Nantang DAO Chronicle (Part Two)

has found a way out.

The story of Nantang DAO continues, despite facing numerous challenges, everything is still happening naturally and continuously emerging. The community is exploring forward through trial and error, digging for new possibilities in the pursuit of change. Some core members have gone to Jianta Village in Pujiang County, Chengdu, to try and initiate new projects, attempting to find the true intersection of "rural construction and Web3" and build a "rural entrepreneurship DAO." Meanwhile, some have chosen to stay local in Nantang, proposing the initiative of "living well," by organizing local young people to engage in blockchain co-learning, band activities, and more, continuously cultivating the community. One side explores outward, while the other is rooted locally, with both paths running parallel without conflict. Paving a new road is always full of hardships, but as the saying goes: "Pessimists are often right, while optimists keep moving forward." The optimists of Nantang DAO are writing their own answers through action.

Attract more professionals

Talent is the cornerstone of any organization's development. Cikey reflected that in the early stages of its establishment, Nantang DAO failed to effectively attract "real talents who understand blockchain and Web3", coupled with the general lack of mature rural construction experience among early members, leading the community to take quite a few detours in its exploration. Fortunately, the community has recognized this shortcoming and has taken a series of improvement measures. Currently, Nantang DAO plans to invite senior industry experts to form the "Nantang DAO Governance Advisory Group" to provide professional mediation for internal disputes and to deliver systematic suggestions for the strategic direction of each quarter. Additionally, through the "Rural Construction Web3 Bilateral Enlightenment Program", community members have repeatedly participated in domestic and international Web3 activities and have gone into universities to give presentations, which not only enhanced their own professional quality but also attracted more professionals passionate about Web3 and rural construction to join. This two-way interaction has opened up new avenues for talent recruitment. Excitingly, new members are continuously joining, injecting new vitality into the community. Some among them excel in artistic creation, adding creativity to rural cultural activities; some are proficient in brand promotion, providing support for Nantang DAO's external communication; and others have made significant achievements in organizational research, contributing wisdom to the optimization of community governance mechanisms. These new members not only bring professional skills but also open up more possibilities for the future development of Nantang DAO.

Facing the world, drawing on experience

What are the real needs of rural areas? Can Web3 inject new momentum into rural development? The implementation of DAO is not only a topic for Nantang but also a global challenge. Nantang DAO has researched multiple international DAO cases, many of which offer insights closely related to rural construction. For example, after facing the challenges of earthquake reconstruction and an aging population, Japan's Yamakoshi village launched the "Nishikigoi NFT" centered around local specialty "koi", considering NFT holders as "digital villagers". The resulting DAO community attracted over 1,750 members globally, raising funds to support regional sustainable development. Although this model did not incorporate typical DAO elements such as smart contracts or on-chain treasury, it effectively addressed local issues. The experience of Yamakoshi village is quite enlightening for Nantang DAO. Recently, Yamakoshi village proposed the idea of a "dual-layer DAO-driven governance revolution": using the Yamakoshi DAO as a vehicle to achieve co-governance between physical villagers and digital villagers through Snapshot voting; simultaneously using the Shihua People DAO as a platform to facilitate cross-regional collaboration (such as in Shuiye village and Tianlongxia), establishing a "LocalDAO network". This model shares similarities with the current development path of Nantang DAO and should provide valuable reference.

Another relevant case is CabinDAO - a decentralized autonomous organization dedicated to building network cities through community collaboration and technological innovation. Its development process is divided into four stages: the Creator Era from 2020 to 2021, establishing "Creator Cabins" as a funding project for creator residences; from 2021 to 2022, with the booming of DAOs, Cabin began to enter the DAO service provider stage, during which the community created numerous DAO media brands and developed on-chain and physical passport systems and other DAO tools for online communities; from 2022 to 2023, with the turbulence in the crypto market, the community began to significantly reduce the DAO team and focus on creating natural communities for digital nomads and building a global co-living network; starting in early 2024, the team's keyword became "family community", and the team decided to establish deeper connections with local communities, launching the Neighborhood Accelerator program, proposing to create a community where friends live nearby and raise children together.

What is worth learning from and reflecting on is that after years of continuous exploration, the Cabin team believes it is more suitable to exist as a loose community network rather than a startup or DAO. On May 8, 2025, Cabin officially announced its dissolution, deciding to abandon DAO grants and commercialization projects, and shift towards a purely community-driven network. This decision stems from a reflection on the different models of startups, DAOs, and community networks: "Venture capital-backed startups are most suitable for small focused teams that can quickly pivot and seek high-speed growth business opportunities that are financially viable in the short term. DAOs are best suited as a trusted neutral governance mechanism for distributing ecosystem grants from existing cash flow protocols. Community-driven networks are best positioned to act as loose connecting organizations, enabling many people to independently explore adjacent paths and build what they find most interesting and valuable." For practitioners of rural construction DAOs, how to find the positioning of DAOs in rural communities and what value DAOs can bring to local communities is undoubtedly a common proposition faced by the whole world.

Deepen into the local market, seek advantages

While learning from global pioneers, how to take root locally must be based on in-depth research and analysis of local realities. Nantan DAO needs to comprehensively assess local resources such as economy, human resources, spiritual culture, politics, social capital, location, and natural environment, in order to formulate practical goals and action programs.

