We want to express our appreciation for the work produced by the ARDC over the past few months. On a personal level, these contributions, particularly on governance participation risks and Security Council awareness, have provided meaningful context to inform critical DAO decisions. These are not just academic exercises; they are foundational to enabling responsible governance operations and timely responses to evolving threats and participation trends.
We believe these reports are already generating impact. We suggest looking at delegate mentions to published pieces as an impact measures and encourage other delegates to actively reference their claims to remain data-backed.
This kind of context setting, which helps align DAO decision-making with informed analysis, is exactly what high-quality research should enable.
That said, we are saddened, but not surprised, by the recurring opinion that research must be “immediately actionable” to be considered valuable. This misconception mirrors the kind of short-termism often seen in academic research funding: a tendency to dismiss foundational analysis because it doesn’t translate instantly into a discrete execution step. In decentralized governance, context is action-enabling, especially when decisions impact multi-million dollar programs.
In our view, if ARDC research feels under-utilized, that reflects a coordination gap, not a signal to defund it. Delegates and working groups could address this by collaborating more closely with ARDC through structured alignment mechanisms, such as using the SOS goals to define shared priorities. If research is scoped targeting DAO-agreed objectives, the outputs are more likely to be utilized immediately.
Finally, we believe there is a disproportionate level of scrutiny applied to research spending compared to other DAO verticals. This is partly because impact is harder to measure. But based on historical DAO expenditure history, even a 1% improvement in incentive efficiency could justify multiples of ARDC’s current budget. Similarly, well-timed security reports could prevent targeted DAO attacks, avoiding reputational or financial losses far exceeding research costs.
In short: we believe in the ARDC mission, we see evidence of growing value, and we encourage the DAO to extend and refine, not retract, this experiment.