Nantang DAO Chronicles (Part 2)

Author: Fan Jia: PhD student in the Department of Media and Communication at City University of Hong Kong, Eurybia Research Fellow

Preface

In March 2025 , with the support of City University of Hong Kong and my doctoral supervisor Professor Liu Xiaofan, I went to Sanxing Village (formerly Nantang Village) in Sanhe Town, Fuyang City, Anhui Province for a one-and-a-half-month field research. During this period, I conducted in-depth interviews with 14 interviewees, including core members of Nantang DAO, employees of local agricultural cooperatives and villagers, and participated in the Nantang DAO Novice Program, the daily affairs of the Nantang Xingnong Cooperative, and the Nantang DAO Translation Group. Although the time was short, I had a lot of feelings. I have seen the efforts of local partners to put the DAO ideal into practice, and I have also observed the many challenges faced by pioneers in the field of rural construction DAO. These problems are both unique and reflect some common problems in the current development of DAO.

The series "Nantang DAO Chronicles" is divided into seven parts: birth, assembly and conflict, what is the goal, experiments in incentives and circulation, is it decentralized enough, and find a way out, and write at the end . These words are intended to objectively record the stories of those who seek change on this land - the glimmer of ideals in rural construction, the frustrations and perseverance in practice, and the most authentic interpersonal connections. If these stories can touch the hearts of more people, or bring some inspiration to rural builders and Web3 explorers, then their value lies.

Previous links (Part 1 and 2)

This article is the third, fourth and fifth parts , focusing on the problems in the governance process of Nantang DAO: insufficient integration with rural development needs, scattered goals, incentive and voting mechanisms need to be improved, and risks such as external supervision, economic monopoly and centralization of voting rights. At the same time, it introduces the heartwarming story behind the "New Year's Goods Plan".

What is the goal?

“ Promote the integration of rural construction and Web3 . ”

On the Notion homepage of Nantang DAO, there is a sentence about the organization's goals: "Nantang DAO is committed to promoting the overall development of local villages, while promoting mutual learning between rural construction and the Web3 community: 'Seek community DAO from the countryside, and seek global solutions from crypto . ' " On the voting platform, the description of its organizational goals is more specific - "Through upgrading and transforming the cultural courtyard of Nantang Xingnong Cooperative, gradually build a base for Web3 partners in the countryside ; deeply integrate with the local Nantang Cooperative, and strive to establish a work point system that can be used for governance and economically sustainable."

From these goals, it can be seen that Nantang DAO essentially positions itself as a rural service organization, aiming to help rural construction through democratic governance and economic support . Specifically, it hopes to use cryptocurrency and Web3 technology to build a new set of democratic decision-making processes to achieve democratic management and allocation of treasury funds, thereby meeting local needs in infrastructure construction and cultural activities. However, there is a large gap between ideal and reality. In fact, Nantang DAO is currently more like a relatively rigid transplantation of other DAO models from online to rural areas. Not only has it failed to closely integrate with the fundamental needs of rural areas, but its specific goal setting also appears to be relatively scattered and lacks focus.

Democracy is not the democracy of the villagers, rural construction is objective rural construction

In the discussion about the relationship between DAO and rural areas, everyone has basically reached a consensus that DAO is here to serve rural areas, with rural areas as the main body and DAO as the auxiliary. As the basic component of rural areas, villagers should be the main body of rural construction. However, in Nantang DAO, only two members are local villagers (Fang Fang and Yang Zhen), who are also employees of the cooperative. The purpose of DAO absorbing them is to better carry out local work, while more ordinary villagers have not joined the DAO organization, let alone participated in the decision-making process of the organization. Therefore, the democracy of Nantang DAO is only a small-scale internal democracy , which has failed to widely connect and mobilize rural communities . This practice inevitably degenerates into "objective rural construction", that is, rural construction dominated by external entities, rather than a governance model driven by villagers themselves. Due to the lack of deep embedding in rural communities, the sustainability of this model is worrying. Objectively speaking, except for a few members who choose to take root in Nantang for a long time, most members show the characteristics of strong mobility and short active cycles, which further weakens the deep connection between DAO and rural areas. At present, for the entire village, both Nantang DAO and its members are still outsiders to a large extent.

