Find a way out

The story of Nantang DAO continues, and despite facing challenges, everything is still unfolding and emerging naturally. The community is exploring and moving forward through trial and error, digging for new possibilities in the pursuit of change. Some core members have traveled to Jianta Village in Pujiang County, Chengdu, to try to launch a new project, aiming to find the true intersection of "rural construction and Web3" and build a "rural entrepreneurship DAO." Meanwhile, some members have chosen to stay local in Nantang, proposing the initiative of "living well" by organizing local youth activities such as blockchain co-learning and band events, continuously cultivating the community. One side explores externally, while the other is rooted locally; both paths run parallel without conflict. Paving a new road is full of hardships, but as the saying goes: "Pessimists are often right, while optimists keep moving forward." The optimists of Nantang DAO are writing their own answers through action.

Attracting More Professionals

Talent is the cornerstone of any organization's development. Nantang DAO has recognized the early talent shortfall and has taken a series of improvement measures. Currently, Nantang DAO plans to invite senior experts in the industry to form the "Nantang DAO Governance Advisory Group" to provide professional mediation for internal disputes and to offer systematic suggestions for the strategic direction each quarter. In addition, through the "Rural Construction Web3 Bilateral Enlightenment Program," community members have participated multiple times in domestic and international Web3 events and have gone into universities for presentations, which not only enhanced their professional competence but also attracted more passionate professionals about Web3 and rural construction to join. This two-way interaction has opened new avenues 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; and others have made significant achievements in organizational research, contributing wisdom to the optimization of community governance mechanisms. These new members not only bring professional skills but also pave the way for more possibilities in 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? How to implement DAO is not only a topic for Nantang but also a common challenge globally. Nantang DAO has researched multiple international DAO cases, some of which provide insights closely related to rural construction. For example, after facing the challenges of rebuilding after earthquakes and an aging population, Japan's Yamakoshi Village launched the "Nishikigoi NFT," centered around the local specialty "Koi fish," viewing NFT holders as "digital villagers." The DAO community formed as a result attracted over 1,750 members globally, raising funds to support regional sustainable development. Although this model did not adopt typical DAO elements such as smart contracts or on-chain funds, 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 vehicle to achieve co-governance between physical villagers and digital villagers through Snapshot voting; at the same time, using the Sekaihan DAO as a platform to promote cross-regional collaboration and build a "LocalDAO network." This model is very similar to 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 residency; from 2021 to 2022, as DAOs flourished, Cabin began to enter the DAO service provider stage, during which the community built numerous DAO media brands and developed DAO tools such as on-chain and physical passport systems aimed at online communities; from 2022 to 2023, with the turbulence in the crypto market, the community began to significantly reduce the DAO team and focused 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 a neighborhood acceleration program and proposed to create a community where friends live nearby and jointly raise children.

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 grants and commercialization projects, shifting to a purely community-driven network. This decision stems from a reflection on different models of entrepreneurship, DAO, and community networks: "Venture capital-backed startups are best suited for small, focused teams that can pivot quickly and seek high-growth business opportunities that are financially viable in the short term. DAOs are best suited as a trusted neutral governance mechanism for allocating ecosystem grants from existing cash flow protocols. Community-driven networks are best suited to act as loosely connected organizations that allow 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.

Deepen local engagement, seek advantages

While learning from global pioneers, how to take root locally must be based on in-depth research and analysis of local realities. Nantan DAO needs to comprehensively assess local resources such as the economy, human resources, spiritual culture, politics, social capital, geographical location, and natural environment to formulate practical goals and action plans.

Nantang Village is well-known for its historical experience in democratic governance, and the attention from society is the greatest advantage of this land. Looking back at the history of Nantang, it can be seen that the desire for democracy and rights has never ceased, with its important historical nodes always resonating with advanced organizational concepts in the context of the great era. From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, civic movements surged, and the rights protection lawyer movement and environmental movement began to rise, allowing citizens to safeguard their rights through legal means and collective action. Nantang also began to organize farmers to fight for their rights, implement grassroots elections, and practice villagers' autonomy. Starting from 2003-2004, the goal of farmer organization gradually shifted from rights protection to construction. As Yang Yunbiao stated: "In the past, we approached rights protection from a confrontational perspective. After establishing cooperatives, our daily work in rights protection is focused on livelihood development, cultural construction, and rural autonomy." Later, during the process of farmer organization, they drew on Western civilization and introduced deliberative rules, achieving the localization of advanced governance concepts, which led to rapid development in the village's economic and cultural undertakings. Yang Yunbiao pointed out: "Rural revitalization is not simply about industrial 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 Nantang DAO continues the tradition of organizational innovation, marking the latest attempt to integrate local ethics with modern civilization.

