Added Merk case studies + author field

2026-08-19 09:56:46 -06:00
parent 3f072a7fc3
commit aa0ad1bed3
44 changed files with 323 additions and 4 deletions
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 ---
 title: "Case Studies"
 description: "Real examples of companies that have attempted or achieved community ownership"
+author: ""
 ---

@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+---
+title: Aave
+date: '2026-04-14'
+draft: false
+description: "A decentralized lending protocol that transitioned to DAO governance but has faced centralization tensions as founding entities retain control over key infrastructure."
+status: ongoing
+tags:
+- crypto
+- ongoing
+external_url: https://aave.com/
+image: /img/logos/aave.png
+banner: /img/banners/aave.png
+author: "Tara Merk"
+---
+### Summary
+
+Aave is a decentralized lending protocol that transitioned to community governance in 2020 via token-based voting. While initially successful, recent tensions between the DAO and Aave Labs over revenue control and brand ownership reveal how decentralization remains fragile -- especially when founding teams retain control of key infrastructure like frontends, IP, and communication channels.
+
+### Motivation and Readiness
+
+Aave has always aimed to be decentralized and already promised to move to DAO governance in the ETHLend whitepaper. As such, progressive decentralization has been part of the project’s strategy since inception. In terms of readiness, Aave had been in development for over three years before granting its community governance rights via the Aave token. By this time, it had already established itself as a leading decentralized lending protocol. Furthermore, Aave’s transition towards community governance needs to be understood in terms of its temporal context: the launch of Aave Governance V2 came amongst a boom of DAO transitions within the DeFi space at the time. As such, the transition can also be understood as a move to keep up with competitors as well as maintain the project’s attractiveness and legitimacy vis-a-vis the blockchain ecosystem and its users.
+
+### Process and Tensions
+
+The process of transitioning to Aave Governance v2 went relatively smoothly at the time. The project also incentivized Aave users to stake their tokens to the project’s security module, by rewarding them with more Aave (and thus voting power) for doing so. As such, the transition towards decentralized governance directly contributed to the protocol’s security. Two years after the transition, Aave began entering the cross-chain decentralized lending space. To accommodate for the added complexity of governing a multi-chain ecosystem, the DAO adopted [Aave Governance V3](https://github.com/aave-dao/aave-governance-v3/blob/main/README.md) in 2023.
+
+Tensions arose in late 2025, as the DAO and Aave Labs began renegotiating power arrangements between them publicly. The tension began over protocol revenues from decentralized exchanges being funnelled to Aave Labs, rather than the DAO. Aave has long integrated with decentralized exchanges, to allow users to swap different cryptocurrencies on Aave without leaving the application. Previously, this integration was done with ParaSwap, a specific decentralized exchange, which in return for Aave sending new customers its way, sent a portion of the fees it took per swap back to the Aave DAO. In early December 2025, Aave Labs announced a new partnership with CowSwap, who would be the new main decentralized exchange users would access when using Aave through the frontend application maintained by Aave Labs. Following this switch, the DAO quickly realized that it meant that referral fees (likely around $10 million per year) were now flowing to wallets controlled by Aave Labs, rather than the DAO treasury. This unilateral move by Aave Labs triggered a more [widespread (and very heated!) debate](https://rekt.news/aave-winter-of-discontent) within the community concerning the relationship between Aave Labs and the DAO. Several proposals were made by the DAO to transfer ownership over the project's IP and communications channels to the DAOs which could then contract Aave Labs with maintaining these assets. In turn Aave Labs argued that anyone was welcome to build a competing frontend to the protocol, and that these fees were generated by a product built on Aave, rather than the protocol itself and that Aave Labs therefor had the right to take these fees, which it proposed sharing with the DAO.
+
+Nevertheless, following this episode, debates over ownership and control between the DAO and Aave Labs are ongoing in the ecosystem. Discontent was especially high, when Aave Labs pushed a [proposal](https://snapshot.org/#/s:aavedao.eth/proposal/0xbc606159ddeae0184c2086055637d3f357351ec0adc4c9f4150751bc41918eba) for the transfer of brand assets to the DAO, to a vote over the Christmas days and seemingly coordinated its own token holders to vote against it. The role of Stani Kulechov, who remains Aave Labs’ CEO and recently published his own [vision](https://x.com/StaniKulechov/status/2001036446098919461) on how Aave will win in the long term (which does not make mention of decentralized governance and focuses on products instead), is especially contested. In the aftermath, several key DAO service providers have decided to leave the project.
