The Future of Boardroom Comms: On-Chain Voting and Proposal Systems

Multi-week Snapshot-to-multisig workflows create execution risk and voter apathy. Off-chain signaling is just expensive polling.

• Key Benefit: On-chain votes like those in Compound or Aave are self-executing code, slashing time-to-impact from weeks to minutes.
• Key Benefit: Eliminates multisig bottlenecks and counterparty risk, turning governance into a continuous deployment pipeline.

Sybil attacks and low-quality proposals plague forums. Financial skin-in-the-game is the only credible signal.

• Key Benefit: Systems like Optimism's Citizen House use retroactive funding (RPGF) to reward impact, not just votes.
• Key Benefit: Conviction voting (e.g., 1Hive) or ve-token models (e.g., Curve) force long-term alignment, making governance attacks prohibitively expensive.

Billions sit idle in multisigs, invisible to stakeholders and regulators. Manual reporting is a compliance nightmare.

• Key Benefit: Fully on-chain treasuries (e.g., Syndicate's DAO-in-a-Box) provide real-time, verifiable audit trails for $10B+ in assets.
• Key Benefit: Enables programmable treasury strategies via DeFi primitives (Aave, Compound), turning static capital into a yield-generating balance sheet.

DAOs are multi-chain, but governance is often siloed on one L1. Bridging assets to vote is a UX and security disaster.

• Key Benefit: LayerZero's Omnichain Fungible Tokens (OFTs) and Axelar's GMP enable native voting across Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon with a single token.
• Key Benefit: Zero bridging cost for governance participation, unlocking liquidity and voters trapped on other chains.

Offshore foundations and LLCs create fiduciary ambiguity and tax headaches for contributors and token holders.

• Key Benefit: On-chain legal primitives like OpenLaw's Tribute or Kleros's Courts encode jurisdiction and liability into smart contracts.
• Key Benefit: Automated KYC/AML streams via Circle's CCTP or Chainlink's Proof of Reserve enable compliant, on-chain distributions without intermediaries.

Public voting leads to whale front-running and bribery markets, distorting outcomes. Privacy is a requirement for integrity.

• Key Benefit: MACI (Minimal Anti-Collusion Infrastructure) used by clr.fund and Aztec's zk.money enables private, coercion-resistant voting on Ethereum.
• Key Benefit: Eliminates vote selling and governance extractable value (GEV), ensuring decisions reflect true stakeholder preference, not financial arbitrage.

Off-chain voting solves the gas cost problem but creates an execution gap. It's the signaling standard for ~5,000 DAOs, but votes are just promises.

• Gasless voting enables broad participation.
• Delegation via ERC-20/721/1155 tokens.
• Critical flaw: Requires a trusted multisig to execute, creating a centralization vector.

Bridges the Snapshot promise to on-chain reality. OpenZeppelin's Governor is the standard smart contract framework; Tally provides the frontend and delegation tools.

• Autonomous execution: Passed proposals execute automatically after a timelock.
• Composability: Integrates with Safe{Wallet} for treasury management.
• Vote escrow: Enables Curve/veToken-style governance models for long-term alignment.

<5% voter turnout is common. Delegation is static, and proposal spam drowns out signal. The system optimizes for whales, not wisdom.

• Skin-in-the-game failure: Token-weighted voting != expertise.
• Information asymmetry: Voters lack time/context to evaluate complex proposals.
• Execution risk: Malicious or buggy proposals can slip through.

New primitives move beyond simple token voting. Optimistic Governance (like OpenZeppelin Defender) allows vetoes during timelock. Futarchy markets (e.g., Gnosis Conditional Tokens) let markets decide.

• Exit voting: Proposals are default-executed unless a quorum vetoes.
• Intents: Voters signal preferences, and solvers (like CowSwap) find optimal execution.
• Proof-of-Personhood: Integrating Worldcoin to combat sybil attacks.

These are the dashboards that unify the stack. They aggregate proposals from Snapshot, execution from Tally, and discussion from forums like Discourse.

• Cross-DAO visibility: Track your voting power and delegations across protocols.
• Reputation systems: Highlight high-signal delegates and voters.
• Mobile-first: Critical for capturing attention in a notification-saturated world.

The final building block removes humans from routine operations. Think MakerDAO's Stability Scope or Compound's Gauntlet. Code manages parameters within bounded ranges.

