Is Onchain Governance Broken? ENS, BonkDAO, and Tokens vs. Equity

Summary

Laura Shin hosts Nick Almond and Profit to dissect recent DAO governance failures including ENS DAO centralization and a $20M Bonk DAO exploit. They debate DAO structures, the token vs equity split sparked by Venice's VVV token, and whether DAOs are bottoming. Speakers present opposing views on Venice's utility token and highlight token-centric projects like Jito.

• ENS DAO's founder used personal tokens to block a security council renewal, triggering centralization of treasury into a foundation.
• Bonk DAO attacker drained $20M by reaching quorum with $4.4M in bought tokens, exploiting voter apathy and lack of notifications.
• Venice's VVV token sparked token vs equity debate; Nick Almond sees it as a viable utility token, while Profit believes value will accrue to equity, not the token.
• Jito DAO declares itself token-centric, with JTO as the primary value-carrying asset, signaling a shift toward token-first projects.
• MetaDAO uses decision markets instead of voting to improve governance, while curated delegation is proposed as a fix for voter apathy.
• Speakers agree the DAO space is near a sentiment bottom, with new governance experiments needed for a revival.
• Profit is skeptical on utility tokens broadly, while Nick Almond hopes for more utility token innovation alongside centralized companies.