Decentralize the Right Way: How to Bring DAO Principles Into Your Team or Community
"The technology leans left." That was Itamar Dvir’s offhand comment when I asked him about blockchain during a recent livestream of Talk About Your Community! He wasn’t talking politics. He was talking about what happens when a technology favors decentralization, open access, and transparency over hierarchy, control, and secrecy.
And it hit me: DAOs aren’t merely a tech experiment. They’re a working theory about how we might restructure trust.
That’s not just something useful for Web3 evangelists. It’s highly relevant for executives, founders, and community leaders trying to build more transparent, equitable, and participatory organizations—even if you never touch a blockchain.
From WhatsApp to Web3: Itamar’s Unlikely Path
Itamar didn’t set out to build a DAO. He started with a dusty laptop and a Fantasy Premier League podcast. The WhatsApp group that supported the show—just 300 people—was clocking 30,000 messages a week. There was no tech stack. No strategic plan. Just a passionate group of fans who wanted to build something together.
"We didn't even know we were running a community," Itamar told me. "We were just doing what made sense."
That spirit—emergent, organic, contributor-led—is exactly what drew him to DAOs. Fast forward to today, and Itamar is Head of Community at Game7, a Web3 gaming DAO that has scaled from 5,000 to 85,000 members and paid out over $100,000 in bounties to community contributors.
So what can leaders outside of Web3 take from this?
The Leadership Tensions DAOs Surface (That Every Organization Faces)
The most fascinating part of our conversation was philosophical, not technical.
"Do you value stake—or do you value reputation?"
That’s the kind of question DAOs force you to confront. If someone holds more tokens (or shares), should they have more say? What about the person who’s been quietly making the community better for months but owns nothing?
These aren’t just DAO questions. They’re community questions. Organizational questions. And DAOs, for all their messiness, make those tensions visible in ways most companies prefer to avoid.
At Game7, Itamar helped experiment with different ways of assigning power:
Token-based voting, where influence is proportional to financial stake
Reputation-based systems, where influence is earned through contribution
Bounty systems, where work is compensated on an opt-in basis
None of these models are perfect. But they surface the underlying governance questions many leaders never stop to ask.
DAOstack, for instance, offers a reputation-based framework where contributions define voting power—a compelling approach, though hard to measure consistently [1]. Gitcoin, meanwhile, uses a hybrid model blending community input with expert evaluation—a structure that ensures engagement while keeping quality control intact [2].
Quadratic voting has also gained popularity as a compromise—allowing people to express the intensity of their preferences without letting any one individual dominate [3]. Liquid democracy, as seen in some emerging DAOs, combines direct and delegated voting to increase flexibility but must be carefully monitored to avoid over-centralization.
And then there are simpler models like multisig voting, used by DAOs like MolochDAO [1], where a small set of pre-approved members make critical decisions. It's efficient, but not exactly democratic.
Most Organizations Shouldn’t Become DAOs. But They Should Learn From Them.
Itamar was candid: "If you’re not in Web3, you probably don’t need a DAO."
Why? Because the tooling is immature. The norms are unclear. And the risks are real: speculation, power concentration, and contributor apathy among them.
But that doesn’t mean traditional organizations should ignore DAOs. Quite the opposite. DAOs offer a test lab for community-led governance, one that surfaces edge-case scenarios every org will eventually face as they grow.
Projects like MolochDAO show how decentralized decision-making can coexist with centralized financial controls, especially in mission-focused environments [1]. And platforms like Aragon provide modular tools for organizations to design their own governance workflows—a "choose-your-own-decentralization" toolkit [4].
“You're basically designing a new form of company,” Itamar said. "And that means you have to confront how you assign influence, how you reward contribution, and how transparent you want to be."
Organizations exploring flatter structures, co-ops, or member-owned platforms will find plenty of parallels in the DAO world—but fewer shortcuts. There's still no universal playbook. But the experiments are valuable, even when they fail.
How to Apply DAO Thinking to Your Organization (Without Blockchain)
Here’s some good news: You don’t need tokens or wallets to apply DAO thinking. You just need a willingness to share power, reward participation, and build systems for trust.