Scattered goals, each fighting for their own goals

" Promoting the integration of rural construction and Web3 " is an attractive and ambitious goal, which carries natural legitimacy and broad value concerns. Apart from Nantang DAO, few Chinese DAOs have gone to the countryside with such a vision. However, this ambitious concept is full of challenges in practice. Whether it is a participant or an observer, it is inevitable to ask: "How exactly do rural construction and Web3 combine? What is the practical path of Nantang DAO?" The establishment of Nantang DAO and the departure of some core members from Nantang to open a new base in Chengdu have made the differences in organizational goals more apparent, and the team has obviously fallen into the dilemma of inconsistent goals.

" Bingge's goal is very clear - to promote the integration of rural construction and Web3 , but the goals of the members of Nantang DAO are not clear ." Yang Yunbiao commented. When everyone cannot even clarify the most basic direction and boundaries of doing things, it is difficult to reach a group consensus. Recalling the initial preparations for Nantang DAO, Cikey's evaluation was that "the goals are too empty and the things done are too general." She found that the members were responsible for different sectors at the time, but lacked in-depth understanding of related fields, resulting in frequent changes in organizational goals and repeated efforts to seek consensus but slow progress. Even after several months of development, Xiaobai admitted in an interview that "Nantang DAO does not have any specific goals. It is exploratory. We only know what we hope it will look like, but we have not set clear short-term or long-term goals."

By observing at the proposal level, you may have a more intuitive feeling about the above description. As of April 23, 2025, there are 49 completed proposals on the Nantang DAO voting platform, which can be divided into five categories: funding application, project plan, system construction, new member joining and other decisions. Among them, more than half (51.02%) of the proposals are related to funding applications, mainly involving local material procurement, space construction and member incentives; project planning proposals account for 34.69%, most of which include funding applications, which are highly overlapping with the former. There are 13 proposals for system construction, covering the establishment and revision of organizational systems, such as novice tasks, work points schemes, reimbursement systems and voting mechanisms. There are 6 proposals for new members to join, involving the community to decide the qualifications of new members through voting. There are 2 other decision-making proposals, involving the cooperative relationship between Nantang DAO and cooperatives and other DAO organizations (see the figure below).

The following figure shows the trend of Nantang DAO proposals over time. In the past 9 months, community proposals have mainly focused on funding applications and project planning, especially in the early and late stages (four months before and after). Proposals for system construction are mainly concentrated in December 2024, reflecting the initial formation of the organizational system. Subsequently, proposals for new members to join gradually increased, indicating that the community has entered a stage of normalizing the absorption of new members. By further analyzing the specific tasks of project proposals, a significant trend can be observed: from the initial focus on "taking root in the local area" to "expanding outward" . Specifically, the early proposals are mostly directly related to agricultural production (such as enzyme product production and learning, date palm planting, etc.) and local infrastructure construction (such as the construction of the Earth Book House and book procurement); the later stage is divided into two directions: one focuses on external exchanges and cooperation (such as the "Rural Construction Web3 Bilateral Enlightenment Plan" and cooperation with Chengdu Wuxiang), and the other focuses on the operation and integration of local communities (such as the daily operation of the Earth Book House and the organization of local activities).

Build community or commercialize?

Whether from an individual or organizational perspective, DAOs need to weigh the potential conflicts between commercial interests and public interests. In many DAOs, many members only care about short-term commercial returns and not organizational governance, resulting in frequent "free rider" problems, which conflicts with DAO builders who have a long-term vision. From an organizational perspective, if we pursue production efficiency and commercial value growth, we may need a centralized power structure to improve the decision-making and operational efficiency of the organization; while emphasizing public interests requires a democratic organizational structure and decision-making mechanism to ensure equal participation of members and information transparency, but this may lead to a slow decision-making process.

During field research, I often heard this sentence: "Nantang DAO is the DAO that lacks the least money." Investor Liu Bing provided sufficient financial support for Nantang DAO, which is undoubtedly enviable, but also posed risks. Yang Yunbiao questioned this in the interview: "Many people engage in speculative behavior." This reveals the contradictions faced by Nantang DAO at the individual and organizational levels: the choice between individual participation in community building and opportunism, and the tension between the organization's promotion of community integration and the pursuit of commercial value. However, the "original intention" of individuals to join Nantang cannot be forced, as Bi Bing said in response to doubts, "the deeds should be judged, not the heart." Therefore, the following discussion focuses on the goal selection at the organizational level.

