4 months ago
Agora, a blockchain governance startup, is acceptable to get its rival Boardroom. The institution framed the acquisition arsenic a strategical determination to heighten governance wrong the broader Ethereum ecosystem, citing expectations of renewed maturation successful decentralized governance owed to President Trump's committedness of regulatory clarity for the blockchain industry.
"2025 is the twelvemonth we marque bully governance the modular for each protocols successful Ethereum," Agora co-founder Yitong Zhang told CoinDesk.
Agora was founded successful 2022 by Zhang, Charlie Feng, and Kent Fenwick. The trio initially started moving connected governance tooling astatine Nouns DAO, 1 of the buzzier blockchain protocols to look from 2021's DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) and NFT hype cycle.
The word "DAO" mostly describes crypto communities that are governed by their token holders. They’re a favourite among those who judge crypto’s decentralization ethos tin beryllium a world-changing force, albeit an unwieldy mode to tally a pseudo-company. That’s created an opening for enactment projects similar Agora.
Agora was founded connected the premise that token governance is cardinal to the worth of crypto protocols. It aims to supply user-friendly, open-source governance tools for DAOs similar Uniswap and Optimism, which some presently usage Agora to signifier token holders and clasp governance votes.
Boardroom, which predated Agora and has akin goals, took a much horizontal attack to blockchain governance. Boardroom has gradually transitioned from an Agora-style DAO tooling bundle to a information feed—similar to a "Bloomberg" for crypto governance data.
Agora declined to disclose however overmuch it paid to get Boardroom. Boardroom's employees person been offered roles astatine Agora, and Boardroom's founder, Kevin Nielsen, volition stay arsenic an advisor. "There's nary program to deprecate" Boardroom, according to Zhang. Rather, the Agora squad volition support some platforms moving and volition enactment with users to find however the tools mightiness gradually beryllium integrated.
A caller time for DAOs?
"DAO" is little of a buzzword successful 2025 than it was a fewer years ago. They were pitched arsenic a mode to leverage blockchain's halfway strengths successful decentralized coordination to beforehand a caller benignant of community-owned company, but they've been implemented successful assorted ways and to varying degrees of success.
Many DAOs person floundered owed to organizational difficulties; it tin beryllium hard to coordinate thousands of token-holders astir a azygous goal. Improving DAO tooling tin assistance to code this, but it is lone 1 broadside of the equation. Another obstruction for DAOs has been a deficiency of regulatory clarity, which has near unfastened questions of ineligible liability and has made it hard for DAOs to find however tokens should beryllium issued, and however decisions should beryllium divided betwixt token holders and a platform's halfway developers.
"From a concern perspective, DAOs are coming backmost successful a really, truly ample way," said Zhang, who says his ain concern has grown "10X" implicit the past year. "People haven't noticed yet due to the fact that radical person truthful overmuch trauma implicit DAO bulls**t."
The Trump medication has signaled its volition to make clearer guidelines for cryptocurrency issuance, which has led to optimism among Zhang and immoderate of his competitors.
"I deliberation we're gonna yet get tenable definitions for capable decentralization, security, and compliant ways of doing a token," said Zhang."
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