Key Highlights
- Vitalik Buterin says enthusiasm for DAOs, quadratic funding, and blockchain voting tools appears to be declining.
- He argues the world has shifted from a stable era to a chaotic one, making large-scale governance reforms harder to achieve.
- Buterin suggests new consensus tools and AI-driven participation models could reshape future decentralized governance.
Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s Co-Founder, has called on the crypto community to rethink how and when it builds democratic systems, arguing that growing global disillusionment with governance models is changing the way decentralized decision-making should work.
In a detailed post on X, the Co-Founder said that enthusiasm around tools such as DAOs, quadratic funding, and blockchain-based voting systems appears to be declining as the world moves into what he describes as a more chaotic political era.
Rethinking Democratic Systems in Crypto
Buterin said it may be time for developers and researchers to reconsider the role of democratic mechanisms in technology and governance.
According to him, several systems built around collective decision-making fall into this category. These include DAO governance models, experimental funding mechanisms, and blockchain-based identity and voting tools.
Among the areas he listed were:
- DAO voting mechanisms
- Quadratic funding and related public goods funding models
- ZKpassport-based voting systems and governance experiments
- Voting mechanisms built into social media platforms
- Efforts aimed at creating improved political systems within countries
Buterin noted that enthusiasm for these ideas appears weaker than in previous years.
He attributed this shift partly to what he called an “authoritarian wave,” which extends beyond nation-state politics.
“The ‘authoritarian wave’ is not just a matter of some malevolent strongmen smelling an opportunity to exert their will unopposed and seizing it. It’s also a matter of genuine disillusionment with democratic things.”
He added that the trend can also be seen in companies moving away from multi-stakeholder governance structures toward founder-centric control and in the growing dissatisfaction with social media platforms.
Democracy Now Seen as Defensive
Buterin argued that defending democratic systems today often resembles a conservative effort to preserve existing institutions rather than a forward-looking attempt to build better ones.
“Defense of democratic things lately has the vibe of actually being conservatism: it’s about fighting to preserve an existing order.”
He warned that if democratic systems rely only on preserving the current order without innovation, they will ultimately lose influence over time.
Buterin also pointed to what he described as an irony in the current situation. Even as trust in democratic systems appears to be weakening, the technology available today to improve them is more powerful than ever.
He mentioned tools like zero-knowledge cryptography, artificial intelligence, stronger cybersecurity, and years of research on governance models as developments that could help create better and more effective decentralized systems.
From Stable Era to Chaotic Era
Buterin also contrasted earlier decades with the present global climate. He described the 2000s and 2010s as relatively stable periods, while arguing that the 2020s have become far more chaotic.
In earlier years, large scale ambitions such as global universal basic income, nationwide electoral reforms like ranked choice voting, or massive DAOs funding global public goods appeared realistic.
Today, he believes these ambitions are harder to imagine.
“The 00s and 10s were a stable era, and the 20s are a chaotic era.”
In a chaotic environment, Buterin said governance interventions are less about designing ideal systems and more about competing power dynamics.
He pointed out that even relatively basic political reforms, such as ending gerrymandering in the United States, have proven difficult to implement.
Consensus Tools Instead of Binding Governance
Instead of building strict governance systems that directly control decisions, Buterin suggested that democratic technology today should focus more on tools that help large groups find common ground.
These systems would not enforce decisions themselves. Rather, they could help highlight ideas or proposals that receive broad support and bring them to the attention of those who hold decision-making power.
“At a large scale, they do not look like hard binding mechanisms for making decisions. Rather, they look like tools for consensus finding.”
Examples include systems similar to Pol.is, anonymous voting frameworks, and assurance style voting models that reveal public commitments only after a support threshold is reached.
According to Buterin, tools like these could give large, distributed groups a stronger collective voice while still influencing those who hold centralized decision making power.
The Need for Collective Voice
While explaining this idea, Buterin brought up the geopolitical tensions around Iran as an example.
He said that the priorities of powerful countries involved in such conflicts can be very different from what ordinary people in that country actually want. Governments may be focused on their own strategic goals, but those decisions do not always reflect the needs of the local population.
Because of this, Buterin said technologies that allow people to express their views together could become very important during times of conflict or instability.
He described these as “sanctuary tools for collective voice,” systems that could help people communicate their collective opinion even when the situation around them is chaotic.
Egalitarianism and Pluralism
Buterin also discussed the broader debate around democratic systems, especially the balance between equality and expertise.
He acknowledged that people naturally differ in knowledge, experience, and skills. However, he maintained that democratic systems still matter because they ensure that everyone has at least some level of voice.
“Egalitarianism as a floor, not as an absolute.”
According to him, giving everyone at least some level of representation prevents powerful actors from imposing harmful outcomes on groups with no voice.
He also emphasized pluralism, saying democratic structures help create space for alternative elites and diverse viewpoints rather than concentrating power within a single group.
Pluralistic systems that try to build agreement across different viewpoints can help keep decision-making from being dominated by a single ideology or group.
AI and the Future of Governance
Buterin also touched on the role artificial intelligence could play in governance.
He noted that most people are not willing to regularly participate in complex decision making processes. Because of this, many decentralized governance systems struggle with low voter turnout and limited engagement.
Artificial intelligence could help address this by acting as a “shadow” representation of individuals. “LLM shadows of ourselves, fine tuned on our corpus of both public and private actions, can make decisions on our behalf.”
Such systems could enable higher bandwidth participation in decision making processes while maintaining privacy through cryptography.
Buterin also suggested that AI-based systems could potentially allow distributed decision-making models to incorporate private information without exposing it publicly.
A New Cycle for Democratic Technology
Despite growing skepticism toward democratic institutions, Buterin warned that dissatisfaction with centralized power structures is also increasing.
He pointed to examples where elites openly disregard the social consequences of their actions, from geopolitical conflicts to the economic disruption expected from artificial intelligence.
Buterin concluded that the next wave of democratic innovation must begin sooner rather than later. The new systems, he said, should be built with realistic expectations and lessons from the failures of previous governance experiments while still preserving the core idea of giving people a voice.
Also Read: Vitalik Buterin Says AI Wallets Will Remove dApp Screens to Prevent Hacks