+
+### Results
+
+Although Aave Labs seems to have been successful in living up to its mission to decentralize the protocol over the first few years after activating V2 governance, the recent events show that decentralization remains vulnerable. It is vulnerable in the sense that the current setup still allowed Aave Labs to unilaterally re-route funds to its own address, and that the community lacks adequate enforcement mechanisms to prevent such behaviour from individual actors.
+
+Aave’s E2C outcome is also vulnerable in the sense that tensions triggered core service providers to exit, leaving the ecosystem dependent on single vendors (like Aave Labs) or more vulnerable to technical exploits. Three months after the conflict between Aave DAO and Aave Labs emerged, [the Aave Chan Initiative (ACI)](https://www.dlnews.com/articles/defi/aave-firm-exits-defi-giant-amid-protracted-power-struggle/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email), a key governance group inside the DAO resigned. [Shortly after](https://thedefiant.io/news/defi/chaos-labs-terminates-aave-engagement-citing-risk-misalignment?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=aave-loses-chaos-labs), BDG Labs, a developer firm working on Aave v3 also stepped away from the protocol and Chaos Labs, a risk service provider followed. It remains to be seen, to what extent Aave’s journey towards decentralization can be characterized as being successful or unsuccessful.
+
+### Sources
+
+- [Project history and overview](https://messari.io/project/aave/profile)
+
+- [Blog post announcing V2 governance](https://medium.com/aave/aave-protocol-governance-v2-has-been-activated-af4a4b228885)
+
+- [ETHLend whitepaper](https://github.com/ETHLend/Documentation/blob/master/ETHLendWhitePaper.md)
+
+- [Background of EthLend ICO](https://steemit.com/ethereum/@ethlend/value-and-function-of-lend)
+
+- [2026 governance drama at Aave](https://rekt.news/aave-winter-of-discontent)
+
+- [Founders Master plan for Aave](https://x.com/StaniKulechov/status/2001036446098919461)
@@ -13,6 +13,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://ampled.com/
 image: /img/logos/ampled.svg
 banner: /img/banners/ampled.png
+author: ""
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://are.na/
 image: /img/logos/arena.png
 banner: /img/banners/arena.webp
+author: ""
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -13,6 +13,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://buytwitter.org/
 image: /img/logos/buytwitter.png
 banner: /img/banners/buytwitter.jpg
+author: ""
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
+---
+title: Circles Coop
+date: '2026-04-14'
+draft: false
+description: "A cooperative local economy pilot using a blockchain-based UBI coin, which shut down due to insufficient funding."
+status: failure
+tags:
+- co-op
+- crypto
+- failure
+external_url: https://circles.coop/
+image: /img/logos/circlescoop.png
+banner: /img/banners/circlescoop.png
+author: "Tara Merk"
+---
+### Summary
+
+Circles Coop was a German cooperative running a blockchain-based UBI pilot in Berlin, aiming to build a community-stewarded local economy. Despite successful community organizing and local market events, the project shut down in 2024 after running out of funds to subsidize business adoption. This demonstrated how financial sustainability can undermine even well-designed community governance experiments.
+
+### Motivation and Readiness
+
+The core motivation underlying the wider Circles project is to showcase and advance the effectiveness of blockchain based universal income based on trust (in the form of a social graph of users vouching for each other in the system). Furthermore, many members of the Circles pluriverse (a term used within the ecosystem to describe the various organizations and stakeholders involved in the wider Circles project) were interested in practically advancing more equitable, anti- or post-capitalist economic models. Members included many early, idealistic blockchain adopters (including people working in the industry on projects such as MakerDAO or Consensys), which led to the technology becoming central to the Circles project.
+
+After the initial launch of the CRC in October 2020, which was accompanied by several technical difficulties but also relatively fast adoption by cryptocurrency users (more than 20.000 accounts registered in the first week alone), Circles Coop e.G. was initially formed from members of the Basic Income Lab eV, who wanted a more democratic organizational structure going forward. The Circles Coop included people from the platform cooperativism ecosystem, activists and hackers from the peer-to-peer technology community. The pilot was launched with the intention to demonstrate the potential of a community stewarded local economy. To achieve this, of course the pilot had to be stewarded by local community. This constitutes the main motivation for the E2C.
