Nantang DAO Record ( Part Two )

Find a way out

The story of Nan Tang DAO continues, facing numerous challenges, but everything is naturally evolving and constantly emerging. The community is exploring forward through trial and error, digging for new possibilities in the pursuit of change. Some core members have gone to Jiantao Village in Pujiang County, Chengdu, to try to launch a new project, attempting to find the true intersection of "rural development and Web3" and build a "Rural Entrepreneurship DAO". Meanwhile, Jiao has chosen to stay local in Nan Tang, proposing the initiative of "living well", continuously cultivating the community by organizing local young people to engage in blockchain collaborative learning, band activities, and more. One side explores outward, while the other is rooted locally; the two paths run parallel without contradiction. Pioneering a new path 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 Nantan DAO failed to effectively attract "real talents who understand 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 exploration. Fortunately, the community has recognized this shortcoming and has taken a series of improvement measures. Currently, Nantan DAO plans to invite senior experts from the industry to form the "Nantan DAO Governance Advisory Group" to provide professional mediation for internal disputes and to output systematic suggestions for the strategic direction of each quarter. In addition, through the "Rural Construction Web3 Bilateral Enlightenment Program", community members have participated multiple times in domestic and international Web3 activities and have gone to colleges for presentations, which not only enhanced their professional quality but also attracted more professionals who are passionate about Web3 and rural construction to join. This two-way interaction has opened up new opportunities 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 skilled in brand promotion, providing support for the external communication of Nantan DAO; and others have made significant achievements in organizational research, contributing wisdom to the optimization of the community governance mechanism. These new members not only bring professional skills but also open up more possibilities for the future development of Nantan 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 common challenge globally. Nantang DAO has researched multiple international DAO cases, many of which provide insights closely related to rural construction. For example, in response to the challenges of earthquake recovery and aging population, Japan's Yamaguchi Village launched the "Nishikigoi NFT" centered around local specialty "Koi", viewing NFT holders as "digital villagers". The resulting DAO community attracted over 1,750 members globally and raised funds to support regional sustainable 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 Yamaguchi Village is quite enlightening for Nantang DAO. Recently, Yamaguchi Village further proposed the concept of "dual-layer DAO driven governance revolution": using the Yamaguchi DAO as a vehicle to achieve co-governance between physical villagers and digital villagers through Snapshot voting; while using the Shihua DAO as a platform to promote cross-regional collaboration ( such as Chiyeban Village, Tianlongxia ), and build 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 residencies; from 2021 to 2022, as DAOs flourished, Cabin began to enter 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 aimed at online communities; from 2022 to 2023, with the turbulence in the crypto market, the community started to significantly reduce the DAO team and focus on creating natural communities for digital nomads and building a global co-living network; starting in early 2024, the team's keyword became "family community", and the team decided to establish a deeper connection with local communities. They launched the Neighborhood Accelerator (, proposing to create a community where friends live nearby and raise children together.

It is worth noting and reflecting 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 stemmed from a reflection on the different models of startups, DAOs, and community networks: "Venture-backed startups are best suited for small, focused teams that can pivot quickly to find high-growth business opportunities that are financially viable in the short term. DAOs are most suitable as a credible neutral governance mechanism for distributing ecosystem funds from existing cash flow protocols. Community-driven networks are best positioned to act as loosely connected organizations, enabling many individuals 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 by the world.

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) Deeply localize, seek advantages

