How healthy is DAO governance, really?
I spent the last months building a way to answer that question with data.
Today I'm launching the Decentralized Governance Index (DGI) — the first curated benchmark for governance health across the Web3 ecosystem.
Here's what we found analyzing 44 major DAOs across 4 categories:
The average governance health score is 5.4 out of 10. That's a D+.
DeFi protocols lead with 6.0 — not great, but significantly ahead. Public Goods DAOs score just 3.3, the lowest of any category.
The top performer? Radiant Capital at 8.6. Not Uniswap. Not Aave. Not Arbitrum.
Because governance health isn't about size or TVL. It's about:
→ Are real humans participating? (not just wallets)
→ Is voting power distributed? (not concentrated in 5 whales)
→ Are governance processes active? (not stagnant)
Some findings that surprised us:
• Several DAOs with 30,000+ followers have fewer than 200 actual voters
• Perfect sybil resistance scores coexist with near-zero participation
• The gap between best and worst is 6x (8.6 vs 1.4)
Every score is recalculated daily. All methodology is published and transparent.
This is a solo founder project built in Austria — no VC funding, no token, just data.
🔎 Explore the index
✅ Check any DAO for free
🧾 Full methodology