+
+### Process and Tensions
+
+The main tension in the roll out of community governance was the strong reliance on the subsidiary program. The subsidiary program aimed to incentivize more businesses to join the Circles ecosystem in Berlin by allowing them to exchange CRC for a fixed amount of Euros each month. The rationale behind the subsidy program was to enable businesses such as farmers and local producers to join the pilot without bearing the economic risk from accepting a new currency backed by novel, experimental technology. The funding for the subsidy programme came from Martin Koppelmann is listed as the project’s initiator and is also the founder of Gnosis, a blockchain company based in Berlin.While the incentive worked to onboard various businesses, it unfortunately did not achieve the desired effect of creating a critical mass of closed loops within the Circles economy.
+
+After almost three and a half years, the Circles Coop ultimately ran out of funds to continue the subsidiary program and sustain itself, thus leading to the Coop needing to shut down and end the Berlin pilot. Within the Coop Handbook, summarizing the activities and key learnings gathered by the Coop throughout its time, the financial stress that resulted from the need to continue providing subsidiaries without having a clear revenue model in place , is cited as a key factor contributing to the Coop continuously functioning in a ‘state of emergency/ urgency’ which limited the teams ability to conduct better long term and strategic planning. Underlying this tension was also the Coop’s continued dependence on a single funder whose interests it had to cater to and which were difficult to reconcile with the interests of the members of the cooperative. As such, this case highlights the tensions that can arise for cooperatives from relying on external funding.
+
+### Results
+
+The pilot succeeded at showcasing what community stewardship of local economies using blockchain based currency might look like, yet it failed to grow to the extent that the local economies would become financially self-sufficient. While the Circles Coop and with it the Berlin pilot closed down in January 2024, after subsidies ran out, the CRC infrastructure, built open-source on Gnosis chain, remains intact and will continue to be maintained by the Gnosis team. While Poetic Technologies UG, which was founded by Circles Coop members retains the [joincircles.com](http://joincircles.com) website, all other project assets were transitioned to Gnosis. Gnosis has used these assets to create an updated version of the project. The smart contracts were upgraded to support the Circles V2 (CRC) cryptocurrency and the wallet infrastructure is integrated in the Gnosis Wallet, which supports Circles V2.
+
+### Sources
+
+- [The Circles Coop Handbook](https://joincircles.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/EN_Handbook_coop_0723_online.pdf)
+
+- [Papadimitropoulos V and Perperidis G (2024) Universal basic income on blockchain: the case of circles UBI](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/blockchain/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2024.1362939/full)
+
+- [Website](https://joincircles.net/)
+
+- [Whitepaper](https://handbook.joincircles.net/docs/developers/whitepaper)
+
+- [Circles Coop closing announcement](https://x.com/CirclesUBI/status/1785305562462494741)
+
+- [Circles Coop final report](https://circles.coop/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Coop-Report_2501.pdf)
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://cmxhub.com
 image: /img/logos/cmx.jpg
 banner: /img/banners/cmx.webp
+author: ""
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://dadacoin.com
 image: /img/logos/dada.jpg
 banner: /img/banners/dada.png
+author: "Tara Merk"
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -34,4 +35,4 @@ While the outcome of DADA’s E2C remains to be seen, they are well-positioned t
 - [Introducing the DADA Exit to Community](https://powerdada.medium.com/introducing-the-dada-exit-to-community-d4b9874c6c94)
 - [Introducing the Invisible Economy](https://powerdada.medium.com/the-invisible-economy-db46897d4f07)
 - [DADA.art | Medium](https://powerdada.medium.com/)
- [Crypto Artists Share How Web3 Tools Enable Diverse Art Market Experiments - Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2023/05/01/crypto-artists-share-how-web3-tools-enable-diverse-art-market-experiments/?sh=5d0c6ace64b0)
+- [Crypto Artists Share How Web3 Tools Enable Diverse Art Market Experiments - Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2023/05/01/crypto-artists-share-how-web3-tools-enable-diverse-art-market-experiments/?sh=5d0c6ace64b0)
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://debian.org/
 image: /img/logos/debian.png
 banner: /img/banners/debian.png
+author: ""
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://defector.com/
 image: /img/logos/defector.png
 banner: /img/banners/defector.jpg
+author: ""
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://ens.domains/
 image: /img/logos/ens.jpg
 banner: /img/banners/ens.jpg
+author: ""
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://forwardaction.uk/
 image: /img/logos/forward.jpg
 banner: /img/banners/forward.webp
+author: ""
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://gitcoin.co/
 image: /img/logos/gitcoin.png
 banner: /img/banners/gitcoin.png
+author: ""
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://groupmuse.com/
 image: /img/logos/groupmuse.png
 banner: /img/banners/groupmuse.jpg
+author: ""
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://hackernoon.com/
 image: /img/logos/hackernoon.jpg
 banner: /img/banners/hackernoon.png
+author: ""
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/josephine
 image: /img/logos/josephine.png
 banner: /img/banners/josephine.webp
+author: ""
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(company)
 image: /img/logos/juno.png
 banner: /img/banners/juno.jpg
+author: ""
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
+---
+title: MakerDAO/ SKY
+date: '2026-04-14'
+draft: false
+description: "A decentralized stablecoin project which transitioned to full DAO governance, after dissolving its founding organization in 2021."
