Why did Democracy fail in DAOs? w/ Theo Beutel | Devconnect 2025

About this episode

The episode features an interview with Theo Beutel discussing democracy in DAOs and insights from his academic work.

Continuing the publication of interviews from DevConnect in Buenos Aires, I sat down with Theo Beutel (academic secretariat at the Ethereum Foundation, researcher at Centre for Democracy Studies Aarau, University of Zurich) to reflect on attempts at democracy with DAOs. As someone who has worked as the governance lead at several DAOs, Theo had a lot of insight to share. We discussed his recent paper Digital Democracy in Decentralised Autonomous Organisations, the role of academia in Ethereum ...

People in this episode

Host: The Blockchain Socialist

Guest: Theo Beutel

Topics covered

• Democracy
• DAOs
• Governance
• Ethereum
• Academic Research

Keywords

• Democracy
• DAOs
• Ethereum
• Governance
• Digital Democracy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Ethereum Foundation, Centre for Democracy Studies Aarau, University of Zurich

Books & works: Digital Democracy in Decentralised Autonomous Organisations

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