Community building has always been the core issue of Nantang DAO. It covers not only the overall construction of rural construction and Web3, but also the deep integration with the local community of Nantang. As an internal high-activity project, the "Rural Construction Web3 Bilateral Enlightenment Plan" was proposed and funded by Liu Bing, and jointly led by core member Bi Bing and Liang Shaoxiong, who is in the field of rural construction. Through funding to promote exchanges between the rural construction team and the Web3 community, the plan supports team members to participate in domestic and foreign Web3 activities and go to universities for lectures, which has had a certain influence in the industry. In terms of integration into the local community of Nantang, Yu Xing believes that "there is no disagreement about integration itself, but the disagreement lies in how to integrate." As a representative of "public goods", Tiao is recognized as a firm advocate and practitioner of local integration. "When I don't have to make money, I hope to do something truly valuable." He emphasized that he is not advocating lying down, but "believes that such things will definitely be rewarded, and this reward includes economic value."

At the same time, community members also reflected on this from a commercial perspective. In the interview, Cikey talked about his initial confusion: " What economic benefits can we get by continuing to rely on investor funds when we haven't done anything yet?" After a period of exploration, members gradually realized that the existing model was economically unsustainable. For example, Yu Xing believes that "spending money to integrate locally" is meaningless, and the lack of market competition pressure will lead to a waste of resources. "If we keep taking money from the soldiers, we won't be able to prove that we are an independent autonomous organization." However, compared to the pursuit of short-term profits, the community's current exploration is more practical, focusing mainly on real project needs and feasible scenarios in the field of rural construction. As Bi Bing said: "Although the community's current first goal is not to make a profit, everyone needs to hone their abilities by doing some specific things, understand more real needs, and then consider the possibility of commercialization and profitability."

For an organization that has just started, too many goals may lead to disunity, making it difficult to form a deep identification of emotions and values, and hindering close collaboration. And goals that change too quickly will cause people to worry about continuity. Most members believe that there is no contradiction between commercialization and community building. Everyone is just exploring in different directions based on their own experience. However, an objective fact is that differences in internal goals often lead to resource dispersion and even competition. It happened that in the interview, it was mentioned that "the party that is better at writing project plans and applying for financial support often has more say in the community and occupies more resources." When I finished my research, core members Yu Xing and Bi Bing had gone to Jianta Village in Chengdu to explore the feasibility of promoting the "entrepreneurship incubation project" in the DAO model; while Tiao chose to stay in Nantang and organize local members to carry out daily Web3 activities (such as translation groups and writing groups) to continue to promote local integration. He said: "I don't think my attempt is over yet."

An experiment in incentives and circulation: Nantang beans

DAO implements organizational governance around tokens. As a virtual currency asset with both incentive and governance attributes, tokens are often held by all members and used to vote on community proposals. Less than a month after the official operation, the token issuance plan of Nantang DAO was also put on the agenda. On August 20, 2024, Nantang Beans (NT) were officially launched on Optimsim ¹ , with an initial issuance of 10 million. In terms of value anchoring, one Nantang Bean is equivalent to one RMB.

In terms of function, Nantang beans, as a community incentive, bear the dual functions of "contribution record" and "voting rights certificate". On the one hand, Nantang DAO uses a working hour system to record member contributions, and members can record their working hours independently through the Fairsharing platform. According to the current community ^standard2 , each working hour corresponds to a reward of 60 RMB in Ethereum and 60 Nantang beans. Although the effectiveness of working hours mainly depends on mutual evaluation among community members, it may also be flexibly adjusted according to specific circumstances (such as initiating a vote for adjudication), and its ultimate effectiveness depends on community consensus. On the other hand, Nantang beans also have the attributes of governance rights certificates. Members holding more Nantang beans will have greater voting weight in community decision-making. This design that directly links contribution records with governance power is essentially a governance incentive mechanism, which can theoretically enhance the enthusiasm and autonomy of community members to participate.

