Takeaways:

• DAO governance is starting to look less like community participation and more like product capital allocation.

• ZKsync is a direct example: tokenholders are being asked to fund Matter Labs’ Prividium roadmap and institutional network development.

• SafeNet is a token-utility example: SAFE is moving from governance token toward a role in network security.

• Meta Pool is a liquid staking example: governance decisions affect validator distribution, token incentives, protocol rewards, and how value moves through the system.

• If these are the kinds of decisions DAOs are making, then voting power matters. Analysis is useful, but delegation is what turns analysis into leverage.

The job description of a DAO delegate

A few months ago, I wrote that DAOs should increasingly be understood not just as internet communities, but as onchain businesses.

The more governance proposals I review, the more convinced I am that this framing is becoming unavoidable.

Tokenholders are no longer just voting on process, participation, or abstract decentralization. They are being asked to fund product roadmaps, allocate recurring protocol revenue, support validator infrastructure, approve incentive programs, and decide which products a network should become known for.

In other words, DAO governance is becoming product capital allocation. This changes the job description of a delegate.

If governance is mostly about participation, then showing up, commenting thoughtfully, and voting consistently may be enough. But if governance is where product strategy gets funded, then delegates are being asked to evaluate proposals more like board members or investment committee participants.

And this creates the reality that in DAOs, the people with the most voting power are the people with the most meaningful say over product direction.

Good analysis matters. But voting power determines whether that analysis has a seat at the table.

ZKsync and the clearest version of the trend

ZKsync is one of the clearest recent examples of DAO governance becoming product capital allocation.

The latest ZKSync governance proposal, the 2026 ZKsync Protocol & Network Development Allocation, proposes allocating 67 million ZK per month for 12 months to Matter Labs. At the proposal’s reference price of $0.015 per ZK, that works out to roughly $1 million per month.

The stated goal is to fund the 2026 Prividium roadmap and convert the institutional pipeline into deployed chains and a growing institutional network. The proposal also references continued work on Prividium engineering, business development, forward-deployed work, ZK Stack, and Airbender.

This is not a small ecosystem grant.

It is tokenholder-funded product development.

That does not mean it is bad. It may be exactly the kind of strategic bet ZKsync needs to make if it wants to compete for institutional adoption. But it does mean delegates have to evaluate it with the seriousness of a product funding decision.

A few questions matter:

• Is Prividium central to ZKsync’s long-term advantage?

• Does institutional adoption create durable usage for the network?

• Are the milestones specific enough?

• Are the revocation rights meaningful in practice?

• Is this funding ecosystem growth, core-team runway, or both?

• How should tokenholders evaluate return on this allocation?

This is where the old governance framing starts to feel inadequate.

If delegates treat proposals like this as ordinary community governance, they will miss the point. The DAO is being asked to fund a roadmap. That means governance is acting less like a comment section and more like a capital allocation process.

SafeNet and token utility as product infrastructure

SafeNet shows a different version of the same pattern.

The Safe Foundation announced Safenet Beta as a way for SAFE token holders to play a role in network security. SAFE holders can delegate to genesis validators. Validators evaluate Safe transactions, and valid transactions receive cryptographic attestations that are verified onchain before execution.

The beta launched with six genesis validators, each with a minimum stake of 3.5 million SAFE tokens.

This is not a treasury allocation in the same way as the ZKsync proposal. SafeNet is more about making the token part of the product itself.

A governance token by itself is often hard to value. It gives holders some decision-making power, but the connection between voting rights, protocol usage, and economic value can be weak. SafeNet tries to make that connection more concrete by giving SAFE a role in transaction security.

If Safe’s core product is securing onchain accounts and transactions, then SafeNet gives SAFE holders a way to participate in that security layer.

That is a cleaner form of token utility than many governance-token designs because it is native to the product.

The question for delegates is still not automatic support. The questions become:

• Does the validator model actually improve transaction security?

• Are rewards, slashing, and future fees designed in a way that creates real accountability?

• Does delegation concentrate power among a small group of validators?

• Does the mechanism strengthen the product, or mainly strengthen the token narrative?

Those are product-governance questions.

SafeNet is useful as a case study because it shows what it looks like when token utility is designed into protocol infrastructure rather than added later as a marketing layer.

Meta Pool as the liquid staking example

Meta Pool is the less clean, but maybe more realistic, example.

I recently wrote about liquid staking and the importance of looking past the token wrapper. A liquid staking token is not just “the asset plus yield.” It sits on top of validator allocation, governance decisions, liquidity conditions, smart contracts, and exit paths.

