This billion-dollar crypto collective is tearing itself apart

One thing everyone can agree on, Christensen fans or not, is that the existing governance system needs reform. “There are a lot of layers and it’s not always easy to get a sense of the value they provide,” says Derivaux, and MakerDAO is crippled by an inability to make decisions quickly. Less clear is whether Endgame will solve these problems.

“It’s very difficult to say what impact Endgame will have,” said Johnny_TVL, senior analyst at Messari, a specialist crypto research firm. “Of course, if fully executed, it seems like it would decentralize the protocol in a good way. But given the complexity, it’s unlikely to work exactly as advertised.”

To characterize Endgame as complex is perhaps putting it too lightly. In a Substack post, Luca Prosperi, who works in lending oversight for MakerDAO, described Christensen’s Endgame posts as “very detailed, extremely articulate, unforgivably frequent and excruciatingly long.” To understand the latest version of the plan, he says, a “Tolkien-esque glossary” is required.

Despite his doubts during the voting process, Di Prisco is willing to put his faith in the MakerDAO founder, whom he describes as “smart and honest.” He says he has come to terms with the fact that “the founder is often the only one who can really envision things from end to end.”

Christensen admits that he is probably the only one who understands the Endgame proposition and its implications. “In some ways, I don’t even fully understand it,” he says. “I cannot predict all possible future paths.”

“But the current status quo is infinitely more complex; you can’t see the forest for the trees. But with Endgame, things start to crystallize to a point where you can at least count the things you need to understand, says Christensen.

A calculation for DAOs everywhere

At the center of the conflict in the MakerDAO community are questions about whether complete decentralization can ever be achieved – and whether it is even a good idea.

Some believe decentralization should be the DAO’s only priority, as the only protection against government and corporate overreach, while others are willing to compromise on decentralization to make DAI accessible to the largest possible audience.

But Danny says the debate has been hampered by “a real lack of intellectual rigor and consistency” around the concept of decentralisation, which has become a cliché used to denote a general philosophy rather than a clearly defined goal.

Despite their admiration for the spirit of the MakerDAO project, none of the community members who spoke to WIRED (with the exception of Daverington) claimed to be optimistic about the long-term viability of The DAO as a model for organizing human effort. Even Christensen says he had almost given up on the concept, until Endgame restored his faith.

“I think DAOs, up to this point, are pretty much a failure,” says Di Prisco, who suggests the problem has to do with “the architecture of the protocols and the expectations people have of governance.”

Equally pessimistic, Danny says the biggest problem is the inability to get enough people to vote – and to ask them to vote on very complex proposals. The result is a system that forces people to queue behind a figurehead, such as Christensen, and therefore begins to look more and more like a traditional business.

The fundamental question is whether DAOs can be organized in such a way that the best ideas rise to the top, but Danny says that’s simply not the case here. “MakerDAO is as far from a meritocracy of ideas as you can get.”