Limitations of the working hours system

Although Nantang DAO has taken an important step in the incentive mechanism, the current "contribution record" system has exposed a series of problems in the application and evaluation process of work points, such as unclear entry requirements, single evaluation criteria, and ineffective mutual evaluation mechanism. Members happened to share their own experiences: he had participated in local farm work and band formation, but was frequently frustrated when recording working hours. He mentioned: "I have recorded working hours twice, and each time I was questioned in the group - it seems that this is not the business of Nantang DAO, and this thing has not been established yet." This reflects that the current incentive mechanism lacks clear entry standards, at least in terms of transparency. This "invisible threshold" makes it impossible for many members to be recognized for their contributions, and actually excludes them. However, Yu Xing believes that Nantang DAO's expectation for working hours is to "lower the entry standards and encourage members to explore independently." This difference in opinion further highlights the confusion caused by the vague entry standards.

Community members generally reflect that the "equal pay for equal work" model that uses working hours as the only evaluation criterion has obvious limitations. For example, members such as Brother Biao, Xiaobai, Shuhui, and Cikey all mentioned that different members have different work experience and efficiency, and calculating remuneration only by working hours is actually "encouraging inefficiency in disguise." Tiao further pointed out that under this model, the effort is not proportional to the benefits, and members will have a "feeling of inequality." Suppose member A records 10 hours of contribution, but the results are few, other members may be dissatisfied with their corresponding remuneration. In addition, the types of community tasks are diverse, and the time taken by many tasks is difficult to quantify. In addition, some members are not accustomed to self-reporting working hours, which makes the problem more complicated. Brother Biao lamented that this mechanism created a gap between members: "Everyone feels uncomfortable and thinks that others have taken advantage. The most intense arguments in the group often revolve around work points."

So, has the mutual evaluation mechanism played its due role in avoiding these problems? The answer is very limited. Xiao Bai explained: "We don't know each other well at work, so it's hard to judge objectively; and members are generally conservative, consider each other's feelings, and are unwilling to evaluate others." This unwillingness to evaluate each other weakens the effectiveness of the mechanism. When asked about this, Pian Pian's answer was even more straightforward: "I'm too lazy to pay attention to him." This shows that the mutual evaluation mechanism not only failed to ease the dispute, but was ineffective due to lack of participation.

In the face of these challenges, Nantang DAO is trying to reform the incentive system. At present, the community has begun to explore applying for funds on a project basis, and whether the funds will be issued depends on the evaluation of the project results. Some proposals have tried to set project milestones (Milestones) to evaluate progress in stages and issue corresponding funds. In addition, some members suggested adopting "retroactive incentives", that is, issuing funds based on the quality of results after the task is completed. Although the direction of reform is exciting, the community has not yet formed a mature plan. There are still differences among members on what kind of incentives should be adopted in different situations. This is closely related to the obvious "tension" within the community and unclear organizational goals. How to balance the flexibility and standardization of incentives, and how to ensure fairness while encouraging exploration, are still difficult problems that Nantang DAO needs to further solve.

Let Nantang beans circulate

In addition to serving as an incentive and governance voucher, the community is also considering more circulation scenarios, allowing Nantang beans to play more of a "transaction intermediary" role. The most representative event is the "New Year's Goods Debt Reduction and Work Points Promotion Plan" to be implemented around the Spring Festival in 2025 ^3. The scale of this Nantang bean circulation experiment is not small. The main purpose is to allow creditors of the cooperative fund mutual aid project to exchange Nantang beans for New Year's goods, first to help the cooperative alleviate long-term debt problems, and second to create practical use scenarios for Nantang beans. According to the original design, Nantang DAO will issue 20% of Nantang beans (38,400 by the end of the year) to the cooperative account. The cooperative will use these Nantang beans to exchange for Ethereum from the Nantang DAO vault, and then use the money to buy daily necessities (rice, flour, grain, oil, etc.), and at the same time distribute the Nantang beans equally to creditors. Creditors can use Nantang beans to exchange for New Year's goods worth no more than 400 yuan, and the cost of this part of the New Year's goods can be used to pay off debts.

When initially planned, the circulation experiment of Nantang DAO was quite ambitious: by clearly demonstrating the production mechanism, system operation process and exchange rules of Nantang beans, it attempted to cultivate villagers’ habit of using tokens . ⁴ However, the reality was in sharp contrast to the blueprint—the expected scenario of villagers scanning the code to use Nantang beans on their own never occurred, and all token transfers ultimately relied on the cooperative administrator Yang Zhen to manually operate the digital wallet in the background. In addition, according to Liu Bing’s recollection, there was even a situation of helping the elderly to copy the wallet mnemonics ⁵ , but fortunately this behavior was stopped in time. For ordinary local villagers, the technical threshold and difficulty of using virtual currency wallets are still too high.

