Nantan DAO Chronicles (Part II)

What is the goal?

"Promote the integration of rural construction and Web3."

Nantang DAO is committed to promoting the holistic development of local villages while facilitating mutual learning and exchange between rural construction and Web3 communities. Its specific goals include upgrading and transforming cultural courtyards, establishing bases for Web3 partners in rural areas, and deeply integrating with Nantang cooperatives to establish a sustainable work points system.

However, there is a significant gap between ideals and reality. The Nan Tang DAO currently resembles a rough transplant of other DAO models into the countryside, failing to closely integrate with the fundamental needs of the rural areas. Its specific goals are also relatively scattered and lack focus.

Democracy is not the democracy of villagers; rural construction is an objective rural construction.

The democracy of Nancang DAO is only a small-scale internal democracy, failing to widely connect and mobilize rural communities. This practice inevitably degenerates into "object-oriented rural construction," which is dominated by external subjects rather than a self-driven governance model by the villagers. Currently, for the entire rural area, both Nancang DAO and its members largely remain outsiders.

The goal is dispersed, fighting on their own.

"Promoting the integration of rural construction and Web3" is an attractive and ambitious goal, carrying inherent legitimacy and broad value concerns. However, this ambitious concept is fraught with challenges in practice. The establishment of the Nantan DAO and the departure of some core members to Chengdu to establish a new base have increasingly highlighted the divergence of organizational goals, and the team is clearly trapped in a dilemma of misaligned objectives.

Through observations at the proposal level, it can be found that the proposals on the Nantang DAO voting platform are mainly divided into five categories: funding applications, project plans, system construction, new member admissions, and other decisions. Among them, more than half of the proposals are related to funding applications, mainly involving local material procurement, space construction, and member incentives.

Building a community or commercialization?

Whether from an individual or organizational perspective, DAOs need to weigh the potential conflicts between commercial interests and public interests. Community members generally believe that there is no contradiction between commercialization and community building; they are simply exploring different directions based on their respective experiences. However, an objective fact is that internal goal discrepancies often lead to resource dispersion or even competition.

Incentives and Circulation Experiment - Nantang Bean

On August 20, 2024, Nantang Bean (NT) officially launched on Optimsim, with an initial issuance of 10 million pieces. Functionally, Nantang Bean serves as a community incentive, fulfilling the dual role of "contribution record" and "voting rights certificate."

Limitations of the Work Hour System

Although the Nantang DAO has made significant progress in its incentive mechanism, the current "contribution record" system has exposed a series of problems in the application and evaluation process of work points, such as unclear admission requirements, a single evaluation standard, and a failed mutual evaluation mechanism. Community members generally reflect that the "equal pay for equal work" model, which uses work hours as the sole evaluation standard, has obvious limitations.

Let Nantang beans circulate.

In addition to serving as an incentive and governance certificate, the community is also considering more circulation scenarios, allowing Nantan beans to play a greater role as a "transaction intermediary." The most representative event is the "New Year's Goods Debt Conversion and Contribution Promotion Plan" implemented around the Spring Festival in 2025.

United as One: Warm New Year Goods Plan

As the year-end approaches, the cooperative, facing great pressure due to a large number of creditors and a shortage of funds, is in a difficult situation. After discussions among the Nantan DAO members and the cooperative members, they voluntarily decided to "lend" their Nantan beans to the cooperative to help alleviate the pressure. This can certainly be regarded as a significant event in the history of "rural construction + Web3"—the love of DAO members reaches the countryside and enters the lives of their fellow villagers in a Web3 way, truly embodying the slogan "Web3 from the soil."

Is it decentralized enough?

External forces that cannot be ignored

Looking globally, the legal status of DAO is still relatively ambiguous in various countries. When Nantang DAO issues Nantang Beans, it also needs to limit its functionality in the top-level design to be used only for internal governance of Nantang DAO or local service exchanges, avoiding other financial attributes to mitigate legal risks.

The "monopolized" source of income

The establishment and ongoing operation of Nantang DAO is closely linked to the social ideals of its sponsor, Liu Bing. So far, all costs from the preparation to the operation of Nantang DAO have been borne by Liu Bing personally. This single source of funding has raised concerns about its financial independence—especially in the context of emphasizing decentralized governance.

Not decentralized enough voting

For a DAO, the premise of achieving decentralized governance is that members have relatively equal voting rights, which means a relatively flat distribution of voting rights, and the amount of Nan Tang beans each member holds reflects the size of their absolute voting power. After March 2025, four core members held over 75% of the Nan Tang beans, becoming the true "whales" in the community.

Voting Mechanism: Balance of Power and Vulnerabilities

The operation of Nantang DAO follows the classic off-chain governance process of proposals, discussions, and voting, with voting primarily implemented through Snapshot. In terms of voting mechanisms, so far, Nantang DAO has mainly experienced changes in three voting mechanisms: "one person, one vote", "weighted voting", and "weighted but no single person exceeds 20%".

The current voting mechanism of the Nantang DAO has some issues, one of which is a loophole that allows all holders of "Nantang Beans" to participate in governance votes without needing to be formal members of the community. The original intention of this design was to encourage broad participation and enhance community inclusiveness, but it has buried potential centralization risks. Open tokenized governance lowers the voting threshold but may allow a minority to manipulate the results through concentrated tokens.