DAO governance reaches scaling limits as major protocols move toward partial centralization
The DAO mannequin is altering, affecting a lot of the largest organizations. Governance is reaching its limits, with some protocols shifting again to partial centralization.
DAO platforms are evolving in 2026, as some have reached the capability for governance. Others have shed the mannequin completely, citing slowness and the necessity for emergency choice powers.
Based mostly on the newest estimates, DAO holds $13.6B in complete liquidity for over 50,845 organizations. The funds are largely locked within the largest DAO. Governance tokens had been nonetheless extremely lively, lately increasing their worth to over $31B.
Of 11.8M DAO token holders, solely round 3.3M are lively voters. The lively voting share could range throughout protocols and communities. The DAO mannequin has confirmed resilient and has led to ongoing governance, though over time, a number of the selections have been disputed. The most important concern with DAO is the power of whales to take over the voting course of and push selections.
As Cryptopolitan reported, Optimism DAO was the newest to separate its group on a choice to purchase again OP tokens.
DAO shifted to partially centralized governance
The previous yr was dynamic for some initiatives that used a DAO construction as a part of their growth. Based mostly on DAO evaluation by one of many lively voter organizations, decentralized governance had reached capability.
Because of this, a number of large-scale DAOs deserted their voting course of in entire or partly. Arbitrum consolidated all DAO operations in its new OpCo construction. Jupiter paused governance for six months to reassess upgrades and rebuild the method and incentives. Uniswap additionally concentrated operational authority into the DUNI framework.
Gnosis launched arduous forks with restricted group enter, whereas Scroll transitioned to a CEO-led construction.
Most DAOs linked to a working protocol have famous their governance course of doesn’t scale, and voting is commonly gradual or causes conflicts. Not all voters understood technical nuance, and a few proposals prompted panic. Because of this, governance shifted to specialised teams conscious of context, whereas the broader group shifted to oversight.
Participation in DAO declined in 2025
Governance additionally declined in 2025 as participation reached new lows. The dearth of incentives and airdrops meant some DAOs couldn’t discover sufficient voters. Others noticed voting taken over by whales to push a selected end result. Lido Finance adopted a twin governance mode and noticed engagement rise.
Whereas Uniswap and Arbitrum had the very best DAO participation, their communities nonetheless declined prior to now yr.
Because of this, most initiatives switched to small, centered teams with much less frequent governance calls. Token burns and charge switches had been the primary points in 2025, linked to revenue sharing and help for tokens.
DAO possession continues to be a authorized grey zone, regardless of the proposals for DAO LLC registration codecs in some jurisdictions. DAOs exist in a grey zone, resulting in uncertainties on who owns the protocol, model, or has the best to payouts, as within the case of Aave DAO versus Aave Labs.
DAO tokens might also swap from pure governance to some type of possession or income sharing, as token holders could demand some type of compensation.