+status: ongoing
+tags:
+- crypto
+- ongoing
+external_url: https://sky.money/
+image: /img/logos/makerdao.png
+banner: /img/banners/makerdao.png
+author: ""
+---
+### Summary
+
+MakerDAO is best known for creating the decentralized DAI stablecoin.It introduced the MKR governance token and dissolved its Foundation in 2021 to achieve full community governance. However, founder Rune Christensen returned in 2024 to push the "Endgame Plan," recentralizing before re-decentralizing into sub-DAOs. The case shows how E2C is rarely linear: projects may oscillate between centralization and decentralization based on efficiency needs.
+
+### Motivation and Readiness
+
+The main motivation for MakerDAO’s E2C was to increase decentralization of the protocol and ecosystem. MakerDAO has always differentiated DAI as a *decentralized* stable coin, as opposed to centrally controlled competitors such as USDT (controlled by Tether Ltd.) or USDC (controlled by Circle, a publicly traded company). Decentralization here meant that rules on collateral backing the stable coin would be algorithmic and that decisions on how to change these rules would not be controlled by any single entity. Decentralization thereby also contributes towards DAI’s censorship resistance, i.e. making it harder to seize or freeze when held in non-custodial accounts. Consequently, dissolving the Maker Foundation and handing full control to the community has always been part of Maker’s vision and strategy.
+
+By 2019, MakerDAO was well established in the broader blockchain industry, focussing on a clear use case (issuance of DAI) and with the protocol having been stress tested by various market shocks. As such, MakerDAO transitioned at a relatively mature stage of the project.
+
+### Process and Tensions
+
+A core tension of the MakerDAO transition process is balancing decentralization with organizational and economic efficiency. After the dissolution of the Foundation Maker founder Rune Christensen became relatively absent from the project which was then operationally stewarded by Core Units based on decisions made by MKR token holders.
+
+However, a little under two years later, Rune returned to propose [‘The Endgame Plan’](https://forum.sky.money/t/the-endgame-plan-parts-1-2/15456). This plan problematized the level of complexity of MakerDAO, with increasing voter apathy from MKR token holders, who didn’t feel like their voice in the project mattered anymore and had become disgruntled as to how much revenue Core Units were consuming. The Endgame Plan proposed to re-structure MakerDAO into a more minimalist ‘core DAO’, narrowly focused on core protocol functions. Autonomous sub-DAOs would then replace many Core Units to focus on smaller moonshot projects which the community had started incubating within MakerDAO. The plan was adopted via token governance and has resulted in a significant restructuring of the project and its recent rebrand to SKY (where DAI tokens became USDS and MKR tokens became SKY tokens).
+
+Another centralizing force in MakerDAO is the issue of remaining OFAC compliant. To maintain compliance (i.e. being able to exclude actors blacklisted by OFAC from transacting within the system), usually a centralized entity is required. Yet, MakerDAO does not have a centralized entity to enforce requirements. To comply, the Endgame plan introduced an emergency kill-switch and the concept of a legal defense fund for the protocol. This requirement highlights external pressures shaping the E2C strategy of a project.