Although the system has achieved token circulation in the short term, this circulation has obvious flaws. When reviewing the entire New Year's goods plan, Jian Qiao, an intern at the cooperative, said: "Doing this is completely adding costs. The villagers don't care about points, and this method doesn't solve everyone's problems." The circulation and promotion of Nantang beans have always been misaligned with the villagers' core demand for "debt collection and cashing in". Some young creditors bluntly said "I only want cash, not New Year's goods", while Uncle Chang and Uncle Liu, who were interviewed by the author, were more forced to compromise with the reality of "it's better to have it than not to have it", and could only choose to "slowly accept this method". However, the value of daily necessities is just a drop in the bucket for heavy debts. At the villagers' meeting organized by the cooperative, several creditors said that if the use scenarios of Nantang beans can be expanded and can be exchanged for means of production such as seeds and fertilizers, they would also be happy to accept this method.

Judging from the effect of the use of Nantang beans, this circulation experiment is far from successful. However, a data analysis on April 19, 2025 brought new discoveries. By tracking the public digital wallet transaction records of Nantang DAO members, I observed a key node: around January 2025, the holdings of many core participants, including Liu Bing, Bi Bing, Tiao, Yang Zhen, Fang Fang, Ruo Song, and Ya Feng, all fell sharply. Among them, Tiao's Nantang bean assets shrank the most, by more than 70%, while Yang Zhen directly "all-in" his Nantang beans (see the figure below).

At the same time, if we analyze the transfer records of Nantang Bean Wallet, we can find that the total circulation of NT at that time was about 100,000, and there were nearly 40,000 in the Nantang Cooperative Wallet alone, far exceeding the 20% share (see the figure below). After asking, I learned the heartwarming story behind the "New Year's Goods Plan".

United as One: A Warm New Year's Shopping Plan

As the year draws to a close, the cash-strapped cooperative faces great pressure due to the large number of creditors. On one side are the villagers who have watched their savings of many years vanish into thin air, facing the pressure of survival from birth, aging, illness and death; on the other side are the bankrupt debtors and the helpless cooperative. Although it has been decided to exchange Nantang beans for New Year goods, the number of Nantang beans in the cooperative's wallet is very limited, and there are very few New Year goods that can be purchased. In this case, after consultation, the members of the Nantang DAO and the cooperative members spontaneously decided to "lend" their own Nantang beans to the cooperative to help the cooperative relieve pressure. It is no exaggeration to say that the members of the Nantang DAO are using their actual actions to express their support for the cooperative's "debt-for-asset" action, and using the "work points" earned from their own labor to offer their love to the local villagers.

After learning about this heartwarming story, I feel that although the "New Year's Goods Plan" failed to circulate Nantang beans and was just a drop in the bucket in the face of heavy debts, its implementation has surpassed the meaning of the currency itself. Faced with the suffering of the villagers, the people here chose to temporarily put aside their prejudices against each other and use everyone's kindness to fill this scarred reality. Liu Bing said, "During the implementation of the New Year's Goods Plan, the partners were relatively active and helped the cooperative to solve the debt problem to the best of their ability. In the face of external pressure, they could cooperate with each other, and the team atmosphere was enhanced a little." This time, Nantang DAO and the cooperative members finally reached a rare consensus.

This must be regarded as a major event in the history of "rural construction + Web3" - the love of DAO members went to the countryside and the lives of the villagers in the form of Web3, truly practicing the slogan "Web3 from the soil". If we review it, this is probably a plan that only the financier Liu Bing was "hurt", but he paid for his dream. So, he did not lose.

Is it decentralized enough?

Decentralization is a rather vague concept. This article understands it as a power distribution in the organizational governance structure. In the context of DAO, it is manifested externally as political, regulatory and financial independence, while internally it is more specific, the distribution of voting rights among community members, and the dynamic power relations between different members in the decision-making process.

