DAOs are becoming an integral part of decentralized protocols and applications across all blockchains. They now wield considerable influence over billions of dollars worth of assets, with examples such as LidoDAO ($12B), MakerDAO ($8.8B), Uniswap ($4.06B), Curve ($4.24B), and Safe DAO ($35B in Safe contracts), demonstrating their significance in the blockchain ecosystem. This rising influence of DAOs highlights their essential role in the ever-evolving blockchain landscape.
As decentralized protocols and applications grow, the importance of effective DAO governance in safeguarding the growing value managed by the DAOs also escalates. This has been demonstrated through increasing attacks aimed at extracting value from DAOs. For instance, in 2022, Beanstalk Finance lost $182 million following a governance attack, while Mango was exploited for $100M by a whale. In both situations, the attackers exploited vulnerabilities in the DAO's governance framework or smart contracts to gain control of the funds. A recent case involved the AragonDAO governance attack, where the attacker seized more than 50% of the voting power, enabling them to approve a transaction that transferred treasury funds to their personal account.
While the token’s voting power is the main, and in many DAOs, the ultimate instrument to protect the DAOs and therefore protect the protocols that they manage, it is unreasonable to expect most holders to be actively participate in DAOs given the frequency of proposals and the expertise and knowledge required to engage in various proposals covering governance, compensation, budgeting, protocol parameters, etc.
This growing importance of DAOs and the requirement for expertise in DAO participation instilled the concept of “professional delegates”, the individual or team that fully commits to governance and operations of decentralized protocols by leveraging the voting power that is bestowed to them by the token holders via token delegation.
Professional delegates, proficient in interpreting proposal contexts and maintaining steady governance engagement, safeguard the DAO against potential governance threats. Therefore, the act of delegation to Professional Delegates is essential for fostering DAO growth and resilience. It bolsters voter turnout, promotes informed decisions, expands domain expertise, and ensures a sustainable model for ongoing governance participation, ultimately increasing the value of tokens held by those who delegate their voting authority.
It is therefore essential that token holders, if not actively participating in DAOs themselves, delegate to a professional delegate of their choice. In this writing, we propose Curia as the delegate of choice, for the values and operating principles as detailed below.