+
+### Results
+
+Throughout the various iterations of its ongoing E2C, the project is clearly progressing on its goal of making DAI more decentralized. Nevertheless, the Maker ecosystem continues to grapple with the tension of balancing decentralization and efficiency as evidenced by the ongoing implementation of the Endgame plan. As part of this transition the community has adopted a provisional constitution and the SKY Atlas. The Atlas is an evolving set of foundational rules which the community anticipates will become unchangeable over time/ as they become perfected.
+
+### Sources
+
+- [2017 whitepaper](https://makerdao.com/whitepaper/DaiDec17WP.pdf)
+
+- [2019 multi-collateral whitepaper](https://makerdao.com/whitepaper/White%20Paper%20-The%20Maker%20Protocol_%20MakerDAO%E2%80%99s%20Multi-Collateral%20Dai%20(MCD)%20System-FINAL-%20021720.pdf)
+
+- [Sky protocol whitepaper](https://makerdao.com/en/whitepaper/)
+
+- [Maker Foundation shuts down](https://thedefiant.io/news/defi/makerdao-shuts-foundation)
+
+- [Presentation on how MakerDAO works](https://docs.makerdao.com/getting-started/maker-protocol-101)
+
+- [Maker Constitution](https://forum.sky.money/t/mip101-the-maker-constitution/19621)
+
+- [SKY Atlas](https://sky-atlas.io/)
+
+- [Updates on Endgame plan transition](https://fusion.sky.money/endgame#latest-updates)
@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://namastesolar.com
 image: /img/logos/namaste.png
 banner: /img/banners/namaste.jpg
+author: ""
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://nio.com
 image: /img/logos/nio.jpg
 banner: /img/banners/nio.webp
+author: ""
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
+---
+title: Optimism
+date: '2026-04-14'
+draft: false
+description: "An Ethereum scaling solution that uses an iterative approach to decentralization and a bicameral governance system."
+status: ongoing
+tags:
+- crypto
+- ongoing
+- success
+external_url: https://www.optimism.io/
+image: /img/logos/optimism.png
+banner: /img/banners/optimism.png
+author: ""
+---
+### Summary
+
+Optimism is an Ethereum scaling solution that launched a bicameral governance system in 2022: a Token House (token-weighted) and Citizens House (one-person-one-vote), underpinned by a working constitution. After ongoing iterative governance experiments, Season 9 shifted strategic decision making and capital allocation back toward centralized operations via OP Labs. The case highlights the ongoing tension between decentralization ideals and competitive market pressures.
+
+### Motivation and Readiness
+
+Optimism has advertised itself as a scaling solution to Ethereum that upholds the core protocol’s security. To achieve this, the OP Stack itself cannot be stewarded centrally as this would increase the risk of a centralized operator arbitrarily changing aspects of the protocol. Consequently, decentralizing governance has always been part of Optimism’s long term strategy. It is also the project's main motivation to conduct an E2C.
+
+The project kicked off its transition in April 2022, when the Optimism Foundation launched the OP token shortly after OP Labs had raised a series B investment round of USD 150 million, and at a time when the network was leading the layer 2 scaling solution industry for Ethereum with significant user traction and a production ready network. As such, its readiness to transition was likely relatively high.
+
+### Process and Tensions
+
+E2C in Optimism is an ever changing and ongoing process. Since the launch of the Optimism Collective, the ecosystem has been iteratively adapting its governance and structure each ‘season’ (time periods similar to ‘sprints’ in agile workflows). The goal is to design a new system of platform governance that would result in a better product and a more sustainable business model. To monitor its progress, the Optimism Collective commissioned researchers to come up with the [Concentration of Power Index](https://cpi-one.vercel.app/) .
+
+Notable updates since have included specifying [milestones](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IpL0oTd3AgNBu_eWdjP9EjbQfZjq-_Nd3yU1H2ke3vY/edit?gid=0#gid=0) for the ecosystem on its path towards decentralization and governance minimization, the transition towards the [’superchain’](https://docs.optimism.io/app-developers/guides/superchain) narrative and strategy which sees Optimism as an ecosystem that encompasses all chains that are built using the technical OP stack and thus able to interoperate with each other, depend on unified governance as well as shared security and developer tooling. Although the superchain strategy was dropped again, the pivot illustrated that decentralizing governance pre-product-market-fit can be challenging as it requires re-aligning multistakeholder ecosystems when strategy changes.
