Last week, crypto investors debated one of the wonkier terms in blockchain. In a discussion on X, Ali Yahya, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto arm, mused about how previous iterations of DAOs, or decentralized autonomous organizations, didn’t work. “We spent the last 10 years rediscovering the hard way that direct democracy is a bad idea,” he wrote. 

Crypto loves decentralization. Founders have created decentralized versions of social media sites, wireless networks, and even apps that pay you to, um, sweat? To manage these decentralized platforms, many founders created DAOs.

Most DAOs are akin to public…