Vitalik Buterin’s 2026 Manifesto: Ditch Token Voting, Build DAOs That Actually Work
Vitalik Buterin just threw a Molotov cocktail into the crypto governance debate. The Ethereum co-founder is calling time on the industry's lazy obsession with token voting—and demanding we build decentralized autonomous organizations that function beyond simple shareholder referendums.
The Flaw in the Foundation
For years, token voting has been the default. Hold coins, cast votes, steer the protocol. It's clean, it's simple, and according to Buterin, it's fundamentally broken. This model recreates all the worst parts of traditional finance—plutocracy, voter apathy, and short-term speculation masquerading as strategy—while wrapping it in a 'decentralized' bow. It turns DAOs into glorified hedge funds with a voting feature.
Building the Next Wave
The challenge isn't to abandon governance. It's to invent it. Buterin's push is for mechanisms that incorporate nuance: reputation-based systems, delegated expertise, and adaptive structures that can't be gamed by a whale with a fat wallet. Think less corporate boardroom, more fluid, meritocratic collective. The goal? Organizations where influence aligns with contribution, not just capital.
The Real Test for DeFi's Future
This isn't academic. The trillion-dollar question for decentralized finance is whether it can govern the complexity it creates. Can a DAO effectively manage a lending protocol, a derivatives engine, or a cross-chain bridge using a tool as blunt as token voting? The answer, increasingly, is no. The next bull run won't be powered by speculation alone—it will be won by the ecosystems that figure out how to make collective intelligence work. Otherwise, we're just building fancier casinos with shareholder meetings.
The call is clear. The crypto industry has mastered extracting value from markets. Now, Buterin says, it's time to learn how to build institutions that deserve to govern it. The alternative is watching the revolution get bogged down in the same old politics—just with a blockchain receipt.
Vitalik Buterin explains why DAOs are critically needed
We need more DAOs – but different and better DAOs.
The original drive to build ethereum was heavily inspired by decentralized autonomous organizations: systems of code and rules that lived on decentralized networks that could manage resources and direct activity, more…
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 19, 2026
Vitalik argued that better DAOs are necessary to build stronger oracle systems that support prediction markets, decentralized stablecoins, and other critical DeFi infrastructure. He cautioned that token-based oracles are susceptible to structural economic constraints and whale manipulation, making the issue as much a social and governance issue as a technical one.
“We need DAOs for onchain dispute resolution, a necessary component of many types of more advanced smart contract use cases (eg. insurance). This is the same type of problem as price oracles, but even more subjective, and so even harder to get right.”
–Vitalik Buterin, Co-Founder of Ethereum.
Vitalik added that the crypto industry needs DAOs to maintain lists. This includes lists of canonical interfaces, lists of token contract addresses, and listings of applications that are recognized as SAFE or not fraudulent. He claimed that DAOs are necessary for the cryptocurrency sector to launch projects swiftly.
The co-founder of Ethereum went on by explaining that DAOs are essential for long-term project maintenance. He argued that long-term project maintenance will enable new contributors to secure the financing needed to advance the project and ensure that communities can continue even if the original team departs.
Building on these practical functions, Vitalik also explored how DAOs might improve decision-making and governance to address a variety of issues successfully.
Vitalik Buterin revealed on his personal website and blog that he examines DAO decision-making using the “convex vs. concave” concept. He argued that DAOs should optimize reliability for concave problems by combining information from multiple sources, while they need tools to constrain decision-makers in convex situations.
In another report in April of last year, he claimed that for DAO governance to be effective, decision fatigue must be addressed. In the absence of privacy, involvement becomes a social game, and continuous decision-making eventually leads to declining interest.
Vitalik on DAOs, ZK, and L2 scalability
Building on the importance of strong governance and decision-making, Vitalik emphasized that modern technologies such as AI, zero-knowledge proofs, and sophisticated communication tools may usher in a new era of more efficient, scalable DAOs.
Vitalik Buterin said that AI must be used carefully. He cautioned that “ we must ‘not’ put full-size deepseek (or worse, GPT 5.2) in charge of a DAO and call it a day. Rather, AI must be put in thoughtfully, as something that scales and enhances human intention and judgement, rather than replacing it.”
He maintained that zero-knowledge proofs and AI should be considered while developing new governance systems, and the communication LAYER should account for 50% of the labor, not 10%.
Additionally, in a separate announcement on Monday, Vitalik discussed recent advancements in Ethereum’s layer-2 scaling strategy, emphasizing the significance of strong governance and careful application of zero-knowledge proofs technology.
He pointed out that the development of native rollup precompiles and the deadlines for fully adopting ZK at L1 are now aligned, resolving earlier issues with composability and withdrawal delays.
Vitalik emphasized the need for synchronous composability across L2s and offered strategies for integrating rollups with low-latency preconfirmations while ensuring that bespoke features can work with conventional EVM rollup precompiles.
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