+
+### Results
+
+The current state of Optimism makes its internal tensions tangible: On the one hand, Optimism is trying to simplify in order to balance decentralization and efficiency, on the other hand, the superchain strategy increases complexity but is deemed necessary to increase competitiveness in the increasingly crowded market of Ethereum scaling solutions. It remains to be seen, if and how these different objectives and tendencies can be balanced successfully within the ecosystem.
+
+In its 9th season, Optimism [announced](https://gov.optimism.io/t/guide-to-season-9/10529) it would switch away from community driven initiatives (i.e. members of the Token and Citizen House proposing initiatives or allocating funding), and instead focus on fostering stronger community accountability while the main strategy and operations are conducted through OP Labs. This switch positions Optimism more akin to a public company albeit with accountability to a different set of stakeholders and possibly using novel mechanisms to enforce this accountability.
+
+### Sources
+
+- [OPerating manual](https://github.com/ethereum-optimism/Operating-manual)
+
+- [Outlook OP Foundation 2026](https://www.optimism.io/blog/season-9-from-experiment-to-organization)
+
+- [Optimism’s decentralization milestones](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IpL0oTd3AgNBu_eWdjP9EjbQfZjq-_Nd3yU1H2ke3vY/edit?gid=0#gid=0)
+
+- [Optimism’s working constitution](https://gov.optimism.io/t/working-constitution-of-the-optimism-collective/55)
+
+- [Optimism Documentation](https://docs.optimism.io/)
@@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
+---
+title: Proof of Humanity DAO
+date: '2026-04-14'
+draft: false
+description: "A blockchain based identity project governed by a 1-person-1-vote DAO, which failed to establish a shared vision in the community."
+status: failure
+tags:
+- crypto
+- failure
+external_url: https://proofofhumanity.id/
+image: /img/logos/proof-of-humanity.png
+banner: /img/banners/proof-of-humanity.png
+author: ""
+---
+### Summary
+
+Proof of Humanity, a blockchain-based digital identity registry, launched as a one-person-one-vote DAO in 2021. Rapid growth brought diverse communities with conflicting visions for the project. Fragmented Telegram groups prevented effective deliberation. The DAO forked in 2022 after failing to reconcile differences, showing how democratic governance requires robust deliberation infrastructure.
+
+### Motivation and Readiness
+
+PoH was transitioned into a DAO to experiment with the potential of a [one-person-one-vote DAO](https://blog.kleros.io/democracy-awakens/), a relatively rare mechanism in the broader blockchain ecosystem. The move gave PoH a type of ‘first mover advantage’. As the registry had only been launched a couple of months before being transitioned into a DAO, no real use case, beyond the distribution of UBI had been established or tested in the market. The early stage of transition likely contributed towards lower readiness.
+
+### Process and Tensions
+
+The main tension throughout the transition was a lack of unified vision in the community and an incomplete governance design which hampered the community deliberation process and lacked enforcement mechanisms. The transition was announced in a blog post and accompanied by the launch of a governance forum, the description of a very simple voting process (Humanity Improvement Proposals ‘HIP’s), and a Snapshot voting page connected to a Kleros Governor smart contract (anchoring votes on-chain).
+
+Initially the DAO was set up to control the PoH smart contracts, the UBI smart contract and a 4.000.000 UBI treasury. The newly formed DAO was tasked with figuring out the rest, including which of the many potential [use cases](https://blog.kleros.io/proof-of-humanity-a-building-block-for-the-internet-of-the-future/) to prioritize. As the community rapidly grew, it swiftly began adopting several HIPs to build more comprehensive governance processes, such as clarifying how exactly HIPs would progress through different stages and instituting the Mission Board to implement decisions that could not be enforced automatically on-chain.
+
+However, despite its growing sophistication, the governance process and set up was not able to accommodate for the widely different visions that different parts of the community had for the project. A crucial factor that seems to have contributed to this failure was the fact that the community relied on various different Telegram chat groups for its deliberation.Although there were ‘official’ channels set up by the project founders, the community disagreed about who should be the admin of these groups and contested actions of existing admins. Given the low cost of exit new, competing groups began to emerge at a high rate. This ultimately led to a fragmentation of discourses and hampered efforts to find compromise.
+
+Another issue that became apparent in the setup of the Mission Board was the fact that the two founding organizations, DEF and Kleros, also held different opinions on where the project should go, which led to infighting and undermined the legitimacy and efficacy of the Mission Board itself. The fact that the UBI token lost most of its value within the first few months of the DAOs existence further contributed to tensions within its community.