From rights protection organizations to procedural rules, from cooperatives to Nantan DAO, Nantan has experimented with various democratic governance methods over the past 30 years. However, it is important to recognize that regardless of how innovative the organizational forms may be, the key lies in whether they focus on "human connections" and whether they address the fundamental needs of local farmers. It is encouraging that the various past and ongoing attempts have already produced a good "linking" effect. After living and learning together for a while, some wonderful chemical reactions are quietly occurring between DAO members and cooperative members. During my field investigation, I observed local youth actively using Robert's Rules of Order to address the challenges of collective cooking division of labor, efficiently negotiating and forming a consensus on division through "motions" and "reconsiderations." I also sensed the budding awareness of equality among the local youth; they are beginning 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 matters. This budding spirit of independent thinking and critical awareness will be a valuable asset for Nantan's future development. On another front, the cooperative is also broadening its horizons and planning to create a "third space" to serve digital nomads, in order to connect a wider young audience. Based on recognizing each other's needs, doing things in a mutually respectful manner may become a driving force for new possibilities to emerge in this land.

Written at the End

Despite the conflicts, the integration of rural development and Web3 holds promising prospects. Through the trials of time and practice, both sides are expected to reach a consensus amid the conflicts, forming a governance model that balances individual autonomy and collective collaboration. In future developments, Nan Tang DAO must not only promote Web3 technologies and governance models but also be rooted in the cultural soil of the countryside and the vital interests of the 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 intersecting circles: rural construction carries the practice and sentiment of revitalizing the countryside, while DAO reshapes trust and collaboration mechanisms with a decentralized technological philosophy. In recent years, these two fields have begun to converge, attracting Web3 practitioners dedicated to rural areas and those in rural construction eager to embrace new technologies. However, due to the short duration of contact and differences in values and cultural backgrounds, this intersection inevitably produces friction, including the collision between decentralized autonomous logic and rural collectivist culture, as well as the integration of foreign concepts with local traditions.

The core question is how DAO, as a new form of organization, can find its role and capability 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, and its usability and ease of use are even difficult to surpass other existing "alternative currencies"; if token-based voting is just a form of direct democracy transferred to Web3 digital platforms, effectively excluding villagers from the democratic decision-making process, how much change can we realistically expect from this so-called organizational "innovation" in rural society? Although these questions use Nantang DAO as a specific vehicle, they are essentially a universal inquiry for all future rural construction DAOs or similar organizations.

Moreover, it must be acknowledged that DAOs are 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 address sustainable development challenges. Different organizational forms have their own advantages and disadvantages, and they coexist rather than replace each other. If we consider decentralization and autonomy as a spectrum, various types of organizations throughout history, as well as different development stages of the same organization, occupy different positions on this spectrum. Many DAO failures stem from a lack of sufficient understanding of this issue; they want to undertake commercial projects but find that a more centralized approach works better. They aim to allocate funds through a DAO structure, yet often the majority are not beneficiaries, and economic benefits are frequently monopolized by a few. Some DAOs focused on building community networks find that after a period of operation, they seem to struggle to identify their position as a DAO. A vivid example is when a certain foundation, during a vote, decided to provide substantial liquidity mining rewards for a project, which sparked anger within the DAO. Members questioned why the foundation was spending money while centralized entities were earning millions of dollars from front-end fees?

Therefore, rather than striving to establish a perfect DAO, practitioners of rural construction should think about and explore some practical issues: Under what circumstances is it necessary to organize personnel in the form of a DAO? Where exactly are the boundaries of a DAO? In a DAO, which decisions are suitable for "collective brainstorming" and which need to be "decided once and for all"? Although these questions may not have standard answers, a true DAO may never be fully realized.