The ChaosDAO Problem
by Tomi Astikainen
Introduction
“They are loud. They make fun of themselves and it creates this narrative that they are bad or something,” a recently joined ChaosDAO member describes the more established members’ behavior. “When someone mentions them on Twitter, they come and poke at people, making some people hate them. To many people, they seem to be a needle in the eye. It looks like they enjoy presenting themselves as chaotic.”
Although a certain amount of chaos is a necessity to keep the decentralized creative spark alive, at the moment we don’t need more chaos. We need a structured, collaborative and strategic approach to align the community so that we can take Polkadot to the next level.
Sure, some of the ChaosDAO members appear as loud troublemakers in social media, but is ChaosDAO itself problematic? Is there some sinister agenda waiting to be uncovered? If not, why are people so suspicious and angry at them? Could we, in fact, learn something from active governance participants like ChaosDAO? Following their example, how might we improve the Polkadot governance experience? Or are there really some deeper issues that we should address and talk about?
The good stuff
The ChaosDAO, Lucky Friday, KusDAO, Saxemberg and other voting collectives are essential governance bodies to help mature Polkadot OpenGov. These entities are excellent places to delegate your voting power to, if you are busy or uninterested to take part directly, or if you just feel insignificant among the whales. But they are more than that.
ChaosDAO doesn’t have a publicly shared identity. On their delegation page it only states: “Support sensible Treasury spending without corruption”. In other words: oppose evil-doers, expose dumbfuckery and get all the good stuff going. Honestly, it doesn’t sound so bad.
ChaosDAO has a membership of roughly 340 people, out of which 80 participate actively in voting. They have a wide range of viewpoints on various topics, reflecting the diversity of the ChaosDAO members. Active participation and a genuine desire for Polkadot’s success are essential for being in and joining ChaosDAO.
Current members can suggest new members, who are evaluated based on their contributions to the Polkadot community and their alignment with the goals of ChaosDAO. The individual who invites a new member assumes a degree of responsibility for their suitability, which can impact their own influence and reputation within the group. In ChaosDAO, the amount of your social capital is more important than your DOT holdings.
A safe zone
When you strip away all the surrounding drama, the core idea of ChaosDAO, as I interpret it, is to enable individuals to have a voice. A key part in that is to protect the members from proposer reprisal. Their individual voting behavior and opinions are kept a secret within the DAO. There is a rule not to make screenshots of the conversations or to take information out of the DAO.
“I appreciate the open atmosphere in ChaosDAO. Newcomers can see the entire chat history. There is no secrecy. I can scroll up and find my own proposal and read everything they wrote about me, if I want. It feels like a safe space to share my opinions without fearing backlash and negative consequences", says the new ChaosDAO member. “I have only benefited from being part of it. I made friends, found answers to many questions, learned new stuff, got an opportunity to find better sources of information, got connected with people to collaborate, found opportunities to help, had fun reading some of their stuff, and I have this feeling that I belong somewhere.”
The process
ChaosDAO is structured in a way that its individual members—regardless of the weight of their DOT bags—all have one voice each. The ChaosDAO governance Bot alerts the members of new referenda onchain and the members can vote on those off-chain. The vote result leads to a collective decision and one vote, with some commentary included.
This commentary is essential feedback to the proposers. Ideally, it should help the proposers reconsider and improve their approach, so that ultimately the ChaosDAO members and the larger community can get behind the proposal and support it.
While the DAO’s voting patterns can sometimes be conservative, this is often justified. Good proposers with good proposals should be able to convince voters. After some discussion, opinions can change and a Nay can turn into an Aye.
The issue
So, if ChaosDAO has all these good intentions, why are so many people against it? Is it just because their proposal got Nayed by ChaosDAO and it’s just the bitterness talking? That might be part of the story, but there is a growing number of disgruntled voices—the other “DV” we should also listen to. Their claim is that the chaotic entity is a nefarious cabal running some sort of shadow governance based on nepotism, backstabbing and all sorts of ill-will.
Personally, I don’t think there is a hidden agenda, just a bunch of friends, unified by a shared mission to make things good. However, this strong social cohesion, coupled with private voting and an invite-only membership model, can raise eyebrows because people don’t know what’s actually going on.
People often need to find a scapegoat to make sense of things that go wrong. Many people have preconceived notions about ChaosDAO due to a lack of understanding. These misconceptions can lead to fear and speculation. When you don’t have a full picture of how something works, your imagination is prone to fill the gaps.
