The Next Generation of Onchain Organizations

Organizations have created immense value for humanity. They embolden innovators to pool resources and take risks to drive society into new territory.

Onchain organizations have the potential to take this even further. Built on globally distributed, censorship-resistant, and unstoppable infrastructure, they can create, accrue, and distribute value faster than ever before—and at a global scale—all while circumventing intermediaries that gatekeep opportunities and block progress.

But so far, onchain organizations haven’t lived up to this potential. Most have been held back by rigid, ideological governance models that make it hard to create economic value and even harder to accrue it back to stakeholders. Many DAOs have struggled with extractive politics, runaway bureaucracy, unchecked spending, and a lack of accountability. Instead of helping organizations reach their goals, poor governance brought upon by inflexible infrastructure has gotten in the way.

It’s time for the next generation of onchain organizations. One that returns to the core purpose of empowering innovators to create, accrue, and share value—where governance works for builders, not against them, and where token holders have real ownership over assets and value flows.

We’re enabling this next generation of onchain organizations by focusing on two key areas:

• Value Creation: To succeed, teams need to move fast without getting bogged down by politics and bureaucracy. At the same time, they must be held accountable to their mission and stakeholders.
• Value Distribution: As a measure of success, value must accrue so that it can be distributed fairly among stakeholders with skin in the game. Those who take risks to support innovation should be rewarded, with clear mechanisms to participate in and benefit from value accrual. 

Deploy a modular onchain organization to reach your goals

Now, organizations can deploy custom governance processes onchain using the Aragon app. 

Governance should enable execution, not slow it down. Teams need autonomy to move fast, but with proper safeguards. Tailored decision flows reduce friction by empowering the right stakeholders, balance autonomy and accountability, and reduce governance overhead. Instead of forcing organizations into a single governance model, governance can now be designed to fit the unique structure and needs of each organization. 

What you can do with modular governance in the Aragon app

• Launch custom governance designs that align with your structure, operations, and stakeholders—all in one deployment.
• Include as many different proposal types as needed, each tailored to specific actions (ex. protocol upgrades, treasury management, grants). 
• Design custom multi-stage proposal flows for each proposal type.
• Configure stages to require governance approval or pass optimistically unless vetoed.
• Flexibly add timelocks before, after, or during governance processes to give DAO members time to react.
• Empower all of your stakeholders as “governing bodies” by granting them specific permissions based on their role or expertise. 

Organizations have been forced to choose between one-size-fits-all token voting and complex deployments that require costly custom contracts, audits, and ongoing maintenance. Now, they can deploy bespoke and adaptable governance models without the high up front and maintenance costs. Most importantly, they are no longer locked into outdated, ineffective governance models that have caused many projects to fail.

Secure onchain deployments: no need to customize or audit smart contracts

Aragon OSx, our modular DAO framework, powers custom onchain governance. Now, builders can leverage modular components to design tailored governance systems directly from our no-code app.

Why this matters

• Leverage existing components. Deploy complex governance without rebuilding from scratch or writing custom smart contracts.
• Lower costs & security risks. Customizing and auditing smart contracts can be expensive and risky. Composable building blocks eliminate that burden.
• No more software spaghetti. Consolidate governance in a single transparent interface.
• No-code governance design. Anyone on your team can design, implement, and manage your governance without having a dedicated smart contract developer.
• Shared network effects. The entire ecosystem benefits from sharing modular building blocks, with the potential to replicate successful governance models. 
• Adapt your DAO. Evolve governance over time, adding, removing, or modifying processes as your organization matures.

How it works

1. Deploy a DAO.
2. Add a new governance process: 
   1. Enter the process metadata; 
   2. Add stages; 
   3. Add a governing body to each stage.
3. Repeat to add as many processes as needed.
4. Once your governance design is set, remove admin permissions from yourself by passing a proposal, ensuring that your governance is working correctly.
5. Your onchain organization is ready!

The Aragon app is available no-code on Ethereum, Polygon, Base, Zksync, Arbitrum and soon with Optimism, Celo, and peaq.

Modular governance enables pragmatic decentralization

Governing organizations onchain enables real ownership and direct accountability. Every decision and transaction is immutable and verifiable. Token holders can be given control over critical decisions, giving encoded protections where it matters most. This reduces the need for offchain intermediaries, enforcement, and remedies. 

Working towards these ideals, governance needs to be pragmatic and adaptable. It should evolve with your organization, allowing you to add, remove, or modify governance processes as you scale and change. Projects can start with more centralized decision-making and gradually transition power to decentralized stakeholders as they mature—ensuring a secure and sustainable path to decentralization.

Here are a few ways a modular onchain organization can help you reach your decentralization goals, while remaining effective:

Optimistic Governance

Optimistic governance allows teams to move fast while remaining decentralized, by enabling proposals to pass automatically unless vetoed. This reduces governance fatigue while ensuring token holders retain ultimate control through structured safeguards. Organizations can now deploy optimistic governance out of the box, setting flexible timelocks so stakeholders can review, veto, or exit before execution.

Security Councils

Security councils provide oversight to safeguard protocols, treasuries, and governance processes. As power decentralizes, councils ensure critical interventions can be made when needed, preventing governance attacks or misaligned actions. Organizations can now deploy councils in a single interface, assign roles, and configure structured approvals as concurrent (parallel sign-offs) or sequential (staged reviews).

Emergency Proposals

Processes can be segmented by different transaction types, ensuring a critical path to address urgent vulnerabilities. Routine decisions can follow the regular proposal flow, while emergency decisions can be fast-tracked requiring a higher approval threshold. Organizations can now segment different processes, ensuring that governance scales in proportion to risk and impact.

Legal Structures 

Legal structures help DAOs align onchain governance with compliance and business operations. Bridging legal entities with onchain decision-making ensures greater transparency and automation. Organizations can now mirror legal structures onchain, integrating compliance mechanisms directly into onchain governance workflows.

Resource allocation

Instead of navigating forum politics, teams and tokenholders can coordinate around resource allocation through segregated structured processes or even deploy custom resource allocation infrastructure like voting gauges. This allows the DAO to exercise financial discipline and ensure sustainability through long term spending caps. Furthermore, such infrastructure provides guardrails contextualizing the constrained nature of shared resources ensuring alignment around making allocation trade-offs (i.e. spending more on one initiative means spending less on another). 

What's Next

With its modular architecture, our governance stack is built to scale and evolve with the industry.

New features will be continuously integrated into the app, including:

• Universal token voting
• Crosschain governance
• Gasless transactions
• Gauge-based voting 
• Council elections

Design and deploy your modular onchain organization in the Aragon app today.

Need help? Our governance support team is here to guide you.