Nantang DAO Chronicle (Part Two)

found a way out

The story of Nantang DAO continues, despite facing numerous challenges, everything is still developing naturally and constantly 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 Jianting Village, Pujiang County, Chengdu, in an attempt to initiate a new project, trying to find the true intersection of "rural construction and Web3," and build a "rural entrepreneurship DAO." Meanwhile, Tiao chose to stay local in Nantang, proposing the initiative of "living life well," by organizing local young people to engage in blockchain co-learning, band activities, and more, continuously deepening the community. One side explores outward, while the other takes root locally, with two paths running parallel without conflict. Pioneering new paths has always been full of hardships, but as the saying goes: "Pessimists are often right, but optimists keep moving forward." The optimists of Nantang DAO are writing their own answers through action.

Attract more professionals

Talent is the cornerstone of development for any organization. Cikey reflected that the Nantang DAO failed to effectively attract "truly knowledgeable talents in blockchain and Web3" during its early establishment, coupled with the general lack of mature rural development experience among early members, led the community to take many detours in its exploration. Fortunately, the community has recognized this shortcoming and has taken a series of improvement measures. Currently, the Nantang DAO plans to invite senior experts from the industry to form the "Nantang DAO Governance Advisory Group" to provide professional mediation for internal disputes and to offer systematic suggestions for the strategic direction of each quarter. Additionally, through the "Rural Development Web3 Bilateral Enlightenment Program", community members have participated in various domestic and international Web3 activities and have gone to universities to give presentations, which not only enhanced their professional competence but also attracted more enthusiastic professionals in Web3 and rural development to join. This two-way interaction has opened up new prospects for talent recruitment. Excitingly, new members are continuously joining, infusing new vitality into the community. Some of them are skilled in artistic creation, adding creativity to rural cultural activities; others are proficient in brand promotion, providing support for the external communication of the Nantang DAO; and still 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 the 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 practical 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 provide insights closely related to rural construction. For example, after the earthquake, the village of Yamakoji in Japan launched the "Nishikigoi NFT," centered around the local specialty "Koi," to address the challenges of reconstruction and an aging population. NFT holders are regarded as "digital villagers." The DAO community formed in this way has attracted over 1,750 members globally and raised funds to support regional sustainable development. Although this model does not adopt typical DAO elements such as smart contracts or on-chain treasury, it effectively addresses local issues. The experience of Yamakoji village is quite enlightening for Nantang DAO. Recently, Yamakoji village further proposed the idea of a "dual-layer DAO-driven governance revolution": using the Yamakoji 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 promote cross-regional collaboration (such as with Shiyeye Village and Tianlongxia), constructing a "LocalDAO network." This model shares similarities with the current development path of Nantang DAO and should provide valuable references.

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

What is worth learning from and reflecting on is that after several years of continuous exploration, the Cabin team believes it is more suitable as a loose community network rather than a startup or DAO. On May 8, 2025, Cabin officially announced its dissolution on the X platform, deciding to abandon DAO grants and commercialization projects, and shift towards a purely community-driven network. This decision stemmed from reflections on the different models of entrepreneurship, DAO, and community networks: "Venture-backed startups are best suited for small focused teams that can quickly pivot and seek high-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 suited to serve as loose connecting organizations that enable many individuals to independently explore adjacent paths and build what they find most interesting and valuable." For practitioners of rural building DAOs, finding the positioning of DAOs in rural communities and understanding what value DAOs can bring to local communities is undoubtedly a common proposition faced by the world.