While learning from global pioneers, how to root locally needs to 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 social attention it receives is the greatest advantage of this land. Looking back at Nantang's history, it can be seen that the desire for democracy and rights has never ceased, with important historical nodes always resonating with advanced organizational concepts in the context of great times------from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, citizen movements surged, the rights defense lawyer movement and environmental movements began to rise, allowing citizens to safeguard their rights through legal channels and collective actions. Nantang also began to organize farmers' rights defense struggles, implement grassroots elections, and practice villagers' autonomy. Starting from 2003-2004, the goal of farmer organization gradually shifted from rights defense to construction. As Yang Yunbiao stated: "Previously, we approached rights defense from a confrontational perspective. After establishing cooperatives, our daily work is to use livelihood development, cultural construction, and rural autonomy to safeguard rights." Later, during the process of farmer organization, they drew on Western civilization, introduced deliberation rules, and achieved the localization of advanced governance concepts. In 2008, this phase saw rapid development in the village's economic and cultural undertakings. Yang Yunbiao pointed out in a rural construction dialogue: "Rural revitalization is not simply industrial revitalization or organizational revitalization, but must return to 'the revitalization of people', thinking about how to enable people to live with smiles and dignity." Today, the establishment of Nantang DAO continues the tradition of organizational innovation and marks the latest attempt to integrate local ethics with modern civilization.

From rights protection organizations to parliamentary rules, from cooperatives to Nantan DAO, Nantan has experimented with different democratic governance methods 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 encouraging to see that the various past and ongoing attempts have already produced a good "linking" effect; after residing and learning together for some time, DAO members and cooperative members have experienced some wonderful chemical reactions quietly unfolding. During my field observations, I noticed that local youth, when faced with the challenge of dividing labor for communal cooking, proactively employed Robert's Rules of Order to efficiently negotiate and reach a consensus on division of labor through "motions" and "reconsiderations." I also sensed the budding awareness of equality among local youth; they have begun 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 affairs. This emergence of independent thinking and critical spirit will be a valuable asset for Nantan's future development. On another front, the cooperatives are also broadening their horizons, planning to create a "third space" to serve digital nomads, connecting a wider young demographic. Based on recognizing each other's needs, working in a mutually respectful manner may be the driving force for new possibilities to emerge from this land.

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Final Thoughts

Despite the conflicts, the integration of rural development and Web3 holds promise. Through the test of time and practice, both sides are expected to reach a consensus through their conflicts, forming a governance model that balances individual autonomy and collective cooperation. In future developments, Nantang DAO needs to promote Web3 technology and governance models while being rooted in the cultural soil of the countryside and the genuine interests of the villagers, focusing on addressing the 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 carries the practice and sentiment of revitalizing the countryside, while DAO reshapes trust and cooperation mechanisms with a decentralized technological philosophy. In recent years, these two fields have begun to intersect, attracting Web3 practitioners dedicated to rural areas and those in rural construction eager to embrace new technologies. However, due to the short exposure time and differences in values and cultural backgrounds, friction inevitably arises within this intersection, including clashes between decentralized autonomy logic and rural collectivism culture, as well as the integration of external ideas and local traditions.

The core issue lies in 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 replica of the traditional rural governance points system (, such as the work point system ), and its usability, ease of use, or even its ability to surpass other existing "alternative currencies" ### Alternative Currency ( is limited; if token-based voting merely transforms into direct democracy on a Web3 digital platform, while effectively excluding villagers from the democratic decision-making process, how much change can we expect this so-called organizational "innovation" to bring to rural society? Although these questions are specifically embodied in Nantang DAO, they are essentially universal inquiries for all future rural development 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; the trade-offs and choices in the governance process are key for organizations to tackle sustainable development challenges. Different organizational forms have their pros and cons, and they coexist rather than replace each other. If decentralization and autonomy are viewed as a spectrum, various historical organizations, as well as different developmental stages of the same organization, occupy different positions on this spectrum. Many DAO failures stem from a lack of sufficient understanding of this issue; wanting to undertake business projects, they find that a more centralized approach works better. They wish to allocate funds through a DAO model, but often the majority are not beneficiaries, and the economic benefits are frequently monopolized by a few. Some DAOs that focus on building community networks find, after operating for a while, that they seem unable to identify their position as a DAO. A vivid example is when a certain foundation, during a voting session, decided to provide substantial liquidity mining rewards for a project, which triggered anger within the DAO. Members questioned why the foundation had to spend money while centralized entities earned millions from front-end fees.

Therefore,