out here in good faith — the work that was done, the commitments that were made, the questions that still need answers. Anyone can check back and see what gets done." — MetaBeast / 1existence.dcl.eth

Full proposal record: decentraland.org/governance

Decentraland Forums: forum.decentraland.org

47 Yes. 0 No. Not Binding. — May 2026