External forces that cannot be ignored

Looking around the world, the legal status of DAO in various countries is still relatively vague. So far, the regulatory laws on DAO can be mainly divided into three stages6 ^: no clear legal entity (before 2021), inclusion in a limited liability company (2021-2023), and having an independent legal entity (after 2023). Before 2021, US law only regarded it as an ordinary partnership system. During 2021-2023, ^Wyoming7 and ^Tennessee8 in the United States passed bills respectively to allow DAO to be legally recognized as a limited liability company. In March 2023, the Utah State Legislature passed the Decentralized Autonomous Organization Amendment ⁹ , marking that DAO as an organizational form has gained independent legal status in the United States.

It can be seen that the United States is in the lead in terms of regional regulatory legislation. Related proposals and discussions have also begun to emerge in developed countries or regions such as Australia, France, and Hong Kong . ¹⁰ However, DAO has not yet been recognized as a legal entity in most jurisdictions around the world, which makes it difficult to fully integrate into the existing regulatory framework and leads to regulatory uncertainty. Its development in China is no exception.

On the one hand, cryptocurrency is a core component of DAO, and the issuance of cryptocurrency-related tokens in mainland China is still in a highly regulated and legally ambiguous area. When issuing Nantang beans, Nantang DAO also needs to limit its functions to the internal governance of Nantang DAO (such as voting, event participation) or local service exchange in the top-level design, avoiding other financial attributes and thus avoiding legal risks. On the other hand, although the Chinese mainland authorities have not explicitly banned the existence of DAO as an organizational form, they pay close attention to the influence of its specific actions. This is confirmed in the practice of "Summer of Tile Cats" co-sponsored by SeeDAO in 2022: This Web3 event with the "Tile Cat", a mythical beast of Yunnan, as a cultural totem, was originally planned to hold more than 50 thematic discussions. After the main venue was forced to be cancelled due to force majeure factors such as epidemic control, it unexpectedly evolved into an "Open DAO Tavern" flash experiment on the streets of Dali Ancient City-more than 2,000 participants formed impromptu scenes such as NFT auctions and hackathons through self-organization. ¹¹ This case not only became an enlightenment sample for the Chinese Web3 community, but also gave birth to a global collaborative network in Chiang Mai, Thailand, Bali and other places. ¹²

A similar thing happened in Nantang. In March 2025, the "Walking Spring" event jointly initiated by Yang Yunbiao, Liu Bing and SeeDAO was originally planned to walk from Nantang to Taihao Mausoleum in Henan from March 1 to 7, promoting the physical and mental growth and emotional connection of local partners through walking. However, as the event coincided with the eve of the National "Two Sessions", the local government suggested adjusting the itinerary and temporarily canceling the hiking plan. Instead, the government would arrange buses to organize visits to local scenic spots and ecological agriculture demonstration projects. ¹³ Although this incident has no direct connection with Nantang DAO and the relevant departments have not taken compulsory measures, it undoubtedly reflects the external regulatory pressure that Nantang DAO may face. Within Nantang, as the previous consensus on the relationship between the cooperative and Nantang DAO has been reached, the cooperative has a "veto power" over the governance of local affairs, which to some extent also constitutes another kind of "invisible supervision."

The "monopolized" economic source

The establishment and continued operation of Nantang DAO are inseparable from the social ideals of its sponsor Liu Bing. As an investor who has long been concerned about cryptocurrency and rural development, he has been donating Ethereum to fund the Nantang Cooperative since 2017. Later, inspired by the SeeDAO white paper, he began to launch the rural DAO experiment. So far, all costs of Nantang DAO from preparation to operation have been borne by Liu Bing personally. This single source of funds has raised concerns about its financial independence - especially in the context of emphasizing decentralized governance. Almost all members acknowledged Liu Bing's special influence. Yu Xing and Bi Bing mentioned that "many times when Brother Bing spoke up, others did not raise other opinions or insisted on their own opinions." Tiao, Xiaobai and Pianpian emphasized the rationality of the status quo: Tiao believes that "joining this organization means accepting such rules of the game" and "I can refute him, I can choose not to do things I don't agree with, and I feel very equal when I get along with him, just like a friend"; Xiaobai also believes that Liu Bing is "a person who abides by the rules and respects the voting results", and believes that even if he withdraws his investment, "there is still a part of the deposits in the vault that can maintain daily operations"; Pianpian admitted that "there is no better way at present." When mentioning this issue, Brother Biao bluntly criticized: "Nantang DAO is fake decentralization and super-centralization. In name, everyone has the right to vote and speak, but in fact, everyone knows that it will ultimately be Brother Bing who makes the final decision." However, he also pointed out that Brother Bing's central position is determined by his investment responsibility for Nantang DAO, and "if he does not invest. Nantang DAO is actually dead."

