Nantang DAO Chronicles (Part 2)

What is the goal?

"Promote the integration of rural construction and Web3."

Nantang DAO is committed to promoting the overall development of local villages, while fostering mutual learning and exchange between rural construction and the Web3 community: "Looking to the local for the way of community, looking to crypto for the way of universality." Specific goals include upgrading and transforming the cultural courtyard of Nantang Agricultural Cooperative, gradually building a base for Web3 partners in rural areas; deeply integrating with the local Nantang cooperative to establish a sustainable governance and economic work point system.

Nantang DAO is essentially a rural service organization aimed at promoting rural development through democratic governance and economic support. It hopes to leverage cryptocurrency and Web3 technology to create a new type of democratic decision-making process, achieving democratic management and distribution of treasury funds to meet local needs in infrastructure construction and cultural activities. However, there is a significant gap between ideals and reality. In practice, Nantang DAO currently resembles a rigid transplantation of other DAO models from online to rural settings, failing to closely align with the fundamental needs of the countryside, and its specific goals appear somewhat scattered and lack focus.

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

In the Nantung DAO, only two members are local villagers, and they are also employees of the cooperative. The purpose of the DAO absorbing them is to better carry out local work, while more ordinary villagers have not joined the DAO organization, nor have they participated in the organizational decision-making process. Therefore, the democracy of the Nantung DAO is only a small-scale internal democracy and has not been able to widely connect and mobilize the rural community. 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. Due to the lack of deep embedding in the rural community, the sustainability of this model is concerning. Objectively speaking, except for a few members choosing to take root in Nantung for the long term, most members show characteristics of high mobility and short active cycles, further weakening the deep connection between the DAO and the rural area. Currently, for the entire village, both the Nantung DAO and its members largely still play the role of outsiders.

The goal is scattered, each fighting for themselves.

"Promoting the integration of rural construction and Web3" is an attractive and ambitious goal that carries inherent legitimacy and broad value concerns. Aside from the Nantang DAO, few local DAOs in China have embarked on such a vision for rural areas. However, this ambitious concept is fraught with challenges in practice, and whether for participants or observers, it is inevitable to ask: "How exactly do rural construction and Web3 combine? What is the practical path of the Nantang DAO?" The establishment of the Nantang DAO and the departure of some core members to Chengdu to establish a new base have increasingly revealed the divergence of organizational goals, and the team is clearly caught in a predicament of goal misalignment.

By observing at the proposal level, one might have a more intuitive understanding of the above description. As of April 23, 2025, there are a total of 49 completed proposals on the Nantang DAO voting platform, which can be divided into five categories: funding applications, project plans, institutional development, 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; project plan proposals account for 34.69%, most of which include funding applications, showing a high degree of overlap with the former. There are 13 proposals related to institutional development, covering the establishment and revision of organizational systems, such as beginner tasks, contribution schemes, reimbursement systems, and voting mechanisms. There are 6 proposals concerning new member admissions, involving the community voting to decide new member qualifications. Other decision-making proposals number 2, involving the cooperative relationship between Nantang DAO and cooperatives as well as other DAO organizations.

Through further analysis of the specific tasks in the project proposal, a significant trend can be observed: a gradual shift from an initial focus on "rooted in the locality" to "expanding outward." Specifically, the early proposals were mostly related to agricultural production ( such as enzyme product production and learning, date palm planting, etc. ) and local infrastructure construction ( such as the construction of the Earth Book House, book procurement ), etc.; later, it diverged into two directions: one type focuses on external communication and cooperation ( such as the "Rural Construction Web3 Bilateral Enlightenment Plan," cooperation with Chengdu Wuxiang ), while the other type emphasizes the operation and integration of local communities ( such as the daily operation of the Earth Book House, organizing local activities ).

(# Building a community or commercialization?

Whether from an individual or organizational perspective, DAOs need to weigh the potential conflicts between commercial interests and public benefits. In many DAOs, many members only care about short-term commercial returns and ignore organizational governance, leading to the "Free Rider" ) problem, which conflicts with DAO builders who have a long-term vision. From an organizational level, if the pursuit is for production efficiency and commercial value growth, a centralized power structure may be needed to improve the decision-making and operational efficiency of the organization; while emphasizing public interest requires a democratic organizational structure and decision-making mechanism to ensure equal participation and transparency of information among members, but this may slow down the decision-making process.

During field research, I often hear a saying: "Nantang DAO is the DAO that lacks money the least." The funders have provided ample financial support to Nantang DAO, which is undoubtedly enviable, but it also harbors risks. This reveals the contradictions faced by Nantang DAO at both the individual and organizational levels: the choice between personal participation in community building and opportunism, as well as the tension between the organization’s drive for community integration and the pursuit of commercial value. However, the "original intention" of individuals joining Nantang cannot be enforced, just as Bibi said in response to questions, one should "discuss the evidence, not the intentions." Therefore, the following discussion focuses on the goal selection at the organizational level.