+
+### Results
+
+While PoH demonstrated that large-scale DAOs following a 1-person-1-vote principle are technically possible, the early transition and lack of supporting structures (especially for deliberation and decision enforcement) ultimately undermined the project’s succes.The PoH community decided to conduct a [‘Peaceful Fork’](https://gov.proofofhumanity.id/t/phase-3-binding-hip-74-a-peaceful-fork/2487) in November 2022. For this fork to come into effect, each side had to draw up and ratify a constitution outlining its vision and core values for the project. By voting for either of the constitutions, users could decide on which version of the protocol they would remain active. At the time of writing, only the PoH version supported by Kleros seems to remain active.
+
+### Sources
+
+- [PoH launch announcement](https://blog.kleros.io/proof-of-humanity-building-the-internet-of-humans/)
+
+- [UBI launch announcement](https://blog.kleros.io/introducing-ubi-universal-basic-income-for-humans/)
+
+- [PoH DAO launch blog post](https://blog.kleros.io/democracy-awakens/)
+
+- [Ethnographic research report on PoH’s governance and crisis](https://hal.science/hal-04855850/document)
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ title: Python
 date: '2023-12-22'
 draft: false
 description: "Python is a popular computer programming language that evolved in 2018 from a 'benevolent dictator for life' to a foundation with five-member steering council that included its founder for a term, and currently runs smoothly."
-status: success
+status: active
 tags:
 - nonprofit
 - software
@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://python.org/
 image: /img/logos/python.jpg
 banner: /img/banners/python.jpg
+author: ""
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -33,4 +34,4 @@ After PEP 8016 succeeded, 69 out 96 eligible voters elected Python’s first ste

 - E2C conversation with Python researcher Shauna Gordon-McKeon
 - [PEP 8016 – The Steering Council Model](https://peps.python.org/pep-8016/)
- [“A New Era in Python Governance” (Talk) - Shauna Gordon-McKeon, PyCon 2019](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAC83JVDzL8&ab_channel=PyCon2019)
+- [“A New Era in Python Governance” (Talk) - Shauna Gordon-McKeon, PyCon 2019](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAC83JVDzL8&ab_channel=PyCon2019)
@@ -13,6 +13,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://signalise.coop/
 image: /img/logos/signalise.jpg
 banner: /img/banners/signalise.jpg
+author: ""
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://songaday.world/
 image: /img/logos/songadao.png
 banner: /img/banners/songadao.jpg
+author: ""
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://theappeal.org/
 image: /img/logos/the-appeal.jpg
 banner: /img/banners/the-appeal.jpg
+author: ""
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://thebrick.house/
 image: /img/logos/the-brick-house.jpg
 banner: /img/banners/the-brick-house.png
+author: ""
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://well.com/
 image: /img/logos/the-well.png
 banner: /img/banners/the-well.png
+author: ""
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://tridentcafe.com/
 image: /img/logos/trident-booksellers.png
 banner: /img/banners/trident-booksellers.jpg
+author: ""
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@ tags:
 external_url: https://uniswap.org
 image: /img/logos/uniswap.jpg
 banner: /img/banners/uniswap.png
+author: ""
 ---

 ### Summary
@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
+---
+title: Yearn Finance
+date: '2026-04-14'
+draft: false
+description: "A Decentralized Finance project which transitioned to user governance via a ‘fair launch’ token distribution."
+status: ongoing
+tags:
+- crypto
+- ongoing
+- success
+external_url: https://yearn.fi/
+image: /img/logos/yfi.png
+banner: /img/banners/yfi.png
+author: "Tara Merk"
+---
+### Summary
+
+Yearn Finance launched with a "fair launch" in 2020, distributing all governance tokens to users rather than reserving any for founder Andre Cronje. Despite formal decentralization, Cronje's informal influence persisted; when he announced leaving DeFi in 2022, the token price crashed. The case illustrates how founder dependence can outlast formal ownership transitions.
+
+### Motivation and Readiness
+
+Three key factors seem to have driven Yearn’s decision to distribute governance and ownership rights to its community. Firstly, as a decentralized finance project, the goal was always to be credibly decentralized. This required Cronje to cede control. Secondly, the project benefitted from the user influx created through the incentive of its new governance token. And third, YFI launched at a time where launching a governance token simply seemed to be the ‘thing to do’ within the blockchain industry.