In addition to Nantang DAO, the current wages of Nantang Cooperative employees are also borne by Bingge in the form of loans , so it also faces a monopoly problem to a certain extent. In February 2025, the "Complaint Liu Bing Conference" initiated by Nantang Unknown DAO and the cooperative interns became a landmark event. On the Notion homepage of Nantang Unknown ^DAO14 , members disclosed a number of problems related to financial decision-making: there is a lack of open and transparent process for the use of funds, the decision-making process excludes members from participating, and resource allocation is obviously biased towards the "Web3 combination" project favored by Bingge, while other important sectors such as rural construction are not supported enough, and even deliberately restrict their development. In addition, Bingge once "cut the wages of cooperative employees to coerce members to be more motivated to do project dividends." This practice not only made employees feel that they were being treated as "chess pieces", but also caused widespread dissatisfaction and seriously dampened the team's work enthusiasm and cohesion. Members pointed out that this current situation of financial monopoly has threatened the job stability of cooperative employees and DAO members, unbalanced project development, and difficult to implement long-term planning.

Not decentralized enough voting

For a DAO, the premise of decentralized governance is that members have relatively equal voting rights, that is, a relatively flat distribution of voting rights, and the amount of Nantang beans held by each member reflects the size of his absolute voting rights. Looking at the figure below again, it can be found that before December 2024, Yu Xing was the member who obtained the most Nantang beans, and then Tiao, Liu Bing and Fang Fang became the members with the largest increase in currency holdings. After March 2025, these four members accounted for more than 75% of Nantang beans, becoming the veritable "whales" in the community. Interestingly, Liu Bing, as the main investor, was not initially given voting rights, but his opinions still inevitably influenced community decisions. Since he did not directly participate in the recording of working hours, he could not obtain voting rights through conventional channels. After community consultation, it was finally decided to transfer 20% (i.e. 4% of the total) of the 20% of Nantang beans originally allocated to the cooperative to Liu Bing, which not only gave him voting rights, but also partially repaid his personal debt to the cooperative. Talking about this arrangement, Yu Xing half-jokingly said: "For Bingge, not having voting rights is like having all the voting rights. It is better to give him the voting rights."

Voting Mechanisms: Balance of Power and Vulnerabilities

Directly related to voting rights is the community's voting mechanism, which directly determines how much the voting rights (Nantang beans) owned by members actually play a role in community decision-making. The operation of Nantang DAO follows the classic off-chain governance process of proposal, discussion, and voting. Voting is mainly implemented through Snapshot, which is a widely used voting platform in the DAO community that supports the deployment of multiple voting mechanisms. In terms of voting mechanisms, so far, Nantang DAO has mainly experienced changes in three voting mechanisms: "one person one vote", "voting by weight", and "voting by weight but no more than 20% for a single person".

Before November 1, 2024, since Nantang beans had not yet been officially issued, members made decisions by one person, one vote. At that time, the seven founders had equal voting rights. Starting from December 22, 2024, about three months after the work point plan was released, the community decided to vote in proportion to the Nantang beans held. The author observed that at this stage, the decision-making of community proposals was briefly monopolized by a few members. For example, in a proposal involving the "Non-Nantang DAO Member Contribution Incentive System" ¹⁵ , although the other four members voted in favor or abstained, Liu Bing's opposing votes accounted for more than 38%, which directly determined the outcome of the proposal. In another proposal on "Rural Construction and Web3 Bilateral Enlightenment", the core members' voting weight even reached 55.5%, directly rejecting the proposal.

In order to avoid the monopoly of voting rights, Nantang DAO decided to revise the voting rules ^again16 . The new rules stipulate that the weight of a single person’s vote shall not exceed 20%. When the weight of a single subject is greater than 20%, the excess will be deducted and recalculated. At the same time, this rule also stipulates that the number of participants must exceed 50%, and the approval ratio must exceed 60% for the vote to be valid. However, as of the time of the interview (April 2025), the rule of not exceeding 20% has not been well implemented. For example, in the trial operation proposal of Dadi ^Bookstore17 , the voting weight of Jump still accounts for 31%. In this regard, Xiaobai, a member of Nantang DAO, explained: "There is no suitable programmer to adjust the voting mechanism of Snapshot, and because most proposals are passed unanimously, no offline calculations are performed."

