a16z Crypto’s Ali Yahya Says DAOs Failed Last Cycle but Could Return With New Governance Models

a16z Crypto general partner Ali Yahya said decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) were a failed experiment in the last crypto cycle, but argued the outcome may have been driven by poor timing. According to ChainCatcher, Yahya said the industry has relearned over the past 10 years that “direct democracy is a bad idea,” because typical users do not want to spend their mornings deciding risk parameters or protocol upgrades. He added that shifting regulatory conditions could reopen space for experimentation, including representative democracy, bicameral structures, or hybrid models combining permissioned and permissionless elements. Yahya also said AI agents could take on governance tasks that humans are unwilling to perform, potentially enabling DAOs to become more autonomous, and he argued that the design space for a new generation of software-based DAOs could be broad.