DAO, "Turquoise" and Open Source: a trio of geniuses or a dilemma of outcasts? - ForkLog: cryptocurrencies, AI, singularity, the future

# DAO, "Turquoise" and Open Source: Trio of Geniuses or a Trilemma of Outcasts?

Explains Vladimir Menaskop

DAO, Open Source, and "turquoise" management have evolved from a single aspiration — to learn how to act effectively without strict vertical authority and bosses who decide everything for others. But individually, each of these models inevitably faces a crisis. Web3 researcher Vladimir Menaskop explains why these three approaches can only work together.

From the Author

Recently, a piece was published on "Habr" about how OS projects are often maintained by one or two enthusiasts who literally work, if not for free, then for mere pennies.

Reading this article, I immediately recalled my many years of experience with DAO. Back in 2025, I surpassed the milestone of participating in 100 such organizations, but by 2026 it became clear that I might never approach the next threshold of 1,000.

Why? Because the main analytical platform DeepDAO closed down, and many DAOs either shut down or abandoned their fundamental principles.

On the other hand, there are those who understood the catch and decided on a planned and deep restructuring. Strangely enough, these turned out to be market leaders who had been the most conservative in other sectors: Ethereum, Uniswap, Aave.

Looking back on the 21 years I’ve spent in IT, I realized that all three elements of self-organization — DAO as a form, "turquoise" as a methodology, and Open Source as a tool — form a unified whole. But more on that in order.

DAO

Much has been written about this entity on ForkLog, but let’s try to highlight some less obvious points.

What is a DAO? Literally: a decentralized autonomous organization. But even in this brief decoding, an internal paradox is hidden. Let’s recall the definitions:

1. Decentralized — a system where the management principle and structure are created without a single center, where control and authority are distributed among many independent participants.
2. Autonomous — independent, operating on its own, without external control or connection to shared networks.
3. Organization — a group of people working together to achieve common goals and objectives.

At first glance, these terms seem incompatible. The swan of decentralization pulls toward an ideal where a center is an unallowable luxury. The crab of autonomy somehow reinforces this position, but focuses not on internal structure, rather on disobedience to external systems. The pike of organization, on the contrary, asserts that there is indeed a center, but it resides not in management, but in the problems solved and goals set.

That’s why there is no such thing as "a DAO" in a general format. A society with limited liability "generally" exists; a open or closed joint-stock company — also; even a simple partnership or cooperative "generally" exists. But DAO in such an abstract form cannot exist.

Of course, one might object that there are entire platforms like Aragon or xDAO that standardize the process of creating decentralized autonomous organizations. However, they only help with a set of tools. They can stitch a body together, but it will still be a corpse, formally alive but not a single organism, and definitely not a full-fledged personality. Such Frankenstein monsters are abundant today, if not the overwhelming majority.

Personal experience participating in decentralized autonomous organizations always told me that this was wrong: we replaced content with form. Therefore, for the past 10 years, I’ve been practicing creating micro-DAOs: they are not aimed at success, but solely at passing on DAO principles from person to person. And, I must admit, it works, though not quickly. Here, we need the second element — "turquoise" management.

"Turquoise"

In my life, Frederic Laloux’s book "Reinventing Organizations" appeared long before I read my first article about DAO. Because decentralization existed long before blockchain. In our small IT company of five people, we initially promoted this approach, and Laloux helped us formalize the experience and derive some common principles.

Since then, I’ve been part of various "turquoise" communities, studied the experience of many companies (from offline sectors to gaming), wrote analytical articles, and tried to educate in this area.

Seven years ago, I became an administrator of a Telegram channel dedicated to "turquoise" management. There, people talked about DAO without using the word DAO, worked in DAO without knowing about DAO, and did many other things that essentially boiled down to DAO.

I tried to connect the two worlds by organizing several online meetings of participants from different groups: those discussing "turquoise," and those already building DAOs. And… nothing really came of it: it turned out that these are two largely similar but parallel universes.

But then I had another epiphany — each element (both DAO and "turquoise") requires an incredible internal restructuring. How is it — no boss? How is it — no external control? How is it — working only in network entities? And this restructuring consumes enormous resources: time, attention, understanding, and even money. So each group simply couldn’t switch to another process of such complexity.

At the same time, such a union would still be incomplete, at least without a third element.

Open Source

I don’t think readers need an explanation of what open-source software is, but it’s very important to note that almost all DAOs use it by default.

And here, a synthesis of science, art, and, if you will, magic is born:

1. DAO helps organize business within the economy of action (or more precisely, the part I call crypto-fshor), created through Web 3.0 and Web3 tools and mechanisms.
2. The profit generated from this business (whether network fees or profits from successful liquidations) can be distributed as grants among different teams.
3. And finally, to ensure that the profit extraction process shows both quantitative and qualitative growth, it’s necessary to apply "turquoise" management methods (the last one and a half to two years of Aave’s development are exactly about this).

But when Open Source is detached from this triad, it essentially doesn’t live — it survives: you have to rely on donations from those who find it easier to fork than to support you with a ringing coin.

The Polished Secret

Perhaps it seems to you that such "discovery" is an obvious process long understood. The problem is, it’s not.

All these elements are quite developed: behind each is a not necessarily streamlined, but definitely created and well-thought-out theory; each has its supporters and, most importantly, practice. But separately. Together, they only work in exceptional cases, when there are enthusiasts who have immersed themselves in each sphere and drawn conclusions. Something similar can be found, for example, in the statement "1 BTC = 1 BTC": it seems obvious to everyone, but in reality, it’s not.

And so, it appears that such projects have a future: uncertain, like any other, but still a future.

Especially since each of the three elements is currently experiencing a crisis:

• DAO — due to the latest crypto winter;
• "Turquoise" — due to a crisis of management ideas;
• Open Source — due to a lack of financial support.

Therefore, in such times, it’s crucial to focus not on solving immediate and recurring problems, but on much more fundamental values. This might lead us to another trilemma, where we need to bet on two of the three components to evolve effectively. Or perhaps there are still a fourth or even fifth elements that will complement this set.

If you entered the crypto sphere not just for another hype, but for something bigger, such an approach will definitely be useful to you.