+
+It is difficult to make statements about the project’s readiness to transition. Cronje frequently stated that he had built the project for his personal use, that he was ‘testing in production’, that it was likely there would be bugs in the code and that anyone using the application would be doing so at their own risk. As such, the intention was never for the software to be mature or ‘ready’ in any way. Instead, this narrative tried to encourage participation from individuals who were willing to take risks. This culture of ‘living dangerously’ is explicitly heralded in the Yearn Manifesto as something the community embraces.
+
+### Process and Tensions
+
+A core tension throughout YFI’s E2C is that despite its formal independence from Cronje, the founder still retains outsized informal influence. This became clear when Cronje’s [announcement of leaving the DeFi](https://thedefiant.io/news/markets/yearn-cronje-fantom-exit-defi) space in March 2022 sent the YFI token plummeting, despite the maturation of the ecosystem and the fact that Cronje had not worked on the project for over a year. This indicates that in the minds of many, Yearn continued to be connected to its founder. Furthermore, and perhaps unsurprisingly given the culture of ‘living dangerously’, the project has faced numerous [hacks](https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=yearn-finance-exploit-4) and crises over the past years. Finally, an interesting tension that arose shortly after community members acquired YFI tokens via the fair launch, they voted to halt token distribution, thus making YFI governance tokens a more scarce resource than initially envisioned.
+
+### Results
+
+Through its E2C and evolution since 2020, Yearn has clearly progressed on becoming more decentralized as its community now handles major decisions and Cronje has since decoupled himself from the project and moved onto other projects (remaining in DeFi). Nevertheless, Yearn sees its E2C as an ongoing process. Yearn Finance 3 [whitepaper](https://caladex.io/api/files/papers/Yearn%20Finance%20white%20paper.pdf) describes: “we’ve got a firm goal in mind: become a truly community driven Decentralized Finance platform (DeFi), where our investors can make their voices heard and the Yearn Finance 3 team just provides the foundations and a framework to create a real governance over the token YFI3.” This indicates that Yearn understands its community as being one of investors, thus emphasizing the financial relationship that people have with the project rather than anything else.
+
+In late 2025 the community also adopted a [proposal](https://gov.yearn.fi/t/yip-88-governance-overhaul-dao-restructuring/14553) for another governance overhaul which changed yTeams from being relatively independent, functionally organized squads, to becoming self-contained, revenue earning units. To receive a budget, these units have to justify their needs by showing their revenue on-chain. Maintenance work is kept minimal and constrained to tightly scoped, time-bound projects executed within the ‘DAO Ops Team’. The new yTeams also mandatorily need to adopt a split contract to automatically allocate rewards amongst their contributors.
+
+### Sources
+
+- [The Yearn blue pill](https://yfistory.org/thebluepill)
+
+- [About Andre Cronje](https://coinmarketcap.com/academy/article/who-is-andre-cronje)
+
+- [YFI profile](https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/what-is-yearn-finance-yfi-coin-yearnfinance)
+
+- [Yearn Governance 2.0](https://gov.yearn.fi/t/yip-61-governance-2-0/10460)
+
+- [YFI Governance overhaul proposal passed in 2025](https://gov.yearn.fi/t/yip-88-governance-overhaul-dao-restructuring/14553)
+
+- [Yearn Finance 3 whitepaper](https://caladex.io/api/files/papers/Yearn%20Finance%20white%20paper.pdf)
+
+- [Token-Centric Work Practices in Fluid Organizations: The Cases of Yearn and MakerDAO](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nina-Schirrmacher/publication/356490357_Token-Centric_Work_Practices_in_Fluid_Organizations_The_Cases_of_Yearn_and_MakerDAO/links/619da071d7d1af224b2010ec/Token-Centric-Work-Practices-in-Fluid-Organizations-The-Cases-of-Yearn-and-MakerDAO.pdf)
@@ -1,7 +1,8 @@
 ---
 title: Community Ownership Policy Guide
 description: Policy strategies for community-controlled land and housing from Ground Works Consulting
+tags:
 - Policy
 - United-States
 external_url: https://www.groundworksconsulting.org/ourwork/community-ownership-policy-guide
---
+---