Nantang DAO Chronicle (Part II)

Find a way out

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

attract more professionals

Talent is the cornerstone of any organization's development. Cikey once reflected that the Nantang DAO, in its early stages, failed to effectively attract "real talents who understand blockchain and Web3," coupled with the general lack of mature rural development experience among early members, which 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, 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 offer systematic recommendations for the strategic direction of each quarter. Additionally, through the "Rural Development Web3 Bilateral Enlightenment Program," community members have participated multiple times in domestic and international Web3 activities and have gone to universities for presentations, which not only enhanced their professional qualities but also attracted more professionals passionate about Web3 and rural development to join. This two-way interaction has opened new avenues for talent recruitment. Excitingly, new members are continuously joining, injecting new vitality into the community. Some of them excel in artistic creation, adding creativity to rural cultural activities; some are proficient in brand promotion, providing support for the external communication of Nantang DAO; and others have made significant achievements in organizational research, contributing wisdom for 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 provide insights closely related to rural construction. For example, after facing the challenges of earthquake recovery and an aging population, Yamakoji Village in Japan launched the "Nishikigoi NFT" centered around the local specialty "Koi", treating NFT holders as "digital villagers". The DAO community formed from this has attracted over 1,750 members globally and raised funds to support regional sustainable development. Although this model did not employ typical DAO elements such as smart contracts or on-chain treasury, it effectively addressed local issues. The experience of Yamakoji Village is quite enlightening for Nantang DAO. Recently, Yamakoji Village further proposed the concept of a "dual-layer DAO-driven governance revolution": using 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 in Shiye Village and Tianlong Gorge), 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 dedicated to building a network city through community collaboration and technological innovation. Its development history is divided into four stages: The Creator Era from 2020 to 2021, establishing "Creator Cabins" as a funding project for creator residency; from 2021 to 2022, as DAOs flourished, Cabin also began to enter the DAO service provider phase, during which the community created numerous DAO media brands and developed DAO tools such as on-chain and physical passport systems 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 changed to "family community," and they decided to establish deeper connections 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 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 funding 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 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 most suitable as a trusted neutral governance mechanism for distributing ecosystem grants from existing cash flow protocols. Community-driven networks are best suited to serve as loosely connected organizations that allow 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 world.

Deepen local integration, seek advantages

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

Nantang Village is renowned for its historical experience in democratic governance, and the attention it receives from society is the greatest advantage of this land. Looking back at the history of Nantang, one can find that the pursuit of democracy and rights has never ceased, with its important historical nodes always resonating with advanced organizational concepts in the context of the great era— from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, civic movements surged, the rights protection lawyer movement and environmental movement began to emerge, allowing citizens to safeguard their rights through legal means and collective action. Nantang also began organizing farmers' rights protection struggles, implementing grassroots elections and 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, but after establishing cooperatives, our daily work focuses on livelihood development, cultural construction, and rural autonomy for rights protection." Later, in the process of farmer organization, they drew on Western civilization, introduced deliberative rules, and achieved the localization of advanced governance concepts (in 2008), during which the village's economic and cultural endeavors developed rapidly. Yang Yunbiao once 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 we must think about how to enable people to live with smiles and dignity." Today, the establishment of Nantang DAO continues the tradition of organizational innovation, marking the latest attempt at integrating local ethics with modern civilization.

From rights protection organizations to parliamentary rules, from cooperatives to Nantang DAO, Nantang has experimented with different democratic governance methods over the past 30 years. However, it is essential to recognize that regardless of how innovative the organizational forms are, the key lies in whether the focus is on "human connections" and whether the fundamental needs of local farmers are addressed. It is reassuring that the various attempts made in the past and those ongoing have already produced a good "linkage" effect. After living and learning together for a while, some wonderful chemical reactions are quietly occurring between DAO members and cooperative members. During field visits, I observed local young people proactively using Robert's Rules of Order to address the challenges of collective cooking, efficiently negotiating and forming a consensus on division of labor through "motions" and "reconsiderations." I also sensed the budding awareness of equality among local youth, as they began to organize spontaneously to collectively reflect on issues like the lack of transparency in decision-making, unclear responsibilities, and ambiguous rules in local work and life affairs. This independent thinking and critical spirit will be a valuable asset for Nantang's future development. On another front, the cooperative is broadening its horizons and planning to create a "third space" to serve digital nomads, connecting a broader young demographic. Based on recognizing each other's needs, working in a mutually respectful manner might be the driving force for generating new possibilities in this land.

In conclusion

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, Nantung DAO should not only promote Web3 technologies and governance models, but also be rooted in the cultural soil of the countryside and the vital interests of the villagers, focusing on addressing the most fundamental needs of rural areas, so that new digital technologies can truly reach 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 rural areas, while DAO reshapes trust and cooperation mechanisms with decentralized technological concepts. In recent years, these two fields have begun to intersect, 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 clashes between decentralized autonomy logic and rural collectivist culture, as well as the integration of external ideas with local traditions.

The most fundamental question is how DAO, as a new type of organizational form, can find its scope of role and capacity boundaries within rural governance structures. Taking the practice of Nantan DAO as an example, if the issuance of Nantan beans is merely a digital replica of the traditional rural governance points system (like the work point system), and its usability and ease of use cannot even surpass other existing "alternative currencies"; if token-based voting is just a direct democracy transitioned to a Web3 digital platform, but villagers are substantially excluded 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 concretely embodied in Nantan 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 to an organization’s response to sustainable development challenges. Different organizational forms have their own advantages and disadvantages, and they coexist rather than replace each other. If we view decentralization and autonomy as a spectrum, various historical organizations, as well as different stages of development of the same organization, are positioned at different points on this spectrum. Many failures of DAOs stem from a lack of sufficient understanding of this issue; they want to run commercial projects but find that a more centralized approach works better. They want to allocate funds in a DAO manner, but often most people are not beneficiaries, and economic returns are often monopolized by a few. Some DAOs that focus on building community networks find that after operating for a while, they seem to struggle to locate their position as a DAO. A vivid example is when a certain foundation, during a vote, decided to provide substantial liquidity mining rewards for a certain project, which sparked anger within the DAO. Members questioned why the foundation had to spend money while centralized entities profited hundreds from front-end fees.