Farewell to DAOs? Why DAOs 2.0 and Autonomous Organizations Are Inevitable | Sam McCarthy on Just DAO It!

Are DAOs dead? Not even close. They're growing up.

In this episode, host Adam Miller talks with Sam McCarthy from DAOstar and MetaGov, author of the essay "Farewell to DAOs." The title is clickbait on purpose. The essay argues that the one-token-one-vote model is finished, but DAOs themselves are inevitable.

Sam went from consulting for commercial banks to working full time in crypto during DeFi Summer. He explains why DAOs have locked themselves into one copy-paste governance model. He argues that decentralization should be a means to an end, not the goal. And he says DAOs need to beat the corporation on performance to earn legitimacy.

Then they get into autonomous organizations (AOs): companies run by AI agents. Sam shares what DAOstar and Stanford are building together, including a new incubator for AOs. They also cover:
- Who owns an agent-run company, and who is liable for it
- How to make incentives and penalties work for AI agents
- Reputation registries and trust networks
- Why a multi-agent world makes organizational design an AI safety question

If you're building a DAO, a Web3 project, or a company that uses AI agents, this one is for you.

LINKS FROM SAM
Twitter/X: https://x.com/samccarthy27
Substack: https://sammccarthy.substack.com/
Stanford AO Summit (recordings and transcripts): https://www.stanfordao.org/summit
London AO Summit (upcoming, early November, co-hosted with ARIA): https://daostar.org/aosummit

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
"Farewell to DAOs" essay by Sam McCarthy and Spencer Graham: https://sammccarthy.substack.com/p/farewell-to-daos
DAOstar: https://daostar.org/
Metagov (and its Slack community): https://metagov.org/

ABOUT JUST DAO IT!
Just DAO It! is the podcast for people starting DAOs, Web3 projects and AI agents, hosted by Adam Miller, CEO & Co-Founder of MIDAO https://midao.org