In addition, there are some problems with the current voting mechanism of Nantang DAO. One of the loopholes is that it allows all holders of "Nantang Beans" to participate in governance voting without being formal members of the community. This means that external personnel who obtain Nantang Beans by participating in local activities in Nantang (such as rural construction exchanges and New Year's goods plans), or interns who receive Nantang Beans airdrops from ^{cooperatives18} , can theoretically have a substantial impact on community decision-making. The original intention of this design is to encourage broad participation and enhance community inclusiveness, but it has buried the hidden danger of centralization. Open tokenized governance lowers the voting threshold, but it may allow a few people to manipulate the results through concentrated tokens. For example, in the New Year's goods plan scenario, suppose more than 100 creditors unite and instigate a DAO member to publish a malicious proposal on the Snapshot platform requiring "Nantang DAO to assume all cooperative debts". With the voting rights of about 40,000 Nantang Beans, the proposal is very likely to pass with low participation or insufficient review. Although this is a fantasy, if a similar incident occurs, Nantang DAO may face a serious financial crisis, and even cause a loss of community trust after forced non-execution. To this end, it is recommended that Nantang DAO optimize the design of the voting mechanism in the future: first, restrict voting qualifications, require a minimum holding period or community certification; second, introduce multi-stage review and emergency brake mechanisms, such as multi-signature or council veto; third, control the distribution of Nantang beans to prevent the dilution of governance rights through excessive activities. These measures can effectively reduce the risk of centralization and ensure the long-term stability and fair autonomy of Nantang DAO on the road of combining Web3 and rural construction.

Notes and References

1. Optimism is a "Layer 2 network" that makes Ethereum transactions faster and cheaper, aiming to improve the efficiency of Ethereum. NT wallet address: 0x7563cb33148cD2b929ed85e69F697be13b515Bd0

3. Nantang beans are pegged to RMB at a 1:1 ratio, so they are equivalent to RMB 40,000.

5. A mnemonic phrase is a list of words that stores all the information needed to recover a cryptocurrency wallet. It is an important part of cryptocurrency security and can be considered the "master key" of your wallet.

6. zf857.eth. On how the rise of legal status can lead DAO out of the utopian dilemma [EB/OL]. TechFlow, 2023-03-13 [2024-02-28]. https://www.techflowpost.com/article/detail_11516.html

7. See Wyoming Decentralized Autonomous Organization Supplement Act, https://sos.wyo.gov/Forms/WyoBiz/DAO_Supplement.pdf

8. See Tennessee Code Annotated, 48,

9. Utah Legislature. Decentralized Autonomous Organization Amendment Bill: HB 357 [S]. 2023-03-01 [2025-04-20]. https://le.utah.gov/~2023/bills/static/HB0357.html

10. In October 2021, the Australian Senate submitted a report (Senate Select Committee Report into Australia as a Technology and Financial Centre's Final Report), suggesting that Australia formally recognize DAO as a legal corporate structure; in June 2022, Pierre Person, a member of the French National Assembly, suggested that the status of DAO be recognized in the legal system; in May 2024, Wu Jiezhuang, a member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council, proposed that legal reforms are needed to promote the development of DAO.

11. Guazi. "The Unfinished Summer of WaMao｜Guazi: A Flash Experiment of Open DAO Tavern"[OL]. Foresight News, 2023[2025-06-01]. https://foresightnews.pro/article/detail/41473

12. Rui Yue. "In Dali, a web3 conference was cancelled twice" [OL]. QQ News, 2023 [2025-06-01]. https://news.qq.com/rain/a/20230127A041Z600

13. Wen Qian. “Walking in the Spring, Hiking in the Central Plains｜In Anhui and Henan”[OL]. Matters, 2025[2025-06-01]. https://matters.town/a/gbvf918jhdho/history

18. According to the community proposal (https://snapshot.box/#/s:ntdao.eth/proposal/0x8ce03f897a37e41be19c60aea665f35349e111e7e0bc1841b8034a123635f561), Nantang DAO once issued Nantang beans airdrops to Sushe interns (1,000 work points per person per month).