• Continuous approval voting: Delegates set high-level goals, algorithms handle the levers.
• On-chain KPIs: Treasury performance, protocol revenue, and security metrics trigger automatic adjustments.
• Reduces governance surface area: The most dangerous proposals are the ones you never have to vote on.

Traditional proxy voting is slow, lacks transparency, and is vulnerable to manipulation. Shareholders have no cryptographic proof their vote was counted, and boards can obscure proposal details.

• Auditable Trail: Every vote is an immutable on-chain transaction.
• Global Participation: Enables 24/7 voting from any jurisdiction.
• Reduced Friction: Eliminates custodial delays and paper-based processes.

A canonical stack for gasless, off-chain signaling with on-chain execution. Snapshot provides the forum; Safe provides the multi-sig treasury and execution engine.

• Gasless Voting: Uses signed messages (EIP-712), removing cost barriers.
• Execution Ready: Approved proposals auto-queue for Safe{Wallet} multi-sig execution.
• Delegation: Token holders can delegate voting power to experts, akin to Compound or Uniswap governance.

Public on-chain voting reveals voter choices, enabling coercion (e.g., a large shareholder pressuring others) and facilitating explicit, traceable vote-buying, which can corrupt governance.

• Privacy Leak: Wallet addresses and votes are publicly linked.
• Market Manipulation: Voting patterns can front-run treasury actions.
• Regulatory Gray Area: On-chain bribery is trivially verifiable.

Cryptographic frameworks like clr.fund's MACI enable private, coercion-resistant voting. A central coordinator prevents collusion by ensuring only the final tally is revealed.

• End-to-End Verifiability: Voters can prove their vote was included, but not how they voted.
• Collusion Resistance: Makes large-scale, verifiable bribery mathematically infeasible.
• ZK-Proof Integration: Leverages zk-SNARKs for privacy, similar to Aztec or Tornado Cash for governance.

Even in leading DAOs like Uniswap, voter turnout rarely exceeds 10%. Complexity, lack of incentives, and low-stakes proposals cause systemic apathy, centralizing power with whales.

• Abstention Problem: Low turnout delegitimizes governance outcomes.
• Whale Dominance: Decisions are made by a handful of large token holders.
• No Skin in the Game: Voters bear no direct cost for poor decisions.

Proposed by Robin Hanson, futarchy lets markets govern: "Vote on values, bet on beliefs." Implementations like Gnosis' Conditional Tokens allow betting on proposal outcomes, aligning incentives with truth.

• Efficiency Discovery: Markets aggregate information better than votes.
• Skin in the Game: Participants profit from correct predictions.
• Dynamic Policy: Continuously optimized based on measurable goals, moving beyond static proposals.

~5% average voter turnout plagues major DAOs, and proposal spam drowns out signal. The cost of informed participation is too high.

• Solution: Delegate-based systems like Optimism's Citizen House and ENS's Delegate Platform.
• Key Benefit: Professional delegates (e.g., Lido, Gauntlet) provide continuous, research-backed voting.
• Key Benefit: Quadratic voting or conviction voting (as seen in 1Hive) weights preference, not just capital.

Passing a vote is not the same as executing work. Treasury payouts remain a manual, multi-sig bottleneck.

• Solution: Fully on-chain proposal-to-payment stacks like Tally, Governor Bravo, and Safe{Wallet} integrations.
• Key Benefit: Automated, conditional treasury streams (e.g., Sablier, Superfluid) upon vote passage.
• Key Benefit: Reduces multi-sig lag from weeks to minutes, turning governance into a real-time execution engine.

Monolithic governance contracts are inflexible. The future is composable modules for voting, delegation, and execution.

• Solution: OpenZeppelin Governor with modules or Compound's Governor Bravo architecture.
• Key Benefit: Plug-in privacy for early-stage voting (e.g., Aztec, zk-proofs).
• Key Benefit: Cross-chain governance via LayerZero or Axelar messaging, enabling L2/L3 DAO coordination.

Total Value Locked (TVL) is a vanity metric for DAOs. Real health is measured by participation quality and proposal velocity.

• Solution: Track Voter Participation Rate, Proposal Execution Success Rate, and Delegate Concentration.
• Key Benefit: Identifies governance capture risks early (e.g., single delegate with >20% voting power).
• Key Benefit: Incentivizes high-quality contributions through retroactive funding models like Optimism's RPGF.