Advancing DAO Adoption Through Template-driven Design for Applied Governance in Web3

Abstract

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) are emerging as key governance structures in Web3 ecosystems, enabling community-driven decision-making without centralized control. Yet, current DAO implementation frameworks often lack modularity, role adaptability, and low-code accessibility, limiting broader adoption-especially among non-technical users and emerging organizations. Targeting these issues, this paper proposes a modular, template-driven DAO system for public blockchains such as Ethereum, integrating reusable governance logic units, token-based role configuration, and low-code interfaces to support flexible and secure deployment. The system allows role-scoped configuration of governance parameters via templates and supports scenario-specific deployment using predefined smart contracts, avoiding the need for direct code modification in the demonstrated use case. A quadratic votingbased governance scenario was used to demonstrate how the proposed framework can enable DAO setup and participation without requiring direct contract modification for that specific use case. Internal validation, conducted with simulated stakeholder roles, confirmed improvements in usability, configuration safety, and governance clarity, while also identifying practical gaps in role-specific UI guidance and simulation tooling. Although the current implementation is limited to a single voting model and local deployment, the findings highlight the potential of templatebased DAO systems to enable more inclusive, adaptable, and transparent decentralized governance.