Participating in a DAO

What you'll learn

• Getting Started with DAOs
• Your First Steps as a DAO Member
• Ways to Contribute
• Legal Frameworks: The Wyoming DUNA Revolution
• How DAO Contributors Get Compensated
• Essential Tools for DAO Participation
• The Future: AI-Assisted Governance and What is Coming
• Risks and Considerations
• For Deeper Reading

Key terms

Wyoming DUNA

The Decentralized Unincorporated Nonprofit Association Act (Senate File 50). Signed by Governor Mark Gordon on March 7, 2024 and effective July 1, 2024. Provides legal personhood, limited liability, and tax compliance pathways for DAOs.

RetroPGF (Retroactive Public Goods Funding)

A compensation model that rewards contributors after they have created value, rather than promising payment upfront. Optimism's RetroPGF program distributed $100M+ through Round 5, with $1.3B+ reserved for future rounds.

Coordinape

A peer-to-peer compensation tool (coordinape.com) where DAO contributors distribute "GIVE" tokens to each other based on perceived contribution value. The aggregate allocations determine how budgets get distributed at the end of each epoch.

Dework

The leading task management and bounty platform in the DAO space (dework.xyz), processing more than $1.2 million in bounty payouts in 2025.

DeepDAO

The leading DAO analytics platform (deepdao.io), tracking 13,000+ DAOs and treasuries totaling more than $26 billion. Essential resource for DAO due diligence and research.

Working group

A team within a DAO focused on a specific function like marketing, treasury management, or technical development. Members coordinate regularly and typically share a dedicated budget.

Bounty

A one-time reward offered by a DAO for completing a specific task. Bounties are open to anyone and are paid upon satisfactory completion. Dework processed $1.2M+ in bounty payouts in 2025.

Delegate

A DAO member who accepts voting power from other token holders and actively participates in governance on their behalf, often publishing voting rationales. Karma scores help track delegate accountability.

Karma scores

A reputation system (karmahq.xyz) that rates DAO delegates based on activity, communication quality, and voting alignment with their stated principles.

Gitcoin Passport

A sybil resistance tool (passport.gitcoin.co) that aggregates verifiable credentials to demonstrate an account is operated by a unique human. Used by many DAOs to gate quadratic voting and grants.

Optimism Collective RetroPGF Round 7

The seventh round of Optimism's retroactive public goods funding program, launched January 16, 2025, transitioning the program to a more ongoing distribution model.

Arbitrum DAO

The DAO governing the Arbitrum Layer 2 network. The ARB token launched on March 23, 2023 with a total supply of 10 billion tokens, creating one of the largest treasuries in crypto.

AI stewards (AI angels)

A concept proposed by Vitalik Buterin in February 2026 (extending earlier 2024-2025 musings) describing AI agents that read proposals, summarize them, and vote on routine matters according to delegated principles to reduce voter cognitive burden.