Hi everyone,
One area I think deserves more attention in DAO governance design is the potential for onchain reputation systems. Most governance models still rely entirely on token-weighted voting, but that approach has well-known limitations — whales dominate, new contributors feel powerless, and there’s often no correlation between voting power and long-term protocol alignment.
What if we could complement token voting with a reputation layer? Onchain activity — like proposal participation, delegation history, forum contributions, or even validator behavior — could be aggregated into a non-transferable score that reflects someone’s engagement and reliability. This doesn’t mean replacing tokens entirely, but rather weighting votes or creating new governance rights based on long-term contributions. Projects like Gitcoin Passport, Optimism’s badge system, and Sismo are already experimenting with elements of this.
There are risks, of course — reputation systems can be gamed or misrepresentative, and privacy concerns are real. But with the right design and transparency, onchain reputation could become a key primitive for governance: helping DAOs reward aligned contributors, filter out spam, and better represent active community voices.
Curious if anyone here is already working with this idea or has examples of DAOs that have tried something beyond pure token-weighted voting? Would love to hear experiences or concerns.