Kash Dhanda, chief operating officer of the Solana-based Jupiter decentralized exchange (DEX), said the protocol will pause governance voting.
In a lengthy Thursday announcement, Dhanda said Jupiter “stands at the edge of an inflection point” and “the window to define the future of DeFi is open, but it won’t stay open for long.”
Dhanda highlighted the need to “be laser-focused on growth,” and said Jupiter was suspending the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) structure, which he said “isn’t working as intended.”
Dhanda said that DAO votes will be paused until 2026, when it will return “with a fresh approach that unifies, rather than divides.” He claimed that the DAO is “stuck in a negative feedback loop,” slowing execution and creating division in the community.
Suspending DAO voting “will let us all focus on execution, speed, and growth while we rethink how the DAO could best operate.”
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DAO paused to prioritize execution
Dhanda said the suspension of DAO voting will not affect active staking rewards, and all previously funded work groups will remain operational. However, no new proposals will be accepted, and the community reserve will remain untouched until voting resumes. The development team will fund community growth with its own operational treasury.
DAO voting will resume next year after Jupiter’s team defines a new process through community engagement. The objective is to find a more productive approach. Dhanda added:
“To repeat: this is not an end to governance, but rather a pause.“
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Follows growing DAO governance backlash
The choice follows Yuga Labs pushing to overhaul the ApeCoin ecosystem with a proposal to shut down the ApeCoin DAO earlier this month. Rather than a pause, this proposal aimed to replace it with a new entity called ApeCo, with the firm’s CEO, Greg Solano, claiming that the DAO has become dysfunctional.
Solano, much like Dhanda, lamented that the DAO slowed development and “devolved into sluggish, noisy and often unserious governance theater.” He concluded that “too many resources have gone to vanity proposals and low-impact initiatives.”
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