Community building has always been the core issue of Nantang DAO, encompassing both the overall construction of rural development and the Web3 field, as well as deep integration with the local community of Nantang. As an internally high-activity project, the "Rural Development Web3 Bilateral Enlightenment Program" was proposed and funded by investors, and is jointly managed by core members Bibi and Teacher Liang Shaoxiong in the field of rural development. By promoting communication between rural development teams and the Web3 community through funding, this program supports team members to participate in domestic and international Web3 activities multiple times and to give presentations in universities, generating a certain influence in the industry. Regarding the integration into the local community of Nantang, Yu Xing believes that "there is no disagreement about integration itself, the disagreement lies in how to integrate." Tiao, as a representative concerned with "public goods," is recognized as a staunch advocate and practitioner of local integration, stating, "When there is no necessity to make money, I hope to do something truly valuable." He emphasizes that he does not advocate for lying flat, but rather "is convinced that such things will definitely yield returns, and these returns include economic value."

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At the same time, community members have reflected from a commercial perspective. After a period of exploration, members gradually realized the economic unsustainability of the existing model. For example, Yu Xing believes that "spending money for local integration" is meaningless; the lack of market competition pressure leads to resource waste. "If we keep relying on Bing Ge's money, we cannot prove that we are an independent autonomous organization." However, compared to pursuing short-term profits, the community's current exploration is more practical, mainly focusing on the real project needs and implementable scenarios in rural construction. As Bi Bing stated: "Although the community's primary goal is not profitability at the moment, everyone needs to engage in some concrete actions to hone their abilities, understand more real needs, and then consider the possibilities of commercialization and profitability."

For an organization that has just started, having too many goals can lead to dispersion, making it difficult to form a deep emotional and value-based identification, which hinders close collaboration. Rapid changes in goals can also raise concerns about continuity. Most members believe that commercialization and community building are not contradictory; everyone is simply exploring in different directions based on their own experiences. However, an objective fact is that internal goal discrepancies often lead to resource dispersion or even competition. At the end of the research, core members Yu Xing and Bi Bing have gone to Jianta Village in Chengdu to explore the feasibility of promoting the "entrepreneurship incubation project" using the DAO model; meanwhile, Tiao has chosen to remain in Nantang, organizing local members to carry out daily Web3 activities ) such as translation groups and writing groups (, continuously promoting local integration. He said: "I feel that my attempts are not over yet."

) Incentives and Circulation Experiment - Nantang Bean

On August 20, 2024, Nan Tang Dou (NT) officially launched on Optimsim, with an initial issuance of 10 million pieces. In terms of value anchoring, one Nan Tang Dou is equivalent to one Chinese Yuan.

Functionally, Nantang Bean serves as a community incentive mechanism, fulfilling the dual roles of "contribution record" and "voting rights certificate." On one hand, Nantang DAO uses a labor-hour system to record member contributions, and members can autonomously log their working hours through the Fairsharing platform. According to the community's current standards, each labor hour corresponds to a reward of 60 RMB worth of Ether and 60 Nantang Beans. Although the validity of labor hours mainly relies on peer evaluations among community members, it may also be flexibly adjusted based on specific circumstances, such as initiating votes for adjudication, where the final validity depends on community consensus. On the other hand, Nantang Beans also possess the attribute of governance rights certificates. Members holding more Nantang Beans will have greater voting weight in community decisions. This design, which directly links contribution records to governance power, is essentially a governance incentive mechanism that theoretically enhances community members' enthusiasm and autonomy in participation.

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)# Limitations of Hourly Wage System

Although the Nantung DAO has made an important step 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 malfunctioning peer review mechanism. A member shared his experience: he had participated in local farming and band formation activities, but he frequently faced setbacks when recording work hours. He mentioned, "I reported my work hours twice, and each time I was questioned in the group - it seemed like this was not a matter for the Nantung DAO, and this project had not yet been established." This reflects that the current incentive mechanism lacks clear admission standards and is, at least, deficient in transparency. This "invisible threshold" makes it impossible for many members' contributions to be recognized, effectively shutting them out. However, Yu Xing believes that the Nantung DAO's expectation for work hours is to "lower the admission standards and encourage members to explore autonomously." This difference in perspective further highlights the confusion brought about by ambiguous admission standards.

Community members generally reflect that the "equal pay for equal work" model, which uses working hours as the sole evaluation criterion, has obvious limitations. For example, members like Biao Ge, Xiao Bai, Shu Hui, and Cikey have mentioned that there are differences in work experience and efficiency among members, and calculating compensation solely based on hours actually "indirectly encourages low efficiency." Tiao further pointed out that the input and output under this model are not proportional, leading members to feel a sense of "inequality." For instance, if member A records 10 hours of contribution but has little output, other members may feel dissatisfied with the corresponding compensation they receive. Moreover, the community's tasks are diverse, and the time required for many tasks is difficult to quantify. Additionally, some members are not accustomed to self-reporting their working hours, which complicates the issue further. Biao Ge lamented that this mechanism creates a rift among members: "Everyone feels uncomfortable inside, thinking that others are taking advantage, and the most intense arguments in the group often revolve around work points."

So, has the peer review mechanism played its due role in avoiding these problems? The answer is very limited. Xiaobai explained: "Everyone does not know each other well in their work, making it difficult to judge objectively; moreover, members are generally quite conservative, taking each other's feelings into account and are unwilling to criticize others."