One structural lesson that appears across DAOs is the overlap between execution and governance power.
In many cases, the largest service providers or contributors also hold significant governance influence. While this may be unavoidable in early stages (because founders and core teams hold large token allocations), it creates an inherent tension: the same actors can end up both executing and supervising major spending decisions.
But if founders had zero governance power, many protocols would never have shipped. So the real issue is when governance remains dominated by executors for too long and independent oversight fails to emerge.
We have seen examples of this dynamic across the industry. For instance, in Aave, a recent proposal granting substantial funding to Aave Labs passed with strong voting support aligned with the funding recipient itself, despite notable criticism. Situations like this highlight the governance tension when execution and oversight are not clearly separated.
As ENS DAO matures, strengthening independent delegate oversight and maintaining a competitive service provider ecosystem may become increasingly important for ensuring fiscal discipline and accountability. When execution and governance authority are concentrated in the same actors, incentive structures can also become skewed. Developer incentives may end up rewarding the creation of new initiatives rather than measurable adoption or ecosystem growth. This can lead treasury resources to be directed toward experimentation instead of initiatives focused on user education, integrations, and real-world usage.
Another emerging dynamic across DAOs is the increasing role of AI tools in delegate operations. Many delegates are beginning to rely on AI systems for research, analysis, and drafting governance contributions. This trend is likely to accelerate and may significantly affect how governance participation scales. As this evolves, it may be worth considering how AI-supported delegate operations influence expectations around delegate capability, transparency, and accountability.