While there is nothing wrong with ChaosDAO members as such, their overrepresentation within the ecosystem can lead to a feeling of undue influence. Friends naturally help friends and it might not always lead to cronyism. Yet, the fact that the same people seem to be everywhere in the ecosystem underlines a broader issue in Polkadot: capacity constraints. We just don’t have enough people, teams and DAOs to do the governance.
To get a bit of an external perspective, I quote the recent uniFires report and the governance working group coordinator Felix Weber: “Polkadot has a massive risk of accumulation of power. ChaosDAO and Giotto have huge influence on the public conversation, and therefore direction. Ideation and design is not happening bottom-up. Polkadot does not seem to have the capacity to actively build governance. There is a lack of active people focusing on governance and most who do are based in Europe. Apart from Attempts at Governance and OpenGov Watch there isn’t much happening. Due to the sudden shift to decentralization, it has become insanely reactive.”
Some have called for the creation of an open ecosystem map that would show individual community members’ participation in various teams, bounties and other initiatives. This visualization would help shed light on the participation of ChaosDAO members, who are claimed to exert too much influence and to make decisions behind closed doors. Instead of assigning blame to them, it would allow us to celebrate their contributions to the common good. This would also help those participate who currently feel disengaged and left out.
This is not a unique situation
Although we pride ourselves on being on the cutting edge of technological development, the issues we face are age-old. Already in the 1970s, Jo Freeman said: “Once the movement no longer clings tenaciously to the ideology of ‘structurelessness’, it is free to develop those forms of organization best suited to its healthy functioning.”
Freeman’s principles for effective democratic structuring emphasize delegation, responsibility, decentralization, rotation of roles, specialized labor, open information flow, and equitable resource distribution. These principles ensure that power remains with the group and prevents the concentration of authority in a few individuals.
To adopt these principles to Polkadot’s OpenGov, the community should:
- Delegate specific tasks to purpose-built, expertise-based teams.
- Hold individuals in those teams accountable for their actions and decisions.
- Distribute authority among multiple participants to prevent monopolies of power.
- Rotate key roles regularly to prevent the accumulation of power in a single individual.
- Allocate roles based on individuals’ abilities and interests.
- Ensure open access to information to empower participants.
- Strive for equitable resource distribution to prevent undue influence.
A fresh start
The new ChaosDAO member sums it up well: “We need more DAOs like ChaosDAO to promote diversity in the Polkadot ecosystem. The Web3 Foundation’s decision to prioritize DAOs for Decentralized Voices is a great step in the right direction.”
We can make a better OpenGov experience for everyone, by adopting a more democratic, inclusive, and effective governance framework. In developing that, we should listen to those who have been doing this for years but also those who feel currently sidelined.
To ensure that teams working in the Polkadot ecosystem are based on merit rather than personal connections, it’s essential to implement measures that promote transparency, accountability, objectivity and impartiality. To do that, we need to establish clear selection criteria, implement a transparent application process and utilize selection mechanisms that don’t let us favor friends or fall into the trap of affinity bias. Moreover, we should rigorously evaluate the different teams’ and contributors’ progress, pay attention to diversity management, foster a culture of accountability, and provide mechanisms for whistleblowers to flag unsuitable behavior—just like in ChaosDAO, without the fear of reprisal.
I’m not saying it’s happening yet, but if someone starts loudly protesting against the idea of formalizing the organizational structure, it might just be that they (and their friends) benefit from the status quo. If indeed there is a small bunch of well-connected individuals who have a lot to lose, then it won’t be easy to switch to a more fair, egalitarian and transparent model. I hope that is not the case in Polkadot.
My humble wish is that we can learn from the past and go to the future together. After all, if we wish to build Web3 and create a better world for those who come after us, each other is all we have.
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Footnote from the author
This article is based on discussions with a few ChaosDAO members. Once the draft was ready, I asked for feedback. Many enjoyed reading it. Some community members stated it shows ChaosDAO in too good of a light. Some even called it “whitewashing ChaosDAO”. Yet, I heard through the grapevine that some of “the DAOists” themselves didn’t like the article at all. Even so, they refused to give constructive feedback directly, preferring to criticize it after publishing.
So, here goes. Criticize all you want. I have no agenda or strong opinions for or against ChaosDAO. I just wanted to write a good article, as objectively as possible. I hope someone likes it and decides to join a voting collective that resonates with their value system—or starts their own.
Thank you for reading.