Start here:
Introduce layered access. Not all community members need the same permissions. Consider models like Game7’s skill tree, where contributors unlock new levels of access by helping others.
Use bounties to incentivize contribution. Invite community members or internal employees to complete small tasks in exchange for rewards—recognition, perks, or actual payment. Gitcoin’s bounty model is a strong reference here [2].
Experiment with reputation. Track and elevate members based on their helpfulness, consistency, or creativity—not just their title or seniority. DAOstack’s system is a reference point, though it requires thoughtful calibration [1].
Run experiments in governance. Try voting on roadmap features. Let contributors pitch initiatives. Rotate leadership roles. MolochDAO and Aragon both show how flexible frameworks can support this without full decentralization [1][4].
Make your decision-making process transparent. Even if you're not decentralizing control, show people how decisions get made and why. This is where traditional orgs often fall short.
Blend governance modes. Consider combining aspects of liquid democracy with reputation-based filters—allowing trusted contributors to carry more influence and delegate responsibly.
[📊 Sidebar: Six Voting Models and What They Reveal About Power]
If you're curious how DAOs actually vote, check out the infographic below. You'll find six governance models—from token-weighted systems to conviction-based voting—and what each says about how influence gets distributed. It's worth a look before you design your own.
Final Thought: DAOs Aren't the Goal. Healthy Communities Are.
Itamar put it best: "Once you’re inside, you see how many brilliant people are trying to use this technology to build better things."
For executives and founders, the point isn’t to decentralize everything. It’s to create systems where trust is earned, contributions are visible, and the community helps shape the future.
In that sense, DAO thinking might just be the most practical lens we have for building more resilient, responsive, and equitable communities—online or off.
Thanks again to Itamar Dvir for joining me on the show. You can follow him on LinkedIn or dig into Game7’s work at game7.io.
Want more conversations like this? Subscribe to Talk About Your Community! and follow our company page on LinkedIn for a schedule of our upcoming events.
End Notes:
MolochDAO: https://molochdao.com
Gitcoin Grants: https://grants.gitcoin.co
Quadratic Voting Explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhVt-1cA23U
Aragon DAO tools: https://app.aragon.org
DAOstack GitHub: https://github.com/daostack/DAOstack-Hackers-Kit
ABOUT ITAMAR DVIR
Itamar Dvir has over eight years of experience in marketing and community building, with a focus on startups and Web3 gaming. He founded Minus 4, which became Israel’s largest fantasy sports community—generating over 30,000 weekly messages from just 300 members.
He later co-founded Atomix8, an on-chain DeFi game, where he served as CEO after initially joining as a consultant. Over nearly two years, he led a lean team of five and bootstrapped the project from concept to execution. His work with Atomix8 eventually brought him into contact with Game7, first in pursuit of a grant—and later as a full-time team member.
Today, Itamar is the Head of Community at Game7, where he has grown the DAO from 5,000 to over 85,000 members, rebuilt the community team, and transitioned operations to a bounty-driven, community-led model. He also advises Web3 projects on community development and go-to-market strategies.
Show Notes
Fantasy Sports to Future of Tech (3:33): Itamar Dvir shares his journey of launching a fantasy premier league with a friend on WhatsApp. After seeing immense growth, they found they were essentially within community management. A side tangent explores NFT basics and uses.
Governance of DAOs (19:25): Virtuous Society, on Spotify and YouTube, is a podcast that interviews experts in different fields to learn from them. Game7 is another venture of Itamar’s that looks to change the future of gaming. This transitions the conversation into DAOs, explaining the structure and decentralization of power in decision making.
Building a DAO (29:30): Various features that are available on Game7 are explored. Gamification is utilized through quests, campaigns, loot drop, and more. There is no playbook for building DAOs yet. It can be a risk as there are multiple ways to fail, especially if there is not a level of comfort within Web3.
Wild West of Tech (35:25): It is still the Wild West within Blockchain, with how young the technology is. There are people who take advantage and people are in the background continuing to develop uses of such tech. Safety and accountability need to catch up.