Meta Pool is useful because it makes those layers visible.

On NEAR, Meta Pool’s stNEAR is not only a convenience product for staking. It also routes stake across validators and participates in validator distribution. That means governance decisions around Meta Pool are not just about a token. They affect how protocol-generated value, validator incentives, voter rewards, buybacks, and operations fit together.

This is where DAO governance starts to look less like a clean product roadmap and more like operating discipline under constraint.

The questions are practical:

• Should protocol rewards fund buybacks?

• Should they support operations?

• Should active voters continue receiving rewards?

• Should validator delegation remain a major part of the token’s utility?

• How much value should be retained by the treasury?

• Which incentives create durable participation, and which ones simply create sell pressure?

There are also more experimental community ideas, including a proposal to create new forms of utility for mpDAO. I would not treat those as Meta Pool’s official direction, especially when core contributors have raised concerns. But I do think they reveal something important: when token utility feels fragile, communities start searching for new economic loops.

That search can be productive. It can also become distracting.

Meta Pool’s real lesson is not that every DAO needs a new product narrative. It is that token utility has to be funded, maintained, and governed through changing market conditions.

That is harder than announcing a new mechanism.

The delegate role is changing

Across these examples, the pattern is becoming clearer.

ZKsync is asking tokenholders to fund product development.

SafeNet is making token delegation part of transaction security.

Meta Pool is using governance to decide how protocol-generated value should be allocated across operations, validators, tokenholders, and future utility.

These are different situations, but they all point in the same direction: governance is becoming the place where product and economic strategy get decided.

That changes what good delegation requires.

Delegates need to understand more than voting process. They need to understand:

• product strategy,

• treasury allocation,

• protocol revenue,

• token incentives,

• validator economics,

• user adoption,

• accountability structures,

• and tradeoffs between short-term growth and long-term sustainability.

This is also why delegation matters.

If DAO governance were only about discussion, thoughtful commentary might be enough. But governance is increasingly where product roadmaps are funded, protocol revenue is allocated, and economic priorities are set.

In that environment, voting power is not just influence.

It is the seat at the table.

The hard part

This is the part I have been thinking about most directly.

My company, Axia Network, spends a lot of time reading proposals, evaluating governance systems, and thinking through the economic consequences of DAO decisions. But in most DAOs, we do not yet have much voting power.

That creates a real limitation.

We can publish analysis.
We can comment in forums.
We can participate in calls.
We can explain tradeoffs.
We can try to improve the quality of the conversation.

But without delegation, we are still mostly advising from the sidelines.

If the largest tokenholders and delegates are the ones deciding which product roadmaps get funded, which incentive systems survive, and which teams receive protocol resources, then smaller governance firms need delegated voting power to participate meaningfully.

Not because voting power is the point.

Because voting power is how analysis becomes actionable.

Delegation as accountability

There is a cynical version of this argument that says governance is just a power game.

I do not think that is the whole story.

Delegation can be extractive, but it can also be a way to create accountability. Tokenholders who do not have the time, context, or interest to evaluate every proposal can delegate to teams that do.

The question is what those teams do with that responsibility.

For Axia, the goal is not to accumulate voting power for its own sake. The goal is to help DAOs make better capital allocation decisions.

That means evaluating whether proposals are tied to real product outcomes. It means asking whether incentives are sustainable. It means looking at who benefits, who is accountable, and what happens if the assumptions are wrong.

It also means being willing to support ambitious proposals when they are well-designed.

Not every large allocation is wasteful. Not every core-team proposal is suspicious. Not every incentive program is mercenary. Some protocols genuinely need to fund product development, subsidize growth, support infrastructure, or experiment with new economic models.

The job of a delegate is not to say no to everything.

The job is to understand what the DAO is actually buying.

The next phase of DAO governance

The next phase of DAO governance will probably be less about whether communities can produce discussion and more about whether they can make disciplined economic decisions.

That does not mean DAOs should become traditional companies. It does not mean they should abandon openness, community ownership, or credible neutrality.

But it does mean we should be honest about the work governance is already doing.

DAOs are funding product roadmaps.
DAOs are allocating revenue.
DAOs are approving incentive systems.
DAOs are deciding which infrastructure gets supported.
DAOs are shaping what protocols become.

If that is true, then delegates are not just voters.

They are product capital allocators.

And if delegates are capital allocators, then voting power matters. It determines who can move beyond commentary and into actual decision-making.

That is why delegation is not a side issue. It is the mechanism that decides who gets to sit at the table while protocols decide what they are going to build next.