Nantan DAO Chronicles (Part 2): Paving a Path

Find a way out

The story of Nan Tang DAO continues, despite facing numerous challenges, everything is still emerging naturally. The community is exploring its way forward through trial and error, digging out new possibilities in the quest for change. Some core members have gone to Jiantai Village in Pujiang County, Chengdu, to attempt to initiate new projects, trying to find the true intersection of "rural construction and Web3", and build a "rural entrepreneurship DAO". Meanwhile, Jiao has chosen to stay in Nan Tang, proposing the initiative of "living life well", by organizing local young people to engage in blockchain co-learning, band activities, and so on, continuously cultivating the community. One side explores outward while the other is rooted locally; the two paths run parallel without contradiction. Paving a new road has always been filled with hardships, but as a famous saying goes: "Pessimists are often right, but optimists keep moving forward." The optimists of Nan Tang 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 failed to effectively attract "truly knowledgeable talents in blockchain and Web3" during its early establishment, coupled with the general lack of mature rural construction 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 suggestions for the strategic direction of each quarter. In addition, through the "Rural Construction Web3 Bilateral Enlightenment Program", community members have participated in various domestic and international Web3 activities and have entered universities for presentations, which not only enhanced their professional qualities but also attracted more professionals passionate about Web3 and rural construction to join. This two-way interaction has opened up a new situation 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 Nantang DAO's external communication; while others have made significant contributions in organizational research, offering wisdom for optimizing community governance mechanisms. These new members bring not only 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 reconstruction and an aging population, the village of Yamakoshi in Japan launched the "Nishikigoi NFT" centered around the local specialty "Koi" and regarded NFT holders as "digital villagers." The resulting DAO community attracted over 1,750 members from around the world, raising funds to support sustainable regional development. Although this model did not adopt typical DAO elements such as smart contracts or on-chain treasury, it effectively addressed local issues. The experience of Yamakoshi village is quite enlightening for Nantang DAO. Recently, Yamakoshi village further proposed the idea of a "dual-layer DAO-driven governance revolution": using the Yamakoshi DAO as a carrier to achieve co-governance between physical villagers and digital villagers through Snapshot voting; at the same time, using the Shihua People DAO as a platform to promote cross-regional collaboration (such as in Shuiye Village and Tianlong Gorge), building 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 network cities through community collaboration and technological innovation. Its development process is divided into four stages: the Creator Era from 2020 to 2021, establishing "Creator Cabins" as a funding project for creator residences; from 2021 to 2022, as DAOs flourished, Cabin also began entering the DAO service provider stage, during which the community created numerous DAO media brands and developed on-chain and physical passport systems and other DAO tools for online communities; from 2022 to 2023, as the crypto market became turbulent, the community significantly reduced the DAO team and focused on creating natural communities for digital nomads and building a global co-living network; at the beginning of 2024, the team's keyword shifted to "family community," and the team decided to establish deeper connections with local communities, launching the Neighborhood Accelerator program, proposing to create a community where friends live nearby and raise children together.

What is worth learning and reflecting on is that after several years of continuous exploration, the Cabin team believes it is more suitable 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 best suited as a credible neutral governance mechanism for distributing ecosystem grants from existing cash flow protocols. Community-driven networks are best suited to act 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 globally.

Delve into the local market to find advantages.

While learning from global pioneers, how to take root locally must be based on in-depth research and analysis of local realities. Nantang 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 from society is the greatest advantage of this land. Looking back at Nantang's history, it is evident that the desire for democracy and rights has never ceased, and its important historical milestones have always resonated with advanced organizational concepts in the context of great eras. From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, the civic movement surged, with the rise of the rights protection lawyer movement and environmental movement, allowing citizens to defend their rights through legal channels and collective actions. Nantang also began organizing farmers to fight for their rights, promoting grassroots elections and implementing villagers' 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; after establishing cooperatives, our daily work focuses on livelihood development, cultural construction, and rural autonomy to protect our rights." 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 undertakings developed rapidly. Yang Yunbiao pointed out in a rural construction dialogue: "Rural revitalization is not simply about industry revitalization or organizational revitalization; it must return to 'the revitalization of people' and consider how to enable people to live with smiles and dignity." Today, the establishment of the Nantang DAO continues the tradition of organizational innovation, marking the latest attempt to integrate local ethics with modern civilization.

From advocacy organizations to parliamentary procedures, from cooperatives to Nantang DAO, Nantang has attempted various forms of democratic governance over the past 30 years. However, it is important to realize that regardless of how innovative the organizational form is, the key lies in whether it focuses on "human connections" and whether it addresses the fundamental needs of local farmers. It is reassuring that the various attempts made in the past and those currently underway have already produced a good "linkage" effect. After cohabiting and learning together for a period of time, some wonderful chemical reactions are quietly happening between DAO members and cooperative members. During my field visit, I observed local young people proactively using Robert's Rules of Order to efficiently negotiate and reach consensus on the division of labor when faced with the challenge of collective cooking. I also sensed the budding awareness of equality among local youth, as they began to organize spontaneously to collectively reflect on issues such as the lack of transparency in decision-making, unclear responsibilities, and ambiguous rules in local work and life. This emergence of independent thinking and critical spirit will be a valuable asset for Nantang's future development. On the other hand, cooperatives are also broadening their horizons, planning to create a "third space" to serve digital nomads, in order to connect with a wider young demographic. Based on recognizing each other's needs, working in a mutually respectful manner may be the driving force that generates new possibilities in this land.

Final Thoughts

Despite the conflicts, the integration of rural construction and Web3 holds promising prospects. Through the test of time and practice, both sides are expected to reach a consensus amidst conflicts and form a governance model that balances individual autonomy and collective cooperation. In future development, Nantang DAO, while promoting Web3 technology and governance models, must also be rooted in the cultural soil of the countryside and the vital interests of villagers, focusing on addressing the most fundamental needs of rural areas, so that new digital technologies can truly touch 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 embodies the practice and sentiment of revitalizing the countryside, while DAO reshapes trust and collaboration mechanisms with decentralized technological concepts. In recent years, these two fields have begun to intersect, attracting Web3 practitioners committed to rural development and those in rural construction eager to embrace new technologies. However, due to the short contact time, differences in values and cultural backgrounds, this intersection inevitably generates friction, including collisions between decentralized autonomous logic and rural collectivist culture, as well as the integration of external concepts with local traditions.

The core issue is how DAO, as a new organizational form, can find its scope of action and capacity boundaries within rural governance structures. Taking the practice of NANTANG DAO as an example, if the issuance of NANTANG beans is merely a digital replication of the traditional rural governance points system (such as the work point system), and its usability and ease of use are even difficult to surpass other existing "Alternative Currencies"; if the token-based voting is merely a direct democracy transitioned to a Web3 digital platform, but effectively excludes villagers from the democratic decision-making process, how much change can we actually expect this so-called organizational "innovation" to bring to rural society? Although these questions are specifically embodied in NANTANG DAO, they are actually a common 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 for organizations to cope with sustainable development challenges. Different organizational forms have their pros and cons, 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 the same organization's development, occupy different positions on this spectrum. Many DAO failures stem from a lack of sufficient understanding of this issue; when trying to run a business project, they find that a more centralized approach is often better. They want to allocate funds using a DAO approach, but often the majority are not beneficiaries, and economic benefits are often monopolized by a few. Some DAOs that focus on building community networks find that after operating for a while, they also struggle to identify their place as a DAO. A vivid example is when a trading platform foundation decided during a vote to allocate $165 million in liquidity mining rewards for a certain DEX v4 and a certain chain, triggering anger within the DAO. Members questioned why the foundation would...