Deepen local engagement, seek advantages

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

Nantang Village is known for its historical experience in democratic governance, and the attention from society is the greatest advantage of this land. Looking back at the history of Nantang, it can be found that the desire for democracy and rights has never stopped, and its important historical nodes have always resonated with the advanced organizational concepts in the grand environmental context - from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, civic movements surged, the rights protection lawyer movement and environmental movement began to rise, allowing citizens to safeguard their rights through legal means and collective action. Nantang also began to organize farmers' rights protection struggles, implement grassroots elections, and practice villagers' autonomy. Starting from 2003-2004, the goal of farmers' organization gradually shifted from rights protection to construction. As Yang Yunbiao described: "Previously, we approached rights protection from a confrontational perspective, but after establishing cooperatives, our daily work focuses on livelihood development, cultural construction, and rural autonomy for rights protection." Later, in the process of farmers' organization, he drew on Western civilization and introduced deliberative rules, achieving the localization of advanced governance concepts (in 2008). During this stage, the economic and cultural undertakings of the village developed rapidly. Yang Yunbiao pointed out in a rural construction dialogue: "Rural revitalization is not simply about industrial revitalization or organizational revitalization; it must return to 'the revitalization of people' and consider how to enable people to live with smiles and dignity." Today, the establishment of Nantang DAO continues the tradition of organizational innovation and marks the latest attempt at the integration of local ethics and modern civilization.

From rights protection organizations to meeting rules, from cooperatives to Nantan DAO, Nantan has experimented with different democratic governance methods over the past 30 years. However, it is important to realize that regardless of how innovative the organizational form is, the key lies in whether it focuses on the "links among people" and whether it addresses the fundamental needs of local farmers. It is reassuring that the various attempts made in the past and those currently underway have already produced a good "link" effect. After living and learning together for a period, some wonderful chemical reactions are quietly occurring among DAO members and cooperative members. During my field study, I observed local young people proactively using Robert's Rules of Order to efficiently negotiate and form a consensus on the division of labor when facing the challenges of cooking collectively, through "motions" and "reconsiderations." I also sensed the budding awareness of equality among local youth; they are beginning to organize spontaneously to collectively address issues such as the lack of transparency in decision-making, unclear responsibilities and rights, and ambiguous rules in local work and life. This budding independent thinking and critical spirit will be a valuable asset for Nantan's future development. On the other hand, cooperatives are also broadening their horizons, planning to create a "third space" for digital nomads to connect with a broader young audience. Based on recognizing each other's needs, doing things in a mutually respectful manner may be the driving force for generating new possibilities 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 develop a consensus amid the conflicts, forming a governance model that balances individual autonomy and collective collaboration. In future development, Nantang DAO, while promoting Web3 technology and governance models, must also be rooted in the cultural soil of rural areas and the genuine interests of the villagers, focusing on addressing the most fundamental needs of the countryside, 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 originally tangent circles: rural construction carries the practice and sentiment of revitalizing the countryside, while DAO reshapes trust and collaboration mechanisms with a decentralized technological philosophy. In recent years, these two fields have begun to intersect, attracting Web3 practitioners dedicated to the countryside and those in rural construction eager to embrace new technologies. However, due to the short duration of contact and differences in values and cultural backgrounds, friction is inevitable within this intersection, including clashes between decentralized autonomous 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 type of organizational form, can find its role and capability boundaries within the rural governance structure. 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 point system), and its usability and ease of use are even difficult to surpass other existing "alternative currencies"; if token-based voting is simply a shift to direct democracy on a Web3 digital platform, while effectively excluding villagers from the democratic decision-making process, how much change can we expect this so-called organizational "innovation" to bring to rural society? Although these questions are specifically embodied in Nantang DAO, they actually represent a universal inquiry for all future rural construction DAOs or similar organizations.

Moreover, 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 each have their pros and cons, and they coexist rather than replace each other. If we view decentralization and autonomy as a spectrum, various historical organizations, as well as different development stages of the same organization, occupy different positions on this spectrum. Many DAO failures stem from a lack of adequate understanding of this issue; wanting to run a commercial project, they find that a more centralized approach works better. They want to allocate funds using a DAO model, but often the majority are not beneficiaries, and economic benefits tend to be monopolized by a few. Some DAOs focused on building community networks find, after some time, that they seem unable to find their place as a DAO. A vivid example is when the Uniswap Foundation, during a vote, decided to provide $165 million in liquidity mining rewards for Uniswap v4 and Unichain, triggering anger within the DAO. Members questioned why the Foundation had to issue