One of the most misguided concepts crypto ever came up with might be governance tokens.

Most companies don’t actually take governance seriously. They use it as regulatory arbitrage.
The token exists because it’s essentially free money they can print on top of their equity. They would never hand over real decision-making power for their business to a random community (you). And even when it looks like they do, the vote is usually tilted through insider allocations so the outcome ends up exactly where it was planned from the start.
That said, I do feel for the few teams that genuinely tried to make governance work. Ironically, those are often the same teams that truly cared about their token and tried to create real value accrual for it.
But in practice, too many cooks spoil the broth.
Running a business by democracy is one of the most inefficient structures imaginable. Endless proposal discussions, waiting for alignment, debating every step before anything can move forward.
Meanwhile, you end up with a large number of “stakeholders” who aren’t actually interested in the long-term success of the business, but only in extracting short-term value from their position.
It starts to resemble German politics: throw ten different groups with completely opposing views into the same room and the end result is that nothing happens at all.
Crypto is still a startup industry driven by innovation. That means moving fast, trying things, breaking them, learning, iterating.
Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But you learn and adapt.
Nothing kills innovation faster than decision paralysis.
The recent drama around @aave is a great example of this tension. In my opinion, @StaniKulechov and his team are among the best builders in DeFi and genuinely try to make things work for everyone involved. But when everyone thinks they should have a say (each with different incentives) progress inevitably slows down. I don’t even want to imagine where Aave as a business might already be today if the DAO hadn’t become such a bottleneck.
An even clearer example might be @AcrossProtocol and @hal2001’s recent proposal to take the company private again, precisely to avoid these governance gridlocks, while instead making participants true equity stakeholders and aligning everyone around a shared long-term goal.
Hearing rumors that apparently even more DAOs are considering this step for quite some time already, so wouldn't be surprised if we see a lot more of these.
Governance was one of those ideas that was well-intentioned but poorly implemented. In theory, it sounds beautiful, a decentralized kumbaya world where everyone has a voice.
In practice, it simply doesn’t work.
The only real path forward for tokens is digital equity onchain, in whatever form that ultimately takes. Stop trying to design structures that artificially separate ownership, control and value.
Investors and communities have become far too sophisticated to keep falling for that.
Founders who understand this today will be part of the great comeback of this industry tomorrow. But those who still think they can extract value the old way and work around these issues will simply be left behind.
Welcome to the new era.