Nature Stewards Navigate Web3 DAOs: A Journey in Collective Decision-Making
Last week, we in Cohort 0 of the Nature Guild came together online for our third module to explore Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) and Web3 governance. This session was designed to help us understand how nature stewards make decisions in digital spaces, manage shared resources fairly, and connect our values to collective governance.
After our second module, where we familiarized ourselves with wallets, tokens, and blockchains, this session focused on applying those concepts to real-world community challenges. We explored how DAOs and emerging Web3 tools can support inclusive decision-making, transparency, and equitable collaboration. This shows how technology can strengthen the care and stewardship of both people and nature.
Opening the Session and Setting Intentions
We began the session with a warm welcome and a shared reflection on how Web3 governance can feel abstract at first. To ground our learning, we set shared affirmations:
“We are learning how communities make decisions in Web3”
“We contribute our voices and respect each other voices in collective governance”
“We embrace transparency and fairness as core principles in managing resources”
This reminded us that learning governance is not just about technology but about how our communities work together and care for shared resources.
Exploring Community Data and Decision-Making
Our first activity invited us to think deeply about local governance and data privacy, considering what community information should be public, what should stay private, and who should make these decisions.
One participant suggested that “knowledge such as suitable plant species, soil conservation practices, and land rights could be public to benefit others, while sensitive details should stay private.” Others added that ecological data, like wildlife recordings, could be shared globally to support research, while AI models built from that data should remain private.
Participants also highlighted the importance of protecting personal data and community boundaries, especially for indigenous groups. Many noted that communities must fully understand the benefits of new resources, such as introducing a new tree species, to ensure responsible care.
When discussing who should make these decisions, some suggested a combination of leaders, beneficiaries, and funders, while others proposed a community-elected council supported by project developers. Many emphasized that key stakeholders like farmers and project developers should have a stronger voice, and councils in some regions catalog community needs and communicate them to higher authorities.
Through this discussion, we realized that governance is fundamentally about trust, representation, and shared responsibility, which shows why learning about DAOs is so relevant for us. Understanding how decisions are made in digital communities equips us to protect our knowledge, contribute fairly, and participate meaningfully in shaping shared resources.
Introducing DAOs and Why They Matter
We then dove into DAOs, learning that they are communities where members organize and make decisions together online. Some use automated rules through smart contracts, while others operate more simply through open discussions, shared documents, or group votes.. Unlike traditional hierarchical structures, DAOs allow bottom-up, collaborative governance, which mirrors the inclusive values we hold in our real-world communities.
We explored governance types, voting mechanisms, and the history of DAOs. Decisions can be on-chain, recorded permanently and transparently, or off-chain, decided through flexible, trust-based processes. We discussed token-based, quadratic, and reputation-based voting, and explored different types of DAOs, from Climate DAOs like Nature Guild and KlimaDao to service, protocol, and social DAOs. Historical milestones, such as the 2016 DAO hack and the rise of Moloch DAO, helped us see the evolution of collective decision-making in digital spaces.
We also discussed common challenges, including low participation, technology accessibility, miscommunication, and domination by large stakeholders. We saw that understanding DAO governance is not just theoretical but a practical way to ensure our voices matter, our communities are respected, and collective resources are managed equitably.
Simocracy: Encoding Our Values into AI
The highlight of the session was a live demonstration of Simocracy by David Dao. Simocracy is a brand-new tool, and as Cohort 0, we are among the first testers exploring its potential. It is designed to ensure that all voices are represented in governance, especially those who are non-English speakers or cannot be constantly online. Its goal is to create a more inclusive and fair governance system.
We learned to create a “Sim”, a digital twin that represents our values, priorities, and decision-making style. This could be done by writing a manifesto or, more personally, by telling our life story and values to an AI assistant named Luna. This process allowed us to see how our personal values could be encoded into digital governance tools, making our voices count even when we cannot participate directly in every decision.
Post-Session Task: Creating Sims and Forming a Senate
To put these ideas into practice, we are invited to create our own Sim on Simocracy.org using guiding questions provided:
What values do we need when making decisions?
How do we approach conflicts and disagreements?
What are the things we want to protect or achieve?
Who do we trust or listen to in our community?
Once our Sims are ready, we will form a Senate, simulating decision-making processes to see how our individual values influence collective outcomes. This exercise encourages us to reflect on our personal values, understand their impact on the community, and experiment with governance in a practical, hands-on way.
Reflections and Looking Ahead
Module 3 was an eye-opener. Sitting together online, we saw abstract ideas like DAOs transform into something we could experiment with. We debated how communities should make decisions, what knowledge to share, and how to protect what’s sensitive, realizing how these choices ripple through real lives and ecosystems.
Then came Simocracy. Seeing our values encoded into digital ‘Sims’ and imagining how a Senate might act on them made governance feel personal and immediate. We could see how our individual choices could influence collective outcomes, and how fairness, transparency, and shared responsibility play out in practice. We left the session feeling eager to test these tools, and inspired by the possibilities of connecting technology with community care.
📌 This post is part of the Nature Guild Cohort 0 learning series, where experienced nature stewards explore how Web3 tools can support regenerative work and community resilience. Read our reflections on Module 1 here and Module 2 here.