🌐 Can we govern public sector projects using DAOs governance design toolkit?
This JBBA peer-reviewed paper takes a very real-world problem (a Swiss university’s community-led grant allocation) and asks: what can we borrow from DAO governance to make community decisions more fair, transparent, and inclusive — without adding admin burden?
📍Key highlights from the paper:
1) It starts with an uncomfortable truth:
Even DAOs struggle with fairness — governance often centralises (e.g., small groups dominating voting power) and participation can be extremely low.
2) A useful governance lens:
The authors map governance into 4 stages: submission → selection → voting → execution, then compare 7 DAO governance models across these stages (e.g., token staking, reputation, quadratic mechanisms, timelocks, rage-quit style dissent).
3) The core contribution: 8 “DAO-inspired” improvements for community grant allocation (designed and iterated with stakeholders via Action Design Research):
• Blinded proposals to reduce reputational/network bias
• More transparent outcomes (incl. clearer scoring and documentation)
• Feedback loops / community dialogue before voting
• Bonus vote mechanism (inspired by futarchy-style incentives) to reward informed voting
• Flexible voting (votes distributed across proposals, not just a simple pick-list)
• “Raise concerns” phase so dissent is heard before final decisions
• Project presentation event at the end (accountability + learning)
• Continuous community discussion channel to keep improving the process over time
4) Practicality check:
The improvements were evaluated with the programme team — some mechanisms were adopted immediately, others were adapted due to feasibility constraints (e.g., qualitative feedback to every rejected proposal wasn’t scalable; some feedback loops needed extra tooling).
✅ Why this matters (beyond Web3):
This is a blueprint for designing governance as infrastructure, whether you’re allocating grants, running an association, governing a standards body, or coordinating a digital community.
📄 Open access in The JBBA: “Designing Community Governance – Learnings from DAOs” (Lustenberger, Küng, Florian Spychiger, 2025) of ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences
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JBBA Editor in Chief: Prof. Dr
@Prof Naseem Naqvi MBE MBE FBBA
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