Nantang Village is known for its historical experience in democratic governance, and the attention of society is the greatest advantage of this land. Looking back at the history of Nantang, we can find that the desire for democracy and rights has never ceased; its important historical nodes have always resonated with advanced organizational concepts in the environment of the great era— from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, civic movements surged, with the rise of the rights protection lawyer movement and environmental movement, allowing citizens to defend their rights through legal channels and collective actions. Nantang also began to organize farmers' rights protection struggles, implement grassroots elections, and practice village autonomy. Starting from 2003-2004, the goal of farmer organization gradually shifted from rights protection to construction. As Yang Yunbiao stated: "Previously, we approached rights protection from a confrontational perspective; after establishing cooperatives, our daily work has been to defend our rights through livelihood development, cultural construction, and the building of rural autonomy." Later, in the process of farmer organization, they drew on Western civilization, introduced deliberative rules, and realized the localization of advanced governance concepts (in 2008), during which the village's economic and cultural endeavors achieved rapid development. Yang Yunbiao once pointed out in a rural construction dialogue: "Rural revitalization is not simply industrial revitalization or organizational revitalization; it must return to 'the revitalization of people,' and we must consider how to enable people to live with smiles and dignity." Today, the establishment of the Nantang DAO continues the tradition of organizational innovation, marking the latest attempt to integrate local ethics with modern civilization.

From rights protection organizations to meeting rules, from cooperatives to the Nantan DAO, Nantan has experimented with different forms of democratic governance over the past 30 years. However, it is important to realize that no matter how innovative the organizational form is, the key lies in whether it focuses on "human connections" and whether it meets the fundamental needs of local farmers. It is encouraging that the various attempts made in the past and those currently underway have already generated a good "linking" effect. After cohabiting and learning together for some time, some wonderful chemical reactions are quietly happening between DAO members and cooperative members. During my field observations, I noted that local young people, when faced with the challenges of collective cooking division of labor, actively applied Robert's Rules of Order to efficiently negotiate and reach a consensus on division of labor through "motions" and "reconsiderations." I also sensed the budding awareness of equality among local youth; they have begun to spontaneously organize themselves to collectively think about issues such as unclear decision-making, ambiguous responsibilities, and insufficient transparency in local work and life affairs. This budding spirit of independent thinking and criticism will be a valuable asset for Nantan's future development. On another front, cooperatives are also broadening their horizons, planning to create a "third space" for digital nomads to connect with a wider young audience. Based on the recognition of each other's needs, working in a mutually respectful manner may become a driving force for new possibilities to emerge in this land.

written at the end

Despite the conflicts, the integration of rural development and Web3 holds promising prospects. Through the test of time and practice, both sides are expected to reach a consensus amidst the conflicts, forming a governance model that balances individual autonomy and collective cooperation. In future development, Nantang DAO, while promoting Web3 technologies and governance models, must also be rooted in the cultural soil of the countryside and the immediate interests of the villagers, focusing on solving the most fundamental needs of rural areas, allowing new digital technologies to truly touch the soul of rural society.

How to view the exploration of DAO in rural areas?

Rural construction and DAO are like two circles that originally intersect: rural construction carries the practice and sentiment of revitalizing rural areas, while DAO reshapes trust and cooperation mechanisms through decentralized technological concepts. In recent years, these two fields have begun to converge, attracting Web3 practitioners dedicated to rural areas and rural builders eager to embrace new technologies. However, due to the short duration of contact and differences in values and cultural backgrounds, this intersection inevitably generates friction, including the clash between decentralized autonomy logic and rural collectivist culture, as well as the integration of external ideas with local traditions.

The core issue is how the DAO, as a new organizational form, can find its role and capacity boundaries within rural governance structures. Taking the practice of Nantang DAO as an example, if the issuance of Nantang beans is merely a digital replication of the traditional rural governance points system (such as the work points system), and its usability and ease of use are even difficult to surpass other existing "alternative currencies"; if token-based voting is merely a direct democracy transferred to the Web3 digital platform, yet villagers are effectively excluded from the democratic decision-making process, how much change can we expect from this so-called organizational "innovation" for rural society? While these questions are specifically tied to Nantang DAO, they are, in fact, a common inquiry for all future rural construction DAOs or similar organizations.

Furthermore, it must be acknowledged that DAO is not the ultimate answer to all organizational governance issues. No organizational design is perfect, and the trade-offs and choices in the governance process are key for organizations to address sustainable development challenges. Different organizational forms have their own advantages and disadvantages, and they coexist rather than replace each other. If decentralization and autonomy are viewed as a spectrum, various historical organizations, as well as different stages of the same organization, are positioned at different points along this spectrum. Many DAO failures stem from a lack of sufficient awareness of this issue; they attempt to undertake commercial projects only to find that a more centralized approach works better. They want to allocate funds using a DAO approach, but often most people are not beneficiaries, and economic gains are frequently monopolized by a few individuals. Some DAOs that focus on building community networks find that after operating for a while, they struggle to identify their place as a DAO. A vivid example is when the Uniswap Foundation decided during a vote to provide $165 million in liquidity mining rewards for Uniswap v4 and Unichain, which sparked anger within the DAO. Members questioned why the foundation would...