Society’s analysis examines how DAOs can cultivate genuine community—shared culture, relationships, and belonging—beyond purely transactional coordination focused on governance votes and treasury management. The piece argues that many DAOs struggle because they prioritize technical coordination mechanisms while neglecting social foundations that enable collective action, leading to organizations that function procedurally but lack cohesion, trust, and meaningful member engagement. Rather than treating community as automatic byproduct of decentralized structure, the analysis explores intentional practices for building relationships, creating shared culture, fostering belonging, and maintaining social fabric that makes governance mechanisms actually functional. This includes examining rituals, storytelling, informal communication spaces, conflict navigation, and care practices that support community health. The work positions community-building as essential infrastructure for DAO success rather than optional cultural amenity separate from operational concerns.
Key Highlights
-
Community as Essential Infrastructure: Analysis positions genuine community formation—relationships, culture, belonging—as foundational requirement for DAO functionality rather than optional cultural concern separate from governance mechanisms.
-
Beyond Transactional Coordination: Piece argues many DAOs prioritize technical coordination (voting, proposals, treasury) while neglecting social foundations (trust, relationships, shared meaning) that enable collective action to actually function.
-
Intentional Culture Creation: Rather than assuming community emerges automatically from decentralized structure, framework explores deliberate practices for building shared culture including rituals, storytelling, and meaning-making activities.
-
Belonging and Inclusion: Coverage emphasizes creating sense of belonging where members feel genuinely part of collective rather than merely token holders or governance participants, examining what makes DAOs feel like community people want to contribute to.
-
Conflict and Care: Analysis addresses navigating conflicts and maintaining member wellbeing as community responsibilities, positioning care practices and conflict resolution as essential coordination infrastructure not peripheral HR concerns.
-
Communication Infrastructure: Framework examines how informal communication spaces, social gatherings, and relationship-building opportunities support governance functioning by creating trust and shared context that make formal mechanisms actually work.
Practical Applications
This framework enables community-centered DAO design:
-
DAOs struggling with low engagement and cohesion can use analysis to diagnose whether they’ve prioritized technical coordination over community foundation, investing in relationship-building and culture creation that enable governance mechanisms to function effectively
-
DAO operators can implement intentional community practices including regular social gatherings, storytelling rituals, informal communication spaces, and care activities that build social fabric supporting technical coordination
-
community forming new DAOs can recognize community-building as essential work rather than assuming decentralized structure automatically creates cohesive groups, allocating resources and attention to relationship formation alongside governance design
-
Governance designers can understand how social context shapes mechanism effectiveness, recognizing that same voting system functions differently in high-trust community with shared culture versus low-trust groups lacking relationships
-
Researchers studying DAO sustainability can examine community health indicators alongside governance participation metrics, understanding how social cohesion affects organizational resilience and member retention
Connection With SuperBenefit
-
Society’s emphasis on community as essential DAO infrastructure validates SuperBenefit’s conviction that coordination primitives must support social and relational dimensions of collective action not just technical voting and resource management, demonstrating that effective governance mechanisms require trust, shared meaning, and belonging foundations that can’t be reduced to smart contract execution—showing that genuinely serving community means designing tools enabling not just procedural coordination but relationship-building, culture creation, and care practices that constitute communities as meaningful social groups beyond instrumental organizations.
-
The analysis challenges SuperBenefit to examine whether primitive development adequately addresses community formation or risks creating technically functional but socially hollow coordination infrastructure, illustrating that decentralized governance tools should facilitate rituals, storytelling, conflict navigation, and informal relationship-building that enable DAOs to function as actual communities rather than optimizing isolated mechanisms for voting and treasury management while neglecting social fabric that makes collective decision-making legitimate and sustainable when technical coordination alone proves insufficient for maintaining organizational coherence and member commitment over time.
Related Concepts
- Roles - Organizational structures and membership
- Governance - Decision-making frameworks
- DAOs - Decentralized organizations explored
- Community - Social structures and participation
- Coordination - Mechanisms for organizing work