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Key Learnings from the TribalDAOs Project

The TribalDAOs research programme links Indigenous governance practice with modern web3 infrastructure. The themes below summarise important lessons captured throughout the initial research and design phase of this repository and point to the documents that explore each idea in depth.

1. Evolution of Tribal Organisation​

TribalDAOs build on a history of iwi and hapū-led governance, adapting traditional leadership, kinship networks, and community accountability into digital-first environments. The blueprint chronicles how historic structures inform contemporary DAO formation, outlining drivers such as urban dispersal, loss of trust in centralised entities, and the need for transparent, community-led coordination.

Key learning: Tribal entities have adopted different organisational forms for different purposes—often shaped by state legal frameworks—introducing administrative and governnace requirements that at times conflicted with tikanga and gradually displaced traditional leadership, governance, and collaboration practices.

2. Traditional Approaches to Trade and Coordination​

Research highlights pre-existing Māori trading practices grounded in reciprocity, mana, and collective stewardship. These findings emphasise that any coordination tooling must respect traditional exchange protocols, kin-based obligations, and mana-enhancing resource management if it is to gain legitimacy within communities.

Key Learning: Trade primarily served to strengthen relationships and community resilience; governance systems distributed wealth and power to uphold collective wellbeing while respecting individual and collective autonomy at multiple levels.

Sources: Desktop Research Compendium

3. Polycentric Governance and Quadratic Voting​

Matou’s three-house model distributes authority between cultural guardianship, community strategy, and contributor execution, ensuring no single group dominates decision-making. Quadratic voting further balances majority rule with preference intensity, allowing communities to surface kaupapa that hold deep cultural weight.

Key Learning: Governance is layered and complex. Decision-making must balance context-specific adaptability with transparent, scalable process design, and balance domain expertise with the voices of affected stakeholders.

Sources: Three House Governance Model, Roles & Responsibilities, Quadratic Voting Explained

4. Indigenous Economic Wellbeing Design​

Token, treasury, and pricing frameworks are explicitly geared toward redistributive outcomes, intergenerational stewardship, and culturally aligned reinvestment. Worked examples illustrate how fee recycling, bonding curves, and contribution rewards keep value circulating within communities instead of extracting it.

Key Learning: Design reciprocal value flows that circulate value and transparently redistribute revenue back to community and local initiatives—prioritising circulation over extraction to sustain community objectives.

Sources: Matou Tokenomics Model, Treasury Overview, Staking Rewards Scenario, UTIL Pricing Models

The $UTIL positioning paper establishes the token as a service access credit rather than a financial product, detailing safeguards such as governance separation, controlled issuance, and AML/KYC readiness. This legal framing protects Indigenous organisations from misclassification while preserving sovereignty over token use.

Key Learning: Regulatory implications require ongoing design and advice. The community should adopt a clear stance on compliance versus autonomy; in the interim, avoid financial-product promises, document rights and utility clearly, and separate governance from value flows.

Sources: UTIL Utility Token Positioning

6. Tokenomics Design and Communication​

Clear documentation explains how $UTIL functions and how people onboard and offboard. Onboarding runs through a Treasury‑controlled bonding curve that mints along the curve within governed price bands; offboarding is Treasury‑managed via buyback‑and‑burn or burn‑on‑use policies to retire supply and recirculate value. Pricing is governed through clear models (tiered, metered, prepaid) with adjustable bands for affordability and stability. Rewards are parameterised and transparent (fee‑first funding, time‑weighted staking, vesting/lockups to prevent early exits). Sell‑pressure is mitigated with purchase limits, access windows, curve parameter control, reward buffers, and buyback‑and‑burn mechanisms.

Key Learning: Use bonding curves for predictable onboarding and Treasury‑managed offboarding; keep token function strictly utility; govern pricing via models and price bands; publish reward formulas and prioritise fee‑first replenishment; and apply guardrails (limits, lockups, buffers, buybacks) to reduce sell‑pressure while preserving access.

Sources: Matou Tokenomics Model, Treasury Deployment Strategy, Pricing Models, Rewards Scenario, UTIL Distribution Guide

7. Technical Communication and Design Ideas​

Process simulations, use-case walkthroughs, and feasibility studies translate governance concepts into actionable technical steps. They demonstrate how proposal lifecycles, registry patterns, and data anchoring work in practice, bridging the gap between cultural requirements and implementation detail.

Key Learning: Prioritise Indigenous autonomy and values in technical choices. Define trust, distribution, security, and sustainability from an Indigenous perspective and explore partner-chain proof-of-authority and local node deployment.

Sources: Contribution Process Simulation, Matou Use-Case Simulation, Blockchain Feasibility Analysis

8. Contribution Systems Design Principles​

Drawing on Ostrom and Rennie, Matou’s contribution framework codifies boundary setting, peer monitoring, graduated sanctions, and recognition of high-value contributors. This keeps contributions fair, transparent, and culturally grounded while maintaining adaptive feedback loops.

Key Learning: Make contributions first-class, verifiable objects. Resource creation, review, and verification; record provenance and dependencies; and continue designing rewards for demonstrated downstream impact so incentives align with collective wellbeing.

Sources: Contributions Model, Contribution Design Principles, Contribution Systems Framework

9. Cultural Complexity within Systems Design​

Cultural alignment workshops and operations guidance reveal how commuinty values translate into digital protocols. They stress the need for indepth contextualisation across the whole stake, inculding decision making, infrastructure implementations, community deployment, conflict resolution pathways, and ongoing dialogue to keep technology aligned with community realities.

Sources: Cultural Alignment Report, Operations Guide

10. UTxO vs Account-Based Model Considerations​

Technical research explains why Matou favours Cardano’s extended UTxO ledger for treasury control, proposal anchoring, and scripted governance. By contrasting deterministic outputs with account-style ledgers, the analysis shows how UTxO patterns (registry outputs, parameter stores, multi-sig scripts) support transparent, auditable state changes that map cleanly to TribalDAO governance needs.

Sources: Blockchain Feasibility Analysis, Cardano Proof-of-Stake Overview