The Coming Standardization of DAO Proposal Frameworks

Proposal frameworks are fragmented. Every DAO reinvents its own governance process using incompatible tools like Snapshot, Tally, and Discourse, creating a coordination tax that slows protocol evolution.

Standardization drives composability. Just as ERC-20 standardized tokens, a universal proposal standard will enable cross-DAO voting, shared security models, and automated treasury management across ecosystems like Arbitrum and Optimism.

The market demands efficiency. Leading DAOs like Uniswap and Aave spend over 40% of core contributor time on governance overhead, a cost that standardized frameworks like Governor Bravo derivatives will eliminate.

Standardization is a market force. DAOs are not designing governance from scratch; they are adopting battle-tested templates from Snapshot, Tally, and Compound's Governor. This reduces attack surfaces and developer onboarding time, creating a de facto standard akin to ERC-20 for tokens.

The efficiency trap emerges. Standardized frameworks like OpenZeppelin's Governor optimize for security and composability but enforce rigid voting logic. This stifles experimentation with novel mechanisms like conviction voting or futarchy, cementing a one-size-fits-all governance model.

Sovereignty is the casualty. DAOs outsourcing to Snapshot and Tally cede control over their core decision-making infrastructure. This creates systemic risk and platform dependency, mirroring the centralization risks seen in AWS or Infura for web2 and web3 infrastructure.

Evidence: The Snapshot monoculture. Over 4,000 DAOs use Snapshot for off-chain signaling. This creates network effects but also a single point of failure; innovation in proposal types becomes bottlenecked by the platform's roadmap, not community needs.

Standardization enforces a monoculture. Dominant frameworks like OpenZeppelin Governor and the tooling from Tally establish a de facto governance stack. This creates network effects for security and composability but makes alternative voting mechanisms, like conviction voting or holographic consensus, structurally difficult to implement.

The proposal lifecycle becomes ossified. The standard sequence of Snapshot signal, on-chain vote, and Timelock execution is now a rigid pipeline. This eliminates the possibility for more fluid, real-time governance models seen in experimental DAOs like FWB or the multi-body systems of MakerDAO.

Forking becomes a governance weapon. With standardized, forkable code from Aragon and Governor, protocol politics shift from building consensus to capturing treasury assets. The barrier to a contentious fork lowers, making governance attacks a predictable endpoint for all major disputes, as seen in early Compound and Sushi forks.

Evidence: The top 10 DAOs by treasury size all use a variant of the Governor framework, creating a ~90% market share for a single governance architecture. This concentration risks systemic failure if a novel attack vector is discovered in the standard contract library.

Standardization is inevitable. The current landscape of custom-built DAO tooling like Snapshot and Tally creates integration debt and security vulnerabilities. The next phase introduces interoperable proposal standards that separate intent from execution, similar to the ERC-20/ERC-721 evolution for tokens.

Composable execution will dominate. Frameworks like OpenZeppelin's Governor and Aragon OSx are becoming the base layer. This allows DAOs to plug in specialized modules for treasury management (e.g., Llama), cross-chain execution (e.g., Hyperlane), and automated enforcement, moving beyond simple yes/no votes.

The proposal lifecycle fragments. A single governance action will trigger a multi-step flow: off-chain signaling via Snapshot, on-chain approval via a Safe{Wallet}, and automated execution via a Gelato keeper. This specialization increases security and reduces voter fatigue.

Evidence: The rise of ERC-7504 for Dynamic Parameters and ERC-7512 for Security Standards demonstrates the push for on-chain governance primitives that are auditable, reusable, and secure by design.